Showing papers by "Ontario Institute for Studies in Education published in 2019"
TL;DR: The purpose of this review is to explore whether this classic sociological work, following its thirtieth birthday, might have new relevance to students and practitioners of both traditional and emerging information professions, given their rapidly changing work environments.
Abstract: What is an ‘information professional’? For that matter, what is a ‘professional’? These questions are awkward because they are difficult to answer with precision or certainty. ‘The professions’ have been an object of study by sociologists for many decades, but only one author has meaningfully ventured into the information professions. The System of Professions is now somewhat elderly, but the foundational theory developed here is very well-suited to a field like Information – weakly delineated and continually evolving. The purpose of this review is to explore whether this classic sociological work, following its thirtieth birthday, might have new relevance to students and practitioners of both traditional and emerging information professions, given their rapidly changing work environments. Andrew Abbott is a professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, and he served as the long-time editor of the American Journal of Sociology (2000–2016). This was his first book, notably winning the prestigious American Sociology Association’s Distinguished Scholarly Book Award (1991). Abbott’s own doctoral research had focused on the emergence of psychiatry as a profession; it was from this work that he abstracted his general conceptual model of professions as a ‘survival-of-thefittest’ ecology, and one that is set in a frequently changing social, epistemological, and technical landscape. Abbott’s distinctive contribution to the discourse is to methodically define professions wholly in terms of an elbows-out application of expertise; professions compete with each other for expertise-based jurisdiction over solvable problems. Competition
289 citations
TL;DR: This article presented a systematic review of the empirical studies that have been conducted to examine cross-language transfer and proposed an interactive framework in an attempt to capture the complex linguistic and cognitive processes involved in cross language transfer.
103 citations
TL;DR: Results point to spatial visualization as a unique and robust predictor of children's mathematics achievement, and a set of novel hypotheses aimed to more closely reveal the underlying nature of the oft reported space-math association.
87 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors report results of a qualitative study of 12 senior academic women from 6 countries who are known for feminist research and explore how they pursue their projects in the context of contemporary changes and challenges.
Abstract: A considerable scholarship now describes the increasing neoliberalization of universities and the accompanying impacts on academic research and researchers. However, less attention has been devoted to issues of research project leadership, especially for academics with feminist commitments. This article reports results of a qualitative study of 12 senior academic women from 6 countries who are known for feminist research and explores how they pursue their projects in the context of contemporary changes and challenges. Rather than positioning faculty as passive participants, this study acknowledges their agency within institutional structures, albeit somewhat constrained. The results reveal the range of strategies employed by feminist researchers in various national contexts that enable them to maintain their critical focus despite increasing pressures to conform to neoliberal agendas.
67 citations
16 Oct 2019
TL;DR: SITBs, among the transgender population, are both universally high and impacted by race/ethnicity, educational attainment, and income.
Abstract: Introduction: This systematic review assessed the impact of race/ethnicity, education, and income on transgender individual's lifetime experience of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (SITB) in gray and published literature (1997-2017). Methods: Sixty four research projects (108 articles) were identified in WorldCat, PubMed, and Google Scholar. Articles were included if they were published in Canada or the United States, included original quantifiable data on transgender SITBs, and had ≥5 participants, at least 51% of whom were ≥18 years. Results: Across all projects suicide ideation averaged 46.55% and attempts averaged 27.19%. The majority of participants were Caucasian, whereas the highest rate of suicide attempts (55.31%) was among First Nations, who accounted for <1.5% of participants. Caucasians, by contrast, had the lowest attempt rate (36.80%). More participants obtained a bachelor's degree and fewer an associate or technical degree than any other level of education. Suicide attempts were highest among those with ≤some high school (50.70%) and lowest among those with an advanced degree (30.25%). More participants made an income of $20-$50,000/year and less $10-$20,000 than any other income bracket. Conclusion: SITBs, among the transgender population, are both universally high and impacted by race/ethnicity, educational attainment, and income. These findings may be useful in creating culturally and factually informed interventions for transgender individuals experiencing SITBs and in informing future research on this topic.
54 citations
TL;DR: The results of this study reveal that the timing of socially shared monitoring influences the success of collaborative learning, which have implications for teaching practices and for adaptive scaffolding group learners in CSCL.
