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Reading in New Zealand: Achievement and Volume
Abstract
Reading comprehension of students in two age groups, 14 and 18, is compared for three countries. Based on IEA data reanalyzed by Purves, the following rank order occurs: New Zealand, United States, Iran. The concept of reading volume is proposed as an indicator of the quantity of reading among adults and students to account partially for these differences among countries. A metric is devised for reading volume, based on the number of copies (of newspapers, magazines, and books) read per person per month. Data derived from six national and international surveys, comparable in method, purpose, and sampling of the populations, are used to calculate reading volumes, with the result that New Zealand was higher than the United States which was higher than Iran. In addition, reading volumes of subgroups of New Zealanders divided by age, sex, occupation, TV viewing, and recreational interest are presented. These findings are placed in an educational framework in which desired levels of reading achievement for students depend on reading demands of society which are (minimally) estimated by reading volume. The symbiosis of achievement and volume is discussed in the contexts of educational planning and assessment./// [French] On a comparé dans trois pays la compréhension de lecture d'éléves de deux groupes d'âge: 14 et 18 ans. Basé sur les données du IEA réanalysées par Purves, l'ordre suivant a lieu: Nouvelle Zélande, Etats-Unis et Iran. On a proposé le concept de volume de lecture comme un indicateur de qualité de lecture parmi les adultes et les éléves afin d'expliquer en partie ces différences parmi les pays. On a dispoé un métrage pour le volume de lecture, basé sur le nombre de copies (de journaux, magasines et livres) lues par personne chaque mois. On a utilisé des données provenant de six enquêtes nationales et internationales, comparables en méthode, but et échantillon de populations, afin de calculer les volumes de lecture. Les résultats obtenus sont les suivants: La Nouvelle Zélande a un volume plus grand que les Etats-Unis, le volume de cuex-ci dépasse à son tour celui de l'Iran. De plus, on a présenté les volumes de lecture des sousgroupes de Nouveaux Zélandais divisés en âge, sexe, occupation, choix de programmes télévisés, et loisirs. Ces découvertes ont été placées dans un cadre éducatif selon lequel les niveaux désirés d'accomplissement de lecture des éléves dépendent des demandes sociales de lecture qui sont (de manière minime) estimées par volume de lecture. La symbiose d'accomplissement et de volume est discutée dans les contextes de planification et évaluation d'enseignement./// [Spanish] Se comparan comprensión de lectura de dos niveles de edad, 14 y 18 años, en 3 países. Basado en los datos de la IEA (International Education Association), analizados de nuevo por Purves, el siguiente orden de rangos resultó: Nueva Zelanda, Estados Unidos, Irán. Se propone el concepto de volumen de lectura como un indicador de la cantidad de lectura de adultos y estudiantes, para justificar parcialmente las diferencias entre países. Se desarrolla un sistema de medición para el volumen de lectura, basado en el número de periódicos, revistas y libros leídos por mes y por persona. Datos derivados de 6 encuestas nacionales e internacionales - comparables en metodología, objetivos, y muestreo de población-se utilizan para calcular volumen de lectura, con el resultado de que el de Nueva Zelanda era mayor que el de los Estados Unidos, que al mismo tiempo era mayor que el de Irán. Además, se describen los volúmenes de lectura de subgrupos neozelandeses divididos por edad, sexo, ocupación, hábito de mirar la televisión, y actividades durante las horas de ocio. Estos resultados se insertan en una estructura pedagógica en la que niveles de destreza de lectura de alumnos, sujetos a la demanda de la sociedad, se calculan (mínimamente) por medio de volumen de lectura. Se discute la simbiosis de destreza y volumen en el contexto de planificación pedagógica y medición.
... has been implemented nationwide (Goldenberg, 1991;Guthrie, 1981). In California, for example, tutoring cannot be the entire solution for the approximately 40% of a cohort that is eligible for Chapter 1. ...
