International Perspectives, Volume 20 (Advances in Learning and Behavioral Disabilities)

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ADVANCES IN LEARNING AND BEHAVIORAL DISABILITIES Series Editors: Thomas E. Scruggs and Mar...

Author: Thomas E Scruggs | Margo A Mastropieri

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INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

ADVANCES IN LEARNING AND BEHAVIORAL DISABILITIES Series Editors: Thomas E. Scruggs and Margo A. Mastropieri Recent Volumes: Volume 14:

Edited by Thomas E. Scruggs and Margo A. Mastropieri

Volume 15:

Edited by Thomas E. Scruggs and Margo A. Mastropieri

Volume 16:

Edited by Thomas E. Scruggs and Margo A. Mastropieri

Volume 17:

Edited by Thomas E. Scruggs and Margo A. Mastropieri

Volume 18:

Edited by Thomas E. Scruggs and Margo A. Mastropieri

Volume 19:

Edited by Thomas E. Scruggs and Margo A. Mastropieri

ADVANCES IN LEARNING AND BEHAVIORAL DISABILITIES VOLUME 20

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES EDITED BY

THOMAS E. SCRUGGS George Mason University, Fairfax, USA

MARGO A. MASTROPIERI George Mason University, Fairfax, USA

Amsterdam – Boston – Heidelberg – London – New York – Oxford Paris – San Diego – San Francisco – Singapore – Sydney – Tokyo JAI Press is an imprint of Elsevier

JAI Press is an imprint of Elsevier Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK Radarweg 29, PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, The Netherlands 525 B Street, Suite 1900, San Diego, CA 92101-4495, USA First edition 2007 Copyright r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science & Technology Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone (+44) (0) 1865 843830; fax (+44) (0) 1865 853333; email: [email protected]. Alternatively you can submit your request online by visiting the Elsevier web site at http://elsevier.com/locate/permissions, and selecting Obtaining permission to use Elsevier material Notice No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, in particular, independent veriﬁcation of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-7623-1440-9 ISSN: 0735-004X (Series) For information on all JAI Press publications visit our website at books.elsevier.com Printed and bound in the United Kingdom 07 08 09 10 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS ix

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

WORKING MEMORY AND EARLY MATHEMATICS: POSSIBILITIES FOR EARLY IDENTIFICATION OF MATHEMATICS LEARNING DISABILITIES Evelyn H. Kroesbergen, Bernadette A. M. Van de Rijt and Johannes E. H. Van Luit

1

READING DEVELOPMENT AND READING DISABILITIES: FOCUS ON NORWAY Solveig-Alma H. Lyster

21

ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON STUDENT BEHAVIOUR: WHY TEACHERS IN TRAINING NEED TO SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE Julian G. Elliott

57

READING COMPREHENSION INSTRUCTION FOR STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES Sheri Berkeley

79

GOAL ORIENTATIONS AND CLASSROOM GOAL STRUCTURES AS PREDICTORS OF CLASSROOM BEHAVIORS FOR GREEK STUDENTS WITH AND WITHOUT LEARNING DIFFICULTIES: CLARIFYING THE DIFFERENTIAL ROLE OF MOTIVATIONAL ORIENTATIONS Georgios D. Sideridis v

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CONTENTS

PARENTING STRESS IN FAMILIES OF CHILDREN WITH ATTENTION-DEFICIT/HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER: THE IMPACT OF ADHD SUBTYPE AND OPPOSITIONAL DEFIANT DISORDER COMORBIDITY Ana Miranda, Rafaela Marco and Dolores Grau THE PROBLEM OF MEASURING SOCIO-CULTURAL LEVEL IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH Alessandra Coscarelli, Giulia Balboni and Roberto Cubelli

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STUDENTS WITH MATHEMATICAL DISABILITIES IN BELGIUM: FROM DEFINITION, CLASSIFICATION AND ASSESSMENT TO STICORDI DEVICES Annemie Desoete

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ADHD AT FIVE: A DIAGNOSIS-INTERVENTION PROGRAM Anna Maria Re and Cesare Cornoldi

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EVALUATION OF SOCIAL ABILITIES IN EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS: A CHALLENGE FOR STUDENTS WITH COMMUNICATION DIFFICULTIES Mo´nica Elisabeth Castilla

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FOCUS ON INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS: SERVING STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES Beverly D. Shaklee

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Contents

THE DEVELOPMENT OF NUMERICAL INTELLIGENCE IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN WITH COCHLEAR IMPLANTS: A HYPOTHESIS ON MATHEMATICAL, VERBAL, AND NON-VERBAL COGNITIVE COMPETENCE Daniela Lucangeli, Elisabetta Genovese, Marco Gubernale, Silvia Cabrele and Daniele Manzoni CO-TEACHING IN INCLUSIVE CLASSROOMS: RESULTS OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH FROM THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND AUSTRALIA Kimberly A. McDuffie, Thomas E. Scruggs and Margo A. Mastropieri SUBJECT INDEX

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Giulia Balboni

University of Valle d’Aosta, Aosta, Italy

Sheri Berkeley

College of Education and Human Development, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

Silvia Cabrele

Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

Mo´nica Elisabeth Castilla

Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza, Repu´blica Argentina

Cesare Cornoldi

Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

Alessandra Coscarelli

University of Valle d’Aosta, Aosta, Italy

Roberto Cubelli

Department of Cognitive Sciences and Education, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy

Annemie Desoete

Department of Clinical Psychology, Ghent University & Arteveldehogeschool, Ghent, Belgium

Julian G. Elliott

School of Education, Durham University, Durham, UK

Elisabetta Genovese

University of Modena, Modena, Italy

Dolores Grau

Catholic University S.Vicente Ma´rtir, Valencia, Spain

Marco Gubernale

Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

Evelyn H. Kroesbergen

Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands ix

x

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Daniela Lucangeli

Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

Solveig-Alma H. Lyster

Department of Special Needs Education, Faculty of Education, University of Oslo, Blindern, Oslo, Norway

Daniele Manzoni

University of Modena, Modena, Italy

Rafaela Marco

Facultad de Psicologı´ a, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

Margo A. Mastropieri

College of Education and Human Development, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

Kimberly A. McDuffie

Eugene T. Moore School of Education, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA

Ana Miranda

Facultad de Psicologı´ a, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

Anna Maria Re

General Psychology Department, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

Thomas E. Scruggs

College of Education and Human Development, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

Beverly D. Shaklee

Center for International Education, College of Education and Human Development, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

Georgios D. Sideridis

Department of Psychology, University of Crete, Crete, Greece

Bernadette A. M. Van de Rijt

Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Johannes E. H. Van Luit

Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

WORKING MEMORY AND EARLY MATHEMATICS: POSSIBILITIES FOR EARLY IDENTIFICATION OF MATHEMATICS LEARNING DISABILITIES Evelyn H. Kroesbergen, Bernadette A. M. Van de Rijt and Johannes E. H. Van Luit ABSTRACT At the beginning of children’s school careers, large differences already exist between children in their mathematical skills and knowledge. Preparatory math skills such as counting and Piagetian operations are important predictors of later math learning disabilities. However, little research has been conducted on the underlying processes that could explain or predict these preparatory math skills. Traditionally, intelligence has been viewed, next to language (vocabulary), as an important predictor of school success in general and math performance in specific. However, recent studies suggest that other, more fluid, domain-general cognitive processes, such as working memory and executive functions, are better predictors than traditional IQ scores. This chapter reports on two studies in which the relations between early mathematics and different International Perspectives Advances in Learning and Behavioral Disabilities, Volume 20, 1–19 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0735-004X/doi:10.1016/S0735-004X(07)20001-1

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EVELYN H. KROESBERGEN ET AL.

working memory components are investigated. In the first study, the relations between the Early Numeracy Test (ENT) and five working memory aspects have been studied in a correlational study with 240 kindergartners. The following working memory components can be distinguished: the central executive controlling system, the phonological component, and the visuospatial component. In this study, three distinctive executive functions were measured: inhibition, shifting, and planning. The results show that phonological working memory, shifting, and planning are highly related to children’s early math competence. Together, these functions can explain 50% of the total variance in early math. In a second study under 111 kindergartners, it was found that the scores on the ENT are moderately related to the executive function planning. Contrary to the expectations, intelligence was more related to preparatory math skills than planning. However, in a short training study with 15 low performing children, it was found that children’s planning scores could better predict their improvement than intelligence: children low in planning did not profit as much from the training as children with higher planning capacities. The results of these studies emphasize the need for further research on the relations between working memory processes and preparatory math skills. These processes seem to play an important role in the origin of math learning difficulties. The results of the second study also suggest that remediation of early math learning difficulties should be adapted according to children’s cognitive profiles regarding working memory and executive functions.

Mathematics is one of the basic skills that a child is supposed to learn during his/her school career. However, already in kindergarten, large differences between children’s math performance can be detected (Van de Rijt & Van Luit, 1998). Previous research does not provide a satisfactory explanation for this variability (Geary, 2004). Individual differences are often attributed to differences in intelligence. However, evidence shows that intelligence, as measured with traditional tests such as WISC, can explain only 9–25% of the variance in children’s math achievement (Resing, Ruijssenaars, & Bosma, 2002). Recent studies indicate that other domaingeneral cognitive abilities, more speciﬁcally executive functions (EF) and working memory (WM), may provide better explanations for variability in early math learning (with explained variance up to 75%; see Bull & Scerif, 2001; Kroesbergen, Van Luit, & Naglieri, 2003). The focus of this study is

Working Memory and Early Mathematics

3

on the role of working memory processes in young children’s mathematics performance. It is assumed that weaknesses in these processes could cause delays or deﬁcits in preparatory math skills, which in turn are important predictors of later mathematical learning disabilities (Kavkler, Tancig, & Magajna, 2003). The working memory has been described as an active information processor responsible for storing and processing information for a short time (Baddeley, 1986, 1997). It includes at least three components: a central executive controlling system (CE), which is considered primarily responsible for coordinating the activities of the phonological component (PWM) and the visuospatial component (VSWM), but it also draws resources from longterm memory (Baddeley & Logie, 1999). The phonological working memory (PWM) is responsible for temporarily storing and rehearsing linguistic information. The visuospatial working memory (VSWM) is considered to process, store, and manipulate visual and spatial information. A number of studies (e.g., Alloway, Gathercole, Willis, & Adams, 2004; Gathercole, Pickering, Ambride, & Wearing, 2004; Swanson, 2006) conﬁrmed the existence of Baddeley’s model of working memory. In our study, the focus is on the CE and executive functions. In the recent research literature, different deﬁnitions are used for executive functions. In general, the concept is used as an umbrella term for different higher-order functions such as planning, inhibition, and attentional shifting (e.g., Barry, Lyman, & Klinger, 2002). Executive functions are necessary for adequate execution of complex goaldirected activities (Welsh, 2002). Following Baddeley’s model, one of the tasks of the CE is to coordinate the functions of the phonological and the visuospatial short-term memory systems, necessary for keeping information temporarily available for processing in working memory (Bull & Scerif, 2001). Another task is the retrieval of information from long-term memory, such as memorized mathematical facts. Although executive functions have received much attention in recent research literature, studies on executive functions in young children are relatively scarce. According to Welsh (2002), this is partly due do the idea that executive functions are not fully developed before the age of 12. However, she also shows that precursors of executive functions as inhibition and working memory are already manifested at the age of eight months and that from the age of two, planning capacities can be measured. Recent studies (e.g., Espy, Kaufmann, McDiarmid, & Glisky, 2001; Gathercole et al., 2004) suggest that executive functions are already functional and differentiated in children aged two to three years, but that they mature relatively late and continue to develop well into adolescence.

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EVELYN H. KROESBERGEN ET AL.

Several studies have shown empirical evidence suggesting that the different working memory components (especially CE functions such as planning) are involved both in learning early numeracy (Kroesbergen, Van Luit, Naglieri, Franchi, & Taddei, 2006; Kyttala, Aunio, Lehto, Van Luit, & Hautama¨ki, 2003) and in acquiring mathematical skills and knowledge (Bull & Scerif, 2001; Gathercole, Pickering, Knight, & Stegmann, 2004). Furthermore, several studies that compared groups of mathematically disabled children to normally developing groups have found evidence that poor arithmetic performance in children is related to poor working memory ability (Gathercole & Pickering, 2000; Kroesbergen et al., 2003). Differences between children with and without math learning disabilities were found both in the slave systems of PWM and VSWM (e.g., D’Amico & Guarnera, 2005), and in the executive functions inhibition (e.g., Bull, Johnston, & Roy, 1999; McLean & Hitch, 1999), planning (e.g., Sikora, Haley, Edwards, & Butler, 2002), and shifting (e.g., McLean & Hitch, 1999). This study focuses on children’s knowledge of preparatory math skills. Adequate mastery of preparatory math skills will enhance the development of mathematical knowledge in later grades, when children receive formal math instruction (Kavkler et al., 2003; Van de Rijt & Van Luit, 1998). And reversed, children who do not master the preparatory skills adequately before formal math instruction begins are at great risk to develop math learning disabilities. However, preparatory math instruction receives too little attention both in schools and at home. Nevertheless, researchers’ attention for preparatory mathematics has grown in the last decade, both in the area of instruction and remediation (see Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003 for an overview) and concerning the evaluation of kindergartners’ math knowledge (e.g., the Early Numeracy Test (ENT); Van Luit, Van de Rijt, & Pennings, 1994; Van de Rijt, Van Luit, & Pennings, 1999, which has been translated and standardized in several countries from different parts of Europe). Children should have developed two schemas for understanding and operating on numbers. The ﬁrst for verbal counting and the second for global quantity comparison (Fuchs, Fuchs, & Karns, 2001). The starting point is an innate sensitivity to quantity (Gallistel & Gelman, 1992) that matures through experience. At the age of about two, children show their ﬁrst awareness of number in social play or in their own little songs or rhymes. At the age of about four, children begin to count, mostly asynchronously. They begin to realize that numbers can be used to count objects, but they are not yet able to point to one object while enumerating one number. When they can count and point to objects at the same time, they count

Working Memory and Early Mathematics

5

synchronously. One way to count synchronously is to arrange the objects while counting. At the age of about four and a half, children begin to demonstrate different options for arranging objects. At the age of ﬁve, children reach the stage of resultative counting. This means that they are becoming aware of the fact that counting has to begin with the number one, that every object has to be counted once, and that the last number gives the total amount of objects. In this phase, the fact that the children discover the oneto-one-relation between object and number is important. After resultative counting, children begin to use another strategy: shortened counting. From a number of objects they recognize the representation of, for example, the ﬁve on the dice, and they count on from this number: ﬁve, y six, seven, etc. Children at the age of about six should be able to deal with shortened counting as an optimal starting point for formal mathematical education. To use counting effectively, the child must master the cardinal and ordinal aspect of number (Geary, 1994). This means that the child knows that by counting an amount of objects, the last number named in the count (the cardinal number) represents the total number of counted objects. In addition, the child has to learn to order the numerals in the correct sequence and that the numerals represent a place in this sequence (ordinal number). The different counting skills and the skills measured by Piagetian tasks can be operationalized in different components of one overall construct called early numeracy (Van de Rijt & Van Luit, 1998). In this view, four Piagetian tasks can be distinguished: (a) concepts of comparison, such as greater, most, and less; (b) classiﬁcation, or the ability to arrange objects in a class or subclass; (c) seriation, or the ranking of objects; and (d) correspondence, or the comparison of quantities by making a one-to-one relation. In the Netherlands, 97% of the children enter kindergarten soon after their fourth birthday. In Dutch kindergartens, especially in the second year, mathematics is integrated into their daily education. Much attention is given to preparatory academic skills. Many schools even use a curriculum method for activities to teach the prerequisites for math. The Dutch curriculum is based on constructivist principles (e.g., Cobb, Gravemeijer, Yackel, McClain, & Whitenack, 1997). Prerequisite math skills are a variety of counting skills, building with blocks, and discussions of questions involving quantities. These activities, which are playful and interactive, are necessary for the later curricula, which require some basics in math concepts, understanding of numbers, and knowledge of the sequence of numbers (Van Luit & Schopman, 2000). Dutch children thus get used to tasks such as counting and Piagetian operations.

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The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between working memory and early mathematics. Because working memory is related to later mathematics performance, it is hypothesized that working memory is also related to preparatory mathematics skills. When children at risk for math learning disabilities can be identiﬁed at young ages, interventions can start relatively early and the impact of the learning disabilities can thus be weakened. This study is also meant to provide better starting points for interventions with children at risk for math learning disabilities. It is assumed that in preparatory mathematics, the same working memory processes are important as in more advanced mathematics. For example, PWM is necessary for learning number words and the counting row. VSWM processes are used in tasks that are administered visually, for instance when children have to compare pictures of different sizes. Inhibitory processes play a role when children have to focus on a speciﬁc part of the task, for instance, when they have to order objects like toy cars, they have to focus on the size or the colour, and not on the objects themselves. Planning is necessary in almost every academic task, to execute different parts of the task in the right order and in an adequate way, for example in counting objects. The child has to make a plan on how to arrange the objects (e.g., take away after counting, or place them in a long row) and control the process of counting and pointing objects simultaneously. In this chapter, it is ﬁrst studied how the different working memory processes (VSWM, PWM, and CE) are related to preparatory mathematics. Second, it is tested if the executive function planning explains more variation in early math scores than IQ does. The third question is concerned with the effects of training in a speciﬁc area of early mathematics, namely seriation. Former research have shown that eight- to ten-year-old children with math learning disabilities do not all proﬁt in the same way from different forms of instruction, while these differences could not be explained by factors like intelligence, socio-economic background, ethnicity or sex (Kroesbergen et al., 2003). It is hypothesized that individual differences in executive functions have an additive value in predicting remediation effectiveness. Naglieri and Gottling (1997) have shown that older children low in planning and mathematics do proﬁt from a training focused on planning capacities in mathematics, while children performing low on mathematics but high on planning, did not proﬁt from this training. This paper reports on a small study in which the relation between children’s planning capacities and the effectiveness of a seriation training was examined.

Working Memory and Early Mathematics

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METHOD Participants and General Procedure In this chapter, the results of two related studies are reported. In the ﬁrst study, the early math competence and working memory functions of 240 second-year kindergarten children were measured in individual sessions of maximum 20 min each. The children were randomly selected within the 15 participating schools (from different areas of the country) and are therefore assumed to form a representative sample. The children were aged ﬁve to seven (M ¼ 5.89, SD ¼ 0.42). A total of 113 girls and 127 boys participated. The mean IQ score was 101.05 (SD ¼ 13.65). In the second study, 111 children (49 boys, 62 girls) from ﬁve different schools participated. Their mean age was 5.97 years (SD ¼ 0.32). Children’s early math competence and planning capacities were measured in two sessions of 20–30 min each. Fifteen of the children (Mage ¼ 5.65) who scored below average on the ENT participated in a training in seriation. They received ﬁve 20-min training sessions in groups of ﬁve children. All testing and training sessions took place in the morning hours. Materials The ENT (Van de Rijt et al., 1999) was used to measure early numeracy. In study 1, several tasks were used to measure different aspects of working memory. In study 2, the Tower of London (ToL) was used to measure children’s planning abilities. In addition, Raven’s coloured progressive matrices were administered in study 2. Early Numeracy Test The ENT is a task-orientated test that measures the level of early mathematical competence. The test has been developed for kindergarten and grade 1 of the primary school. The ENT consists of eight parts; the tasks are spread over these parts in groups of ﬁve. Concepts of comparison. The comparison of quantitative or qualitative characteristics of objects is assessed with these items. The questions evaluate whether children master concepts that are frequently used in comparisons, especially in mathematical education, such as ‘the most’, ‘the least’, ‘higher’, and ‘lower’.

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Classification. These items evaluate the child’s skill at grouping objects in classes or subclasses based on criteria. The classiﬁcation task determines if children are able to determine similarity or differences among objects and group them according to different attributes. Correspondence. The comparison of amounts by making a one-to-onerelation is used to determine if children are able to make a one-to-one-relation between different objects. For example: ‘‘Are there as many chickens as there are eggs’’? Other items determine if children understand that six blocks is as many as six points on a dice. Seriation. The ranking of objects in class or subclass based on order is evaluated by these items. Terms used in the tasks are from high to low, from more to less, from thin to thick, and from small to broad. Children also have to make a series of their own by means of drawing lines from, for example, a big rabbit to a big carrot and from a small rabbit to a small carrot. Using counting words. The child’s skills in counting forwards and backwards as well as using the cardinal and ordinal numbers are evaluated. This task also determines if the child knows how to use cardinal and ordinal numbers up to 20. Structured counting. These items help determine if the child can correspond numbers with numbers of objects. Children are asked to point to the objects with their ﬁngers while counting. Other items include automatic recognition of number of points on each side of a dice. Resultative counting. Counting structured and unstructured quantities as well as counting hidden quantities are assessed. With this set of items it is determined whether children are capable of determining the total number of objects up to 12 from both structured and unstructured collections. While counting they are not allowed to use their ﬁngers for pointing to the objects in the collection. General knowledge of numbers. Being able to use knowledge of the number system in a simple problem situation is also evaluated. Items determine if children are able to use numbers under 20 in simple daily problem situations. Working Memory To measure PWM, the subtests Word Series and Sentence Repetition from the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS; Naglieri & Das, 1997; Dutch translation: Van Luit & Kroesbergen, 1998) were administered. Word Series is a verbal subtest that exists of repeating a series of one-syllable words, increasing from two to nine words per series. Sentence Repetition is a

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subtest by which the child has to repeat nonsense sentences (sentences in which all verbs and nouns are replaced by colours, like ‘yellow greened the blue’). Cronbach’s alpha of the combined scale is 0.81. To measure VSWM, the subtest Figure Memory from the CAS was administered. In this subtest a page with a two- or three-dimensional ﬁgure is shown for 5 s. Subsequently, the child has to ﬁnd the original ﬁgure when it is presented imbedded within a larger more complex geometric pattern. For inhibition, Expressive Attention was administered, an analogue version of the Stroop test (Stroop, 1935) with pictures of animals. The task requires the child to name the real-life size (big or small) of an animal, while ignoring the size of the drawing. The child has to suppress a logical (automatized) answer to be able to give the right answer. For shifting, Children’s Colour Trail Test (CCTT; Llorente, Williams, Satz, & D’Elia, 2003) was used. In this test, children have to connect pink and yellow numbers from 1 to 15. They have to switch from the pink 1 to the yellow 2 to the pink 3, etc. Finally, two planning subtests from the CAS were administered (a ¼ 0.65): In the subtest Matching Numbers the children have to ﬁnd two numbers that are the same in each of eight rows on a page. The length of these numbers ranges from single digit numbers to eight digits. The subtest Planned Codes consists of two pages with letters (A, B, C, and D) with an empty space under each letter where the child must ﬁll in a given code, each letter has its own code. On the ﬁrst page the letters appear in columns (in the ﬁrst column the A’s, in the second the B’s, etc.), on the second page the letters appear in a diagonal pattern. Tower of London The ToL is a spatial puzzle, which requires planning, an executive function, along with the ability to adhere to a set of rules to solve it successfully. The ToL consists of three coloured balls (blue, yellow, and red), which must be arranged on three sticks to match the target conﬁguration on a picture while only one ball can be moved at a time (Shallice, 1982). The test consists of 20 trials, which gradually increase in the number of required moves. Raven-Coloured Progressive Matrices Raven’s Progressive Matrices (Raven, Court, & Raven, 1986) are used to measure non-verbal intelligence: the capacity to reason by analogy, form

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EVELYN H. KROESBERGEN ET AL.

comparisons, and think logically. The Coloured Progressive Matrices (CPM) is the 36-item version of the test used with children aged 5–12. The 36 problems are divided into three sets (A, AB, and B), each containing 12 problems. The child has to complete a matrix by choosing the missing part from six alternatives given at the bottom of the page, then has to induce a relation on the completed part of the matrix and apply that relation to the incomplete part. Training in Seriation The training in seriation consists of different seriation tasks and feedback given to the children after completing an individual item. Different dimensions were used in the training: Materials. Concrete materials but also pictures were used. Actions. Recognition of a series, inserting objects into an existing series and making seriations themselves. Aspects. Seriation on a single aspect and seriation on several aspects. Kind of Aspects. Height, length, colour, number, width, etc. Feedback was given in the way Siegler and Svetina (2002) have described it in their study: after each given answer feedback is given to the child and the child is asked why he or she thinks the answer is correct. If the answer is not correct, the test assistant says: ‘‘no, I would choose this one’’! After that, the child is asked why the answer of the test assistant is correct. Despite the answer that follows, the test assistant gives positive feedback by saying ‘‘ok’’. The effectiveness of this kind of feedback was shown by the study of Siegler and Svetina (2002), in which the group trained with feedback as described above, showed more progress compared with a control group. By following these procedures, the children learn to think about the task and learn to make and evaluate plans for conducting such tasks. The training thus asks from the children that they use their planning skills. In the study presented here, the training consisted of ﬁve meetings in which each time different aspects of seriation were combined, becoming more difﬁcult each time.

RESULTS Results of Study 1 The ﬁrst study was meant to investigate the relations between working memory functions and early numeracy. In Table 1, the mean scores on the

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ENT and the working memory tasks are presented. The results show that the sample is representative for the population. Table 2 shows the correlations between the working memory functions and the ENT subtests. In general, VSWM, shifting, and planning show the highest correlations with early numeracy. The subscale use of counting words is most related to working memory components, in speciﬁc to the PWM, shifting, and planning. The VSWM task shows the highest correlation with seriation. The correlations between the ENT subtests and inhibition are relatively low. Furthermore, a regression analysis was conducted to investigate the

Table 1.

Mean Scores on ENT Scales (Score 1–5) and WM Components (M ¼ 10, SD ¼ 3).

Comparison Classiﬁcation Correspondence Seriation Counting words Structured counting Resultative counting Number knowledge Total ENT PWM VSWM Inhibition Shifting Planning

Table 2.

M

SD

Range

4.66 4.37 4.01 3.34 3.54 3.13 2.47 3.43 3.62 10.05 11.73 11.19 9.13 9.61

0.63 0.75 1.00 1.29 1.29 1.19 1.23 1.34 0.75 2.71 3.21 2.50 3.21 2.27

1–5 2–5 0–5 0–5 0–5 0–5 0–5 0–5 0.9–4.9 4–18.5 5–18 4–19 1–19 4.5–15.5

Correlations between WM Components and ENT (N ¼ 240).

Comparison Classiﬁcation Correspondence Seriation Counting words Structured counting Resultative counting Number knowledge Total

PWM

VSWM

Inhibition

Shifting

Planning

0.218 0.247 0.248 0.296 0.355 0.209 0.187 0.174 0.321

0.220 0.365 0.377 0.507 0.461 0.295 0.375 0.413 0.558

0.228 0.207 0.255 0.224 0.191 0.146 0.216 0.285 0.355

n.s. 0.197 0.360 0.351 0.531 0.349 0.349 0.389 0.500

0.231 0.243 0.286 0.366 0.414 0.310 0.299 0.358 0.490

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EVELYN H. KROESBERGEN ET AL.

Table 3.

(Constant) VSWM Shifting Planning

Results of Linear Regression on ENT Scores (R2 ¼ 0.50). B

Std. Error

Beta

t

p

32.798 1.253 1.251 1.310

4.198 0.310 0.332 0.478

0.312 0.324 0.234

7.813 4.042 3.761 2.739

0.000 0.000 0.000 0.007

combined effect of the working memory components. Inhibition and the PWM did not signiﬁcantly contribute to the explanation of variation in early numeracy. They were therefore excluded from the regression analysis. The remaining factors such as VSWM, shifting, and planning (see also Table 3) together explain 50% of the total variance in early math scores.

Results of Study 2 In study 2, the relations between the ToL and the Ravens’s CPM with early numeracy were investigated. Table 4 shows the mean scores of the total sample and the selected sample for the seriation training. The training sample performed lower than the other children in the sample on all tasks, F(10,91) ¼ 4.44, po0.01. First of all, the correlations between planning and early numeracy and between intelligence and early numeracy were investigated. Contrary to our expectations, the correlations between the CPM and early numeracy were higher than between ToL and numeracy (see Table 5). Both planning and intelligence can explain part of the variance in early numeracy. The results of a regression analysis show that the two tests together accounted for 51.6% of the variance in early numeracy (see also Table 6). Furthermore, it was studied if the CPM or the ToL test could predict children’s learning during a training. In the seriation training, low performing children received 5 20 min training in seriation. At the end of each training, they completed a parallel version of a seriation test with 10 items. To compare groups of children who performed average or below or above average, the children were categorized into three (equal) categories, based on their scores on the ToL test. Fig. 1 shows the mean scores for the three groups over the ﬁve training sessions. The children with average or high planning skills, improve, especially in sessions 3–5. The children with low planning skills show little improvement in the ﬁrst two lessons, but in the third session, a plafond effect seems to become visible. Multivariate analysis

Working Memory and Early Mathematics

Table 4.

