Boys Flying High in Early Literacy at Camp Hill Infants State School
In contrast with concerns elsewhere that many boys in the earliest of school experiences lose their way with literacy, those at one school in Queensland, Australia, have consistently performed well. In comparison with Statewide average scores on tests (The Year 2 Diagnostic Net), designed to identify those children with need for additional attention in their early reading, writing or numeracy, boys of Camp Hill State Infants School have been outstanding. In this presentation, educators from the school and a critical friend speak to the phenomenon of gender-different achievement in early phase education, and to their beliefs about what is happening in their school.
Gender-based differences in reading literacy in the first two years of school: In this case, type of school trumps gender.
The phenomenon of gender-based differences in students’ literacy achievement in the later years of schooling has been widely researched and reported but it cannot be taken as given that such differences span the entire age continuum. The current study considered the reading literacy of boys and girls in the first years of schooling from two major perspectives: The expectations of students, teachers, and parents were sampled, and the literacy of those boys and girls measured by system measures of reading performance and an external assessment of reading comprehension. It was not surprising that student, parent, and teacher attitudes predicted gender-based differences in reading literacy, nor that the school-based Year 2 Diagnostic Net test provided statistical evidence of such differences, nor was it surprising that girls generally outperformed boys. What was surprising was that other internal and external measures of achievement found no significant differences for gender. Instead, what emerged was a significant gap in terms of both achievement and attitude related to type of school attended together with some agreement about a child’s judgment that he/she reads well as the most important concomitant of reading literacy.
Initial Teacher Training: the French view
ABSTRACT This paper, against the background of trends in the development of initial teacher training in Europe as a whole, identifies and explains some of the recent, radical reforms which were introduced in France by a socialist government. These include the need to raise the status and the competence of the teaching profession; the creation of new teacher‐training institutions of university status (Instituts universitaires de formation des maitres); the introduction of common entry qualifications at degree level for both primary and secondary levels; the harmonisation and the extension to 2 years of the post‐degree teacher‐training course and the increase in emphasis placed on professional training, both theoretical and practical. These reforms provoked a storm of protest and an examination of the reasons for this reveals a multiplicity of crucial questions which have far‐reaching implications.