Analogical reasoning in children's reading and addition

The purpose of the research was to examine the role of analogical reasoning in children's early reading and addition and to look for possible commonalities in children's performance across these two educational contexts. The research comprised four studies. Study I was a preliminary investigation of individual differences in children's use of analogies in beginning reading. In this study, 55 five-to six year-old beginning readers were presented with the traditional clue word analogy task incorporating either real word or non-word test items. After the presentation of an initial clue word that was decoded for them, children were asked to read a series of related and unrelated target words. Distinct patterns of analogy emerged with regard to the children's ability to use different combinations of orthographic and phonological relations using cluster analysis. The findings illustrated the usefulness of identifying profiles of orthographic and phonological relations for characterising children's development in learning to read. Study 2 was designed to extend the findings from Study 1 by examining whether children's traditional analogical reasoning abilities, short-term memory and their reading related skills could provide some explanations for these patterns of individual differences in reasoning skills in beginning reading. The results of Study 2 supported those of Study 1 revealing distinct patterns in children's use of orthographic and phonological relations. Although single word reading and early phonological knowledge were systematically related to these different patterns of analogy, measures of traditional analogical reasoning skill were unable to account for differences in children's profiles. The purpose of Study 3 was to systematically explore the possibility that analogies are important for children's addition. In this study, 66 five-to-seven year-olds were given an addition-based analogy task designed to assess their ability to solve series of addition problems that were either conceptually related or unrelated to a solved addition problem. Similar to Study 2, children also solved a series of traditional analogical reasoning tasks, designed to assess their ability to solve analogies based on thematic, causal and visual relations. The results indicated that children's use of analogy to solve commuted addition problems was systematically related to their profiles of addition problem solving skills, although no relation was found between children's use of addition analogy and traditional analogical reasoning tasks. In Study 4,69 five-to-six year-olds were given a revised version of the reading and addition analogy tasks presented in Studies 2 and 3 to examine possible similarities in children's analogical reasoning skills across the two domains. Individual self-reports of strategies showed that the children relied on a wide repertoire of strategies for solving related analogy problems in reading and addition. Furthermore, children's patterns of responses to solving analogical problems indicated that most children who reported using analogy strategies in early reading had high levels of analogical reasoning in addition. The findings suggest that there may be a common analogical reasoning component underlying the two domains of reading and mathematics. Overall, the four studies suggest that children's ability to reason about conceptual relations are an important aspect of their development in reading and addition and that the study of analogical reasoning across different educational contexts can provide important insights into children's cognitive development

The impact of technology: value-added classroom practice: final report

This report extends Becta’s enquiries into the ways in which digital technologies are supporting learning. It looks in detail at the learning practices mediated by ICT in nine secondary schools in which ICT for learning is well embedded. The project proposes a broader perspective on the notion of ‘impact’ that is rather different from a number of previous studies investigating impact. Previous studies have been limited in that they have either focused on a single innovation or have reported on institutional level factors. However, in both cases this pays insufficient attention to the contexts of learning. In this project, the focus has been on the learning practices of the classroom and the contexts of ICT-supported learning. The study reports an analysis of 85 lesson logs, in which teachers recorded their use of space, digital technology and student outcomes in relation to student engagement and learning. The teachers who filled in the logs, as well as their schools’ senior managers, were interviewed as part of a ‘deep audit’ of ICT provision conducted over two days. One-hour follow-up interviews with the teachers were carried out after the teachers’ log activity. The aim of this was to obtain a broader contextualisation of their teaching

Understanding the Impact of Technology: Learner and School Level Factors

The first part of this report focuses on the factors impacting on learner performance in national tests at primary and secondary level. This was the central research question of this research. The second section focuses on teacher and learner perceptions of their own responses to learning and the learning environment. This was centred on, but not confined to, their school. The institutional structures record the level of development of the schools sampled here and investigate the use of two key technologies – interactive whiteboards and learning platform

Narrowing the gap: Literature review

This review supports a research programme that is exploring how technology can narrow the gap for under- and low-achieving learners in secondary schools. Technology can support learning for underachievers by improving results and increasing engagement. Research shows that it can do this by: •monitoring behaviour and targeting learners who need special attention •making the curriculum relevant to learners' everyday experiences •encouraging learners' self-assessment and developing educators' reflective practices •offering targeted online support to learners need it •improving the literacy skills of Non-English Mother Tongue learners •developing learners' executive attention and improving their intelligence scores. Research shows that many different approaches using technology are effective. For instance, playing electronic games can encourage learners to practice skills such as language development. Games can also engage learners with special educational needs, such as ADHD. In one study, boys aged 9-11 with ADHD played a computer driving game. They were more engaged and had a tiny dropout rate compared to boys with ADHD who did not play. Using presentation software in the classroom can also produce results. Researchers found that learners rate educators who use this technology more highly than educators who don't

Impact 2007: Personalising Learning with Technology

The Impact 2007: Personalising Learning with Technology project was commissioned by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta). This report presents the findings from Impact 2007: Phases One and Two. The findings are based on both quantitative and qualitative data collected from the 67 Impact 2007 schools. All of the schools contributed to the teacher and pupil online surveys. This provided 450 teacher and more than 1,300 primary and 2,000 secondary pupil questionnaire responses being available for analysis. In addition, senior managers and ICT co-ordinators were interviewed from 30 schools and 24 case study schools provided illuminative data from observations and researcher/teacher discussions. Quantitative analyses of the data included the use of cluster and factor analysis, analysis of variance and regression, and also multilevel modelling in orde

