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Reading confers significant benefits to children in both social and academic domains. However, the number of children who read for pleasure is decreasing and has been shown to drop significantly between the ages of 8 and 9. Despite the rising popularity of audiobooks and podcasts, research on children's listening to spoken stories remains in its infancy. Thus, the present study explores how children engage with these realtively novel media. Fifty-two parents of children aged 8-13 years completed an online survey that asked about their children's listening habits. Results showed that 74% of children listen to spoken stories, with the vast majority (92.5%) listening at least 1-2 times per week. While the survey revealed children are engaging with both podcasts and audiobooks, being read aloud to continues to be the most popular format for story listening in this age group (77.4% of listeners). Across platforms, the genre most frequently listened to was fantasy stories (84.9%; more detailed descriptions of popular themes and sub-themes are described in text). In sum, access to technology is becoming an increasingly important part of children's lives. The data described here provide a timely perspective and a basis for informed studies of listening engagement in children.

Many First Nations people in Canada struggle in the acquisition of the skills associated with western literacy, that is, with the skills necessary to communicate through reading, writing, and numeracy in either English or French. Rooted in the history of colonial education, this problem continues to have a negative impact on the lives of individuals and communities. Its solution requires a change of attitudes, respect for Aboriginal knowledge and teachings, recognition of the importance of lifelong learning opportunities, academic research, political will and, most importantly, the real and continuing participation of all stakeholders.

The maintenance of heritage language is essential to immigrant children's linguistic, cultural, and social development. While there is a large body of literature on heritage language, how heritage language is practiced at home remains largely unknown. Engaging in an autobiographical narrative inquiry, I tell and retell stories of our pedagogical practices in the home context. I seek to bridge the research gap with new understandings of the "parent knowledge" that immigrant parents bring to bear in heritage language education. I invite you into my home and immigrant family's language journey to witness the efforts, challenges, and rewards of learning heritage language.

Globalisation and policy transfer in education make it incumbent upon decision makers to prioritise among competing policy options, select policy initiatives that are appropriate for their national contexts, and understand how system-specific factors moderate the relationship between those policies and student outcomes. This study used qualitative comparative analysis and correlational analyses to explore these relationships with publicly available data on socio-economic, cultural, and education conditions, and their association with PISA 2015 results in 49 countries. Findings show that gender and income equality, human development, and individualism were outcome-enabling conditions for PISA 2015 results, and gender equality was the most consistent of these conditions. These factors significantly moderated the relationships between education policy and PISA results. Implications for the identification of meaningful peer countries for comparative educational research, policy transfer, and the future expansion of PISA are discussed.

Since my family came to Canada, family story nights have become our daily practice. Within such moments, I explore how I, as a mother, have been sustaining the Vietnamese language and traditions in my family and how, when transitioning to a new land, this has become the core of our familiar curriculum making (Huber, Murphy, & Clandinin, 2011). As I share Vietnamese stories with my children, they reply to me in English. Also, they only have a distant understanding of Vietnamese culture and the intergenerational traditions of our great family back home. Acknowledging these transitional processes allows me to nurture their love and understanding of Vietnamese language, culture and traditions. As I inquire into my own experiences as a mother, I trace my ancestral heritage in my homeland, where, in Thúy's (2012) words, "a country is no longer a place but a lullaby." Meaningfully, the following questions have shaped my research puzzles: (a) What are possible ways to build our familial curriculum in integration with our homeland language, culture, and traditions; and (b) How could I as a mother sustain these three essential areas in my children's lives in Canada? I embrace autobiographical narrative inquiry as the methodology for my paper. Narrative inquiry draws attention to story as both the phenomenon under study and narrative as the methodology for the inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 1994). I will be living, telling, retelling, and reliving (Clandinin, 2013) my storied experiences and my children's in our familial curriculum making through cooking, reading, and painting. By attending to my daughters' experiences, I inquire into their transitions differently, that is to understand their own transitions narratively (Clandinin, Steeves & Caine, 2013). Significantly, this paper will bring understandings on Vietnamese newcomer mother's and children's familial curriculum making as a way to sustain the homeland's language, culture, and traditions and to support the children in their transition to a new country as well as inform related realities, knowledges, and approaches in education.

