The introduction of a literature programme (emphasising the teaching of thinking skills) as part of the Israeli English curriculum, led to this qualitative action research case study. The rationale for this study was further strengthened by two concerns. First, self-proclaimed readers (readers who claim they read a lot) read literature superficially. Second, even when teachers enable richer discussions through open-ended questions and implied use of reading comprehension strategies (RCS), pupils do not appropriate these strategies for their own reading. The year-and-a-half long study was conducted with 53 pupils from two advanced classes in two secondary schools. It began by looking at whether self-proclaimed readers were aware of the RCS they use while reading and how this knowledge or lack of it influenced their reading. The findings revealed that pupils use RCS haphazardly due to lack of awareness of what they are doing or need to do while reading. Consequently, a reading strategy PaRDeS was designed and implemented with the idea that pupils would appropriate it. The data analysed through constructive-interpretive-hermeneutic methods shows the effects on pupils' reading during and after the implementation of the PaRDeS reading strategy (a question generating strategy based on the Ministry's thinking skills). The study reveals how metacognitive discussions improved pupils' awareness of what they were doing and enhanced their use of PaRDeS. Furthermore, the study observes how the strategy can be improved by using it within a community of readers. Thus, pupils moved from the periphery of the classroom space to the centre as they appropriated the strategy and took control of their discussions and therefore their comprehension. The study also reveals that using PaRDeS helps pupils understand that inference is central to constructing understanding of literary texts. In addition, the strategy causes pupils to view texts as multi-layered and enables them to read iteratively to create a global meaning that is greater than the sum of understanding of each part of the text. This synergy is further enhanced when pupils bring their questions to the community to analyse texts from different perspectives. Synergy led to the central finding of this study, an understanding of why PaRDeS may improve reading comprehension. The study concludes that a reading prism is created due to the PaRDeS question types, the scaffolding of the strategy and its utilisation in the community. This prism is constructed from six points: reader, text, author, contexts of knowledge and experience, teacher/facilitator and participants in a reading community. As the points of the reading prism interact, the hermeneutic space is established in which hermeneutic dialogue occurs. Close observation of what is happening within the hermeneutic space reveals that because of the interaction between the points, pupils use several reading styles iteratively and that these reading styles enhance thinking styles. Consequently, pupils co-created enriched textual interpretation, which also led to individual creative analysis through writing assignments. To conclude, this study suggests that when an environment is created to implement and use PaRDeS, the resulting synergy between members of the learning community leads to enhanced thinking necessary for both enriched understanding of the text and the development of active independent readers.

In this thesis, I explore the negotiating strategies, knowledges and literacies that come into play when children interact with picturebooks as readers and bookmakers; and how children interact with discourses in representation that are pervasive throughout picturebooks. For decades, children's books have suffered from poor cultural representation, with critics noting the lack of diversity in characters, inauthentic portrayals and poor diversity among writers. Tied to young and inexperienced readers by age banding and perceptions of little complexity, picturebooks have for years been linked to the teaching of reading. In England, this is largely dominated by the use of synthetic phonics as the preferred teaching method. Coupled with what critics have called a 'pedagogy of performativity' which places intense pressures upon teachers, schools and children for these to meet standard expectations in national testing, the teaching of reading in schools tends to be approached through methods that focus on the development of skills. This study uses an arts-informed methodology to explore the relationships between children and picturebooks, and how they are connected to literacy learning and discourses in representation present in picturebooks. At its heart are six children with whom I conducted observations, interviews and bookmaking workshops during the 2014-2015 school year. The data was analysed using verbal and visual narratives, drawing from notions of portraiture and bricolage to create a responsive approach, and based upon James Britton's theory of the 'third space' of play, where children negotiate the demands of the outside world with their own inner wishes, and notions of narrative identity. The findings indicate that discourses surrounding picturebooks' complexities and representational aspects within them affect how children relate to these books, as well as how they negotiate their sense of place, belonging and self-understanding. The implications of this research have repercussions for academic, educational and publishing professionals.

No description available.

