This Learner Response System (LRS) intervention involves the use of electronic handheld devices that allow teachers and pupils to provide immediate feedback during lessons. For example, pupils can respond to a question using the device and responses are immediately visible to the teacher, or they can work through problems on the device at their…

The Internet has become the primary source for obtaining information at work, at home, and for school. Because Internet reading increasingly is becoming one of the central ways students are acquiring information, in 2016, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) was extended to include ePIRLS--an innovative assessment of online…

As a part of the teacher licensure program at the graduate level at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), the M.Ed. licensure candidate is required to complete an action research project during a 3-semester-hour course that coincides with the 9-semester-hour student teaching experience or with school employment. This course, Education…

This special edition of IJMSE focuses on the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) project now that it has completed a full cycle of administration--reading, mathematics, and science--to look at ways in which PISA has been used in participating countries and with what consequences, and to identify potential research and policy…

Anagram solution tasks have been frequently used to assess word recognition processes and relevant research suggests that anagram solution ability is closely related to reading. Recently, the anagram paradigm was utilized to compare reading performance in the Greek language and was found to share significant positive correlation to reading…

Although young children display various types of interests, little is known regarding the potential impact of these interests on subsequent learning and development. Of particular importance is the question of whether or not children's early interests are instrumental in their later academic achievement. The current study fills this gap in the…

Given the international need to improve student learning, there is nothing more important than classroom teachers. Obtaining a deeper understanding of effective classrooms is a priority if educational reform efforts are to succeed in any educational system around the world. In the last decade, educational researchers have expanded the knowledge…

The purpose of this study was to examine the connections between national culture and student achievement. Using Hofstede's six cultural dimensions and the two dimensions from the World Values survey, we conducted multiple regressions to determine the most significant predictors of student achievement as measured by the 2009 Program for…

Standardized testing is widely utilized to determine the levels of children's learning achievement. There has been a constant debate on how accurately standardized tests reflect children's achievement. Many practice teachers struggle with teaching to the test to meet the national criteria. An elementary teacher questioned the accuracy of the…

What do great teachers do differently? It is obvious that some teachers simply have better student achievement than others. Some teachers have stellar results year after year with all students. The age old question then becomes, how do these teachers have this level of success? This research started with an examination of teachers who had strong…

The authors discuss strategic selection of literature for children and young adults based on the characteristics of written text and images as teachers and parents choose books for classroom and home settings. The topic is approached from two stances/lenses: (1) the cognitive processes used while reading and the ways different genres, topics, and…

A group of elementary school reading teachers used their time in a Professional Learning Community to develop a systematic intervention to address the needs of struggling readers in grades 3 to 5. Working as a team, they identified a collection of books that was culturally diverse, high interest, appealing to boys and girls, aligned with…

This study addressed the effects of multiyear, response-based, tiered intervention for struggling readers in grades 6-8. A sample of 768 sixth-grade students with reading difficulties was randomized to a response-based, tiered-intervention condition or "business as usual," and initial treatment status was maintained over the three-year…

It has been argued that children with dyslexia (DC) are poor at learning a foreign language (L2) and, in particular, reading foreign words. This assumption is so general that an Italian law (law 170, October, 2010) has established that DC may be completely exempted from foreign language learning and, in any case, should not be engaged in tuition…

Two studies from English-speaking samples investigated the methodologically difficult question of whether the later reading achievement of children learning to read earlier or later differs. Children (n = 287) from predominantly state-funded schools were selected and they differed in whether the reading instruction age (RIA) was either five or…