Despite the growth in online learning offerings in K-12 and higher education, limited research has been undertaken to better understand less visible online learning activities. Reading and rereading are not typically valued as important indicators of learning since the number or frequency of entries, words, or key phrases are usually visible and easily tracked. This article reports on a mixed-methods study addressing the reading, writing, and revisiting activities of graduate students attending one of eight online graduate courses taking place over a four-year period. Students were grouped by clusters of reading and writing activities to identify patterns related to rereading. Participant perceptions of the value of rereading entries in online learning are discussed. The findings highlight the importance of a more nuanced understanding of the different roles reading and rereading play in online learning discussions. This research informs our understanding of the importance of non-posting behaviors to student learning. Instructionally, these results may encourage the valuing of different "paths" to online learning success beyond the criterion of written entries.

Objective: To systematically review available evidence focusing on the relationship between physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior (SB), and educational outcomes (EO), among university students. Method: Articles published in English and up to April 2019 were eligible to be included in the review if they examined associations between either PA or SB measures and EO in undergraduate university students. Results: Thirty-five articles met the eligibility criteria. The majority of papers used self-report measures of PA and SB and were rated as demonstrating poor quality (22/ 35). Evidence indicated no associations with EO for overall PA, MPA, VPA, and indeterminate associations for MVPA and leisure-based screen time. Conclusion: Mixed findings for PA, SB, and EO were found. Future studies should use more rigorous designs, including robust measures of relevant outcomes, to further our understanding of this area.

The concept of identity has become prominent in the study of Canadian education. We further the understanding of identity by examining the ways through which adults present themselves as subjects in learning processes. We recruited 134 adults who had recently read self-help books pertaining to health, careers, or relationships, and conducted qualitative interviews that focused on the motivations, goals, and learning outcomes that they attributed to their reading. We found that, during the process of being interviewed about their self-help reading experience, roughly half of our interviewees engaged in unsolicited "identity talk"--rhetorically embracing or distancing themselves from the social role of the self-help reader. Our study provides three key contributions to the scholarship of education: a nuanced ethnographic description of the complex and diverse ways in which adult learners position themselves as subjects in self-directed learning processes; an illustration of the theoretical utility and limitations of research focused on the identity work of individuals; and an exhortation to further research concerned with understanding the role of identity in processes of educational engagement/disengagement.

Sleep plays an important role in both students' academic and personal life. Despite widespread sleep problems among young adults, few studies focus on higher education students living in campus residence. This study investigated residence-living students' sleep patterns, sleep promoting practices, sources of help seeking, and preferred ways to receive information. Results highlighted that 66.8% of the participants did not think they had enough sleep. However, only 18.9% of the students sought help. The campus residence sleep environment was challenging for many students. Problems such as uncomfortable room temperature and noise were frequently identified. Students used different strategies to promote sleep such as opening the window, reading books, listening to music, and alcohol. Efficient knowledge translation activities to facilitate the understanding of sleep physiology and sleep problem solving are needed at both the student and the organizational planning/administration level. Further studies focusing specifically on sleep environment scans and developing best practice guidelines are recommended.