Reading comprehension in English as a foreign language (EFL) is a key to success in academic studies in Israel. As Israel is a cultural melting pot, adult students come from widely diverse educational backgrounds, often determined by their cultural environment. They arrive at the university or college classroom with vastly different approaches to learning and reading, in general, and to reading in EFL, in particular. The challenge for the EFL teacher is to help students draw from their cultural toolkits while exposing them to new tools so that they can reach their full learning potential. The rationale of the current inquiry is that in order to tailor a programme that takes into account students' needs, a better understanding of the impact of cultural background on their learning process is essential. This inquiry was guided by three main research questions: How do differing cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds impact upon adult students' approach to and process of learning reading comprehension in English? How do these backgrounds impact upon progress and achievement in reading comprehension in English? And which teaching approach or approaches can best address the range of needs of a culturally diverse student group? To address these questions, an action research study was conducted using a case study approach. Thirty-nine young adult students who participated in a year-long matriculation preparation programme in a teachers' college in Israel were examined. The programme was based on providing students with both bottom-up and top-down reading skills, with particular emphasis on reading strategies. The learning process that students underwent generated qualitative and quantitative data through class observations, interviews, and student records. The data indicated that student background played a significant role in how learning, reading, and EFL were approached. Family background, whether more 'traditional' or less 'traditional', reflected students' cultural background, echoed by a school system sharing a similar mindset and approach to EFL pedagogy. As a result, students' background impacted upon their classroom behaviour and social engagement. Cultural distinctions were apparent at entry level, but were not determining factors in student progress and achievement over the course of the year. Students with greater intercultural competence adopted different learning approaches and reading strategies from those with which they had been educated in their cultural environment and appropriated them as their own. These students also made the most significant progress in their EFL reading comprehension, regardless of background. For students to share their diverse learning approaches and adopt new ones from one another, as well as the new strategies offered by the programme, the establishment of a 'third space', or classroom culture, was crucial. Providing such a space allowed students to exchange learning methods, examine their own, and finally adopt those that were most effective for them. Enhanced reading comprehension at the end of the programme resulted from a process of several cycles of integration and engagement. Those students who reported feeling more integrated within mainstream Israeli society, in general, were also those who more easily integrated within the classroom culture. These students were also more socially engaged in class and showed greater engagement with texts in English. Consequently they made greater progress and reached higher achievements. When teaching EFL reading comprehension to a multicultural class of students, it is argued that a classroom culture should celebrate their diversity and allow them to voice their distinct learning approaches. At the same time, their voices should be harmonized through a unified learning approach, based on the application of reading strategies and engagement with a text.

This thesis reports on a study of the effects of a two-tiered Buddy Reading Programme on the reading skills of 12 to 14 year old middle school students in a high-poverty urban school in a Midwestern United States school. The research took place during one school year with white and African American students. The research, influenced by action research, was in the form of a Buddy Reading intervention programme using a reciprocal teaching model, within a constructivist paradigm. The key finding of the study was that the social nature of the programme allowed the middle school students to rehearse texts, engage in dialogue surrounding texts, and led to improvement in the affective aspects of reading, as well as in reading skills. This social aspect led many of the students to engage in literacy activities beyond those required either for the programme or in classroom instruction. A second finding of the study was that a comprehensive, balanced approach to literacy instruction was effective for simulating the process of reading for the struggling readers and leading them to emulate the reading processes of proficient readers. Through the programme, the students were immersed in a literacy-rich environment and interacted with texts in a positive, natural way.

For many children, storybooks are ubiquitous, forming a unique and special part of their childhood. Storybooks are a critical aspect of young children's emerging literacy. Exposing them to phoneme word sounds, a rich varied vocabulary and print knowledge. This thesis explores one aspect of the amazing relationship children have with storybooks. Specifically, how do children learn new words from books, and it further discusses the best ways to use storybooks to facilitate this learning. Through the use of purpose-made storybooks, which help to control for all the different book elements (e.g. ensuring the story plot and the words that children were learning were novel). This thesis presents an empirical examination of the cognitive processes that help children learn new words through shared storybook reading. A series of experiments investigate the relationship between repetition of words, sleep consolidation and book formats - and their effects on vocabulary acquisition in 3.5-year-old children. These experiments have allowed us to isolate factors that increase the likelihood of children learning more words, and knowledge that can be used to support children's vocabulary development. Importantly, we have discovered that children benefit from the same contextually cueing effects as adults supporting Horst, Parsons, and Bryan (2011) theory for repeated effects during repeated book readings. In addition, children demonstrate similar memory consolidation effects as adults when learning immediately proceeds sleep (Stickgold & Walker, 2005a). By examining the effects of rhyme books, we can further contribute to Hayes, Chemelski, and Palmer (1982) levels of processing theory for memory function in children. Overall, this thesis examines how understanding the cognitive processes supported by regular storybook reading can provide benefits for all preschool children, and outlines accessible and feasible techniques to help children's emergent literacy.

Shared storybook readings with an adult provide children with opportunities to imagine different worlds, experiment with new ideas and be inspired. Existing research shows that shared storybook reading also supports word learning. To date the role of attention in word learning from shared storybooks has been largely overlooked. The aims of this research programme were to investigate how changes to storybook reading interactions, or storybook formats might influence children's word learning by making target words and objects more or less salient using various attentional manipulations which could be used in the real world. Chapter 1 provides an introduction and literature review. Chapter 2 presents a multi-level meta-analysis of studies of word comprehension from shared storybook reading. Empirical chapters (Chapters 3-6) use bespoke storybooks controlling for story length and number of exposures to novel vocabulary to examine children's word learning from storybooks. Participants are 3- and 4-year-old typically developing children. In Chapter 3 children's eye movements are recorded while they are presented with repeated or different stories. We find no evidence of differences in eye movements or word learning between conditions. Chapter 4 demonstrates that presenting storybooks one page at a time (as in Chapter 3) improves word learning compared with when two pages are displayed at a time. Chapter 5 investigates whether illustration complexity (Experiment 1) or salient illustration features (Experiment 2a and b) affect children's learning of the depicted novel words. We found no evidence to support this with the stimuli we used. Chapter 6 investigated the role of storybook repetition in learning new words and the development of narrative skills. Overall, the research programme supports the idea that children's word learning can best be supported by storybooks and reading styles which provide a suitable level of informational content and adult scaffolding from which they can learn.