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Reading and Social Imagination: What Relationally Oriented Reading Instruction Can Do for Children
Abstract
Twenty-two second and third grade children experiencing difficulties with social relationships and reading comprehension participated in small group Relationally Oriented Reading Instruction for eight weeks. Developmental and literacy assessments done before and after the reading intervention showed statistically significant improvements in the understanding of text and in social imagination. Analysis of writing samples resulted in a typology of relationally oriented response. Together these data provide initial evidence linking the understanding of texts to the development of other relational capacities like social imagination, and indicate that purposeful use of picture books within relationally oriented reading instruction may enhance this development.
... Character perspective-taking can be defined as the ability to consider the viewpoints of the characters' thoughts, emotions, and motivations who exist within narratives (Lysaker et al., 2011). A number of recent studies demonstrate a positive correlation between integrating the practice of perspective-taking and improved narrative reading comprehension with specific considerations toward better understanding characters (Barth & Elleman, 2017;Gardner & Smith, 1987;Hodges et al., 2018;Kendeou et al., 2008;Lewis, 2014;Lysaker & Nie, 2017;Lysaker et al., 2011;McTigue et al., 2015). ...
... Character perspective-taking can be defined as the ability to consider the viewpoints of the characters' thoughts, emotions, and motivations who exist within narratives (Lysaker et al., 2011). A number of recent studies demonstrate a positive correlation between integrating the practice of perspective-taking and improved narrative reading comprehension with specific considerations toward better understanding characters (Barth & Elleman, 2017;Gardner & Smith, 1987;Hodges et al., 2018;Kendeou et al., 2008;Lewis, 2014;Lysaker & Nie, 2017;Lysaker et al., 2011;McTigue et al., 2015). More specifically, perspective-taking is especially beneficial for comprehending narrative texts (Graesser et al., 1994), as the elements of narrative texts often include characters who have needs and desires, who are called upon to make choices to act and react, and who experience emotions (Graesser et al., 1994). ...
... Because of the diverse socioeconomic and racial make-up of the school and observed instances of bullying and microaggressions based on student differences, we sought to support our students' social and emotional needs in conjunction with their academic ones. Below, we outline three strategies to support incorporating perspective-taking in the classroom including practicing perspective-taking in small groups, building students' emotion vocabulary, and including images and sounds when engaging students with texts, each of which correlates with improved narrative comprehension (Barth & Elleman, 2017;Gardner & Smith, 1987;Hodges et al., 2018;Kendeou et al., 2008;Lewis, 2014;Lysaker & Nie, 2017;Lysaker et al., 2011;McTigue et al., 2015). In addition, we provide examples of these strategies in action using The Invisible Boy as a model and outline the potential SEL benefits of each strategy. ...
In this article, we explore how character perspective‐taking can support students’ reading comprehension, as well as opportunities to engage social‐emotional learning (SEL). We start by defining character perspective‐taking and SEL. Then, we present strategies for practicing character perspective‐taking in classrooms, how these strategies are connected by research to improved reading comprehension skills, and how they can benefit SEL. More specifically, we outline three strategies to support incorporating perspective‐taking in the classroom including practicing perspective‐taking in small groups, building students’ emotion vocabulary, and including images and sounds when engaging students with texts, each of which correlates with improved narrative comprehension. By building a practice of perspective‐taking in our classrooms, we are not only growing our students’ reading comprehension and building space for SEL, but we are honoring what our students bring to the table as readers and as people.
... 282). They reflect relational activities of comprehending (Ivey & Johnston, 2016;Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson, & Miller, 2011;Rosenblatt, 1978). ...
... 55). This is consistent with my own work in which I have theorized both reading engagement and comprehending as intersubjective activity within the vicarious social worlds of text, requiring social imagination and social understanding-imagining the thoughts, feelings, intentions, and beliefs of characters while reading (Lysaker, 2014;Lysaker & Nie, 2017;Lysaker et al., 2011). Again, there are similar constructs in language theory. ...
... This experience of an inbetween suggests that selves experience movement in and out of text worlds as well as within them (Karsten, 2014;Langer, 2011;Lysaker & Nie, 2017;Sipe, 2000). Activity within storied worlds, as readers make sense of the inner worlds and realities of characters, involves imagination and social understanding (Keene, 2006;Lysaker et al., 2011;Mar, Oatley, Djikic, & Mullin, 2011) and is emotionally fueled and textured (Keene, 2006;Lysaker & Arvelo-Alicia, 2017;Mar et al., 2011). When imaginative activity and emotional connection are successful, intersubjective experience can result, a condition in which readers have a sense of sharedness with and within the storied world. ...
In this article, I consider expanding meaningfulness in literacy research by exploring the possibilities offered by a relational perspective on literacy and its study. An interdisciplinary relational perspective is outlined and used to rethink what happens when we engage in reading and writing. Questions guiding this exploration include: What makes literate activity meaningful, and how might a relational perspective enhance meaningfulness in studying this activity? What does a relational perspective look like as a theoretical frame for literacy research, and why might such a perspective be needed now? A synthesis of literacy research representing a relational perspective will be presented and examples of methodological applications offered. I conclude with the consequences of a relational perspective including implications for student well-being, assessment practices, and capacities for social justice work.
... Developing this approach, I synthesized authentic classroom practice and educational research. In this way, I drew from years of experience as a preschool teacher as well as from Lysaker's (2011Lysaker's ( , 2013 Relationally Oriented Reading Instruction (RORI), Whitehurst et al.'s (1988) dialogic reading, Johnston's (2012) dynamic learning framework, and Derman-Sparks et al.'s (2020) anti-bias education goals. Concentrating on relational interactions, I strove to "demonstrate and foster children's abilities to understand the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of others by focusing on picturebooks characters" (Lysaker & Miller, 2013, p. 635). ...
... • Children's books which tell a story (Mitchell et al., 2003;Sipe, 2012) and possess text and illustrations which work together to create meaning (Callow, 2016;Sipe, 1998). • Picturebooks with characters who display emotions that can be recognized, explored, and applied to personal experiences of preschool age children (Lysaker et al., 2011). • Picturebooks with characters that the students can place themselves in the role of in order to expand their own experiences (Arvelo Alicea & Lysaker, 2017). ...
This article highlights the Picturebooks for Social Justice approach which the author developed within her preschool program. Picturebooks for Social Justice was born of 2-year design-based qualitative research study exploring the intentional use of interactive read-alouds in early childhood education. This was not a prepackaged plan or a strict script; instead, the author drew from the research literature and her own experience as an early childhood educator to use books as an entry point to rich discussions and thinking. Through read-alouds, the author promoted social justice and created a classroom community that embraced identity, diversity, justice, and action. Based on her experiences as teacher and researcher, the author describes the approach and offers guiding principles for early childhood educators. The insights gained here are important because exploring social justice through picturebooks has the potential to be an essential practice in early childhood education which will enable teachers to guide their students’ development in this key area. By prompting dialogue, valuing children’s voices, and affirming children's role as change agents, educators make social justice learning visible.
... The goal of educational approaches from the expressive stance involves enhancing children's imaginative and emotional engagement with narrative texts to inspire rich simulations of fictional characters' inner worlds and spontaneous affective and personal responses in readers (Henschel et al., 2016;Lysaker et al., 2011;Schrijvers et al., 2019b). Instructional activities for achieving this goal mainly include writing activities, literary discussions, and other creative activities (role-play, staged reading, and drawing). ...
... Literary quality plays an important role in the selection of the books (e.g., language that invites social imagination). RORI significantly enhanced ToM skills (e.g., RMET and faux pas) in second-and third-grade students with social difficulties (Lysaker et al., 2011). A literary program that similarly stimulates social imagination in younger elementary school children through literary fiction is Reading and Feeling (Kumschick et al., 2014). ...
Educators read narrative fiction with children not only to promote their literacy skills, but also to support their sociomoral development. However, different approaches strongly diverge in their explanations and recommended instructional activities. Informed by theoretical understandings of reader-text transactions, this integrative review presents three different conceptions about how children learn socially from narrative fiction. The first approach explains sociomoral learning through narrative fiction by children’s extraction and internalization of the text’s moral message. The second approach refers to children’s training of mindreading and empathy as they become immersed in a fictional social world and imaginatively engage with the fictional characters’ perspectives. The third approach focuses on children’s social reasoning development through engagement in argumentative dialogues with peers about the complex sociomoral issues raised in narrative fiction. The article aims to theoretically position a wide range of literary programs to clarify their psychological foundations as well as critically discuss their strengths and limitations.
... These kinds of social inferences about characters' thoughts, feelings, and intentions contribute to reading concurrently and longitudinally (Guajardo & Cartwright, 2016) but do not necessarily occur naturally for elementary school students, who are more likely to focus on characters' actions, with limited attention paid to characters' internal mental or emotional motivations unless they are stated explicitly (e.g., Shannon, Kameenui, & Baumann, 1988). Instruction in such social reasoning improves reading comprehension (e.g., Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson, & Miller, 2011) but may be missed by practitioners guided by the rope model. ...
... Elleman (2017) Language structure The organization of language to convey meaning, such as how words are ordered within a sentence (syntax); some aspects of language structure are encompassed in other constructs Weaver (1979) Theory of mind A kind of social reasoning that involves "the ability to understand and take into account one's own and others' mental states (Premack & Woodruff, 1978)" (Weimer et al., 2021, p. 1), including characters' mental states (e.g., thoughts, feelings, intentions) to understand, reason about, and make inferences from text Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson, and Miller (2011) language comprehension constructs, as well as the skills that bridge both constructs. Understandably, given the two models' purposes, neither as readily offers practical implications for identification of, and intervention for, students with reading difficulties. ...
