Gender differences in reading ability and attitudes: examining where these differences lie     

Sarah Logan  Rhona Johnston 《Journal of Research in Reading》2009,32(2):199-214

The aim of this study was to investigate gender differences in the relationship between reading ability, frequency of reading and attitudes and beliefs relating to reading and school. Two hundred and thirty‐two 10‐year‐old children (117 male) completed a reading comprehension test and a questionnaire exploring the following areas: frequency of reading, attitude to reading, attitude to school, competency beliefs and perceived academic support (from peers and teacher). Overall, girls had better reading comprehension, read more frequently and had a more positive attitude to reading and school. However, smaller gender differences were found in reading ability than in attitudes and frequency of reading. Indeed, effect sizes for gender differences in reading were found to be small in this and other studies. Reading ability correlated with both boys' and girls' reading frequency and competency beliefs; however, only boys' reading ability was associated with their attitude to reading and school. Notably, gender differences were found predominantly in the relationship between factors, rather than solely in the factors themselves. Previous research has neglected to study these relationships, and has focused instead on the gender differences found in individual factors. Conclusions are made regarding the applicability of these findings to the school situation.  相似文献   

Reading instruction affects the cognitive skills supporting early reading development     

Sarah P. McGeown  Rhona S. Johnston  Emma Medford 《Learning and individual differences》2012,22(3):360-364

This study examined the cognitive skills associated with early reading development when children were taught by different types of instruction. Seventy-nine children (mean age at pre-test 4;10 (.22 S.D.) and post-test 5;03 (.21 S.D.)) were taught to read either by an eclectic approach which included sight-word learning, guessing from context and analytic phonics, or by a synthetic phonics approach, where children were taught solely to sound and blend letters to read unfamiliar words. The results illustrated differences in the skills supporting children's word reading based on their method of reading instruction. For the eclectic group, pre-test letter knowledge, vocabulary and rhyming skills predicted later reading ability, whereas for the synthetic phonics group, letter knowledge, phonemic awareness and memory span predicted later reading skill. The results suggest that children will draw upon different cognitive skills when reading if they are taught to use different word recognition strategies.  相似文献   

'It's Just Really Hard to Come to Terms With': Young people's views on homosexuality     

Sue Sharpe 《Sex education》2013,13(3):263-277

This article explores young people's views and beliefs about homosexuality. It is based on data from the Respect study, a multi-method project which involved over 1700 young people aged 11-16 in schools in various UK locations (including Northern Ireland), and from some marginal groups including a gay and lesbian group. Gendered patterns in attitudes to homosexuality and expressions of homophobia are described and examined, the latter generally expressed through the homosocial groups that most inhabit in the early and mid-teens. Some of the ways in which their views are constructed are suggested. Homosexuality for these young people appears to be more a label than 'real', allowing homophobic discourse to keep it distanced and denigrated. But despite strong expressions of homophobia amongst young people, emerging counter-currents were in evidence, often ill-informed and contradictory, but ones that are in urgent need of clarification and broadening out through information and discussion. The views and experiences of young people in the study who had struggled with the process of coming out as gay or lesbian demonstrate the impact of the cultural context of homophobia. These findings have several implications for sex education practice.  相似文献   

The relationship between young children’s enjoyment of learning to read,reading attitudes,confidence and attainment     

Sarah P. McGeown  Rhona S. Johnston  Jo Walker  Kathryn Howatson  Ann Stockburn  Paul Dufton 《Educational research; a review for teachers and all concerned with progress in education》2013,55(4):389-402

Background: While there is a considerable body of research exploring the relationship between older primary school children’s reading attitudes, confidence and attainment, there is a noticeable lack of research with younger children. Furthermore, there is relatively little research exploring the extent to which children’s reading attitudes, confidence and attainment are related to their enjoyment of learning to read.

Purpose: To understand the relationship between young children’s reading attitudes, reading confidence, enjoyment of learning to read and reading attainment.

Sample: Two hundred and three children (103 boys) with an average age of 6 years and 9 months (.32 years standard deviation) participated in this study. Children were from 11 primary schools in England, located within a wide range of socio-economic neighbourhoods.

Design and methods: All children completed questionnaires examining their attitudes to reading, reading confidence (using Progress in International Reading Literacy Study items) and enjoyment of learning to read. Children also completed an assessment of word reading. All assessments were administered individually.

Results: Children’s attitudes to reading, reading confidence and enjoyment of learning to read correlated with their word reading skill; however, only reading attitudes and reading confidence predicted variance in reading success. With regard to gender differences, girls reported more positive reading attitudes than boys, even after controlling for differences in reading skill.

