Issues in Teacher Education - Essay Example

Running Head: Child Care. Name: Course: Tutor: October 15, 2012 Article 1 Sénéchal and LeFevre (2002) insinuated that, there are substantial correlation between early home literacy experiences, receptive language and emergent literacy skills and reading achievement in the development of children. They used longitudinal studies to study their hypothesis. Longitudinal method is widely used to study the child’s development. This happens for instance when a parent’s enrol their newborns in a study agreed to have the child weighed, measured, observed and tested until they are old enough. In this case, same individuals are studied repeatedly at various points of their life in order to assess patterns of stability and change over time. It is worth noting that, this allows researchers to monitor the development of a child, rather than a group, over time and then have an observation of the possible causes of observed patterns. Sénéchal and LeFevre (2002) argued that, children get exposed to two types of literacy experiences at home, informal and formal literacy activities. In this study, they wanted to assess the importance of parent story book reading and parent reports of teaching to children language and emergent literacy, assess the relationship between early literacy experiences and reading acquisition, and finally assess the long term influence of early home literacy experiences on reading achievement. Participants This study included children and their parents recruited from three schools in Ottawa Canada. In this regions, children can start kindergarten at age 4 for 2 years, and 4 and 5 years children can be integrated in the same classes and so were both used in the study. There were 110 kindergarten children tested, 93 (41 girls and 52 boys) were followed until the end of grade 1, and 66 (30 boys, 36 girls), were followed up to the end of grade 3. They were labelled K- cohort children. Then 58 grade 1 children tested in grade 1. 45 (22 girls, 23 boys), were followed up until grade 3, from English speaking homes and whites. Some children did not manage to complete the study, this is because of their inattentiveness, invalidated their grade 3 reading scores (2 % of the sample), 9 were not followed for they transferred to special or enriched school programs (5% of the sample) and the remaining 28% were not followed because they moved out of the school district. It is clear that, loss rates increased with the length of time and therefore much was lost by the youngest at the original test. Those children who completed the study performed better than the children who did not complete the study on measures of language and emergent literacy. It is clear that, reading acquisition in the early grades is predictive of the later reading performances. In the same case, children’s early experiences are linked to their performance in kindergarten or grade 1. This study shows that, fluent reading in a child have links to different aspects of children’s early experiences. Measures In this study, two parent measures of home literacy experiences were used. Parent reported of how frequently they taught their child to read and their exposure to print words and storybook exposure. The frequency with which they taught their child to read and print words on two 5 point scales, 1= never and 5= very often. The responses to the two questions were linked to index the frequency of parent’s reports of teaching at home through their average. Giving a list of titles and authors of children’s books to parents and asking them which they recognize was used to measure the story book exposure. Questionnaires about the frequency of storybook reading were also used, the number of storybooks at home, age at which reading started, frequents of library visits and any shared readings among other children initiated by the child. The child’s exposure to print was also measured at the end of grade 1. They were shown key instructions from 37 popular children’s books and asked to recall the title. Their performance in this reflected their exposure to children’s literature book from reading or even listening to books read to them. Article 2 Yu (2006) conducted a study which was aimed at examining the spelling-learning process of a Chinese English bilingual child in terms of the developmental patterns. In this study, certain questions were asked on what developmental patterns could be observed from the bilingual child’s invented spelling. This study used direct observation method. This method means that, the researcher used direct observation of child development and in most cases, this observational data is only valid when the observer is present to other demands of the situation do not distort participants behaviour to the responses. This is due to the fact that, children and parents often behave differently in different kinds of settings or even when they know they are being watched. Participants Jason (9; 8 years) was the participant involved in this study. Who is a grade 2 in an American school in Taiwan; He was solely a Chinese speaking child, on attending this school he then gets exposed to English as he started Kindergarten at 4;9, and then much emphasis on the same at 5;3. The use of and attitude towards language has markedly emerged since the age of 4;9 