The simple view of reading is commonly presented to educators in professional development about the science of reading. The simple view is a useful tool for conveying the undeniable importance—in fact, the necessity—of both decoding and linguistic comprehension for reading. Research in the 35 years since the theory was proposed has revealed additional understandings about reading. In this article, we synthesize research documenting three of these advances: (1) Reading difficulties have a number of causes, not all of which fall under decoding and/or listening comprehension as posited in the simple view; (2) rather than influencing reading solely independently, as conceived in the simple view, decoding and listening comprehension (or in terms more commonly used in reference to the simple view today, word recognition and language comprehension) overlap in important ways; and (3) there are many contributors to reading not named in the simple view, such as active, self‐regulatory processes, that play a substantial role in reading. We point to research showing that instruction aligned with these advances can improve students’ reading. We present a theory, which we call the active view of reading, that is an expansion of the simple view and can be used to convey these important advances to current and future educators. We discuss the need to lift up updated theories and models to guide practitioners’ work in supporting students’ reading development in classrooms and interventions.
... Promising lines of work suggest training ToM improves reading comprehension for students who struggle to understand characters' perspectives throughout middle childhood (Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson, & Miller, 2011;Shanahan & Shanahan, 1997). Other work suggests bidirectional relations between ToM and reading ability, such that reading comprehension also might contribute to the development of ToM throughout middle childhood (Cantin et al., 2016). ...
... Mentalizing may be more important for some academic task types, such as inferential narrative texts or mathematical word problem comprehension, than for others. Further, given these positive relations, ToM could offer a unique target of intervention for reading comprehension difficulties, which has been tested in small studies (i.e., Lysaker et al., 2011), but should be further explored in more extensive training work. ...
Theory of Mind (ToM) is one of the core abilities that allows children to connect socially with others and to consider others' perspectives. Historically , most research on ToM development has focused on early childhood, but recent years have seen an increased focus on how children build this critical social understanding beyond the preschool timeframe. Given this burgeoning literature, we have identified and organized findings across a variety of domains of development to provide a cohesive theoretical framework depicting the correlates and antecedents of ToM development throughout middle childhood and adolescence. Thus, the present paper provides a synthesis and narrative review of the research to yield insights into important ways in which often-disparate lines of study (e.g., brain specialization, relational aggression, reading comprehension) relate to ToM and bidirectionally influence one another in the developing child. Specifically, we focused our analysis of the literature on identifying neural networks underlying ToM, the roles of executive function and emotional self-regulation on ToM, the socioemotional correlates of ToM, and relations between ToM and academic performance. We also provide a brief discussion of studies recognizing sociocultural, linguistic, and contextual influences on ToM. Our review provides evidence for both common and distinct processes and corollaries with age across these disparate literatures, with significant research indicating the important role of mediating and moderating processes when considering how advanced ToM impacts development. We end by proposing a theoretical, integrative framework and discussing the future directions for the field, including testable predictions generated by the framework that span often-disparate domains of inquiry.
... In classrooms where gen-der, racial, and linguistic normativity often manifest (Blaise, 2005;Delpit, 1988;Van Ausdale & Feagin, 1996), books can serve as sliding glass doors (Bishop, 1990) for students to connect to diverse ways of being human. The power of literature is immense, as texts can offer counternarratives to stereotypical representation of marginalized groups of people (Brooks, 2009), highlight current social inequities to act on (Souto-Manning, 2009), and provide opportunities for students to develop empathetic relationships with characters (Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson, & Miller, 2011). ...
... Together, Ethan and Jesse activated their social imaginations (Lysaker et al., 2011), reflecting on the pain and anger another might feel when they are teased and scrutinized. Rick and Sara paused for a moment, letting Ethan and Jesse's comments resonate with the class. ...
How might literature be shared with students for transformative purposes? Literature has the power to shape students’ worldviews through the exploration of diverse human experiences, but how students engage with diverse characters is important to reaching transformative goals. The author identified teachers’ pedagogical moves within a preschool conversation on gender around the picture book My Princess Boy by Cheryl Kilodavis. Noticing how gender normativity manifested in the classroom, teachers used the book to open the conversation on gender, honor students’ sensemaking, and complicate gender norms through responsive listening. Using examples of teacher–student interactions across the preschool book conversation, practical suggestions are provided for teachers to facilitate transformative dialogue when sharing diverse texts with young students.
... Picturebooks are interlocutors because they encompass the voices and perspectives of others (Linell, 2009) and grant the reader opportunities for dialogue with text. We understand the affordances of fictional picturebooks as relational invitations (Lysaker et al., 2011;Gregory, 2009), which entice the reader to enter the fictional world through social imagination (Lysaker et al., 2011), the use of Theory of Mind in the story plane. ...
... Picturebooks are interlocutors because they encompass the voices and perspectives of others (Linell, 2009) and grant the reader opportunities for dialogue with text. We understand the affordances of fictional picturebooks as relational invitations (Lysaker et al., 2011;Gregory, 2009), which entice the reader to enter the fictional world through social imagination (Lysaker et al., 2011), the use of Theory of Mind in the story plane. ...
Picturebooks aid children’s developing social understanding because they are dialogic, relational contexts where child readers have opportunities to engage vicariously with a wide range of imagined others. We use research by literacy and literature scholars, including our own past work, to showcase a series of visual and linguistic elements in picturebooks that invite readers to co-create characters’ consciousness via social imagination, the equivalent to a Theory of Mind in the world of story. We ground these relational and dialogical invitations by presenting an analysis of these elements in the picturebooks (in: Pak, Dear Juno, Puffin Books, New York, 1999; in: Soto, Chato and the Party Animals, Puffin Books, New York, 2004).
... Social imagination was assessed by measuring the ability of children to recognize emotion in the eyes of other people represented in photographs (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001), perceive when people's feelings are being hurt in a short story (Baron-Cohen & O'Riordan, 1999), and imagine the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of others during wordless book reading. As shown in Table 1, children made statistically significant gains on these measures after eight weeks of RORI (Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson, & Miller, 2011). The purpose of this article is to describe the approach and the rationale for RORI and discuss what we learned from its implementation. ...
... Using a constant comparison approach, we read and discussed the letters with our relational frame in mind. We identified a range of responses that we organized into a typology reflecting their progressive complexity in the use of social imagination, from simple personal response to a broader sense of caring for others (Lysaker et al., 2011). ...
Children with reading difficulties often face social and emotional challenges as well. These struggles may be particularly taxing for these children as classrooms increase in diversity and they encounter fewer people like themselves. In response to these issues, we developed an approach to teaching reading called Relationally Oriented Reading Instruction (RORI) which attempts to build relational capacities through a systematic approach to reading picture books. In this article we present the background and rationale for this approach, describe its implementation, as well as what we learned from that implementation.
... Social imagination, which involves attempting to imagine what is happening in the minds of other individuals, has also been found to facilitate narrative comprehension 51,52 . For instance, in a study examining the efficacy of a reading program for children with reported social and reading differences, participants who displayed lower rates of understanding and imagination for the emotions of others received lower scores on measures of story comprehension 53 . ...
Individuals with higher levels of autistic traits sometimes demonstrate differences with narrative comprehension compared to those with lower levels of autistic traits. One particular aspect of narrative processing that is thought to be affected by autistic traits is inferencing. Some studies using verbal narratives (i.e., written or spoken stories) have documented differences in inferencing skills among autistic participants. However, fewer studies have investigated how inferencing abilities using visual narratives (e.g., comics) are modulated by autistic traits, despite mounting evidence that narrative comprehension shares similar cognitive mechanisms across verbal and visual domains. Here, we report two studies examining inference generation during visual narrative comprehension in adults with a range of autistic traits. Experiment 1 used a deletion recognition paradigm to examine participants’ accuracy (ACC) and reaction time (RT) to identify where a panel had been removed from a visual sequence. Experiment 2 used a self-paced viewing paradigm to examine viewing times on sequences that required an inference; ACC and RT on comprehension questions were also examined. In both experiments, individual differences in autistic traits and visual language fluency were examined. In Experiment 1 we did not see any effects of these predictors; however, for Experiment 2 we found that autistic traits and visual language fluency may be influential in narrative comprehension for measures of offline processing. Subsequent analyses identified differences in imaginative abilities as potentially underlying these modulations.
... Social imagination, which involves attempting to imagine what is happening in the minds of other individuals, has also been found to facilitate narrative comprehension [50], [51]. For instance, in a study examining the e cacy of a reading program for children with reported social and reading differences, participants who displayed lower rates of understanding and imagination for the emotions of others received lower scores on measures of story comprehension [52]. ...
Autistic individuals sometimes demonstrate differences with narrative comprehension compared to non-autistic individuals. One particular aspect of narrative processing that is thought to be affected in autism is inferencing. Some studies using verbal narratives (i.e., written or spoken stories) have documented differences in inferencing skills among autistic participants. However, fewer studies have investigated inferencing abilities using visual narratives (e.g., comics) in autistic participants, despite mounting evidence that narrative comprehension shares similar cognitive mechanisms across verbal and visual domains. Here, we report two studies examining inference generation during visual narrative comprehension in adults with a range of autistic traits. Experiment 1 used a deletion recognition paradigm to examine participants’ accuracy (ACC) and reaction time (RT) to identify where a panel had been removed from a visual sequence. Experiment 2 used a self-paced viewing paradigm to examine viewing times on sequences that required an inference; ACC and RT on comprehension questions were also examined. In both experiments, individual differences in autistic traits and visual language fluency were examined. Across both studies, autistic traits modulated inferencing abilities and comprehension performance. Subsequent analyses identified differences in imaginative abilities as potentially underlying these modulations.
