The Efficacy of Repeated Reading and Wide Reading Practice for High School Students with Severe Reading Disabilities

This experimental study was conducted to examine the efficacy of repeated reading and wide reading practice interventions for high school students with severe reading disabilities. Effects on comprehension, fluency, and word reading were evaluated. Participants were 96 students with reading disabilities in grades 9–12. Students were paired within classes and pairs were randomly assigned to one of three groups: repeated reading ( N  = 33), wide reading ( N  = 34), or typical instruction ( N  = 29). Intervention was provided daily for approximately 15–20 minutes for 10 weeks. Results indicated no overall statistically significant differences for any condition, with effect sizes ranging from −.31 to .27. Findings do not support either approach for severely impaired readers at the high school level. We hypothesize that these students require more intensive interventions that include direct and explicit instruction in word- and text-level skills as well as engaged reading practice with effective feedback.     

Multiple Representation in Learning About Evaporation

There has been extensive research on children’s understanding of evaporation, but representational issues entailed in this understanding have not been investigated in depth. This study explored three students’ engagement with science concepts relating to evaporation through various representational modes, such as diagrams, verbal accounts, gestures, and captioned drawings. This engagement entailed students (a) clarifying their thinking through exploring representational resources; (b) developing understanding of what these representations signify; and (c) learning how to construct representational aspects of scientific explanation. The study involved a sequence of classroom lessons on evaporation and structured interviews with nine children, and found that a focus on representational challenges provided fresh insights into the conceptual task involved in learning science. The findings suggest that teacher‐mediated negotiation of representational issues as students construct different modal accounts can support enriched learning by enabling both (a) richer conceptual understanding by students; and (b) enhanced teacher insights into students’ thinking.     

Attachment and Temperament in the Early Life Course: A Meta‐Analytic Review

This meta‐analytic review examines the association between early attachment (assessed at 1–5 years) and child temperament (assessed at birth–12 years), and compares the strength of this association with recently documented meta‐analytic associations between early attachment and social competence, externalizing behavior, and internalizing symptoms. Based on 109 independent samples (N = 11,440) of diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, temperament was weakly associated with attachment (in)security (d = .14, CI [0.08, 0.19]) but modestly associated with resistant attachment (d = .30, CI [0.21, 0.40]). Temperament was not significantly associated with avoidant (d = .10, CI [?0.02, 0.19]) or disorganized (d = .11, CI [?0.03, 0.25]) attachment. Across developmental domains, early attachment security was more strongly associated with social competence and externalizing behaviors than internalizing symptoms and temperament.     

Meta-Analyses of the Effects of Tier 2 Type Reading Interventions in Grades K-3

This meta-analysis extends previous work on extensive Tier 3 type reading interventions (Wanzek and Vaughn School Psychology Review, 36, 541–561, 2007; Wanzek et al. Review of Educational Research, 83, 163–195, 2013) to Tier 2 type interventions by examining a non-overlapping set of studies addressing the effects of less extensive reading interventions for students with or at risk for reading difficulties in Grades K-3. We examined the overall effects of these interventions on students’ foundational skills, language, and comprehension as well as the intervention features that may be associated with improved outcomes. We conducted four meta-analyses on 72 studies to examine effects on (1) standardized foundational skill measures (mean ES?=?0.54), (2) not-standardized foundational skill measures (mean ES?=?0.62), (3) standardized language/comprehension measures (mean ES?=?0.36), and (4) not-standardized language/comprehension measures (mean ES?=?1.02). There were no differences in effects related to intervention type, instructional group size, grade level, intervention implementer, or the number of intervention hours.     

Quantity of Group Child Care,Behavior Problems,and Prosocial Behaviors: A Study with Portuguese Preschoolers

Research Findings: Data from a national sample of Portuguese preschool centers were used to examine the relationship between age of start and number of hours in child care and levels of externalizing and prosocial behaviors with peers. Participants were both parents and teachers of 543 children (mean age = 4.5 years, 50.6% girls). Children started child care between 3 and 64 months and were attending child care 1–9 hr per day. The child care centers’ classrooms had adult–child ratios between 5 and 8.7 and group sizes between 15 and 26 children. Externalizing and prosocial behavior with peers was assessed with the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation Scale–Short Form completed by the 3 adult informants. Control variables included family sociodemographics and education level, maternal parenting style assessed with the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire, and maternal stress assessed with the Parenting Experiences questionnaire. Practice or Policy: Both the number of hours per week in child care and an earlier start of center-based child care had modest but significant associations with dimensional scores from teachers’ reports of externalizing behavior but not with mothers’ or fathers’ reports, suggesting that externalizing behavior with peers could be regarded as context specific to peer relationships in group child care. There was no evidence that the quantity of exposure to child care per se could be a substantial risk factor for severe levels of externalizing behavior. Prosocial behavior with peers was not significantly associated with the number of hours in child care or with the age of entry into group child care.     

Response to intervention with secondary school students with reading difficulties

The authors summarize evidence from a multiyear study with secondary students with reading difficulties on (a) the potential efficacy of primary-level (Tier 1), secondary-level (Tier 2), and tertiary-level (Tier 3) interventions in remediating reading difficulties with middle school students, (b) the likelihood of resolving reading disabilities with older students with intractable reading disabilities, (c) the reliability, validity, and use of screening and progress monitoring measures with middle school students, and (d) the implications of implementing response to intervention (RTI) practices at the middle school level. The authors provide guidance about prevailing questions about remediating reading difficulties with secondary students and discuss future directions for research using RTI frameworks for students at the secondary level.     

Theorising Learning in Science Through Integrating Multimodal Representations

Research in Science Education - There is growing interest in the construct of “transduction”, first introduced by (Kress, Cope and Kalantzis (eds), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning...