205,425 research outputs found
Developing Reading Identities: Understanding Issues of Motivation within the Reading Workshop
No full textEmpirical evidence suggests a correlation between motivation and reading achievement as well as a decline in motivation as students progress through the grades. In order to address this issue, it is necessary to determine the instructional methods that promote motivation and identity development in reading. This study examines the motivation and the identity development of four fourth grade students as they experienced the reading workshop over the course of one year. Ford’s Motivational Systems Theory and Wenger’s Theory of Learning frame the study of student motivation and identity development within the reading workshop. Data related to motivation and identity development was collected weekly through student interviews, surveys, and conferences. A description of the context was gained through researcher observations and a teacher interview. Analysis of this data revealed that (1) Increased time spent reading self- selected books correlates positively to student motivation and identity development. (2) Increased responsive feedback from teachers and peers is correlated with increased motivation and reading identity development. (3) These elements form the crux of the reading workshop, which supports the notion that this model of instruction encourages motivation and identity development. (4) The correlation between motivation, identity development, and achievement is not evident in the context of this study. However, this correlation often emerges over time. This dissertation concludes with directions for future research, which may contribute to a further understanding of the relationship between student motivation, identity development and the reading workshop
Preservice Teachers' Development of Effective Approaches to Text-based Discussion
No full textText-based discussion is a dialogic instructional practice to promote reading comprehension among students. To enact this practice, a teacher engages students in authentic conversation about text as students read it, to assist them in building understanding of text ideas as they are encountered. Text-based discussion has the potential to promote the development of both low-level and high-level comprehension skills among students, yet teachers need support in learning to enact it. Research has indicated that text-based discussion is not well-represented in classrooms today, likely because not many teachers have access to this support.
Recently, some teacher educators have focused on teaching preservice teachers (PSTs) to enact text-based discussions during teacher preparation programs, in an attempt to increase the presence of the practice in classrooms. Practice-based methods courses have been developed which attempt to provide preservice teachers with the knowledge and skill needed to enact text-based discussions successfully. This study investigated the ways in which six preservice teachers’ enactments of text-based discussion developed over the course of their one-year student teaching placements, after completing one such methods course in which they learned to enact the practice.
Data were collected at three time points during student teaching, and included transcripts of enactments of text-based discussion, lesson plans, interview transcripts, and assessments of lesson quality using the Instructional Quality Instrument (Junker et al., 2004). Analysis of the data suggested that the PSTs entered student teaching with the ability to enact text-based discussions with a moderate level of success, and that the quality of the discussions continued to improve over the course of the school year. The methods course seemed to support PSTs in learning to link student comments and press students for accuracy and reasoning. PSTs were more successful in eliciting student linking and recall of explicit text information than in eliciting elaborated responses from students; the participation structure enforced by the PST seemed to influence the extent to which students provided elaborated responses. This study supports the use of practice-based methods courses to teach PSTs to enact text-based discussions, and uncovers several areas that are in need of additional focus during these courses
Reading in the mobile era
No full textMobile technology can advance literacy and learning in underserved communities around the world.
Summary
Millions of people do not read for one reason: they do not have access to text. But today mobile phones and cellular networks are transforming a scarce resource into an abundant one.
Drawing on the analysis of over 4,000 surveys collected in seven developing countries and corresponding qualitative interviews, this report paints the most detailed picture to date of who reads books and stories on mobile devices and why.
The findings illuminate, for the first time, the habits, beliefs and profiles of mobile readers. This information points to strategies to expand mobile reading and, by extension, the educational, social and economic benefits associated with increased reading.