... As Lysaker (2019) contended, "making sense of stories is like making sense of life; comprehending involves understanding ourselves, other people, and relationships, and taps on deeply personal aspect of being" (Lysaker 2019, p. 3). The children used their imaginations to place themselves in the roles of the characters, taking on aspects of the characters as parts of themselves and enhancing their understanding of themselves and others (Lysaker et al., 2011). ...
The purpose of this article is to detail preschool age students’ exploration of social justice as they cocreated with their teacher an interactive read-aloud approach, named Picturebooks for Social Justice. Over the three phases, the teacher researcher studied her own preschool teaching as she read and explored 12 picturebooks with the 3-5-year-old children in her preschool class. Guided by relational and critical theoretical perspectives, findings demonstrate and detail examples of the children’s learning across the social justice standards of identity, diversity, justice, and action. These standards, which functioned both as the content and the goals of Picturebooks for Social Justice, were explored through books in the context of the strong bond between the children and teacher. The insights gained in this study can guide educators and researchers in understanding young children’s capacity to explore and understand social justice.
... In fact, the directions of the correlations proposed in the studies that used structural equation modelling (e.g., Kim, 2017, see Figure 2) or path analyses are based on a priori theoretical decisions. Therefore, given that narrative reading seems to increase people's knowledge of the social world (e.g., Doise et al, 2013;Lysaker et al., 2011;Mar & Oatley, 2008), the relationship between reading comprehension and ToM likely is also bidirectional. For instance, in a set of experiments, Kidd and Castano (2013) showed that the reading of narrative texts led to an improvement in the development of ToM even in adult readers. ...
Reading comprehension is the product of a complex set of processes and components (i.e., reader’s skills and knowledge). Among them, Theory of Mind (ToM) has recently been pointed out as a capacity that plays a crucial role in comprehending texts. This has been especially highlighted in the case of narrative stories because it requires understanding of emotions, mental states, and perspectives of the characters, which often demands inferring information that is not explicitly stated in the text. In the present chapter, we review some of the most relevant research work that has examined the association between ToM and reading comprehension in both the typical and atypical population. To that end, we first introduce the basic assumptions of some of the more relevant theoretical models of reading comprehension. We then review recent empirical evidence showing that ToM seems to contribute to reading comprehension via listening comprehension, as well as that it is related to low-level linguistic skills, such as vocabulary or grammatical knowledge, and to high-level linguistic skills, such as inference-making or comprehension monitoring. In addition, as we show below, the association between ToM and reading comprehension appears to be stronger in people with autism spectrum disorders and in individuals with deafness or reduced hearing than in their typically developing peers, two atypical populations in which difficulties in ToM are usual. Lastly, we conclude the chapter by outlining the main limitations, research gaps, and future directions in this field.
... As Kim and White (2008) postulate, for YA literature, the fun or entertainment aspect is consciously given prominence by writers in order to preempt the possibility of young adult readers abandoning such stories because such stories may be boring for them. Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson and Miller (2011) and Lysaker and Miller (2012) are among the critics who corroborate this position. These critics specifically aver that most young adults are more interested in the enjoyment stories than the education aspect of the stories. ...
This work investigated the effects chloride environments have on mechanical properties of reinforced steel in Clay Portland Cement (CPC) and Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) concretes. These concretes were exposed to 3% and 5% (W/V) of Sodium Chloride (NaCl) and 3% (W/V) Calcium Hypochlorite (𝑪𝒂(𝑶𝑪𝒍)𝟐) as corrosion acceleration media. Mechanical and pullout strengths tests, X-ray Diffractometry (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) were performed over 1 to 23 days to determine the extent of corrosion of the steel and to ascertain the surface morphology of samples. The results indicated that CPC recorded an average compressive strength of 15.17 MPa while OPC is 22.75 MPa. Pull-out forces for CPC recorded average values of 71, 65.33, 57.7 and 54.67 MN against 80, 70.1, 61, and 49 MN respectively for OPC concrete. XRD analysis showed high presence of Alite (3CaO.SiO2) in all concrete types. However, CPC had enough alumina-silicates. The XRD also showed low intensity peak for NaCl in CPC and relatively higher intensity peak for OPC concretes.
... As Kim and White (2008) postulate, for YA literature, the fun or entertainment aspect is consciously given prominence by writers in order to preempt the possibility of young adult readers abandoning such stories because such stories may be boring for them. Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson and Miller (2011) and Lysaker and Miller (2012) are among the critics who corroborate this position. These critics specifically aver that most young adults are more interested in the enjoyment stories than the education aspect of the stories. ...
An Appraisal of The Causes and Effects of Building Transformation in
Housing Estates in Ghana: The Case of Asawase Estate, Kumasi
The study addresses the causes, effect and degree of building transformation in state-built
estates and its surroundings. The mixed method approach of research was adopted in gathering
data. 307 houses were sampled from a finite population of 1313 for the study, using a sample
interval of 4. It was established that 91% of houses in the area were involved in ‘addition and
division’ of their rooms. Population increase was identified as the major cause of
transformation in the area. Inaccessibility to houses, poor lighting and ventilation was a
negative impact to building transformation. Increase in privacy level of owners and increases
in number of rooms influenced building transformation positively. The paper recommended
that flexible designs (core housing) and strict enforcement of measures towards encroachment
must be adhered to. The paper concludes that transformation perse is not bad but should be
done within the confines of the law. The research provides insight to government, policy makers
and investors on the dynamics of user-initiated extensions within income estates.
Keywords: building transformation, core housing, housing estate, law
... As Kim and White (2008) postulate, for YA literature, the fun or entertainment aspect is consciously given prominence by writers in order to preempt the possibility of young adult readers abandoning such stories because such stories may be boring for them. Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson and Miller (2011) and Lysaker and Miller (2012) are among the critics who corroborate this position. These critics specifically aver that most young adults are more interested in the enjoyment stories than the education aspect of the stories. ...
The Ghacem and Nzima-Mensah halls, two halls of residence on the main campus of Takoradi Technical University (TTU), were assessed with the aim of identifying the facilities provided and determining the level of satisfaction of residents. Using a quantitative research approach involving a questionnaire survey and measurement of indoor thermal comfort parameters, data were obtained and presented as descriptive statistics. It was discovered that both halls lacked car parks and study rooms. The findings further revealed the dissatisfaction of residents with most of the provided facilities, including the room sizes vis-à-vis the number of occupants as well as washrooms. Respondents also indicated their discomfort with the indoor thermal environment. Data loggers recorded higher indoor temperatures (mean = 29.1°C) than outdoor temperatures (mean = 24.6°C). It is, therefore, recommended that room occupancies be reduced and quantity of washrooms be increased as means of enhancing the user-satisfaction.
... In addition, when scholars in reading research refer directly to Vygotsky's work (Vygotsky, 1979), they often claim that Vygotsky states that most higher functions such as reading, reasoning, and thought exist in social relations first and then become internalized in the individual (e.g., Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson, & Miller, 2011;Prior, & Welling, 2001). In other words, they refer to Vygotsky's (1978) general law of cultural development, which states that -any function in children's cultural development appears first on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological)‖ (p. ...
It is commonly assumed that skills involved in reading poetry, such as decoding and assessing the poem, scanning for details arise in social relations with others, which makes reading social. However, this is social in a weak sense because these new accomplishments result from people working together. Using an alternative theoretical framework based on Vygotsky’s later work, in this paper I defend the strong social nature of reading poetry for content through an example of how students (K-4) read haiku, a Japanese form of poetry. I illustrate that this sense of social is not constructed in the minds of individuals in a social setting, but it refers to a relation—a visible and irreducible joint production that develops as transactional features of the organization of turns in the haiku reading event. I demonstrate how reading haiku transforms itself as a what-where-when poem in this community. Understanding that reading poetry is social in this sense, through and through, helps us recognize how this socio-cultural practice keeps (re)producing itself in different cultures.
... Evidencia desde la neuropsicología muestra procesos y estructuras cerebrales que se activan en concordancia con simulaciones mentales (Agnati et al., 2013;Jung, Flores, & Hunter, 2016), lo cual ocurre dentro del sistema cerebral denominado Red Neuronal por Defecto (Tamir, Bricker, Dodell-Feder, & Mitchell, 2016). Aun más, la imaginación es un componente esencial en el manejo de la información sobre otras personas, manejo que involucra interpretar, predecir y responder a acciones sociales (Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson, & Miller, 2011;Oatley, 2016). ...
