The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine the contribution of phonological, morphological and dialect awareness to the prediction of reading and spelling in a Greek bi-dialectal setting. The target group (N=404) consisted of children, aged 6 to 9 years at the start of the project, who learn literacy in Cyprus, where a dialect is spoken in certain contexts but where Standard Modern Greek is also widely used. At present there are few studies with Greek Cypriot children on how phonological, morphological and dialect awareness relates to reading and spelling. Because there are no standardised measures of phonological, morphological and dialect awareness with Greek Cypriot children, measures of these factors were developed during the pilot study and their internal consistency was assessed. With the larger sample the measures were validated by examining their construct validity. The first wave of data collection showed that morphological and dialect awareness make unique contribution to the prediction of reading and spelling in Greek. The second wave of data collection showed that the measures of morphological and dialect awareness predicted performance in reading and spelling eight months later, even partialling out grade level, estimation of verbal intelligence and initial scores in reading and spelling. A model with dialect awareness as a mediator between phonological and morphological awareness and reading and spelling fitted the data better than a model with phonological or morphological awareness as mediators, and hence, phonological awareness and morphological awareness help children to become aware of the differences between their dialect and the standard variety, and dialect awareness in turn facilitates reading and spelling. Cross-lagged correlations showed that the more experience children have with reading and spelling, the more likely they are to develop morphological and dialect awareness. This study makes theoretical, empirical and practical educational contributions. The established mediational model contributes to the theoretical knowledge of the connection between dialect awareness and phonological and morphological awareness and reading and spelling while the longitudinal study contributes to theory the long term relation of morphological and dialect awareness with reading and spelling in Greek. Empirically, the study established the plausibility of a causal link between morphological and dialect awareness and reading and spelling, which must be tested in further research using intervention methods. In practice, this study contributes valid measures for assessing morphological and dialect awareness in the Greek Cypriot setting.

The diploma thesis deals with the learning styles in a connection with the teaching strategies, especially their use by the gifted pupils from the fifth year of the primary school. The theoretical part describes the concepts of learning style and learning strategies from the several authors' point of view of, but it also deals with the characteristic features of a talented pupil in the younger school age. The theoretical part prepares the reader to understand the empirical part, which is crucial for the diploma thesis. The subject of the study is a group of eight gifted pupils from the fifth grade of the primary school who are attending an educational program for the exceptionally gifted pupils. The aim of the empirical part is to analyze pupils' own preference of the learning strategies and to map their situation. Thanks to the methods of the research such as the interviews, an observation, methods for developing the learning strategies and a questionnaire research, the goal of the qualitative empirical work has been fully achieved. After a month of work with the gifted pupils and their classmates, I have found that their own choice of the learning strategies is greatly influenced by the inner motivation, an in-depth learning style, a strategic learning style, and overall approach to the learning...

The Solomon Islands (SI), a small developing nation in the South Pacific, demonstrates an emergent community-based kindergarten model with the potential to promote context and culture relevant early learning and development. SI early childhood education (ECE) particularly rose in prominence with a 2008 national policy enactment requiring all children to attend three years of kindergarten as prerequisite for primary school entry. However, these ECE programs remain severely challenged by faltering community support. Internationally, many ECE programs dramatically resemble a universalized Western-based model, with a decidedly specific discourse for “high quality” programs and practices for children ages 0-8. Often these uncritical international transfers of Euro-American ideologies promote restricted policies and practices. This has resulted in a self-perpetuating set of practices and values, which arguably prevent recognition of, and efforts to reinvent, more culturally-relevant, sustainable programs for the Majority World. Based on the Kahua region (est. pop. 4,500) of Makira-Ulawa Province, this collaborative, ethnographically-inspired, case study explores how community characteristics have affected the cultural and contextual sustainability of community-based ECE in remote villages. The study traces historical and cultural influences to present-day SI ECE. Subsequently, it explores the re-imagined SI approach to formal ECE program design, remaining challenges preventing these programs from being sustained by communities, and potential community-wide transformations arising from these initiatives. To achieve this, the study collaborated with stakeholders from all levels of SI society through extensive participant-observations, interviews, and participatory focus groups. Findings aspire to enlighten regional sustainable developments and resilient behaviors relating to ECE. Key research findings suggest five overarching principles influencing kindergarten sustainability: presence of “champion” for the ECE vision; community ownership-taking, awareness-building, and cooperation-maintenance; and program cultural/contextual sensitivity and relevance. These elements were found to be strongly linked with an intergenerational cultural decay in the Kahua region, as conceptualized through a model of Cyclically-Sustained Kindergarten Mediocrity.