onwards. It is noted that he then gets increasingly dependent on English, only at the expense of native language. It is also observed that, after some time, there is rapid progress and even the parents have contributed much to help him improve his Chinese, but he shoes sign of stagnation as far as Chinese is concerned and maybe regression as he grows older. Measures The data was collected over a two year period by the investigator. Observations were made on invented spelling and writing, every week for the period of two years. Uninterrupted writing and dictated writing of words were the tests used. For uninterrupted the investigator designed a specific theme, such as walking, eating, playing with friends, reading books, and then asked the participant to write what he would want to say about the specific topic, until he expressed that he was not able to go on any more. Dictated writing of words, the investigator would choose 15 words and then ask the participant to write down these specific dictated words. The data collected was informed of audio cassettes and video tapes as well as observational notes. Taping was aimed at tapping the attitude towards use of words. The findings showed that, although the participant kept on learning Chinese, his spelling and writing did not improve, it did stagnate. The percentage of correct writing for the observed child decreased from 80.7%, to 75.3%, 67.1%, and finally 54.3% and then it was found that, he produced fewer and fewer Chinese words in the Uninterrupted Writing task from 433, 390, 279, and finally 161. Article 3 Moschovaki and Meadows (2005) conducted a cross-sectional study to examine the children’s spontaneous participation during classroom book reading in response to different types of books. Where the kindergarten teacher read 4 books; two fiction and two information books; it was found that, the majority of children spontaneous participation was related to book illustration and the children’s personal experiences. Cross-sectional method gives searchers a chance to compare different individuals representing different level at approximately the same point in time. Participants Twenty teachers participated from two Greek islands and the children in all classes with mixed ages from 3.5 to 5.5 years. Teachers volunteered to participate, and the sample was made up of experienced teachers; mean teaching experience=12.6 years, range 3-20. Each class had 10-20 children. Measures Unit analysis - sentence reading by the teacher For both teacher and children, the unit analysis was the utterance. During the coding of the children’s behaviour, all spontaneous comments were counted as separate utterances. Also the coding of the participants behaviour, the first code is the speaker, whether teacher or child. The second one is the open or closed questions or response or provision of information. And the third is the spontaneity or responsiveness. Spontaneous utterances correlated to al questions, statements that initiate discussion and responsive utterances include all responses to questions, statements that followed another statement and repetitions of questions for a correct answer. After coding, all measure of oral language was calculated in correlation to the total number of utterances for each session. To receive reliability of the coding of the data, two people were employed. Using the Cohen Kappa for the participants ranged from 0.99 to 1; for information 0.97 to 0.99; for spontaneous or responsive behaviour, 0.92 to 0.99 and for cognitive engagement 0.90 to 0.97. Article 5 By the use of qualitative research, Claire and Lyndon (1992) were able to explore the subject of literacy in hearing-impaired children and came up with very insightful findings on the subject. Qualitative research is able to provide such findings because they gather an in-depth understanding by investigating the why and how and don’t involve statistics. Claire and Lyndon (1992), in their paper on literacy development of hearing-impaired children, found that it is through involvement in everyday life that young children gain knowledge on literacy and the learning of this literacy occurs within social contexts. The pair used qualitative methods in this study. The knowledge the participants had and learned about literacy and how they acquired it were studied through observations of the participants in their school setting. Drawings and writing samples from the children, and interviews with teachers and parents were also used in the research. Participants The research took place in a public elementary school in a large South-western suburban school district and was conducted by Rottenberg and Searfoss (1992 ). The participants were seven children (aged between 3yrs 4months and 4yrs 11months at start of research) from two preschool hearing-impaired classes which consisted of a total communication group in the morning and an oral group in the afternoon. The two classes shared a teacher as well as a classroom. There were three children in the oral class who communicated using audition, lip-reading, and speech while the other four in the total communication class communicated using mainly a manual sign system for English. Claire, the lead researcher, also participated as an observer-participant. Measures Claire, who served as the principle researcher, observed