Kieron Sheehy

Children's engagement with educational iPad apps: Insights from a Spanish classroom

This study investigates the effects of a story-making app called Our Story and a selection of other educational apps on the learning engagement of forty-one Spanish 4-5-year-olds. Children were observed interacting in small groups with the story-making app and this was compared to their engagement with a selection of construction and drawing apps. Childrens engagement was analysed in two ways: it was categorised using Bangert-Drowns and Pykes taxonomy for individual hands-on engagement with educational software, and using the concept of exploratory talk as developed by Mercer et al. to analyse peer engagement. For both approaches, quantitative and qualitative indices of childrens engagement were considered. The overall findings suggested that in terms of the Bangert-Drowns and Pyke taxonomy, the quality of childrens individual engagement was higher with the OS app in contrast to their engagement with other app software. The frequency of childrens use of exploratory talk was similar with the OS and colouring and drawing apps, and a detailed qualitative analysis of the interaction transcripts revealed several instances of the OS and drawing apps supporting joint problem-solving and collaborative engagement. We suggest that critical indices of an apps educational value are the extent to which the app supports opportunities for open-ended content and childrens independent use of increasingly difficult features.

Sensitivity to speech rhythm explains individual differences in reading ability independently of phonological awareness

This study considered whether sensitivity to speech rhythm can predict concurrent variance in reading attainment after individual differences in age, vocabulary, and phonological awareness have been controlled. Five- to six-year-old English-speaking children completed a battery of phonological processing assessments and reading assessments, along with a simple word stress manipulation task. The results showed that performance on the stress manipulation measure predicted a significant amount of variance in reading attainment after age, vocabulary, and phonological processing had been taken into account. These results suggest that stress sensitivity is an important, yet neglected, aspect of English-speaking childrens phonological representations, which needs to be incorporated into theoretical accounts of reading development.

The contribution of sensitivity to speech rhythm and non‐speech rhythm to early reading development

Both sensitivity to speech rhythm and non‐speech rhythm have been associated with successful phonological awareness and reading development in separate studies. However, the extent to which speech rhythm, non‐speech rhythm and literacy skills are interrelated has not been examined. As a result, five‐ to seven‐year‐old English‐speaking children were assessed on measures of speech rhythm sensitivity, non‐speech rhythm sensitivity (both receptive and productive), reading attainment and phonological awareness. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that productive non‐speech rhythm was unable to predict variance in reading attainment independently of phonological awareness and speech rhythm sensitivity. Receptive sensitivity to speech rhythm and non‐speech rhythm were both able to predict a significant amount of unique variance in reading attainment after controlling for age, vocabulary, phonological awareness, short‐term memory and each other. The findings suggest that receptive sensitivity to speech rhythm and non‐speech rhythm, while related to each other, also make contributions to reading attainment that are independent of each other. These findings provide only partial consistency with the general auditory processing deficit theory of reading difficulties, but are in line with the emerging theoretical claim that sensitivity to speech prosody may be implicated in successful literacy development.

Methodological challenges in researching inclusive school cultures

This article addresses the methodological challenges faced in a pilot study of the processes and cultures of inclusion and exclusion in two primary school classrooms. The authors, who were the research team, engaged with a range of practical and ethical challenges, some of which face any researcher entering classroom contexts and some of which were specific to our focus on inclusive school processes and cultures. This article is about the latter: challenges of who decides that a school is inclusive and worthy of attention in an inclusion study; how we look for and recognize inclusive school cultures; how much we do and should change things that we find; and how to put children and their experiences at the centre of our research. We discuss the risks of pathologizing and objectifying children and a key issue that arose for us, the risk of problematizing teachers when (perhaps inevitably) we found more evidence of exclusionary than inclusionary processes at work.

A Vygotskian perspective on parent-child talk during iPad story sharing

This study explores the themes in the talk of two mothers and daughters as they share a self-created story with an iPad app. Vygotskys theory of learning is applied to inform a thematic analysis and help interpret the learning potential within the observed parent–child exchanges. A deductive–inductive thematic analysis identified three recurring themes in the parent–child talk: realistic fiction, scaffolding variations, and engaged players and objects of ‘play’. The themes suggested that Vygotskys theory has particular relevance in exploring the learning processes facilitated by the iPad app. In addition, however, post-Vygotskian theoretical frameworks were helpful in capturing the dynamic co-construction of the authentic and multimedia stories parents and children shared.

