Long-term effects of synthetic versus analytic phonics teaching on the reading and spelling ability of 10?year old boys and girls

A comparison was made of 10-year-old boys and girls who had learnt to read by analytic or synthetic phonics methods as part of their early literacy programmes. The boys taught by the synthetic phonics method had better word reading than the girls in their classes, and their spelling and reading comprehension was as good. In contrast, with analytic phonics teaching, although the boys performed as well as the girls in word reading, they had inferior spelling and reading comprehension. Overall, the group taught by synthetic phonics had better word reading, spelling, and reading comprehension. There was no evidence that the synthetic phonics approach, which early on teaches children to blend letter sounds in order to read unfamiliar words, led to any impairment in the reading of irregular words.     

The effects of using drawings in developing young children’s mathematical word problem solving: A design experiment with third-grade Hungarian students

The present study aims to investigate the effects of a design experiment developed for third-grade students in the field of mathematics word problems. The main focus of the program was developing students?? knowledge about word problem solving strategies with an emphasis on the role of visual representations in mathematical modeling. The experiment involved five experimental and six control classes (N?=?106 and 138, respectively) of third-grade students. The experiment comprised 20 lessons with 73 word problems, providing a systematic overview of the basic word problem types. Teachers of the experimental classes received a booklet containing lesson plans and overhead transparencies with different types of visual representations attached to the word problems. Students themselves were invited to make drawings for each task, and group work and teacher-led discussion shaped their beliefs about the role of visual representations in word problem solving. The effect sizes of the experiment were calculated from the results of two tests: an arithmetic skill and a word problem test, and the unbiased estimates for Cohen??s d proved to be 0.20 and 0.62. There were significant changes also in experimental group students?? beliefs about mathematics. The experiment pointed to the possibility, feasibility, and importance of learning about visual representations in mathematical word problem solving as early as in grade?3 (around age 9?C10).     

Co‐operative Learning for Children with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Mainstream and Special Class Settings: An exploratory study

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a cooperative learning (CL) intervention on the levels of social and task engagement of a child with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) conducted in a mainstream class setting and a child with ASD implemented in a special needs class setting. The target children were two 8‐year‐old boys diagnosed with high functioning autism. Both children were placed in CL groups which included three typically developing peers, one male and two females. Four baseline sessions taught in a traditional teaching format and seven CL intervention sessions based on a “learning together/conceptual approach” took place. All sessions were recorded for video analysis. CL was found to be successful in substantially increasing the level of social engagement for both the child in the special needs class and the child in the mainstream class. CL was not found to facilitate task engagement. Active task engagement was found to remain relatively stable and passive task engagement was found to decrease for one child and remain stable for the other. Teacher concerns and issues relating to the practical implementation of CL in both settings are discussed.     

Visual and orthographic information in learning to read and the influence of phonics instruction

In the Jackson and Coltheart theory of acquisition of word reading it is claimed that, near the beginning of the partial alphabetic phase of development, children have full use of abstract letter units (ALUs). This claim and less exclusive alternatives were examined. In Experiment 1, normal progress children with on average 9 months of school reading instruction, either with or without explicit phonics, read with moderate accuracy (orthographically) familiar words in upper-case letters (e.g., AND) that are visually dissimilar from their lower-case forms. Lower-case forms were read with greater accuracy but only for familiar words, there being no letter-case effect for less familiar words. Children with explicit phonics showed less impairment in reading accuracy when words were presented in upper-case form than children without such phonics. Children with on average 22 months of instruction, in Experiment 2, read relatively unfamiliar words that required some phonological mediation. Those without explicit phonics instruction read words with digraphs in unfamiliar upper case less accurately than in lower case, while those with explicit phonics showed no such letter-case difference. The results supported the view that children do not have full use of ALUs in early alphabetic reading, both children with and without explicit phonics to some extent using letter identities specific to lower case for representation of familiar words.     

Continuity and Discontinuity Between Training and School Experience: Follow-up Studies of Former Students of the Institute of Education

The present report is based on three pilot projects that aimed to explore and describe teachers' perceptions of their training and the transition experience of teachers in the shift from being a student on a teacher training programme to being a full-fledged teacher in the primary or secondary school. The three studies were prompted by the concern for a possible lack of fit, even under the best circumstances, between pre-service training and the work of a full-time teacher in a typical school. In the main, then, this report focuses on the continuity between campus-based training and teaching practice and full-time teaching experience.     

The role of feedback from phonology to orthography in orthographic learning: an extension of item‐based accounts

Skilled readers were trained to recognise either the oral (n=44) or visual form (n=40) of a set of 32 novel words (oral and visual instantiation, respectively). Training involved learning the ‘meanings’ for the instantiated words and was followed by a visual lexical decision task in which the instantiated words were mixed with real English words and untrained pseudowords, and the instantiated words were to be considered as words. The phonology‐to‐orthography consistency (feedback consistency) of the instantiated words was manipulated to investigate the role of feedback from phonology in orthographic learning. Masked consonant and vowel‐preserving form primes were used in the lexical decision task as probes of orthographic learning. Feedback‐consistent instantiated words were recognised significantly faster in lexical decision than feedback‐inconsistent instantiated words, and facilitation was significantly greater from consonant‐preserving than vowel‐preserving primes for orally but not visually instantiated words. The results support the hypothesis that orthographic representations based on a consonant frame can be generated from the speech signal before encountering the printed forms, and that feedback from phonology is involved in the early stages of orthographic learning.     

Crowdsourcing civility: A natural experiment examining the effects of distributed moderation in online forums

Participation in discussions about the public interest can be enhanced by technology, but can also create an environment in which participants are overwhelmed by the quantity, quality, and diversity of information and arguments. Political participation is at a greater disadvantage than non-political activities in that participants from different parties already start out with established differences, which requires them to reach some form of common ground before progress can be made. Those seeking authentic deliberation are discouraged to participate when confronted with uncivil and inflammatory rhetoric. These issues are often exacerbated in online discussions, where lack of identity cues and low barriers to entry can lead to heightened incivility between participants, often labeled as “flaming” and “trolling”. This paper explores the extent to which moderator systems, tools online discussion forums use to manage contributions, can reduce information overload and encourage civil conversations in virtual discussion spaces. Using the popular website Slashdot as an example of sound moderation in a public discourse setting, we found that users move toward consensus about which and how comments deserve to be moderated. Using these findings, we explore how transferable these systems are for participation in public matters specifically to the unique attributes of political discussion. Slashdot's political forum provides a comparison group that allowed us to find quantitative and qualitative differences in political posting, comments, and moderation. Our results show that large scale, civil participation is possible with a distributed moderation system that enables regularly lively debates to be conducted positively because the system provides tools for people to enforce norms of civility.     

Encountering Pedagogy through Relational Art Practices

Two artists involved in ‘socially engaged art’ practice were invited to work with art education teacher candidates and instructors in an effort to rethink notions of teaching, learning and art. We initiated this residency, which we called ‘The Summerhill Residency’, to examine how learning encounters might create environments for meaningful exchanges between the ways in which artists and secondary art education teacher candidates learn to think about pedagogy and the nature of artistic learning. Drawing upon Bourriaud's theory of relational aesthetics, we consider, yet trouble, the relational aspects of the processes and products of the artist residency, and examine the crisis of imagination that permeated teacher candidates' experiences. Throughout the project, a/r/tography offered a rich form of living enquiry that opened up possibilities for learning within a community of enquirers.