Introduction: The ability of students to engage with graphical materials supports learning in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics areas. For students with visual impairments, understanding the factors that contribute to the effective interpretation of graphics can promote meaningful access to the curricula. Methods: Forty students with visual impairments completed multiple-choice question tasks for five types of graphics presented in their medium of choice and provided difficulty ratings. The teachers of students with visual impairments rated the students on several factors. Statistical analyses investigated the relationship between performance differences and teacher-rated factors. Results: Significant differences in performance between print and tactile graphics users were found for bar graph, map, and total correct responses on all tasks. For some tasks, perceived difficulty by tactile graphic users did not align with actual performance. Teachers' ratings of students who had Individualized Education Program goals for graphics, independence in using graphics, problem-solving ability, mathematics ability, and frequency of engaging with graphics contributed to significant differences in performance across total correct and most individual graphic results. Discussion: Although medium type was a significant contributor across graphic types, some teacher-rated variables appeared to mitigate the importance of medium on student performance. Depending on the graphic type, experience, content knowledge, skills with graphics, and confidence and motivation can all affect student performance when interpreting graphics. Implications for practitioners: Teachers should provide students with early and frequent opportunities to engage with graphics and support their problem-solving abilities regarding how to engage with different graphic types to enhance their independent use of graphics.

Specialized assessments, including the learning media assessment (LMA), are essential in appropriately planning and implementing instruction for students with visual impairments (Holbrook et al., 2017; Lusk et al., 2013). The LMA, first introduced by Koenig and Holbrook in the early 1990s, was designed to be an "objective process of systematically selecting learning and literacy media for students with visual impairments...regardless of level of vision or severity of additional disabilities" (Koenig & Holbrook, 1995, p. 17). Through the LMA process, teachers of students with visual impairments systematically gather data about how students use their senses and efficiency with print, braille, or auditory information (Ferrell et al., 2014; Holbrook et al., 2017; Koenig & Holbrook, 1995). In addition to sensory learning channels, the LMA process for academic students also includes the collection of data to document reading rates, reading accuracy, reading comprehension, reading fluency, and reading efficiency (Holbrook et al., 2017; Koenig & Holbrook, 1995; Spungin et al., 2016). For students who are print readers, additional data are collected on the student's distance. from the reading materials and their visual stamina (Holbrook et al., 2017; Koenig & Holbrook, 1995; Spungin et al., 2016). For students with multiple disabilities, the LMA process considers all literacy options, including communication devices, calendar systems, or tactile or picture symbols so that the educational team can make decisions based on the student's unique needs and determine functional literacy goals (Bruce et al., 2016; Holbrook et al., 2017; Koenig & Holbrook, 1995). The LMA process for students who are emergent readers includes the selection of a literacy medium and literacy tools (Holbrook et al., 2017; Koenig & Holbrook, 1995; Lusk et al., 2013). This current study reports the results of a survey administered to teachers in the United States and Canada. Through the survey, the authors gathered information about the procedures and forms the teachers use in the LMA process. Three questions guided the study: (1) What are the current practices of teachers of students with visual impairments who conduct LMAs? (2) What assessment instruments are being used by teachers of students with visual impairments who conduct LMAs? and (3) How are the results from LMAs used in the practice of teaching individuals with visual impairments?

We investigated knowledge and attitudes before and after reading refutation texts augmented by different kinds of persuasive information and how emotions mediated the process of knowledge and attitude change. Undergraduates (N = 424) enrolled in 4 universities from 3 countries read a refutation text on genetically modified foods (GMFs) and were then randomly assigned to receive additional information about advantages of GMFs, disadvantages of GMFs, or both. After studying, students reading about advantages of GMFs had significantly more positive attitudes than students who read about disadvantages. There was also a significant reduction in misconceptions; participants in the positive-oriented text condition showed the largest learning gains, particularly those who held more positive initial attitudes. Epistemic emotions of curiosity, frustration, hope, and enjoyment mediated attitude change while confusion mediated relations between prereading attitudes and postreading knowledge. In addition, the direct relationship between prior attitudes and surprise was moderated by type of text. When reading about both advantages and disadvantages of GMFs, participants reported significantly less surprise when compared with those who read about either advantages or disadvantages of GMFs. To foster conceptual change when learning about complex topics, refutation texts may be paired with persuasive information that is aligned with accurate conceptions.

