The effect of multimedia instruction for Chinese learning

In Taiwan, lectures are commonly used for younger students to learn their own language, which is traditional Chinese. Passively listening to lectures has led to this group of students making such mistakes as forgetting strokes and word meanings, combining phrases to create incomprehensible blurs of information, and switching radicals with phonetic characters. Thus, the rationale of this study is that better and longer lasting Chinese learning results will occur when a combination of well‐designed texts, audio, graphics, animation, and hands‐on practice are employed. A multimedia system with computer‐based courseware in combination with added, assistive technologies including sound equipment, digital boards, and pens was developed based on this rationale. This study used a treatment group who used the system and a comparison group who received lectures. The subjects were 41 second graders in a southern city in Taiwan and all of them received the same pretest, immediate posttest, and the delayed posttest. Even though some of the differences between the two groups did not reach statistical significance, the results revealed that the treatment group consistently performed better than the comparison group in almost all the areas of competencies in both posttests.     

Early adolescents' and their parents' mental imagery in relation to perceived reading competence

This cross‐sectional survey study examined the relation between mental imagery (i.e., seeing images of a story ‘in the mind's eye’) and perceived self‐competence in reading. The study was conducted with a group of seventh‐grade to ninth‐grade students in the prevocational educational track of secondary schools in the Netherlands and their parents. Results showed a moderate relation between mental imagery and self‐competence beliefs, also after controlling for the quality of students' home literacy environment. Examination of gender differences revealed that girls outperformed boys in self‐competence beliefs. Furthermore, boys perceived themselves as better readers when their parents had higher mental imagery skills. No direct relation was found between parents' and adolescents' mental imagery skills. These findings imply that parents and teachers may need to be made aware of the importance of mental imagery strategies as it may enhance the reading experiences of boys as well as girls.     

LATENT CLASS ANALYSIS OF CONDUCT PROBLEMS OF ELEMENTARY STUDENTS RECEIVING SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICES

Students with conduct problems (CPs) may present heterogeneity in terms of behavioral manifestations and service needs. Previous studies using Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to capture this heterogeneity have been conducted mostly with community samples and have often applied a narrow definition of CP. Considering this context, this study investigated CP subgroups among elementary students with CP receiving special education services. LCA was conducted on 10 CP indices for 297 6–9 year old children. Latent CP subgroups were compared with 201 controls without CP. LCA suggests a three‐class solution based on severity of CP and context/informant reports (home/parent, school/teacher). Multinomial logistic regressions indicated that all CP subgroups differed from the control group on social competence and surgency/extraversion temperament scale in the expected direction but varied on specific personal, family, or school correlates. Interventions aimed at reducing CP should consider differences in CP subtype and in correlated risk factors.     

College Admissions,International Competition,and the Cold War in Asia: The Case of Overseas Chinese Students in Taiwan in the 1950s

Focusing only on education exchanges between the United States and other countries, existing scholarship fails to illuminate how American‐sponsored student migrations between other countries helped expand U.S. hegemony. This article attempts to rectify this limitation by looking at Taiwan's policies on overseas Chinese students (qiaosheng) in the 1950s. After the debacle of the Chinese Civil War and its retreat to Taiwan, the Kuomintang (KMT) sought to solicit overseas Chinese support and to counter Communist China's drive for “returning students.” The KMT‐developed qiaosheng program faced difficulties until 1954, when the United States, seeing that Taiwan's project could serve its anti‐Communist plan, started bankrolling the qiaosheng program, thereby enabling the KMT to lure more students away from Communist China. These findings suggest that overlooking U.S.‐sponsored student migrations between nations outside the United States renders our analysis of international education exchanges and American imperialism incomplete.     

