Reading comprehension in primary school: textbooks, curriculum and assessment

This study describes the reading comprehension processes present in the most widely sold textbooks at the fourth grade level in Portugal and discusses how they compare to international assessments of reading literacy. We adopted the Progress of International Reading Literacy Study framework to categorize the questions in the textbooks. Our analyses revealed that they focus heavily on the retrieval of explicitly stated information to the detriment of higher level comprehension skills. Portuguese fourth grade textbooks rarely challenge students to make connections between their knowledge and the ideas in the texts and to adopt a critical and evaluative reading stance. This is in sharp contrast to what students are asked to do in the Progress of International Reading Literacy Study, conducted every five years since 2001, and it may help explain the poor results Portuguese students have in national assessment and in PISA. The findings are discussed in light of the curriculum frameworks currently adopted in Portugal and suggestions are made as to how we can improve reading literacy achievement.

Authentic leadership in school organizations

This research study, descriptive and exploratory in nature, had as objectives to know the perceptions of the teacher/students of a graduation course in Educational Sciences about their leaders, measured and evaluated through the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ) and to verify if existed differences between the public and private school organizations in the four characteristics defined for the ALQ: a) self-conscious; b) transparency; c) moral/ethics; d) balanced processing. A non-probabilistic sample by convenience consisted of 86 participants from Brazil. The results of this research study show that the level of authenticity of the leader, in the four characteristics defined for the ALQ, in the perception of the subjects inquired, is above of the moderate level. Having in account the type of school organization (public or private), the differences found in the levels of the four characteristics defined for the ALQ were not statistically significant even though, the leaders of the private schools demonstrated to possess slightly higher values in the four analysed sub areas.