This study at a Canadian university grew out of the need to know whether students acquired academic vocabulary incidentally through text exposure (extensive reading) in class. The ability to explicitly teach all the words on the academic word list is an unreasonable expectation for a one-semester course. This study, therefore, investigated whether thirteen English as an additional language (EAL) students in a capstone foundation course (academic reading and writing) acquired vocabulary simply through exposure to a variety of different academic texts (such as policy papers, essays, journal articles, and book chapters) in class. Students assessed their own vocabulary knowledge and development through Paribakht and Weschke's (1993) "Vocabulary Knowledge Scale" ("VKS") at the beginning of the study (Week 3) and again at the end of the semester (Week 13). Results indicated a vocabulary gain for almost all students, even with word exposure frequencies as low as one to four. Further research on incidental academic vocabulary acquisition is needed using other instrumentation to confirm the findings.

Using a form of analysis that sees talk as social interaction, this study examines how a teacher-librarian-researcher and a parent of elementary-aged children construct reading, readers and social in/equality in the context of a research interview. The analysis suggests that the participants produced equal and unequal social relations and values in and through their talk of reading and readers. Using ethnomethodological tools, this analysis illustrates some of the challenges of transforming unequal social relations through a change in the words we use. The study recommends a greater attention to identifying how we recognize and mystify differences in terms of access to resources and wealth in our talk, so that we can create new narratives of reading/readers that recognize and value marginalized literacies without pretending that all literacies are equally valued in the world.

Spelling errors are typically thought of as an "effect" of a word's weak orthographic representation in an individual mind. What if existence of spelling errors is a partial "cause" of effortful orthographic learning and word recognition? We selected words that had homophonic substandard spelling variants of varying frequency (e.g., "innocent" and "inocent" occur in 69% and 31% of occurrences of the word, respectively). Conventional spellings were presented for recognition either in context (Experiment 1, eye-tracking sentence reading) or in isolation (Experiment 2, lexical decision). Words elicited longer fixation durations and lexical decision latencies if there was more uncertainty (higher entropy) regarding which spelling is a preferred one. The inhibitory effect of frequency was not modulated by spelling or other reading skill. This finding is in line with theories of learning that predict spelling errors to weaken associations between conventional spellings and the word's meaning.

Douglas Coupland, a prolific author/artist/lecturer and now prognosticator, is in the forefront of the arts movement in both Canada and the US. His works, starting with his breakout novel "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture," have consistently worked as a bellwether of current perspectives and values, both noting our cultural milestones and influencing future trends. In books, such as "Microserfs" and "JPod," he sensitively involves the reader in the world of the technologically wired, showing the paradox of the resultant isolation and alternative community that evolves within the computer industry. Each novel, artwork, or article shows a different side of Coupland, explores new topics, yet reiterates his belief in the randomness of behaviour, or at least humanity's inability to control the excesses. Nonetheless, he consistently leaves the reader with a paradoxical sense of hope that there is a future, perhaps even one that is superior to what people dream. "Beware the Ides of Coupland" is a look at his current work and his 2010 CBC Massey Lecture series, which he presents as a "novel in five hours" about the future. Linking this to his previous apocalyptic theme, presented by Coupland in "Girlfriend in a Coma and JPod," he gives cultural clues that inform the present day sociological perspective. In this article, the author talks about Coupland's perspective on the future and what it means to the people.