Hiebert describes an intervention program that was developed with Chapter 1 teachers in which the teachers worked with three children in half-hour sessions on repetitive reading, writing, and guidance on the words in texts that emphasized phonemic awareness and word patterns. The Chapter 1 students had text-level reading scores at the end of the year that were slightly higher than those of children designated as the middle group in their classrooms at the beginning of the year. Hiebert discusses critical features of this intervention, such as teachers setting high expectations for children and increasing the amount of time spent on reading and writing by the children in the project. The chapter concludes with the important observation that a variety of different intervention models, ranging from one-on-one tutoring to small-group Chapter 1 and small-group classroom intervention, be coordinated within a school to provide extra help in reading to all children who need it.
... If we accept the finding that out of school reading volume increases students' reading competencies, it is reasonable to wonder what influences out-of-school reading. To investigate this point, Guthrie (1981) examined the reading environments of students who were highest-achieving readers in a large international survey conducted in 1973. The survey had been administered to representative samples of 14-and 18-year-olds in 15 countries. ...
... According to this hypothesis, the performance of readingdisabled children is characterized by a relatively high degree of specificity upon entering school (see Jorm, Share, Maclean, & Matthews, 1986).The obvious candidate for the critically deficient process is phonological awareness.Thus, it is hypothesized that due to several incompletely determined-but undoubtedly complex and interacting-genetic and environmental causes (Chall, 1983;S. Cohen, Glass, & Singer, 1973;Duane, 1983;Feitelson & Goldstein, 1986;Guthrie, 1981;Rutter et al., 1974;Stevenson et al., 1985), children who will later be candidates for the label of reading-disabled enter school with markedly underdeveloped phonological awareness, but with either mild deficits in other cognitive skills or none at all. Deficient phonological awareness makes it difficult for the child to understand the alphabetic principle and delays the breaking of the spelling-to-sound code.The differences in in-school exposure to text chronicled by Allington (1980Allington ( , 1983Allington ( , 1984 and Biemiller (1977Biemiller ( -1978 begin to build up by the middle of the first-grade year.These exposure differences compound any out-of-school differences already present and leave reading-disabled children farther behind their peers in the development of the rapid, automatic processes of direct visual recognition. ...
A framework for conceptualizing the development of individual differences in reading ability is presented that synthesizes a great deal of the research literature. The framework places special emphasis on the effects of reading on cognitive development and on “bootstrapping” relationships involving reading. Of key importance are the concepts of reciprocal relationships—situations where the causal connection between reading ability and the efficiency of a cognitive process is bidirectional-and organism-environment correlation—the fact that differentially advantaged organisms are exposed to nonrandom distributions of environmental quality. Hypotheses are advanced to explain how these mechanisms operate to create rich-get-richer and poor-get-poorer patterns of reading achievement. The framework is used to explicate some persisting problems in the literature on reading disability and to conceptualize remediation efforts in reading.
... First, we considered fluency. We identified choral and then partner rereading of new grade-level text segments every day (what we called shared reading) to integrate the potential benefits of both repeated and wide reading (Guthrie, 1981;Kuhn, 2005;Rasinski, Reutzel, Chard, & Linan-Thompson, 2011). Choral reading, in which the teacher leads the class in an initial oral reading of text, affords students in the upper elementary grades a sheltered opportunity to apply their developing word recognition skills in a supportive environment, led by the teacher. ...
We compared year-long gains in fluency and comprehension in grades 3–5 in 3 treatment and 4 comparison schools. Treatment schools implemented a comprehensive school reform (CSR) program called Bookworms. The program employed challenging text and emphasized high text volume, aggressive vocabulary and knowledge building, and contextualized strategy instruction. Comparison schools used a traditional guided reading approach that matched children to instructional-level texts. We established feasibility of the CSR treatment through document review. Achievement levels were initially comparable in fluency and comprehension. Repeated-measures MANOVAs revealed that for reading fluency, the treatment group grew significantly more than the control group in grades 3 and 5 but not in grade 4. For comprehension, the treatment group exhibited significantly more growth at all 3 grades. Implications of the study are discussed.
