Slow and fast adult readers in text comprehension

Reading speed is a component of reading ability tests designed to separate «good» and «poor» readers. The purpose of the two experiments reported in this paper were to study whether slow and fast adult readers differ in terms of the subprocesses involved in textual organization. For this, two variables were manipulated: title and type of text. Subjects were classified as slow and fast readers based on the median value of the distribution of reading times on a preliminary text. Data clearly show that reading speed is a reliable individual characteristic. In Experiment 1, the recall performance of slow and fast readers did not differ. No interaction between reading speed and the title and type of text variables were observed. In Experiment 2, these results were replicated and extended to a summary test. So, it appears that slow and fast readers do not process textual organization in a different way and show identical comprehension performances. Further research is necessary to identify those factors that characterize good comprehenders among slow and fast readers.     

Evaluating the effects of faculty development: theoretical framework and empirical implementation

ABSTRACT

This article implements a systemic framework to evaluate the long-term effects of a program characterized by a SoTL approach and a hybrid learning environment. The importance of the difference between the perception of long-term effects on individual professional development on the one hand and the development of collective practices on the other, is interpreted with reference to certain shortcomings of the faculty development program’s learning design and its non-alignment with institutional practices. Based on this in-depth research, concrete ways to take account of the complexity of faculty development programs are proposed, both for research into and development of such programs and their impact at individual and institutional levels.     

Making Space for Consuming Practices

This empirically driven paper is about workplace learning with specific focus on the ‘work’ of consuming practices. By consuming we refer to the eating, and the drinking, and (at times) to the smoking that workers, in most organisations, do on a daily basis. Indeed, it is the quotidian nature of consuming, coupled with its absence from workplace learning research that make them noteworthy practices to explore. In using the term practice we draw on the recent tranche of practice based theorisations: notably Schatzki (1996, Organization Studies, 26(3), 465-484, 2005, Organization Studies, 27(12), 1863-1873, 2006) and Gherardi (Human Relations, 54(1), 131-139, 2001, 2006, Learning Organization, 16(5), 352-359, 2009). The paper frames consuming practices as ‘dispersed’ (general) practices and, illustrated through empirical data from multiple projects, we progressively outline how these contribute to the learning of ‘integrative’ (specialized work) practices. Our overall aim is to (re)position consuming practices from prosaic, to having much relevance for research on workplace learning.     

Personalizing twitter communication: an evaluation of ‘rotation-curation’ for enhancing social media engagement within higher education

Social media content generated by learning communities within universities is serving both pedagogical and marketing purposes. There is currently a dearth of literature related to social media use at the departmental level within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This study explores the multi-voiced interactions of a UK Psychology department’s ‘rotation curation’ approach to using Twitter. An in-depth analysis of a corpus of 4342 tweets by 58 curators (14 staff, 41 students, and 3 guest curators) was carried out using a combination of computer-assisted and manual techniques to generate a quantitative content analysis. The interactions received (e.g. retweets and favorites) and type of content posted (e.g. original tweets, retweets and replies) varied by curator type. Student curators were more likely to gain interactions from other students in comparison to staff. This paper discusses the benefits and potential limitations of a multi-voiced ‘rotation curation’ approach to social media management.     

Spelling,Reading Abilities and Speech Perception in Deaf Children with a Cochlear Implant

ABSTRACT

This study aims to compare word spelling outcomes for French-speaking deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI) with hearing children who matched for age, level of education and gender. A picture written naming task controlling for word frequency, word length, and phoneme-to-grapheme predictability was designed to analyze spelling productions. A generalized linear mixed model on the percentage of correct spelling revealed an effect of participant’s reading abilities, but no effect of hearing status. Word frequency and word length, but not phoneme-to-grapheme predictability, contributed to explaining the spelling variance. Deaf children with a CI made significantly less phonologically plausible errors and more phonologically unacceptable errors when compared to their hearing peers. Age at implantation and speech perception scores were related to deaf children’s errors. A good word spelling level can be achieved by deaf children with a CI, who nonetheless use less efficiently the phoneme-to-grapheme strategy than do hearing children.     

How do the spellings of children with dyslexia compare with those of nondyslexic children?

Children with dyslexia are believed to have very poor phonological skills for which they compensate, to some extent, through relatively well-developed knowledge of letter patterns. We tested this view in Study 1 by comparing 25 dyslexic children and 25 younger normal children, chosen so that both groups performed, on average, at a second-grade spelling level. Phonological skill was assessed using phoneme counting and nonword spelling tasks. Knowledge of legal and illegal letter patterns was tested using a spelling choice task. The dyslexic children and the younger nondyslexic children performed similarly on all the tasks, and they had difficulty, for the most part, with the same linguistic structures. Supporting the idea that older dyslexics spellings are quite similar to those of typical beginners, we found in Study 2 that experienced teachers could not differentiate between the two groups based on their spellings.     

Teaching Life Narratives in the Classroom: Strategies Based on Indigenous Traditions

The life narrative is an oral genre grounded in Indigenous tradition and teaching practice. In Canadian Indigenous communities, the expertise and content transmitted by life narratives are a part of their oral heritage. Drawing from their personal and professional experiences in Indigenous school environments, as well as the results from exploratory studies, the authors have developed an educational model for teaching life narratives in the classroom. This paper begins with an overview on the pedagogical use of life narratives for historical reconciliation, knowledge and expertise preservation, and ethical education. This enables the authors to propose a definition supported by the existing scientific literature. An analysis of the data collected from Innu, Algonquin, and Mohawk communities revealed the main strategies commonly used by their teachers and Elders. A pedagogical model dividing these strategies into planning, integration, and implementation phases for using life narratives is finally presented.