Task‐focused behaviour and literacy development: a reciprocal relationship

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to examine the effect of task‐focused behaviour on reading fluency, spelling and comprehension; and (b) to examine the role of the different literacy skills in subsequent task‐focused behaviour. Two hundred and seven Finnish‐speaking children were followed from preschool until their fourth year at school and were tested for reading fluency, spelling and reading comprehension. The teachers also rated the children's task‐focused behaviour. The results showed that task‐focused behaviour was a significant predictor of later reading comprehension and spelling skills. However, all three literacy skills predicted subsequent task‐focused behaviour.     

Training of Farmers in Island Agricultural Areas: The Case of Cyclades Prefecture

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explore the views of young farmers regarding the agricultural training, the training needs and content, as well as the implementation of information technology (IT) and the Internet in agricultural training. The research was conducted in the Greek islands of Cyclades.

Methodology: A quantitative approach was implemented in the research and questionnaires were used for the data collection. There were 129 young farmers (under the age of 40), who participated. These farmers were situated in 23 islands of the Cycladic complex in Greece.

Findings: The research concluded that young farmers in Cyclades were, in general, positively situated towards agricultural training. They also stressed the importance of training content, which focuses on local agricultural needs, instead of tackling general agricultural policies and practices. Consequently, all future training programs should be tailor-made to the needs of local agricultural economies (e.g. different programs for different parts of the country). Although most farmers agreed on the importance of IT technology in the agricultural profession and training, they do not make extensive use of it.

Research Implications: The research shed some light on the basic parameters of the agricultural training parameters. These parameters need to be clearly defined in order to organize future efforts for the modernization of the agricultural profession in Greece. It is believed that the results will help official authorities (e.g. the Ministry of Agricultural Development and Food) to organize future training programs according to the needs of the agricultural population and considering the regional peculiarities in cultivation and stockbreeding.

Originality/Value: A multi-dimensional approach has been followed, by exploring a variety of agricultural training issues: trainees' views, training needs and content and IT use in the agricultural sector and training. The researchers wanted to explore whether their results were similar to those of research that was conducted in the past nationwide, as the Cyclades islands are quite different from the mainland due to geographical reasons.     

Environmental Education within a Science Course in the Initial Education of Primary Teachers

This paper describes an attempt to infuse an environmental dimension into a science course through which prospective primary teachers are trained. The innovation concerns teaching science concepts not in the context of the discipline, but within a context of everyday life, and as such the focus chosen was drinking water. In formulating the course, learners’ ideas about aspects of the issue were taken into account. The evaluation was based on a post‐course questionnaire. The main conclusions to be drawn from this evaluation is that the science knowledge learned through this approach helped students gain a better understanding of a variety of aspects which concern that issue. The majority of students appreciated such an integrated approach and thought the approach taken was more promising than the stereotypical one that they had been accustomed to up to that point.     

Is Victor Better than Victoria at Maths?

The aim of this study was to examine whether there are gender differences in actual maths achievement, in attitudes towards maths, and in relevant achievement attributions among early adolescents. The participants were 255 eighth grade students (mean age 14.2) from 10 randomly selected public junior high schools in Cyprus. They completed a questionnaire that measured their attributions of their own maths achievement and their attitudes towards the subject (how attractive and useful it is). Then they took a maths achievement test and immediately afterwards they reported their affective reactions towards the test (how challenging or threatening they thought it was). No significant differences were found between boys and girls in actual maths achievement. Significant differences were found, however, in the way the two genders explain their performance. Boys tend to believe more than girls do that their intellectual abilities are causing their high marks in maths. Also, it was found that high achievement could predict a positive attitude towards mathematics, but not vice versa. These findings contradict the widespread beliefs that (a) girls are not as good at maths as boys are; and (b) better attitudes towards maths lead to better performance.     

Beliefs of experienced and novice teachers about achievement

The aim of this study was to examine the beliefs that experienced and novice teachers hold about school achievement. It is important to investigate these beliefs and attributions because of the significant role that teachers play in the lives of most children. A group of Greek Cypriot elementary school teachers (n = 154) and a comparable group of teacher education students (n = 159) completed the Beliefs About School Achievement (BASA) scale. It was found that, in comparison to student teachers, experienced teachers tend to attribute achievement more to factors that are biologically determined, uncontrollable by the child, and stable over time – such as intellectual ability. They also believe significantly more than student teachers that factors such as gender and family background play an important role in child achievement. In contrast, novice teachers believe more in the role that teachers play in student learning and in the importance of student effort.     

Developmental Relations Between Home Literacy Environment,Reading Interest,and Reading Skills: Evidence From a 3-Year Longitudinal Study

We examined the bidirectional relations between home literacy environment, reading interest, and children’s emergent literacy and reading skills in a sample of 172 English-speaking Canadian children (M_age = 75.87 months) followed from Grade 1 to Grade 3. Results of cross-lagged analysis revealed that the reading comprehension activities (RCA) at home positively predicted children's reading skills at the end of Grade 2 and the reading skills negatively predicted the RCA in Grade 3. Parent-rated reading interest was bidirectionally related to reading skills, whereas child-rated reading interest was only predicted by earlier reading skills, but not vice versa. These findings suggest that parents are sensitive to their children’s reading performance and modify their involvement accordingly.     

Epistemic gameplay and discovery in computational model-based inquiry activities

In computational modeling activities, learners are expected to discover the inner workings of scientific and mathematical systems: First elaborating their understandings of a given system through constructing a computer model, then “debugging” that knowledge by testing and refining the model. While such activities have been shown to support science learning, difficulties building and using computational models are common and reduce learning benefits. Drawing from Collins and Ferguson (Educ Psychol 28(1):25–42, 1993), we conjecture that a major cause for such difficulties is a misalignment between the epistemic games (modeling strategies) learners play, and the epistemic forms (model types) a given modeling environment is designed to support. To investigate, we analyzed data from a study in which ten groups of U. S. fifth graders (n = 28) worked to create stop motion animations and agent-based computational models (ABMs) to discover the particulate nature of matter. Content analyses revealed that (1) groups that made progress—that is, that developed increasingly mechanistic, explanatory models—focused on elements, movement, and interactions when developing their models, a strategy well-aligned with both animation and ABM; (2) groups that did not make progress focused on sequences of phases, a strategy well-aligned with animation but not with ABM; and (3) struggling groups progressed when they received guidance about modeling strategies, but not when they received guidance about model content. We present summary analyses and three vignettes to illustrate these findings, and share implications for research and curricular design.     

Examining the effects of PASS cognitive processes on Chinese reading accuracy and fluency

The purpose of this study was to examine the contribution of PASS (Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive) processes to Chinese reading accuracy and fluency. One-hundred-forty Grade 3 to 5 Mandarin-speaking children were assessed on measures of PASS processes, phonological awareness, and orthographic knowledge. A year later they were assessed on reading accuracy and fluency. The results indicated that successive processing predicted reading through the effects of phonological awareness and simultaneous processing predicted reading through the effects of orthographic knowledge. The results were similar for reading accuracy and fluency. Implications for the PASS theory are discussed.