... Two international surveys showed good results. The IEA survey of 1973 showed that New Zealand adolescents were reading well (Anderson et al. 1985;Guthrie 1981) and the IEA report in 1993 (Elley 1993(Elley , 1994 placed us among the top five countries, the first English-speaking country, with USA right on our heels. [Certain important literacy countries like Australia did not participate in the surveys.] ...
... Traditional research has used a self-reported measure of reading habits, which asks college students or young adults to estimate the amount of time they spend reading. Results of questionnaires and interviews have served to assess their variation in literacy habits (e.g., Gallik, 1999;Guthrie, 1981;Walberg & Tsai, 1984). An alternative tool, the Author Recognition Test (ART) for college students, was first developed by Stanovich and West (1989) and has been widely used since its creation. ...
This study set out to develop a Chinese Author Recognition Test (CART) that might be used as a measure of objective print exposure for college students in Taiwan. We found that there is a linkage between print exposure and general reading achievement for college students. We also found that, among self-reported reading habits, comparative reading habits and CART, primary print knowledge scores within the CART family have the strongest prediction power for both the ‘General Scholastic Ability Test-Chinese’ and the ‘Department Required Test-Chinese’ beyond the joint contributions of vocabulary size and reading comprehension. By sharing the process of developing the instrument, we shed some light for researchers from regions other than English-speaking countries on how they might move forward in future investigations.
... Print exposure can be assessed by means of questionnaires and interviews (Guthrie, 1981;Guthrie & Greaney, 1991;Walberg & Tsai, 1984); however, these techniques are susceptible to social desirability factors, primarily the tendency to report more time spent reading than actually occurs. Activity diaries, in which individuals record their daily activities, can provide more reliable results (Carp & Carp, 1981;Greaney, 1980;Rice, 1986); however, this technique can be expensive and time-consuming. ...
The ability to learn and execute the component processes of reading varies widely. Reading comprehension involves language specific processes as well as domain general cognitive abilities-sensation, perception, attention, memory, and reasoning. Variation in any of these abilities potentially underlies individual differences in comprehension performance. Thus, one important question concerns the extent to which variation in some ability is central to individual differences in comprehension performance and the extent to which variation in the ability is derivative. For example, researchers have found that poor comprehenders have more difficulty parsing complex syntactic structures than do good comprehenders. This chapter reviews five reader characteristics that are associated with comprehension ability in mature readers. Two criteria are used in selecting these particular characteristics from all of those that are potentially involved in comprehension. First, characteristics are selected that have the strongest correlations with comprehension performance. Second, characteristics are selected that play a central role in different theories of comprehension skill. The characteristics that selected are: word-level ability, working memory capacity, suppression ability, print exposure, and background knowledge.
... Parti What the teacher doesn't see In 1973, an international survey of reading comprehension (Thorndike, 1973) found that New Zealand, at the high school level, was best in the world, scoring higher than industrialised countries such as Britain and the United States. Since then, overseas researchers have been interested in finding out why New Zealand did so well (Purves, 1979;Guthrie, 1981). ...
Argues that, in the high school classroom, it may appear that much is being learned, but in the minds of pupils there is often considerable confusion as to the meaning of what they have read. Reports on a study that explored the nature of that confusion and discusses what can be done. (RBW)
... Other techniques are available if one wants only an index of relative differences in exposure to print. For example, a variety of questionnaire and interview techniques have been used to assess relative differences in print exposure (e.g., Estes, 1971; Guthrie, 1981; Guthrie & Greaney, 1991; Guthrie & Seifert, 1983; Lewis & Teale, 1980; Sharon, 1973 Sharon, -1974 Walberg & Tsai, 1984 ), but many of these are encumbered with social-desirability confounds: responses are distorted because of the tendency to report socially desirable behaviors (Furnham, 1986; Paulhus, 1984)-in this case, the tendency to report more reading than actually takes place (Ennis, 1965; Sharon, 1973 Sharon, -1974 Zill & Winglee, 1990 ). This problem is particularly acute in cases such as the present one, in which relatively educated people are asked questions about a socially valued activity such as reading. ...