Personalising Learning

This report presents the findings of the Personalising Learning project, which was commissioned by Becta. The core aim of the project is to develop a robust model of the effective use of digital technologies for the personalising of learning. Personalising learning in this context involves the tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and learning support to meet the needs and aspirations of individual learners irrespective of ability, culture or social status in order to nurture the unique talents of every pupil. Section 2 of this report outlines the background and aims of this research project. Section 3 traces the development of the model and the accompanying learning equation. The key concept encapsulated in this model is that of overlapping action spaces, school, teaching, personal and living spaces, in which learning occurs. These spaces are populated by the key educational stakeholders: learners, their teachers, their family and peers. In each of these spaces a range of digital technologies is available to support the learner. Section 4 is a validation of the model using evidence from field research

The development of spelling and reading strategies and children's sensitivity to word type

Research Context. There is an overlapping developmental relationship between word recognition, transcriptive processes (e.g. spelling) and text-level features of writing (Berninger et al. 2002). Furthermore the role of metaknowledge has been highlighted in these processes (Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000) with evidence that children can strategically choose among different reading and spelling approaches (e.g. Farrington-Flint et al 2008a, Lindberg et al 2011). However there has been less consideration for how these word recognition and transcriptive processes may change among older children as they encounter more complex word types and the implications of strategy-based research for theories of spelling and reading. Aims. To examine patterns in children’s spelling and reading strategies across older age groups and across more complex word types incorporating a selection of regular (e.g. ‘wedding’) irregular (e.g. ‘island’) and nonword items (e.g. ‘brinth’). Furthermore to explore the distribution of strategy type (lexical versus non-lexical) according to word type, to evaluate predictions made by the Dual Route Cascade (DRC) model (Castles et al. 2001). Method. Sixty children (aged 7-9 years), were given experimental spelling and reading trials and asked to provide retrospective verbal reports of the strategies that they employed. The individual reports were then coded as lexical/non-lexical strategies across the two domains and according to word type. Results. Reading showed greater accuracy than spelling across word type however there was a similar distribution of strategies across the domains. The distribution of strategy use according to word type matched predictions made by the DRC model with a mixture of lexical and non-lexical strategies being employed for regular words, a predominance of lexical strategies being employed for irregular words and a predominance of non-lexical strategies being employed for nonwords. However regression analyses examining strategy usage in relation to accuracy when spelling and reading word types produced mixed findings. Discussion. Implications are considered for understanding how children’s strategy choice develops as they encounter more complex word types when spelling and reading and the role of metaknowledge in reading and writing. Furthermore the usefulness of a model for skilled spelling and reading is considered in relation to children who are still developin

The development of spelling and reading strategies and children’s sensitivity to word type

Previous work, in reading and spelling, has examined global changes within young children’s strategy choice supporting the application of the Overlapping Waves theory of cognitive development to non-algorithmic domains (Farrington-Flint et al 2008a, 2008b, Lindberg et al 2011). However there has been less consideration of developmental changes in word-specific orthographic representations and how this influences the choice of reading or spelling strategies within older children. The current work examined patterns in children’s reading and spelling strategies across older age groups and across more complex word types incorporating a selection of regular (e.g. ‘wedding’) irregular (e.g. ‘island’) and nonword items (e.g. ‘brinth’) so as to consider changes in orthographic representations on later strategy performance. Sixty children, aged between 7-9 years, were given experimental reading and spelling trials and asked to provide retrospective verbal reports of the strategies that they employed. The individual reports were then analysed to code for patterns of lexical and non-lexical strategy choice across the two domains. Results showed that children were highly variable in the type of strategies they employ when reading and spelling but that reliance on particular strategies is dependent on year group and orthographic features of word type. As children become more sophisticated in their reading and spelling ability, they show greater adaptation when selecting appropriate strategies, which is sensitive to word type and reflects the development of the underlying orthographic representations

Learning and the E-Generation

This book aims to demonstrate the usefulness of classroom computers and to suggest how they can be used to aid teachers in fostering cognitive development. What are the goals that should be set for computer use? Should we think of classroom computers as we think of pencils, books and TV programmes, or as a tool with which to develop thinking? This book addresses these questions, reviewing educational practice from the perspective of cognitive development as well as offering an evaluation of software packages such as wordprocessing and Logo programs

Longitudinal study of scaffolding errors and their impact on children's strategy choice in reading

Scaffolding errors (errors preserving the initial and final phonemes) have been found to be accurate predictors of children’s later reading performance (c.f., Savage & Stuart 2001; Savage, Stuart & Hill, 2001). Therefore, in emergent reading it is expected that there would be a shift towards making greater proportion of scaffolding errors on words that the children are still reading incorrectly over time. It was also predicted that scaffolding errors would be associated with the greater use of lexical strategies as the boundary letters in a word can aid word recognition (c.f., Pitchford et al., 2008). Thirty-one children participated in the study. The study used a repeated measures design over one academic term with 15 children from Year One (mean age 5.8 years, SD =2.8 months) and 16 children were from Year Two (mean age of 6.7 years, SD=3.5 months). The children took part in single word reading task on five occasions and were asked to give a self-report of strategy use after reading each word. Children’s reading errors were coded in line with the classifications by Savage and Stuart (2001). The children followed the predictions and by time five there had been a shift in errors made and they were making significantly more scaffolding errors than at time one. These scaffolding errors were also found to be predominately associated with the use of lexical strategies. This suggests that the children were making scaffolding errors by retrieving the word from memory. They were striving to be able to read the words by sight