25. Multiple Imputation for Nonresponse in Surveys. By D. B. Rubin. ISBN 0 471 08705 X. Wiley, Chichester, 1987. 258 pp. £30.25.

Multiple Imputation for Nonresponse in Surveys

In this article, Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan argue that “disciplinary literacy” — advanced literacy instruction embedded within content-area classes such as math, science, and social studies — should be a focus of middle and secondary school settings. Moving beyond the oft-cited “every teacher a teacher of reading” philosophy that has historically frustrated secondary content-area teachers, the Shanahans present data collected during the first two years of a study on disciplinary literacy that reveal how content experts and secondary content teachers read disciplinary texts, make use of comprehension strategies, and subsequently teach those strategies to adolescent readers. Preliminary findings suggest that experts from math, chemistry, and history read their respective texts quite differently; consequently, both the content-area experts and secondary teachers in this study recommend different comprehension strategies for work with adolescents. This study not only has implications for which comprehension strategies might best fit particular disciplinary reading tasks, but also suggests how students may be best prepared for the reading, writing, and thinking required by advanced disciplinary coursework. Reading is commonly viewed as a basic set of skills, widely adaptable and applicable to all kinds of texts and reading situations. Accordingly, in the 1990s, most states took on the challenge of improving young children’s reading skills, assuming that once the basics of literacy were accomplished, students would be well equipped for literacy-related tasks later in life (Blair, 1999). The idea that basic reading skills automatically evolve into more advanced reading skills, and that these basic skills are highly generalizable and adaptable, is partially correct: The basic perceptual and decoding skills that are connected with early

/pdf/teaching-disciplinary-literacy-to-adolescents-rethinking-8yr8kpp6vo.pdf

Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents: Rethinking Content- Area Literacy

Based on an engagement perspective of reading development, we investigated the extent to which an instructional framework of combining motivation support and strategy instruction (Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction—CORI) influenced reading outcomes for third-grade children. In CORI, five motivational practices were integrated with six cognitive strategies for reading comprehension. In the first study, we compared this framework to an instructional framework emphasizing Strategy Instruction (SI), but not including motivation support. In the second study, we compared CORI to SI and to a traditional instruction group (TI), and used additional measures of major constructs. In both studies, class-level analyses showed that students in CORI classrooms were higher than SI and/or TI students on measures of reading comprehension, reading motivation, and reading strategies. A widespread goal of education in the elementary grades is reading comprehension for all students. Reading comprehension becomes especially important in the later elementary grades (Sweet & Snow, 2003) and provides the basis for a substantial amount of learning in secondary school (Kirsch et al., 2002). Without the skills of reading comprehension and the motivation for reading to learn, students’ academic progress is limited (Alvermann & Earle, 2003). In view of the prominence of reading comprehension, a vital issue for educational psychology is investigating the characteristics of effective instruction for reading comprehension (Hiebert & Raphael, 1996). The growing knowledge base about instruction for reading comprehension is rightly directed toward identifying classroom practices with known effects on specific aspects of reading, and a major focus of this research has been on identifying effective reading strategies that increase children’s comprehension (Block & Pressley, 2002; Duke & Pearson, 2002; National Reading Panel, 2000). However, the evidence rests primarily on instructional research in which single cognitive strategies, such as questioning, are taught in controlled experiments. Relatively little investigation has been conducted on how multiple strategies can be combined in long-term comprehension instruction within the classroom, and

http://cori.umd.edu/research-publications/2004-guthrie-wigfield-etal.pdf

Increasing Reading Comprehension and Engagement Through Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction

These are the questions that the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) aims to answer through three-yearly surveys (2000, 2003, 2006...) of 15-year-olds in the principal industrialised countries that examine student performance in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy. The first survey, in 2000, focused on reading and the second, in 2003, on mathematics. PISA 2006, with its focus on science, completes the first full cycle of the survey.

Assessing scientific, reading and mathematical literacy : a framework for PISA 2006

We review the comparative literature on the impact of national-level educational institutions on inequality in student achievement. We focus on two types of institutions that characterize the educational system of a country: the system of school-type differentiation (between-school tracking) and the level of standardization (e.g., with regard to central examinations and school autonomy). Two types of inequality are examined: inequality in terms of dispersion of student test scores and inequality of opportunity by social background and race/ethnicity. We conclude from this literature, which mostly uses PISA, TIMSS, and/or PIRLS data, that inequalities are magnified by national-level tracking institutions and that standardization decreases inequality. Methodological issues are discussed, and possible avenues for further research are suggested.

/pdf/achievement-inequality-and-the-institutional-structure-of-gdx04mfa5y.pdf

Achievement Inequality and the Institutional Structure of Educational Systems: A Comparative Perspective

Following the initial report on the results of the first PISA survey, this report looks more closely at performance in reading. Some countries manage to combine high overall results with relatively small differences among students; in others, there are worryingly large numbers of students capable of only the most basic reading tasks. More specifically, there are particularly wide inequalities, in some countries, in the ability of students to deal with written materials in non-continous form – such as graphs or forms. Students also show greater differences in many countries in their ability to retrieve required information from texts than when it comes to interpreting or reflecting on information. Such outcomes give clues to policy makers about how their education system might improve.

J. McQueen

Papers

Reading for change : performance and engagement across countries : results of PISA 2000

La lecture, moteur de changement : performances et engagement d'un pays à l'autre : résultats de PISA 2000