Most studies of the cognitive consequences of literacy have attempted to compare the performance of literate individuals with that of illiterate individuals. We argue that it is not absolutely necessary to examine illiterates in order to study the cognitive consequences of reading experience because there is enormous variation in exposure to print even within a generally literate society. In the present study, we tested several methods of assessing differential exposure to print and demonstrated that all have significant correlations with measures of vocabulary, cultural knowledge, spelling ability, and verbal fluency. Several indicators of print exposure predicted variance in these knowledge domains even when general ability and reading-comprehension skill were statistically controlled. Our results, although correlational, suggest that print exposure is an independent contributor to the development of certain verbal skills.
... Three of the methods that have been used to assess an individual's level ofexposure to print have serious shortcomings. Questionnaires and interviews (e.g.,Guthrie, 1981;Walberg & Tsai, 1984) require that respondents estimate the amount of time they read, which is very difficult to accomplish with an adequate degree of accuracy (Burt & Kemp, 1991). Furthermore, both are susceptible to socially desirable responding (Paulhus, 1984). ...
The effect of exposure to print on the efficiency of phonological and orthographic word recognition processes was examined by comparing two groups of university students having similar reading comprehension scores but different levels of exposure to print. Participants with a high level of exposure to print were faster and more accurate in naming pseudowords, in choosing the correct member of a homophone pair, and in making lexical decisions when nonwords were pseudohomophones. In the lexical decision task, low-print-exposure participants were more sensitive to the frequency of the orthographic patterns in the stimuli. The results of a form priming task demonstrated that high-print-exposure participants more quickly and strongly activated the orthographic representations of common words and subsequently more strongly activated the corresponding phonological representations. Even among successful students, differences in exposure to print produce large differences in the efficiency of both orthographic and phonological word recognition processes.
Fulfilling a need for careful and thorough synthesis of an extensive body of findings on reading, this report presents leading experts' interpretations of both current knowledge of reading and the state of the art and practice of teaching reading. The introduction contains two claims: (1) the knowledge is now available to make worthwhile improvements in reading throughout the United States, and (2) if the practices seen in the classrooms of the best teachers in the best schools could be introduced everywhere, improvement in reading would be dramatic. The first chapter of the report stresses reading as the process of constructing meaning from written texts, a complex skill requiring the coordination of a number of interrelated sources of information. The second chapter, on emerging literacy, argues that reading must be seen as part of a child's general language development and not as a discrete skill isolated from listening, speaking, and writing. The third chapter, on extending literacy, stresses that as proficiency develops, reading should not be thought of as a separate subject, but as integral to learning in all content areas. The fourth chapter concerns the teacher and the classroom and notes that an indisputable conclusion of research is that the quality of teaching makes a considerable difference in children's learning. The next two chapters note that standardized reading tests do not measure everything, and that teaching is a complex profession. The last chapter contains seventeen recommendations for conditions likely to produce citizens who would read with high levels of skill and do so frequently with evident satisfaction. In the afterword, Jeanne Chall comments on the history of the report, and three appendixes contain 260 references and notes plus lists of project consultants and the members of the National Academy of Education. (HOD)
READING RECOVERY(R) is an early instructional intervention for at-risk children. This article analyzes its effectiveness. Specifically, it considers whether Reading Recovery leads to learning and compares the amount of learning accomplished relative to the gains of average and low-achieving students. The analysis considers whether learning gains attributable to Reading Recovery can be maintained once special instruction is discontinued, and whether the program leads to other instructional changes in schools. Costs and benefits of the program are analyzed. It was found that Reading Recovery leads to learning. Students make greater than expected gains in reading, effects comparable to those accomplished by the most effective educational interventions. It is less effective and more costly than has been claimed, and does not lead to systemic changes in classroom instruction, making it difficult to maintain learning gains. This is discouraging given program claims and its great expense. Reading Recovery, like other effective interventions, merits continued support. Several recommendations are made for monitoring the program more effectively and for encouraging innovations that might lower costs while maintaining effectiveness.
