The Home Literacy Environment and Preschool Children's Reading Skills and Interest

Research Findings: This study explored the association between the home literacy environment (HLE), conceptualized as comprising parents’ reading beliefs and home literacy practices, and preschoolers’ reading skills and reading interest. It also identified factors in the HLE that predict emerging reading competence and motivation to read. A total of 193 children age 6 years from 14 preschools across Singapore and their parents participated in the study. The parents completed a reading belief inventory, a family literacy activity inventory, and a demographic questionnaire that surveyed the child's reading interest. The children were administered a battery of standardized literacy tests. The study found a moderate relationship between the HLE and children's reading competencies and a strong relationship between the HLE and children's reading interest. When parents’ education level and children's age were controlled, hierarchical multiple regression analyses found that family literacy activities contributed more unique variance to children's reading outcomes and reading interest than did parents’ reading beliefs. Active parental involvement was the strongest component of the HLE, with parent–child engagement in reading and writing emerging as the best predictor of both the child's emerging reading skills and reading interest. With respect to reading beliefs, parents’ efficacy in supporting literacy development before their child attended school positively predicted reading competence, as did parents’ affect and verbal participation in fostering reading interest. However, verbal participation negatively predicted Singapore children's reading competence. Practice or Policy: The implications of the results were discussed.     

Therapeutic radionuclides in nuclear medicine: current and future prospects

The potential use of radionuclides in therapy has been recognized for many decades. A number of radionuclides, such as iodine-131 (¹³¹I), phosphorous-32 (³²P), strontium-90 (⁹⁰Sr), and yttrium-90 (⁹⁰Y), have been used successfully for the treatment of many benign and malignant disorders. Recently, the rapid growth of this branch of nuclear medicine has been stimulated by the introduction of a number of new radionuclides and radiopharmaceuticals for the treatment of metastatic bone pain and neuroendocrine and other malignant or non-malignant tumours. Today, the field of radionuclide therapy is enjoying an exciting phase and is poised for greater growth and development in the coming years. For example, in Asia, the high prevalence of thyroid and liver diseases has prompted many novel developments and clinical trials using targeted radionuclide therapy. This paper reviews the characteristics and clinical applications of the commonly available therapeutic radionuclides, as well as the problems and issues involved in translating novel radionuclides into clinical therapies.     

Fostering online social construction of science knowledge with primary pre-service teachers working in virtual teams

As many primary pre-service teachers enter teacher education courses with little science background, it is essential in teacher education courses to provide opportunities for them to learn more science independently. The purpose of this study is to investigate an online pedagogical activity that fosters the social construction of science knowledge by primary pre-service teachers working in small virtual teams. The study investigated how the pre-service teachers collaborated online in virtual teams to complete set tasks, their attitudes toward and beliefs about the effectiveness of the online learning experience, and the types and quality of the resources developed. The findings indicated that the virtual team-produced science resource materials were generally of high quality, with nearly half the number of teams engaging with Web 2.0 technologies (e.g. wikis and blogs) to construct their product. The findings indicated positive attitudes toward the collaborative learning even though beliefs about online learning were mixed.     

School‐to‐work transition services for students with disabilities in Malaysia: organisations' views on policy and practices

Transition services are required by law for students with disabilities in many developed countries. In Malaysia, however, there is still no specific legislation mandating that school‐to‐work transition planning and services be provided to students with disabilities. This study investigated the state of the transition services provided by educational organisations to students with disabilities in Malaysia. A mixed method research design, which utilises both quantitative and qualitative research techniques, was employed to obtain information from 23 government organisations and NGOs involved in the education and training of students with disabilities. This study found that the organisations surveyed were aware of the lack of transition support and call attention to the importance of instituting a national policy on school‐to‐work transition services and supported employment systems for students with disabilities. The legislative and educational implications for Malaysia are discussed.     

Developing Singapore school leaders to handle complexity in times of uncertainty

In times of uncertainty, university faculties have a duty to prepare school leaders to handle complexity, as the number of variables in the educational system and the interactivity of variables increase exponentially. The Leaders in Education Program (LEP) is a 6-month full-time program at the Singapore National Institute of Education (NIE, which is a part of Nanyang Technological University). The LEP aims to prepare especially selected vice-principals and ministry officers in Singapore for school leadership. The LEP is a collaborative effort between the NIE and the Ministry of Education, an example of a university–government partnership in program development. This article describes the efforts of the LEP in developing the ability of school leaders to deal with complexity. It also examines in detail one particular component of the LEP, the Creative Action Project, to illustrate how this is done in practice, and analyzes the views of participants on their learning through the project.     

Three Levels of Goal Orientation in Learning

Sixteen adult volunteers provided thinking-aloud protocols while undergoing a 10-hr individually administered course in BASIC (beginner's all-purpose symbolic instruction code) programming. Three levels of goals were identified as operative in the learning situation: task-completion goals, instructional goals, and personal knowledge-building goals. Although protocol statements indicating knowledge-building goals were infrequent, students exhibiting a relatively high proportion of them were distinctive in several ways. They did significantly better on a posttest. Their performance in goal cue selections differed from that of other participants in ways consistent with their orientation: They responded more often to learning goal cues than to task goal cues. They actively related new learning to prior knowledge and they posed and tried to solve problems and questions. Students oriented toward instructional goals tended to focus on what was explicitly taught. Students oriented toward task-completion goals tended to equate learning with successful completion of assigned tasks. Level of goal orientation and posttest performance were unrelated to level of education and prior computer experience but were positively related to previous experience of independent learning.     

Self-schematic students in mathematics and their contrasting coping responses to mathematical challenges: a cluster analytic investigation

Educational Studies in Mathematics - Mathematics self-schemas are students’ cognitive generalisations of their selves in learning mathematics (Ng in Educational Psychology, 34(6),...     

Quality assurance in the Singapore education system in an era of diversity and innovation

This paper describes how Singapore attempts to balance the need for quality assurance and the need for educational diversity and innovation. The Singapore experience shows that this is a delicate balance. On the one hand, to promote diversity and innovation, the government attempts to decentralise its power to the schools. On the other hand, for quality assurance, the government sets up quality structures that reassert the centrality of government control. This paper examines the implications of such a strategy and the challenges that schools face in navigating a new paradigm of diversity and innovation while satisfying the requirements of quality assurance.     

Auditing for Score Inflation Using Self-Monitoring Assessments: Findings From Three Pilot Studies

Test-based accountability often produces score inflation. Most studies have evaluated inflation by comparing trends on a high-stakes test and a lower stakes audit test. However, Koretz and Beguin (2010) noted weaknesses of audit tests and suggested self-monitoring assessments (SMAs), which incorporate audit items into high-stakes tests. This article reports the first three trials of SMAs, evaluating whether SMAs can detect inflation that had already been documented. The studies were conducted with mathematics tests in three grades. Despite severe conservative biases, the audit component functioned as expected in many of the trials. The difference in performance between nonaudit and audit items was associated with factors that earlier research showed to be related to test preparation and score inflation, such as scoring just below the Proficient cut in the previous year and school poverty. However, a number of null findings underscore the need for additional research into the design of audit items.