13

Mean Scores on ENT Scales, Planning (M ¼ 15, SD ¼ 5), and CPM (0–36). Total Sample (N ¼ 111)

Comparison Classiﬁcation Correspondence Seriation Counting words Structured counting Resultative counting Number knowledge Total Planning Raven’s CPM

Table 5.

Training Sample (n ¼ 15)

M

SD

Range

M

SD

Range

4.69 4.41 3.98 3.94 3.91 3.14 2.88 3.60 3.82 14.42 23.42

0.67 0.75 0.89 1.22 1.06 1.27 1.30 1.21 0.66 2.48 4.69

2–5 2–5 2–5 0–5 1–5 0–5 0–5 1–5 2–5 8–19 12–34

4.20 3.87 3.27 3.67 2.93 2.13 1.93 2.93 3.12 13.47 19.93

1.01 0.92 0.80 1.29 1.16 1.25 1.22 1.39 0.54 2.53 4.77

2–5 2–5 2–4 1–5 1–5 0–4 0–4 1–5 2–3.9 8–16 12–26

Correlations between ToL, CPM, and ENT (N ¼ 102).

Comparison Classiﬁcation Correspondence Seriation Counting words Structured counting Resultative counting Number knowledge Total

ToL

CPM

0.258 0.304 0.252 0.296 0.375 0.285 0.332 0.239 0.446

n.s. 0.426 0.385 0.370 0.349 0.399 0.381 0.451 0.578

Table 6. Results of Linear Regression on ENT Scores.

(Constant) CPM ToL

B

Std. Error

Beta

t

p

33.087 0.899 1.247

6.941 0.280 0.483

0.472 0.380

4.767 3.210 2.582

0.000 0.003 0.016

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EVELYN H. KROESBERGEN ET AL. 10 low average high

8

6

4

2

0 1

Fig. 1.

2

3

4

5

Improvement during Intervention for Children with Low, Average, or High Levels of Planning Competence.

of variance showed a signiﬁcant main effect of group on a combination of the ﬁve training sessions, Wilks l ¼ 0.09, p ¼ 0.01. Univariate analyses showed that this effect was only found at the last session, in which the group who performed relatively low on the ToL, showed lower scores on the seriation test than the other two groups, F(2,12) ¼ 7.919, p ¼ 0.006. It appears that these children did not proﬁt as much from the training as the children with average or high planning capacities. The same procedure was used to investigate the predictive value of Raven’s CPM (see Fig. 2). Although the intelligence scores are reﬂected in the math scores at session 1, all groups showed improvement in seriation skills and reached the same level at the end of the training. This was conﬁrmed by the analyses, in which no multivariate effects between the groups were found. At the end of the training, the groups did not differ in performance on the seriation test.

DISCUSSION This study was aimed to investigate the relationship between early mathematics and working memory, because of the important role of working memory processes in math learning disabilities. In this study, three working

Working Memory and Early Mathematics

15

10 9

low average

8

high

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1

Fig. 2.

2

3

4

5

Improvement during Intervention for Children Performing Low, Average, or High on Raven’s CPM.

memory components were distinguished: VSWM, PWM, and executive functions. The results show that signiﬁcant correlations exist between the three working memory components and early mathematics, although the correlation between PWM and early math performance was relatively low (r ¼ 0.32). This could be explained by the fact that most tasks of the ENT are visually presented to the children. This is supported by the ﬁnding that the PWM is most related to the task in which children are asked to use counting words. Apparently, PWM is most important in verbal counting, and less important in the other tasks of the ENT. The ﬁndings of this study support the hypothesis that working memory processes in kindergarten already play an important role in the acquisition of (preparatory) mathematical skills. In this study, the executive component was divided into three parts: inhibition, shifting, and planning. The latter two functions showed the highest correlations with early math. The relatively low correlations between inhibition and early math (r ¼ 0.36) could be explained by the simplicity of the tasks. The items in the ENT are less complex than mathematical tasks in grade 1 and further on. It can be expected that inhibition is especially important in more complex tasks and less important in more easy tasks that are included in the ENT. This is conﬁrmed by the studies of Bull et al. (1999)

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EVELYN H. KROESBERGEN ET AL.

and McLean and Hitch (1999), who demonstrated that inhibition is related with mathematical performance in older children. The results show that the VSWM, shifting, and planning together can explain 50% of the variance in children’s early math performance. It can be concluded that working memory functions provide better explanations for variability in early math learning than traditional IQ measures, which explain at most half of this percentage (Resing et al., 2002). However, the correlations found in this study were not as high as expected based on former research. It was even found that planning alone did not explain as much variance as Raven’s CPM, a more traditional measure of IQ. It should be noted, however, that the CPM measures ﬂuid intelligence, which is more related to executive functions than crystallized intelligence, as measured with a more regularly used IQ test like the WISC III (cf. Ackerman, Beier, & Boyle, 2005). That the correlations found in this study are lower than expected, may be attributed to the tests that were used. Only few valid and reliable tasks are available that could measure working memory in general and executive functions in speciﬁc in young children (cf. Van der Ven & Kroesbergen, 2006). Further research should therefore focus on pure measures of the different working memory components. In addition to the correlational study, an experimental study was conducted to investigate the predictive value of planning versus traditional intelligence. A small sample (N ¼ 15) of children performing low at preparatory math skills received a training in seriation. The training stimulated the children to think about the task and thus asked for planning skills. Owing to the small number, the results should be interpreted with caution. However, it seemed that the children’s planning scores at the beginning of the training could partly predict their improvement during the ﬁve-sessions training, more than IQ scores could. Children with limited planning capacities could not proﬁt as much from the training as their peers with average or above average planning capacities. It seems that the latter groups have adequately learned to use their planning skills in working on seriation tasks. However, children with lower planning skills, may need another kind of instruction. It can be concluded that children’s executive functioning have implications for their instructional needs. Further research is necessary to investigate if training in executive functions (planning) could help the lowest performing children to proﬁt from instruction, or if instruction for these children can be designed in such a way that a minimum of planning capacities is required. In general, it can be concluded that working memory processes do play an important role in the acquisition of early mathematical skills. Although further research is necessary to get deeper insight in how these processes

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17

exactly inﬂuence math development, it can be stated that working memory and executive functions are related to early math performance. The study has yielded promising ﬁndings for the ﬁeld of learning disabilities, both for early identiﬁcation and for remediation of learning disabilities. It has been shown that the relations between working memory and math skills found at later ages are already apparent in 5-year-old children. The ﬁndings give direction to alternative screening procedures at young ages to select children at risk for learning disabilities. Children who show deﬁcits in preparatory math skills are at risk for later math learning disabilities. However, when these children also have deﬁcits in executive functions and working memory processes, the risk for serious delays or deﬁcits in later mathematical development is even higher. Children, who perform low both at preparatory mathematics and executive functions, should therefore receive special attention already in kindergarten. It is recommended to start intervention already in kindergarten and ﬁrst grade to remediate and/or compensate their weaknesses. Interventions should then be focused both on mathematical skills and on the more domain-general executive functions.

REFERENCES Ackerman, P. L., Beier, M. E., & Boyle, M. O. (2005). Working memory and intelligence: The same or different constructs?. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 30–60. Alloway, T. P., Gathercole, S. E., Willis, C., & Adams, A. (2004). A structural analysis of working memory and related cognitive skills in young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 87, 85–106. Baddeley, A. D. (1986). Working memory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Baddeley, A. D. (1997). Human memory: Theory and practice. Hove: Psychology Press. Baddeley, A. D., & Logie, R. H. (1999). Working memory: The multiple component model. In: A. Miyake & P. Shah (Eds), Models of working memory (pp. 28–61). New York: Cambridge University Press. Barry, T., Lyman, R. D., & Klinger, L. (2002). Academic underachievement and attentiondeﬁcit/hyperactivity disorder: The negative impacts of symptom severity on school performance. Journal of School Psychology, 40, 259–283. Bull, R., Johnston, R. S., & Roy, J. A. (1999). Exploring the roles of the visual-spatial sketch pad and central executive in children’s arithmetical skills: Views from cognition and developmental neuropsychology. Developmental Neuropsychology, 15, 421–442. Bull, R., & Scerif, G. (2001). Executive functioning as a predictor of children’s mathematics ability: Inhibition, switching, and working memory. Developmental Neuropsychology, 19, 273–293. Cobb, P., Gravemeijer, K., Yackel, E., McClain, K., & Whitenack, J. (1997). Mathematizing and symbolizing: The emergence of chains of signiﬁcation in one ﬁrst-grade classroom. In: D. Kirshner & J. A. Whitson (Eds), Situated cognition theory: Social, semiotic, and neurological perspectives (pp. 151–233). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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D’Amico, A. D., & Guarnera, M. (2005). Exploring working memory in children with low arithmetical achievement. Learning and Individual Differences, 15, 189–202. Espy, K. A., Kaufmann, P. M., McDiarmid, M. D., & Glisky, M. L. (2001). New procedures to assess executive functions in preschool children. Developmental Neuropsychology, 15, 46–58. Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., & Karns, K. (2001). Enhancing kindergartners’ mathematical development: Effects of peer-assisted learning strategies. Elementary School Journal, 101, 495–510. Gallistel, C. R., & Gelman, R. (1992). Preverbal and verbal counting and computation. Cognition, 44, 43–74. Gathercole, S. E., & Pickering, S. J. (2000). Assessment of working memory in six- and sevenyear-old children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 377–390. Gathercole, S. E., Pickering, S. J., Ambride, B., & Wearing, H. (2004). The structure of working memory from 4 to 15 years of age. Developmental Psychology, 40, 177–190. Gathercole, S. E., Pickering, S. J., Knight, C., & Stegmann, Z. (2004). Working memory skills and educational attainment: Evidence from national curriculum assessments at 7 and 14 years of age. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18, 1–16. Geary, D. C. (1994). Children’s mathematical development. Washington, DC: APA. Geary, D. C. (2004). Mathematics and learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37, 4–15. Kavkler, M., Tancig, S., & Magajna, L. (2003). Longitudinal study of children with very low mathematical competence in preschool years. Paper presented at the EARLI2003, Padova, Italy, 25–30 August. Kroesbergen, E. H., & Van Luit, J. E. H. (2003). Mathematics interventions for children with special educational needs: A meta-analysis. Remedial and Special Education, 24, 97–114. Kroesbergen, E. H., Van Luit, J. E. H., & Naglieri, J. A. (2003). Mathematical learning difﬁculties and PASS cognitive processes. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 36, 574–582. Kroesbergen, E. H., Van Luit, J. E. H., Naglieri, J. A., Franchi, E., & Taddei, S. (2006). A cross-cultural study of PASS-processes and preparatory mathematics. Manuscript submitted for publication. Kyttala, M., Aunio, P., Lehto, J. E., Van Luit, J. E. H., & Hautama¨ki, J. (2003). Visuospatial working memory and early numeracy. Educational and Child Psychology, 20, 65–76. Llorente, A. M., Williams, J., Satz, P., & D’Elia, L. F. (2003). Children’s color trail test. Lutz: Psychological Assessment Resources. McLean, J. F., & Hitch, G. J. (1999). Working memory impairments in children with speciﬁc arithmetic learning difﬁculties. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 74, 240–260. Naglieri, J. A., & Das, J. P. (1997). Cognitive assessment system. Illinois: Riverside. Naglieri, J. A., & Gottling, S. H. (1997). Mathematics instruction and PASS cognitive processes: An intervention study. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 30, 513–520. Raven, J. C., Court, J. H., & Raven, J. (1986). Coloured progressive matrices. London: H. K. Lewis & Co. Resing, W. C. M., Ruijssenaars, A. J. J. M., & Bosma, T. (2002). Dynamic assessment: Using measures for learning potential in the diagnostic process. In: G. M. Van der Aalsvoort, W. C. M. Resing & A. J. J. M. Ruijssenaars (Eds), Advances in cognition and educational practice (Vol. 7, pp. 29–64). New York: Elsevier Science. Shallice, T. (1982). Speciﬁc impairments of planning. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (Biology), 298, 199–209. Siegler, R. S., & Svetina, M. (2002). A microgenetic/cross-sectional study of matrix completion: Comparing short-term and long-term change. Child Development, 73, 793–809.

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Sikora, D. M., Haley, P., Edwards, J., & Butler, R. W. (2002). Tower of London test performance in children with poor arithmetical skills. Developmental Neuropsychology, 21, 243–254. Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18, 643–662. Swanson, H. L. (2006). Cognitive processes that underlie mathematical precociousness in young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 93, 239–264. Van de Rijt, B. A. M., & Van Luit, J. E. H. (1998). Effectiveness of the additional early mathematics program for teaching children early mathematics. Instructional Science, 26, 337–358. Van de Rijt, B. A. M., Van Luit, J. E. H., & Pennings, A. H. (1999). The construction of the Utrecht early mathematical competence scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 59(2), 289–309. Van der Ven, S. H. G., & Kroesbergen, E. H. (2006). Executive functions and learning arithmetic in seven-year-old children. Manuscript submitted for publication. Van Luit, J. E. H., & Kroesbergen, E. H. (1998). Cognitive assessment system (Dutch adaptation). Utrecht, The Netherlands: Utrecht University. Van Luit, J. E. H., & Schopman, E. A. M. (2000). Improving early numeracy of young children with special educational needs. Remedial and Special Education, 21, 27–40. Van Luit, J. E. H., Van de Rijt, B. A. M., & Pennings, A. H. (1994). Utrechtse Getalbegrip Toets [Early numeracy test]. Doetinchem, The Netherlands: Graviant. Welsh, D. (2002). Development and clinical variations in executive functions. In: D. L. M. V. J. Molfese (Ed.), Developmental variations in learning. Applications to social, executive function, language, and reading skills. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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READING DEVELOPMENT AND READING DISABILITIES: FOCUS ON NORWAY Solveig-Alma H. Lyster ABSTRACT Literacy research in Norway has focused on many areas. Dyslexia has been one main area for many years. The last years’ many approaches have been taken to understand how reading disabilities can be prevented and to understand the connection between the spoken and written language. A school reform reducing the age of admission to school from seven to six from 1997 has had the effect of stimulating research in the field of reading development. Norwegian orthography is described as semi-transparent. Studies of Norwegian children show that even children with dyslexia break the alphabetic code rather easily. Also, Norway is an advanced, rich country with a clear commitment to equity. These are some reasons why Norway should get good results on international reading achievement tests. The results from different international reading assessments, however, have worried the Norwegian Government. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has clearly stated that Norway has a job to do in terms of equity. In most reading achievement tests, Norway shows a wider spread of outcomes than many other OECD countries. The Norwegian school reform of 1997 has not been a great

International Perspectives Advances in Learning and Behavioral Disabilities, Volume 20, 21–55 r 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd. ISSN: 0735-004X/doi:10.1016/S0735-004X(07)20002-3

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SOLVEIG-ALMA H. LYSTER

success in the area of children’s literacy development. The international results and the evaluation of the reform have led to a range of initiatives from the Government and to yet another reform with a new curriculum. In this new curriculum, there is a somewhat clearer focus on benchmarks to be achieved. There is, however, little concentration on what to do when children fall behind their peers for no apparent reason. The school authorities hope, however, that the initiatives that are taken will make a difference.

Special needs education has developed as a response to teaching and training problems in connection with disabled people in school and society. Ever since the establishment of the Norwegian College of Special Needs Education in 1961, reading development and reading disabilities have been primary areas of focus for special education students and their professional development. At the start, special needs education was primarily given to teachers as continued education. A one-year course of study covered many aspects of the ﬁeld, but reading disabilities (especially dyslexia) and mathematical disabilities were considered to be the most important areas for study. An additional one-year course gave the students the possibility to specialise within ﬁelds such as speech therapy, hearing disabilities or visual disabilities. From 1976, postgraduate courses were offered in six different ﬁelds of special needs education. The College of Special Needs Education expanded and developed over the years. A doctoral programme in special needs education was founded and the college became part of the University of Oslo and assimilated into the Faculty of Education in 1996. Today, the Department of Special Needs Education at the University of Oslo offers a three-year Bachelor programme and a two-year Master programme with the possibility to specialise within a range of special needs areas including vision, hearing, mental retardation, speech therapy, learning disabilities and psychosocial problems. As a rule, speech therapists, together with educational psychologists and cognitive psychologists, have been the specialists to whom persons with reading disabilities have been referred. People specialising within the ﬁeld of learning disabilities also have a strong focus on reading and writing disabilities in their work in school psychologist ofﬁces and other places within the educational system. Today, both graduate and postgraduate courses in special needs education are offered at many universities and colleges in Norway. For a couple of decades, Norway has also had a Centre for Reading Research, situated in Stavanger. This centre has been given a special responsibility by the

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Norwegian government to develop tests and provide national standards of measurement for reading development. Today, the National Centre for Reading Education and Research is part of the Faculty of Arts and Education at the University of Stavanger. Even if there are departments and researchers at other Norwegian universities, such as the Department of Psychology at the University of Bergen, as well as University Colleges that have a concentration on reading development and reading disabilities, the main research work on reading disabilities is being done at the Universities of Stavanger and of Oslo. Norwegian researchers in the ﬁeld of reading and writing focus on topics that most researchers worldwide view as important for the development of our understanding of the ﬁeld. There is much that is known about how early linguistic awareness, especially phonological and/or phonemic awareness, facilitates reading development, but the focus for research is also on other linguistic and cognitive early markers of dyslexia, as well as other reading problems. New insights into the role of the orthography of different languages are emerging. This has led to a focus on the role that Norwegian orthography and script plays in children’s literacy development (Hagtvet, Helland, & Lyster, 2006; Hagtvet & Lyster, 2003). Even if orthography makes a difference, the activities and teaching in the classroom and especially the role of the teachers, make a great difference. Norwegian studies have shown that the variations between children’s reading performance, between classroom results and between the schools’ results are far larger than desired, and the National Centre for Reading Research called attention to these facts as early as in 1998 (Tønnessen & Solheim, 1998). In Norway, relatively low scores on most reading tasks in international assessments, at least in comparison to results from other Nordic and Western European countries, are also causing concern for the government. In 1997, there was a reform of the Norwegian educational system. Prior to that time, children started school when they were seven years old. Now they start school in August of the year when they turn six. This earlier school start, however, did not lead to better reading abilities. Evaluations of the reform, the curriculum and classroom activities showed that there were too many free-play activities with less focus on the curriculum. Play as an educational tool was less often observed (Hagtvet, 2003). The teaching of reading in the ﬁrst grade took place in some classrooms and schools, while in other classrooms there was not even any systematic learning of letters. The curriculum was very vague as to what to do and when to introduce the teaching of reading. In most classrooms, however, the children did have linguistic awareness activities and other activities believed to have effect on later reading development.

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Now there has been a recent change in the curriculum, and the Ministry of Education and Research has clearly stated that literacy teaching is to start in the ﬁrst grade. It is important to view the 1997 school reform and the resulting curriculum with consideration given to the heavy debate that preceded the reform. Some political parties and quite a large percentage of the Norwegian population thought that an earlier school start would deprive the children of part of their childhood. For those working in the ﬁeld of reading and reading difﬁculties, it is difﬁcult to say how much one should be concerned by the different performance results. However, since Norway is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and uses more money than many comparable countries concerning reading development, some of the results from international studies are discouraging. These relatively poor results, however, have led to the government investing more money into various kinds of research work and thus helping to develop an understanding, not only why Norway is not at the top of the list when it comes to reading development, but also to understand the complexities of the reading process and why some children really struggle and need special education to cope with written language (OECD, 2004a).

CONTRIBUTORS Usually, when contributors to the ﬁeld of reading development are mentioned, one thinks of researchers and other people who have written about reading. One seldom thinks of the people who have written the primary reading textbooks that children use on their way to understanding the written language. In the case of Norway, it is important to mention Nordahl Rolfsen, the author who fostered increased awareness of the need to interpret reading as something much broader than simply the act of decoding (see Hagtvet & Lyster, 1997). The language he used in his books was simple compared to the language in other primary reading textbooks and closer to the children’s own language. His stories were also taken from daily life and represented children’s experiences in a much better way than other primary reading textbooks. Thus, using the children’s own language and experience, he provided them with enough background knowledge to understand the content of the texts. The pictures and stories were also designed to stimulate a child’s imagination, helping them to enter into a dialogue with the text. This is an ability that appears to receive too little attention. The government’s concentration on reading and especially the project ‘‘Make room for reading’’ hopefully will make a change. Nordahl Rolfsen’s books are no

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longer used in the classroom, even if they were used for many decades – the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. Of course, the stories from the mid-twentieth century would be strange for many children today and no longer provide them with the best texts for reading comprehension, but books such as Lively Discussions: Fostering Engaged Reading (Gambrell & Almasi, 1996) and others give ideas about how to foster engaged readers, ideas that should be a concern of the teachers. So even if there is no new series of Rolfsen-style primary reading textbooks in Norway, there are research-based ideas throughout the world about how to foster engaged readers. Teachers who understand that the ultimate goal for reading development is to help children to enter into a dialogue with the text (and the author who is not present), will be better equipped to help their pupils developing good reading comprehension strategies. For children who struggle with decoding or word reading speed, for example dyslexic children, it is of utmost importance that they learn to develop good reading comprehension strategies that can help them in various ways to cope with their difﬁculties. In Norway, as in the rest of the western world, there has been much progress made in understanding the complexities of reading as well as writing, since the Norwegian pioneer Gjessing stressed the need for early identiﬁcation of poor readers and intervention in the 1950s and 1960s (Gjessing, 1958, 1968). Gjessing was the ﬁrst Head of the College of Special Needs Education, the institution that underwent several kinds of changes and developments, to become what is currently the Department of Special Needs Education at the University of Oslo. He helped to raise awareness about dyslexia and the idea that even children of normal and high intelligence can develop reading problems, even to a serious degree. Gjessing’s doctoral thesis from 1958 concerning early reading development was considered to be for many years a bible for teachers in special needs education. His focus was very much on children’s auditory and visual perception, as well as on what he called ‘‘emotional dyslexia’’ and ‘‘pedagogic dyslexia’’ (i.e. the failure of the school system). Behavioural factors such as various decoding and spelling errors were diagnosed as symptoms of auditory or visual dyslexia or a mixture of auditory and visual dyslexia. Even if symptoms Gjessing considered to be visually based can be explained from the knowledge we have today as being phonologically based and his diagnostic approaches are now more or less rejected, Gjessing is acknowledged for his work and for the strong focus teachers had on children’s developmental reading difﬁculties. Gjessing’s methodological approach was well ahead of his time, and much of his work in methodology is still in use. Methods developed both for the teaching of reading and intervention in Norway have also been highly

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SOLVEIG-ALMA H. LYSTER

inﬂuenced by methods from abroad, particularly the United States. Various versions of ‘‘the whole word approach’’ (Smith, 1971, 1973) were for a time warmly welcomed in a large number of classrooms, and even if researchers emphasised that such a method probably did not suit a regular language such as Norwegian, teachers still had the freedom to choose their own methods and approaches. Also Leimar’s (1974) ‘‘Language Experience Method’’, which stresses the use of texts created by the children themselves, has been adopted by many Norwegian teachers. Leimar herself focused on phonology as one important component in her approach, but the practice differed from classroom to classroom as to how explicitly the phonological aspect was given attention. However, most classrooms have had different forms of phonic approaches to the teaching of reading for many years even if linguistic awareness as a concept did not receive attention from the teachers until the late 1990s. Another important contribution to the teaching of reading and writing came from Skjelfjord (1976, 1983, 1987). In the 1970s, his doctoral thesis ‘‘Phonemic Learning in the School’’ (Foneminnlæring i skolen) provided evidence for the importance of articulatory analyses in the teaching of reading and spelling. With his empirical evidence, he emphasises the importance of children’s ability to segment speech sound by sound in a sequential way when learning to spell and read. He argues that phonemic awareness mainly proceeds on an articulatory basis. A study by Lie (1991) supports Skjelfjord’s ﬁndings and hypothesis. First-grade children, who learn to segment speech into articulatory units in a sequential way (while also listening to the phonological structure of the words), develop better literacy skills in grade 1 than children following a phonologically-based programme with no focus on articulation. Other studies have also found support for the importance of focusing on the articulatory position of sounds and the articulatory sequence of a phonological sequence (i.e. a spoken word). Castiglioni-Spalten and Ehri (2003) have, for example, shown that articulatory sequential instruction enhances processes that enable children to read words. This was not the case for children being trained ‘‘by ear’’ only. Still, some studies do not have results that give support to articulatory awareness as an important component in developing phonemic awareness (Wise, Ring, & Olson, 1999). It could be, however, that articulatory awareness plays a more important role in more regular languages, such as Norwegian, where the words to a large extent are written the way they are pronounced. The focus on reading for the past 10–15 years has resulted in more reading and dyslexia research at the universities and colleges in Norway. The National Centre for Reading Research with Torleif Hoien as its ﬁrst Director

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27

has also called attention to the importance of doing research in the ﬁeld of reading. Today, there are more contributors to the reading research ﬁeld than just a few years ago.

THE CHALLENGES OF THE NORWEGIAN SCRIPT To understand children’s reading development and children’s reading failure, it is important to understand the challenges they meet when learning how their spoken language is represented in the script they are learning. It is important for both the teacher and researcher to know and understand these challenges in order to achieve the goals of developing effective methods for teaching reading and preventing reading failure. The Norwegian script is described as fairly transparent, even though it is not as transparent as in Finnish, Spanish or Italian (Elley, 1992; Hagtvet et al., 2006). Norwegian is a Germanic language and is closely related to the other two Scandinavian languages (i.e. Swedish and Danish), such that speakers of the three languages can generally understand each other. Modern Scandinavian languages developed from Old Norse language, which was spoken in the area of what is now Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The Norwegian phonetic system is similar to the Swedish and Danish systems. However, while Swedish is fairly close to Norwegian concerning transparency, Danish has a much less transparent script system. This difference is important to remember when interpreting international reading results. The Scandinavian countries look upon themselves as being very similar in their approach to schooling, various social issues, ways of living and a range of cultural aspects. Differences between children’s reading development in Denmark and Norway may therefore, at least partly, be explained by differences in the transparency of the two written languages. Even though the difference between the number of phonemes and graphemes in Norwegian is fairly small compared with those in French, for example, which has 30 phonemes represented by approximately 130 graphemes, there are still many pitfalls, both phonologically and morphologically, when Norwegian children decode and spell words. First, there are many consonant clusters in Norwegian. Consonant clusters are found in words such as oftest (most often), strikk (rubber band), lengst (the longest) and nifst (scary). These can be very difﬁcult for young children. In addition to the challenges presented by consonant clusters, there are different orthographic rules that cause the written word to differ from its pronunciation, with exceptions to each of these rules.

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The reason why some words are not written the way they are spoken is primarily etymological. Many of the exceptions may quite often be explained morphemically. Stygt (/stykt/, neutral-gender adjective meaning ‘‘ugly’’), for example, is spelled with a g and not with a k, as it sounds, because the root morpheme is stygg (added to the root morpheme is the sufﬁx t, signifying the neutral gender). Hagtvet et al. (2006) have made a broader presentation of the Norwegian orthographic system with a discussion of the pitfalls awaiting the young learner. Since many of these pitfalls are morphologically based, both spelling and word decoding could be more ﬂuent if children became aware of how words are built from morphemes. Norwegian dyslexic children seem to be able to crack the alphabetic code easily and read accurately. They still struggle with reading, but this struggle seems to arise from their slowness in reading (Hagtvet & Lyster, 2003). Giving these children an early insight into the morphological structure of their language therefore seems to be a good suggestion. Elbro (1990) points to the fact that the role of morphological decomposition in the decoding process is a controversial issue, but he also suggests that morphological analysis may be used as a coping strategy by dyslexic readers. In one study, Elbro and Arnbak (1996) found that dyslexic adolescents rely more on morphological word structure than younger typical readers do with a similar level of word decoding ability. Treiman and Cassar (1997) suggest that although sound is important in children’s spelling, so is morphological information. Vygotsky (1962) emphasised strongly the importance of the teaching of grammar in developing literacy skills. The focus on morphology presented by researchers, such as Elbro and Arnbak (1996), Henry (1993) and Lyster (1995, 1998, 2002), has led to a broader focus on grammar in the early grades in the Norwegian school system. The Ministry of Education and Research published an instructional book for teachers in 1997 that covered not only the importance of focusing on phonological awareness in the early grades, but also the necessity of including other kinds of language activities, such as working with morphemes. Since this book has also been included in the syllabus for many of the teachers colleges, it can be expected that the morphological/grammatical issue will receive more attention, at least to some extent, when children are being taught to read and write.