This thesis consists of a short introduction and three self-contained analytical chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on the question of learning gaps and divergence in achievement across countries. I use unique child-level panel data from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam to ask at what ages do gaps between different populations emerge, how they increase or decline over time, and what the proximate determinants of this divergence are. I document that learning gaps between the four countries are already evident at the age of 5 years and grow throughout the age trajectory of children, preserving country ranks from 5 to 15 years of age. At primary school age, the divergence between Vietnam and the other countries is largely accounted for by substantially greater learning gains per year of schooling. Chapter 2 focuses on learning differences between private and government school students in India. I present the first value-added models of learning production in private and government schools in this context, using panel data from Andhra Pradesh. I examine the heterogeneity in private school value-added across different subjects, urban and rural areas, medium of instruction, and across age groups. Further, I also estimate private school effects on children's self-efficacy and agency. I find modest or insignificant causal effects of attending private schools in most test domains other than English and on children's academic self-concept and agency. Results on comparable test domains and age groups correspond closely with, and further extend, estimates from a parallel experimental evaluation. Chapter 3 uses panel data from the state of Andhra Pradesh in India to estimate the impact of the introduction of a national midday meal program on anthropometric z-scores of primary school students, and investigates whether the program ameliorated the deterioration of health in young children caused by a severe drought. Correcting for self-selection into the program using a non-linearity in how age affects the probability of enrollment, we find that the program acted as a safety net for children, providing large and significant health gains for children whose families suffered from drought.

Young children learn through the interactions they have within their environments. These interactions include all of the people who support them (parents, family members, interventionists, therapists, childcare providers, and other practitioners). This session will focus on how practitioners can help parents, families, and other adult caregivers develop the types of interactions needed to have a lasting positive impact on the learning of their young children with disabilities. Objectives: Explore strategies for helping families understand early communication attempts of children before language is developed or in the presence of a delay or disability Explore how adult-child interactions change to promote children’s learning Explore the role of the environment in the interaction between parent and child

This paper analyzes how the Lego Group discourse portrays children, education, play, themselves and attempts to reveal corresponding ideologies surrounding the brick. The LEGO Group claim equality, honesty and transparency in their communications, and within their business ecosystem, at their core are their traditional family values, creating an intriguing and multi-layered discourse. This thesis explores the construction of representations, from a constructionist approach using discourse analysis and language coding, aiming to uncover what is revealed and ignored. The Lego Group positions themselves as one of the future solutions to the widening gap between current educational systems and the needs of future young adults in the workforce of our rapidly changing society. They continuously portray the ‘other’ actors as bad - whether in education, technology or activities. They define every subject they cover in their own terms, creating a LEGO language and microworld philosophy. There is an imbalance between their time promoting children’s agency and time spent discussing 21st century education; the latter concerns appear to far outweigh their portrayal of children, leading to conclusions that marketing logic and aspired educational market share has a stronger influence on LEGO discourse. Children are constructed as agentic, competent and commodified when selling them new products and services, as adults-in-training when discussing education and as vulnerable or innocent when highlighting child safety concerns online. Education is viewed in terms of failure, power and change, and their versions of play and creativity as the solution to all of society's ills. Their discourse reflects The LEGO Group’s position and hegemony as one of the most powerful and influential toy companies in the world. This study contributes towards the current gap in research surrounding The LEGO Group discourse, and attempts to reveal the competing ideologies of neoliberal business values versus social good and incorporates concerns of childhood studies exploring whether this company rather represents or uses children within the context of its educational - business ecosystem.