Abstract: While the importance in collaborative learning of both self- and socially shared regulatory processes has increasingly been emphasized, little research has examined sequences of such processes and how they influence group performance. This study identified sequences of self- and socially shared regulatory activities in the online chats and logs of students completing a STEM task in a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment. High school and college students (N = 156) were randomly assigned to groups of three and asked to solve four tasks of increasing complexity in a virtual learning environment designed to teach students about electronics. The results revealed that the students engaged mostly in executing, self-monitoring, and socially shared monitoring activities. The successful groups demonstrated more frequent and more diverse regulatory activities than did the less successful groups. A Markov chain analysis revealed that the successful groups were most likely to start with self-executing and end with socially shared monitoring, while the less successful group were most likely to start with executing and end with self-executing. The results of this study reveal that the timing of socially shared monitoring influences the success of collaborative learning, which have implications for teaching practices and for adaptive scaffolding group learners in CSCL.
51 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the relation between interest and curiosity is discussed, and the scientific importance of making a distinction between the two concepts is discussed as well as how earlier and later phases of developing interest are related to curiosity.
Abstract: In order to consider the relation between interest and curiosity, we first review various points of view on this issue, and discuss the scientific importance of making a distinction between the two concepts. Next, we explain that interest defined as a psychological state and as a cognitive and motivational variable can be supported to develop. Furthermore, the content-specific development of interest provides a different type of information search than curiosity, defined as the motivation to close a knowledge gap driven by uncertainty. We also discuss how earlier and later phases of developing interest are related to curiosity. More specifically, we suggest that (a) once curiosity is resolved, it may not result in any further engagement, or it may trigger a situational interest that could develop, and (b) when an existing, more developed interest initiates, supports or is related to a particular instance of triggered curiosity, continued engagement (and information search) is likely. In concluding, we point to needed neuroscientific research that could contribute to further clarifying the relation between interest and curiosity. This information is as important to research, as it is to practice.
42 citations
TL;DR: This paper describes a series of design-based research projects to investigate a smart classroom infrastructure that scaffolds students and teachers in new forms of collaboration and inquiry, including a substantive role for large projected displays and small touch surfaces, as well as a dependency on students’ physical location within the room.
Abstract: K-12 classroom settings are not yet incorporating emerging technologies such as ubiquitous computing, augmented reality, nor even touch surfaces, despite the significant impact that such media have made in many other aspects of our lives. Unfortunately, classroom environments have not generally evolved to support students in the new modes of collaboration, idea sharing, and inquiry that characterize many of our research-based innovations. Responding to this challenge, our research was conducted by a multi-disciplinary design team including educational researchers, a high school physics teacher, and technology designers. We embarked on a series of design-based research projects to investigate a smart classroom infrastructure that scaffolds students and teachers in new forms of collaboration and inquiry, including a substantive role for large projected displays and small touch surfaces, as well as a dependency on students’ physical location within the room. This paper describes our designs, including: (1) the role of large displays for communicating aggregate and ambient information, (2) the role of real-time communication between students, (3) the application of intelligent software agents to enact real-time pedagogical logic, (4) support for learning across contexts, and (5) orchestration of inquiry roles, materials and environments. These designs are particularly relevant for the Learning Sciences community, as they offer insight into how the orchestrated classroom can support new forms of collaborative, cooperative and collective inquiry. One important outcome of this work is a set of design principles for supporting smart classroom research.
39 citations
01 Feb 2019
38 citations
TL;DR: This article used the case study of two Chinese universities to address two research questions: (1) How have Chinese universities managed to rise so dramatically in terms of internationalization? and (2) Why do they embrace internationalization so enthusiastically and how does this benefit them?
Abstract: Internationalization has become a new landmark of Chinese higher education, measured by indicators such as personnel mobility, number of offshore/joint programs, and international publications. Chinese universities have moved from isolation to the forefront of internationalization in a short timeline and amid the dramatic expansion of Chinese higher education to a mass system since the late 1990s. This has set the context of the internationalization discourse. At the same time, Chinese upper- and middle-class families increasingly choose not to send their offspring to Chinese universities, but rather to study abroad. These developments add up to a puzzle as to how internationalization has helped lift the standards of Chinese higher education. Drawing on the glonacal agency heuristic, resource dependency theory, and the Ethical Internationalism in Higher Education (EIHE) perspective, this paper utilizes the case study of two Chinese universities to address such two research questions: (1) How have Chinese universities managed to rise so dramatically in terms of internationalization? and (2) Why do they embrace internationalization so enthusiastically and how does this benefit them?
37 citations
TL;DR: The role of the physical classroom environment, coupled with a technology environment that includes real-time agents and data analytics, to support the orchestration of complex collaborative inquiry designs in a high school physics classroom is investigated.