International Student Assessment – the Case of Norway For various reasons, there has been a strong focus on reading development and reading disabilities in Norway for the past 15–20 years. One of the

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primary reasons that the government is directing such huge attention to the subject of reading and its teaching is the standing that Norway has received in various international assessments of reading ability. Norway has taken part in several international tests of student performance. In the IEA Reading Literacy Study in 1991, 9-year-olds and 14-year-olds participated (Elley, 1992). The results for the nine-year-old Norwegian readers were satisfactory with an overall mean score for the reading of narrative prose, expository prose and documents above the international mean. The results for the 14-year-olds, however, were not that satisfactory. The Norwegian students performed consistently below the scores predicted by the Norwegian Composite Development Index (CDI) score, a combination of scores for economic, health and literacy factors. These indicators of national development were chosen because they are believed to indirectly facilitate the advancement of literacy levels in schools. Switzerland and Sweden came out as number 1 and 2 on this index, and as number 3 and 7 on the reading assessment result list. Norway ranked third on the CDI scale, but had a mean reading score for the 14-year-olds that gave them the ranking of 17 on the list (Elley, 1992). This relatively poor result worried politicians and school authorities and resulted in a growth in interest concerning the best practices for teaching reading and writing and for preventing failure. New standardised tests were developed by the Centre for Reading Research in Stavanger. Findings from a range of studies including the Hagtvet (1996) and Lyster (1995, 2002) studies and the theoretical perspectives behind them became a topic of discussion. This led to a much broader focus on early intervention as a means of preventing disabilities in the ﬁeld of reading and on the necessity of focusing on linguistic awareness both before the child has cracked the alphabetic code and then alongside further reading instruction. The results from the OECD assessments of 15-year-olds’ reading performance in 2000 (Lie, Kjernsli, Roe, & Turmo, 2001), however, did not reveal any great changes in the Norwegian students’ level of reading ability. The results were not as expected on the basis of CDI-ranking and other factors that should have facilitated development in Norway, for example, the amount of resources that are channelled into the education system. There is a large variation in the Norwegian results in comparison with, for example, Sweden and Finland. Also the largest difference in the Norwegian results is related to gender. The difference between boys’ and girls’ reading results are even larger than previously observed. The Norwegian results do not follow a normal distribution curve as in most countries. There is a large group of good readers, as in many other countries with good results. On the

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other hand, and this is what makes Norway different from comparable countries (e.g., Sweden), there is a much larger group of poor readers than what is found in most other countries. Teachers have claimed that many more exceptional children have been included in the assessment due to the Norwegian educational system’s widespread practice of mainstreaming. The OECD reports, however, focus on factors as more important for explaining the excellent Finnish results. The teachers have also claimed that the positive results in Finland can be partly explained by the fact that the Finnish school system has very few children from Third World countries. This is not a good argument, however, since Sweden has more groups with larger numbers of minority-language-speaking children than any other Nordic country. Sweden has also done extremely well in the most recent international assessments. Sweden has, however, had many years of experience dealing with large groups of immigrants and refugees. There are more families who have reached a third-generation level as well as a greater number of parents who have completed at least nine years of obligatory schooling, or even higher education in Sweden. In Norway, there are still a large number of people from Pakistan, for example, that for longer periods, send their children to schools in Pakistan. Many families also still travel to Pakistan to ﬁnd husbands or wives for their children, which means there is a steady inﬂux of people with no knowledge of Norwegian culture or language in the relatively established Pakistani community in Norway. Thus, many children in that community grow up with at least one parent who knows little Norwegian and knows little about how to help their children develop into good Norwegian readers. Questions connected to facts of this type often surface when Norwegian reading results are discussed. Norwegian school administrators and even teachers have been ﬂocking to Finland to try to uncover the secrets behind their good performance. There are indications, according to Norwegian teachers, that the Finnish teachers use methods that appear to be old-fashioned, but also that children at risk seem to get help early, before problems develop (OECD, 2005). The teaching of the alphabetic system is systematic (even if most children know a lot of the system prior to the start of school). The teaching of the complex Finnish grammatical system is also systematic. The Norwegian government has focused on the fact that teacher education in Finland is a ﬁve-year-long university study. So, one of the next steps in Norway may be to consider changing to a ﬁve-year education of teachers. Currently, students have to study four years to be qualiﬁed to teach in primary and lower secondary school (grades 1–10).

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PISA 2003 was the second survey in OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment. It was conducted in the 30 OECD countries and 11 partner countries (OECD 2004a, 2004b, 2004c, 2005). One of the primary areas of focus is reading. In 2003, the performance of the Norwegian students was somewhat above the OECD mean in reading. Once more, gender differences, however, based on the much better reading performance for girls, were much larger in Norway than in most OECD countries and the standard deviation for the Norwegian results was larger than for most OECD and partner countries. The picture does not change if we include the 2001 results from PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study). Among the 35 participating countries, at that time, 8 were part of the European Union and 12 were candidate or EEA (European Economic Area) countries, such as Norway. PIRLS is an international assessment exercise conducted by the International Study Centre (ISC) at Boston College and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). PIRLS measured reading literacy achievement of fourth-grade students (aged 9 and 10). The material assessed a range of reading comprehension skills. There was a concentration on both reading as a literary experience and reading as a means of acquiring information. Sweden achieved excellent results while Norway was placed at the opposite end of the scale together with Turkey, Cyprus and Slovenia. The contrasting results obtained by two Nordic countries such as Norway and Sweden are surprising. The results from PISA and PIRLS have worried the Norwegian government and school authorities even more, perhaps, than the relatively poor results from the 1991 IEA study. This concern has resulted in the development of a range of reading projects all over the country under the slogan ‘‘Make room for reading’’. These projects, ﬁnanced by the Ministry of Education and Research, were not research projects, but they were based on experience gathered from earlier projects. To a large extent, these projects were headed or supported in various ways by researchers in the ﬁeld of reading and reading disorders, however, and some evaluation will take place. The government has provided generous ﬁnancial support for projects like these, a new curriculum with greater concentration on literacy development from grade 1 has been developed, and more hours are now being devoted to the study of literacy teaching in teachers colleges and other settings. So at the moment, school authorities, teachers and others interested in the Norwegian school system and the teaching of reading are currently waiting in suspense for the next round of national and international assessments.

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RECENT AND CURRENT NORWEGIAN PROJECTS Norwegian Longitudinal Reading Studies With the background of international longitudinal studies as well as intervention studies and the somewhat discouraging Norwegian ranking in the international student assessment studies of reading performance, several longitudinal studies of reading development have been conducted in Norway. Hagtvet (1996) describes the linguistic and cognitive development of a group of 74 randomly selected Norwegian children from the age of four until the age of nine. This study also follows the children’s literacy development over the same period of time. In accordance with many other studies, the results indicate that phonological and especially phonemic awareness at ages 5 and 6 predicts later word decoding abilities. Signiﬁcant correlations were also revealed between oral language skills as measured by the Reynell Developmental Language Scales (Hagtvet & Lillestølen, 1985) at age 4 and written language skills at ages 7 and 8. Finally, a positive correlation was revealed between language skills and psychosocial skills to the extent that the children who were described as slow readers at age 9 were more emotionally charged at ages 6 and 8, while children who were described as early readers were emotionally relaxed at the same age. Lyster (1997, 1998, 2002) followed approximately 270 children and their reading development from their ﬁnal preschool year and until grade 10. The children’s spelling development was also monitored during the early period. An intervention study was conducted in the children’s ﬁnal preschool year, but after the intervention and the post-test, the children’s reading development was followed without any kind of intervention. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the long-term effects of two different linguistic training programmes in kindergarten on reading (and spelling) development, namely phonological awareness training and morphological awareness training. The intervention activities were based on what has come to be considered good intervention activities on the basis of earlier intervention studies, such as Lundberg, Frost and Petersen’s study from Bornholm (Lundberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988) as well as Bradley and Bryant’s widely cited study from England (Bradley & Bryant, 1983). However, since there had been no intervention studies covering the effect of morphological training in preschool on reading development, this programme had to be developed based upon the knowledge available at the time of the connection between morphological awareness/knowledge and reading development. One experimental group received a programme focusing on phonological awareness. The ultimate

Reading Development and Reading Disabilities

33

goal for the training was the development of the children’s phonemic awareness. It was also designed to give the children some insight into the idea that letters (or rather graphemes) are the written symbols for the sounds in spoken language. By itself, this training could not be considered as literacy teaching, but for example, when playing the traditional Norwegian game ‘‘My ship is loaded with something starting with the sound y’’, letters were also shown. The teacher draws a ship on the blackboard or ﬂip-over with a letter for a speciﬁc sound to be used in the game written on the ship. The children then supply words that start with that sound and these words are then written on the picture of the ship, so that the children can see that all the words listed start with the same letter, for example S, if the given sound was /s/. All the sounds that were focused on early in the year were continuants so that the children could continually pronounce the sound, having the opportunity to feel the sound in an articulatory way and thus be aided to identify it in other places in words as well (Skjelfjord, 1987). The second experimental group received a programme focusing on morphology. Torne´us (1987) and Elbro (1990) each conducted studies in Sweden and Denmark, respectively, where morphological awareness was focused. Ideas from these studies, as well as from Berko (1958), were used when developing tests and intervention elements. Working with preﬁxes, sufﬁxes and other morphological items that can be recognised in the language of 5- and 6-years old children, this group was also exposed to print to the same extent as the phonological group. When identifying the Norwegian plural ending for nouns, for example, they would also see that the letter sequence -er was added to the end of the word gutt (boy) – gutter (boys) on the ﬂip-over or blackboard. So far, the results appear to emphasise the importance of working with children’s morphological awareness and knowledge, in order to prevent reading and writing failure and to facilitate reading and writing development (Lyster, 1998). Long-term effects of preschool morphological training seem to be stronger within the Norwegian preschool and school context than the effects of intervention programmes that focus on phonological awareness. However, a smaller group of children with a weekly-developed phonological awareness at the beginning of the intervention period proﬁted clearly from phonological awareness training in terms of a better reading development in grade 1 than similar groups of children in the morphological group or the control group. Children with well-developed phonological awareness proﬁted the most from morphological awareness training. Thus, the results underline that it seems to be necessary to have developed phonological awareness to a certain level before morphological awareness training has a clear effect on early reading development (Lyster, 1998).

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SOLVEIG-ALMA H. LYSTER

Perhaps one reason for the relatively moderate effect of phonological awareness training, especially the lack of clear long-term effects is that phonological awareness seems to outlive its role at a relatively early stage of reading development in the Norwegian context (Hagtvet & Lyster, 2003; Hagtvet et al., 2006). One reason for this may be the fairly regular orthography and the relatively strong focus on phonology and phonics in literacy teaching. Researchers at Department of Special Needs Education (Hagtvet et al., 1999) have conducted a longitudinal study of young children of dyslexic parents. The purpose of the study was to explore the developmental links between early linguistic, cognitive and emotional factors and later problems with written language in this group of children. Findings suggest that the heredity component is considerable and that the children developing reading difﬁculties have subtle language problems in preschool difﬁcult to detect in everyday verbal interactions. Receptive language as measured by Reynell Developmental Scale at age 2 was found to be one crucial predictor of text reading at age 9. Phonological awareness, on the other hand, did only inﬂuence reading development within a short period of time. At school start, phonological awareness had a clear impact on the development of decoding abilities, but there was no direct link between phonological awareness in preschool or at school start and text reading at age 9 (Hagtvet, Hagtvet, & Lyster, 2007). This result suggests that other abilities than phonological awareness take over the role as predictors of text reading relatively early in the process of reading development. One factor that at the end of grade 1 seems to play an early and important role in predicting text reading comprehension, in the group in question, is the speed by which words are identiﬁed. (The children should within a time limit identify the words in word/ pseudo-homophone pairs.) This ﬁnding is in line with ﬁndings from other studies uncovering word reading speed as one of the most important factors for efﬁcient reading comprehension (Torgesen, Rashotte, & Alexander, 2001), but since even children at risk for dyslexia develop word decoding abilities in a relatively easy way in Norwegian, it might be that the speed by which words are identiﬁed plays an important role from an early age.

READING DEVELOPMENT IN NORWAY: ONE FOLLOW-UP AND ONE LONGITUDINAL STUDY As found in studies throughout the world (Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Cunningham, 1990; Hatcher, Hulme, & Ellis, 1994; Lundberg et al., 1988),

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35

Norwegian studies also show that early intervention to a large extent can prevent reading failure from happening and hinder the development of serious levels of reading difﬁculties (Hagtvet, 1996; Lyster, 1998, 2002). However, there is still a need to understand more about the broad spectres of factors that facilitate or hinder reading development. A large body of research has demonstrated that reading skill is linked to an incredibly wide range of verbal and cognitive abilities such as vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, verbal short-term memory, phonological awareness, memory and verbal ﬂuency (Catts, Fey, Tomblin, & Zhang, 1999; Scarborough, 1990; Snowling, Gallagher, & Frith, 2003). Knowledge about development within these areas will provide a better background for developing good, preventive interventions and literacy programmes. The ﬁrst study presents a comparison of good and poor readers in grade 6 according to their linguistic and cognitive abilities at the start of school. The second study aims at evaluating the effect of supplementary teacher education on reading development in grade 2.

STUDY 1 Method Subjects One hundred and thirty-two randomly selected children from a group of 273 children assessed in preschool were tested again approximately six years later in grade 6. All the children came from one community near Oslo. At the time of assessment prior to school start, the children ranged in age from 6 years 4 months to 7 years 3 months. Upon starting school, the children in the group were placed in 12 different classes in nine separate schools. Most children belonged to the same class for the entire six-year period but a few children changed to a new class. Children who had moved away from the community were removed from the study. Measures Preschool Measures. Four months prior to school start, the children were tested on a large number of verbal abilities. All tests (Lyster & Tingleff, 2002) were administered in groups and all tests were preceded by practice items. Cronbach’s alpha is reported for scale reliability. I.

Rhyme Recognition. For each item the children were presented with four pictures. The words corresponding to the pictures were also

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SOLVEIG-ALMA H. LYSTER

presented orally. The children’s task was to mark the one word (picture) that rhymed with the ﬁrst word (picture) on each line. Reliability (alpha) was 0.92. II. Phoneme Blending. For each item, the children were presented with a row of pictures. Then a word was sounded out with the sounds presented at an interval of approximately 12 s. The children were asked to mark the picture matching the resulting word. Reliability was 0.70. III. Phoneme Counting. Each word was presented orally with pronunciation at normal speed together with an easily recognisable picture. The children’s task was to mark the number of sounds with pencil strokes in an empty box next to the picture. Reliability was 0.78. IV. Deletion of Initial Phonemes. For each item the children were presented a row of three pictures. They were told that if the initial sound was deleted, the resulting word would match one of the pictures in that row. The initial sound was then presented (What is left if you take away/delete the ﬁrst sound /r/ in rice?). Reliability was 0.70. V. Compound Words. Compound words like brannbil and bilbrann (ﬁre engine and engine ﬁre), blomsterpotte and potteblomst (ﬂower pot and potted ﬂower), etc. are high-frequency words in Norwegian. This task was constructed to assess the children’s knowledge of compound words. Reliability was 0.78. VI. Segmentation of Sentences into Words. The children marked the number of words in orally presented sentences with pencil strokes in empty boxes next to the pictures representing the items. Reliability was 0.78. VII. Syntactic Awareness. The children had to decide whether a sentence was correct or not. If correct, they were to put a mark by a picture of a mother. If not, they were to put a mark by a picture of a child. Reliability was 0.72. VIII. Homophones. For each item the children had to identify two out of four pictures that represented something named by the same phonological codes (e.g., hjul (Christmas) and jul (wheel), which are homophones in Norwegian). There was a time limit for this task. Reliability was 0.85. IX. Listening Comprehension. The children were given sentences with various morphemic elements and syntactic constructions. For each item the children had to identify one picture out of four representing the orally presented sentence. Reliability was 0.75. X. Spelling at School Start. The children were given ﬁve regular words to spell. Each sound represented by the correct letter scored one point. Reliability was 0.95.

Reading Development and Reading Disabilities

XI.

37

Reading at School Start. The children were given 32, mostly high frequency, words to match with corresponding pictures. Reliability was 0.98.

First-Grade Measures of IQ. The subtests Digit Span, Vocabulary and Similarities from WISC-R and Raven were administered to the children shortly after school start. The following tests were administered at the end of grade 1: I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

Word Reading. Presented with a picture, the children had to pick the matching word among ﬁve given words. This is part of an earlier developed standardised test. Test–retest reliability for a larger version of the test is reported to be 0.87. Phonological Coding. The children were presented with 20 non-word/ non-word pairs and the task was to underline the one word in each pair that sounded like a real word. Reliability was 0.89 (see Olson, Kliegel, Davidson, & Foltz, 1985). Orthographic Coding. The children were presented with 20 word/ pseudo-homophone pairs and the task was to underline the word in each pair. The reliability was 0.93 (see Olson, Wise, Connors, & Rack, 1990). Spelling Simple Regular Words. The children had to spell 18 relatively simple words (e.g., leke (play), ring (ring), etc.). Few of these words had consonant cluster. The reliability was 0.94. Spelling Complex Regular Words. The children had to spell nine relatively complex regular words (e.g., straks and elektrisk). One point was given for each correct letter in correct place that represented the correct sound in each given word. The reliability was 0.83. Mathematics. An old standardised test (Tornes, 1968) that has been broadly used and is considered a valid test for assessing early mathematical skills was used. Internal reliability (alpha) for the addition section is reported to be 0.98, for the subtraction section 0.96 and for the practical part 0.88. The questions in the practical part (word problems) were read aloud to the children.

Sixth-Grade Measures of Assessment. Two subtests from a standardised Norwegian test (Nasjonalt læremiddelsenter, 1995a) were used in grade 6: Word Reading (word–picture matching) and Text Reading (a comprehension task with questions to be answered at the end of each paragraph). Reliability for these tests are reported to be 0.97 and 0.94, respectively.

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SOLVEIG-ALMA H. LYSTER

Children with scores in the lowest 20% of the scale on Word Reading and Text Reading were designated respectively as poor decoders and/or poor text readers. Children with a top score on Word Reading (50% of the children) and on Text Reading (30% of the children) were designated as good readers. The subtests were constructed to uncover poor readers and children who needed further assessment. That is why so many of the children have maximum scores. To ensure that the groups were as homogenous as possible, only children with scaled scores between 7 and 13 on both WISC-R subtests, Similarities and Vocabulary, were included in the analyses. The numbers of poor and good word decoders within this range were 16 and 46, respectively and the numbers of poor and good text readers were 17 and 25.

Results Preschool and Grade 1 Differences between Grade 6 Poor and Good Word Readers Even though the poor and good readers were selected from the group of children scoring within what is considered to be the normal range of the WISC-R scaled scores, signiﬁcant differences were found between the poor and good word decoders on Vocabulary (WISC-R), F(1, 60) ¼ 12.05, po0.01, Similarities, F(1, 60) ¼ 10.73, po0.01 and Raven’s Progressive Matrices, F(1, 60) ¼ 6.75, po0.05. Signiﬁcant differences were also found between poor and good text readers on the same three measures. No differences were found between poor and good decoders and between the two groups of text readers on Raven when Vocabulary and Similarities were used as covariates. A series of analyses of covariance were conducted to assess the poor and good readers’ performance on the preschool and ﬁrstgrade tests. The two WISC-R subtests were entered as covariates to control for the differences in verbal IQ as measured by these two tests. There is some variation in the number of students participating in the different tests due to illness or visits at the dentist on the day of testing and the n reported in Tables 1 and 2 represent the number of students participating in most of the tests. The preschool and ﬁrst-grade differences between the grade 6 poor and good readers on the word reading task are presented in Table 1. The statistical signiﬁcances of the differences between the groups as well as partial eta squared (Z2p) and standard errors are reported in the table. As the table shows, the grade 6 good decoders exhibited a signiﬁcantly better level of performance than the poor decoders on a wide range of

F

p

Z2p

St.e 0.16 0.22 0.33 0.25 0.31 0.25 0.35 0.54 0.49 1.09 1.63

5.65 4.24 0.06 22.62 1.71 0.02 0.18 6.28 9.43 2.94 2.86

o0.05 o0.05 ns o0.001 ns ns ns o0.05 o0.01 ns ns

0.11 0.08 0.00 0.32 0.04 0.00 0.00 0.11 0.17 0.05 0.05

1.16 0.89 0.95 0.66 0.55 4.36

13.40 4.87 6.92 3.87 8.00 1.86

o0.001 o0.05 o0.05 ns o0.01 ns

0.19 0.08 0.11 0.06 0.12 0.04

Assessment Measure

Poor Readers (n ¼ 16)

Good Readers (n ¼ 46)

Preschool measures Rhyme recognition (9) Phoneme blending (9) Phoneme counting (6) Deletion of initial phoneme (9) Compound words (13) Sentence segmentation Syntactic awareness (10) Homophones (16) Comprehension (28) Spelling, school start (20) Reading, school start (32)

Mean 7.84 7.55 2.87 4.34 9.34 3.81 7.51 6.95 21.77 8.94 10.01

St.e 0.30 0.39 0.62 0.45 0.55 0.52 0.66 0.96 0.92 2.01 2.92

Mean 8.69 8.51 3.04 6.90 10.21 3.88 7.84 9.84 25.10 13.02 15.95

16.98 5.85 7.53 11.98 53.33 64.35

2.09 1.60 1.71 1.19 2.79 7.00

26.14 10.08 12.9 14.77 61.78 76.35

First-grade measures Word reading (36) Phonological coding (20) Orthographic coding (20) Spelling simple words (18) Spelling complex words (68) Mathematics (121)

Reading Development and Reading Disabilities

Table 1. Preschool and First-Grade Differences between Poor and Good Grade 6 Word Readers.

With Similarities and Vocabulary from WISC-R as covariates. Estimated marginal means. Numbers in parentheses ¼ maximum score. Listening Comprehension.

39

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SOLVEIG-ALMA H. LYSTER

preschool and school measures. The analyses revealed signiﬁcant differences between the poor and good grade 6 readers on Rhyme Recognition, Phoneme Blending and Deletion of Initial Phoneme in preschool. The effect size, or strength of the relationship between the preschool phonological measures and word reading in grade 6 was stronger, however, for Deletion of Initial Phoneme (Z2p value of 0.32) than that between Rhyme Recognition and Phoneme Blending and grade 6 word reading (Z2p values of 0.11 and 0.08, respectively). It should be noted, however, that no signiﬁcant preschool differences were found between the two groups on Phoneme Counting, Sentence Segmentation and Syntactic Awareness. The abilities to segment sentences into words and awareness of syntactic irregularities are probably not good predictors of word reading, and the awareness of words in sentences was not very well developed before the children started school. There were signiﬁcant differences between the groups on Homophones, F(1, 49) ¼ 6.28, po0.05, and Listening Comprehension, F(1, 45) ¼ 9.43, po0.05. The strength of the relationships between these to preschool measures and word reading six years later was somewhat stronger for Listening Comprehension (Z2p value of 0.17) than for Homophones (Z2p value of 0.11). The results, however, clearly show that both the ability to understand the spoken language and the speed by which children can access a word’s phonological code in lexicon, seem to be important predictors for the ability to read words fast and ﬂuently six years later. Even if the error variance also has to be considered since the Z2p is used, it is important to remember that the impact of the abilities measured by Listening Comprehension and Homophones are measured after the impact of Vocabulary and Similarities from WISC-R are controlled for. There were no differences between the groups on the spelling and reading measures at school start. This result is in line with the fact that there had been no teaching of reading and writing. The children who had developed reading and/or spelling abilities had learned this in their homes or by themselves. There were signiﬁcant differences between the poor and good grade 6 word readers on all grade 1 reading task. The clear and signiﬁcant result for Orthographic Coding is interesting in that it underlines that the ability to identify a word’s orthographic structure develops early. The ability to use an orthographic strategy when identifying words seems to be a more powerful predictor of reading development (Z2 value of 0.11) than the ability to use an alphabetic or phonological strategy (Z value of 0.08) as early as grade 1 in a Norwegian context. The two groups did not differ on Spelling Simple Regular Words at the end of grade 1 or on Mathematics. Only when the

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orthographic structure became more challenging (contained more consonant clusters) as was the case for Spelling Complex regular Words, did the good word decoders in grade 6 outperform the poor readers in grade 1. This means that phonologically complex words should be used when assessing spelling performance in Norwegian if it is important to differentiate between children who are and who are not at risk for reading disorders. The transparent Norwegian orthography can be handled easily by most children in grade 1 if the phonological structure is not too complex. Even dyslexic children seem to handle such words relatively early in their spelling development (Hagtvet & Lyster, 2003). Preschool and Grade 1 Differences between Grade 6 Poor and Good Text Readers The preschool and school measures for the poor and good text readers are shown in Table 2. The results are to some extent in line with the decoding results, but there are also differences that are important to notice. A series of analyses of covariance were run with preschool and grade 1 measures as dependent variables. The statistical signiﬁcances of the differences between the groups as well as Z2p and standard errors are reported in the table. Good text readers in grade 6 had signiﬁcantly higher scores on a range of preschool and grade 1 measures. Some of the differences between the poor and good text readers in grade 6, however, varied from the differences between the groups of poor and good word readers. No preschool differences were found between poor and good text readers on Phoneme Blending and Deletion of Initial Phonemes. Even if a signiﬁcant difference between the poor and good text readers were found for Rhyme Recognition, the results are in accordance with ﬁndings from other studies showing that text reading is only partly dependent on phonological skills. Preschool and grade 1 differences were found, however, on several other tasks. The largest difference between the groups on the pre-test, is on Listening Comprehension, F(1, 31) ¼ 15.07, po0.001, underlining the close connection between listening comprehension and reading comprehension. The Z2p for the preschool differences between the groups was 0.33. This result shows that children’s listening comprehension before they enter school is a powerful predictor of later reading comprehension. The two groups of text readers also differed on the preschool subtest Syntactic Awareness, F(1, 31) ¼ 7.00, po0.05, showing that early awareness of sentence structure predicts reading comprehension. The difference between the groups on Homophones, F(1, 35) ¼ 10.38, po0.01, shows that the speed by which the child can reach the lexicon, is important for reading comprehension. Partial

42

Table 2.

Preschool and First-Grade Differences between Grade 6 Poor and Good Text Readers. p

Z2p

St.e 0.23 0.29 0.37 0.37 0.32 0.36 0.44 0.56 0.55 1.45 1.94

4.72 0.74 0.12 0.72 4.68 0.12 7.00 10.38 15.07 3.40 3.75

o0.05 ns ns ns o0.05 ns o0.05 o0.01 o0.001 ns ns

0.12 0.02 0.00 0.02 0.13 0.01 0.18 0.23 0.33 0.08 0.09

1.26 0.91 1.04 0.64 1.89 5.51

15.71 16.03 12.30 5.64 5.35 2.44

o0.001 o0.001 o0.001 o0.05 o0.05 ns

0.29 0.29 0.24 0.13 0.12 0.07

Poor Readers (n ¼ 17)

Good Readers (n ¼ 25)

Preschool measures Rhyme recognition (9) Phoneme blending (9) Phoneme counting (6) Deletion of initial phoneme (9) Compound words (13) Sentence segmentation (6) Syntactic awareness (10) Homophones (16) Comprehension (28) Spelling, school start (20) Reading, school start (32)

Mean 7.56 7.76 2.60 5.63 8.98 3.10 5.21 5.75 20.39 6.24 6.37

St.e 0.35 0.44 0.58 0.55 0.51 0.70 0.75 0.83 0.93 2.02 2.62

Mean 8.51 8.24 2.86 6.25 10.37 3.38 7.64 9.17 24.81 11.09 13.12

17.04 5.12 5.98 11.87 54.55 61.40

1.68 1.18 1.35 0.89 2.44 6.22

25.76 11.37 12.24 14.59 62.03 74.93

First-grade measures Word reading (36) Phonological coding (20) Orthographic coding (20) Spelling simple words (18) Spelling complex words (68) Mathematics (121)

With Similarities and Vocabulary from WISC-R as covariates. Estimated marginal means. Numbers in parentheses ¼ maximum score. Listening Comprehension.

