Reading and Maths

Question 1

What is emergent literacy?

Answer 1

The skills and knowledge that are precursors to reading, includes concept of print:
direction, spaces between letters, written words correspond to spoken words, read pages in specific order

Question 2

What is emergent literacy linked too?

Answer 2

Home literacy environment

Question 3

How does emergent literacy develop?

Answer 3

From birth as you get older - realisation that marks on a page correspond to spoken sounds, this discovery is made during early years
Crucial to understand that parents aren’t just making things up, the words on a page have meaning
Experience of sharing a book with a parent, being read too is very important - if you haven’t been read too, emergent literacy won’t develop

Question 4

What did Weigel et al find about the home literacy environment?

Answer 4

That it was a predictor of children’s subsequent reading ability
One year longitudinal study of 85 families with pre-schoolers not yet in kindergarten
Found that:
Parent-child literacy/language activities predicts greater print knowledge and reading interest
Home literacy practises depended on parent beliefs and values - parental motivation important

Question 5

What did Froiland et al find when looking at pathways to home literacy environment?

Answer 5

551 pre-schoolers attending head start classrooms
Found that neighbourhood socioeconomic wellbeing lead to the home literacy environment (no of books) which impacted child’s early literacy, after controlling for parents educational level
People in affluent families had more positive home environments
But correlational data - limitation, doesn’t show a predictor over time - should do a follow up
Social context does matter

Question 6

What does research on the wider family context show?

Answer 6

Family context isn’t just based on how many books there are, consider general parent-child interactive styles as well as measures of home environment (e.g. overall quality and responsiveness - HOME)

Question 7

What did Roberts et al find when looking at HOME?

Answer 7

It was the most consistent and strongest predictor of children’s language and literacy skills

Question 8

Why is mediation important?

Answer 8

Important to understand why there are indirect pathways

Question 9

What are the predictors of reading ability?

Answer 9

Good evidence for:

1. Concepts of print
2. Phonemic awareness (working with the sounds of language, segmenting, blending, discriminating between phonemes)
3. Rhyme awareness
4. Letter knowledge

Performance on all of these predicts reading ability

Question 10

What are the tests of phonemic awareness?

Answer 10

Phoneme deletion task (start off with whole syllable deletion, then say ward, say spot without the p)

Counting out phonemes

Identifying which of three words doesn’t contain the same sound

Question 11

Bradley and Bryant - longitudinal study and training study

Answer 11

Sound categorisation task (odd one out in a list of CVC words)before reading predicted later reading and spelling 3 years later
Training in sound categorisation in 40 lessons over two years led to superior reading and spelling - good for interventions
Supported hypothesis that early rhyme and alliteration awareness is causally important

Question 12

Schatschneider et al - longitudinal study from kindergarten to 2nd grade

Answer 12

Large array of possible predictors of reading outcomes
Consistent predictive value of phonemic awareness, knowledge of letter sounds and letter naming speed (rapid automatised naming of letters, RAN)

Question 13

What are the controversies when teaching reading?

Answer 13

Phonics vs whole word
Reading schemes vs real books
Synthetic phonics vs analytic phonics
should we be starting this as early as we do?

Question 14

What is the phonics vs whole-word debate?

Answer 14

Whether children can be taught to read by decomposing whole words, using the context, cues of the world, visual image of the word etc
Evidence of learning whole words from context

Question 15

What did Goodman et al find about learning words from context?

Answer 15

Reading words in context showed 60-80% fewer errors than reading in isolation (lists) - led to the assumption that we should use the context to encourage children to learn
Implications for national policy

Question 16

What is the UK primary framework?

Answer 16

Framework for teaching that was set out in 1998 - using national cues
Focussed on four searchlights: phonics, grammatical knowledge, word recognition and graphic knowledge, knowledge and context
Idea of using cues or context might be what children do, but doesn’t mean it should be taught like this

Question 17

What does Nicholson believe about the context?

Answer 17

The effect of context is less robust than previously suggested, and likely to be present for only poor/average readers

Suggests it could be a compensation effect - use the context when you can’t read the word, skilled readers don’t need the context

Contrasts with evidence that training in phonemic awareness leads to improved reading and spelling - meta analysis by Ehri et al- combining whole language and code orientated approaches

Question 18

What are the processes of reading?

Answer 18

Word recognition processes

Language comprehension processes

Question 19

Is there evidence for synthetic over analytic phonics?

Answer 19

Clackmannnshire study: Johnston and Watson
3 groups:
analytic - one letter a week in onset position, followed by CVC words
analytic and phonological awareness - as above plus phoneme and rhyme awareness in the absence of print
Synthetic - sounding out, blending, letter formation, looking at letter sounds in all positions

Showed superior performance in synthetic group
7 year longitudinal study - at the end, children were 3.5 years ahead of chronological age in word reading
Should be teaching children phonemes at a very young age, so they have the tools to blend them together e.g. qu, ou, ue - giving raining improves outcomes

Question 20

What is the evidence against using synthetic phonics?