Abstract: This paper investigates the role of the physical classroom environment, coupled with a technology environment that includes real-time agents and data analytics, to support the orchestration of complex collaborative inquiry designs in a high school physics classroom. This design-based research contributes to the wider domain of scripting and orchestration (e.g., Dillenbourg 2012; Dimitriadis 2012; Fischer et al. 2013). Guided by a theoretical perspective of learning in knowledge communities (Slotta et al., 2018), we partnered with a physics teacher to co-design curricular activities and assessments that engaged students in collectively solving, tagging and evaluating physics problems, creating a knowledge base of student-contributed examples, and using those examples as a resource in collaborative inquiry challenges. To support the teacher in orchestrating such a complex curricular design, we developed a tablet application that allowed the teacher see the state of the class in real-time, control the flow of activities and helped him know when and where he was needed within the flow of class activities. The tablet leveraged a set of specially designed real-time software agents to process student interactions in real time, allowing dynamic orchestration of student groups, material allocation, and teacher notifications. The paper begins with a review of recent literature on scripting and orchestration, drawing connection to the theoretical perspective of knowledge communities. We then describe our theoretical model, the design-based method, and details of our curriculum and technology environment. The paper concludes with a summary of how the teacher tablet and the real-time software agents helped support the teacher’s real-time facilitation and orchestration.
TL;DR: Posttraumatic Stress symptomology, maltreatment history, and childhood adversity were examined in relation to RNR risk factors for reoffending (criminogenic needs) and recidivism in a sample of female and male juvenile offenders.
Abstract: Elevated rates of traumatic experience in the juvenile justice population are well established. Nevertheless, the role of trauma and its application to rehabilitation and recidivism in a criminal justice context remains hotly debated, particularly for female youth. The Risk-Need-Responsivity framework, the predominant model for risk assessment and case management in juvenile justice, does not consider trauma to be a risk factor for offending. This study examined– Posttraumatic Stress symptomology, maltreatment history, and childhood adversity – in relation to RNR risk factors for reoffending (criminogenic needs) and recidivism in a sample of female and male juvenile offenders. Rates of PTS symptomology, maltreatment, and childhood adversity were significantly higher in this sample compared to prevalence in the general population. Females were more likely to have experienced maltreatment. Several maltreatment and childhood adversity types were significantly related to criminogenic needs. PTS symptomology and adversity were not significant predictors of recidivism when entered alongside criminogenic needs; however, maltreatment was the strongest predictor of recidivism for both male and female youth in a model that included criminogenic needs. Gender did not moderate the relationship between maltreatment and recidivism. The importance of considering youths’ maltreatment history in their rehabilitative care is discussed.
TL;DR: English language teaching upholds racist nativist notions that competent teachers are white native speakers of English born in majority-white countries as mentioned in this paper, and these notions manifest when international languages teaching is conducted in majority white countries.
Abstract: English language teaching upholds racist nativist notions that competent teachers are white native speakers of English born in majority-white countries. These notions manifest when international st...
TL;DR: The authors argue that the public discourse surrounding these protests exposed the limits of Canadian pluralism, fuelling a meta-debate about the "Canadianness" of recent immigrants and the incompatibility of liberal values with those of non-westerners, especially Muslims.
Abstract: Scholars of sexuality have argued that ‘moral panics’ about sexuality often stand in for broader conflicts over nationality and belonging. Canada has spent decades cultivating a national image founded on multiculturalism and democratic equality. The Ontario sexuality education curriculum introduced in 2015 drew audible condemnation from a variety of groups. Drawing from Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Race Theory, we argue that the public discourse surrounding these protests exposed the limits of Canadian pluralism, fuelling a meta-debate about the ‘Canadianness’ of recent immigrants and the incompatibility of liberal values with those of non-Westerners, especially Muslims. We explain this in terms of contextual factors such as Ontario’s publicly funded Catholic school system and anti-Muslim xenophobia in the post-9/11 era. Our analysis speaks to the importance of intersectional social justice efforts as part of the movement for comprehensive sex education.
TL;DR: The interplay between heterosexism and cisnormativity, intersectional forms of stigma, and place limited LGBTQ+ persons' sexual healthcare access and produced negative experiences in sexual healthcare.
