Dyslexia and remediation/education: where next?

Interventions to support students with reading difficulties have existed for over 70 years. This paper rehearses the need for interventions to be grounded in theory and empirical evidence about reading processes. The suggestion that the next generation of interventions should go beyond simple context-independent small unit phonics teaching to cover context-dependent larger phonological units is evaluated. Examples of contemporary interventions that involve large units, and morphology are presented. Current interventions reported target students with literacy difficulties regardless of a diagnosis of dyslexia.

Working through the layers: curriculum implementation in language education

This chapter presents findings on English Language instruction at the lower primary level in the context of policies for curricular innovation at national, school and classroom levels. The focus is on policies which connect national and school levels, and on how they might be interpreted when implemented in multiple schools within Singapore’s educational system. Referring to case studies in two schools and to individual lesson observations in 10 schools, we found much agreement with national policies in terms of curriculum (i.e. lesson content and activity selection),leading to great uniformity in the lessons taught by different teachers in different schools. In addition, we found that schools had an important mediating influence on implementation of national policies. However, adoptions and adaptations of policy innovations at the classroom level were somewhat superficial as they were more related to changes in educational facilities and procedures than in philosophies.

How students view the boundaries between their science and religious education concerning the origins of life and the universe

Internationally in secondary schools, lessons are typically taught by subject specialists, raising the question of how to accommodate teaching which bridges the sciences and humanities. This is the first study to look at how students make sense of the teaching they receive in two subjects (science and religious education) when one subject’s curriculum explicitly refers to cross-disciplinary study and the other does not. Interviews with 61 students in seven schools in England suggested that students perceive a permeable boundary between science and their learning in science lessons and also a permeable boundary between religion and their learning in RE lessons, yet perceive a firm boundary between science lessons and RE lessons. We concluded that it is unreasonable to expect students to transfer instruction about cross-disciplinary perspectives across such impermeable subject boundaries. Finally we consider the implications of these findings for the successful management of cross-disciplinary education.