Thesis (Ph. D.)--University OF MICHIGAN.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oklahoma State University, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p.86-95).

Bachelor-Arbeit Univ. St. Gallen, 2005.

Metalinguistic awareness is transferable between oral and written forms of language, and between different languages. Recent research has established a connection between monolingual children's grammatical awareness and their morphological spelling knowledge. Studies of bilingual children have shown that phonological awareness and alphabetic knowledge transfer across languages, even if the languages are dissimilar and are written with different scripts. This study investigates transfer of grammatical awareness and morphological spelling knowledge across dissimilar languages and scripts. In spoken language, children learn not only surface-level language 'facts' specific to that language (e.g. vocabulary) but also deeper-level grammatical principles (e.g. morphological and syntactic relationships), which govern other languages. Similarly, literacy requires surface-level knowledge of a specific script (e.g. letters and their sound values), and knowledge of the principle underlying that script (e.g. that alphabets represent phonology and morphology), which governs other scripts of the same type. I propose that transfer across languages occurs at the level of grammatical awareness but not at the level of vocabulary. The hypothesis was tested in Englishspeaking children (6-11 years) learning Hebrew as a second language. In Study 1, Hebrew learners were given oral measures of vocabulary and grammatical awareness, and measures of morphological spelling knowledge. Grammatical awareness and morphological spelling knowledge were significantly correlated across languages, but vocabulary was not. In Study 2, awareness of conceptually similar aspects of English and Hebrew morphology was measured in oral language and spelling. These were significantly correlated across languages. In both studies, Hebrew learners with high levels of Hebrew scored significantly higher than English-speaking monolinguals on grammatical and spelling measures. I conclude that grammatical awareness and morphological spelling knowledge are transferable across languages and scripts, and that learning a second language can benefit specific aspects of metalinguistic and spelling development.

The alarmingly high rates of teacher attrition in the UK and abroad are perhaps unsurprising given that teaching is consistently ranked among the top most stressful occupations. Up until relatively recently, researchers have sought to address this problem by investigating the causes of teacher stress and burnout, and the coping strategies that teachers may use in response to feeling stressed and burnt out. However, this has facilitated a deficit approach to understanding the problem, with teachers viewed as personally responsible for their stress and burnout because they have failed to engage in strategies to ‘cope’ with their problem. Rather than focusing on the idea of ‘coping’ with a ‘problem’, this research adopted a ‘what-works’ approach and investigated teacher resilience. This qualitative research adopted a phenomenological approach and data was collected over two phases using semi-structured interviews. In total, 30 participants were interviewed; 25 experienced mainstream class teachers in phase one of data collection and 5 mainstream primary school teachers in phase two of data collection. NVivo9 supported a thematic approach to data analysis, which identified themes in the strategies and major processes that facilitated the experience of teacher resilience. The findings reveal that complex interactions exist between the personal and environmental factors that facilitate the experience teacher resilience during professional challenges. The participants’ conceptualisations of teacher resilience are compared and contrasted with previous research and theorybased literature on teacher resilience, and directions for future research are suggested. Implications for Educational Psychologists are discussed, including systemic interventions at the individual teacher and whole school level.

Throughout our lives we engage in problem solving, which is thought to depend on executive functions (EFs) e.g., inhibition, shifting and working memory. Previous work has identified the need to consider these abilities in an everyday context. EF skills are known to be impaired in Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS). This thesis aims to investigate experimental and real-life problem solving in WS and DS, and how these groups use EF skills to solve problems, through experimental and questionnaire-based cross-syndrome comparisons. Participants with WS and DS aged 12-24 years (Ns=20) and typically developing (TD) controls (N=56; nonverbal matched subset = 20) completed the Tower of London (TOL) problem-solving task and a battery of EF tests. In a separate study, parents (WS, DS, TD; total N=112) completed the BRIEF (Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning) and a novel Problem-Solving Questionnaire. The WS group, but not the DS group, scored more poorly on the TOL than the nonverbal-matched controls. In WS, developmental trajectory analysis indicated over-reliance on planning for TOL performance for low planning scores. For the DS group only speed of picture matching was associated with TOL performance, while more rule violations were exhibited than for the WS group. Questionnaire scores were poor for the WS group in relation to DS and TD groups. Asking for help for the DS group, and becoming emotional for the WS group, was related to reaching the solution. In general, associations between experimental and everyday measures were scarce. It was concluded that: while EFs (planning, visuospatial working memory) were constraining factors for WS problem solving, alternative strategies were used by the DS group to reach the solution; real-life problem solving should be considered in its own right; and poor WS problem solving may be related to emotional difficulties.

Studies into the recall performance of children with moderate learning difficulties (MLD) have consistently and repetitiously shown that, where strategies are needed, these children perform deficiently when compared to typical children of the same age. The present study challenges these findings by demonstrating that MLD children can spontaneously engage in active and effective strategic behaviour, providing that the task requirements are effective in eliciting these skills. The notion of "Task Authenticity", as perceived by the memorizer, is presented to explain why some tasks, and not others, are effective in eliciting strategies already at the disposal of the MLD memorizer. Further study of the notion of "Task Authenticity" from the perspective of the memorizer reveals a taxonomy of authentic features which, when incorporated into recall tasks, will be effective in prompting the employment of mnemonic strategies to aid recall. Six factors are identified: real-world relevance, personal relevance, concrete materials, practical engagement, sensory appeal and game format. Findings from the final phase of the study, which compares spontaneous strategic employment by MLD subjects across authentic and non-authentic tasks, support and extend previous findings which indicated that MLD subjects were capable of spontaneously engaging in active and effective strategic mechanisms for authentically-perceived tasks, but not for tasks of a discrete, de-contextualised or rote-type nature. The practical implications of these findings are discussed in the final chapter and a classroom-based instructional model is proposed.

