Few studies have quantified the effects on academic performance; none has investigated, as this study does, the effects of immigration, home language, and school mobility on academic development over time. What makes this study unique is its melding of sociological and psychometric perspectives – an approach that is still quite new. Logistic regression was used to analyze data from Ontario’s 2007-2008 Junior (Grade 6) Assessment of Reading, Writing and Mathematics, with linked assessment results from three years earlier, to investigate students’ academic achievement. The focus of this study is on whether the students maintained proficiency between Grades 3 and 6 or achieved proficiency in Grade 6 if they were not proficient in Grade 3. The results indicate that Grade 3 proficiency is the strongest predictor of Grade 6 proficiency and that home language or interactions with home language are also significant in most cases. In addition, students who speak a language other than or in addition to English at home are, in general, a little more likely to be proficient at Grade 6. Most students who were born outside of Canada were significantly more likely than students born in Canada to stay or become proficient in Reading, Writing, and Mathematics by Grade 6. These results highlight the importance of considering the enormous heterogeneity of immigrants’ experiences when studying the effects of immigration on academic performance.

Few studies have quantified the effects on academic performance; none has investigated, as this study does, the effects of immigration, home language, and school mobility on academic development over time. What makes this study unique is its melding of sociological and psychometric perspectives – an approach that is still quite new. Logistic regression was used to analyze data from Ontario’s 2007-2008 Junior (Grade 6) Assessment of Reading, Writing and Mathematics, with linked assessment results from three years earlier, to investigate students’ academic achievement. The focus of this study is on whether the students maintained proficiency between Grades 3 and 6 or achieved proficiency in Grade 6 if they were not proficient in Grade 3. The results indicate that Grade 3 proficiency is the strongest predictor of Grade 6 proficiency and that home language or interactions with home language are also significant in most cases. In addition, students who speak a language other than or in addition to English at home are, in general, a little more likely to be proficient at Grade 6. Most students who were born outside of Canada were significantly more likely than students born in Canada to stay or become proficient in Reading, Writing, and Mathematics by Grade 6. These results highlight the importance of considering the enormous heterogeneity of immigrants’ experiences when studying the effects of immigration on academic performance.

Learning to read is a complex and demanding skill which is vital in order for children to be able to access a broad curriculum of learning within the school environment. Reading requires the integration of many different processes, it is possible that difficulties with one or more of these processes has the possibility to interfere with reading ability. The research aimed to investigate the presence and co-occurrence of difficulties across many factors thought to be involved in the reading process. Data were collected from 126 schoolchildren, aged 8-10 years on performance measures associated with reading; reading ability, visual sensory and oculomotor function, visual perception, attention, memory, phonological awareness and rapid naming. Differences in mean performance between different reading ability groups (ANOVA), and correlations between the variables studied, were used to investigate the presence and magnitude of any relationships. Many of the variables studied were found to be significantly different between reading ability groups and significantly correlated with reading ability to varying degrees. The analysis of multiple single-case studies determined that each child has a unique pattern of strengths and weaknesses and that many children including ‘average/above average’ readers, show below average performance on several measures included in the study, with affected skills rarely existing in isolation. Thus, it is recommended that an individualised multi-factorial approach is taken to the assessment of children struggling to read. This will require communication by a multi-professional team to ensure all possible contributing factors are explored to enable each child to achieve their potential. / College of Optometrist / Some material in this thesis is unavailable for copyright reasons.

When the Swedish school system met with the novel experience of cancelled the annual national tests in spring 2020, teachers across the country were forced to adapt to teaching without this traditional support. Due to English being one of the subjects required to administer national tests, upper secondary school English teachers were immediately affected. By looking at several studies regarding standardised testing in general, and Swedish national test tradition specifically, this qualitative study summarises how large-scale assessment in education affects teaching.Through semi-structured interviews with three English teachers, this study surveyed how teaching was affected by the cancellation of the national tests in Sweden. The teachers’ experiences of teaching without the supportive function of the national tests were also documented. The recorded interviews were analysed through the theoretical framework of reactivity, and specifically, Campbell’s Law. This study’s findings are that while the national tests hold a critical support function for teachers, they may also inhibit English teachers from teaching what is specified in the English curriculum. What emerged from the collected data and subsequent analysis was teachers’ fractured role as dependent on performance standards-based on test criteria rather than the content standards in the English curriculum. The interviewed teachers showed a great deal of trust in the national tests as grounds for assessing their students’ English skills, occasionally at the cost of their faith in themselves as teachers. Counterproductively, this resulted in teachers, consciously or not, adapting their teaching practices to fit the predicted national test rather than the curriculum. Essentially, teachers had changed their behaviour to accommodate an observer, as theorized by Campbell. During the 2020 spring semester when national tests were cancelled in Sweden, and English teachers all over the nation had to make do without their supporting function, this was made clear.