The centralised control over curriculum framing and pedagogy, the generally poor quality of teaching with little sensitivity to children’s sociocultural environment; and very high drop out rates, even at the primary school level, are some of the challenges facing school education in many of the regions of India. However, one of the successful approaches to these challenges has been the Digantar school system, working in rural communities. The study is based in one Digantar School in Rajasthan and employs concepts derived from the Vygotskian tradition to interrogate the methods employed in Digantar school system. The study took Edwards’ (2010a, 2011, 2012) idea of common knowledge and Hedegaard’s (2008, 2012, 2013) idea of institutional demand in practices as conceptual lenses through which to investigate the components of the pedagogical practices that help Digantar teachers to align the motives of the school with those of the child in classroom activities. In doing so it analyses the institutional practices that lead to the development of common knowledge that in turn facilitates how teachers engage pupils as learners. Data were gathered over six months and comprised around 120 hours of school-based video data together with interviews and detailed observations with teachers and community members. Data were gathered in classrooms, teacher meetings, meetings between parents and teachers and at school-community meetings. Analyses focused on the construction of common knowledge and the use made of it by the school to achieve a mutual alignment of motives between the practices of the school with the community and the families. The study has revealed that teachers’ engagement with the knowledge and motives of other teachers and community members helped to create common knowledge, i.e. an understanding of what mattered for each participating group, which facilitated teaching-learning in the school. The analysis also points towards a form of democracy, which enhances children’s participation in their learning. It was found that building and sharing of common knowledge and creating a socially articulated ‘space of reasons’ (Derry 2008) produced a pedagogical model that engaged children in creating their social situation of development, seeking and recognising the curriculum demands being placed on them.

This thesis examines Karen childhood transitions in a context of expansion of the cash economy, formal education and modern institutions. Since the 1960s, Thai state development has had a significant impact on the organisation of work and learning among highland populations. Today, household economies largely depend on cash income and children aspire towards an adult life in which paid work is central. Formal education is highly valued as a means to reach this goal. Children often migrate for education to better-resourced locations and access scholarships provided by national and international institutions. On the basis of 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between October 2007 and September 2009, the thesis seeks to understand the effects of globalisation on politically and economically marginalized children in northern Thailand through the lens of changing modes of production and learning. Findings indicate that children’s migration for education reflects broad political economic inequalities among Karen households as well as between them and mainstream Thai lowland populations. International dimensions of unequal relations are revealed in local peoples’ collective negotiations with Japanese and Catholic Christian NGOs. Although socio-cultural constructs like ‘gender’, ‘generation’, and ‘ethnicity’ shape Karen childhoods, this study found that their economic and political status are more fundamental in shaping all aspects of their social lives, including their socio-cultural identities. Childhood transitions emerge as multidimensional learning processes towards mastery of ‘translocal identities’, the skill to manage identities and relationships across multiple spaces and institutions. This is a culturally valued skill evidenced when minority children tactfully negotiate differing modes of compliance, resistance, and adaptation, especially in the domains of work and education. Thus, children participate in the moulding of local versions of the modern political economy of northern Thailand.