SOLVEIG-ALMA H. LYSTER

F

Measure

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eta squared for this difference was 0.30. Table 2 also shows that Phonological Coding and Orthographic Coding at the end of grade 1 are stronger predictors of text reading than for Word Reading in grade 6. The grade 1 differences for Word Reading, F (1, 39) ¼ 15.71, po0.001, and Phonological Coding, F(1, 40) ¼ 16.03, po0.001, show that children who have developed the most efﬁcient phonological strategy also are among the best text readers in grade 6. The results also show, however, that the children that have developed a good ability to use an orthographic strategy as early as grade 1 also are among the best text readers in grade 6. A Z2p of 0.24 tells us that a relatively large amount of the variance in Text Reading in grade 6 can be explained by the children’s ability to use an orthographic strategy in grade 1. There may be differences between languages in that children’s orthographic skills may develop differently in different orthographic scripts. A study in Canada (Arab-Moghaddam & Se´ne´chal, 2001) indicates that there may be differences in how Persian and English bilinguals rely on orthographic skills. On the other hand, it is also suggested that strict stage models provide inaccurate explanations of developmental changes (Martin, Claydon, Morton, Binns, & Pratt, 2003). Developmental theories postulating gradual transitions may be more appropriate explanations for the development of reading accuracy and ﬂuency (Spear-Swerling & Sternberg, 1994), but it could be that such transitions differ from one orthographic system to another. Even if teaching methods make a difference, it is important to underline that the children participating in Study 1 all learned to read and spell by following a phonics approach. Linguistic awareness activities were introduced before and in parallel to the introduction of the alphabetic principle learning the correspondences between sounds and letters.

Comments and Conclusions The results show that poor decoding and text reading can be predicted from a wide range of preschool linguistic and cognitive measures. Some measures only predict text reading ability, while others predict decoding ability. A wider range of linguistic measures appear to predict text reading ability while phonological skills primarily predict decoding but not text reading ability. Reading measures in grade 1 are very strong predictors of both decoding and text reading ability in grade 6. The results show that it is important to focus a wide range of cognitive and linguistic areas long before school starts to prevent reading failure in groups of children at risk. Segmentation abilities such as phonemic segmentation and the awareness of the individual

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component words in compound words do not predict reading development. Such results show that some linguistic awareness skills probably develop as a result of reading instruction. Linguistic awareness skills might facilitate reading development, but probably have the best effect if introduced concurrently with reading instruction. The results from this study suggest that the best way to prevent reading failure may be early intervention focusing a broad aspect of linguistic and cognitive variables to facilitate language development. For various reasons, early intervention is important for both the typical poor readers and for children at risk for developing dyslexic problems. Bishop (1997) has put forward important questions in the ﬁeld of language development, questions and suggestions which also appear to make important contributions to teaching and clinical practice in the ﬁeld of reading and reading development. If Listening Comprehension in the preschool years is as important for reading development as was found in this study, grammar and sentence comprehension should receive more focus in the preschool years, especially if we are working with children who for different reasons are at risk for developing reading disabilities.

STUDY 2 The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of supplementary teacher training in the area of reading on children’s reading development. A cohort of third-grade children in a community outside Oslo was assessed after their teachers had ﬁnished a year of continuing education courses and practical assignments. The children’s reading results were compared with standard results and the results from the previous third-grade assessment in the same community.

Method Subjects All second-grade teachers from 16 schools in a community outside Oslo participated in the study together with other representatives for their schools. The second-grade teachers were responsible for teaching reading to all children in grade 2, N ¼ 303, in that community. The students belonged to 22 different classes. Norway had for a period few standardised reading tests. For this study, the cohort of third graders was selected because there was a standardised test battery including both word decoding and reading

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comprehension tasks. The Central Bureau of Statistics selected the cohort of second graders that participated in the Norwegian standardisation. This standardisation made it possible, at least to some extent, to investigate the effect of an innovation aimed at the continuing education of primary school teachers in the ﬁeld of reading development and metalinguistic awareness. Most of the children in the present study had attended preschool groups focusing on metalinguistic awareness training. The same kind of training had also been given to children in previous years. At the time when the present cohort of children started school, there was also a concentration on linguistic awareness in the school system, just as there had been in the previous couple of years. Procedure At the time of the study, phonological and morphological approaches to linguistic awareness had been used in most preschool groups and in many classrooms for several years. This means that preschool teachers and schoolteachers had some experience helping the children to develop their linguistic awareness. The school administration and the school psychologists’ ofﬁce decided to offer courses about reading development and reading disabilities to all schools in the community. All schools were supposed to send a minimum of two teachers to a six-day course that extended throughout the school year. One of the teachers was to be responsible for the teaching of reading in grade 2 the following year. The course introduction took place when the children had reached the end of ﬁrst grade. In between lectures, the teachers attending the course were supposed to share what they had learned by giving lectures to their colleagues in their own schools, in addition to completing various types of homework assignments. The experimenter and speech therapists responsible for the training of the preschool teachers in Lyster’s 1995 training study were also responsible for lecturing and counselling. This kind of continuing education for teachers differed from the earlier practise, in that the amount of time devoted to continuing education was far more extensive than the one-day courses normally offered to the teachers during the school year. The agenda for the six-day course included many things, including new developments in literacy teaching, in the area of phonological and morphological awareness as well as other linguistic areas. Central dimensions in reading such as phonemic awareness, decoding, vocabulary, reading ﬂuency and reading comprehension strategies as well as, assessment and intervention were focused. The teachers also had different homework assignments.

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When the teachers had ﬁnished the continuing education courses, their students’ word reading and text reading comprehension were assessed. Measures of Assessment The only test used in Study 2 was Kartlegging av leseferdighet, 2.klasse [Assessment of Reading Ability, Second Grade] (Nasjonalt læremiddelsenter, 1995b). The test consists of seven different decoding and text reading tasks and was administered as a group test. Split-half reliabilities are reported to be from 0.97 to 0.74. Lowest reliabilities are reported for the text reading tasks and the instruction task. There was a time limit for all subtests. The subtests were constructed to uncover poor readers who need further assessment. The standardisation gives a cut-off point for all the subtests. This cut-off point leaves, for all subtests, approximately 20% of the children under what is decided to be critical limit. Results from the community where Study 2 took place show that they follow the results from the standardisation with very few and very small differences. The test battery consists of the following subtests: I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

Word–picture matching. This test was a word-decoding task consisting of 30 words. Each word was included in a box with a row of four pictures attached. The children had to silently read the printed words and mark the matching pictures. Picture–word matching. This task was the reverse of the ﬁrst one. Four words were attached to a picture. The children had to mark the word that matched the picture. The task consisted of 30 items. Analysing compound words. This test consisted of 20 compound words each made up of two root morphemes. The children’s task was to draw a line separating the two root morphemes. Sentence reading. This test consisted of 23 sentences. The children had to mark the one out of four attached pictures that matched each of the 23 sentences. Text reading A – cloze tasks. This task is a cloze task requiring the children to pick the correct word out of three given words in order to ﬁll in the gap in six different places in the text. Text reading B – answering questions. This test consisted of small multiple-choice comprehension questions with four possible answers for each question. The children’s task was to mark the correct answer. Following instructions. Ten different instructions were attached to a map or picture. The children’s task was to follow the instructions on the map using their pencil (e.g. draw a line from the school to the bank).

Reading Development and Reading Disabilities

Table 3.

47

Percentages of Children under Critical Limit. Results from the Innovation and from the Standardisation.

Measure

Word–picture matching Picture–word matching Analysing compound words Sentence reading Text A – cloze tasks Text B – answering questions Text C – following instructions

Number of Items and Maximum Score

Critical Limit

Percent of Students under Critical Limit

Percent of Students under Critical Limit in the 1998 Standardisation

30 30 20 23 6 5

14 15 9 13 2 1

8.3 15.5 12.2 10.2 9.2 9.2

20 19 20 21 20 18

10

7

12.2

20

According to the makers of the test, the school should consider further assessment if children

have scores under the critical limit with no apparent reason. The critical limit is chosen such that about 20% of the population is expected to have a score under that limit. The ﬁgures refer to the percentage of children under the critical limit in the standardisation. Following written instructions.

Results Table 3 shows the results on the different subtests for the entire population of 303 second graders in the community as well as the results from the standardisation population. The table shows that the percentage of students under the critical limit for all tests was much smaller than expected based on the standardisation. For many of the tests, the percentage of children at risk was less than 50% of what could be expected from the testing of 1,400 students in the standardisation procedures. The test was designed to ﬁnd children at risk, so no comparisons could be made in relation to the average and good readers.

Discussion The results in Study 2 must be interpreted with great care. There are many factors that could have caused the good results. It is possible that the sample of children was not representative for second-grade children in that their socio-economic background was not assessed. The children might also have

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had higher than average intelligence. However, since all second-grade classes in an entire community were involved, and since the number of subjects was large, the probability that these factors explain the results appears to be unlikely. The information from the Statistical Year Book, 1996, supports this interpretation. The best answer to and explanation of the good results in Study 2 is most likely explained by the extensive continuing education provided to both preschool teachers (separate courses) and primary school teachers in the area of linguistic awareness, reading and spelling development. If similar results are found in another grade 2 testing, this would provide support for that argument. This testing can take place when the one-year younger group of students become second graders. To achieve stable results over a period of years, however, it would be necessary to continue the continuing education of both preschool teachers and primary school teachers at various intervals. The best tool for preventing reading disability is teacher competence. The more a teacher knows about risk factors and how to prevent them from ﬂourishing, the better students will be supported through their various phases of development towards the achievement of adequate reading abilities. A post-test-only design with no control group and no pre-test is of course a weak design. When results from the samples of second-grade students from the three previous years in the same community, however, closely matches the standardisation results, the standardisation results indicate relatively clearly what results to expect from the present sample of children. The size of the sample also matches the sizes of the previous samples of second graders: approximately 300 students (see Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002, for discussions of post-test-only designs). On the whole, the results indicate that in-service education is important to ensure sustained implementation of new methods and student achievement. The report of the National Reading panel (2000) found little research, however, on how teachers can be supported over the long term and they state that much more must be known about the best ways to assess the effectiveness of teacher education and professional development. Teacher education in Finland is supposed to be qualitatively very good. Even if more factors than teacher education can explain, for example, the PISA and PIRLS results, teacher education in Finland is believed to make a difference (OECD, 2005). This interpretation is in accordance with the OECD (2005) understanding of the outstanding Finnish results from the PISA. Finland outperformed all other countries on the PISA reading tests in 2000 and 2003, despite Finland’s GDP per capita, ranking 17th out of 30 countries. The reading results in Finland are also not in accordance with

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Finland’s unemployment rate which is somewhat high by European standards (10%). The same high results for reading were uncovered in an earlier IEA study where Finnish 9-year-olds and 14-year-olds were ranked as the best readers in their age groups among the 28 and 32 countries that were studied (Elley, 1992). A partial explanation given by the OECD for these good results is the high quality of teacher training in Finland. Schoolteachers must have a university education with a Masters degree. At the moment, the teaching profession in Finland is the most popular occupation goal among upper secondary school students and there is a competitive selection process with only approximately 10% of applicants gaining entrance to teacher training programmes (OECD, 2005). Assisted by a mentor, student teachers in Finland are given experience in the classroom which provides the students with the ability to cope with a variety of classroom issues, even special education issues. Some of the examples given in the OECD report include the special needs of immigrant children and even more difﬁcult cases such as foetal alcohol syndrome and attention deﬁcit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Thus, Finnish teachers graduate from the university as independent professionals who are able to cope with a range of pedagogical and special needs issues. The special needs teachers in the schools also have the basic ﬁve-year university teacher training programme. In addition, they take a one-year course of study covering various learning problems and special education. Another explanation offered by the OECD for the unique PISA results in Finland is a series of practices that reinforce equality of outcomes, practices that could be more widely adopted in other countries. The OECD presented different strategies used by the Finnish school system to achieve equity. The ﬁrst line of attack against inequity is the individual teacher’s responsibility for identifying students who are falling behind their peers or grade norms. Teachers work with these students one-to-one as soon as they are identiﬁed. The second line of attack is the use of a teacher’s assistant who works under the teacher’s direction, and the third line of attack is the special needs teacher. In cooperation with the class teacher, the special needs teacher works one-to-one or in small groups with students who have not received sufﬁcient help from the ﬁrst two lines of attack. The special needs teacher concentrates on language (Finnish or Swedish) and on math. If a student’s weak progress is associated with wider home or social problems, a multidisciplinary team is used. This team consists of the class teacher, the special needs teacher, the school’s counsellor and several experts from outside the school. These approaches are thought to be among the main reasons for the Finnish school system’s ability to minimise the number of students falling

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behind their peers or grade norms. There is more time provided to keep struggling students on track and to help them maintain the same rate of progress as their peers. Other good explanations for these positive results may include the continuing educating of teachers as described in the above Study 2 and the concentration on the necessity of early intervention. Attention should be given to children who lag behind their peers within the area of linguistic awareness when they start school. If a child lags behind when learning the correspondence between sounds and letters, he or she should be given immediate intensive assistance. If automatisation of word decoding is not established at the expected time, the focus should be on helping the child to speed up word decoding through repeated reading exercises or other methods designed to aid the child to gain more ﬂuency in reading. During the year of the continuing education course described above, there was a focus on these strategies. It can easily be said that the results gained were worth far more than the initial investment. There were approximately 50% fewer children under the so-called critical score level than there were on previous assessments in the community. In addition, there were 50% fewer children under this critical level compared to the Norwegian norms. Caution must be exercised in interpreting results from a study using a post-test-only-design. This is a weak design if important variables are not kept under control. Previous results on the second-grade assessments, the national norm and the large group of students, however, lend support to the validity of the results and the possible direct effect on students reading achievement of educating the teachers. Since this teacher training included the emphasis on the need for immediate intervention when a child falls behind and the necessity of intensive training for many children, more than one component or variable may have had an impact on the results. However, as long as the approach on the whole has had its desired effect, the teacher training is the important factor when an approach like this is to be evaluated.

FUTURE CHALLENGES The Norwegian school reform of 1997 has not been a great success in the area of children’s literacy development. The evaluation of the reform has led to a range of initiatives from the Government and to yet another reform with a new curriculum. In this new curriculum, there is a somewhat clearer focus on benchmarks to be achieved. There is, however, little concentration on what to do when children fall behind their peers for no apparent reason.

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There is also little focus, if at all, on special needs education. Many ideas have been put forward to explain the relatively poor results on PISA, PIRLS and other assessments of reading achievement in Norway, but too little has been done to improve the quality of teacher education and to ensure that children who lag behind are helped in the early phases of their struggle. The Norwegian Government has provided grants for a large number of projects – the big question is whether these funds will be granted to projects that can give us new insight as to how poor achievers can best be helped to develop according to their potential. In the OECD report, Equity in Education – Thematic Review (Norway Country note, 2004a), the authors clearly state that Norway has a job to do in terms of equity. In the case of science literacy, for example, the report concludes clearly that Norway ‘‘performs rather poorly’’. In most reading achievement tests, Norway also shows a wider spread of outcomes than Finland, Sweden and many other OECD countries. Given that Norway is an advanced, rich country with a clear commitment to equity, such results are disappointing. Therefore, it is justiﬁable to ask if all the money that Norway invests in its school system is spent in a way that facilitates equity. The OECD (2004a) clearly points to weaknesses that should be addressed. One of the issues they focus is that ‘‘The time devoted to multicultural, bilingual and special education issues in teacher education should be increased’’. Another issue mentioned is that ‘‘y research should be undertaken into ways of supporting the early teaching of disadvantaged pupils in danger of underachieving’’. There is a lot of knowledge from international as well as Norwegian studies about the prevention of reading disabilities and about best practices for teaching reading to dyslexic and underachieving students (Hagtvet, 1996; Lyster, 1998; National Reading Panel, 2000; Torgesen, 1998; Torgesen et al., 2001). There is much knowledge to be found in the schools about linguistic awareness and how to integrate activities in this ﬁeld with the teaching of reading today. Some efforts have been taken to educate the teachers about the knowledge that has accumulated in the ﬁeld of reading the past decades. On the other hand, there have been disagreements as to how to provide the best support to children who fall behind. For a large group of special needs teachers and researchers, some approaches in the debate have been identiﬁed as very ideological. According to these ideologists, special needs education in a one-to-one situation or in smaller groups will lead to segregation and inequity (see Backmann & Haug, 2006). Such strategies designed to help children keep up with their peers are more damaging than anything else according to this group of ‘‘experts’’ – that is, experts from ﬁelds outside of special needs education. These ideas are very much in disagreement with the

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experiences from Finland where special needs education has one important goal in creating ‘‘an environment that brings out the best in students, and is surely part of the reason for the strong results of Finnish education’’ (OECD, 2005, p. 13). Norwegian school authorities should also closely examine other paragraphs about special needs education in the OECD report from 2004(c). The report about Finland states that the various approaches taken in Finland ‘‘to minimize students falling behind display two features: intensiﬁcation, or providing more time by more instructors; and alternative approaches (rather than ‘more of the same’), particularly in efforts of special needs teachers and the multidisciplinary teams’’ (p. 20). Students do not suffer exclusion from the social context in a school system because of special needs teaching in a one-to-one situation or in small groups for part of the school day or part of the week. More importantly, if intensive special needs education comes early enough, it may lead to a situation when the student does not need further special needs education. This may be very much the case for reading disabilities. Even if there is no quick ﬁx for dyslexia, severe dyslexics can reach their normal grade level if given proper special needs education. Many of these students will be permanently behind if they do not receive assistance from special needs teachers who are able to perform good assessments and develop well-adapted lesson plans and methods to tackle the dyslexic symptoms and develop good coping strategies for decoding and reading comprehension. Last but not least, some dyslexic students need such intensive reading practice over a period of time that the class teacher would have great difﬁculty fulﬁlling the student’s needs within the framework of the normal classroom. In the case of these students and others with special needs, Norwegian school authorities should look to Finland. To some extent they have done just that. There is a debate about extending the Norwegian teacher education to a ﬁve-year course of study at the Master level. On the other hand, the Finnish strategies against inequity and their methods for supporting children falling behind, seem to interest Norwegian school authorities less. The belief in a vision that all children can get support for their individual special needs within the framework of the normal classroom is so strong in some groups within the Norwegian school system that it may be a threat to some children who need to have some one-to-one lessons to keep up with their peers or with their own capabilities. Thus the greatest challenge in Norway within the ﬁeld of special needs education is to have the school system adopt more of the knowledge that has been accumulated about special needs education and especially to open up for more research about how special needs education can best be practiced and organised to keep children from falling behind and losing conﬁdence in their own learning progress.

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REFERENCES Arab-Moghaddam, N., & Se´ne´chal, M. (2001). Orthographic and phonological processing skills in reading and spelling in Persian/English bilinguals. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 25, 140–147. Backmann, K., & Haug, P. (2006). Forskning om tilpasset opplæring. Forskningsrapport nr. 62 [Research on adapted teaching. Research Report 62]. Volda: Høgskolen i Volda. Berko, J. (1958). The child’s learning of English morphology. Word, 14, 150–177. Bishop, D. V. M. (1997). Uncommon understanding. Development and disorders of language comprehension in children. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press. Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. (1983). Categorizing sounds and learning to read – a causal connection. Nature, 301, 419–421. Castiglioni-Spalten, M. L., & Ehri, L. C. (2003). Phonemic awareness instruction: Contribution of articulatory segmentation to novice beginners’ reading and spelling. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 25–52. Catts, H. W., Fey, M. E., Tomblin, J. B., & Zhang, X. (1999). Language basis of reading and reading disabilities. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3, 331–361. Cunningham, A. E. (1990). Explicit versus implicit instruction in phonemic awareness. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 50, 429–444. Elbro, C. (1990). Differences in dyslexia. Munksgaard, København. Elbro, C., & Arnbak, E. (1996). The role of morpheme recognition and morphologic awareness in dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 46, 209–240. Elley, W. (1992). How in the world do students read? Hague: The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement Headquarters. Gambrell, L. B., & Almasi, J. F. (Eds) (1996). Lively discussions. Fostering engaged reading. Newark, DL: International Reading Association. Gjessing, H. J. (1958). En studie av lesemodenhet ved skolegangens begynnelse [A study of reading readiness at school start]. Oslo: Cappelens forlag. Gjessing, H. J. (1968). Laerevansker og dysleksiforskning [Learning disabilities and dyslexia research]. Skandinavisk tidsskrift for lesepedagoger, 1. Hagtvet, B., Hagtvet, K., & Lyster, S. A. H. (2007). Connections between oral and written language skills within a longitudinal paradigm: Early precursors of language skills. Manuscript in preparation. Hagtvet, B., Helland, T., & Lyster, S. A. H. (2006). Literacy acquisition in Norwegian. In: R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aron (Eds), Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 15–29). Mahwah, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum Associates. Hagtvet, B., Horn, E., Lassen, L. M., Lauvaas, K., Lyster, S. A. H., & Misund, S. (1999). Developing literacy in families with histories of reading problems: Preliminary results from a longitudinal study of young children of dyslexic parents. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 14, 135–143. Hagtvet, B., & Lillestolen, R. (1985). Reynells spra˚ktest [Reynell developmental language scales]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Hagtvet, B., & Lyster, S. A. H. (1997). Literacy teaching in Norway. In: V. Edwards (Ed.), The encyclopedia of language and education (pp. 225–234). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Hagtvet, B., & Lyster, S. A. H. (2003). Spelling errors of good and poor decoders. In: N. Goulandris (Ed.), Dyslexia in different languages: Cross-linguistic comparisons (pp. 181–207). London: Whurr Publishers.

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Hagtvet, B. E. (1996). Fra tale til skrift. Om prediksjon og utvikling av leseferdighet i fire- til A˚ttea˚rsalderen [From the spoken to the written language. About prediction and development of reading competence from four to eight years of age]. Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk Forlag. Hagtvet, B. E. (2003). Skriftspra˚kstimulering i første klasse: Faglig innhold og didaktiske angrepsma˚ter [Stimulating literacy in grade 1: Subject content and didactics]. In: K. Klette (Ed.), Evaluering av reform 97 [Evaluating reform 97] (pp. 173–223). Oslo: UiO/Norges Forskningsra˚d. Hatcher, P., Hulme, C., & Ellis, A. (1994). Ameliorating early reading by integrating the teaching of reading and phonological skills: The phonological linkage hypothesis. Child Development, 65, 41–57. Henry, M. K. (1993). Morphological structure: Latin and Greek roots and afﬁxes as upper grade code strategies. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 5, 227–241. Leimar, U. (1974). La¨sning pa˚ talets grund [Reading based on the spoken language]. Stockholm: Liber. Lie, A. (1991). Effects of a training program for stimulating skills in word analysis in ﬁrst-grade children. Reading Research Quarterly, 26, 234–250. Lie, S., Kjærnsli, M., Roe, A., & Turmo, A. (2001). Godt rustet for framtida? Norske 15- a˚ringers kompetanse i lesing og realfag i et internasjonalt perspektiv. Oslo: Institutt for lærerutdanning og skoleutvikling/Universitetet i Oslo. Lundberg, I., Frost, J., & Petersen, O. (1988). Effects of an extensive program for stimulating phonological awareness in pre-school children. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 263–284. Lyster, S. A. H. (1995). Preventing reading and spelling failure: The effects of early intervention promoting metalinguistic abilities. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Oslo. Lyster, S. A. H. (1997). Spelling development and metalinguistic training before school entrance. The effects of different metalinguistic training on spelling development in ﬁrst grade. In: C. K. Leong & R. M. Joshi (Eds), Cross-language studies of learning to read and spell (pp. 305–330). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Lyster, S. A. H. (1998). Preventing reading failure: A follow-up study. Dyslexia, 4, 132–144. Lyster, S. A. H. (2002). The effects of morphological versus phonological awareness training in kindergarten on reading development. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 15, 261–294. Lyster, S. A. H., & Tingleff, H. (2002). Ringeriksmaterialet. Kartlegging av spra˚klig oppmerksomhet hos barn i alderen 5–7 a˚r [The Ringerike material. Testing children’s metalinguistic awareness in the age group 5–7 years]. Oslo: Damm forlag. Martin, F., Claydon, E., Morton, A., Binns, S., & Pratt, C. (2003). The development of orthographic and phonological strategies for decoding of words in children. Journal of Research in Reading, 26, 191–204. Nasjonalt læremiddelsenter (1995a). Kartlegging av leseferdighet, 6. klasse [Assessing reading abilities, sixth grade]. Oslo: Nasjonalt læremiddelsenter. Nasjonalt læremiddelsenter (1995b). Kartlegging av leseferdighet, 2. klasse [Assessing reading abilities, second grade]. Oslo: Nasjonalt læremiddelsenter. National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching children to read. An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Reports of the subgroups. Rockville, MD: NICHD Clearinghouse. OECD (2004a). Equity in education. Thematic review. Norway – country note. Paris: OECD.

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OECD (2004b). Learning for tomorrow’s world – first measures of cross curricular competencies from PISA 2003. Paris: OECD. OECD (2004c). Learning for tomorrow’s world. First results from PISA 2003. Paris: OECD. OECD (2005). Equity in education. Thematic review. Finland – country note. Paris: OECD. Olson, R., Kliegel, R., Davidson, B. J., & Foltz, G. (1985). Individual developmental differences in reading disability. In: T. G. Waller (Ed.), Reading research: Advances in theory and practice (Vol. 4, pp. 1–64). New York: Academic Press. Olson, R., Wise, B., Conners, F., & Rack, J. (1990). Organization, heritability, and remediation of component reading and language skills in disabled readers. In: T. H. Carr & B. A. Levy (Eds), Reading and its development (pp. 261–322). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Scarborough, H. S. (1990). Very early language deﬁcits in dyslexic children. Child Development, 61, 1728–1743. Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (2002). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin Company. Skjelfjord, V. J. (1976). Fonemlæring i skolen [Learning about phonemes in the school]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Skjelfjord, V. J. (1983). Analysetrening i leselæringen. Treningsprogram og lærerveiledning. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Skjelfjord, V. J. (1987). Phonemic segmentation. An important subskill in learning to read. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 31, 41–57. Smith, F. (1971). Understanding reading. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Smith, F. (1973). Psycholinguistics and reading. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Snowling, M. J., Gallagher, A., & Frith, U. (2003). Family risk of dyslexia is continous: Individual differences in the precursors of reading skill. Child Development, 74, 358–373. Spear-Swerling, L., & Sternberg, R. (1994). The road not taken: An integrative theoretical model of reading disability. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 27, 91–103 122. Tønnessen, F. E., & Solheim, R. (1998). Kartlegging av leseferdighet og lesevaner pa˚ 2. klassetrinn [Assessing reading and reading habits in grade 2]. Oslo: Kirke-utdannings og forskningsdepartementet. Torgesen, J. K. (1998). Catch them before they fall. American Educator, 22, 32–39. Torgesen, J. K., Rashotte, C. A., & Alexander, A,W. (2001). Principles of ﬂuency instruction in reading: Relationships with established empirical outcomes. In: M. Wolf (Ed.), Dyslexia, fluency and the brain (pp. 333–355). Timonium, MD: York Press. Tornes, J. (1968). Standpunktprøver I skolen. Matematikk. 1., 2. og 3. klasse [Standardised tests in the school. Mathematics. Grade 1, 2, and 3]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Torne`us, M. (1987). The importance of metaphonological and metamorphological abilities for different phases of reading development. Paper presented at the 3rd World Congress on Dyslexia, Crete. Treiman, R., & Cassar, M. (1997). Spelling acquisition in English. In: C. A. Perfetti., L. Rieben & M. Fayol (Eds), Learning to spell (pp. 61–80). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Wise, B. W., Ring, J., & Olson, R. K. (1999). Training phonological awareness with and without explicit attention to articulation. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 72, 271–304.