Studies carried out investigated predictors of spelling and reading in monolingual and bilingual Greek and English school children attending Years 2 to 6. Studies 1, 2 and 3 investigated underlying factors in spelling of typically developing children, monolingual and bilingual. The findings of Study 1 support the notion that spelling is a multifaceted process integrating phonological, morphological, semantic and orthographic skill (Frith 1980). The aim in Study 2 was to narrow the focus on the variables found to be most strongly associated with lexical and sublexical processes for spelling and to investigate language transfer effects. Factors associated with spelling in English of bilingual children with more or less experience with Greek were examined. Children with stronger Greek literacy skill showed more influence of phonological processes than those with weak Greek literacy skills. In Study 3, three variables were investigated in relation to the single word spelling performance of a new sample of Greek and English monolingual and bilingual children. These were phonological ability (associated with sublexical processes), and visual memory and letter report (both associated with lexical processes). The findings from Studies 1, 2 and 3 indicated that, despite the difference in transparency between Greek and English, lexical processes seem to play a more important role in spelling for monolingual children than phonologically-based processes with increasing age. In Study 4 case studies of monolingual and multilingual English- and Greek-speaking children with spelling and reading difficulty are presented. Following identification of the deficit in each case, training was conducted that targeted lexical or sublexical processes. This study aimed to further test hypotheses regarding causal relationships among cognitive processes (Nickels, Kohnen, & Biedermann, 2010). The findings support the effectiveness of theoretically based targeted training programmes for literacy difficulties (cf. Brunsdon, Coltheart, & Nickels, 2005) and the usefulness of Dual Route models of spelling for identifying the underlying deficit.

In the present study, a total of two experiments constitute a follow up study of the development of communication: referring expressions and other aspects of discourse in pre-school urban Algerian children. In the first experiment, the focus is on the differences between the use of definite and indefinite noun-phrase, in two conditions (freeplay/ structured play), and differences between the use of person pronouns (I, You) which are essentially deictic and the ones which are essentially intralinguistic or cohesive (3rd p: he, she, it) within the two conditions. The demonstrative pronouns and adverbs which are added in the grouping are less important with regard to the main factors of interest (definite vs. indefinite NP, and 1st and 2nd p. vs. 3rd p.), but in the global analysis they are of some interest as to the continuity from the more indexical function to the more intralinguistic or cohesive use of referring expressions. The categories which are of interest in the second experiment, are those which, strictly speaking, are used anaphorically. The person pronouns (I,You) and the demonstrative adverbs (or locatives: here, there) which were under scrutiny in the first experiment, are dropped in the second experiment. These categories of discourse are hardly found, because of the nature of the experiment, the purpose of which being the evaluation of the more intralinguistic uses of referring expressions. Unlike the first experiment which was designed to tackle both the deictic and intralinguistic uses of referring expressions by pre-school children, the second experiment was, thus, designed to measure the extent to which pre-schoolers engaged in some specific tasks (tasks which might prompt the use of some aspects of discourse), use referring expressions in their anaphoric sense, and track down these uses to their significance. Overall, the results of the present study, together with examples from other experimental data, indicate that the function of the definite article may initially be predominantly exophoric or deictic, in as much as this function signals a particular object or the actions of one salient object singled out from a group of others, in the extralinguistic context. The results of the first experiment showed a predominant presence of a developmental function (the nominative use of the definite reference) and a consistency in the appearance of such a function across categories (the deictic uses) developmentally associated with this function. The person pronouns '1"you' are typically 'exophoric' since they refer to aspects of the non-linguistic context and, by contrast 3rd p. pronouns (he, she, it, they) are essentially intralinguistic or cohesive. Similarly in the second experiment the results concerning the definite NP do agree with some recent findings about the deictic function of the definite article (which sometimes is used correctly when the object is alone, and at some other time it is used incorrectly in the instance of a non-specific reference). This, in fact, is quite different from an anaphoric or intralinguistic function: it grew out from the present data, that the apparently correct use of the definite NP is tied to situationally introduced referent and it is not truly anaphoric.

Over the past forty years the topic of bullying has generated considerable research interest. Schools spend a large amount of their budgets on interventions designed to reduce the incidence of bullying and to promote prosocial behaviours (Viding, McCrory, Blakemore and Frederickson, 2011). Nationwide initiatives such as the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) curriculum (DfE, 2005) have been widely implemented across schools in the United Kingdom with a view to increasing social and emotional competence and reducing bullying. Despite this, bullying remains a prominent concern and anti-bullying interventions do not always seem to lead to a significant decrease in bullying behaviour (Salmivalli, Kaukiainen & Voeten, 2005). Although much of the bullying research has focused primarily on bullies and victims it seems more widely accepted now that bullying is a group process which happens within a social context. More recent studies have looked at the other roles that children can adopt in a bullying situation such as defender, reinforcer, assistant and outsider (Salmivalli, 1996), however research in this areas is relatively limited to date. Existing research is largely quantitative in design and is considerably reliant on fixed response questionnaires. The current study looks at defending in particular and explores the factors associated with children’s expressed intentions to defend. Due to complexities involved in operationalising bullying as a construct, the focus of this study is on unkind behaviour rather than bullying. A mixed methods approach is used incorporating both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. 113 upper Key Stage 2 children (66 boys and 47 girls) from two schools in the south east of England completed questionnaires designed to assess behavioural tendencies in relation to unkindness, friendship quality, social group structure and attitudes towards unkind behaviour. Paired interviews were conducted with 32 children (17 girls and 15 boys). Correlation, regression and thematic analyses were used to explore factors seemingly associated with defending. Results are discussed in light of existing literature on defending along with implications for the professional practice of Educational Psychologists (EPs).