This thesis explores the development of emergent literacy in Hong Kong Kindergarten children who are learning English as a Second Language (L2). Two interrelated empirical studies have been conducted, and both aim to examine the contribution of code-related and oral language skills to predicting early L2 reading ability, controlling for home influences. The majority of research on emergent literacy has been conducted on First-Language (L1) English-speaking children, and it is possible that these established concepts and models could also be relevant to L2 children. The first is a 2-year longitudinal study examining the continuity of L2 emergent literacy development in Hong Kong children from Kindergarten to early Primary school. The convenience sample of 51 children were initially assessed in their final or penultimate year of Kindergarten (mean age: 4;6 SD = 6.16) on 3 emergent literacy measures (receptive vocabulary, phonological awareness, letter identification) and a non-verbal cognitive measure. They later progressed onto the Primary section of the same school, and were assessed again as first or second-graders (mean age: 6;4 SD = 6.21) on a more comprehensive battery of measures. An extensive parental questionnaire on family demographics and the home literacy environment was also administered. In addition to assessing a wide range of L2 emergent literacy skills and English word reading ability, a Chinese syllable deletion task was also included, to explore the potential effects of cross-linguistic phonological transfer between the children’s L1 (Cantonese) and L2 (English). The second study sought to improve upon the first by selecting a larger, more representative sample of children from 3 bilingual Kindergartens in the Kowloon City School District. It examines the concurrent relationships between emergent literacy skills and L2 word reading ability in 137 children. They were all in their final year of Kindergarten (mean age: 5;2 SD = 5.61), and were assessed once on largely the same battery of measures as Study 1 (Time 2). Again, a non-verbal cognitive measure was administered, as well as the parental questionnaire on home support for language development. The main data analysis was carried out via multivariate statistical techniques such as multiple regression. Further analysis was conducted using structural equation modelling in Study 2, but in a cautious and exploratory manner. The overall findings suggest that like the L1 emergent literacy model, early L2 word reading ability is predominantly influenced by children’s code-related skills, especially print knowledge and phonological sensitivity. Also, the relationship between oral language and word reading seems to be mediated by code-related skills. Thus, while oral language abilities do not appear to make substantial direct contributions to early L2 reading, they do play an essential albeit indirect role. Furthermore, L2 children’s home influences seem to make their strongest impact before formal schooling begins, again in the form of indirect effects on pre-school oral language skills. In short, the development of emergent literacy and early word reading skills is similar in many ways for both L1 and L2 children, and implications for practice are considered.

The purpose of this thesis was to explore and describe how bilingual programmes are organized and implemented within the unique linguistic and socio-economic case of Qatar. Specifically the thesis explored bilingual programs offered by two types of primary schools in Qatar: international schools and independent schools. Qatar launched a new initiative for educational development in 2001 but with hardly any research linked to these changes. The study was positioned within a qualitative interpretive tradition drawing on elements of ethnography and grounded theory as tools of methodology. However, quantitative methods were also incorporated within the design. The research design is structured within two main phases: phase one included statistical analysis of secondary data investigating three variables: average teaching time in the first and the second language, students’ and teachers’ nationality. Phase two utilized a multi-case study design. One school from each type was examined in depth over a period of nine weeks. Data were collected by means of school documents, interviews, and non-participant observation of English and Arabic classes. The first phase made an initial impression of the model of bilingual education followed by international and independent schools compared to bilingual typologies found in the literature. The analysis of the two cases examined revealed various differences across the two types. Findings reveal that the international school followed a partial immersion type of programme while the independent school followed a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) type of programme. The study reveals that the Qatari bilingual schools context was one of heteroglossia, with three codes in operation: Modern Standard Arabic, Colloquial Arabic dialects and English. Findings reveal that teachers and students in the international school adopt a strict separation policy between the two languages following a monoglossic belief. Language teachers and students in the independent school were found to apply a flexible language policy inside English and Arabic classes. The study revealed a gap between claimed programme features and implementation of these features. An absence of a clear language policy in the schools was also a main finding relating to the practice of these schools. In light of these findings, adopting a clear and explicit language-in-education policy should be a priority for policy makers in Qatar. The study revealed how the diglossia situation in Qatari schools is unique and therefore schools must be aware of the languages at the disposal of students and teachers. Schools must also concentrate on developing academic language skills needed for success in L2 schooling.