Mobile technology can advance literacy and learning in underserved communities around the world. This report shows how
The social construction of meaning : Reading Animal Farm in the classroom
No full textThe novel, it has generally been assumed, was from its very beginnings a literary form designed to be read by solitary, silent individuals. One consequence of this assumption is that the class novel, read amid all the noise and sociality of the classroom, tends to be treated as a preparation formore authentic, private reading, or even as poor substitute for it. This essay argues that the history of novel-reading is more complicated and more varied than has been assumed; it goes on to explore, through the story of a single lesson, the possibilities for meaning-making that are the product of particular pedagogic practices as well as of the irreducibly social process of reading the class novel
Strategies for Controlling Hypothesis Formation in Reading
No full textReading is a process of forming and evaluating hypotheses to account for the data in a text. Because of its complexity, the task of reading requires strategies for controlling the proliferation of hypotheses. Four of these strategies, (a) jumping to conclusions, (b) maintaining inertia, (c) relying on background knowledge, and (d) working backwards from the goal, are generally effective, but they occasionally create reading problems, rather than alleviating them. Examples from protocols of readers reading a reading test passage are presented. These examples show both the effective use of the strategies and some problems that may arise from their use.is peer reviewedSubmitted by Bertram Bruce ([email protected]) on 2010-05-16T20:25:22Z
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Previous issue date: 1984National Institute of Education under Contract No. HEW-NIE-C-400-76-0116.published or submitted for publicatio
'This Stuff Tastes of Window': Reading as a Writer
No full textDiscusses the difference between reading as a writer and reading for pleasure
Investigating the causes of reading comprehension failure: the comprehension-age match design.
No full textThe reading-level (or reading-age) match design has become a widely-used tool for investigating the possible direction of the relation between particular skills and word reading ability: Cause or consequence. This paper outlines an analogous method for identifying candidate causes of reading comprehension failure, the ‘comprehension-age match design’ and discusses the strengths and limitations of this design
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Reading comprehension in developmental disorders of language and communication
No full textBackground: Deficits in reading airment (SLI), Down syndrome (DS) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD).
Methods: In this review (based on a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge database to 2011), the Simple View of Reading is used as a framework for considering reading comprehension in these groups.
Conclusions: There is substantial evidence for reading comprehension impairments in SLI and growing evidence that weaknesses in this domain are common in DS and ASD. Further, in these groups reading comprehension is typically more impaired than word recognition. However, there is also evidence that some children and adolescents with DS, ASD and a history of SLI develop reading comprehension and word recognition skills at or above the age appropriate level. This review of the literature indicates that factors including word recognition, oral language, nonverbal ability and working memory may explain reading comprehension difficulties in SLI, DS and ASD. In addition, it highlights methodological issues, implications of poor reading comprehension and fruitful areas for future research
Study and Detection of Mindless Reading
No full textMind-wandering refers to a phenomenon of having thoughts unrelated to the task at hand. Its occurrences have been documented across different activities in both experimentally controlled and real-life situations. Furthermore, evidence suggests that one’s mind may start to wander at will and in moments when we preferred it did not. Indeed, mind-wandering has been linked to deterioration of performance in a number of activities. One example is compromised text comprehension: Experiencing mind-wandering episodes is unconducive to efficient reading.
One way we could hope to attenuate the negative influence of mind-wandering on performance is to recognize it and avoid it. However, because one may not be aware that their mind has wandered, we need to rely on external means of discovering mind-wandering. Unfortunately, current state-of-the-art methods of detecting mind-wandering are imprecise and impractical. In this dissertation, I attempt to ameliorate some of these methodological deficiencies by developing an alternative, a completely unobtrusive way of detecting mindless reading (i.e., mind-wandering during reading).
The ability to read is the sine qua non of daily life in literate societies and has been studied for over 40 years. However, mindless reading literature is far less voluminous. Because of that, I approach mindless reading detection by first systematically studying mindless reading itself thus expanding our understanding of this still nebulous cognitive phenomenon.
Eye movements play a central role in this work. Interestingly, even though text comprehension may cease entirely during mindless reading, eyes of mindless readers move remarkably similar to those of mindful readers. Despite that, my results suggest that eye movements can be used to successfully disentangle these two modes of reading
Initial-seed recursions and dualities for d-vectors
No full textWe present an initial-seed-mutation formula for d-vectors of cluster variables in a cluster algebra. We also give two rephrasings of this recursion: one as a duality formula for d-vectors in the style of the g-vectors/c-vectors dualities of Nakanishi and Zelevinsky, and one as a formula expressing the highest powers in the Laurent expansion of a cluster variable in terms of the d-vectors of any cluster containing it. We prove that the initial-seedmutation recursion holds in a varied collection of cluster algebras, but not in general. We conjecture further that the formula holds for source-sink moves on the initial seed in an arbitrary cluster algebra, and we prove this conjecture in the case of surfaces
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