Una estrategia para disminuir el prejuicio de un grupo social hacia otro es el uso de historias de ficción. Esta modalidad de contacto indirecto destaca como alternativa cuando el contacto directo no es viable, ya sea por falta de oportunidad para un encuentro o porque conlleva riesgos para las partes involucradas. El objetivo de este estudio fue comparar niveles de prejuicio sexual en participantes heterosexuales que vieron o leyeron una historia con personajes gay y quienes imaginaron un encuentro con una persona gay o una desconocida. A través de un diseño experimental, se puso a prueba la hipótesis de que el prejuicio sexual (prejuicio alto o prejuicio bajo) variaría en función de la historia (ficticia o imaginada) y del país de origen de los participantes (El Salvador o Reino Unido). En comparación con participantes del Reino Unido, participantes de El Salvador puntuaron significativamente más bajo en Dominancia social, más alto en Autoritarismo e Identificación heterosexual, y reportaron menor acuerdo con las uniones legales de parejas del mismo sexo. No se encontró asociación entre estos factores y puntajes de prejuicio sexual. Se discuten posibles explicaciones a estos resultados y direcciones futuras para el uso de narrativas en la reducción del prejuicio hacia minorías sexuales.
... In this paper, we suggest that the literature classroom pre-eminently offers a space of opportunity for adolescents to develop insight into themselves and others, or for short, into "human nature". Empirical studies have shown that reading fictional and literary textsnovels, stories, poemsmay offer such insight to younger children, adolescents, and adult readers alike (e.g., Hakemulder, Fialho, & Bal, 2016;Koopman & Hakemulder, 2015;Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson, & Miller, 2011;Richardson & Eccles, 2007). During reading such texts, we are drawn into a simulated social world, in which we can safely experience situations that may either resemble or be very different from situations in our own lives (Mar & Oatley, 2008). ...
This quasi-experimental study assessed the effects of the newly developed Transformative Dialogic Literature Teaching (TDLT) intervention on 15-year-old students' insight into human nature, eudaimonic reasons for reading, use of reading strategies, and motivation for literature education. Six TDLT units centered around short stories about "justice and injustice". Students were stimulated to engage in internal dialogues with stories and in external dialogues with peers about stories and reading experiences. TDLT students (n = 166) were compared to students who received regular literature teaching (RLT) focused on analysis of literary texts (n = 166). Analysis of quantitative and qualitative data indicated that TDLT fostered students' insight into human nature, eudaimonic reasons for reading, reported use of strategies to deal with difficulties in literary texts, and motivation for literature education, whereas RLT did not. Strategy use and one motivational factor mediated effects of TDLT to a small extent. Limitations and implications are discussed.
... Imagination also plays a critical role in understanding texts by promoting children's ability to envision the possibility of having multiple perspectives or ways of understanding. When children actively imagine or visualize the information they are given, they become more engaged and thus can deepen their literary understanding (Lysaker et al., 2011;Wood & Endres, 2004). ...
Although previous studies have underlined the importance of social interactions, multicultural education, prediction/imagination, and bilingual/bi-literacy learning, the intersection of all these four areas is yet to be explored. This qualitative case study explored how young bilingual readers create meanings and develop literary responses through prediction, imagination, and social interaction while reading multicultural literature. As part of a larger longitudinal study, this study focused on kindergarten-age Korean-English bilingual children at a Korean Language School in a Midwestern city in the United States. The data were collected over five months using audio/video recordings, open-ended interviews, and children’s artifacts. The findings suggest that creative participation and social interactions using two languages help young bilingual readers to engage deeply with the reading and encourage multiple perspectives.
... Okuma, bir yazıyı oluşturan her tür sembol, harf ve işareti seslendirme buna bağlı olarak anlamlandırma süreci olarak tanımlanmaktadır (Demirel, 2000;Arıcı, 2008;Akyol, 2010;Lysaker, 2011;Çifci, 2013;Veenendaal, Groen ve Verhoeven, 2015). Dolayısıyla okuma sırasında birçok faktör etkili olabilmektedir. ...
In this study, it was aimed to develop a reading habit scale. 639 students studying at Uşak Faculty of Education participated in this study. Related literature was searched and the items upon the reading habits were written. Having been analyzed in terms of the language appropriacy, the scale consisting of 10 counts and 91 items in total was applied to measure the validity and reliability. Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed on the purpose of determining the counts in the scale. 10 counts and 51 items were formed as a result of the analysis. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was benefited in order to determine the validity of the scale and it was found out that the counts and items are in compliance with one another and the model is well fit. The internal consistency coefficient of the scale is 0,876. Therefore, this indicates that the scale is valid and reliable.Extended English summary is in the end of Full Text PDF (TURKISH) file. ÖzetBu araştırmanın amacı okuma alışkanlığını ölçeğini geliştirmektir. Araştırmaya Uşak Eğitim Fakültesinin farklı bölümlerinde okuyan 639 öğrenci katılmıştır. Alan yazın incelenerek okuma alışkanlığınayönelik maddeler yazılmıştır, dil bakımından uygunluğu incelendikten sonra güvenirlik geçerlik çalışması için hazırlanan 10 boyuttan ve toplam 91 maddeden oluşan ölçek uygulanmıştır. Ölçeğin boyutlarını belirlemek ve boyutları adlandırmak için için açımlayıcı faktör analizi uygulanmıştır. Analiz sonucunda 10 boyut ve 51 madde ölçeği oluşturmuştur. Ölçeğin geçerliğini belirlemek için doğrulayıcı faktör analiz uygulanmış ve boyutlar ile maddelerin uyum içinde olduğu, modelin desteklendiği bulunmuştur. Ölçeğin iç tutarlılık katsayısı 0,876 olarak bulunmuştur. Bu sonuçlara göre ölçeğin geçerli ve güvenilir bir ölçme aracı olduğu söylenebilir.
... Potential evidence for a causal relation could come from longer interventions involving reading with children and investigating subsequent effects on ToM. In one such study, Lysaker et al. (2011) used a "relationally oriented reading instruction" intervention with second and third graders and found that ToM improved over an 8-week period. However, it is not clear that reading per se rather than other elements offered in the intervention were responsible for the ToM boost. ...
Theory of mind is the understanding that other people have mental states that drive their actions and that those mental states can be different from one’s own. Without understanding theory of mind and being able to take others’ perspectives, it could be difficult for children to read and understand narrative texts. This paper posits that children’s understanding of others’ minds may be a potential missing piece in current accounts of reading comprehension. Indeed, the typical progression of children’s theory of mind abilities across childhood is closely aligned with the development of narrative processing skills. Furthermore, emerging evidence shows that both narrative processing and theory of mind are predictive of children’s reading comprehension, both concurrently and longitudinally. We present a possible explanation for why such a link exists and propose a causal framework of this relation in which increased ToM leads to increased understanding of and inferencing about characters’ mental states. Understanding characters’ mental states then leads to better reading comprehension. The framework makes novel, testable predictions and provides directions for future research.
... In addition, research has suggested that characters can serve as a bridge to a deeper understanding of narratives, including thematic meanings (Lehr, 1988). Lysaker, Tonge, Gaulson, and Miller (2011) found that characters can foster social imagination by helping readers learn how to better live in the world beyond the book. If characters are to serve in these ways, readers must connect to and follow them willingly into and through stories (Koss, Martinez, & Johnson, 2016). ...
... This reinforces the point that in the extracurricular groups readers' interpretations of the text, whether with or without adults, was a dialogic accomplishment. The data suggest that such group reading can be a fully social process and is a potential site for developing a dialogic, relational self (Lysaker et al. 2011). ...
The research object of this chapter is school librarians as leaders of extracurricular reading groups in secondary schools. The study was undertaken in England where young people continue to read less independently and find less pleasure in reading than many of their peers in other countries (Twist, Schagen, & Hodgson 2007; Twist, Sizmur, Bartlett, & Lynn, 2012).
... This reinforces the point that in the extracurricular groups readers' interpretations of the text, whether with or without adults, was a dialogic accomplishment. The data suggest that such group reading can be a fully social process and is a potential site for developing a dialogic, relational self (Lysaker et al. 2011). ...
The research object of this chapter is school librarians as leaders of extracurricular reading groups in secondary schools. The study was undertaken in England where young people continue to read less independently and find less pleasure in reading than many of their peers in other countries (Twist et al. 2007, 2012). Attention has thus turned towards all those who work to foster young people’s engagement and pleasure in reading, including school librarians (Cremin and Swann, 2015). However, whilst studies of teachers’ practices and reading interactions abound, there is scant research focused upon the practices of school librarians. The chapter’s purpose is to explore the role of secondary school librarians in extracurricular reading groups. The research questions addressed are twofold: What is the nature of the reading groups’ practices and how are these constructed and maintained by the school librarians and the group members, and, what dialogic dimensions to reading are evidenced in these groups? The research draws upon case studies of seven secondary school extracurricular reading groups led by six school librarians and one teacher, all of whom were participating in a national book award ‘shadowing’ scheme.The scheme involves student groups reading the books shortlisted (by UK children’s librarians) for two prestigious book awards: the Carnegie Medal and the Kate Greenaway Medal. The groups spend part of the summer term reading and discussing these shortlisted books and are able to upload their reviews and compare their views with those of the award judges when the medal winners are announced. The research findings indicate that the school librarians, working from a commonly expressed purpose, to develop students’ pleasure in reading, sought to differentiate the extracurricular reading groups from English, and profiled reading choice and agency in the shared social space for reading which they created. Group members, both students and attending teachers, contributed to the shaping of these reading events, and the relatively informal relationships that obtained between group leaders and members, afforded space for readers to construct a more dialogic understanding of the literary texts, and in some instances of the texts of their own and each other’s lives.
... Much of this earlier work regarded readers' emotions as an individual phenomenon, but, starting in the 2000s, researchers have increasingly used sociocultural perspectives to portray readers' emotions as culturally situated and socially constructed (Dutro, 2008;Gee, 2000Gee, , 2001Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson, & Miller, 2011;Trainor, 2008). These views hold that readers construct situated meanings from the text using their own cultural models and become emotionally involved through representations of cultural experiences. ...