SOLITARY INDIVIDUALS waiting for flights in an airport departure lounge were classified as either readers (engaged in recreational reading for 10 consecutive minutes) or nonreaders by an experimenter unobtrusively observing their behavior. Of the 217 subjects, 111 were classified as readers and 106 as nonreaders. Individuals classified as readers scored higher on several recognition checklist measures of print exposure that can be administered in a matter of minutes. Individuals judged to be high in print exposure-on the basis of either an inference from their airport behavior or an inference from their responses on the checklist measures-displayed more extensive vocabularies and cultural knowledge than did individuals low in print exposure. Although engagement in literacy activities was correlated with both age and education, exposure to print was a substantial predictor of vocabulary and cultural knowledge even after differences in age and education were controlled. The results, taken in conjunction with the outcomes of several related studies, suggest a more prominent role for exposure to print in theories of individual differences in cognitive development.
ABSTRACTS
Among all countries that participated in the latest IEA survey of reading literacy, New Zealand showed the second largest difference in achievement between girls and boys in primary school and the largest difference in achievement between those students learning in their home language and those who were not. This study sought to identify school and classroom factors that moderated the gender and home language gaps in the reading achievement of New Zealand students. Using data from the IEA survey, comprehension and word recognition scores and other information relating to 3,027 9‐year‐old students from a sample of 176 primary schools were analyzed by means of the hierarchical linear model. Findings showed that the magnitudes of the gender gap for comprehension and of the home language gaps for comprehension and word recognition varied across schools. In large measure, factors that moderated the gaps were those that reflected teachers' capacities to handle diversity. Well‐educated teachers, who showed commitment to their work and set up rich literacy environments for their students—and these tended to be mostly female teachers—and who frequently assessed students' progress in order to address their needs were helping close the gender or home language gaps. However, evidence suggests that many teachers were struggling to cope with increased diversity among students under conditions that made it difficult for them to be responsive to individual needs. Additional school and classroom factors that might minimize reading difficulties experienced by boys at an early age and students from non‐English‐speaking backgrounds are discussed.
DE TODOS los países que participaron en el último estudio IEA de lectura, Nueva Zelanda presentó la segunda diferencia más importante en desempeño entre niñas y niños de escuela primaria y la mayor diferencia en desempeño entre los estudiantes que aprenden a leer en la lengua de su hogar y los que no lo hacen. Este estudio intentó identificar los factores de la escuela y el aula que disminuyen las diferencias de género y lengua del hogar en el desempeño en lectura de los estudiantes neocelandeses. Usando datos del estudio IEA se analizaron, mediante el modelo lineal jerárquico, medidas de comprensión y reconocimiento de palabras y otra información correspondiente a 3,027 estudiantes de 9 años de una muestra de 176 escuelas primarias. Los resultados mostraron que las magnitudes de la diferencia de género en comprensión y de la diferencia de lengua del hogar en comprensión y reconcimiento de palabras variaban según las escuelas. En gran medida, los factores que disminuyeron las diferencias fueron aquellos que reflejaron la capacidad de los docentes para abordar la diversidad. Docentes bien educados, que mostraron un compromiso con su trabajo y crearon contextos de alfabetización ricos para sus estudiantes ‐ estos docentes en general eran mujeres ‐ y que evaluaron con frecuencia el progreso de sus estudiantes para atender a sus necesidades, ayudaron a disminuir las diferencias de género y lengua del hogar. Sin embargo, la evidencia sugiere que muchos docentes estaban tratando de enfrentar la situación de diversidad cada vez mayor entre los estudiantes en condiciones que hacían difícil poder contemplar las necesidades individuales. Se discuten factores adicionales de la escuela y del aula que podrían minimizar las dificultades de lectura experimentadas por los niños a edad temprana y por los estudiantes provenientes de hogares en los que no se habla inglés.
