Applying sociological conceptualisations of temporality in the context of families, this article explores shared reading between parents and young children. The research draws on interviews with a sample of 29 parents/carers with pre-school children (predominantly mothers) from diverse backgrounds. Reading with young children provides an…

This study examined the effect of prompts on the shared reading interactions of parents and young children with Down syndrome. Eight parents and their children with Down syndrome (aged 4 years, 7 months to 6 years, 9 months) were recorded reading two books together, one of which included 12 question prompts which parents were instructed to ask…

Audiobook listenership is growing with the increasing availability of devices, platforms and apps offering an ever-wider range of high quality titles. This literature review provides an overview of research exploring the role of audiobooks in supporting children's literacy both at home and in the classroom. It focuses on how positive engagement…

Many overseas students in Higher Education in the UK struggle to understand the compulsory texts for their course, and obtain lower scores for their modules than their monolingual peers. While the existence of this achievement gap is well established in the literature, little is known about the ways in which overseas students in HE with limited…

While much is known about the benefits of shared reading activity for children, and the role of the home in cultivating shared reading practices far less is known about the factors that can influence parents' shared reading practices with their children. Given that many young people leave school with poor relationships with reading, this study…

Recent initiatives in the United States and United Kingdom have added greatly to the amount and quality of research on the effectiveness of secondary reading programs, especially programs for struggling readers. In this review of the experimental research on secondary reading programs, the authors focused on 69 studies that used random assignment…

This paper challenges the reductive notion of children as "efferent" readers who learn to decode written language in order to "take away" knowledge. This anachronistic idea has become entrenched in current UK curriculum and education policy. However, it is well established that decoding letters and sounds is only one aspect of…

Since "Reading Power" was launched ten years ago in an elementary school in Vancouver, it has evolved into a recognized approach to comprehension instruction being implemented across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and China. This groundbreaking approach shows teachers how to help students think while they…

A considerable amount of studies has been done on the relationship of L2 vocabulary and reading/listening, strategy use and reading/listening, and vocabulary and strategy use in different contexts among different levels of learners; however, little has been known about the relationships among all these variables with the same cohort of learners…

This study explores how a change of learning environment from China to the United Kingdom affects Chinese international master's students' use of strategies in academic reading. Think aloud was used at two time points in one academic year among 15 participants. To capture the complexity of the academic reading, reading strategies were categorized…

Academic reading is different from other forms of reading because it is complex and discipline-specific. It involves a measured, challenging, and multifaceted process in which students are dynamically engaged with a range of reading strategies. Academic reading improvement is possible, provided students work on it and there are no short cuts or…

In the United Kingdom, the majority of national assessments involve human raters. The processes by which raters determine the scores to award are central to the assessment process and affect the extent to which valid inferences can be made from assessment outcomes. Thus, understanding rater cognition has become a growing area of research in the…

This study investigates whether a common set of student attitudes and behavioral tendencies can account for academic achievement across different, especially high-performing, countries via analysis of the PISA 2009 international data set. The 13 countries examined are 5 of the top-performing Eastern countries/systems, namely Shanghai China, South…

While textbooks remain a key part of the teaching and learning process, evidence suggests that student completion of reading assignments is lower than teacher expectations. Although there is a small body of literature examining textbook use, studies relating specifically to marketing textbooks are sparse. This article seeks to explore how…

The National Literacy Trust's Premier League Reading Stars programme (PLRS) is a reading intervention for children aged 8 to 13 that captures the motivational power of football to inspire children and young people to read more and to improve their literacy skills. PLRS is delivered by teachers and librarians. The programme delivers statutory…