Background: Although Zimbabwe has performed quite well on Grade 6 SACMEQ literacy assessments compared to other African countries, reading levels are generally low and there is little research on reading literacy in Zimbabwean primary schools. Aim: Grade 3 and 4 learners' reading comprehension (RC), accuracy and speed in oral reading fluency (ORF)…

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of the reading comprehension program prepared for primary school fourth grade students on students' reading comprehension skills. In this context, students' attitudes toward reading, reading motivation, fluent reading skills and reading comprehension strategies were considered in the study. The…

Purpose: This longitudinal study examined the contribution of preschool morphological awareness to word reading skills and reading comprehension, as well as to the developmental change of reading ability beyond other well-established oral language and cognitive predictors. A distinction was made between the domains of inflectional and derivational…

In 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that learning to read is a fundamental human right and failure to provide appropriate education for students with reading disabilities is discriminatory (Moore v. British Columbia, 2012). In Ontario, Canada's most populous province, the Human Rights Commission's inquiry in 2022 found the province's…

Purpose: Two types of orthographic knowledge were examined: i) knowledge of permissible letter combinations (general orthographic knowledge) and ii) knowledge of whole words (word-specific orthographic knowledge), to gain further insights into the relationship of general and word-specific orthographic knowledge with literacy skills. Method:…

Group differences in test scores are a key metric in education policy. Response time offers novel opportunities for understanding these differences, especially in low-stakes settings. Here, we describe how observed group differences in test accuracy can be attributed to group differences in latent response speed or group differences in latent…

This study investigates the effects of prosodic sensitivity on reading. Highly capable adult musicians (i.e., persons with potentially excellent prosodic skills) and non-musicians were compared in terms of prosodic sensitivity and reading. Furthermore, the study examines possible reciprocal effects of prosodic sensitivity and reading. Sixty native…

Randomized experiments involving education interventions are typically implemented as cluster randomized trials, with schools serving as clusters. To design such a study, it is critical to understand the degree to which learning outcomes vary between versus within clusters (schools), specifically the intraclass correlation coefficient. It is also…

This study investigated special educational needs (SEN) teachers' (n = 29) assessment practices and the accuracy of their ratings of the students' (M age = 12.75 years, n = 55) skill levels in reading fluency and reading comprehension. Teachers rated their sixth grade students' fluency and comprehension on a three-point scale, and the students…

This qualitative study surfaced beliefs around reading instruction and reading development at the onset of an elementary literacy methods course. Prior understandings and knowledge around reading instruction and reading acquisition emerge through various experiences and have the potential to contradict notions presented by teacher educators. This…

Background: Cognitive and linguistic factors have been incorporated into models to explain reading comprehension beyond classical models of reading. This study explores the contribution of executive functions, mainly domain-general and reading-specific cognitive flexibility, in reading comprehension of science texts in monolingual Spanish speaking…

Curriculum-based measurement is designed to predict students' future reading performance and identify children in need of early reading intervention. Although curriculum-based measures in reading are commonly implemented in schools throughout the United States, their use with children living overseas is restricted due to the disparity that exists…

Background: The Alouette-R (2005) by Lefavrais is one of the most widely used tools to assess reading skills in French. However, this instrument does not have normative data specific to the French-speaking population of Quebec, Canada. Aims: The validity of an assessment being strongly compromised when using inappropriate norms, the first…

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…

The growing number of children in primary schools in Germany who have German as their second language (L2) has raised questions about the fairness of performance assessment. Fair tests are a prerequisite for distinguishing between L2 learning delay and a specific learning disability. We evaluated five commonly used reading and spelling tests for…