A Literacy Program for Fathers: A Case Study

A case study approach was used to document the literacy experiences of 25 fathers and their children who participated in a family literacy program. It explored the effects of a literacy intervention that was designed to assist fathers of five-year-old children to develop their children’s literacy learning in a family environment. The findings indicated that the fathers promoted their children’s literacy development when they learned literacy strategies and activities in the program. Although all fathers were provided with the same literacy content, they differed in their use of literacy strategies. Themes were identified and described based on the literacy strategies, interactions, materials, and activities that the fathers used.     

“Why do dogs pant?”: Characteristics of parental explanations about science predict children's knowledge

Using a new method for examining parental explanations in a laboratory setting, the prompted explanation task, this study examines how characteristics of parental explanations about biology relate to children's knowledge. Parents (N = 148; M_age = 38; 84% female, 16% male; 67% having completed college) of children ages 7–10 (M_age = 8.92; 47% female, 53% male; 58% White, 9.5% Black, 9.5% Asian) provided answers to eight how and why questions about biology. Parents used a number of different approaches to address the questions, including providing more mechanistic responses to how questions and more teleological responses to why questions. The characteristics of parental explanations—most notably, how frequently parents provided correct responses—predicted children's performance on measures of verbal intelligence and biological knowledge. Additional exploratory analyses and implications for children's learning are discussed.     

The Online Studio: Cultures,Perceptions and Questions for the Future

We investigated the impact of the transition to online architectural design studios in response to the COVID-19 pandemic at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. The study focussed specifically on student and tutor perceptions of online design studio before the sudden transition to online delivery, and how those perceptions shifted through the initial months of online delivery. We consider the pedagogical context in which the shift to online teaching took place and the evident successes and failures in the early iterations of online studio. We discuss similar and contrasting perceptions in student and tutor groups and observe the changes in these perceptions prior to and after teaching and learning in online studios. The paper concludes with a series of questions directed to the architectural design studio teaching community regarding the apparent inevitability of a future in which both FTF and online-only studios are surpassed with hybrid design studios.     

Flexible phonics: a complementary ‘next generation’ approach for teaching early reading

We describe the rationale for- and content of- a freely available, novel, theoretically driven and evidence-based approach to improving the teaching of word reading in reception classrooms called ‘Flexible Phonics’. Flexible Phonics (FP) adds measurable value to-, rather than wholly replacing, existing synthetic phonics programmes. The rationale underpinning the FP approach concerns the need for multi-componential, maximally efficient, and truly generative approaches to allow early independence in reading for all children that apply to all words in the opaque spelling system of English. Building from these three principles, contemporary reading theory and evidence from cognitive science, linguistics and scaled educational implementation research, FP embodies a 5-element intervention differentiated to children's current attainment levels. FP augments mandated synthetic phonics through use of quality real books allowing ‘Direct Mapping’ of taught grapheme-phoneme correspondences, targeted oral vocabulary teaching, strategy-instruction on ‘Set-for-Variability’ and targeted preventative intervention for the most at-risk readers to then access wider FP content. Implications for policy and enhanced professional practice in English schools are considered.     

Families’ Selection of Children’s Literature Books

This study examined families’ choices of children’s literature books for joint story reading. Teachers, parents, and their children from five kindergarten classrooms participated in the study. Over a 4 months period, family members joined other parents twice a week to learn and practice story reading techniques. They selected children’s literature books that were of interest to both of them and their children and were developmentally appropriate. Family members were interviewed and responded to a questionnaire before the intervention. The results provided insight in relation to the parents’ perceptions about literacy, reading with families, and story reading. All members of the families read to their children frequently or daily and engaged the children in conversations about the books read. The books chosen to be read to the children were categorized by genre, with modern fiction being the most popular genre.