Sense of audience and the adult writer: A study across competence levels

The purpose of this research was to investigate five audience-related constructs impacting on the written expression of adult writers who demonstrate varying degrees of literacy competence. Four specific groups of adult writers were targeted for this study, including 35 college-able writers demonstrating learning disabilities, 22 writers with learning disabilities attending a rehabilitation vocational training program, 35 remedial English college writers, and 35 normally achieving college writers. A primary trait scale was developed to investigate five major constructs identified in the literature as impacting on audience. These constructs included general characteristics, organization of text, analyzing/constructing the audience, construct differentiation of voice, and execution. The results of this research indicate that the population of adult writers demonstrating learning disabilities have difficulties with certain aspects of the writing process that may impact on the audience (reader). Implications for assessment and instruction are discussed.     

How to support and engage students in alternative forms of education and training? A qualitative study of school staff members in Flanders

This study focuses on how students, who for a variety of reasons struggle in mainstream secondary schools, can be supported and engaged by alternative forms of education and training to attain a (formal) qualification. Interviews and focus groups are carried out with school staff members of distinct types of alternative learning arenas in Flanders (northern part of Belgium): second chance secondary education, part-time apprenticeship track and part-time work-based vocational education. Our analyses reveal that, due to the selectiveness of mainstream secondary education, staff members in alternative learning arenas mainly struggle with the ways to develop inclusive curricula/practices and with the actual content of the curricula of their educational training or programme they are supposed to teach. Staff members struggle with putting into practice the fundamental aim to prepare socially vulnerable students for their future lives. Debates within the school team focus upon the relative importance of transferrable, specialist and social skills and competences. Results of this study are discussed to further enhance the professionalisation of school teams, and can be seen as the starting point to specify and develop the curriculum taught in both alternative learning arenas and mainstream secondary education.     

The Conceptual Bases of Study Strategy Inventories

This article describes the historical origins and development of a series of well-known study strategy inventories and seeks to identify their conceptual bases. The theories and evidence influencing the development of 6 contrasting instruments are considered before examining empirical evidence of similarities and differences between the measurement instruments. This analysis is tackled in three stages, looking first at inventories developed in the 1970s and 1980s that focused mainly on motivation, study methods, and learning processes. The more recent work that brought in mental models, metacognition, and self-regulation is then introduced, leading to a concluding section that discusses the conceptual bases of the whole set of inventories. The trends found in this research area are described and used to explore the current confusion of overlapping terms describing apparently similar aspects of learning and studying in higher education.     

Why is letter-name knowledge such a good predictor of learning to read?

The knowledge of letter names measured just before children enter school has been known for a long time as one of the best longitudinal predictors of learning to read in an alphabetic writing system. After a period during which the comprehensive investigation of this relationship was largely disregarded, there is now a growing interest in attempts to understand the role(s) letter names play in literacy acquisition. This paper reviews these recent studies and emphasizes their main findings regarding the influence of letter-name knowledge in early and formal literacy for three main components of literacy acquisition: first, the emergence of the phonological processing of print; then, the learning of letter-sound correspondences; finally, the development of phonemic sensitivity skills. The final section discusses the status of letter-name knowledge (LNK) in literacy acquisition and suggests possible directions for further research.     

Alternative placements in initial teacher education: An evaluation

The paper evaluates a programme of short alternative placements for final-year B.Ed. students in Northern Ireland, which aims to broaden student teachers’ experience and develop their transferable skills. The alternative placement programme is set first in an international context of evolving pre-service field placements and then set in a local context marked by a surplus of teachers; a Revised Curriculum that emphasises the importance of employability, lifelong learning, and enterprise and entrepreneurship; and the introduction of the Extended Schools programme. The evaluation is based on feedback from the 2007 to 2008 cohort of students whose comments confirm the value of exposing student teachers to non-traditional educational environments.