In this study it is aimed to describe and evaluate comparatively the reading literacy exam results, the finance of education and schools, and socio-cultural status of parents in Turkey and the top-five OECD countries, Finland, Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand respectively, in the light reports and publications by OECD regarding PISA 2003 and 2006 evaluations. Pisa evaluation studies are helpful to understand the current outcomes of the educational systems and will definitely enhance the quality of future educational policies with the help of comparison between the accomplishments of the rival countries. In this descriptive study, the data regarding Pisa results and country statistics have been obtained from the online OECD publications. It is observed that higher rate of students in Turkey has lower level reading skills, and a small rate of its students can accomplish high level reading skills contrary to the situation in the top-five OECD countries. Great majority of Turkish students lacks of advance skills such as working with abstract ideas, critical thinking, making links with the inferred knowledge with daily experiences. On the other hand, Turkish educational system is below the standards of OE CD countries in terms of educational sources because of lower level finance in education and schools, higher number of students per class and teacher, less amount of teacher salaries, which all parallel to its low level economic wealth. Moreover, Turkish citizens have low level of socio-cultural status with respect to other OECD countries in that most of Turkish students do not attend high school level education, and a great majority of parents, both mothers and fathers, have lower level of education. (Contains 5 tables.)

In teaching reading, authentic texts with abundant lexical items and complex grammatical structures are typically used (Roche, 1992). Unfortunately, this has been a challenge for students enrolled in reading courses developed for English as a Second Language (ESL) as well as Languages Other Than English (LOTE) students. Students often translate word by word rather than applying learned strategies. To address this, an introductory online course on reading LOTE was developed. Texts and interactive activities in the new course selected words based on frequency lists and applied task-cycling (Levy & Kennedy, 2004) to reading strategies and grammatical structures. The desired outcome was "spiral learning": while some words, strategies and structures were recycled between chapters, new words and structures were also introduced. The course was taught at the University of Victoria in Canada in 2009. Class observations showed that students responded well and used dictionaries less frequently than in previous courses. (Contains 1 figure.)

This study examined relationships between the after-school literacy activities and test performance of students who passed and students who failed the 2003 administration of the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test. It included both students who have been in the Canadian school system for most of their school lives and mostly use English as a first language (L1), and students who have recently entered the Canadian school system and use English as a second language (L2). This study demonstrates the relatively small yet complex relationship between the test performance of these different groups of students on this literacy test and their after-school reading and writing activities. (Contains 4 tables and 5 footnotes.)

This study compares rural educational disadvantage across Australia, Canada, and New Zealand using data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Across the three countries, student reading literacy and school learning environments are less positive in rural communities than in urban. Furthermore, rural disadvantage in educational outcomes (reading) and opportunities is greater in Australia than Canada or New Zealand. This could be seen as surprising as student socioeconomic status (SES), typically a strong predictor of educational outcomes, is similar for rural communities in Australia and Canada, but lower in New Zealand. Rural school principals in Australia are most likely among the three countries to report that shortages of teaching personnel hinder learning. This could suggest that policies and structures can play a role in ameliorating or exacerbating rural educational disadvantage. We conclude with questions and recommendations for future research.

The self-teaching hypothesis posits that enduring orthographic and phonological representations are produced when children independently recode print into speech. However, very little research has examined how children self-teach when initial decoding attempts are weak or ineffective. In this within-participant design, 25 students in Grade 2 learned to read 85 different words in 4 conditions. Words were read in and out of context, with and without feedback. Accuracy rates were recorded throughout 5 training sessions (2 word repetitions per session = 10 repetitions in total). A posttest was administered after a 6-day delay by reinstating the training materials. At the end of training, the highest accuracy scores were observed when children read in context/feedback followed by when they read in isolation/feedback, and then in context/no feedback; the lowest accuracy scores were observed when children read in isolation/no feedback. This pattern remained over the retention period, suggesting that external support from feedback, and top-down support from context, can help create word representations in memory. The results are discussed in relation to the importance of whole-word phonology within self-teaching.

In this study, students in Grade 2 read different sets of words under 4 experimental training conditions (context/feedback, isolation/feedback, context/no-feedback, isolation/no-feedback). Training took place over 10 trials, followed by a spelling test and a delayed reading posttest. Reading in context boosted reading accuracy initially; in contrast, the external support garnered from feedback resulted in heightened reading accuracy throughout training, as well as 1 week later. Different patterns were noted in spelling transfer; first, there was no effect of reading feedback on spelling at posttest. Second, the highest spelling scores were observed when children practiced reading words in isolation versus in context. In sum, providing feedback and/or context helps children read words accurately, which in turn seems to create orthographic representations that are "good enough" to support reading accuracy. However, reading in isolation seems to produce orthographic representations that are higher in quality, and therefore better able to support precise spelling.

