Parental education in Cyprus: Past,present and future

The article examines the history of parental education in Cyprus from its beginnings in the 1960s until the present day, in the wider context of Cypriot history and education. It considers the three main forums of parental education in the country, the Pancyprian School for Parents, the Adult Education Centres of the Ministry of Education and Culture and the University of Cyprus, which roughly coincide with the past, the present and the future of parental education on the island. The article comments on the development of the teaching philosophy and approach in the area of parental education, namely from a passive teacher centred traditional didactic model to a more dynamic participatory partnership.     

The duality of scientific ethos: Deep and surface structures

Aristotle's concept of ethos is primarily one based on civic duty, and as such loses its specificity when extended to the scientific forum. By adapting Aristotle's traditional concept of ethos to contemporary social norms of science, a link can be established between classical theory and contemporary practice. In this essay, I use Robert Merton's theory of the normative conditions of science to perform a meta‐critique of the use of ethos in four case studies. This meta‐analysis reveals the dual structure of ethos as reflected in a surface structure of style and a deep structure of argument.     

Girls' Entry into Higher Secondary Sciences

Numerous reports since the 1970s showed that there was a great concern about the lack of female students entering the sciences in Australia. Despite these concerns, there still appears to be a reluctance on the part of females to enter the sciences. This article draws on research conducted with Year 10 students within the Perth metropolitan area and examines the effects of encouragement as perceived by these female students. A qualitative methodological approach was utilised, where perceptions were compiled from individual in-depth interviews, open-ended questionnaires, and through participatory observation in the classrooms. This study has been reported from a feminist position which locates gender as central and which posits that human subjects are positioned and position themselves in a multiplicity of ways through the discourses to which they have access. This study showed that encouragement played a major part in the way female students actively positioned themselves in the science classroom as high achievers. These students also spoke out against fitting into the feminine 'mould' of being quiet and hard-working. The way they positioned themselves was influential in these female students' choice to continue with sciences into the higher secondary level and ultimately into further education and possibly a career.     

Supplemental Reading Instruction for Students at Risk for Reading Disabilities: Improve Reading 30 Minutes at a Time

Supplemental reading instruction provides a way to improve the reading outcomes of students at risk for reading difficulties and to meet the challenges produced by increases in student diversity in today’s classrooms. The research–based intervention described in this article includes intensive, explicit, and systematic reading instruction in five areas: fluency, phonemic awareness, instructional–level reading with an emphasis on comprehension, word analysis, and spelling. This intervention was effective in improving the reading skills of low SES, second–grade English monolingual and English–language learners.     

Decoding the phonics screening check

The statutory ‘phonics screening check’ was introduced in 2012 and reflects the current emphasis in England on teaching early reading through systematic synthetic phonics. The check is intended to assess children's phonic abilities and their knowledge of 85 grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) through decoding 20 real words and 20 pseudo words. Since the national rollout, little attention has been devoted to the content of the checks. The current paper, therefore, reviews the first three years of the check between 2012 and 2014 to examine how the 85 specified GPCs have been assessed and whether children are only using decoding skills to read the words. The analysis found that out of the 85 GPCs considered testable by the check, just 15 GPCs accounted for 67% of all GPC occurrences, with 27 of the 85 specified GPCs (31.8%) not appearing at all. Where a grapheme represented more than one phoneme, the most frequently occurring pronunciation was assessed in 72.2% of cases, with vocabulary knowledge being required to determine the correct pronunciation within real words where multiple pronunciations were possible. The GPCs assessed, therefore, do not reflect the full range of GPCs that it is expected will be taught within a systematic synthetic phonics approach. Furthermore, children's ability to decode real words is dependent on their vocabulary knowledge, not just their phonic skills. These results question the purpose and validity of the phonics screening check and the role of synthetic phonics for teaching early reading.