the children and wrote field notes especially as they related to literacy learning. The field notes included descriptions of children’s verbalizations both oral and sign, and nonverbal communications which includes body movements, gestures and facial expressions. The notes also comprised of descriptions of their interactions with adults and peers and participation in daily activities. There were also informal open-ended interviews which concentrated on the children's prior and concurrent schooling, home environments, language and literacy development, and activities on days that observation did not take place. Several parents were also interviewed to ascertain the literacy events that occurred in the homes and the children’s involvement and to obtain the parents’ perspective on the children’s language and literacy learning. The findings showed that the children used literacy as a primary form of communication, an interactional tool, and used it to make sense of the world around them. Article 6 Quantitative research methods use mathematical and computational techniques to analyze information in order to draw conclusions (Fielding 2008). As a result, making measurements is essential in data collection intended for analysis using quantitative techniques. These techniques involve the use the use formulae, mathematical models, logical theories and hypotheses. To gather information the researcher sets out to ask questions and collects data in numerical form which is later analyzed in a statistical format. Participants The study involves 76 children in a district in Mid West state and was conducted by Lori and collegues (2011). They are to join a sub urban school and the study focuses on their social and academic development. All children are aged 4 years in average but they are in two categories based on the preschool age set by the district of December first. One sample of 46 children is attending their first year of preschool while the second group of 30 joins their second year of preschool. The children come from middle to high class backgrounds with 57% being males and 43% females. The proportion of males to females did not differ in the two groups. Those attending their first year had .65 years (SD=1.18) of previous child care which is relatively lower compared to 1.99 years (SD=2.48) for those attending the second their second year which means they had more time in child care. Using multiple analysis of variance (NANOVA) technique with propensity scoring technique, there shows results of disparity in the children performance in the tests. These differences arise from the inclusion of paternal and maternal age and education, child race and the total number of years the two groups of children attended in the analysis. Measures The children’s skills were assessed in the fall or spring of preschool year in a suitable location where tasks were administered individually each lasting for 30 minutes. The children’s self regulation, early literacy and language skills are tested. Self regulation was tested with a head to toes task in form of a game with an aim of measuring attention, inhibitory control and working memory which is essential for academic success. The responses from the game gave scores out of 10. Early literacy development was assessed by decoding in the Woodcock Johnson tests through letter identification. This task was excellent in reliability with a strong correlation of spring and fall scores. Language development was tested with vocabulary subset of WJ-III where children are asked to indentify pictures verbally which has reliability of .81 in norming population. Article 7 In Josie and colleagues Norbury’s (2001) ‘A Comparison of Children with Mild-to-moderate Sensor neural hearing Loss and Those with Specific Language Impairment’ the researchers employ qualitative research methods to investigate this particular human behaviour. Qualitative research aims to gather an in-depth understanding of human behaviour and reasons that govern them focussing on samples of the whole. Phonological skills, language ability, and literacy scores were compared for four groups. Two clinical samples aged 5 to 10 years were administered a battery of linguistic and non verbal measures of ability in two test sessions that lasted approximately 45 minutes each. A single experimenter tested each child individually in a quiet area. Participants The participants in this research were 19 children aged from 5.91 to 10.66 years (mean age 8.66 years) with mild-to-moderate sensor neural hearing loss (SNH), 20 children with specific language impairment (SLI), and 20 controls matched on chronological age to the SNH group (CA- Control group A), and 15 controls matched on receptive vocabulary level to a subset of the SLI group (CB – Control group B). In addition, a small group of older children with SLI were included that were matched in vocabulary level to group CA. The control group consisted of thirty five children with no known educational difficulties or histories of speech and language therapy were recruited mainly from primary schools in the Oxfordshire area. Measurements Standardised assessments which include raven's coloured progressive matrices, British picture vocabulary scales, test for reception of grammar, children's test of non-word repetition, word finding test as