Abstract: Sexual and mental health disparities are reported in Arctic Canada as in other Arctic regions that experience shared challenges of insufficient healthcare resources, limited transportation, and a scarcity of healthcare research. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer persons (LGBTQ+) report sexual and mental health disparities in comparison with their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts, and these disparities may be exacerbated in rural versus urban settings. Yet limited research has explored sexual healthcare experiences among LGBTQ+ persons in the Arctic who are at the juncture of Arctic and LGBTQ+ health disparities. We conducted a qualitative study from May 2015 to October 2015 with LGBTQ+ persons in the Northwest Territories, Canada that involved in-depth individual interviews with LGBTQ+ youth (n = 16), LGBTQ+ adults (n = 21), and key informants (e.g. coaches, teachers, nurses, social workers, and healthcare providers) (n = 14). We conducted thematic analysis, a theoretically flexible approach that integrates deductive and inductive approaches, to identify and map themes in the data. Findings reveal geographical, social, and healthcare factors converge to shape healthcare access. Specifically, the interplay between heterosexism and cisnormativity, intersectional forms of stigma, and place limited LGBTQ+ persons' sexual healthcare access and produced negative experiences in sexual healthcare. Limited healthcare facilities in small communities resulted in confidentiality concerns. Heteronormativity and cisnormativity constrained the ability to access appropriate sexual healthcare. LGBTQ+ persons experienced LGBTQ+, HIV, and sexually transmitted infections stigma in healthcare. Participants also discussed healthcare provider recommendations to better serve LGBTQ+ persons: non-judgment, knowledge of LGBTQ+ health issues, and gender inclusivity. Findings can inform multi-level strategies to reduce intersecting stigma in communities and healthcare, transform healthcare education, and build LGBTQ+ persons' healthcare navigation skills.
TL;DR: In this paper, an exhaustive review of the English-language published scholarship on integrating gender and sexual diversity in teacher education (GSDTE) since 1982 is presented, including critical questions about the field's construction, objects and beneficiaries, and the importance of citing GSDTE and teacher education research and not only youth outcome research.
TL;DR: In education, walking has typically been used as a pedagogical strategy to move student bodies from one point to another, emphasizing creativity, discovery, health, and mobility as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In education, walking has typically been used as a pedagogical strategy to move student bodies from one point to another, emphasizing creativity, discovery, health, and mobility. Although there are...
TL;DR: The authors used data from interviews with 70 school principals and found that email is having a profound impact on the workplace; this is particularly true for schools and for those in the position of principal.
Abstract: E-mail is having a profound impact on the workplace; this is particularly true for schools and for those in the position of principal. This article uses data from interviews with 70 school principa...
TL;DR: In this article, Springgay and Truman introduce various matterings of felt in order to generate a practice of writing that engenders bodily difference that is affective, moving, and wooly.
Abstract: In this paper, I invoke various matterings of felt in order to generate a practice of writing that engenders bodily difference that is affective, moving, and wooly In attending to ‘how to write as felt,’ as a touching encounter, I consider how human and nonhuman matter composes (Haraway in Staying with the trouble: making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press, Durham, 2016) This co-mingling that felt performs enacts what Alaimo (Bodily natures: science, environment, and the material self, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2010; Exposed: Environmental politics and pleasures in posthuman times, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2016) calls transcorporeality Connecting felt with theories of touch and transcorporeality becomes a way to open up and re-configure different bodily imaginaries, both human and nonhuman, that are radically immanent and intensive; as an assemblage of forces and flows that open bodies to helices and trans connections (Springgay and Truman in Body Soc 23(4):27–58, 2017b) My contribution to this collection on ‘humanity in a posthuman age’ is experimental and performative Felt is activated not as a metaphor but rather poses questions about what writing does at the interstices between research and creation
TL;DR: High-participation students were more likely to elaborate reasons, describe relationships and mechanisms surrounding ideas they explored, and to introduce new ideas and concepts into community resources and personalized support to students with different participation levels is proposed to create a more discursively connected community.
Abstract: Emotions have a powerful effect on learning but results regarding the nature of the impact are inconsistent and little is known about effects with young students, as participants are usually university students. This study aims to explore the emotional and cognitive dynamics of young students in both online and offline Knowledge Building. Classroom transcripts and online discourse collected for 45 grade 1 and 2 students over seven to 8 weeks were analyzed. Based on the total number of spoken and written words, the participants were classified into high- and low-participation groups. Multimodal learning analytics including speech emotion analysis, sentiment analysis, and idea improvement analysis were used in a mixed method research design incorporating co-occurrence patterns of emotions and idea improvement of students at different participation levels. High-participation students expressed significantly higher frequencies of emotions recorded as neutrality, joy, curiosity, and confidence compared to low-participation students. High-participation students were more likely to elaborate reasons, describe relationships and mechanisms surrounding ideas they explored, and to introduce new ideas and concepts into community resources. Surprise, challenge, and neutrality can be beneficial since students tended to express these emotions when producing explanation-seeking questions, new ideas, explanations, and regulation. Personalized support to students with different participation levels is proposed, to create a more discursively connected community. Future directions include collecting more diverse data to better understand students’ emotions and to provide teachers and students with real-time data to support Knowledge Building as it proceeds.