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ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON STUDENT BEHAVIOUR: WHY TEACHERS IN TRAINING NEED TO SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE Julian G. Elliott ABSTRACT Reforms to teacher training in England, undertaken in the 1990s, significantly increased the proportion of time that student teachers spent in classrooms engaged in ‘on the job’ training. While this provides greater opportunity for students to develop practical knowledge, there is an inherent danger that an undue preoccupation with the development of ‘survival skills’ will reduce the fostering of broader and deeper understandings about the role of important historical, sociological and cultural factors upon children’s motivation, behaviour and learning. This chapter draws upon a number of comparative international studies, particularly in Russia and the US, to illustrate the benefits of an ecosystemic analysis of human behaviour in which student behaviour is considered, not only in terms of everyday school-based practices, but also in relation to broader social, economic and historical factors.

International Perspectives Advances in Learning and Behavioral Disabilities, Volume 20, 57–77 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0735-004X/doi:10.1016/S0735-004X(07)20003-5

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The reforms to teacher training undertaken in the 1990s, in both England and the United States, reﬂected recognition that student teachers’ professional learning was often maximised when undertaken within a speciﬁc school context (Wang & Odell, 2002). Courses in university departments were widely perceived to be overly theoretical and unrelated to the more basic day-to-day needs of novice teachers. As a result, a variety of different training models have sprung up, with differing degrees of theoretical input, yet common to all is the fact that substantial student time is based in schools where students are given opportunities to observe highly skilled (and sometimes less skilled) practitioners and consider the operation of various strategies and approaches. To some extent there can be a tension between the aims of teacher educators and teachers in training. While the former may have uppermost in their minds the model of the reﬂective practitioner who can draw upon theoretical knowledge to inform practice, and vice versa (Wilson, Floden, & Ferrini-Mundy, 2001), for many student teachers, the most pressing concern, quite understandably, is to develop broad survival skills (Holligan, 1997). To some extent, student teachers confronted by children exhibiting a wide range of learning and behaviour difﬁculties may be particularly attracted by a form of training in which the provision of survivalist knowledge and approaches is paramount. However, beyond the inculcation and development of basic skills, issues concerning the education of those with special educational needs, like many others in education, often require a deeper conceptual and theoretical examination that has not always been forthcoming on initial teacher education (preparation) programmes (Garner, 1995). While examining the management of student behaviour in the context of a school may provide many ideas for practice, this may not help broader understandings to emerge. A central thrust of current English educational initiatives geared to improving children’s behaviour is that these must be considered, not in isolation, but rather in terms of learning more generally. In our various writings on student motivation and engagement (e.g., Hufton, Elliott, & Illushin, 2002b; Elliott, Hufton, Willis, & Illushin, 2005), we have argued that one needs to look outside one’s immediate context so that a more complete picture of human behaviour and dynamics emerges. Our theoretical approach has been guided by the work of Bronfenbrenner (1979) who contends that to understand development, one needs to consider all layers of the ecosystem, from the individual, the classroom, the home, the local and national community, through to the broader sociohistorical context. Within the ﬁeld of work with children with emotional and behavioural difﬁculties, such an approach has been highlighted by Cooper and Upton

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(1990) and Sellman, Bedward, Cole, and Daniels (2002) as one way to provide more sophisticated analyses of problematic behaviour than simple within-child explanations. Even this approach may lack comprehensiveness if analysis focuses solely upon one’s own ‘system’. Rather, it may only be by looking at the ecosystems of other cultures, in comparative mode, that we can gain the most complete understanding of ourselves. In this paper, I seek to draw upon certain socialisation practices in two countries, the US and Russia, to illustrate the powerful effects of broader factors upon children’s behaviour. I argue, that such analyses are important for teachers whose focus upon the salient issues of the immediate context, in particular, simple ‘cause-effect’ interactions between teachers and students, may obscure recognition of more profound and deep-seated inﬂuences (historical, cultural and social) upon behaviour and learning. Such a narrowness of perspective may be particularly problematic for student teachers, such as those in England, whose concern for daily professional survival and the appropriation of simplistic cause-effect understandings is less tempered by academic theorising and reﬂection than was the case prior to the arrival of school-based training in the early 1990s.

INTERNATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOUR IN SCHOOL International visitors to schools around the world would almost inevitably conclude that a widespread belief that children’s behaviour is deteriorating is far from unique to English contexts. Irrespective of the country, teachers everywhere seem to express dissatisfaction with standards of discipline that are believed to compare poorly with those of previous generations. Often, it is considered that the reasons for this lie in a shift of societal standards about what is deemed to be appropriate behaviour and the perceived rights of authority ﬁgures (teachers, police and the like) to seek compliance. It should be recognised that here we are largely talking about subjective perceptions that are greatly inﬂuenced by localised normative understandings. Thus, even within a given community, what constitutes ‘problem’ behaviour may differ greatly from school to school (and even from teacher to teacher). Thus, while concern about perceived increase in misbehaviour may be a universal phenomenon, we cannot easily make judgements as to its nature across contexts and cultures. Nevertheless, from the evidence available, it would appear that there remain signiﬁcant differences in absolute behaviour across countries.

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Comparative work that has examined student attitudes and behaviour ranges from very large-scale surveys [Third International Maths and Science Study, (TIMSS), Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Progress in International Reading Study (PIRLS)] to detailed examination of a small number of countries (Alexander, 2000; Elliott et al., 2005). More recently, large-scale studies have moved away from a relatively narrow focus upon academic achievement to consideration of various attitudinal and behavioural factors that are considered to play an inﬂuential role. A recent large-scale study, PISA 2003 (OECD, 2004) for example, involved more than a quarter of a million 15-year-olds from the 30 OECD member countries and a further 11 countries, including the Russian Federation. The primary focus was upon mathematics performance, surveys of student selfreports about their motivation, attitudes, self-related beliefs and disciplinary climate, together with data collected from teachers and school principals. In examining children’s views of disciplinary climate in mathematics lessons, it is instructive that, in common with an earlier PISA study, conducted in 2000 (OECD, 2003), students in the Russian Federation reported behavioural standards highly conducive to academic activity. Thus, of the 41 countries studied, Russian children, after those from Macao-China, were the least likely to report lessons in which there was noise and disorder, least likely (tying with Japan) to state that students do not start working for a long time after the lesson begins, and, third behind Macao-China and Japan, in stating that teachers did not have to wait long for students to quiet down. On the other two ‘disciplinary climate’ measures, concerning the extent to which students listened to their teachers, and the extent to which they could or could not work well, Russian students also featured as among the most studious youngsters. Perhaps surprisingly, students from the United States reported a disciplinary climate slightly superior to the OECD average. Of course, perceptions as to what constitutes a good disciplinary climate will be subject to local norms and expectations. Like that of the Russian respondents, the US position reﬂects views obtained for PISA 2000 (OECD, 2003). (Note: The response rate from the United Kingdom was insufﬁcient for inclusion for the PISA 2003 analysis. For PISA 2000, UK scores for disciplinary climate were similar to those of the US.) Figs. 1 and 2 illustrate ﬁndings from a number of participating countries. These ﬁndings reﬂect those of other contemporary researchers (e.g., Muckle, 1990; Glowka, 1995; O’Brien, 2000; Alexander, 2000; Laihiala-Kainkainen, 1998). The presence of high levels of discipline and behaviour can be traced back through many generations of Russian schoolchildren. In his many

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Fig. 1. Percentage of Students in Schools Where School Principals Agree or Strongly Agree that Disruption of Classes by Students Hinders Learning. Source: OECD (2003).

observations in Russian schools, 40 years ago, Bronfenbrenner was struck by the positive behaviour of most Soviet youngsters: In their external actions, they are well-mannered, attentive, and industrious. In informal conversations, they reveal a strong motivation to learn, a readiness to serve their society, and – in general – ironically enough for a culture committed to a materialistic philosophy, what can only be described as an idealistic attitude towards life. In keeping with this general orientation, relationships with parents, teachers and upbringers are those of respectful but affectionate friendship. The discipline of the collective is accepted and regarded as justiﬁed, even when severe as judged by Western standards y it is apparent that instances of aggressiveness, violation of rules, or other antisocial behaviour are genuinely rare. (Extract from Research Report at the 1963 International Congress of Psychology, reproduced in Bronfenbrenner, 1970, p. 76)

Our own research in St. Petersburg (Elliott, Hufton, Hildreth, & Illushin, 1999, 2001; Hufton, Elliott, & Illushin, 2002a) indicated behaviour and peer

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Percentage of Students Reporting Negative Behaviours in Every, or in Most of, Their Mathematics Lessons. Source: OECD (2003).

relationships that strongly echoed those described in Bronfenbrenner’s studies of a very different world operating some three decades earlier. In our observations of multiple classrooms in St. Petersburg, behaviour in class and around the school was overwhelmingly positive and the students we interviewed, both formally (Hufton et al., 2002a) and in corridor conversations, presented accounts in which they were actively pro-learning, prostudy and in which they shared precepts of propriety and due behaviour with the teacher. Where we observed a small proportion of children in class who were seemingly less motivated and engaged than their peers, their typical response was more likely to be cognitive withdrawal than disruption,

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a distinction similarly noted by Glowka (1995) in a comparative study of German and Russian students. There is some evidence to suggest that the Russian tradition does not sit easily with changing beliefs in that country about student–teacher relationships. Thus in PISA 2003, a series of questions to school principals (headteachers) about teacher-related factors affecting the general school climate resulted in a more negative picture. Russian principals were second, only to those of Indonesia, in reporting that excessive strictness on the part of teachers was proving detrimental to student learning. Also, rather surprisingly, given contrasting reports from other sources (e.g., Alexander, 2000), poor student–teacher relations were also seen as more problematic than in most other countries. Again, US ﬁgures were much nearer to the OECD average. However, in the US excessive strictness was not seen as problematic. A puzzling phenomenon results from examination of principals’ views concerning students workrates and attitudes to education. A mere 57% of the Russian students involved were considered to work with enthusiasm (compared with 89% in the US and an OECD average of 73%), yet 98% were perceived to value the education they received in the school (US 94%, OECD average 87%) and 97% were seen to take pride in their school (US 95%, OECD 86%). Interestingly, students in the US were far more likely to state that they often felt bored in school (61% US, 27% Russia, OECD average 48%) (Source: OECD, 2002, p. 330). From these ﬁgures, a picture emerges of Russian students who are comparatively well-behaved, who complain less of being bored, who value education, yet who, counter to many accounts, tend to be perceived by teachers as working with lower levels of enthusiasm than is reported in US comparisons. Cross-cultural differences are immensely difﬁcult to examine or reconcile where self-reports are the primary source of information. As my colleagues and I have illustrated in our various researches, student and teacher perceptions can vary greatly both within and across cultures (Elliott, Hufton, Illushin, & Lauchlan, 2001; Hufton, Elliott, & Illushin, 2003). In a study of 10-year-olds in St. Petersburg, Russia, Kentucky, USA and Sunderland (Elliott et al., 2001), we asked teachers to rate the behaviour of the children in their classes on a 5-point scale. We then compared this information with the perspectives of the same children who were asked to rate the behaviour exhibited in their class. It was then possible to compare student and teacher perceptions (see Fig. 3). Findings indicated that in all three locations, teachers were generally positive about the behaviour of their students. The least positive were the Russian teachers. When examining the views of the students, however,

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Teacher and Child Ratings of Classroom Behaviour. Originally published by Taylor and Francis. (Source: Elliott et al., 2001a, Reprinted by Permission from the Publisher, See http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals).

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a striking difference of opinion with that of the teachers emerged. As Fig. 3 shows, Sunderland and Kentucky students saw the presence of disruptive behaviour as being far more common than did their St. Petersburg peers. This ﬁnding echoed that obtained in an earlier study of adolescents in the same locations (Elliott et al., 1999). In our attempts to make sense of the fact that Russian teachers were less positive about their students’ behaviour than might be anticipated (cf. Elliott et al., 2005), we have suggested that their expectations appear to be higher than their US and English counterparts. However, the picture obtained across surveys is not always consistent, even when the same grouping is concerned (teachers, parents or students). For example, in contrast to the relatively positive PISA account of US classrooms, another large-scale study TIMSS produced ﬁndings indicating that teachers in the US were twice as likely as those in the Russian Federation to report that their teaching was extensively limited by students’ disruptive behaviours. The Russian ﬁgure (21%) was the fourth lowest of 37 countries reported (see Akiba, LeTendre, Baker, & Goesling, 2002). However, there is some external evidence to support the potentially subjective concerns of American teachers. Videotaped studies of eighth-grade classrooms, undertaken as part of the TIMSS study, showed that, in comparison with Japanese and German classrooms, lessons in the US were frequently interrupted and subject to distraction (Martin & Mullis, 2000).

SOCIALISATION PRACTICES AND STUDENT BEHAVIOUR Given that there appears to be a convincing, meaningful long-standing difference in general classroom behaviour between children in the United States and Russia, it may prove helpful, even to help us understand the workings of our own culture, to examine potentially important explanatory factors. In this paper, I argue that, key to this, are early socialisation practices and experiences. In his classic study of childhood socialisation in the US and the Soviet Union, Bronfenbrenner (1970) describes the ways by which early socialisation experiences impacted upon later behaviour. Between the ages of three and six years, most young children left their home for supervised group activities. As part of these, children learned how to cooperate, to subjugate their own desires to those of the group, and to defer to the authority of adults (Tudge, 1991). This was often a far from a negative experience as

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many children beneﬁted greatly from the warm, nurturing and caring environment that these settings usually provided (Markowitz, 2000). Formal schooling in Russia commences at the age of seven. Having absorbed and internalised the importance of deferring to the needs of the group, Soviet children learned patriotic songs and stories that would underpin both their education and moral upbringing (Markowitz, 2000). For any who found it difﬁcult to accept the behavioural standards expected, the threat of exclusion from youth groups, the Octobrists, and later, the Pioneers, was both real and potent. In general, however, most children were accepted into these organisations, albeit after several recruiting rounds, yet clearly, the threat was still meaningful and inﬂuential. Soviet children learned the importance of accepting adult authority. In Markowitz’s ethnographic study of teenagers in the 1990s, it is noted that many informants spoke using the passive tense. Markowitz suggests that this reﬂects the general sense of powerless felt by young people during the Soviet period: Children learned to be passive recipients of what their elders doled out, and parents in all but the most exceptional cases were in complicity with teachers and the school administration y . Parents knew from experience that if their children were to rebel against the order of things they would risk the worst punishment of all – exclusion from the only game in town. In the main, however, it did not often occur to anyone to rebel. (Markowitz, 2000, p. 50)

Such an adherence to imposed authority, which may explain the tendency of less motivated students generally to withdraw rather than overtly challenge, does not sit lightly within Anglo-American societies. Yet even in cultures that place a premium upon individualism, individual autonomy and selfdetermination, teachers need to impose discipline and avoid the anarchy that would result from a free for all. In his ﬁve nation study of primary education, Alexander (2000) describes the tensions evident in the US where student autonomy and empowerment are highly valued, yet these ideals became problematic as teachers sought to maintain order and discipline. Across the ﬁve countries studies – England, US, Russia, France and India, Alexander found particularly strong contrast between the US and Russia. In the one context the substantive messages about the nature of knowledge, teaching and learning and about behavioural norms and expectations were unambiguous yet also – bar the occasional brief reminder – tacit; in the other context they were the subject of frequent reminders by the teacher and often intense encounters ranging from negotiation to confrontation. (2000, p. 318)

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Alexander (2004) writes of the tensions he found in American schools where teachers often promoted values that seemed to be in opposition, selffulﬁlment and altruism, consumerism and environmentalism, cooperation and competition, while, in the wider US, a strong sense of communal commitment was at odds with ‘rampant’ individualism. These tensions were manifested not only in formal education goals, but also in the everyday discourse and actions of both students and teachers. As Bronfenbrenner wrote in 1992, ‘‘We Americans are all the descendants of those who couldn’t stand authority, and of those whom authority couldn’t stand’’ (p. 288). Peer Influences – for Better or Worse An important element of Bronfenbrenner’s (1970) account was geared to examination of differing peer inﬂuences in the two cultures. The workings of these are increasingly being highlighted by researchers (Steinberg, 1996; Harris, 1995, 1998; Bishop, 2004) although consideration has been rendered more complex by the multiple types of peer grouping that exist – from oneto-one relationships to small cliques, through to an entire age cohort (Brown, Steinberg, Mounts, & Philipp, 1990). Research suggests that each of these will impact upon student behaviour in school: immediate, close friends (Berndt & Keefe, 1996), broader friendship groupings (Wentzel & Caldwell, 1997) and the larger social group (Kindermann, 1993), although these may have differing forms of inﬂuence. Sage and Kindermann (1999), for example, suggest that friends will have more bearing upon socioemotional and personal identity development, whereas wider peer networks may exert greater inﬂuence upon classroom behaviour. On the basis of both his observations in the Soviet Union, and a series of experiments, Bronfenbrenner argued that the high standards of student behaviour (with few instances of aggression, violation of rules or other forms of anti-social behaviour) were sustained, in large part by the emphasis upon the collective, whereby students felt responsibility for supporting adults. Thus, Not only does the peer group in the U.S.S.R. act to support behaviour consistent with the values of the adult society, but it also succeeds in introducing its members to take personal initiative and responsibility for developing and retaining such behaviour in others. (2005, p. 228)

Such behaviour contrasted strongly with that in the US. In one comparative study, Bronfenbrenner (1967) found that Russian 12-year-olds were more resistant than Americans to promptings to engage in anti-social behaviour and more responsive to adult standards of behaviour. While Russian peers

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exerted inﬂuence in support of such standards, American peers were more likely to encourage deviance from adult norms. While this was particularly true for Russian girls (see also Muckle, 1998), Bronfenbrenner found that boys were also more adult oriented than their counterparts in the other countries that he and his research team studied. Some three decades later, we similarly found Russian students reporting that their classmates exerted pressures in a pro-social fashion: that is, their peers tended to increase the likelihood that they would work hard in school, and resist the temptation to misbehave (Elliott et al., 1999, 2001). Bronfenbrenner (1967) argues that children are more likely to be inﬂuenced by other young people to reject adult values and ministrations where the peer group is highly autonomous and separated from the adult world. In the Soviet Union, the strong emphasis within the education process upon upbringing, ‘vospitanie’ and the use of the collective, resulted in the harnessing of powerful peer group inﬂuences that supported and maintained existing adult values and objectives. The role of the peer group in the Soviet Union, was not, as in the US, left mainly to chance but rather, was the ‘result of explicit policy and practice’ (p. 206) whereby the peer group was used as an agent of socialisation geared to encouraging identiﬁcation with societal values. In an intriguing account, Bronfenbrenner (1970) highlights the systematic attention to detail that prevailed in the Soviet Union. To illustrate, he draws from a manual written for teachers and Pioneer leaders that provides direct guidance on appropriate procedures. Here there exist elements of both competition and collaboration. Addressing the children’s very ﬁrst day in school, for example, the manual notes that instructing them to ‘All sit straight’ does not ‘reach the sensibilities of the pupils and does not activate them’. Rather, the teacher should say, ‘Let’s see which row can sit the straightest’ as it has a number of psychological advantages. The children not only try to do everything as well as possible themselves, but also take an evaluative attitude towards those who are undermining the achievement of the row. If similar measures arousing the spirit of competition in the children are systematically applied by experienced teachers in the primary classes, then gradually the children themselves begin to monitor the behavior of their comrades and remind those of them who forget about the rules set by the teacher, not to forget what needs to be done and what should not be done. The teacher soon has helpers. (Novikova, 1959, cited in Bronfenbrenner, 1970, p. 55)

While the phrasing that the teacher is recommended to use here would not be dissimilar to that observable in Western contexts, it is the deliberate and systemic emphasis upon positive peer relationships that renders its meaning

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very different. Bronfenbrenner goes on to describe the ways by which the power of the collective is utilised. Although the teacher is initially key in setting and maintaining standards, gradually the children are encouraged to take on monitorial roles. In the ﬁrst grade of primary school, monitors have responsibility for recording teacher evaluations; during the second grade, they are taught to make the evaluations themselves. In the third grade, they are taught to make criticisms publicly. But, more importantly, the children are asked to see if they can enter into competition with the monitors to highlight their own areas for improvement. For some Westerners, this may seem like an Orwellian exercise in mind control; for others it may be construed as a powerful means of inducing self-regulation and self-discipline. A consistent theme in American writings concerns the subtle inﬂuence peers exert to undermine student motivation and behaviour (Howley, Howley, & Pendarvis, 1995; Steinberg, 1996). In many US schools, the key pressure is to avoid to be seen to be trying too hard or with too much enthusiasm. Interestingly, academic success generally appears to be acceptable within the peer group as long as it is achieved relatively effortlessly (Damon, 1995; Cheney, 1993). As Bishop (2004) points out, the purpose of harassing high achievers is not to punish them for being ‘smart’ but, rather, to discourage study effort. Akerlof and Kranton (2002) suggest that a student’s primary motivation in school involves the desire to attain an acceptable public identity – one that helps them ﬁt into a high status ‘crowd’. Rarely does this lead to a prolearning stance. Indeed, increasingly detached from home and parental inﬂuence, and resistant to teachers’ strictures, the emergence of adolescent culture in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in many US schools becoming ‘‘... one of the most potent breeding grounds of alienation in American society’’ (Bronfenbrenner, 1974, p. 60). It is hard to argue that this situation has been transformed in the intervening three decades. High-status adolescent groupings (jocks, burnouts, party animals, etc.) often have values and codes of conduct that run counter to teacher desires. Achieving and maintaining the right image is paramount, even if this ultimately undermines academic achievement (Covington, 1992). This attitude is neatly illustrated in an interview with one of our Kentucky informants who refers to his classmates: I think it’s part of their image, they’re just trying to be like they don’t care. They don’t want anybody to know that they’re like, some of them, really smart, they just don’t try; so they try to hide this image, like they’re too cool to get good grades or whatever. (Elliott et al., 2005, p. 122)

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Such a phenomenon was largely absent in the Soviet Union where highstatus student groupings were predominantly engineered by adults who acted as gatekeepers to prestigious organisations. When we conducted our interviews in St. Petersburg in the mid-to-late1990s, children’s socialising experiences were no longer heavily underpinned by Soviet ideology or by organised groupings such as the Pioneers. Nevertheless, an adolescent counter-culture in school was still not salient and there is some evidence that orientation to the family continues to be comparatively strong (Stetsenko, 2002). In relation to scholastic performance, high-achieving students were still generally admired and respected (as long as they exhibited desirable personal qualities such as modesty and generosity towards their peers). I think that how a person is studying is less important than what sort of person he is. How he treats others, what sort of relationships he has y The most important thing is that he doesn’t become snobbish. I think that the pupils who have a sort of ‘brain’, who think well are the popular and attractive ones. y They are respected for their cleverness. If a bright student is a nice person, not a snobby one, why should we treat him badly? I respect those who work hard and do well. In our class, there is no envy, we feel positively about (hard-working) students. (Elliott et al., 2005, p. 124)

Successful students in Kentucky ran the risk of being labelled as ‘nerds’ – a term that opens the door to unpopularity and harassment (Bishop, 2004). To avoid such a charge, the high achiever had to show not only a casual approach to academic endeavour, but also a predilection to engage in a full range of other typical teenage activities. While the mass media often focus on the ‘untractable’ problems of American inner city schools, the reality is that students from more advantaged communities are also subject to powerful social pressures to resist the efforts of their teachers. Thus, despite the presence of fewer disruptive students in middle-class schools, peer support for academic disengagement is similarly a common phenomenon. The adolescent peer culture in [middle class] America demeans academic success and scorns students who try to do well in school y . Less than 5 percent of all students are members of a high-achieving crowd that deﬁnes itself mainly on the basis of academic excellence y . Of all the crowds, the brains were the least happy with who they are – nearly half wished they were in a different crowd. (Steinberg, 1996, pp. 145–146)

Our cross-cultural researches (Elliott et al., 2005) supported Bronfenbrenner’s (1967) observation that the autonomy of the American adolescent group, and its separation from the world of adults led to greater resistance to the

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strictures of parents and teachers than was the case in the Soviet Union. If our teenage informants in St. Petersburg were inﬂuenced by any wider adolescent peer culture, it had not so far, at least on the basis of their interview statements, impacted on their response to schooling. In both Sunderland and Kentucky, however, we found students far more involved in an out of school youth culture. Not only did this reduce students’ commitment to homework, but through its emphases upon youth icons, fashion, consumer activity and recreation, it also widened the gap between teachers and students. While the American high schools provided a range of out of school activities, many centring upon competitive sports, these appeared to have little positive bearing upon academic life. Indeed, at times, the emphasis appeared to be more negative as the broad programme of activities sometimes ate into the academic programme and, through the student and adult preoccupations that resulted, subtly reduced the perceived importance of scholastic achievement.

Historical Influences It is important for all educators (not merely student teachers) to recognise the twin inﬂuences of sociohistorical and contemporary factors upon student behaviour. In gaining a more sophisticated understanding, we should realise that behaviour may, in part, be a reﬂection of longstanding traditions and social mores that may stretch back for multiple generations. In a fascinating account of the origins of anti-social behaviour in the dockland region of South-East London, for example, Robson (2000) shows that, contrary to the twin scapegoats – 1960s liberalism and 1980s anomie resulting from socioeconomic marginalisation – authorised transgression, in the form of excess raucousness, disorder and drunkenness had been a particular feature of this community for many centuries. In a detailed review (Elliott et al., 2005), we show that the origins of motivational difﬁculties on the part of many American students can be traced back through 200 years of regional and national history. In Kentucky, strong traditions of personal freedom, local democracy and resentment of taxation, combined with fears about the effect of education upon the community’s young resulted in ambivalence towards formal education. Too much education (beyond teaching of the basics) was seen by some as taking children away from their responsibilities to assist the family in carrying out chores and might ultimately lead the youngster to feel superior to other members of the family, a charge of ‘... going beyond yer raisin’.

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Perfectly capturing these traditional beliefs, one informant told us, ‘‘Don’t do you to learn all this bunch of gunk, you know you, all you need to learn is to read and write’’ (Elliott et al., 2005, p. 114). Elliott et al. (2005) point out that factors militating against student engagement in US schools exist both within peer networks and beyond. Unlike Russia, where being educated (cultured) is generally something that is a source of great pride throughout society, in the United States, antiintellectualism has long been a feature of many sectors of society (Howley et al., 1995). At around the same time that Bronfenbrenner was ﬁrst visiting Soviet schools, Coleman (1961) was noting that in American high schools, social and sporting success often represented the pinnacle of achievement. Coleman’s work led him to conclude that important attitudes about the relative importance of schooling appeared to originate not from within the adolescent subculture but, rather, from students’ socialising experiences within the wider community. Thus students were inﬂuenced by the community’s commitment to non-intellectual high school activities (e.g., participation in football or cheerleading). As in Russia, such messages carry on through succeeding generations (see Hufton & Elliott, 2000, for an examination of Russian continuity and stability in school life). The notion that low teacher expectations are explanatory causal factors in understanding poor motivation and behaviour reﬂects a poverty of understanding of the complex interaction between societal (and subcultural) perspectives and school practices. Thus, low expectations may be as much a coping strategy as a cause of underachievement. To illustrate, one way by which some US teachers have sought to minimise disruption from uninterested students is to draw up an ‘implicit bargain’ (Sedlak, Wheeler, Pullin, & Cusick, 1986). Here, teachers and students arrive at an unspoken agreement that few heavy academic demands will be made in return for an acceptable level of compliance. Where demands are low, such a bargain can include the following essential features: y relatively little concern for academic content; a willingness to tolerate, if not encourage, diversion from the speciﬁed knowledge to be presented or discussed; the substitution of genial banter and conversation for concentrated academic exercises; improvisational instructional adaptation to student preference for or indifference towards speciﬁc subject matter or pedagogical techniques; the ‘negotiation’ of class content, assignments, and standards; and a high degree of teacher autonomy in managing the level of academic engagement, personal interaction, and course content. (Sedlak et al., 1986, p. 7)

While this point is certainly not made in order to legitimise unchallenging, undemanding teaching situations, it is important that student teachers

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understand why and how such practices may be derived and nurtured. In some contexts, low expectations and demands are less a reﬂection of teacher indolence than of a search for ‘survival’ strategies. In my opinion, it is only when this more complex picture is understood and acknowledged that attempts to raise the level of demand are likely to prove productive.