Three experiments examined the role of phonology in the activation of word meanings in Grade 5 students. In Experiment 1, homophone and spelling control errors were embedded in a story context and participants performed a proofreading task as they read for meaning. For both good and poor readers, more homophone errors went undetected than spelling control errors. In Experiments 2 and 3, homophone and spelling control errors were in sentence contexts. Experiment 2 used an online sentence verification task, and found that both good and poor readers were less accurate when sentences contained a homophone error than a spelling control error. Furthermore, a difference between the 2 types of sentences was observed even when participants were concurrently performing an articulation task. In Experiment 3, initial reading times were shorter on homophone errors than on spelling controls, and participants were less likely to make a regression from homophone errors than spelling controls. These experiments provide clear evidence that phonology makes an important contribution to the activation of word meanings in Grade 5 readers.

Studies show that the use of writing in the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) can discourage some adults, especially those without a diploma. For those who do proceed, how is the use of reading and writing experienced? Is it a lever or a barrier? This article presents results from a study conducted in Quebec based on semi-structured interviews and archival data. It describes the use of reading and writing in two secondary education level RPL measures. The first, called Spheres of Generic Competencies, is offered in adult general education. The second, Recognition of Acquired Competencies (RAC) concerns vocational training. The article also identifies barriers and levers related to reading and writing. A concluding discussion highlights challenges adults face when required to read and write during an RPL process.

Objective: To address a critical gap in health education scholarship by exploring the contexts in which self-help reading takes place, the motivations of self-help readers and the processes through which such readers engage with books on mental health. Design: Structured, in-depth interviews conducted with participants recruited through online classified advertisements. Setting: Self-help readers were recruited from the four largest cities in western Canada. The setting of self-help reading as an "intervention" was as natural as possible, with readers being asked to reflect upon their recent experience of reading a self-help book. Method: Qualitative interviews conducted with 45 readers. Interview transcripts were analysed thematically. Results: Illustrative narratives are provided for two categories of readers: those who read in conjunction with direct therapeutic intervention and those who read without input from a therapist. Findings within both categories indicate a high level of diversity in terms of contexts, motivations and experiences. Conclusion: Understanding the diversity of readers and their experiences is an important prerequisite for health educators wishing to develop a critical and responsible approach to positioning self-help literature within the broader range of approaches to promoting mental health.

Dual-route theories of reading posit that a sublexical reading mechanism that operates serially and from left to right is involved in the orthography-to-phonology computation. These theories attribute the masked onset priming effect (MOPE) and the phonological Stroop effect (PSE) to the serial left-to-right operation of this mechanism. However, both effects may arise during speech planning, in the phonological encoding process, which also occurs serially and from left to right. In the present paper, we sought to determine the locus of serial processing in reading aloud by testing the contrasting predictions that the dual-route and speech planning accounts make in relation to the MOPE and the PSE. The results from three experiments that used the MOPE and the PSE paradigms in English are inconsistent with the idea that these effects arise during speech planning, and consistent with the claim that a sublexical serially operating reading mechanism is involved in the print-to-sound translation. Simulations of the empirical data on the MOPE with the dual route cascaded (DRC) and connectionist dual process (CDP++) models, which are computational implementations of the dual-route theory of reading, provide further support for the dual-route account.