TL;DR: The authors pointed out that despite their promotion of English aiding in intercultural communication, private English language schools market the language as a tool that helps one connect with others from different cultures, despite the fact that English is not a language that can be easily understood by many people.
Abstract: Private English language schools market the language as a tool that helps one connect with others from different cultures. Despite their promotion of English aiding in intercultural communication, ...
TL;DR: Findings provide new insight into the processes through which NSSI may be initiated and maintained, as well as elucidate the impacts of N SSI on emotion regulation and stressful life experiences in university.
Abstract: Developmental theory on nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI; e.g., self-cutting without lethal intent) underscores that stressful life experiences may lead to heightened risk for NSSI, potentially by undermining individuals’ emotion coping capacities. Given that the transition to university is often accompanied by new stressors for emerging adults, it is possible that stressors experienced during the university years may lead to heightened susceptibility for NSSI during this developmental period. Cross-sectional research supports a positive association between stressful experiences and NSSI among students; however, longitudinal research is needed to examine the direction of effects and explore potential mediating factors (i.e., emotion dysregulation). In the present study, university students (N = 1132; 70.5% female; mage = 19.11) reported on their stressful experiences in university, difficulties in emotion regulation, and NSSI each year for three consecutive years. Path analysis revealed a bidirectional association between stressful experiences and NSSI. Increased stressful experiences predicted increased risk for NSSI through emotion dysregulation, and NSSI predicted increased stressful experiences through emotion dysregulation. Overall, these findings provide new insight into the processes through which NSSI may be initiated and maintained, as well as elucidate the impacts of NSSI on emotion regulation and stressful life experiences in university.
TL;DR: Wisdom was statistically more strongly related to mastery among older adults, whereas the association between mastery and purpose in life was statistically stronger among young adults, and the mediated pathways from wisdom and religiosity to well-being did not differ by nation of residency.
Abstract: Objectives:Prior research found that the positive association between wisdom and subjective well-being might at least partially be explained by a greater sense of mastery and purpose in life. This study tested whether religiosity provides an alternative pathway to well-being and whether the associations are moderated by age cohort and nation of residency.Design and Participants:A quota sample design was used, stratified by age group, sex, and nation of residency, to collect cross-sectional survey data of 111 older adults (age range 62–99 years, M = 77.20, SD = 8.98) and 100 young adults (age range 21–30 years, M = 24.05, SD = 2.69) from Canada and the United States.Measurements:Face-to-face interviews were conducted to administer the survey. All measures consisted of validated scales and items.Results:Multi-group path analysis confirmed that mastery and purpose in life partially mediated the association between wisdom and well-being. Religiosity offered an alternative pathway to well-being, also partially through a greater sense of mastery and purpose in life. Wisdom was statistically more strongly related to mastery among older adults, whereas the association between mastery and purpose in life was statistically stronger among young adults. The mediated pathways from wisdom and religiosity to well-being did not differ by nation of residency.Conclusions:These results highlight the importance of internal strengths for subjective well-being among both young and older adults and add confidence to the generalizability of the mediated path model for North America.
TL;DR: Transition-rate analysis, entropy-analysis, and sequential pattern mining were used to analyze the chat message of 144 students of two-year colleges and revealed that students in groups who completed tasks successfully tended to ensure that everyone in their group had a shared understanding of the relationship between the variables before they moved on to the next step.
