Formative assessment is an important driver in supporting children's writing development. This paper describes a writing rubric designed for use by teachers to formatively assess the writing of children in Pre-K to Grade 2, how the rubric was received by teachers, and its implementation in classrooms. Writing samples from 337 children in 33…

This study examined the integration of artificial intelligence-powered speech recognition technology within early reading assessments in Morocco's Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) program. The purpose was to evaluate the effectiveness of an automated speech recognition tool compared to traditional paper-based assessments in improving reading…

Large-scale learning assessments can be used to generate performance and contextual data on student learning outcomes. They can be national, regional, or international; school based or household based. The UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP-UNESCO) has conducted a qualitative study to explore both how and why learning…

Background: On an annual basis, students across Australia in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are assessed on their literacy and numeracy skills via the National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), with the student performance data used for purposes including national accountability. Purpose: Against this backdrop of large-scale national…

The COVID-19 pandemic and the move by governments worldwide to cancel in-class instruction and move to emergency remote instruction in March and April of 2020 created an unprecedented disruption in children's education. As the COVID-19 pandemic took form and continued to impact education in the following 2020/2021 academic year, multiple concerns…

The present study investigated the usefulness of a pre-programmed, teleoperated, socially assistive peer robot in dynamic testing of complex problem solving utilising the Tower of Hanoi. The robot, in a 'Wizard of Oz' setting, provided instructions and prompts during dynamic testing to children when they had to solve 3 D Tower of Hanoi puzzles.…

Reading abilities in Swedish students have declined in recent decades. The current study examined the effectiveness of a full-scale three-tier Response to Intervention (RtI) model designed to improve reading skills in Swedish students. Participants were grade 2 students in a primary school setting. A quasi-experimental between-group design was…

To date, no research on the influence of social-emotional learning (SEL) instruction on school violence and academic performance in the Kyrgyz Republic has been published. However, the current levels of school violence and poor academic performance in Kyrgyz schools warrant action. According to the UNICEF report (2012), 83% of students reported…

This paper reports on a mixed-methods study of the "Total Reading Approach for Children Plus" (TRAC+) program, with a particular focus on its mobile learning element, where tablets and an app called "Aan Khmer" (Read Khmer) were introduced into Cambodian schools to assist 'struggling students' in Grades 1 to 3 learn early…

Little is known about students' engagement in school writing tasks and the methods that should be used by the researchers to assess this engagement. This exploratory study examines the relationship between the engagement reported by elementary school students (N = 136) in a handwriting and keyboarding activity (Likert scale questionnaire) and…

Foundation and Year 1/2 teachers at Saint Martin de Porres Primary School, a Catholic School in Laverton, Melbourne have been collaborating with a team of researchers from Monash University on a four-year project led by Professor Peter Sullivan and colleagues. The teachers have been trialling and implementing a series of lesson sequences as part…

Jung and Won's (2018) review of elementary school ER found a lack of understanding of instructional practices for ER with young children. Other researchers have called for further studies into what effective classroom orchestration and interaction look like within ER classrooms (Ioannou & Makridou, 2018; Xia & Zhong, 2019). This study was…

To be effective teachers of literacy for students who read braille, we need to know what our students' strengths and needs are as all these components come together in braille literacy. Using an appropriate assessment that addresses the skill sets involved in braille literacy is critical to putting together effective intervention packages for our…

This study examined the oral language skills of grade-two anglophone children enrolled in French Immersion and English-stream programs. The study had two objectives: (1) to compare performance between the groups on measures of receptive vocabulary, narrative comprehension, and narrative production (i.e., structure and language) in English; and (2)…

We report results from children learning to read in one of four different languages: Croatian, English, Estonian and Swedish. The languages all have an alphabetical script but vary greatly on the dimension deep-shallow (or complexity-simplicity, or opacity-transparency), i.e., how close orthography and phonology are related. These languages also…