Contemporary Influences ‘‘The individual’s own developmental life course is seen as embedded in and powerfully shaped by conditions and events occurring during the historical period through which the person lives’’ (Bronfenbrenner, 1995, p. 641). While being sensitive to traditional beliefs and mores, student teachers need similarly to be cognisant of contemporaneous pressures that are likely to inﬂuence young people in ways counter to those of previous generations. This interaction between the historical and the contemporary can be highlighted by examination of Russian education during the past decade. As we write elsewhere in greater detail (Elliott & Hufton, 2003; Elliott et al., 2005), radical social and economic transformation in Russian society resulted in many challenges for teachers eager to ensure that children’s orientation towards learning was maintained. During the time of our research studies, in the mid-1990s, societal transformation had appeared to have very little impact upon the education orientations of the young people with whom we worked. At this time it appeared that Russian schools were operating as havens that, during the school day, at least, isolated students (and to some extent, teachers) from the stressors and dislocation experienced in the wider world (Hufton & Elliott, 2000; Alexander, 2000). Yet school walls could only keep out such forces for a ﬁnite period, and increasingly during the late 1990s, commentators expressed alarm at the impact of societal transformation upon young people’s attitudes, values and behaviour. y the desanctiﬁcation of attitudes toward the world and society, the decline of the ideal, exalted, romantic aspect of life, have been accompanied by its banaliﬁcation, rendering it more bourgeois and susceptible to the laws of the market, converting it into a commodity. The old symbols and imagery, which expressed lofty and oftentimes unattainable ideals are being turned into products of mass spiritual assimilation – but an assimilation that is illusory, limited to audio-visual familiarity. Ideals are being turned into products of mass spiritual consumption rather than assimilation. (Erasov, 1994, p. 217)

As individualism took over from collectivism, instrumentality replaced socialist ideals, and the economic disparity between the majority of the people and visibly afﬂuent ‘New Russians’ increased, the intrinsic value of

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education as an end in itself began to be questioned by students who increasing sought to position themselves more favourably in their rapidly changing world. For some, education became an economic commodity more similar to that of Western societies – a means to gain access to high paying employment in banking, law and commerce. In addition, structural changes in educational provision fuelled such attitudinal change. A massive proliferation of specialist schools, that cater for more able, or more wealthy, students, resulted in the demoralisation of young people and teachers in other, often impoverished, under-resourced schools and, seemingly, this contributed to the rise of an alienated student underclass, many of whom dropped out of schooling altogether. To observe the inﬂuence of growing instrumentality and individualism, the increasing tendency for adolescents to be critical of their teachers (Iartsev, 2000), the growth of powerful peer cultures and the concomitant decline of adult inﬂuence (Sergeev, 1999) and the physical or intellectual withdrawal of a signiﬁcant minority of students from schooling, is to witness some of the problems of the Western world being superimposed upon a very different culture and very different traditions. By observing such phenomena, student teachers in Britain and elsewhere may gain greater understanding of their own educational context and culture.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have argued that the strength of ‘on the job’ teacher training in relation to the inculcation of managerial and professional skills may, paradoxically also be its weakness. Increased time in classrooms provides valuable opportunities for students to observe and practise a range of procedures and skills, and to consider their differential impact in relation to different groups, classes and schools. However, an overly narrow concentration upon student teachers’ immediate contexts may undermine the development of meaningful understandings about social, historical and cultural factors that play a signiﬁcant part in contemporary school dynamics. Such latter considerations may be perceived as overly theoretical and an unnecessary luxury when pressure upon training time is so great, but this represents, in my opinion, a failure to understand that teachers need wisdom as well as techniques. In framing my argument I have drawn upon two very different cultures, Russia and the US to demonstrate the importance of utilising an ecosystemic analysis of human development and behaviour. Children’s behaviour

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in school is not merely a consequence of within-child, teacher and whole school factors, but, rather, it reﬂects and reproduces important forces in contemporary society, which, in turn are inﬂuenced by our history and traditional values. It is to be hoped that student teachers will appreciate that professionalism involves understanding the ‘big picture’ as well as the acquisition of practical teaching skills.

REFERENCES Akerlof, G., & Kranton, R. (2002). Identity and schooling: Some lessons for the economics of schooling. Journal of Economic Literature, 40, 1167–1201. Akiba, M., LeTendre, G. K., Baker, D. P., & Goesling, B. (2002). Student victimization: National and school system effects on school violence in 37 nations. American Educational Research Journal, 39, 829–853. Alexander, R. (2000). Culture and pedagogy: International comparisons in primary education. Oxford: Blackwell. Alexander, R. (2004). L’apprentisage, la civilite´ et la culture: Perspectives internationals [Learning, behaviour and culture: International perspectives]. Paper presented at the third DESCO Conference (2003), Paris. Reprinted in A. Christophe (Ed.), L’apprentissage de la civilite´ a` l’E´cole: Regards croise´s (pp. 7–14). Paris: DESCO. Berndt, T. J., & Keefe, K. (1996). Friends’ inﬂuence on school adjustment: A motivational analysis. In: J. Juvonen & K. R. Wentzel (Eds), Social motivation: Understanding children’s school adjustment (pp. 248–278). New York: Cambridge University Press. Bishop, J. H. (2004). Drinking from the fountain of knowledge: Student incentive to study and learn – externalities, information problems and peer pressure. Working Paper 04–15. Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1967). Response to pressure from peers versus adults among Soviet and American school children. International Journal of Psychology, 2, 199–207. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1970). The two worlds of childhood. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1974). The origins of alienation. Scientific American, 231, 53–61. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1992). Child care in the Anglo-Saxon mode. In: M. E. Lamb, K. J. Sternberg, C. P. Hwang & A. G. Broberg (Eds), Child care in context: Cross-cultural perspectives. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1995). Development ecology through space and time: A future perspective. In: P. Moen, G. Elder & K. Luscher (Eds), Examining lives in context: Perspectives on the ecology of human development (pp. 619–647). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Brown, B., Steinberg, L., Mounts, N., & Philipp, M. (1990). The comparative inﬂuence of peers and parents on high school achievement: Ethnic differences. In: Ethnic variations in adolescent experience. Symposium conducted at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Atlanta, Georgia. Cheney, L. (1993). Hard work, once as American as apple pie. Wall Street Journal, December 5. Coleman, J. (1961). Adolescent society: The social life of the teenager and its impact on education. New York: Free Press.

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Cooper, P., & Upton, G. (1990). An ecosystemic approach to emotional and behavioural difﬁculties in school. Educational Psychology, 10, 301–321. Covington, M. V. (1992). Making the grade: A self-worth perspective on motivation and school reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Damon, W. (1995). Greater expectations. New York: Free Press. Elliott, J. G., & Hufton, N. (2003). Achievement motivation in real contexts. In: L. Smith, C. Rogers, & P. Tomlinson (Eds), Development and motivation: Joint perspectives (pp. 155–172). Monograph Series II: Psychological Aspects of Education, British Journal of Educational Psychology. Leicester, UK: British Psychological Society. Elliott, J. G., Hufton, N., Hildreth, A., & Illushin, L. (1999). Factors inﬂuencing educational motivation: A study of attitudes, expectations and behaviour of children in Sunderland, Kentucky and St. Petersburg. British Educational Research Journal, 25, 75–94. Elliott, J. G., Hufton, N., Illushin, L., & Lauchlan, F. (2001). Motivation in the junior years: International perspectives on children’s attitudes, expectations and behaviour and their relationship to educational achievement. Oxford Review of Education, 27, 37–68. Elliott, J. G., Hufton, N., Willis, W., & Illushin, L. (2005). Motivation, engagement and educational performance: International perspectives on contexts for learning. London: Palgrave. Erasov, B. (1994). Social culturology, Part 2. Moscow: n.p. Garner, P. (1995). A special education? The experiences of newly qualifying teachers during initial training. British Educational Research Journal, 22, 155–164. Glowka, D. (1995). Schulen und unterricht im vergleich: Rusland/Deutschland [Schools and teaching in comparison: Russia and Germany]. New York: Waxmann Verlag. Harris, J. R. (1995). Where is the child’s environment? A group socialisation theory of development. Psychological Review, 102, 458–489. Harris, J. R. (1998). The nurture assumption: Why children turn out the way they do. New York: Touchstone Books. Holligan, C. (1997). Theory in initial teacher education: Students’ perspectives on its utility – a case study. British Educational Research Journal, 23, 533–551. Howley, C. B., Howley, A., & Pendarvis, E. D. (1995). Out of our minds: Anti-intellectualism and talent development in American schooling. New York: Teachers College Press. Hufton, N., & Elliott, J. G. (2000). Motivation to learn: The pedagogical nexus in the Russian school: Some implications for transnational research and policy borrowing. Educational Studies, 26, 115–136. Hufton, N., Elliott, J. G., & Illushin, L. (2002a). Motivation to learn: The elusive role of culture: Qualitative accounts from three countries. British Educational Research Journal, 28, 267–291. Hufton, N., Elliott, J. G., & Illushin, L. (2002b). Achievement motivation: Cross-cultural puzzles and paradoxes. In: J. Bempechat & J. Elliott (Eds), Learning in culture and context: Approaching the complexities of achievement motivation in student learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hufton, N. R., Elliott, J. G., & Illushin, L. (2003). Teachers’ beliefs about student motivation: Similarities and differences across cultures. Comparative Education, 39, 367–389. Iartsev, D. V. (2000). Characteristics of the socialisation of today’s adolescent. Russian Education and Society, 42, 67–75. Kindermann, T. A. (1993). Natural peer groups as contexts for individual development: The case of children’s motivation in school. Developmental Psychology, 29, 970–977.

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Laihiala-Kainkainen, S. (1998). Russian pupils in Finnish schools – problems created by differences in pedagogical cultures. Paper presented at the European conference on Educational Research, Slovenia. Markowitz, F. (2000). Coming of age in post-Soviet Russia. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Martin, M. O., & Mullis, I. V. (2000). International comparisons of student achievement: Perspectives from the TIMSS International Study Centre. In: D. Shorrocks-Taylor & E. W. Jenkins (Eds), Learning from others. London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Muckle, J. (1990). Portrait of a Soviet school under glasnost. London: Macmillan. Muckle, J. (1998). Review article. (Schulen und Unterricht im Vergleich. By D. Glowka et al., Munster, NY: Waxmann Verlag, 1995.) Russian Education and Society, 16(1), 35–41. O’Brien, D. (2000). From Moscow: Living and teaching among Russians in the 1990s. Nottingham: Bramcote Press. OECD (2002). Education at a glance. Paris: OECD. OECD (2003). Literacy skills for the world of tomorrow: Further results from PISA 2000. Paris: OECD. OECD (2004). Learning for tomorrow’s world: First results from PISA 2003. Paris: OECD. Robson, G. (2000). ‘‘No one likes us, we don’t care’’: The myth and reality of Millwall fandom. New York: New York University Press. Sage, N. A., & Kindermann, T. A. (1999). Peer networks, behavior contingencies, and children’s engagement in the classroom. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 45, 143–171. Sedlak, M., Wheeler, C. W., Pullin, D. C., & Cusick, P. A. (1986). Selling students short: Classroom bargains and academic reform in the American high school. New York: Teachers College Press. Sellman, E., Bedward, J., Cole, T., & Daniels, H. (2002). Thematic review: A sociocultural approach to exclusion. British Educational Research Journal, 28, 889–900. Sergeev, S. A. (1999). Youth subcultures in the Republic. Russian Education and Society, 41(10), 74–91. Steinberg, L. (1996). Beyond the classroom: Why school reform has failed and what parents need to do. New York: Touchstone Books. Stetsenko, A. (2002). Adolescents in Russia: Surviving the turmoil and creating a brighter future. In: B. B. Brown, R. W. Larson & T. S. Saraswathi (Eds), The world’s youth: Adolescence in eight regions of the globe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tudge, J. R. H. (1991). Education of young children in the Soviet Union: Current practice in historical perspective. The Elementary School Journal, 92, 121–133. Wang, J., & Odell, S. J. (2002). Mentored learning to teach according to standards-based reform. Review of Educational Research, 72, 481–546. Wentzel, K. R., & Caldwell, K. (1997). Friendships, peer acceptance, and group membership: Relations to academic achievement in middle school. Child Development, 68, 1198–1209. Wilson, S. M., Floden, R. E., & Ferrini-Mundy, J. (2001). Teacher preparation research: Current knowledge, gaps, and recommendations (No. R-01-3). Seattle, WA: CTP.

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READING COMPREHENSION INSTRUCTION FOR STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES Sheri Berkeley ABSTRACT Reading comprehension is a critical area of instruction for all students, but particularly for students with learning disabilities (LD) that impede their ability to understand what they read. This synthesis includes 30 intervention studies on reading comprehension for students with LD conducted in several countries and all regions of the United States. Specifically, the current review focuses on the efficacy of these strategies across grade levels, with various types of reading materials, and in conjunction with other instructional components that have potential to enhance instructional benefits to students. Results suggest that reading comprehension instruction is effective for improving the skills of this population.

Reading is a challenge for many students, but particularly for students who have learning disabilities (LD) that impact their acquisition of reading comprehension skills. In the United States alone, almost three million children are receiving special education services for speciﬁc LD (U.S. Department of Education, 2006). It is estimated that 80% of these students have difﬁculty in the area of reading (Jennings, Caldwell, & Lerner, 2006). International Perspectives Advances in Learning and Behavioral Disabilities, Volume 20, 79–99 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0735-004X/doi:10.1016/S0735-004X(07)20004-7

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Early childhood is recognized as a critical time period for providing intensive reading intervention to students with LD and students at risk for LD (NICHD, 2000). The focus of reading instruction during these early grades predominately focuses on teaching students how to decode text. For this reason, interventions that focus on phonological awareness, phonics, and ﬂuency for pre-kindergarten through 3rd grades have been researched extensively. However, despite large-scale efforts to remediate reading difﬁculties early (e.g., reading ﬁrst initiative), over 1.5 million children with LD from 12 to 17 years of age continue to receive special education (U.S. Department of Education, 2006). Further, as students progress through the grades, expectations for students shift from ‘‘learning to read’’ to ‘‘reading to learn.’’ For example, by 4th grade, reading expository material to obtain content information is expected, and by high school, the majority of students’ instructional time is spent reading expository text (Barton, 1997; Hudson, Lignugaris-Kraft, & Miller, 1993; Saenz & Fuchs, 2002). Even mathematics instruction now teaches mathematical skills and concepts using an authentic word problem– solution approach which requires the ability to understand linguistic, semantic, and representational structures used in word problems (Bryant, Linan-Thompson, Ugel, Hamff, & Hougen, 2001; Mayer, 1992). In order to best meet the learning needs of students with LD of all ages, teachers need to be well informed about what strategies and instructional methods are effective for increasing the reading comprehension skills that students need to be successful with both narrative and expository texts.

PREVIOUS REVIEWS Several narrative reviews on the effectiveness of reading comprehension interventions for students with LD have been conducted (e.g., Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek, & Wei, 2004; Mastropieri, Scruggs, & Graetz, 2003; Vaughn, Gersten, & Chard, 2000b; Vaughn, Levy, Coleman, & Bos, 2002). Each of these reviews used unique inclusion criteria and organizational categories for identiﬁed studies. For example, one of the most recent of these (Gersten et al., 2001) focused on the effectiveness of various interventions when used with various types of text (i.e., narrative text, expository text). Another (Kim et al., 2004) focused on the effectiveness of graphic organizers. A narrative review by Mastropieri et al. (2003) focused on reading comprehension instruction for secondary students. Cumulatively, research has focused on many factors identiﬁed as adding to students’ reading

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difﬁculties related to comprehension of text including: strategic processing and metacognition, knowledge of common text structure (i.e., narrative text structure, expository text structure), vocabulary knowledge, appropriate use of background knowledge while reading, reading ﬂuency, and active reading (Gersten et al., 2001). A strategy with potential for addressing task persistence, a ﬁnal factor identiﬁed by Gersten et al. (2001), lies in teaching students to self-regulate their learning. Moreover, according to Vaughn et al. (2000b), ‘‘a comprehensive approach to strategy instruction that incorporates multiple strategies and uses peers to provide feedback represents the most promising instructional method for enhancing comprehension’’ (p. 105). Prior to these narrative reviews, a comprehensive overview of reading comprehension research with students with LD came from the Mastropieri, Scruggs, Bakken, and Whedon (1996) meta-analysis of 68 studies that spanned for two decades (1976–1995). This analysis found that the largest effects were attributed to cognitive strategies, such as summarizing, activating background knowledge, self-monitoring, and self-questioning. Other studies in this synthesis were categorized as skills training and reinforcement, or text enhancements. This chapter provides a descriptive evaluation of intervention studies with students with LD published in peer reviewed journals in the last 10 years by replicating the general intervention categories identiﬁed in 1996 by Mastropieri et al. (for a quantitative synthesis of these same studies, see Berkeley, Scruggs, & Mastropieri, 2007). Because of changes that have occurred in schools in the last decade, an increasing number of students are receiving special education services within the general education classroom. For this reason, this synthesis included not only students with LD, but also those in which some of the subjects were identiﬁed with other high-incidence disabilities or as ‘‘at risk.’’ In addition, this review will look not only at the overall efﬁcacy of different types of interventions for improving the reading comprehension of students, but also the efﬁcacy of these strategies across grade levels, with various types of reading material, and in conjunction with other instructional components that have potential to enhance instructional beneﬁts to students.

METHOD Search Procedures The PsychINFO, ERIC, Expanded Academic, and Social Sciences Citation Index online databases were used to locate studies using combinations of the

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key words: reading disabilities, LD, reading comprehension, and strategies. Ancestry searches were conducted of both identiﬁed studies and several other literature reviews concerning reading comprehension and students with LD in reading. Professional journals were systematically scanned for additional relevant studies including the following: Exceptional Children, Journal of Special Education, Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, Learning Disability Quarterly, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Remedial and Special Education, and Education and Treatment of Children.

Criteria for Inclusion Studies were included in this review if the following conditions were met (1) the study was published in a peer reviewed journal between 1995 and 2005, (2) the study was written in English, (3) subjects in the study were between kindergarten and grade 12, (4) subjects were identiﬁed as having high-incidence disabilities such as LD, mild mental retardation, emotional disabilities, or other health impairments, (5) at least half of the students identiﬁed as having high-incidence disabilities had LD, (6) the study speciﬁed reading comprehension outcomes, and (7) data reported was disaggregated for subjects with disabilities. Students described as reading disabled or dyslexic were considered synonymous to learning disabled for the purposes of this synthesis. ‘‘Struggling readers’’ were included in the data set if, and only if, data for this population could not be separated from special education outcome data and where this subgroup made up less than a third of the number of special education subjects. Studies that focused on characteristics of students with LD in the area of reading were not included in this synthesis (e.g., Carr & Thompson, 1996), nor were studies that used single-subject designs (e.g., Gardill & Jitendra, 1999).

FINDINGS Thirty studies between 1995 and 2005 met the search criteria. Interventions that used questioning strategies were the most prevalent, followed by text enhancement interventions, and interventions that focused on basic skills. Further, several of the studies included instruction designed to promote students’ self-regulation of learning. In addition, almost half of the studies had some type of peer component. Although the same number of

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interventions were conducted with younger students (15 studies) and older students (15 students), because the nature of instruction at the elementary school and secondary school levels are quite different, studies for each type of intervention are presented under these broad categories (see also Tables 1 and 2).

Strategy Instruction Two-thirds of all of the studies reviewed here (total 20) dealt with strategy instruction or questioning. Many programs for teaching reading comprehension strategies used a combination of the following strategies: activating background knowledge, making predications, summarizing or identifying the main idea of information read, using knowledge of text structure conventions, mapping or taking notes on information read, using strategies to develop vocabulary, and questioning and self-correction strategies. Many times, mnemonic strategies were used to help students remember the steps to the strategies being taught. In addition, comprehension strategies were often combined with ﬂuency building instruction such as word identiﬁcation skills and partner reading with corrective feedback. Further, several studies used peer assisted learning (47%) or to a lesser extent, instruction to promote the self-regulation of learning by students (20%). Questioning or Strategy Instruction with Younger Students One identiﬁed study involved teacher-led questioning for teaching 4th grade students to identify character motive (Rabren, Darch, & Eaves, 1999). Speciﬁcally, explicit rule-based instruction of strategies, based on the Direct Instruction Model, was compared to activity-based instruction developed from basal reading programs. The explicit instruction group outperformed the activity-based group on all criterion reference measures including story retells and unit tests. No differences were found, however, on transfer or maintenance measures. Self-Regulation. Three studies incorporated components of self-regulation in instruction with narrative text (Johnson, Graham, & Harris, 1997) or expository text (Miranda, Villaescusa, & Vidal-Abarca, 1997; MansetWilliamson & Nelson, 2005). Story Grammar Marker is a method designed to aid comprehension by teaching students to identify story structure using the following strategies: (1) write and say story parts, (2) read and think, (3) remember and write, and (4) look back and check. In 1997, Johnson

Study

Grade

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Table 1.

Elementary School Studies.

Setting

Text

Basic Skills Training Burns and Kondrick (1998)/ Washington State

2nd to 4th one-to-one

Narrative

Parent

Oakland et al. (1998)/Texas

4th

Rankhorn et al. (1998)/ Southwest U.S.

3rd to 5th Classroom

Both

Teacher/Peers >8 weeks Peer assisted learning strategies (PALS) Partner reading with retell Paragraph summary Prediction relay Researcher 5–8 weeks Self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) Goal setting (GS) Self-instruction (SI)

Torgesen, Alexander, Wanger, 4th Rashotte, Voeller, and Conway (2001)/Florida

one-to-one

one-to-one

Johnson et al. (1997)/ Washington, D.C.

Duration

Treatment/Alternate Treatment

5–8 weeks Parent administered reading therapy program (RTP) Single-word reading Paragraph reading Story reading Unreported Teachers/ 2 years Dyslexia training program (DTP) Phonic skills for reading and spelling Technology Narrative Teacher >8 weeks Failure free reading program Repetition Sentence structure Story content Both Teacher >8 weeks Auditory discrimination in-depth program (ADD) Phonemic awareness Self-monitoring Embedded phonics (EP) Explicit phonics

4th to 6th Small group Narrative

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Questioning and Strategy Instruction Fuchs et al. (1997)/Southern 2nd to 6th Classroom U.S.

Delivery

Rabren et al. (1999)/ Southeast U.S. Saenz et al. (2005)/Texas Stevens and Slavin (1995)/ Maryland Van Den Bos, Brand-Gruwel, and Aarnoutse (1998) – study 1/The Netherlands

Tutors

5–8 weeks Explicit comprehension Guided reading Researcher >8 weeks Self-instruction (SI) SI plus attribution (ATT) 4th Small group Narrative Teacher 1–2 weeks Explicit rule-based instruction Basal-reader/activity approach 3rd to 6th Classroom Both Teacher/Peers 3–4 weeks PALS 2nd to 6th Classroom Unreported Teachers/Peers 2 years Cooperative elementary schools Small group Expository

Graduate students/ Peers

Van Den Bos et al. (1998) – study 2/The Netherlands

Small group Expository

Vaughn et al. 3rd (2000a)/location unreported

Classroom

Expository

Graduate students/ Peers Teacher/Peers >8 weeks Collaborative strategic reading (CSR) Prediction Vocabulary Main idea Summarization Partner reading

4th to 6th Classroom

Expository

Text Enhancements Xin and Rieth (2001)/ Southeast U.S.

Teacher

>8 weeks Direct instruction (DI)+strategy reciprocal teaching (SRT) Clarifying Question generation Summarizing Predicting 1–2 weeks DI+RT

Reading Comprehension Instruction

Manset-Williamson and 4th to 8th one-to-one Expository Nelson (2005)/Midwest U.S. Miranda et al. (1997)/Spain 5th & 6th Small group Expository

5–8 weeks Video vocabulary instruction

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Study

Grade

Questioning and Strategy Instruction Bakken et al. (1997)/ 8th Midwest U.S. Bryant et al. (2000)/ 6th Southwest U.S.

Setting

Secondary School Studies. Text

Delivery

one-to-one

Expository

Researcher

Classroom

Both

Teacher/Peers

6th to 8th Classroom

Unreported Teacher

Fuchs et al. (1999)/ Southeast U.S. Jitendra et al. (2000)/ Northeast U.S. Katims and Harris (1997)/ Texas

8th to 10th Classroom

Narrative

Teacher/Peers

6th to 8th Small group Both

Researcher

7th

Teacher

Expository

Duration

Treatment/Alternate Treatment

o1 week

Text structure-based strategy Summarization strategy 3–4 weeks Word identiﬁcation (DISSECT) Partner reading CSR >8 weeks Linguistics skills training (LST) Phonetics Phenomenology Morphology English orthography PALS Saxon phonics intervention (SPI) Decoding skills Spelling vocabulary Reading ﬂuency Reading comprehension Skill acquisition program (SRA) Individually read story Independently answer comprehension questions >8 weeks PALS 3–4 weeks Main idea strategy Self-monitoring 5–8 weeks RAP – Paraphrasing strategy

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Calhoon (2005)/ Southwest U.S.

Classroom

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Table 2.

Small group Expository

Teachers/Peers

Lovett et al. (1996)/Canada

7th

Small group Expository

Teachers/Peers

Mastropieri et al. (1996)/ Midwest U.S. Mastropieri et al. (2001)/ Midwest U.S.

7th & 8th

one-to-one

Expository

Researcher

7th

Classroom

Expository

Teacher/Peers

7th & 8th

Classroom

Narrative

Teacher/Peers

Williams (1998)/New York Text Enhancements Boyle (1996)/Kansas Dicecco and Gleason (2002)/ Oregon MacArthur and Haynes (1995)/Maryland Peverly and Wood (2001)/ Northeast U.S.

5–8 weeks SRT Cross-age tutoring vs. cooperative grouping 5–8 weeks Text content and structure (TCS) program Activating prior knowledge Elaborating information Mapping main ideas Analysis of text structure SRT o1 week Elaborative interrogation 5–8 weeks Peer Tutoring Partner reading Paragraph summary 3–4 weeks Theme instruction (with guided reading approach)

6th to 8th Small group Unreported Researcher 6th to 8th Small group Expository Teacher

3–4 weeks Cognitive mapping strategy (TRAVEL) 3–4 weeks Graphic organizers

9th & 10th one-to-one

o1 week

Expository

9th to 11th Small group Narrative

Teacher/ Technology Researcher

Reading Comprehension Instruction

Klingner and Vaughn (1996)/ 7th & 8th Florida

Student assistant for learning from text (SALT) Hypermedia reading aid 5–8 weeks Inserted questions Massed questions (at end) Feedback (answers given)

87

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et al. reported that using self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) to teach 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students to regulate their use of this strategy resulted in statistically signiﬁcant increases on main ideas, total details, and grammar marker assessments as well as maintenance of retelling skills. Goal setting, however, did not enhance student outcomes. The contribution of attribution retraining to reading comprehension outcomes for 60 children with LD was investigated in 1997 by Miranda and colleagues. Both LD experimental groups, one with self-regulation procedures plus attribution retraining and a second with self-regulation procedures only, scored as well as a normal achieving control group on a reading comprehension post-test while signiﬁcant differences remained with an LD control group. Additional beneﬁts were not demonstrated with the attribution retraining component. Manset-Williamson and Nelson (2005) also investigated self-regulation procedures. Speciﬁcally they examined the effects of phonemic awareness/ analysis, decoding and ﬂuency combined with explicit instruction in reading comprehension and self-regulatory strategies (PDF/EC) compared to phonemic awareness/analysis, decoding and ﬂuency instruction combined with guided reading (PDF/GR). Like studies that only included basic skills components, this study used random assignment with one-to-one instruction. While both groups made progress on comprehension measures, neither demonstrated signiﬁcant gains on near transfer and only the PDF/EC group demonstrated signiﬁcant gains on far transfer. When methods were compared, the explicit comprehension condition outperformed the guided reading condition on both oral retell quality and main-idea identiﬁcation. Peers. Two studies investigated the effects of peer assisted learning strategies (PALS) with a combination of narrative and expository texts (Fuchs, Fuchs, Mathes, & Simmons, 1997; Saenz, Fuchs, & Fuchs, 2005). PALS have three primary components: partner reading with retell, paragraph shrinking, and prediction relay (i.e., predict, reread, conﬁrm/disconﬁrm prediction, and summarize). In 1997, Fuchs et al. investigated the effects of PALS with 40 students with LD in grades 2–6. The comprehensive reading assessment battery (CRAB) was used to measure effects. LD students made signiﬁcantly more progress than the students in the comparison group with a small effect size (.22). In another study, Saenz et al. (2005) investigated the effects of PALS with 20 LD students in grades 3–6. Although large effects were reported for LD students based on the criterion referenced measure, CRAB, it should be noted that these effects were inﬂated by the fact that students in the LD control group regressed at all post-test measures.