Answer 20

Goswami emphasises both rhyme and phoneme work - includes teaching the metacognitive strategy of analogy
Ehri et al - systematic phonics better than unsystematic or no phonics and better to start early
BUT
different types of systematic phonics programmes (synthetic vs larger uni) did not differ in the impact of reading - doesn’t matter if you focus on synthetic or larger words

Question 21

What are the critical responses towards phonics?

Answer 21

Torgerson et al - not strong evidence that any one form of systematic phonics is more effective - not going to change pratise

Wise and Styles - inadequate research basis, criticisms of the clackmannshire study. Concerns about how turning reading into instructions to decode, might have a negative effect on motivation, interest and attention - critique of rigid view of reading in England. Hard to turn it into government policy

Question 22

What is the relationship between reading comprehension and metacognition?

Answer 22

Some readers are good decodes but poor comprehenders
Role of metacognition in skilled comprehension - need to understand what the words actually mean
Most cases go together, bad decoding means bad comprehension

Question 23

What did Cain et al find about poor comprehenders?

Answer 23

They were less likely to identify independent strategies when encountering a word, they can’t read a sentence they can’t understand
Less likely to identify strategies for remembering the gist of a story
Less likely to adapt reading style to accomplish different goals

Question 24

What did Cain, Oakhill and Bryant find - longitundal study of children aged 8-11

Answer 24

Working memory predicts reading comprehension after controlling for word reading skill and verbal ability
But inference-making ability and comprehension monitoring were also significant predictors, even after controlling for memory - need to infer what is going on

Question 25

What is the phonics screening check?

Answer 25

Designed to confirm whether pupils have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard. It will identify pupils who need extra help to improve their decoding skills
Duff et al - confirms validity of check but raises questions about added value beyond teacher judgements

Question 26

What is the relationship between procedural knowledge and conceptual knowledge?

Answer 26

Procedural knowledge is often at the expense of conceptual knowledge - children can follow step by step on how to solve a problem but if they encounter a new problem, don’t know how to use it
Cant use their knowledge to solve different

Question 27

What is the use of higher-order conceptually challenging questions?

Answer 27

Focus on explanations rather than repetition/memorisation - asking children to articulate problem solving strategies, going beyond problem at hand
Use of plausible and meaningful contexts
Could explain cultural differences in maths performance - more computing in context and higher order questions in Taiwan and Japan than US - way in which maths is taught is different

Question 28

What are the factors in gender differences?

Answer 28

natural ability? if so, where is this from?
better school grades in maths?
better peformance on tests?

Question 29

How does self perception, attribution and shame impact gender?

Answer 29

Eccles et al - higher competence beliefs among boys
Skipek and Gralinski - questions before and after maths test:
higher expected performance in boys
greater attribution of failure to lack of ability in girls
less belief in value of effort for success by girls
girls more likely to hide test paper
may not be performing different, but expectations may contribute to motivation

Question 30

How do parental expectations impact gender outcomes?

Answer 30

Parsons et al - parents had sex-differentiated ideas about mathematics performance, despite actual similarity
Parent beliefs more important for shaping children’s self-perceptions than their own past performance

Question 31

What did Bleeker and Jacobs find?

Answer 31

Mothers prediction of child success in a maths orientated career is a big predictor of adolescent self-perceptions of maths ability, which then impacts adolescence math/science career self-efficacy
How they think about themselves at age 15 is predicted by mothers expectations, which in terms predicts if they have self-efficacy towards career - bigger predictor of self efficacy than actual grades

Question 32

What are the early stereotypes about intellectual ability? Bian, Leslie and Cimpian

Answer 32

Who is really really smart? - found a clear difference
5 yr olds - both boys and girls show an own gender bias
6 year olds - only boys shown an own gender bias, girls drop it
Girls perceptions not correlated with beliefs about school achievement
Perceptions are related to choice of new games (described as for children who are really really smart) - girls less likely to choose these games
If it is starting at 6 years old, how do we eliminate it

Question 33

What does ‘knowledge isn’t enough’ refer too?

Answer 33

It isn’t just the awareness that causes differences - the differences in basic ability isn’t just caused by being aware of them

Question 34

Where does the awareness of different gender ability come fro?

Answer 34

Media
Parents
Role models

Question 35

What did Huguet and Raynor find about gender differences?

Answer 35

Boys and girls aged 11-13 years given 90 seconds to learn complex figure and then 5 mins to reproduce it from memory
Students told test would measure geometry (stereotype threat) or control
Separate assessment showed that girls had counter-stereotypical beliefs about girls ability in geometry - believe they are just as good as boys
But,
when task labelled as focussed on geometry, boys outperformed girls
when task labelled as focussed on drawing, girls outperformed boys
threat is activating a stereotype, which might be unconscious
Girls a lot better at drawing

Question 36

What is the social context of conceptual change?

Answer 36

Many of the students talked about their dislike of maths and their plans to drop it, not because of the cognitive demand, but because they didn’t want to be positioned as received knowers, engaging in practises that left no room for their own interpretation or agency (not interested, just get a formula, memorise the answer, apply it and thats it)

Question 37

What are the implications for interventions of gender differences?

Answer 37

Reduce stereotyped behaviour - encourage neutral play

Role models - not as much exposure to women mathematicians, so expose children more