Abstract: Many universities are using computer-supported collaborative-inquiry-learning (CSCiL) environments to develop their students' skills in collaboration, problem solving, and critical thinking. Diverse states of discourse during CSCiL occur in sequences, but we do not yet fully understand which patterns are beneficial to learning and when exactly to foster them. This study used transition-rate analysis, entropy-analysis, and sequential pattern mining to analyze the chat message of 144 students of two-year colleges. The participants worked on tasks related to Ohm's Law in a simulation-based collaborative-inquiry-learning environment. The results revealed that students in groups who completed tasks successfully tended to ensure that everyone in their group had a shared understanding of the relationship between the variables before they moved on to the next step. In contrast, students in groups who did not complete tasks successfully were more likely to regulate the process without reaching a shared understanding. Gaoxia Zhu is a PhD candidate and research assistant in the Institute for Knowledge Innovation & Technology, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto with background in Educational Technology and Curriculum Studies. Her research interests include Knowledge Building, learning analytics, and CSCL. Wanli Xing is an Assistant Professor in Instructional Technology at Texas Tech University, USA with background in learning sciences, statistics, computer science and mathematical modelling. His research interests are educational data mining, learning analytics, and CSCL. Vitaliy Popov is a research associate in Jacobs Institute for Innovation in Education at University of San Diego. Dr. Popov areas of interest include: computer supported collaborative learning, mobile learning, learning sciences, learning analytics, and technology-enhanced learning across cultures.
TL;DR: Medical discourse currently dominates as the defining framework for madness in educational praxis, and ideas rooted in a mental health/illness binary abound in higher learning, as both cu...
Abstract: Medical discourse currently dominates as the defining framework for madness in educational praxis. Consequently, ideas rooted in a mental health/illness binary abound in higher learning, as both cu...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors found that knowledge-building activities helped to transform students into more collaborative, autonomous and creative learners, capable of working innovatively with ideas to address the energy-related issues under discussion.
Abstract: Effective energy education depends on continuing research designed to identify instructional strategies that will proof effective in particular learning contexts. The aim of this study was to help Taiwanese students learn about energy-saving related concepts through idea-centered, collaborative knowledge-building activities carried out in an online environment. The participants were 34 fifth-grade Taiwanese students. The data were taken mainly from students’ online interaction logs and discourse content. We found that knowledge-building activities helped to transform students into more collaborative, autonomous and creative learners, capable of working innovatively with ideas to address the energy-related issues under discussion. The students also demonstrated deeper understanding of the energy-related topics they explored. This study suggests that knowledge-building, an innovative pedagogical approach, was conducive to collaborative learning even in young students.
TL;DR: Camp participation led to improved social health, followed by enhanced constructions of the self, quality of life, sense of normalcy, and attitude, demonstrating the potential ability of camp to buffer psychosocial losses for children affected by cancer.
TL;DR: In this paper, Cavanagh, S. L. and Ingrey, J. C. analyzed gender policing in schools through gender binary washrooms, drawing from Canadian policy in public schools and higher education, interview data, as well as transgender teen narratives.
Abstract: Schools are often sites of surveillance for students as behaviors are governed and regulated by gendered norms and sexed expectations. For transgender and gender non-conforming students, school environments can produce anxiety as students are categorized into gender binaries. This article draws from Canadian policy in public schools and higher education, interview data, as well as transgender teen narratives, to analyze gender policing in schools through gender binary washrooms. Building upon prior research and writing on gender binary washrooms [Cavanagh, S. L. 2010. Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination. Toronto: University of Toronto Press; Ingrey, J. C. 2012. “The Public School Washroom as Analytic Space for Troubling Gender: Investigating the Spatiality of Gender Through Students’ Self-Knowledge.” Gender and Education 24 (7): 799-817; Ingrey, J. C. 2013a. “Shadows and Light: Pursuing Gender Justice Through Students’ Photovoice Projects of the Washroom Space.” Jou...
TL;DR: The authors investigated an emergent interaction between word reading fluency and vocabulary knowledge in the prediction of reading comprehension among French immersion students in Grades 2 and 3 and found that vocabulary was positively related to reading comprehension with moderate to high levels of fluency.
Abstract: This study investigated an emergent interaction between word reading fluency and vocabulary knowledge in the prediction of reading comprehension among French immersion students in Grades 2 and 3. A group of 66 students were tested on measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy, vocabulary, word reading fluency and reading comprehension in English and French at both time points. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine whether vocabulary and word reading fluency interact in predicting English and French reading comprehension. Regressions were constructed for each language and grade separately. Results showed that in Grade 2, word reading fluency and vocabulary contributed independently to reading comprehension, though an interaction between these variables was not observed in either language. By Grade 3, an interaction between these constructs emerged and was shown to predict reading comprehension in both English and French. Specifically, vocabulary was positively related to reading comprehension among students with moderate to high levels of fluency, while vocabulary did not uniquely contribute to reading comprehension among those who were less fluent. The emergence of an interaction in Grade 3 suggests that as students’ reading skills become more proficient, reading comprehension outcomes are better explained by taking into account the interaction between reading fluency and vocabulary knowledge.