Readers’ emotions often become engaged while reading and can sometimes enhance and sometimes skew text comprehension, with most research focused on reading texts in one’s native language. This project extended the work of Gaskins to explore how adolescents’ culturally constructed emotions affected their reading comprehension, and how this effect varied when reading in their first (Korean) or second (English) language. Students (N = 477) in a Korean high school read short paragraphs on four expository topics counterbalanced to represent both languages and both an emotional and neutral version of each topic. Results were that participants were more emotionally engaged and performed better on comprehension assessments when reading emotional than neutral texts. Thus, unlike Gaskin’s study, these results indicated that emotions were generally helpful for comprehension, whether the text was in the reader’s first language or a learned language, possibly by way of increasing attention and engagement with the text.
... These kinds of terms overlap with those in the next section on the Degree of Confidence in Information Conveyed. These terms share common ground with research on theory of mind (the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others and to know that the intentions, beliefs and desires of others are different from one's own) which has been linked to later reading comprehension [81,82]. Research has shown that children's story books contain a high rate of reference to mental states, so they provide an activity for exposing children to an understanding of mind [83]. ...
Teaching academic language has recently become a separate focus from teaching subject content for school-aged children, but it is rarely considered with preschoolers and kindergartners. The critical importance of fostering academic language before children enter elementary school has recently been posited and supported by various strands of research, and the term academic talk has been used to capture the fact that early exposure to and use of this register is in the oral modality only. There is a pressing need for an early focus on this register for children with language impairments, given that their language weaknesses often foreshadow academic difficulties. In this article, an integrative framework of academic talk developed by van Kleeck is used to discuss concrete ways in which professionals can foster the social-interactive and cognitive features of academic talk among young prereading children. A focus on these social-interactive and cognitive features, which provide a coherent and accessible conceptual framework for the interventionist, automatically recruits the many specific linguistic features that have been found to be characteristic of academic language. Previous research has directly or indirectly shown that preschool and kindergarten children's exposure individually to each of these features is associated with future academic success. However, this previous research has not provided a construct for considering the full constellation of features that combine to create the academic talk register. This article provides ideas for approaching these features individually at first, but then posits the need to gradually combine a focus on more and more features simultaneously to more completely reflect the nature of the academic talk register.
... In their review of the literature on wordless book reading, Crawford and Hade ( 2000 ) outline the contributions of this research. Wordless book research has documented children ' s early comprehending abilities, including how they respond to images by making inferences, which is important to the larger task of understanding narrative (Jett-Simpson, 1976 ;Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson, & Miller, 2011 ;Lysaker & Miller, 2013 ;Paris & Paris, 2003 ). Notably, Paris and Paris ( 2003 ) studied kindergarten children ' s wordless book readings to develop a way of assessing these narrative understandings. ...
Decades of research in emergent reading demonstrate that children don't come to print reading as if it were a completely new activity. Emergent reading practices such as wordless book reading are often seen as precursors to the meaning making that comes later during print reading. Yet often, the specific strategies noted in children's emergent readings are seen as distinct, and not readily linked to those they will use later in more mature print reading. In this article, we examine the strategy use of one kindergartener as she engages in wordless book reading. Using Clay's overarching idea of monitoring and the related strategies of searching, cross-checking, self-correcting and rereading, we analyze children's wordless book readings for “print like” strategy use. We suggest that wordless book reading is an underutilized context for developing emergent comprehension prior to a focus on decoding.
... In their review of the literature on wordless book reading, Crawford and Hade ( 2000 ) outline the contributions of this research. Wordless book research has documented children ' s early comprehending abilities, including how they respond to images by making inferences, which is important to the larger task of understanding narrative (Jett-Simpson, 1976 ;Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson, & Miller, 2011 ;Lysaker & Miller, 2013 ;Paris & Paris, 2003 ). Notably, Paris and Paris ( 2003 ) studied kindergarten children ' s wordless book readings to develop a way of assessing these narrative understandings. ...
In racially and culturally homogeneous school settings, opportunities for children to interact with those who are unlike themselves are not always available. Picture book retellings provide contexts within which students are exposed to racial and cultural differences by allowing them to engage in vicarious events with people they might not otherwise encounter. In this article, the authors explore two fourth graders' aided and unaided picture book retellings. They argue that retellings are dialogic literacy events that provide children with opportunities to explore difference through social imagination and develop empathetic response to a wide range of fictional others.
... In order to create the necessary conditions for transformative learning, we have chosen a relational, dialogic approach to pedagogy (Fecho, in press;Lysaker, Tonge, Gauson & Miller, 2011;Thayer-Bacon, 1997.) This approach stands in contrast to a transmission view in which the teacher as the authority would ''handout'' knowledge of research methods didactically and students would be expected to take up this knowledge language of traditional educational research ''as given.'' ...
Given the current and historical trends favoring the view of teachers as passive followers of “expert” directives, teachers are in need of continuing education that encourages them to be active change agents in educational reform. Teachers need professional education that helps them critique trends which question the legitimacy of their knowledge and experience as vital to critical conversations about school improvement. In this article, we elucidate the epistemic stance and the dialogic, relational approach to pedagogy that we adopt during the 3-week Summer Cohort experience. Second, we describe and analyze one of these activities—autobiographical writing which sets the framework for the course in terms of the relational and dialogic processes of our pedagogy and suggest ways in which such writing provides spaces for transformation in our students. We hope to demonstrate the ways in which a relational epistemology and dialogic, relationally oriented pedagogy provides one way to invite teachers to personal and professional transformation.
This article highlights a Cultural Sustenance View of Reading (CSVR), a complex reader model illuminated by vivid findings from an eight‐year collaborative classroom‐based study and extensive reviews of cognitive and sociocultural research. Within the CSVR, reading is conceptualized as being shaped by a readers' culturally and linguistically situated knowledge (ways of knowing), experiences and relationships (ways of being), and cognitive reading processes (ways of reading) which overlap and interact through the non‐linear, active process of culturally mediated cognition. In extending the CSVR, the authors hope to supplant long‐ standing false dichotomies between the cognitive and sociocultural functions within the human experience of reading. In doing so, we hope to advance ideas about how learning to read can foster cultural sustenance—with children and their lifeways centered as full and complete.
This article (a) explores the experience of an early childhood teacher researcher as she intentionally uses interactive read‐alouds to promote social justice and to encourage critical consciousness in her preschool classroom and (b) offers guidance for educators to embark on their own social justice journey. Over the course of a 2‐year study, the teacher engaged the children with 12 books. Findings describe the personal and professional evolution of the teacher researcher as social justice became her “way of being.” As she studied and reflected on issues of oppression and equity, and considered her own classroom read‐alouds, she shifted her approach from centering social–emotional learning to social justice. This shift was marked by changes in book selection and presentation and by two key turning points. Findings also detail the roles the teacher adopted as she explored books with her students and illustrate how these roles supported and prompted social justice. Self‐reflection points and steps are included to support educators in teaching for social justice.
In this study, it was aimed to examine the evaluation of children's language development by parents and experts in terms of some variables (socioeconomic level, attendance at pre-school education institution, frequency of reading to the child, interactive reading to the child, availability of a library at home and interactive play with the child). 118 children aged between 36-72 months old and their parents were included in the study. The study is a quantitative descriptive survey study. The language sub-dimension of the Gazi Early Childhood Assessment Tool (GECDA) was used to evaluate the language development levels of children through the eyes of an expert. The communication sub-dimension of the Early Childhood Development Inventory (CDI) was used. In addition, the language-cognitive subscale of the Ankara Developmental Screening Inventory (ADSI) was used for parents. According to the findings obtained from the study, it was seen that the language sub-dimension score averages of the Gazi Early Childhood Assessment Tool used in the expert evaluation were at an average level. However, according to parents' evaluation, it was found that the mean scores of the communication sub-dimension of the Early Childhood Development Inventory (EGE) and the language-cognitive sub-dimension of the Ankara Developmental Screening Inventory (AGTE) were high. In addition, within the scope of the expert evaluation, it was determined that the socio-economic level, attendance to a preschool education institution, the frequency of reading to the child, the status of reading interactive books to the child, the availability of the library at home and interactive play with the child were effective in the language sub-dimension score averages of the Gazi Early Childhood Assessment Tool. Within the scope of the evaluation, only the socioeconomic level was found to be effective in the language-cognitive sub-dimension of the Ankara Developmental Screening Inventory (AGTE).As a result of the study, it was discovered that evaluating the language development of 36-72 month-old children from the viewpoints of parents and experts, as well as the variables studied, is critical.
Keywords: language development, parents, early childhood, socio-ecomomic level, interactive book reading
Narrative Absorption brings together research from the social sciences and Humanities to solve a number of mysteries: Most of us will have had those moments, of being totally absorbed in a book, a movie, or computer game. Typically we do not have any idea about how we ended up in such a state. Nor do we fully realize how we might have changed as we return for the fictional worlds we have visited. The feeling of being absorbed is one of the most illusive and transient feelings, but also one that motivates audiences to spend considerable amounts of time in narrative worlds, and one that is central to our understanding of the effects of narratives on beliefs and behavior. Key specialists inform the reader of this book about the nature of the peculiar state of consciousness during episodes of absorption, the perception of absorption in history, the role of absorption in meaningful experiences with narratives, the relation with related phenomena such as suspense and identification, issues of measurement, and the practical implications, for instance in education-entertainment.