Conclusions: Results highlight that the relationship between children’s reading skills and the affective aspects of learning to read develops from a young age. Therefore, methods of reading instruction need to foster affective aspects of reading, in addition to developing cognitive skills to best support young children’s reading development.  相似文献   

Physical Activity Habits of African-American College Students     

George A. Kelley DA  Kristi Sharpe Kelley 《Research quarterly for exercise and sport》2013,84(3):207-212

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Raising Literacy Standards for All? The National Literacy Strategy: An experiment in change in England and Wales     

Rhona Stainthorp 《教育心理学》2002,22(4):473-487

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Secondary school students’ attitudes to practical work in biology,chemistry and physics in England     

R. Sharpe  I. Abrahams 《Research in Science & Technological Education》2020,38(1):84-104

ABSTRACT

Background: In England, practical work is a major part of secondary school science and yet little research has examined students’ attitudes specifically to practical work.

Purpose: To examine students’ attitudes to practical work in biology chemistry and physics in secondary schools in England.

Sample: The study involved 607 students from Year 7 to Year 10 (aged 11–15) drawn from three state-maintained secondary schools in England. The schools were, broadly speaking, representative of schools in England in terms of academic measures such as GCSE outcomes, value-added performance and socio-economic area.

Design and methods: The research considered students’ attitudes in terms of an established analytical framework incorporating the affective, behavioural and cognitive (ABC) domains and used a mixed methods approach involving questionnaires, lesson observations, and focus group discussions.

Results: Whilst secondary students’ attitudes to practical work were, generally speaking, positive they were not constant and homogenous but change over time. The affective value of practical work was found to vary by subject although in all three sciences this value decreased, albeit at different rates, as students approached their General Certificate in Secondary Education examinations (GCSE) taken at age 16.

Conclusion: The affective value of practical work needs to be considered on a subject by subject basis, rather than, as is often the case currently in school, in terms of a generic attitude to science practical work. Furthermore, the affective value of practical work can be maximised by using more at the start of secondary education (Key Stage 3 – ages 11–14) with a gradual, subject-specific, reduction as students approach their summative public examinations (age 16) when their preference for non-practical, exam orientated, teaching increases.  相似文献   

Pseudohomophone effects in 8 and 11 year old good and poor readers     

Rhona S. Johnston  Michael D. Rugg  Tana Scott 《Journal of Research in Reading》1988,11(2):110-132

Eight and 11 year old good and poor readers carried out a lexical decision task, in which the accuracy of responding to nonwords and pseudohomophonic nonwords was assessed. Nonwords such as‘loast', are meaningless but conform to the rules of English spelling. Pseudohomophones, such as‘poast', are a special category of nonword as they sound like real words. In this study, the two classes of nonwords were closely matched for visual similarity,‘poast’and‘loast', for example, differing only in the initial consonant. All the groups were more prone to misclassify pseudo-homophones as words than nonwords. Poor readers of average and below average IQ, and their reading age controls, performed very similarly. It was concluded that the poor readers were equally as able to generate phonological information from nonwords as their reading age controls, and that there was no evidence to suggest that the poor readers suffered primarily from a phonological dysfunction. Both the average and below average intelligence poor readers showed a pattern of performance indicative of a delay or an arrestment in reading development, rather than a deficit in generating and utilising phonological information.  相似文献   

W(h)ither Phonological Awareness? Literate trainee teachers' lack of stable knowledge about the sound structure of words     

Rhona Stainthorp 《教育心理学》2004,24(6):753-765

Recent national developments in the teaching of literacy in the early years in the UK mean that teachers need to have explicit fluent knowledge of the sound structure of the language and its relationship to orthography in order to teach reading effectively. In this study, a group of 38 graduate trainee primary teachers were given a pencil and paper test of phonological awareness as part of a course on teaching literacy. Results from the pencil and paper test were used as the basis of teaching about the sound structure of words. The test was repeated six months later. The results showed that they did not use a consistent system for segmenting words into component sounds. Though there was substantial improvement on second testing, many trainees still did not show evidence that they had yet developed sufficient insights into the sound structure of words to be able to teach children about phonemes with certainty. It is argued that student teachers need substantial explicit training and practice in manipulating the sound structure of words to enable them to teach this aspect of language confidently.  相似文献   

Are nonword and other phonological deficits indicative of a failed reading process?     

Thompson  G. Brian  Johanston  Rhona S. 《Reading and writing》2000,12(1-2):63-97

Phonological processing problems have been consideredcritical in explaining developmental readingdisability. Reading disabled children were comparedwith two matched reading-level normal control groupson indicators of phonological processing. The readingdisabled children had lower nonword readingperformance than the phonics taught controls. However, performance was equivalent to that of thecontrols without phonics teaching. Therefore anonword reading deficit was not in itself diagnosticof developmental reading disability. The readingdisabled children and the non-phonics control groupwho exhibited lower nonword reading did not differfrom the phonics taught control group in phonemeawareness, nor in magnitude of the word regularityeffect. Nevertheless, within all groups thosechildren with higher phonemic awareness skills showedlarger word regularity effects and better nonwordreading. Processes involving two sources of knowledgefor phonological recoding are discussed asexplanations of these and many previous results onphonological deficits and of the phonological effectsof phonics instruction.  相似文献