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Three other elementary studies utilized peers in instruction. In 1998, Van Den Bos, Brand-Gruwel, and Aarnoutse reported on a pair of studies involving a combination of direct instruction and reciprocal teaching of auditorily presented informative texts. The strategies that students were taught to use while reading were: (1) clarifying, (2) question generation, (3) summarizing, and (4) prediction. In the ﬁrst study, 95 students with LD were identiﬁed as normal listeners or poor listeners and assigned to the experimental or control group. The results showed that students who were taught comprehension strategies for material read to them performed better on both strategic listening and reading comprehension tests at post-testing and a 3 month delayed post-testing. Following similar procedures, a second study was conducted with listening, reading, and combined listening and reading lessons. Again, the treatment group showed signiﬁcant growth on strategic listening and reading post-tests, but not on the maintenance measure. Further, students in neither study demonstrated transfer to a general reading comprehension test. Peers were also used in instruction to investigate the effects of collaborative strategic reading (CSR) with 16 subjects with LD (Vaughn et al., 2000a). Like PALS, CSR uses a component of basic skills instruction in addition to strategy instruction. In addition, CSR incorporates peer learning, however, students work in small groups as opposed to pairs. The key steps of this program are: (1) activating prior knowledge or ‘‘preview,’’ (2) vocabulary building or ‘‘click and clunk,’’ (3) identifying the main idea or ‘‘get the gist,’’ and (4) summarization or ‘‘wrap up.’’ Effects on reading comprehension were small (.04). In a more general investigation of the effects of using peers, Stevens and Slavin (1995) conducted an year long study involving cooperative learning in an elementary school. Beneﬁts for LD students on reading comprehension after the ﬁrst year were not signiﬁcant. The authors attributed this lack of progress to scheduling of services for these students. After restructuring in the second year that ensured: (a) students with disabilities were integrated on heterogeneous learning teams, (b) group goals were created based in individual accountability, and (c) special education teachers were scheduled to provide additional support in regular classroom settings, authors report gains with an effect size of .85 for students with LD. Questioning or Strategy Instruction with Older Students Two identiﬁed studies involved teacher-led questioning. The ﬁrst study (Mastropieri et al., 1996) was a series of questions designed to help promote active thinking about expository text in students with LD. The authors

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reported that students in the elaborative interrogation condition were more accurate in their explanations of the content and better able to explain underlying relationships than students in a control condition that were prompted to ‘‘try to remember.’’ Students were not, however, better able to recall facts. The second teacher-led intervention (Williams, 1998) was similar to a more traditional guided reading approach to teaching students how to identify story themes. The teacher led a pre-reading discussion, reading of the story, discussion of the important story information, identiﬁcation of the theme of the story, and practicing and applying the generalized theme. Students in the theme instruction group outperformed the traditional instruction group on a criterion-referenced measure with several items related to stories explicitly taught, but not on items of near or far transfer. Strategy instruction was the focus of a 1997 study conducted by Bakken et al. They used an experimental design with 1:1 instruction to investigate the effects of teaching students strategies for speciﬁc text structures commonly found in expository texts: main idea, list, and order. Results with 54 8th grade students showed very strong effects for the text structure-based condition compared to both the control and the paragraph restatement alternate treatment condition across measures for immediate, delayed, and transfer tests. Self-Regulation. Although the expectation that students will be independent in their learning increases as they progress through the grades, only two studies with older students incorporated components of self-regulation in instruction (Katims & Harris, 1997; Jitendra, Hoppes, & Xin, 2000). Using both narrative and expository text, 207 7th grade students with and without disabilities were taught to self-regulate the strategy steps to the RAP strategy (Katims & Harris, 1997). The mnemonic to this strategy represented the following steps: (1) read a paragraph, (2) ask yourself questions about the main ideas and details, and (3) put the main ideas and details in your own words using complete sentences. All students were taught in an inclusive setting with differentiation of instructional intensity. The ﬁndings showed that students in the intervention group outperformed the control group on reading comprehension performance. However, disaggregating the results for the 25 participating LD students showed that these students did not make statistically signiﬁcant improvement, perhaps indicating that these students needed more intensive instruction. Jitendra et al. (2000) investigated the effects of a main idea strategy with self-monitoring using a combination of narrative and expository text. They

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found that students in the intervention group were better able to identify main ideas than a control group both immediately after intervention and after a delay of 6 weeks. In addition, the intervention group outperformed the control on a selection response transfer test, but not on production response transfer measures. Peers. The majority of questioning or strategy instruction interventions utilized peers. In 1999, Fuchs, Fuchs, and Kazdan again used a similar quasi-experimental design to investigate the effects of PALS with 74 high school students with LD. Although students in the PALS condition outperformed students in a contrast classroom on reading comprehension measures, the authors report only a modest effect size of .34. In 2005, Calhoon looked at the efﬁcacy of PALS in combination with the linguistics skills training (LST) program. LST focuses on teaching phonology skills including phonetics, phonology, morphology, and English orthography. Findings showed that the LST/Pals group made signiﬁcant growth in comprehension when compared to the comparison group, Saxon Phonics. Bryant et al. (2000) also investigated the effects of CSR using a pre-/postdesign with a middle school team where strategies for decoding multisyllable words (DISSECT), ﬂuency (partner reading), and comprehension CSR were taught to students in each of their core classes. Outcomes were not signiﬁcant and effect sizes were small. These ﬁndings may be a reﬂection of a need for a more intensive intervention for LD students. One study (Lovett et al., 1996) reported signiﬁcant gains on several standardized measures of comprehension and generalization of skills with the text content and structure (TCS) program. This strategy incorporated the following activities: (1) activating prior knowledge, (2) elaborating of text information, (3) mapping main ideas from the text, and (4) an analysis of the text structure. This program was found to have signiﬁcantly superior results compared to a classroom survival skills (CSS) program control condition. Klingner and Vaughn (1996) also investigated the effects of using peers in instruction. Speciﬁcally, they investigated the different effects of using crossage tutors compared to same age peers for reciprocal teaching. The strategies used in reciprocal teaching are as follows: (1) predict, (2) brainstorm, (3) clarify words and phrases, (4) highlight main idea, (5) summarize main idea, and (6) ask and answer questions about the passage. There were no differences found between the two grouping conditions, however both groups showed improvement from pre-test to post-test.

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Less elaborate classwide peer tutoring strategies have also been found to be effective. In 2001, Mastropieri et al. investigated partner reading with summarization strategy using expository text for 24 7th grade subjects with LD or mild mental retardation (MMR). Students in the tutoring condition outperformed the control condition on the reading comprehension post-test measure. Overall Effects of Questioning or Strategy Instruction The majority of the elementary school studies investigated questioning strategies with expository text. All but one of the studies involving older students investigated questioning strategies with middle school students. Like the elementary school studies, the majority of these studies utilized expository text. General ﬁndings demonstrate that comprehension strategies training can be effective for increasing the reading comprehension in students with disabilities.

Text Enhancements Another type of reading comprehension intervention commonly studied is text enhancements such as graphic organizers and adjunct questions. In the time parameters of this review, one study looked at video enhancements for text, two studies were found that looked at graphic organizers, and one was found that focused on the effective use of adjunct questions. Graphic organizers are visual displays such as story maps and charts that are designed to assist students in organizing major concepts and details of information that they read. Adjunct questions are questions that accompany text aimed to assist students in attending to key concepts while reading. Text Enhancements in the Younger Grades One elementary school study investigated the effects of video vocabulary instruction as an enhancement to text (Xin & Rieth, 2001). Seven special education teachers and 76 children with LD participated in this 6-week study. There was no evidence of an interaction effect for instructional condition and testing time for either criterion referenced measure of comprehension. Text Enhancements in the Upper Grades Two studies investigated the effects of graphic organizers. One that investigated cognitive mapping (Boyle, 1996) for narrative texts found effective results measured by informal and curriculum-based measures, but these

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skills were not found to generalize to standardized test measures. A second study by DiCecco and Gleason (2002) studied the effects of graphic organizers for expository text and found similar gains based on informal measures. Standardized assessment measures were not used in this study, however graphic organizers were found to cause greater gains on post-test scores than traditional guided notes. Two studies investigated text enhancements with high-school-aged students. One study (Peverly & Wood, 2001) investigated the effects of question placement and feedback on comprehension. This study focused on 9th, 10th, and 11th grade students with LD. Results indicate that inserted questions resulted in more comprehension gains than massed questions, and that inserted questions with feedback resulted in more gains in comprehension than inserted questions without feedback. MacArthur and Haynes (1995) looked at enhanced passages using the hypermedia reading aid: student assistant for learning from text (SALT) with students in grades 9 and 10. In addition to including all parts of a traditional text (such as graphics, chapter outlines, and questions) this system can integrate supplementary text, graphics, and video. Reading comprehension was higher for students who used SALT compared to those who read a traditional textbook. Overall Effectiveness of Text Enhancements Only one elementary level study investigated text enhancements, and only three studies in the upper grades dealt with text enhancements; both were at the high school level. The use of text enhancements seems to be a promising tool for improving reading comprehension for students with disabilities.

Basic Skills Training Basic skills approaches to reading comprehension instruction developed from the premise that if student skills are improved, they will be able to focus more attention to understanding what they read (Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1997). Compared to 20 studies from 1976 to 1995 dealing with the effectiveness of basic skills approaches to instruction for students with LD (Mastropieri et al., 1996), fewer studies dealing with instruction of speciﬁc skills were located between 1995 and the present. All of these studies were conducted at the early elementary level and evaluated the effectiveness of packaged programs that targeted phonological and auditory skills, and/or word identiﬁcation skills.

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Basic Skills Interventions with Younger Students In 1998, Burns and Konrick investigated the effects of parent implementation of the Behavioral Reading Therapy Program for 10 s in 3rd and 4th grade students who were identiﬁed as LD or as struggling readers. This program included single word reading, paragraph reading, story reading, and comprehension questions based on narrative text. Compared to pre-test performance, students made signiﬁcant gains on the word comprehension subtest of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised after both 34 and 60 h of one-to-one reading therapy. Another study investigated the effects of the failure free reading program with 39 students with severe reading disabilities (Rankhorn, England, Collins, Lockavitch, & Algozzine, 1998). Components of this program included: (a) using age-appropriate materials, (b) promoting independent reading, and (c) using repetition, consistency, and immediate feedback. Students were required to preview a story, listen to the story being read, present content from the story, and read and review the story. This study also used a pre-/post-design and found the most substantial gains on the measure of reading comprehension. Torgesen et al. (2001) used both narrative and expository text in a comparison of the auditory discrimination in depth (ADD) program designed to improve reading skills by teaching phonemic awareness via articulatory cues, and the embedded phonics (EP) program that used direct instruction to teach phonemic decoding strategies. Sixty LD students in the 4th grade received one-to-one instruction for a period of 8–9 weeks. Although the EP group outscored the ADD group on all norm referenced reading comprehension post-test measures, the ADD group made statistically higher gain scores than the EP group on the same measures. At both the 1 and 2 year follow-up assessments, student scores continued to increase signiﬁcantly on one of the standard measures, but did not change on a second standard measure of comprehension. Forty-eight students with dyslexia participated in a study that investigated the effects of the dyslexia training program (DTP), based on the Orton-Gillingham approach, compared to a control group (Oakland, Black, Stanford, Nussbaum, & Balise, 1998). Students were taught one-to-one either by the teacher or by video during this 2-year study. A phonology sequence of procedures was used with choral reading, listening, reading, spelling, and writing. Researchers reported signiﬁcant gains for students in the DTP group over 2 years, but not for the control group. Additionally, there were no differences in performance for students taught by a teacher compared to those taught via video.

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Overall Effectiveness of Basic Skills Training for Comprehension Mirroring the typical elementary school curriculum, studies focused on basic skills training of phonological awareness and/or phonetic skills. Each of these studies utilized packaged intervention programs and seemed to have a positive impact on student comprehension. Use of the programs may be limited, however, especially for students in upper grades, due to the low student to teacher ratio required for implementation. Prior reviews of the literature for reading comprehension suggest that speciﬁc comprehension strategies may be a more effective method for improving reading comprehension skills (Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1997). In fact, as reﬂected in this review far more studies in the last decade have addressed strategy instruction than basic skills training.

CONCLUSIONS Like previous reviews of research on instruction of reading comprehension (e.g., Gersten et al., 2001; Mastropieri et al., 1996), this synthesis also reveals that reading comprehension interventions seem to be an effective approach for students with LD. The largest number of intervention studies used expository text with self-questioning or combinations of strategies. Consistent with the ﬁndings of Mastropieri et al. (1996), strategies that incorporated some type of self-questioning were effective overall. Because results were inconsistent in some cases, more research is needed with these types of interventions to identify speciﬁcally what components of multiple strategies programs are effective and under what instructional conditions. As reading becomes more challenging, it becomes even more important that students persist in their efforts to understand what they read. Two instructional areas suggested in previous literature (e.g., Gersten et al., 2001) as having promise for inﬂuencing student persistence are utilizing peer tutoring and self-regulation. Studies over the last 10 years that incorporated a peer component, however, did not consistently produce large effects in the area of reading comprehension. This indicates that it is important that future studies continue to focus on determining the components of peer tutoring arrangements that create the greatest gains for students. Fewer than 25% of the studies discussed in this review had self-regulation components. Further, detailed descriptions of factors such as the amount of modeling, practice, and prompting used were often not reported making it unclear how explicit instruction needs to be to produce self-regulation by students with LD. This should also be a focus of future research.

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With only one text enhancement study occurring at the elementary school level, it is difﬁcult to make comparisons between effects for younger and older students. However, the use of technology to enhance text seems quite promising. With the increase of technology in public schools and in society in general, technology has become an important resource for instruction. More research is needed to determine the most effective ways to use these resources to enhance student learning. The same can be said for research involving the use of graphic organizers and adjunct questions. It is not surprising that basic skills interventions only occurred at the elementary school level, as this is when students are typically taught basic reading skills. Because each of the interventions were delivered in a oneto-one setting, it cannot be determined if less intensive interventions or interventions implemented in small groups within classroom settings by classroom teachers would have the same impact on comprehension. In 1996, Mastropieri et al. found that only a small minority of studies were delivered by classroom teachers in regular classrooms or large group settings. In the past 10 years, this has begun to change. The number of studies where teachers delivered the treatment was almost the same as the number of studies where researchers delivered the treatment, and almost half of the studies reported here were conducted in a large group or general classroom setting. It is important to note that within the broad category of secondary interventions, only three studies conducted with high school students met the criteria to be included in this review. There is a need for more classroom-based interventions at the high school level particularly in regular classrooms and large group settings where an increasing number of students with LD are receiving instruction.

REFERENCES Bakken, J. P., Mastropieri, M. A., & Scruggs, T. E. (1997). Reading comprehension of expository science materials and students with learning disabilities: A comparison of strategies. Journal of Special Education, 31, 300–325. Barton, M. L. (1997). Addressing the literacy crisis: Teaching reading in the content areas. National Association of Secondary School Principals, 81, 22–30. Berkeley, S., Scruggs, T. E., & Mastropieri, M. A. (2007). An updated synthesis of intervention research on reading comprehension for LD students (1995–2005). Paper presented at the American Education Research Association National Convention, Chicago, IL. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University. Boyle, J. R. (1996). The effects of cognitive mapping strategy of the literal and inferential comprehension of student with mild disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 12, 86–99.

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Bryant, D. P., Linan-Thompson, S., Ugel, N., Hamff, A., & Hougen, M. (2001). The effects of professional development for middle school general and special education teachers on implementation of reading strategies in inclusive content area classes. Learning Disability Quarterly, 24, 251–265. Bryant, D. P., Vaughn, S., Linan-Thompson, S., Ugel, N., Hamff, A., & Hougen, M. (2000). Reading outcomes for students with and without reading disabilities in general education middle-school content area classes. Learning Disability Quarterly, 23, 238–252. Burns, G. L., & Kondrick, P. A. (1998). Psychological behaviorism’s reading therapy program: Parents as reading therapists for their children’s reading disability. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 31, 278–285. Calhoon, M. B. (2005). Effects of a peer-mediated phonological skill and reading comprehension program on reading skill acquisition for middle school students with reading disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 38, 424–433. Carr, S. C., & Thompson, B. (1996). The effects of prior knowledge and schema activation strategies on the inferential reading comprehension of children with and without learning disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 19, 48–61. DiCecco, V. M., & Gleason, M. M. (2002). Using graphic organizers to attain relational knowledge from expository text. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35, 306–320. Fuchs, D., Fuchs, L. S., Mathes, P. G., & Simmons, D. C. (1997). Peer-assisted learning strategies: Making classrooms more responsive to diversity. American Educational Research Journal, 34, 174–206. Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., & Kazdan, S. (1999). Effects of peer-assisted learning strategies on high school students with serious reading problems. Remedial and Special Education, 20, 309–318. Gardill, M. C., & Jitendra, A. K. (1999). Advanced story map instruction: Effects on the reading comprehension of students with learning disabilities. Journal of Special Education, 33(2–17), 28. Gersten, R., Fuchs, L. S., Williams, J. P., & Baker, S. (2001). Teaching reading comprehension strategies to students with learning disabilities: A review of research. Review of Educational Research, 71, 279–321. Hudson, P., Lignugaris-Kraft, B., & Miller, T. (1993). Using content enhancements to improve the performance of adolescents with learning disabilities in content classes. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 8, 106–126. Jennings, J. H., Caldwell, J., & Lerner, J. W. (2006). Reading problems: Assessment and teaching strategies (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Jitendra, A. K., Hoppes, M. K., & Xin, Y. P. (2000). Enhancing main idea comprehension for students with learning problems: The role of a summarization strategy and selfmonitoring instruction. Journal of Special Education, 34, 127–139. Johnson, L., Graham, S., & Harris, K. R. (1997). The effects of goal setting and selfinstructions on learning a reading comprehension strategy: A study with students with learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 30, 80–91. Katims, D. S., & Harris, S. (1997). Improving the reading comprehension of middle school students in inclusive classrooms. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 41, 116–123. Kim, A., Vaughn, S., Wanzek, J., & Wei, S. (2004). Graphic organizers and their effects on the reading comprehension of students with LD: A syntheses of research. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37, 105–118.

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Klingner, J. K., & Vaughn, S. (1996). Reciprocal teaching of reading comprehension strategies for students with learning disabilities who use English as a second language. The Elementary School Journal, 96, 275–293. Lovett, M. W., Borden, S. L., Warren-Chaplin, P. M., Lacerenza, L., DeLuca, L., & Giovinazzo, R. (1996). Text comprehension training for disabled readers: An evaluation of reciprocal teaching and text analysis training programs. Brain and Language, 54, 447–480. MacArthur, C. A., & Haynes, J. B. (1995). Student assistant for learning from text (SALT): A hypermedia reading aid. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 28, 150–159. Manset-Williamson, G., & Nelson, J. M. (2005). Balanced, strategic reading instruction for upper-elementary and middle school students with reading disabilities: A comparative study of two approaches. Learning Disability Quarterly, 28, 59–74. Mastropieri, M. A., & Scruggs, T. E. (1997). Best practices in promoting reading comprehension in students with learning disabilities: 1976 to 1996. Remedial & Special Education, 18, 197–213. Mastropieri, M. A., Scruggs, T. E., Bakken, J. P., & Whedon, C. (1996). Reading comprehension: A synthesis of research in learning disabilities. In: T. E. Scruggs & M. A. Mastropieri (Eds), Advances in learning and behavioral disabilities: Intervention research (Vol. 10, Part B, pp. 201–227). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Mastropieri, M. A., Scruggs, T. E., & Graetz, J. E. (2003). Reading comprehension instruction for secondary students: Challenges for struggling students and teachers. Learning Disability Quarterly, 26, 103–116. Mastropieri, M. A., Scruggs, T. E., Hamilton, S. L., Wolfe, S., Whedon, C., & Canevaro, A. (1996). Promoting thinking skills of students with learning disabilities: Effects on recall and comprehension of expository prose. Exceptionality, 6, 1–11. Mastropieri, M. A., Scruggs, T. E., Mohler, L., Beranek, M., Boon, R., Spencer, V., & Talbott, E. (2001). Can middle school students with serious reading difﬁculties help each other and learn anything?. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 16, 18–27. Mayer, R. E. (1992). Thinking, problem solving, cognition (2nd ed.). New York: Freeman. Miranda, A., Villaescusa, M. I., & Vidal-Abarca, E. (1997). Is attribution retraining necessary? Use of self-regulation procedures for enhancing the reading comprehension strategies of children with learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 30, 503–512. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups. Report of the National Reading Panel (NIH Publication No. 00-4754). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce. Oakland, T., Black, J. L., Stanford, G., Nussbaum, N. L., & Balise, R. R. (1998). An evaluation of the dyslexia training program: A multisensory method for promoting reading in students with reading disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 31, 140–147. Peverly, S. T., & Wood, R. (2001). The effects of adjunct questions and feedback on improving the reading comprehension skills of learning-disabled adolescents. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 26, 25–43. Rabren, K., Darch, C., & Eaves, R. C. (1999). The differential effects of two systematic reading comprehension approaches with students with learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 32, 36–47.

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Rankhorn, B., England, G., Collins, S. M., Lockavitch, J. F., & Algozzine, B. (1998). Effects of the failure free reading program on students with severe reading disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 31, 307–312. Saenz, L. M., & Fuchs, L. S. (2002). Examining the reading difﬁculty of secondary students with learning disabilities: Expository versus narrative text. Remedial and Special Education, 23, 31–41. Saenz, L. M., Fuchs, L. S., & Fuchs, D. (2005). Peer-assisted learning strategies for English language learners with learning disabilities. Exceptional Children, 71, 231–247. Stevens, R. J., & Slavin, R. E. (1995). The cooperative elementary school: Effect on student achievement and social relations. American Educational Research Journal, 32, 321–351. Torgesen, J. K., Alexander, A. W., Wagner, R. K., Rashotte, C. A., Voeller, K. K. S., & Conway, T. (2001). Intensive remedial instruction for children with severe reading disabilities: Immediate and long-term outcomes from two instructional approaches. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 34, 33–58. U.S. Department of Education (2005). Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) data. Washington, DC: Author. Available at http://www.ideadata.org/partbreport.asp Van Den Bos, K. P., Brand-Gruwel, S., & Aarnoutse, C. A. J. (1998). Text comprehension strategy instruction with poor readers. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 10, 471–498. Vaughn, S., Chard, D. J., Bryant, D. P., Coleman, M., Tyler, B., Linan-Thompson, S. L., & Kouzekanani, K. (2000a). Fluency and comprehension interventions for third-grade students. Remedial and Special Education, 21, 325–335. Vaughn, S., Gersten, R., & Chard, J. D. (2000b). The underlying message in LD intervention research: Findings from research synthesis. Exceptional Children, 67, 99–114. Vaughn, S., Levy, S., Coleman, M., & Bos, C. S. (2002). Reading instruction for students with LD and EBD: A synthesis of observation studies. Journal of Special Education, 36, 2–13. Williams, J. P. (1998). Improving the comprehension of disabled readers. Annals of Dyslexia, 48, 213–238. Xin, J. F., & Rieth, H. (2001). Video-assisted vocabulary instruction for elementary school students with learning disabilities. Information Technology in Childhood Education Annual, 1, 87–103.

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GOAL ORIENTATIONS AND CLASSROOM GOAL STRUCTURES AS PREDICTORS OF CLASSROOM BEHAVIORS FOR GREEK STUDENTS WITH AND WITHOUT LEARNING DIFFICULTIES: CLARIFYING THE DIFFERENTIAL ROLE OF MOTIVATIONAL ORIENTATIONS Georgios D. Sideridis ABSTRACT Goal orientations and classroom goal structures proved to be highly predictive of classroom-related behaviors and academic achievement. The purpose of the present study was to predict students’ classroom behaviors from goal orientations and classroom goal structures and compare those predictions across students with and without learning problems. Participants were 209 typical students and 18 students with learning International Perspectives Advances in Learning and Behavioral Disabilities, Volume 20, 101–137 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0735-004X/doi:10.1016/S0735-004X(07)20005-9

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difficulties/disabilities (LD). Individual goal orientations and perceptions of classrooms’ goal structures were assessed using self-reports. Student behaviors were assessed over five consecutive days during school hours. Using Multilevel Random Coefficient Modeling (MRCM) procedures, results indicated that mastery approach goals and a mastery goal structure were positive predictors of positive affect, student engagement and students’ perceptions of reinforcement from teachers. Mastery avoidance goals were a negative predictor of positive affective states and a positive predictor of both negative affective states and perceptions of punishment. Last, performance approach goals and a performance goal structure exerted deleterious effects on students’ positive classroom behaviors, particularly for students with LD. When matching mastery goals with a mastery goal structure, effects were significantly more pronounced, and in the desired direction, compared to the matching of performance goals with a performance goal structure. Implications of the findings for practice are discussed.

Predicting students’ classroom behaviors from personal (student) and contextual (classroom) characteristics may be associated with enhancements in student achievement, through modifying those attributes. In particular, the interplay between personal–motivational characteristics a student brings to school along with the contextual–motivational characteristics he/she encounters may explain students’ engagement, affect, and achievement at school. This interactionist’s perspective may be well understood within the context of achievement goal theory (Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Nicholls, 1984), particularly as extended in the examination of classroom motivational structures in relation to student self-regulation in academic contexts (Ames, 1992; Ghaith, 2003; Howes, 2000; Karabenick, 2004; Maehr & Anderman, 1993; Pierce, 1994), or even students’ mental health (Somersalo, Solantaus, & Almqvist, 2002).

ACHIEVEMENT GOAL THEORY Goal theory originated with the pioneering work of Dweck (1986), Nicholls (1984), Ames (1992), and later Elliot and Harackiewicz (1996), and Pintrich (2000). The major theses of goal theory are that an individual brings to an achievement situation a set of cognitive schemas regarding appraisals, goals,

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emotions, and expectations (termed goal orientations). Originally, there were two speciﬁc mindsets, those reﬂecting a person’s attempts to conquer the environment through demonstrating his/her competence over others (termed a performance goal orientation) or one’s attempts to perform a task based on self-referential standards of success and in the absence of comparing his/her performance with that of others; rather performing a task out of the pleasure and joy the task brings to the person (termed a mastery goal orientation). Since then, these two patterns of thought have been bifurcated into approach and avoidance components (Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996; Elliot & McGregor, 2001), that is, attempts to avoid being one of the worst students/participants (a performance avoidance orientation) or attempts to avoid performing less than one could possibly perform, given personal standards of success (a mastery avoidance orientation). Although the latter construct has received little attention (Elliot & McGregor, 2001), some empirical evidence has pointed to its existence (Elliot & Reis, 2003), although alternative views do exist (Brophy, 2005; Grant & Dweck, 2003).