Various fields have worked separately on topics of absorption, albeit using different terminology and methods, but having reached a high level of development and complexity in understanding absorption. Now is the time to bring them together. This volume will be a point of reference for years to come.
The lexical quality hypothesis emphasizes the importance of the quantity and the quality of lexical knowledge for reading comprehension: children need to quickly and accurately access the meanings of the written words they encounter. This chapter discusses research on the quality and quantity of lexical representations in spoken language and in signed language in children with cochlear implants (CIs). It also describes the impact of three multimodal approaches that have been used to enhance the quantity and quality of lexical representations in deaf and hard-of-hearing children, including those with CIs: Cued Speech, orthographic information, and augmentative signs. The chapter argues that these three multimodal approaches are promising tools for enhancing the quality of lexical representations in spoken language in children with CIs.
Can we teach children and young adults about reading while simultaneously and inseparably teaching them how to take control of their own lives and relationships, a possibility that has been just barely touched by research and even less so by educational policies and practice? This address highlights research findings that suggest the promise of literacy engagement for clarifying and expanding how we think about reading assessment, achievement, comprehension, socio-emotional growth, and equity in literacy instruction. Using my own evolution as a researcher studying, primarily, the classroom-based reading experiences of middle school students, I show how my own questions and theoretical perspectives shifted based on what the children taught me as I studied their experiences and how that led me to champion engagement as a promising way forward. I rely heavily on what students themselves have shared with me, as their perspectives have fueled the shifts in my thinking and in the research questions I have pursued. I then share what I believe is the potential of an engagement-focused perspective on our field’s knowledge about reading development and practices. Finally, I comment on what we might need to do to make this line of research influence real classrooms and policies in positive ways. I argue that in order to influence, through an engagement perspective, the transformation of reading-related policies—and more importantly the agentive transformation of individuals and communities—we must renew our commitment to research conducted in classrooms and in partnership with teachers and families.
In this cross-case analysis of six young children’s wordless book readings, we examine the ways in which participants use social understanding during the reading of a wordless book to understand the narrative story. Using a conceptually based coding scheme, we identified places in children’s readings in which they imagined the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of characters. We refer to this use of social understanding during reading as social imagination, as it is occurs not in an actual but in a vicarious context. The findings indicated that children who frequently engaged in imagining the minds of others produced more as well as more varied meaning units and often ‘became’ the characters during their wordless book reading. Multimodal analysis of video data show that children who used social imagination relatively more frequently had livelier readings, with extensive use of inflection, emotion, and voicing of characters as well as a sense of continual investment in the narrative event as it unfolded. The use of social imagination appears to be critical in making sense of a story. The cases presented here demonstrate how understanding the minds of others leads to more complex thinking during the reader-text transaction. Implications for classroom practice and research are discussed.
In this article, we present one fourth grader’s unaided and illustration-aided retellings of The Other Side. Using a qualitative clinical case study approach, we examine comprehending activity in these retellings using microethnographic discourse analysis in conjunction with dialogic self theory and a transactional model of reading. Analysis indicates that illustration-aided retelling results in qualitatively different comprehending activity than unaided retelling. John’s illustration-aided retelling demonstrates relational involvement in the social world of the story and a more aesthetic stance characterized by movement between multiple character positions and their perspectives. John’s unaided retelling shows a nearly singular, outsider position and an efferent stance, characterized by summarizing and reporting. In addition, this study suggests that microethnographic analysis is a useful framework for noticing and understanding social and relational aspects of comprehending in illustration-aided retelling. Specifically, in illustration-aided retelling, the reader’s use of contextualization cues and dialogic activity of turn-taking were accompanied by social imagination and intersubjective relationships with characters. Other social and dialogic aspects of the illustration-aided retelling included intertextuality and narrative coherence both frequently involving polychronic activity. Implications of illustration-aided retellings as assessments of readers’ comprehending activity within picturebooks are discussed.
Research on what reading engagement is and how it is achieved often takes the approach of identifying factors that motivate reading, as perceived from outside the reading experience itself. In this study, we examine reading engagement as it occurs with an emergent reader reading a wordless picturebook. Using a dialogic, relational perspective on reading engagement, grounded in transactional theory specific to fictional narrative, we illustrate the ways such a perspective can explain the deeply human experience of engaged fiction reading. Results suggest that intersubjective connections and Theory of Mind (ToM) are integral to a reader's construction of relationships within the fictional world and definitional to engaged reading. In addition, this study builds on the methodological promise of wordless book reading in reading research.
This action research study provided a collaborative social space in which to examine the intersection of shared singing/reading, emergent literacy, and family literacy. In particular, the significance of home literacy engagement with song-based picture books was investigated through the core action of a non-deficit, school-based family literacy program. Data were collected via parent/guardian journals that documented intergenerational home literacy engagement over a two-month period. Findings revealed that shared singing/reading with song-based picture books provided rich opportunities for families to build joyful, literacy relationships while providing kindergarten-aged children with meaningful experiences with text.
This commentary explores selected ideas presented in the special issue on language and the self and considers them in terms of reading. Bertau’s notions of the in-between and sharedness, Lipari’s description of the polychronic, polymodal, and polyphonic qualities of language events, and Karsten’s description of the cross chronotope relationships between self-positions during writing are discussed. Using a case analysis of a young child’s wordless picture book reading, this set of ideas is used to illuminate reading as a dialogic, relational event of the self, one that depends on the use of social imagination as a critical part of the meaning-making process.
This article highlights, though examples from research, the social dimensions of reading for young adolescents in classroom communities that are centrally focused on engagement. Included are the positive social consequences of engagement and suggestions for teachers interested in arranging for productive social activity inside of texts and outside with peers and others.
This study examines students' perceptions of the outcomes and processes of engaged reading in classrooms prioritizing engagement through self-selected, self-paced reading of compelling young adult literature. The primary data were 71 end-of-year student interviews, supported by end-of-year teacher interviews, biweekly observational data, on-the-fly conversations with students, and video/audio records of student-initiated book discussions. An inductive analysis yielded 15 main categories of outcomes, including changes in students' identities, in their sense of agency, and in their relational, moral, and intellectual lives. The web of relationships among the processes and outcomes is examined through 317 causal statements made by students in interviews. Finally, a case study illustrates the cascading and reciprocal effects of engaged reading on one student's development. These adolescents showed, to varying degrees, an awareness of these processes and self-transformations, and thus a sense of agency with respect to their own development—their personhood and future narratives. This study raises questions about the adequacy of existing models of engagement for explaining students' engaged reading experiences and about currently advocated approaches to teaching English language arts that (a) minimize the roles of engagement and fiction, (b) require students to read the same text, (c) focus on engaged reading as an individual cognitive act without regard for the social nature of literate and human development, and (d) expect uniform outcomes across students.
The reading process and reading development have been addressed by researchers for decades. As a result we know much about what reading is and how it happens. However, less is known about how reading influences other aspects of children’s development, specifically the development of social imagination. To address this, we examined the narrative produced by one child during wordless picture book reading using a conceptually derived coding scheme to identify instances of social imagination. We asked: Is children’s use of social imagination visible in wordless book reading, and if so, what does it look like and how might it give us a more detailed in-process view of the reader–text transaction? Results suggest that the use of social imagination is observable in wordless book reading and that it is an integral part of the comprehension of stories. From this we posit that through vicarious engagement with others, the process of reading may influence the relational capacity for social imagination.
Moral development research has previously demonstrated that more extended discourse is a vital element in effective moral education, although the difficulty of implementing this type of discourse into classroom practice has seldom been discussed. In this study, transcripts of lessons were examined of a teacher systematically assisted to develop a more conversational style. These lessons were taped over the course of the school year at different times, beginning in the fall of the year. In addition, writing samples from children who participated in the lessons were subject to content analysis for themes relating to moral questions. Analysis of the lesson transcripts suggests that young students initiate discussion of values-implications of the texts they read if opportunities for connected discourse are increased. Evidence of the impact of more "conversational" discussions was found in the essays written by students in the class of a teacher using a more conversational style but not in the essays of students who were taught using a conventional format.
THIS STUDY explores the usefulness of the attachment relationship between children and parents for explaining differences in parent-preschooler reading in high- and low-socioeconomic-status families. On the basis of a questionnaire completed by about 350 mothers of 3-year-olds, three matched groups were composed: infrequently reading dyads, low SES (n = 15); frequently reading dyads, low SES (n = 15); and frequently reading dyads, high SES (n = 15). The children's behavior during a reunion after being separated from their mothers for about 30 minutes was scored on a rating scale for attachment security. Mothers and children were then observed while reading. The study supports the hypothesis that less secure dyads read less frequently. The groups also differed in the way parents shaped interactive reading: In the frequently reading group there was less communication about the book, whereas in the infrequently reading group more irrelevant interactions (such as disciplining) occurred. The frequently reading groups from low and high SES differed only in number of inferences. A developmental model of interactive reading is proposed, and it is concluded that programs must create a safe base from which children can explore literacy.
Read-alouds are a common component of literacy instruction. However, research on the method for providing read-alouds is limited. To determine if there was a common set of implementation practices, the authors examined the read-aloud practices of 25 teachers who were nominated by their administrators as experts. From these data, the authors identified several factors common to read-alouds. The authors then observed 100 additional teachers to determine how common each of these factors were in read-alouds.