The phantom recollection model is a multiprocess analysis according to which memory judgments are collaboratively supported by one's recollection of an item in its context, a vaguer sense of stimulus familiarity, and the phantom recollection of the substance and even perceptual details of unstudied but related lures. Phantom recollection has previously been documented to support readers' judgments of certain logical implications of sentences and discourse bridging inferences. This study evaluated the representational status of elaborative inferences in a comparable way. Subjects read blocks of brief passages and then judged explicit, bridging inference, elaborative inference, and control test items. Different subject groups were instructed to make their judgments with (1) a verbatim criterion, or (2) a gist criterion or (3) to accept only items implied but not stated in their passages. Multinomial tree processing analysis was applied to the data. Consistent with numerous other behavioral measures, these procedures provided evidence of phantom recollection support for bridging but not elaborative inferences. This outcome bears on the representational basis of elaborative inferences. The merits but also some hazards of the present methodology are discussed.

The work of Jacques Rancière has become rather popular of late, with a series of high-profile advocates. In this article, we reflect on an elementary classroom and an experiment with pedagogy inspired by Rancière's (1991) text, The "Ignorant Schoolmaster." The authors discuss the text, outline a 20-lesson response that emerged from the study (focusing on reading-as-inquiry), and highlighting some of the possibilities, tensions, and ambiguities involved. The article concludes with discussion of how we sought to make sense of, and redistribute, our roles as science teacher-researchers by embracing teaching, will, and instability. We suggest becoming "ignorant schoolmasters," wandering beyond the "domain of the sensible," as we struggle to come to different terms with our political work.

Research on issues concerning the assessment of school-age English language learners (ELLs) in curriculum-learning contexts has been relatively less productive than assessment of adult language learners. A growing demand for assessing school-age ELLs has led to the development of assessment frameworks that provide the opportunity to examine the extent to which such frameworks represent the developmental continuum of these learners' language acquisition and literacy learning. Steps to English Proficiency (STEP) assessment framework were developed in Ontario, Canada, to be used by its teachers to assess, track, and support the language proficiency development of English language learners. STEP comprises three sets of descriptor-based developmental continua related to oral communication, reading, and writing, for each of four different grade clusters across Kindergarten to Grade 12. In this article we focus mainly on the characteristics of STEP language proficiency descriptors concerning: (a) the extent to which the descriptors are distinguishable across the skills of oral communication, reading, and writing; (b) the extent to which the STEP descriptors are distinguishable across the six proficiency levels; and (c) the extent to which the descriptors are homogeneous within each proficiency level. Our findings reveal that overall, the STEP scales are stable with six distinguishable STEPs and that there are strong correlational relationships among the three represented skills. Our research highlights the urgent need for research geared to understanding the relationship between oral and literacy skills for school-age language learners.

This article explores the learning pathways of 15 Canadian and American female crime fiction authors. Using a critical feminist perspective, it argues that despite the neoliberal rhetoric of individual choice, as in most careers, there are social-structural factors that create opportunities and barriers for women mystery writers. The article explores the background factors that shape women's interest in writing crime fiction, considers the challenges that they face in developing their careers, and looks at the supports that may help them to attain success. Despite challenges, there is often intrinsic value in doing meaningful work that may motivate women to develop a fiction-writing career.

This study examined the within-language and cross-language relationships between orthographic processing and word reading in French and English across Grades 1 and 2. Seventy-three children in French Immersion completed measures of orthographic processing and word reading in French and English in Grade 1 and Grade 2, as well as a series of control measures. Regressions controlled for non-verbal reasoning, phonological awareness, rapid naming, and the appropriate autoregressor of orthographic processing or word reading. Orthographic processing in Grade 1 did not predict word reading in Grade 2, in either language. Instead, within both languages, word reading in Grade 1 predicted orthographic processing in Grade 2. Cross-linguistically, French word reading was a unique predictor of growth in English orthographic processing. Theoretical and practical implications of the relationships between orthographic processing and word reading in bilinguals are discussed.

