This study investigated effective teaching factors and student reading strategies as predictors of student reading achievement in the United States and China. Participants were 10,348 students in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, 5115 from China and 5233 from the United States. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)…

Development of reading skills has been shown to be tightly linked to phonological processing skills and to some extent to speech perception abilities. Although speech perception is also known to play a role in reading development, it is not clear which processes underlie this connection. Using event-related potentials (ERPs) we investigated the…

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) aims to provide comparative data on 15-year-olds' academic performance and well-being. The purpose of the current study is to explore and compare the variables that predict the reading literacy and life satisfaction of U.S. and South Korean students. The random forest algorithm, which is a…

Researchers have used various theories to explain deaf individuals' reading skills, including the dual route reading theory, the orthographic depth theory, and the early language access theory. This study tested 4 groups of children--hearing with dyslexia, hearing without dyslexia, deaf early signers, and deaf late signers (N = 857)--from 4…

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) is an international assessment of student performance in reading literacy at the fourth grade. PIRLS measures students in the fourth year of formal schooling because this is typically when students' learning transitions from a focus on "learning to read" to a focus on…

Background: Educational qualifications and literacy skills are highly related. This is not surprising as it is one aim of educational systems to equip individuals with competencies necessary to take part in society. Because of this relationship educational qualifications are often used as a proxy for "human capital". However, from a…

In response to international concern over poor reading skills among adolescent learners, teachers of these students are encouraged to integrate reading comprehension instruction into their classrooms. To increase the likelihood that reading comprehension strategies are effectively used in schools, teachers in all content areas need extensive…

Using the 2000 and 2009 waves of Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) data, we examined the relationships between family socio-economic status (SES), cultural capital, and reading achievement among students in five post-socialist Eastern European countries while comparing the findings with three Western bench-marking countries.…

The relationships between cumulative family risk factors and American students' academic performance were examined in all 50 States and the District of Columbia. Data from the 2007 "American Community Survey" were used to ascertain the percent of birth to 18 year old children in the United States who experienced three or more risk…

In this study, we carry out a qualitative and quantitative analysis of abbreviations in 300 randomly collected research paper titles published in the most prestigious European and US-based Astrophysics journals written in English. Our main results show that the process of shortening words and groups of words is one of the most characteristic and…

Inspired by Bourdieu's ("Homo Academicus, Polity," Cambridge, 1988; "The Logic of Practice, Polity," Cambridge, 1990) ideas of knowledge reproduction, the article presents an empirical mapping of knowledge geographies, as manifest in the curricular practices found within a single international MA programme in Denmark. Following…

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conducted the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), a multi-domain adult skills assessment with an extensive background questionnaire, in 2012. PIAAC is a global effort to understand how individuals' education, workplace experiences, and other…

Over 50% of American public school students read below average literacy levels. Recent research suggests that oral and print-based high school curriculum instruction require an infusion of electronic educational technology (EET), such as computer programs, online instruction, electronic thesaurus, and other devices, to better serve student need…

An online survey of award-winning literacy teachers was conducted to determine the most influential qualities of literacy teacher educators in teacher preparation programs. Sixty-two recipients of literacy awards participated in the study, representing teachers of excellence from all U.S. geographic regions. Using a backward mapping process,…

Serious reading problems exist among middle school learners as evidenced by declining national reading scores and increased dropout rates. In response to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) expectations in reading, several experts have promoted a scripted repeated reading strategy such as readers' theater as a possible approach to improving student…