Internalized Racism,Perceived Racism,and Ethnic Identity: Exploring Their Relationship in Latina/o Undergraduates

For Latina/o undergraduates, ethnic identity is an important construct linked to self‐esteem and educational attainment. Internalized and perceived racism have been hypothesized to hinder ethnic identity development in Latina/o undergraduates. To assess if internalized and perceived racism were inversely related to ethnic identity, the author conducted a hierarchical linear regression with 373 Latina/o undergraduates. There was a significant relationship between internalized racism and ethnic identity. Findings indicate a need to challenge internalized racism in Latina/o undergraduates.     

Reading‐Specific Flexibility Moderates the Relation Between Reading Strategy Use and Reading Comprehension During the Elementary Years

The goal was to test whether cognitive flexibility moderates the relation between reading strategy use and reading comprehension during the elementary years. Seventy‐five second‐ through fifth‐grade students completed a think aloud task and a metacognitive questionnaire to measure reading strategies, two card‐sorting tasks to measure general and reading‐specific cognitive flexibility, and one standardized measure of reading comprehension, as well as measures of oral reading fluency and vocabulary. As expected, oral reading fluency and vocabulary predicted reading comprehension, as did reading‐specific flexibility. Importantly, reading‐specific flexibility had a significant moderating effect, over and above the other effects. Specifically, weak reading‐specific flexibility skills were associated with a negative relation between reading strategy use during think aloud and reading comprehension, suggesting that children with weak flexibility skills are less adept at using reading strategies effectively.     

Impact of videotaped instruction in dialogic reading strategies: An investigation of caregiver implementation integrity

Research during the past 15 years has repeatedly demonstrated the beneficial effects of dialogic reading (DR), a form of shared storybook reading, on the development of language in preschool children. Although much is known about the effects of DR on children, little attention has been paid to the role that adult caregivers play in the DR experience. Specifically, we do not yet have an understanding of the frequency and consistency with which caregivers use DR strategies in daily practice, prior to and following training. In the current study, the integrity with which six caregivers used DR strategies with their preschool‐aged children subsequent to viewing a commercially available training videotape was investigated. Results indicate that caregivers can learn to use several DR strategies through videotaped training; however, supplemental training may be necessary to teach caregivers certain strategies if they are to use them with integrity. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Spelling as a self‐teaching mechanism in orthographic learning

The present study examined the possibility that spelling fulfils a self‐teaching function in the acquisition of orthographic knowledge because, like decoding, it requires close attention to letter order and identity as well as to word‐specific spelling–sound mapping. We hypothesised that: (i) spelling would lead to significant (i.e. above‐chance) levels of orthographic learning; (ii) spelling would actually result in superior learning relative to reading owing to the additional processing demands invoked when spelling; (iii) there would be stronger outcomes for post‐test spelling production compared with spelling recognition; and (iv) relative to reading, spelling would produce superior orthographic learning in the case of later‐occurring orthographic detail compared with information appearing earlier in the letter string. In a fully within‐subjects design, third grade Hebrew readers were exposed to novel letter strings presented in three conditions: spelling, reading and an unseen control condition. With the exception of the position by condition interaction (our fourth hypothesis), which, although in the expected direction, failed to attain significance, all hypotheses were supported. These data highlight yet another dimension of reading–writing reciprocity by suggesting that spelling offers a powerful self‐teaching tool in the compilation of word‐specific orthographic representations.     

Revisiting print exposure: exploring differential links to vocabulary,comprehension and reading rate

Undergraduates (N=171) completed a revised version of the Author Recognition Test ( Stanovich & West, 1989 ). The resulting print exposure scores were divided into two dimensions: personal reading experience (primary print knowledge – PPK) and secondary print knowledge (SPK). Both PPK and SPK were correlated with print exposure, but not with each other. PPK correlated more strongly with reading‐related variables (vocabulary, comprehension and reading rate) than did SPK. Of particular importance, PPK accounted for variance in all three criterion variables after the effects of SPK had been factored out. Thus, these data support the notion that it is the act of reading over and above memory for reading‐related information that furthers the development of linguistic skill.