Sociocultural theories provide a useful lens for interpreting behaviors as individuals enter contexts requiring social interactions. These theories help us understand that learning is stimulated and nourished by interactions with others, supporting a view that learning is essentially a socially inspired process. This emphasis on the social and cultural origins of knowledge, however, often minimizes dynamics related to individual development that influence how we respond to others and how others respond to us. Most relevant to this argument is information related to the influence of (a) the child's history of relationships, (b) the child's understanding of others and others' behavior, and (c) the child's cognitive perspective on the world. To account for these influences, the authors propose a model of collaborative literacy events (CLEs). The model merges understandings related to a sociocultural theory and individual development to broaden interpretations of children's behavior during socially mediated literacy events.
Discusses 2 studies that examined the influence of ability tracking on the type of reading instruction students receive in urban elementary schools, focusing on how the discriminatory treatment revealed in these studies is perpetuated in face-to-face classroom interactions. Two schools, one in California and the other in Chicago, are described in which differential treatment assumed different forms but always entailed for one group a denial of access to practice in comprehending texts. Whether methods of conversational analysis could be applied to the study of classroom interaction was also examined. Findings indicate that different instructional approaches were used with high- and low-ranked students, even when they were working on identical texts. Implications for reading achievement by lower-SES minority children are considered. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The authors of this article discuss how a mixed-methods research team designed and conducted a 4-year study (Variations in Teachers’ Work and Lives and Their Effects on Pupils) that tracked 300 teachers in 100 schools in England over a 3-year fieldwork period. The authors discuss processes that led to new knowledge. Although mixed methods are becoming more popular, few published accounts describe in detail how researchers have moved beyond the use and integration of mixed methods to arrive at more synergistic understandings. The advantage of synergistic approaches is their consideration and combination of a greater range of data, resulting in more nuanced, authentic accounts and explanations of complex realities.
Theory of mind, or the ability to make inferences about the mental states of other peo-ple, is thought to be the proximate mechanism underlying humans' ability to function in complex, collaborative social networks. Here we present a set of stories and questions for investigating higher-order theory of mind functioning in school-age children, and also a scale for obtaining rat-ings of children's social competence. Ten and eleven year old children master first and second level theory of mind problems, are slightly above chance on third level problems, and perform at chance on fourth level. Theory of mind performance is positively correlated with teacher ratings of the child's social competence. We also find poorer performance in a relatively deprived school than a relatively affluent one.
Ten children (aged between 7;11 and 9;2) with mixed reading disability participated in an oral narrative intervention programme that focused on enhancing children's story structure knowledge. The participants had all demonstrated persistent reading and oral narrative comprehension and production difficulties in a two-year longitudinal study prior to the intervention. A non-equivalent pretest—posttest control group design was used in which one group of five children was randomly selected to receive the intervention immediately and the other group of five children received the intervention delayed. A speech language therapist implemented the intervention in small group sessions twice weekly until 12 hours of intervention were completed. The results indicated significant treatment effects for oral narrative comprehension performance. Despite this improvement in children's ability to answer comprehension questions relating to story structure elements, there was little change in oral narrative production performance as a result of the intervention, and transfer to reading comprehension was not evident.
The study examined children’s self-reported socio-emotional characteristics (loneliness and sense
of coherence) and perception of their homeroom teacher as a secure base among 3rd-graders with
reading difficulties prior to formal diagnostic assessment, thus controlling for the possible impact of
diagnosis. In line with resilience theory, this study also aimed to further explore the resilience of
these children with reading difficulties. The sample comprised 266 3rd-graders from regular
classrooms: 118 children with reading difficulties and 148 without reading difficulties. Significant
inter-group differences emerged on all three measures. Moreover, children’s perception of their
teacher as a secure base correlated significantly with feelings of loneliness and with sense of
coherence. In addition, a subgroup of resilient children emerged among the children with reading
difficulties. The distribution of resilient and non-resilient children revealed significant inter-group
differences. Discussion focused on the theoretical model of developmental adaptation, providing a
comprehensive and dynamic view of developing children, and pinpointing research future directions
and counselling implications.
This study, involving 138 families rearing firstborn sons, extends work on bookreading by relating quality of parent-child interactive exchange during bookreading to contemporaneous and antecedent assessments of infant-parent attachment security. One parent and the child were observed when children were 12, 13, 18, and 20 months. At the first and third visit, infant-mother attachment security was assessed, with infant-father attachment security being assessed at the second and fourth visit. Following the assessment of attachment security at 18 and 20 months, parent and child were videotaped in a bookreading session. At 18 and 20 months, children responded to the pictures in a book by pointing and labelling, and their parents tried to initiate these reactions by following predictable routines. In contrast to other mothers, insecure-avoidant mothers were more inclined to read the verbal text and less inclined to initiate interactions around the pictures. Insecure-avoidant children were less inclined to respond to the book and were more distracted. In insecure-resistant dyads, overcontrolling and overstimulating behavior by the mother appeared to covary with ambivalence on the part of the children. The results do not support a similar pattern for the fatherchild dyads. Implications for family literacy programs are discussed.
Lilly, Sammy, and Caroline (all children's names are pseudonyms) are sitting at their table collaboratively creating a word web. The teacher has divided her first-grade class into groups of three or four children. Each group is to create a web around an animal name. The teacher is present as the children work, but her intent is to have the children proceed with the activity as they, not she. directs. This teacher values collaboration and independence. This is explicit, as evidenced by her statement that each group should "work as a team," as well as implied by her minimal intrusion as they work. The children enjoy working in such child-directed literacy events. These events occur frequently, so the children know what to do and are able to get to work promptly after the instructions are provided.
A synthesis of the extant research on extensive early reading interventions for students with reading difficulties and disabilities is provided. Findings from 18 studies published between 1995 and 2005 revealed positive outcomes for students participating in extensive interventions. Results indicated higher effects for studies providing intervention to students in the smallest group sizes as well as providing intervention early (grades K-1). No differences in overall outcomes were revealed between studies implementing highly standardized interventions or interventions with less standardized implementation. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.
The study reported here investigated the relationship between security of attachment and children's solo and instructed symbolic play. Participants were 43 (27 secure and 16 insecure) 21/2-year-olds, whose security of attachment had been assessed in infancy. No differences were found in the sophistication of solo symbolic play between the secure and insecure groups, but the securely attached children were better able to incorporate an experimenter's suggestions into their sequences of pretence. In addition, the securely attached children were found to have greater ‘executive capacity’ scores (Belsky, Garduque & Hrncir, 1984). These data show that securely attached children are better able to benefit from the play suggestions of an unfamiliar adult, and thus extend the findings of Slade (1987) on maternal enhancement of children's play. The relationship between security of attachment and response to suggestions for symbolic play is discussed within a Vygotskian framework, and the possibility that these results are evidence for the greater social responsiveness and flexibility of securely attached children is addressed.
Previous research studies examining the effects of reading interventions on social outcomes for five- to twelve-year-old students with reading difficulties are synthesized. Twenty-seven studies published between 1975 and 2002 met criteria for inclusion in this synthesis. Small, positive effects for several social outcomes are summarized. Reading interventions that implemented group interactive learning situations yielded the strongest effects on social outcomes for students; however, participation in reading interventions yielded negative effects on measures of attitude. Implications for researchers and teachers regarding social outcomes from reading interventions are highlighted.
The author describes how thinking aloud promotes the comprehension of all learners, including those who struggle with reading. These techniques “improved strategy use, promoted self-efficacy, and increased engagement as well as comprehension.” Suggestions and methods for supporting think-alouds are provided.
This article reports a case study of a high school teacher's attempt to enhance students' development of empathy after guiding them to explore the cultural, political, and historical context of text. Empathy is defined as an other-oriented perspective that is congruent with another's sociocultural values, political ideology, and historical background. The students who participated in this study grew up in a small town with limited exposure to diversity in their lives and in their school curriculum. During a six-week unit, the teacher used simulation, lecture, poster analysis, and a movie to help students understand the context of a Chinese novella before they read the book. Students engaged in discussion and journal writing when they read the text. The data collected included videorecording of lessons, the investigator's field notes, teacher diary entries, students' assignments, and postinstructional interviews with individual students. The findings suggest that these students demonstrated five types of empathy: cognitive empathy, historical empathy, parallel emotional empathy, reactive emotional empathy, and crosscultural empathy. Students varied in their empathetic responses. Some refused to empathize with the characters; some accepted the characters' positions partially; only a few could and were willing to experience the feelings of the characters.
To understand difficulties in early literacy most research has focused on print related knowledge. Knowing about print, however, is only one aspect of reading and may neglect how successful early readers also develop capacities to enter the text world and make sense of it through a personal, relational experience. To explore this other aspect of early literacy I examined the wordless picture book readings of 18 children aged 5 and 6 prior to their ability to decode print. Analyses imply that the development of ‘self that reads’ might be described as a process of movement along a continuum over which a complex, flexible, dialogic self-system develops and which then influences the kind and amount of transactional relationship a reader has with a text. Acknowledging the importance of the developing ‘self that reads’ during childhood may deepen definitions of emergent literacy and broaden our approaches to young readers.