Empirical Findings for Typical Students and Students with Learning Disabilities Research with typical student groups has provided unequivocal ﬁndings regarding the regulation that is the outcome from adopting various goals. For example, mastery approach goals have oftentimes been positively linked to achievement (through cognitive engagement, Greene & Miller, 1996), deep processing of information (Barker, McInerney, & Dowson, 2002), effort and persistence (Miller, Greene, Montalvo, Ravidran, & Nichols, 1996), positive affect (Kaplan & Maehr, 1999), help seeking (Ryan, 1998), self-efﬁcacy (Kaplan & Maehr, 1999), and with a mastery goal structure (Kaplan & Maehr, 1999; Roeser, Midgley, & Urdan, 1996). On the contrary, performance approach goals have, at times, been positively linked to disruptive classroom behaviors (Kaplan, Gheen, & Midgley, 2002), self-handicapping (Urdan, 2004), negative affective states (Kaplan & Maehr, 1999), shallow processing of information during task engagement (Greene & Miller, 1996), lack in using cognitive strategies (Ames & Archer, 1988; Meece, Blumenfeld & Hoyle, 1988), but also enhanced effort/persistence (Elliot, McGregor, & Gable, 1999) and grades (Barron & Harackiewicz, 2003; Harackiewicz, Barron, Pintrich, Elliot, & Thrash, 2002a). Since the bifurcation of performance goals into approach and avoidance components (Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996), the negative effects of performance goals have been

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mostly ‘‘loading’’ on its avoidance component, that is, performance avoidance goal orientations (Sideridis, 2003, 2005a) highlighting problems in selfregulation from adopting these goals (Middleton & Midgley, 1997). Others, however, maintain that performance approach goals are still maladaptive (Midgley, Kaplan, & Middleton, 2001; Kaplan & Middleton, 2002). For students with LD, much fewer studies have been conducted on goal orientations (e.g., Carlson, Booth, Shin, & Canu, 2002; Fulk, Brigham, & Lohman, 1998; Lepola, 2004; Pintrich, Anderman, & Klobucar, 1994), although motivation has been long considered an important attribute for their future academic success (Adelman & Taylor, 1983) and effective selfregulation (Botsas & Padeliadu, 2003). Most of the studies indicate low levels of motivation for at-risk students, those with LD, or ADHD (e.g., Bouffard & Couture, 2003; Dunn & Shapiro, 1999). However, one major difference between the two populations has been on the fact that performance approach goals appear to be highly more adaptive for at-risk students regarding effort and academic achievement outcomes (Sideridis, 2003, 2005b, 2005d, in press; Sideridis & Tsorbatzoudis, 2003). This consistent ﬁnding suggests that motivation, even in the form of performance goals, may be more adaptive for students with learning problems compared to the absence of any motivational conﬁguration. Alternatively, this ﬁnding suggests that performance goals are much more precious for low achievers and, creating a mindset to attain these goals (Brooks, 2004, 2005) may be associated with more adaptive achievement and behavioral outcomes compared to their absence. Nevertheless, the empirical ﬁndings for students with LD are much more variable, given the heterogeneity of the population (Kavale & Forness, 1987) and the fact that small, idiosyncratic groups of students participate in different studies, limiting generalization of the ﬁndings to the respective population.

ACHIEVEMENT GOAL THEORY AND CLASSROOM GOAL STRUCTURES A recent extension of achievement goal theory has been the application of those motivational ‘‘descriptions’’ in the classroom (Eisenberger, Kuhlman, & Cotterell, 1992; Fuchs, Bahr, & Rieth, 1989; Midgley, 2002; Turner, Meyer, & Sweinle, 2003; Young, 1997). That is, does teaching or the motivational discourse exerted by the teacher contains elements of mastery or performance goals? Wolters (2004) deﬁned goal structures as descriptions of the prevailing instructional practices, policies, and teacher behaviors.

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Earlier, Ames (1992) provided a taxonomy of student behaviors and classroom characteristics that deﬁne goal structures using the acronym TARGET (for task, authority, recognition, grouping, evaluation, and time; see Maehr & Midgley, 1991 for an analytic presentation). Others have termed a classroom’s motivational discourse as the ‘‘psychological environment’’ (Roeser et al., 1996) or school climate (Andersen, 1982). Earlier studies contributed data regarding the two major components of goal structures, namely cooperation and competition, which have been also based on the intrinsic–extrinsic motivational distinction (see also Deci, 1971; Harter, 1981; Lepper, Corpus, & Iyengar, 2005). For example, Johnson, Johnson, and Tauer (1979) reported that cooperative structures were more adaptive with regard to students’ perceptions of teacher and peer support compared to competitive goal structures. Crockenberg, Bryant, and Wilce (1976) reported similar results with younger children. They found that when competitive structures were combined with winning, students perceived those structures as more fun, less boring, more fair, more pleasant, and evaluated themselves higher compared to nonwinners in either motivational structure. More recent research tended to replicate those ﬁndings (Rawsthorne & Elliot, 1999; Tauer & Harackiewicz, 1999). Collectively, these ﬁndings comprise a basis on which to expand the taxonomy of motivational discourse by including more elements of mastery and performance goal structures.

Empirical Findings on the Effects of Classroom Goal Structures on Students’ Regulation of Academic Behaviors and Achievement Several recent studies shed light on the regulation of student behaviors as a function of the presence of different motivational discourses in those classrooms. For example, Karabenick (2004) linked a mastery goal structure with students’ help-seeking behavior, after controlling for personal goal orientations (similar ﬁndings were reported by Linnenbrink, 2005). Performance goal structures, on the contrary, have been implicated with avoidance in help-seeking behaviors (Abreton, 1998; Ryan, 1998; Ryan, Gheen, & Midgley, 1998) and disruptive behavior in the class (Kaplan et al., 2002). Performance avoidant goal structures have also been associated with avoidance in help seeking (Karabenick, 2004). Church, Elliot, and Gable (2001) linked performance goal structures to harsh evaluation and a general focus on evaluation, whereas a mastery goal structure with lecture engagement and an absence of an evaluation focus. Kaplan and Midgley (1999)

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linked a mastery goal structure to adaptive coping, self-efﬁcacy, and positive affect (see also Kaplan, Middleton, Urdan, & Midgley, 2002). Urdan (2004) presented associations between performance goal structures and selfhandicapping, both directly and through performance avoidance goals (see also Urdan, Midgley, & Anderman, 1998). Last, Wolters (2004) linked a mastery goal structure to grades and strategy use, although the effects were more pronounced when taking into account the presence of a mastery goal orientation, suggesting the presence of the buffering hypothesis (Linnenbrink, 2005, see the section ‘‘Matching versus Buffering Hypothesis’’ given below). Another contribution to the extant literature emerged from sports contexts (Xiang, Bruene, & McBride, 2004) for which applications of performance goal structures, in particular, may be easier to demonstrate (Solmon, 1996). For example, Raschle, Coulomb-Cabagno, and Delsarte (2005) reported that athletes were signiﬁcantly more aggressive in performanceoriented motivational climates compared to mastery ones. Ryska, Yin, and Boyd (1999) reported high levels of self-handicapping for young athletes in performance goal structures and these effects were independent of personal goal orientations or trait self-handicapping (contrary to the effects of Xiang et al., 2004 in which mastery goal structures and mastery goal orientations interacted to produce enhanced positive outcomes with regard to effort/ persistence – see below on matching hypothesis in section ‘‘Matching Goal Orientation-Goal Structure Hypothesis’’). If performance motivational climates are associated with maladaptive outcomes, worrisome is the fact that Xiang, McBride, and Solmon (2003) reported a higher presence of performance elements in physical education classes compared to mastery ones (although a blend of the two was present most of the time). Nevertheless, it is interesting to examine if combinations of motivational attributes are associated with unique effects on students’ academic or nonacademic outcomes in every academic setting.

Matching versus Buffering Hypothesis in Goal Orientation Research Linnenbrink and Pintrich (2001) suggested that matches versus mismatches between personal goal orientations and a classroom’s goal structure might be associated with differential achievement or experiential outcomes for students. This interesting proposition suggests that when a person’s mastery goal orientation meets a mastery goal structure, students’ motivational and behavioral characteristics may be altered, with matches being likely

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associated with more adaptive effects. The same may be true with adoption of performance goals. An alternative hypothesis (i.e., the buffering hypothesis) suggests that adoption of mastery goals or the presence of a mastery goal structure will ‘‘buffer’’ the negative effects of performance goals (Linnenbrink, 2005). However, this latter proposition is based on the notion that performance goals are maladaptive (Kaplan & Middleton, 2002; Midgley et al., 2001), which is clearly a tentative assumption, at least with regard to academic achievement outcomes (Harackiewicz, Barron, Tauer, & Elliot, 2002b). To the present, no study has tested those predictions, thus, the present testing cannot be compared with previous research on those matters.

Methodological Issues in the Assessment of Classroom Goal Structures Classroom goal structures have been predominantly assessed via student perceptions and this is the approach employed in the present study as well. As Church et al. (2001) have pointed out, what may be more important is what students think and feel about the speciﬁcities in their environment, rather than what actually happens. Thus, although one could claim that ideally goal structures should be assessed with objective and observable criteria (Ryan et al., 1998; Sideridis, 2005d; Urdan et al., 1998), student selfreports can certainly comprise a proxy for these environments as there must be some degree of concordance between subjective evaluations of the environment and actual environment. A few studies only have looked at both subjective and objective criteria (Perry & VandeKamp, 2000; Ryan et al., 1998), although their use has been recommended (Turner & Meyer, 2000; Turner, Thorpe, & Meyer, 1998b; Turner et al., 2002). Thus, the purpose of the present studies was to predict classroom behaviors from (a) individual goal orientations and their interaction and (b) a classroom’s goal structure. Those predictions were run separately for each group, although between-groups differences were assessed using statistical means.

METHOD Participants and Procedures Participants were 230 5th and 6th graders (107 from grade 5 and 123 from grade 6) with and without learning difﬁculties (LD). All students came from

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13 public elementary schools of Cyprus. Two-hundred-twelve students were typical and eighteen of them had learning difﬁculties identiﬁed by their teachers or had a State diagnosis of learning disabilities. In particular, one student had a diagnosis of LD and ADHD, two had LD and psychological disturbances, and the rest were designated as having learning problems by their teachers. There were 112 boys and 118 girls. The study run under the approval of the Cyprus Ministry of Education and both the students and their guardians provided written consent forms. All assessments were completed during school hours by trained research assistants during the ﬁrst 2 h of the day. Five consecutive assessments were conducted during the last 10 min of the second lesson of the day. The affective experience from socializing with other students during the break was assessed after students entered the classroom for the third lesson. Measures Classroom Goal Structures Classroom goal structures were assessed using self-reports given recommendations that student reports are appropriate means for those assessments (Church et al., 2001). The scales included items which came from a synthesis of valid relevant instruments (e.g., the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS); Midgley, Maehr, Hruda, Anderman, Anderman, & Freeman, 2000; Urdan, 2004) and were rated using a six-point Likert-type response option (which ranged between 1 ¼ strongly disagree and 6 ¼ strongly agree (see Sideridis, 2005c). There were seven and eight items deﬁning a mastery goal structure and the performance goal structure, respectively. Assessments of the mastery goal items began with the stem: ‘‘The teacher tells us that y .’’ mistakes do not matter, to learn and improve is important, etc. The performance goal items began with the stem: ‘‘During the lesson y .’’ there is a lot of competition, there is pressure, the teacher compares students with each other, etc. The presence of a two-factor structure was veriﬁed using an exploratory factor analysis using varimax rotation (Gorsuch, 1983), thus, forcing an orthogonal solution of two distinct motivational discourse dimensions. Thirty-nine percent of the total variance was accounted for by the two latent constructs (for details of the validation of the scale see Sideridis, Ageriadis, Irakleous, Siakali, & Georgiou, 2006). All items loaded on their respective factor with their highest loading, and all loadings were well above acceptable standards of construct deﬁnition (i.e., standardized weights above 0.30). Internal consistency estimates (i.e., Cronbach’s alpha) for the typical student group were 0.80 for a mastery goal

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structure and 0.61 for a performance goal structure. The respective estimates for students with LD were 0.60 and 0.75. Achievement Goal Orientations They were assessed using items from Elliot and Church (1997) modiﬁed for use with young children (Sideridis, 2003). Internal consistency estimates for the typical student group were 0.85 for mastery approach goals, 0.67 for mastery avoidance, 0.80 for performance approach, and 0.66 for performance avoidance. The respective estimates for students with LD were 0.68/ 0.68/0.57 and 0.68. Student Classroom Behaviors Self-reports of student’s classroom behaviors were assessed over 5 days at the same time of the day (2nd hour). There were seven classes of behaviors related to positive affect1 (four items), negative affect (four items), perceptions of reinforcement (two items), perceptions of punishment (two items), student engagement (three items), student boredom (two items), and positive affectivity during the school break (two items). Sample items for positive affect were ‘‘enthusiastic’’ and ‘‘energetic,’’ for negative affect, ‘‘disappointed’’ and ‘‘scared,’’ for reinforcement ‘‘the teacher encouraged you/helped you,’’ for punishment ‘‘the teacher was mean to you/ignored you,’’ for engagement ‘‘you worked hard/were engaged during the previous lesson,’’ for boredom ‘‘you got bored/wished you weren’t in the class,’’ for positive affect during the break ‘‘you played/had a good time with your friends during the break.’’ The scaling ranged between 1 and 5 with 1 being ‘‘not at all’’ and 5 being ‘‘very much so.’’ Using Cronbach’s alpha, estimates of internal consistency were 0.83 for positive affect, 0.86 for negative affect, 0.78 for reinforcement, 0.81 for punishment, 0.77 for engagement, 0.75 for boredom, and 0.87 for positive affectivity during the break. Data Analysis Multilevel Random Coefﬁcient Models (MRCM) originated in the work of Bryk and Raudenbush (1992) and have been instrumental towards explaining variance at various levels of analyses (e.g., within person, between person, between groups, between contexts, etc.). For example, the present design allowed prediction of student behavior over time (i.e., within person variance) from between person characteristics (i.e., achievement goal orientations and perceptions of a classroom’s goal structure). In other words, student behavior over time was nested within student characteristics

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and perceptions of classroom motivational discourse (see also Snijders & Bosker, 1999). Thus, two types of variance were assessed, within person (i.e., assessments of students’ variability in their behaviors over 5 days) and between person (i.e., variations in students’ goal orientations or their perceptions of their classroom’s motivational climate – although the students were supposedly exposed to approximately the same instructional conditions).2 The models were run separately for typical students and students with LD in order to ascertain solutions for each group. Whenever between groups comparisons were of interest, intercept tests or slope difference tests, were conducted. All models were run with inclusion of random effects, with the level 2 predictors being standardized, although solutions with both random and ﬁxed effects were very similar (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). The following MRCM model was run for predicting classroom behaviors as a function of goal orientation adoption: Level 1 Y 0ðstudent behaviorÞ ¼ p0 þ e Level 2 p0 ¼ b00 þ b01 ðmastery approachÞ þ b02 ðmastery avoidÞ þ b03 ðperformance approachÞ þ b04 ðperformance avoidÞ þ r0 With p0 representing the mean levels of student behaviors from the time series (e.g., positive affect over 5 days), b01 through b04 representing partial regression coefﬁcients of each goal orientation, adjusted for the presence of the other coefﬁcients in the model. R0 represents the error associated with those estimates (i.e., residual or left-over variance). Between-groups comparisons were run using custom slope difference t-tests and statistical signiﬁcance was judged to be present whenever p-values were o0.05. The following model was run for estimating the effects of classroom goal structures on students’ classroom behavior: Level 1 Y 0ðstudent behaviorÞ ¼ p0 þ e Level 2 b01 ¼ b00 þ b01 ðmastery goal structureÞ þ b02 ðperformance goal structureÞ þ r0 Again, betas of 01 and 02 reﬂect partial regression coefﬁcients for the ﬁrst and second predictors of the model (i.e., mastery goal structure and

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performance goal structure, respectively) and r0 represents the variance around those estimates.

RESULTS Intercorrelations between Measured Variables Table 1 shows descriptive statistics and intercorrelations among measured variables. It is evident that there were signiﬁcant relations between observed variables for both groups with few between-group differences. For example, performance avoidance goals were related to mastery avoidance goals for the typical student group only. Performance approach goals were also related signiﬁcantly more heavily with performance avoidance goals and both classroom goal structures for the LD students compared to typical students. Mastery approach and performance approach goals were signiﬁcantly related, as it is common practice when measured via self-reports.

Table 1.

Intercorrelations between Measured Variables.

Variables

1

2

3

4

5

6

Typical students Mastery approach Mastery avoidance Performance approach Performance avoidance Mastery goal structure Performance goal structure

– 0.190 0.481 0.146 0.591 0.180

– 0.080 0.607 0.014 0.266

– 0.175 0.229 0.344

– 0.142 0.210

– 0.145

–

Students with LD Mastery approach Mastery avoidance Performance approach Performance avoidance Mastery goal structure Performance goal structure

– 0.049 0.313 0.360 0.662 0.054

– 0.043 0.115 0.277 0.228

– 0.555 0.625 0.678

– 0.574 0.219

– 0.437

–

Note: Classroom behaviors are not included in the table because they were measured over 5 days and represented within person characteristics. po0.05. po0.01.

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Achievement Goal Orientations and Student Classroom Behaviors The results are shown individually for each group, to make use of all available observations, followed by a section in which the two groups are compared with each other using statistical means. Predictions for Typical Students As shown in Table 2 the typical student group had, on the average, above scale median levels in positive affect (b00 ¼ 2.872). Mastery approach was a signiﬁcant positive predictor and performance avoidance a negative predictor of positive affect. Using w2 slope difference tests, there were signiﬁcant differences in the slope coefﬁcients of mastery approach; and (a) mastery avoidance w2 (1) ¼ 11.178, po0.001; (b) performance approach w2 (1) ¼ 3.690, p ¼ 0.05; and (c) performance avoidance w2 (1) ¼ 15.914, po0.001. Thus, only mastery approach was a positive predictor of positive affect. With regard to negative affect, mean levels were low compared to the scales’ median (b00 ¼ 1.458) and mastery avoidance emerged as a signiﬁcant positive predictor of that affective state. Chi-square slope difference tests indicated that the effects of mastery avoidance goals were signiﬁcantly different from those of mastery approach goals w2 (1) ¼ 8.489, po0.01, and performance approach goals w2 (1) ¼ 3.771, po0.05, pointing to the maladaptive role of mastery avoidance goals, compared to the other two orientations. For reinforcement, intercept levels were below the median scaling (b00 ¼ 2.178). Mastery approach goals were a signiﬁcant positive predictor (see Table 2) and its predictive ability was also signiﬁcantly higher compared to (a) mastery avoidance goals w2 (1) ¼ 8.396, po0.01, performance approach goals w2 (1) ¼ 7.422, po0.01; and (b) performance avoidance goals w2 (1) ¼ 13.922, po0.001. Thus, only mastery approach goals were positive predictors of perceptions of teacher’s reinforcement. For perceptions of punishment, its levels were low (b00 ¼ 1.853) and mastery approach and mastery avoidance goals exerted negative and positive effects, respectively. Slope difference tests pointed to signiﬁcant differences between mastery approach and mastery avoidance goals w2 (1) ¼ 12.158, po0.001, favoring the function of the former. Levels of engagement were reportedly low for the typical students (b00 ¼ 1.950) with both mastery approach and performance approach being positive predictors. Slope difference tests pointed to signiﬁcant differences between mastery approach and (a) mastery avoidance w2 (1) ¼ 29.606,

Goal Orientations and Classroom Goal Structures

Table 2.

113

Standardized Estimates for the Prediction of Classroom Student Behaviors.

Robust Effects

Coefﬁcient

Standard Error

t-Ratio

d.f.

p-Value

Positive Affect Typical students Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

2.872387 0.235417 0.047416 0.018909 0.095574

0.317161 0.067053 0.051540 0.059255 0.045847

9.057 3.511 0.920 0.319 2.085

203 203 203 203 203

0.000 0.001 0.359 0.750 0.038

Students with LD Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

1.565666 0.097274 0.332124 0.062541 0.141451

0.622971 0.151306 0.071696 0.189262 0.096221

2.513 0.643 4.632 0.330 1.470

11 11 11 11 11

0.029 0.533 0.001 0.747 0.169

Negative Affect Typical students Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

1.458535 0.068947 0.086748 0.017332 0.009479

0.171690 0.040977 0.032278 0.035939 0.027423

8.495 1.683 2.688 0.482 0.346

203 203 203 203 203

0.000 0.094 0.008 0.630 0.730

Students with LD Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

2.301845 0.234881 0.042209 0.093202 0.006869

0.723306 0.121655 0.056439 0.093957 0.075006

3.182 1.931 0.748 0.992 0.092

11 11 11 11 11

0.009 0.079 0.470 0.343 0.929

Reinforcement Typical students Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

2.177595 0.325068 0.023484 0.054437 0.101590

0.430489 0.084063 0.080447 0.078068 0.066690

5.058 3.867 0.292 0.697 1.523

203 203 203 203 203

0.000 0.000 0.771 0.486 0.129

Students with LD Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

1.914401 0.316961 0.228250 0.407152 0.224046

0.683114 0.141210 0.079016 0.126234 0.093975

2.802 2.245 2.889 3.225 2.384

11 11 11 11 11

0.018 0.046 0.015 0.009 0.036

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Table 2. (Continued ) Robust Effects

Coefﬁcient

Standard Error

t-Ratio

d.f.

p-Value

Punishment Typical students Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

1.853568 0.147597 0.094480 0.001624 0.015196

0.322600 0.058836 0.046052 0.045496 0.041293

5.746 2.509 2.052 0.036 0.368

203 203 203 203 203

0.000 0.013 0.041 0.972 0.713

Students with LD Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

2.989370 0.170616 0.071396 0.136380 0.056781

1.324086 0.220656 0.071155 0.309150 0.126320

2.258 0.773 1.003 0.441 0.449

11 11 11 11 11

0.045 0.456 0.338 0.667 0.661

Active Engagement Typical students Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

1.950437 0.346749 0.063803 0.104686 0.041904

0.305681 0.058104 0.047447 0.049721 0.044464

6.381 5.968 1.345 2.105 0.942

203 203 203 203 203

0.000 0.000 0.180 0.036 0.347

Students with LD Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

2.005422 0.436250 0.232156 0.373370 0.107710

0.886491 0.092606 0.134796 0.125435 0.121709

2.262 4.711 1.722 2.977 0.885

11 11 11 11 11

0.045 0.001 0.113 0.013 0.395

Boredom Typical students Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

3.000523 0.287006 0.087022 0.015511 0.057268

0.429210 0.082998 0.060797 0.069416 0.057956

6.991 3.458 1.431 0.223 0.988

203 203 203 203 203

0.000 0.001 0.154 0.824 0.325

Students with LD Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

3.856771 0.495534 0.043764 0.434647 0.178785

0.884475 0.139127 0.107004 0.176410 0.130980

4.361 3.562 0.409 2.464 1.365

11 11 11 11 11

0.001 0.005 0.690 0.032 0.200

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Table 2. (Continued ) Standard Error

t-Ratio

d.f.

p-Value

Positive Affect during the Break Typical students Intercept b00 3.407861 Mastery approach b01 0.248710 Mastery avoidance b02 0.007434 Performance approach b03 0.126313 Performance avoidance b04 0.010984

0.359968 0.070529 0.070703 0.064141 0.060425

9.467 3.526 0.105 1.969 0.182

203 203 203 203 203

0.000 0.001 0.917 0.050 0.856

Students with LD Intercept b00 Mastery approach b01 Mastery avoidance b02 Performance approach b03 Performance avoidance b04

1.165296 0.182818 0.117501 0.189525 0.140677

1.269 2.957 1.406 1.034 0.660

11 11 11 11 11

0.231 0.014 0.187 0.324 0.522

Robust Effects

Coefﬁcient

1.478394 0.540653 0.165193 0.195921 0.092908

Note: The level 1 units that contributed data were 1,040 and 80 time series, for the typical student group and the LD students, respectively; the level 2 units involved 208 and 16 participants for the typical and LD groups, respectively. Indicates statistical signiﬁcant coefﬁcients at po0.05. Indicates statistical signiﬁcant coefﬁcients at po0.01.

po0.001; (b) performance approach w2 (1) ¼ 7.145, po0.01; and (c) performance avoidance w2 (1) ¼ 24.222, po0.001. Performance approach goals were also different in their prediction compared to both mastery avoidance goals w2 (1) ¼ 7.254, po0.01 and performance avoidance goals w2 (1) ¼ 3.962, po0.05. Boredom levels were high for the typical student group (b00 ¼ 3.001). Mastery approach goals were the only signiﬁcant negative predictor. The coefﬁcient of mastery approach was signiﬁcantly more negative compared to (a) mastery avoidance w2 (1) ¼ 16.973, po0.001; (b) performance approach w2 (1) ¼ 4.254, po0.05; and (c) performance avoidance w2 (1) ¼ 10.402, po0.001, pointing to its adaptive role. Last, for positive affect during the break, average levels were high (b00 ¼ 3.408), and mastery approach and performance approach goals were signiﬁcant positive and negative predictors, respectively, pointing to the adaptive role of the former. Slope difference tests indicated that mastery approach goals were a signiﬁcantly more positive predictor compared to (a) mastery avoidance goals w2 (1) ¼ 4.652, po0.05; (b) performance approach goals w2 (1) ¼ 11.736, po0.001; and (c) performance avoidance goals w2 (1) ¼ 7.262, po0.01.

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GEORGIOS D. SIDERIDIS

Predictions for Students with LD Students with LD seemed to have below average levels in positive affect (b00 ¼ 1.566), although signiﬁcantly different from zero. Surprisingly, mastery avoidance was a positive predictor of their low levels in positive affect. Using w2 difference tests results indicated that there were signiﬁcant differences in the predictive ability of mastery avoidance goals compared to (a) performance approach w2 (1) ¼ 4.187, po0.05; and (b) performance avoidance goals w2 (1) ¼ 3.663, p ¼ 0.05. Negative affect levels were about average on the 1–5 scale (b00 ¼ 2.302) and no coefﬁcient exceeded conventional levels of signiﬁcance. However, using w2 slope difference tests, mastery approach goals were a signiﬁcantly more negative predictor of negative affect compared to performance approach goals w2 (1) ¼ 4.697, po0.05. With regard to perceptions of reinforcement, mean levels were low (b00 ¼ 1.914) and all goal orientation slopes were signiﬁcant (Table 2) with performance approach goals being the only ones exerting negative effects. All other coefﬁcients were positive. Using slope difference tests, performance approach goals exerted signiﬁcantly different effects compared to mastery approach goals w2 (1) ¼ 10.682, po0.01; mastery avoidance goals w2 (1) ¼ 28.881, po0.001; and performance avoidance goals w2 (1) ¼ 11.873, po0.001, pointing to their maladaptiveness. Regarding perceptions of punishment, students with LD had high levels (M ¼ 2.989) and no coefﬁcient exceeded signiﬁcance. The same was true for the slope difference tests. Regarding reported engagement, its levels were low (b00 ¼ 2.001) and mastery approach and performance approach goals were signiﬁcant predictors, with positive and negative signs, respectively (see Table 2). Slope difference tests indicated that mastery approach goals exerted signiﬁcantly different effects compared to performance approach goals w2 (1) ¼ 31.576, po0.001. Performance approach goals were a signiﬁcant more negative predictor of engagement compared to mastery avoidance w2 (1) ¼ 13.929, po0.01 and performance avoidance w2 (1) ¼ 6.144, po0.05. Boredom levels were high for the LD student group (b00 ¼ 3.857). Both mastery approach and performance approach goals emerged as negative and positive predictors of boredom, respectively. Slope difference tests indicated that mastery approach goals were signiﬁcantly more negative predictors compared to mastery avoidance w2 (1) ¼ 5.718, po0.05 and performance approach goals w2 (1) ¼ 18.448, po0.001. Performance approach goals were a signiﬁcantly more positive predictor of boredom compared to both mastery avoidance goals w2 (1) ¼ 6.672, po0.01, and performance avoidance goals w2 (1) ¼ 4.701, po0.05. The negative effects observed for performance

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117

approach goals with regard to reinforcement and engagement, were also observed with regard to perceptions of boredom. Last, positive affectivity during the break was very low for the LD student group (b00 ¼ 1. 478). Only mastery approach goals emerged as a signiﬁcant positive predictor of positive affect. Slope difference tests pointed to the fact that mastery approach goals were a signiﬁcantly more positive predictor compared to performance approach goals only w2 (1) ¼ 13.696, po0.001. All other comparisons were not signiﬁcant. Given that the sign of the slope for performance approach goals was negative, this ﬁnding follows along with the previous negative effects of those goals on positive student behaviors. Achievement Goal Effects: Comparisons between Students with and without LD at the Intercept and Slope Levels With regard to the seven classes of behaviors assessed, there were no signiﬁcant between-group differences at the mean level (intercepts) across several comparisons, although the coefﬁcient regarding positive affect approached statistical signiﬁcance (typical b00 ¼ 2.872, LD b00 ¼ 1.566) favoring the typical student group (t(229) ¼ 1.875, p ¼ 0.06). At the slope level several signiﬁcant between-group differences emerged. Speciﬁcally