UNTER ALLEN Ländern, die an der letzten IEA Umfrage über die Lesefähigkeit teilnahmen, zeigte sich in Neuseeland die zweithöchste Differenz in der Leistung zwischen Mädchen und Jungen in der Grundschule und die höchste Differenz in der Leistung zwischen solchen Schülern, die in ihren häuslichen Sprachgewohnheiten lernten und jenen, die dies nicht taten. Die Studie trachtete danach Schul‐ und Klassenraumfaktoren zu identifizieren, welche die Leistungsunterschiede zwischen den Geschlechtern und in der zu Hause gesprochenen Sprache von Schülern in Neuseeland bei den Leseleistungen ausgleichen. Unter Benutzung der Daten von der IEA Umfrage wurden Verständnis und Worterkennung bewertet, sowie andere Informationen in Bezug auf 3,027 neun Jahre alte Schüler aus einer Auswahl von 176 Grundschulen, mittels des hirarchisch aufgebauten linearen Modells. Die Ergebnisse zeigten, daß das Hauptgewicht in der Leistungslücke bei den Geschlechtern im Auffassungsvermögen bestand und bei den Lücken in der zu Hause gesprochenen Sprache aus Auffassungsvermögen bzw. Verständnis und Worterkennung bestand, welche quer durch die Schulen variierten. Weitläufig bemessen, Faktoren die die Lücken ausglichen, waren jene, die sich in der Fähigkeit der Lehrer in der Handhabung der Diversifikationen widerspiegelten. Gut ausgebildete Lehrer, die Pflichtbewußtsein in ihrer Arbeit zeigten und reichhaltige Lese‐ und Schreibeinrichtungen für ihre Schüler bereit hielten ‐ und dies schienen hauptsächlich weibliche Lehrkräfte zu sein ‐ und die häufig die Fortschritte bei denSchülern überprüften, um ihre Mängel anzusprechen, halfen die Lücken resultierend aus Geschlecht oder häuslichen Sprachgewohnheiten zu schließen. Jedoch läßt sich aus den Fakten ableiten, daß viele Lehrer damit rangen, um die steigende Diversität unter den Schülern zu bewältigen, unter Bedingungen, die das Eingehen auf individuelle Bedürfnisse erschwerten. Zusätzliche Schul‐ und Klassenraumfaktoren, die Leseschwierigkeiten verringern könnten, durchgemacht bei Buben im frühen Alter und bei Schülern von nicht englischsprachigem Hintergrund, werden besprochen.
PARMI TOUS les pays qui ont participé à la dernière enquête sur la lecture de l'IEA, la Nouvelle Zélande s'est trouvée être seconde pour les différences entre garçons et filles à l'école primaire et première pour les différences de réussite entre les élèves qui apprennent dans leur langue maternelle et les autres. Cette étude s'est efforcée d'identifier les facteurs relatifs à l'école et à la classe qui modèrent les écarts de genre et de langue dans la réussite en lecture des élèves en Nouvelle Zélande. En utilisant des données provenant de l'enquête de l'IEA, les résultats en compréhension et en reconnaissance de mots et d'autres informations relatives à 3,027 élèves de 9 ans issus d'un échantillon de 176 écoles primaires ont été analysés au moyen d'un modèle hiérarchique linéaire. Les résultats ont montré que les grandeurs de l'écart de genre pour la compréhension et des écarts de langue pour la compréhension et la reconnaissance des mots varient selon les écoles. Dans une large mesure, les facteurs qui modèrent les écarts sont ceux qui reflètent la capacité des enseignants à appréhender l'hétérogénéité. Les enseignants bien formés, qui manifestent un engagement dans leur travail et mettent en place un environnement de lecture‐écriture riche à l'intention de leurs élèves—et il y a une tendance à ce que ce soient surtout des femmes—et qui évaluent fréquemment les progrès des élèves de façon à répondre à leurs besoins, fournissent une aide proche des écarts de genre ou de langue. Cependant des faits suggèrent que beaucoup d'enseignants s'efforcent de faire face à l'hétérogénéité croissante des élèves dans des conditions qui leur rend difficile de répondre aux besoins individuels. On discute des autres facteurs relatifs à l'école ou à la classe qui pourraient réduire les difficultés de lecture que rencontrent les garçons très jeunes et les élèves de milieux non anglophones.