This study reports on an analysis of the relation between kindergarten children's developing theory of mind and their understanding of characters' actions and consciousness in story narrative, based on Bruner's (1986) notion of the dual landscapes of action and consciousness. Wordless picture books were used to model these two aspects of narrative through the direct portrayal of action and thought by way of thought bubbles and adults' explicit metacognitive talk. Children were asked to retell stories following both an experimenter's and the teacher's initial storytelling. Children's ability to coordinate story characters' thoughts, beliefs and intentions (consciousness) was measured by the frequency of reference to both the character's action or presence and the content of his/her thought bubbles in the stories. Results of the analyses revealed relations among children's age, language ability, non-verbal intelligence, theory of mind development, and their ability to coordinate consciousness and action in the stories. Younger children who have less developed theory of mind more often retold just the action in the real world without reference to thought, or else described the scene depicted within the thought bubble without reference to the character who held the thought. Implications for education, such as teaching children to talk about the mind, are discussed.
This article reviews the existing literature on the relationship between dialogue and pedagogy, examining the concepts of dialogic instruction, dialogic enquiry and dialogic teaching. It submits these concepts to critical scrutiny and explores questions which remain to be resolved in the field. It is argued that a dialogic mode of engagement with learners has the potential to bring about a narrowing of the gap in educational outcomes. The structural conditions of schooling and current assessment policy are seen as constraints on the development of a dialogical pedagogy. The article identifies the affective conditions for learning created by different patterns of teacher–student interaction as a neglected line of enquiry, which future research could profitably pursue.
Although teachers face increasing pressure to focus on academics in kindergarten, research indicates that promoting school success in young children involves integrating skills in multiple domains. For example, by using dialogic reading—a well-researched shared-reading technique—and books with strong social-emotional content, teachers can emphasize the overlapping areas between emergent literacy and social-emotional learning to create a more powerful learning experience in both domains.Dialogic reading includes strategic questioning and responding to children while reading a book. It involves multiple readings and conversations about books with children in small groups. Studied for a decade in diverse settings of 2- to 6-year-olds, dialogic reading has been shown to have a positive effect on oral language development, a cornerstone of emergent literacy. In the small-group setting of dialogic reading, children also benefit from the social experience of listening to others, taking turns, and getting to know their peers. Using dialogic reading with books with social-emotional content, teachers can follow the readings with related activities where social-emotional skills are modeled, coached, and cued. Numerous suggestions for how to begin using dialogic reading, incorporate social-emotional learning, and involve families are discussed.
The use of metacognitive strategies helps students to “think about their thinking” before, during, and after they read.
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19.1 (2005) 1-40
A theory of the self seeks a comprehensive account of the elements whose interactions constitute a human being and the principles that govern those interactions. It must reckon with a vast array of phenomena, from perception and self-awareness to an infant's journey into adulthood; from language and labor to emotion, conscience, and mental illness. And it must do so in a way that recognizes that human beings are not simply instantiations of an eidos but unique, developing loci of life and activity. No two of us are alike. No one perceives, understands, or desires for another.
In this paper we want to explore what we regard as a fundamental facet of a human being: it engages in, even lives, as an ensemble of dialogues. Said otherwise, the locus of life and activity that we are is dialogical, and in the first place. We relate to others and ourselves, we plan, imagine, remember, and lust only on the basis of dialogical relations. Each of us is thus more than an atomistic entity. In elusive but crucial ways, our being is bound to and in some sense involves the presence of others, and our lives unfold as movements within ourselves and among others.
Even at the outset, it is crucial to note that our claim is not simply that selves employ narratives that synthesize their lives and that these narratives involve dialogues among various facets of a life. No doubt this happens, and we shall try to explain, at least in part, why and how. But our claim runs further than this. At base, that is, the very self whose life one might gather up and redirect through a narrative—that being is dialogical. To repeat, on our view, the self is dialogical in the first place, and thus a multiple phenomenon in and of itself, not simply in its self-representations.
Now, this is not to say that what follows provides a comprehensive account of the self. We have little to say about perception, memory, neurophysiology, self-conscious and prereflective awareness of bodily states, and so forth. Nor are we claiming that one might develop a comprehensive account using only the elements that we employ, nor even that these elements are irreducible to other phenomena. Falliblists through and through, we have little interest in dictating what any account simply must say at the end of inquiry.
In order to demonstrate the power of a dialogical theory of the self, we will use it to interpret the phenomenon of schizophrenia, and in a way that preserves the participants' perspective, addressing what it is like to suffer from schizophrenia and what it means when persons with schizophrenia tell us that their sense of self has been fundamentally damaged or disrupted. More specifically, we will interpret the disruptions in sense of self that characterize schizophrenia as well as the persistence of various symptoms associated with schizophrenia, particularly: (a) hallucinations (or having sensory perceptions that others do not share); (b) delusions (or having beliefs that others deem idiosyncratic and grossly implausible); and finally (c) the diminishment of will and desire. This will show, we think, that a dialogical approach to philosophical anthropology, clinical and experimental psychological research, and psychotherapy promises to pay rich dividends.
Let's begin with something of an intellectual history of dialogical theory. The outlines of a dialogical conception of the self can be found in diverse places. Among a distinguished group, we find Bakhtin's reading of Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche's reflections on subjectivity, and Dewey's and Mead's social psychology particularly helpful. Interpreting the poetics of Dostoyevsky, Bakhtin (1985) asserts that humans are best described as polyphonic beings, products of an ongoing series of dialogues among distinct voices. Rather than revolving around singular, conclusive perspectives, Bakhtin holds that our sense of self emerges through conversations among functionally independent elements within persons. As an illustration, consider Dostoyevsky's description of Roskolnikov in Crime and Punishment: "sullen, gloomy, arrogant, proud ... insecure ...magnanimous and kind ... cold and callous...
This paper presents some findings from a longitudinal study of one child's interactive story readings from birth to 5-years-of-age. The young child in the case study responds strongly to the meaning of the stories she shares with significant adults. She shows considerable empathy with the characters in the stories and makes links between events in the stories and those in her own life. Other kinds of learning to do with becoming literate are also evident and the article explores the following: the child's use of key story phrases, the visual memory of words and the development of phonic knowledge. The interactive story readings, and re-readings, enabled Alice to learn about reading and to learn to read. The continuation and development of story readings in the early years classroom is suggested to provide an enjoyment of good literature and literacy learning.
Traces the concept of internalization through 2 lines of theorizing that include Freudian and social-learning accounts of socialization and the sociogenetic theories of general mental functions and development held by P. Janet (e.g., 1901, 1921), J. M. Baldwin (e.g., 1892, 1895), and Vygotsky. Internalization is suggested to be a process involving transformations of semiotic material imported from the social world into personally constructed subjective experience. Researchers who work within the sociogenetic tradition would benefit from making explicit the historical connections between their versions of the concept of internalization and the thinking of major figures in sociogenetic theorizing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
It is sometimes assumed that the strongest opportunities for developing imagination and empathy through children's writing lie in narrative starting points, whereas other less obviously literary writing forms are more readily associated with functional literacy. Consequently, writing regarded as non-literary is rarely analysed with these qualities in mind. This paper presents an exploratory, textual analysis of children's letter-writing texts, which aims to identify and describe the uses of imagination and empathy. It is suggested that imaginative strategies were integral to this textual construction and that the significance of imagination and empathy in writing development is worthy of further exploration.
Analysis of classroom discourse shows that the classroom must be seen as a site of cultural production; children are transformed as they are introduced to a new subject position-that of "student." Children are not passive objects of this work; they actively adopt this new position and on occasion they, equally actively, breach the classroom order. We argue that a splitting is produced-a division between child as member-of-family and child as student-in-classroom. As the year goes by, breaches of the order become less frequent, as new cultural mediators (reading, writing, arithmetic) crystallize this division in the person of each child.
Incl. abstract, tabl. bibl. Background The evidence is now quite clear that bullying in schools is an international problem. Bullying is widely regarded as a particularly destructive form of aggression, with harmful physical, social and emotional outcomes for all involved (bullies, victims and bystanders), and with particular risks for children with special needs. The research of the past 25 years confirms its widespread nature where it is most likely in groups from which the potential victim cannot escape - e.g. schools. In 1994 an Australian Commonwealth Government inquiry, following on from the pioneering work of research documented by Smith and co-workers, heralded a growing awareness of the need to address the issue of school violence, particularly bullying. Internationally, researchers have identified the impact of intervention programmes to reduce school bullying. In Australia a nationally and internationally used, systemically based intervention programme called the PEACE Pack, has previously been shown to be effective in reducing bullying in primary schools. Purpose The purpose of the present study was to provide further supporting longitudinal evidence regarding the efficacy of the PEACE Pack in markedly reducing bullying among young children of junior primary and primary school age. Further, the study also identified the characteristics of a small group of children who do not appear to benefit from intervention efforts. Finally, in this paper, a computer-based innovation for collecting school-based data regarding student perceptions of bullying is described. Sample The sample of 954 pupils comprised 458 males and 496 females from four Australian primary schools in Adelaide, a large metropolitan city in Australia. The pupils ranged in age from 5.4 to 13.5 years. Design and methods The study involved a pre- and post-test design and the administration of a questionnaire to evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of the PEACE Pack programme to address the issue of school bullying. Results The interventions were effective in reducing the level of school bullying in the junior primary and primary schools, although there were variations in the gains achieved across the age range and across the four schools. Conclusions In the present study the systemic PEACE Pack interventions resulted in approximately one-fifth of pupils in the overall sample reporting that they were being bullied 'less' as a result of year-long interventions. This effect was greatest in the primary schools, particularly for boys. Consideration was given to a small group of students who reported being bullied 'more' after the interventions, and to the development of a computer-based assessment procedure for assessing the extent of bullying in schools.