well as the four core linguistic measures and recalling sentences subtest from clinical evaluation of language fundamentals. With the exception of non word repetition and word finding, scores on these tests were transformed to standard scores according to published norms (mean = 100, SD = 15, except for recalling sentences, where mean is 10, SD = 3). For non-word repetition, published norms extend only to 9 years. The most important finding from this study is that children with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss are as impaired as normally hearing children with SLI on tests of phonological discrimination, phonological awareness, and non-word repetition, yet they do not show the pervasive difficulties with language and literacy that characterise SLI. Article 8 The researchers in this paper used systematic empirical investigation on early childhood educators’ via statistical technique to ascertain the knowledge of early literacy development of these educators.  The process of measurement is central to quantitative research because it offers the primary connection between empirical observation and mathematical expression of quantitative relationships. Measurement Evaluation of participants’ knowledge was conducted using portions of three of the 14 sections on the Informal Survey of Linguistic Knowledge that most closely aligned with prekindergarten literacy guidelines. These three sections contained several items that focused on the recognition of syllables, phonemes, and morphemes within words. In these three sections, the researchers analyzed the individual responses to items. An item analysis reports the percentage for correct and incorrect responses for each item in the section. When participants completed a majority of the assessment, but left some questions unanswered, researchers coded these non-responses as incorrect. This process allowed for a more thorough analysis of the participants’ responses and enabled researchers to determine if an individual knew the number of syllables in one word in the section, but not for another. Participants The setting for this study covers urban, suburban, and rural communities in southeast Texas conducted by Crim and collegues (2008). The participants in this study consisted of 64, arbitrarily selected early childhood educators who voluntarily agreed to participate in the professional opportunities offered by the C3 Coaching: Quality Professional Development Grant (Collegial, Cognitive, and Collaborative), beginning in the school year 2003-2004. The majority of participating teachers were female (95.5%) with a mean age of 39.7 years. The teachers averaged 9.8 years of teaching experience and reported holding their current position for an average of 4.7 years. All participants worked with preschool children (ages 3, 4 and 5) in public school prekindergarten, kindergarten and Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities classrooms, community or school-based Head Start classrooms, or community-based preschool/childcare classrooms. The results show that participating early childhood teachers had difficulty identifying specific print-to-speech concepts of the English language composition, basic skills related to beginning reading instruction. These concepts include counting syllables in words and identifying the number of morphemes and phonemes in words. The results show that some participants may have used only pronunciation guiding principles rather than identifying syllables by vowels when determining the number of syllables in the word. Bibliography Claire J Rottenberg and Lyndon W. Searfoss. (1992 ). Becoming Literate in a Preschool Class: Literacy Development of Hearing-Impaired Children. Journal of Literacy Research 1, 24, 467-478. Courtney Crim, Jacqueline Hawkins, Jenifer Thornton, Holly Boon Rosof, Juanita Copley, Emily Thomas. ( 2008). Early Childhood Educators’ Knowledge of Early Literacy Development. Issues in Teacher Education, 17(1), 17-30. Eleni Moschovaki and Sara Meadows. (2005). Young Children's Spontaneous Participation during Classroom Book Reading: Differences According to Various Types of Books . ECRP, 7(1), 1-17. Fielding,Pillinger. (2008). Using Quantitative Data in Research: Concepts and Definitions. Centre for Multilevel Modelling, 1-5. Josie Briscoe, Dorothy V. M. Bishop, and Courtenay Frazier Norbury. ( 2001). Phonological Processing, Language, and Literacy: A Comparison of Children with Mild-to-moderate Sensorineural Hearing Loss and Those with Speci®c Language Impairment. J. Child Psychol. Psychiat. Vol. 42, No. 3, , 329-340,. Lori E. Skibbea, Carol McDonald Connorb, Frederick J. Morrisonc, Abigail M. Jewkesd. (2011). Schooling effects on preschoolers’ self-regulation, early literacy, and language growth. Early Childhood Research Quarterly , 26, 42–49. Monique Sénéchal and Jo-Anne LeFevre. (2002). Parental Involvement in the Development of Children's Reading Skill: A Five-Year Longitudinal Study. Child Development, 73(2), 445-460. Shields,Twycross. (2004). The difference between quantitative and qualitative research. Pediatric nursing, 1. Yu, M.-c. (2006). Explorations in Language and Literacy Learning: A Two-Year Case Study on a Nine-Year-Old Chinese-English Bilingual Child’s Chinese Invented Spelling. Journal of Language and Linguistics, 5(1), 132-157. Read More