Aliteracy, a term describing people who can read but choose not to, is a growing problem in American society. The de mand for a back-to-basics curriculum, legislation requiring minimum compe tency testing, and other societal changes are explored as causes of aliter acy. Educational strategies to reverse the trend are discussed by Decker.
This paper focuses on the preliminary reading literacy test scores for New Zealand, of students in the grade levels where most 9‐ (Standard 3) and 14‐ (Form 4) year‐olds were to be found. In addition to some within country analyses, New Zealand results are compared with the results for the probability samples of students in 32 systems of education which participated in the IEA study of Reading Literacy. Within country comparisons by gender and ethnicity reveal large differences in favour of Pakeha students at both levels, and gender differences in favour of girls particularly at the Standard 3 level. Between country comparisons of results suggest high levels of reading competence among the New Zealand students in the target age groups.
Children's reading attainments, attitudes to reading and reading habits are central educational concerns. A three‐year longitudinal study compares the progress on these variables of 324 children, initially aged ten years, attending four middle schools in one English local education authority (Bradford). The city is characterized by declining traditional industries, high unemployment and many related socio‐economic disadvantages. Two schools (deemed experimental) each received approximately 4,500 books in addition to their normal stock and capitation allowance for books. The two matched control schools received no such additional supply of books.Although important changes in reading attainments were found, no simple differential gain consequent on the extra supply of books was identified in relation to either reading attainments or attitudes to reading. The data obtained concerning the number and variety of books read by the children in the four schools over the three years of the research represent a unique record of the development of children's reading habits. It also provides important insights into the development of the reading habits of pupils attending the four schools involved in the research. Case studies of avid and infrequent readers, together with analyses of the policies and practices of the four schools concerning the use of books and the teaching of reading, were carried out.Against this background, the implications of the study for future research in this field and also for the more effective use of books in schools are considered. From the research design perspective, the value of using a range of methodologies in such studies is advocated. From the viewpoint of the classroom teacher wishing to improve the range and quality of children's involvement with books, eight key strategies derived from the thematic analysis of the data are described. In particular, the potential of the Reading Record Forms used in the study is underlined. The technique is one with considerable promise and wide applicability. The key roles of the headteacher and staff in determining the school's policy and practices concerning the use of books is emphasized.
Reading Recovery, a program in which teachers tutor first graders, has been implemented extensively in the United States over the past decade. This review summarizes seven aspects of the available data from Reading Recovery in the United States: (a) nature of the reading tasks, (b) characteristics of tutees, (c) student accomplishments as first graders, (d) maintenance of student accomplishments through Grade 4, (e) student-teacher ratio, (f) cost-effectiveness, and (g) teacher effectiveness and retention.
Responds to an article ("On Balanced Reading") in the December 1998/January 1999 issue of this journal. Argues for a closer look and more evidence before committing to "balanced" models of literacy education. Discusses criticisms of Reading Recovery programs. (SR)
Viitaniemi, E. 1983. Has There Been a Decline in Reading Ability among Pupils of Finnish ‘Comprehensive’ Schools? Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 27, 183‐200. Reading ability among third‐ and fourth‐grade pupils in Finnish ‘Comprehensive’ schools was measured in 1964 and 1965 and again in 1979, using the same tests. Factors like the teachers, time of testing in the school year, and the schools themselves were identical. The reading tests covered ‘speed of reading aloud’, ‘skimming’, ‘synonyms’ and ‘interpretation’. In all four domains the 1979‐pupils’ reading ability was significantly better than the 1964‐65‐pupils’. And in two of the tests, the standard deviations had decreased markedly, a tendency that also was observed in the remaining two, but to a lesser degree. Results are interpreted in light of the acceleration theory.