How Is Technology Seen in Young People's Visions of Future Education Systems?

This research captured the views of young people regarding their views of ‘how learning should be in the future’. Four focus groups were run with different groups of school‐age pupils. The ways in which technology was seen within these discussions were analysed. The findings noted that the explicit use of technological innovations, and predicted innovations, was rarely seen as having a significant impact on learning, rather that the technology was used in line with the models of learning derived from the participant’s best current experiences of learning and education. Technology was, therefore, seen as something which could make current learning practices more efficient but did not transform the learning process.

The Effective Use of Symbols in Teaching Word Recognition to Children with Severe Learning Difficulties: A comparison of word alone, integrated picture cueing and the handle technique

The use of logographic symbols to teach word recognition is controversial. Whilst educational advice typically promotes this practice, the results of controlled studies show it to be ineffective and potentially detrimental to student learning. This study partially resolves this conflict. A comparison is made between a new technique (the Handle Technique), Integrated Picture Cueing and a Word Alone method. The results show that using a new combination of teaching strategies enables logographic symbols to be used effectively in teaching word recognition to children with severe learning difficulties who had previously failed to develop a sight vocabulary.

Exploring provision for children identified with special educational needs: an international review of policy and practice

This project aimed to create a descriptive map of international research which explores the notion of the continuum of educational provision for children with special educational needs. It also aimed to determine and examine the nature of how the continuum of provision is conceptualised, operationalised and enacted in a sample of selected countries. Commissioned by the National Council for Special Education, it also identified implications for the development of provision within the Irish context. The research involved a systematic identification and thematic review of theory, identifying and examining literature associated with the conceptualisation of the continuum; it examined the policy and provision across 55 administrations as publically reported, primarily to international agencies; it carried out more detailed examination of policy and practice in 10 countries using a survey and vignette study; and it involved a series of interviews with a range of individuals in a range of settings in four countries with differing approaches to supporting children with special educational needs. This paper outlines the overall findings of the research. It focuses in particular upon the need to change how we think about provision associated with continua, recognising the lack of international coherence in approaches to support for pupils with special educational needs. It identifies in particular the opportunities presented by a reconceptualisation of the class and the management of class resources, and the role key personnel can play in creating links between diverse services.

Teaching Non‐readers with Severe Learning Difficulties to Recognise Words: the effective use of symbols in a new technique

Abstract Despite the apparent advantages of incorporating logographic symbols in procedures intended to teach children with severe learning difficulties to recognise words, such procedures have never proved successful. Their failure has been attributed to a blocking effect that is induced by the additional cues. The blocking effect account predicts that any method that involves introducing additional stimulus cues will be inefficient for teaching word recognition, compared with a word alone method. A new technique was devised in an attempt to surmount this problem. The basis of the technique draws on a range of research areas. Children who had no reading skills and had previously failed to gain any sight vocabulary were taught to recognise 12 words. An experiment compared a word alone method with two variants of the new technique. Both versions were more successful than the word alone method at teaching the children to recognise the words. The findings refute the view that any procedure that incorporates additional cues will necessarily be ineffective. For students who have hitherto made no progress at all in learning to recognise words, the new technique offers an effective instructional procedure.

Reading personalized books with preschool children enhances their word acquisition

This study examines whether books that contain personalized content are better facilitators of young children’s word acquisition than books which are not personalized for a child. In a repeated-measures experimental design, 18 children (mean age 3;10) were read a picture book which contained both personalized and non-personalized sections, with unknown, real, target words embedded in each section. The book was read to the children on two occasions, with a one-week gap between each session. There were three testing points and these took place after the first reading session, just before the second reading session and immediately after the second reading session. At each testing point the children’s knowledge of the new words was assessed with picture comprehension, definition and emotional valence tests. The findings revealed that, at the second and third testing points, the children showed significantly better knowledge about the words that were in the personalized sections of the books than the words in the non-personalized sections. The implications of these findings for future book reading research and practice are discussed.