This paper examined grades 5 and 6 students' participation in wikis while writing reports on social studies topics. An analysis of eight wikis showed that students represented meanings they had constructed about their topics by engaging in knowledge telling practices (e.g., introducing, stating, or repeating information or an idea and developing previous ideas with examples, statistics or other information) more frequently than they engaged in knowledge transforming processes, such as drawing conclusions, identifying cause-effect relationships, or making inferences or judgements. Our research shows that Bereiter and Scardamalia's model (1987) is useful to inform the development of tools for assessing students' demonstration of their understanding of concepts in content area writing.

This study was designed to examine the independent contributions of phonological awareness, orthographic processing and morphological awareness on early word reading. English-speaking children in Grades 1 and 3 completed measures of these three constructs, as well as standardised measures of real and pseudoword reading and of vocabulary. Each of the three reading-related variables made an independent contribution to both real and pseudoword reading. Independent contributions of phonological awareness (7-17%) were consistently larger than those of orthographic processing (5-10%) or of morphological awareness (1-2%). In terms of differences between the grades, there was particular evidence of an increase in greater contribution of orthographic processing to pseudoword reading at Grade 3 than at Grade 1. These findings are discussed in light of current models of reading development. (Contains 7 tables and 1 note.)

This article presents a review of the Children's Organizational Skills Scales (COSS) which were designed to assess how children organize their time, materials, and actions to accomplish important tasks at home and school. The scale quantifies children's skills in organization, time management, and planning (OTMP). The COSS is a multi-informant assessment based on responses from parents, teachers, and self-report. The COSS has several strengths. The COSS uses parallel forms to obtain perspectives from parent, teacher, and child, while also offering comparisons of parent and teacher responses. The test uses accessible reading levels to alleviate language effects. The COSS is easy to administer, score, and interpret. The manual is also straightforward and supported by graphs and examples so that administrator errors are minimized. The administration time is relatively short and the user has the flexibility of administering the test in groups or on an individual basis. Results from the COSS can also be scored by computer which provides a timely method in processing results. However, the COSS is not infallible. Individuals should use caution in forming conclusions based on the standardization sample. Overall, the COSS definitely fills a gap in the area of identifying children's organizational skills. The COSS has a user-friendly manual and report forms. The test can be administered in a reasonably short amount of time, and the results can be used in conjunction with observations by both researchers and practitioners to identify the level of deficiency, design individualized interventions, and monitor progress in specific skill deficits.

An increasing number of students with Learning Disabilities (LD) are enrolling in postsecondary education (PSE). Assistive technology (AT) is often provided to these students to circumvent academic deficits. This article will focus on research at the PSE level and students with LD to (a) identify AT service delivery practices, (b) describe the most frequently used ATs, (c) review research on the efficacy of AT to circumvent academic deficits, and (d) provide suggestions for future research on AT efficacy and for formulation of recommendations within psychoeducational reports. The use of AT by PSE students with LD appears to have moved ahead of research, proving or even testing the effectiveness of ATs in supporting the learning needs of this population. (Contains 1 table.)

Many schools across the United States and Canada are now implementing response-to-intervention (RTI) as a means to address the needs of students who struggle with reading, writing, or math by using dual discrepancy (i.e., low ability and little to no progress over time with targeted intervention programming) as a means to classify for learning disability. This project represents a longitudinal study of a Pacific Northwest elementary school, which designed its own RTI model in 2006 and has worked to implement a tiered-intervention process for literacy skills. Three children represent the purposeful sample as to how they progressed through tiered programming. The authors discuss the school's RTI processes and makes recommendations as to how the model could evolve to better facilitate instruction and assessment as children move through the tiers. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

While writing in doctoral education is increasingly visible as a focus for research and pedagogy, what remains less visible is the role of reading in the doctoral journey. This paper draws on data from two parallel research programmes in which doctoral student day-to-day experience was documented longitudinally, initially in the social sciences and more recently in the sciences. The analysis shines a light on the essential role of reading in the development of student thinking, writing and academic identity; pedagogical implications are explored. (Contains 6 notes.)