This study examined the influence of print exposure on syllogistic reasoning and knowledge of mental-state verbs. One hundred thirty-three college students completed measures of reading comprehension, knowledge of mental-state verbs, syllogistic reasoning, and print exposure. A series of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that the print-exposure measure accounted for significant unique variance in performance on a measure of knowledge or- mental-state verbs, even after years of college completed, grade point average, and reading comprehension were statistically controlled. Print exposure proved to be a less robust predictor of performance on a syllogistic reasoning task when examined with a parallel series of analyses. These findings suggest that even the variation in literacy activity found among college students is associated with the ability to interpret texts by enhancing the ability to deal with subtle distinctions among mental-state terms. However, the view that print exposure fosters decontextualized reasoning, as typified in syllogistic reasoning, received only very modest support from this study.
A FRAMEWORK for conceptualizing the development of individual differences in reading ability is presented that synthesizes a great deal of the research literature. The framework places special emphasis on the effects of reading on cognitive development and on "bootstrapping" relationships involving reading. Of key importance are the concepts of reciprocal relationships-situations where the causal connection between reading ability and the efficiency of a cognitive process is bidirectional-and organism-environment correlation-the fact that differentially advantaged organisms are exposed to nonrandom distributions of environmental quality. Hypotheses are advanced to explain how these mechanisms operate to create rich-getricher and poor-get-poorer patterns of reading achievement. The framework is used to explicate some persisting problems in the literature on reading disability and to conceptualize remediation efforts in reading.
ABSTRACT The United States has experienced a sharp rise in recent years in the number of heritage language (HL) bilinguals, students who speak a language other than English at home. Due to a lack of advanced language development in other settings, many of these students enroll in foreign language courses in their respective home languages. This paper reports on a program designed to promote heritage language and literacy development in one university-level HL course, Spanish for Native Speakers (SNS). The ten-week program involved two classes of mostly English-dominant SNS students participating in an experimental course that included a combination of the following elements: free voluntary reading (FVR) outside the classroom, in-class literature circles (small group book discussions), a survey of popular literature in Spanish, and individual inquiry learning projects. Three measures of the course were used to evaluate its success in terms of vocabulary acquisition, attitudes toward Spanish literacy development, and reading habits. The experimental group made significant gains in word knowledge, read more than a comparison group of SNS students, and exhibited positive attitudes toward Spanish literacy at the end of the ten-week course. The evidence in favor of FVR, theoretical justifications for the approach in SNS courses, and implications for redesigning heritage language curricula at the secondary and university levels are discussed.
The question of the role played by experiential differences in determining variation in cognitive growth has been at the heart of much theorizing in developmental psychology. Enthusiasm for experiential explanations of differences in cognitive growth has waxed and waned over the years, as has interest in explanations based on genetic inheritance. This chapter reviews the first steps in the development of a new research paradigm for studying the unique cognitive correlates of literacy. Reading experience exhibits enough isolable variance within a generally literate society to be reliably linked with cognitive differences. Research on such links is therefore facilitated because the consequences of engaging in literacy activities can be studied without necessarily obtaining totally illiterate samples or setting up cross-cultural comparisons. Issues that are at least analogous issues to those raised in cross-cultural research can be studied within literate societies with a paradigm such as this, and, therefore, the speed with which the questions are answered about the cognitive consequences of literacy may be greatly increased because more studies can be carried out, larger samples can be studied, and the range of the cognitive domains tapped can be widened.
The relationship between print exposure and measures of reading skill was examined in college students (N = 99, 58 female; mean age = 20.3 years). Print exposure was measured with several new self-reports of reading and writing habits, as well as updated versions of the Author Recognition Test and the Magazine Recognition Test (Stanovich & West, 1989). Participants completed a sentence comprehension task with syntactically complex sentences, and reading times and comprehension accuracy were measured. An additional measure of reading skill was provided by participants' scores on the verbal portions of the ACT, a standardized achievement test. Higher levels of print exposure were associated with higher sentence processing abilities and superior verbal ACT performance. The relative merits of different print exposure assessments are discussed.
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