Existing studies have demonstrated the usefulness of dynamic training in developing children’s various cognitive abilities, such as cognitive flexibility and reasoning. Additionally, research has...Show moreExisting studies have demonstrated the usefulness of dynamic training in developing children’s various cognitive abilities, such as cognitive flexibility and reasoning. Additionally, research has also shown dynamic measures, such as posttest performance and the amount of training prompts to be significant predictors for children’s academic performance in reading and mathematics. However, there is little information about the effectiveness of dynamic training on the working memory performance of typically developing and younger primary school children. The current study was performed using a dynamic task of working memory with a pretest-training-posttest design. The participants of this study were 103 typically developing Dutch children between the ages of 8 and 9 years old (mean age = 8.55 years, 50.50% girls). Children were allocated into a control and experimental group, where the experimental group received dynamic training following the pretest using a graduated prompts approach, while the control group did not receive training. Our study found a statistically significant difference between the children’s performance at the pretest and posttest measures of the dynamic working memory task in both experimental groups. Inconsistent with previous research, children’s working memory performance regressed from pretest to posttest in both groups. Furthermore, in-line with previous research, we found that higher performance at posttest predicted higher academic performance in reading and mathematics for the experimental group. However, the number of prompts children received during dynamic training was not a significant predictor for their academic performance. Our findings indicated that the dynamic task for working memory profited children in both experimental groups to a limited extent. Additionally, dynamic measures of working memory, such as posttest score, had a predictive effect on children’s reading and mathematical performance in school. Future research should evaluate the effectiveness of a shorter dynamic training procedure and the specific type of prompts that are most useful for children’s performance progression. Another implication for future research is to examine children’s concentration during dynamic testing. Practical implications include the application of dynamic testing along with static testing for a more comprehensive understanding about children’s learning needs and cognitive abilities.Show less
The CBM maze task scores must reflect all skills required for reading for it to be used as a measure of general reading proficiency. The main purpose of the current study was to find out whether...Show moreThe CBM maze task scores must reflect all skills required for reading for it to be used as a measure of general reading proficiency. The main purpose of the current study was to find out whether the CBM maze task scores reflect reading comprehension because, despite evidence for the reliability and validity of the maze task as a measure of general reading performance, there are questions about the extent to which the maze task scores reflect reading comprehension. The second purpose was to find out whether gender is an influential factor affecting the performance on the maze task. The current study had an experimental design because the format of the maze, which was the within-subjects factor, was manipulated. All 44 participants in the study completed both standard and scrambled mazes. The coherence of the scrambled maze texts was distorted by randomly shuffling the order of the sentences. Thus, if the participants score significantly higher on the standard mazes than on the non-coherent scrambled mazes, it would mean that CBM maze scores reflect reading comprehension. A two-way mixed ANOVA was performed to answer the research questions. The study revealed that participants obtained significantly higher scores on the standard mazes than on the scrambled mazes, supporting the hypothesis that CBM maze scores reflect reading comprehension. A statistically significant main effect of gender was found, however, there was no statistically significant interaction between the gender of the participants and the maze format on the maze scores. More research is needed to find out whether gender plays a significant role in the performance on maze tasks. The finding that CBM maze task scores reflect reading comprehension supports the use of the CBM maze as a measure of general reading proficiency.Show less
Reading is one of the most important academic skills, because it is a requirement to be able to learn. The reading skills of Dutch students have worsened over the last years and the COVID- 19...Show moreReading is one of the most important academic skills, because it is a requirement to be able to learn. The reading skills of Dutch students have worsened over the last years and the COVID- 19 pandemic has had a negative influence on that. That is why it is important to help struggling readers. This study examined the effects of two intensive, individual reading interventions aimed at improving the reading skills of students with reading difficulties. The effects of the Universele Interventie voor Lezen, a structured online reading intervention, were compared to the RA, the control condition. Additionally, the effects of the interventions on reading enjoyment were examined. Two research questions were formulated. Firstly, "What are the relative effects of the Universele Interventie voor Lezen and Read-Along reading interventions on the reading performance of children with reading difficulties?" Secondly, "What are the relative effects of the Universele Interventie voor Lezen and Read-Along reading interventions on the reading enjoyment of children with reading difficulties?" The Universele Interventie voor Lezen is a structured intervention that uses explicit, direct instruction. The Read-Along intervention, on the other hand, is based on the idea that more reading is sufficient to improve the reading skills of struggling readers. During this study, both interventions were administered through online, individual meetings. The sample consisted of 29 struggling readers from fifth and sixth grade. A significant effect over time was found for reading performance, but not for intervention. No significant effect was found for reading enjoyment. These findings suggest that it can be beneficial to implement reading interventions such as the Universele Interventie voor Lezen and the Read-Along for struggling readers.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a newly developed dynamic screener to assess first year secondary school students’ potential for learning. Participants included 52 children ...Show moreThis study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a newly developed dynamic screener to assess first year secondary school students’ potential for learning. Participants included 52 children (mean age = 13.14) from different Dutch educational tracks. The dynamic screener consists of the subtests reading, mathematics, working memory, planning, divergent thinking, and inductive reasoning. Each subtest employs a test-training-test design. Based on randomized blocking, half of the children received a graduated prompts training between pre-test and post-test, while the other half did not. On some, but not all, subtests training seems to lead to an increase in performance. Additionally, some constructs measured through the dynamic screener relate to current school performance. This pilot study provides preliminary support to the use of such an instrument to gain more insight into children’s learning potential and instructional needs. Directions for future research are discussed.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a newly developed dynamic test for phonological and prosodic awareness in children with and without dyslexia. Additionally, the impact of...Show moreThis study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a newly developed dynamic test for phonological and prosodic awareness in children with and without dyslexia. Additionally, the impact of reading self-concept was investigated. 30 children with dyslexia and 48 without dyslexia (Mage = 10.55) were included. The study consisted of two sessions: In the first session, all children completed a reading self-concept questionnaire. In the second session, the children were randomized into an experimental or control condition for a test-training-test design. Children in the experimental condition received a dynamic training between pre-test and post-test, the control condition did not. Results indicated that trained children had improved more on prosodic awareness than non-trained children. This effect was not found for phonemic awareness. Dyslexia diagnosis did not influence improvement. Furthermore, children with dyslexia had lower reading self-concept compared to children without dyslexia. However, reading self-concept was not related to improvement during a dynamic test, and dyslexia diagnosis did not moderate this relationship.Show less
This thesis set out to analyse the eighteenth-century library of Johanna Paauw. If looking at the books in someone's bookcase offers some insight into who they are, what might one conclude on the...Show moreThis thesis set out to analyse the eighteenth-century library of Johanna Paauw. If looking at the books in someone's bookcase offers some insight into who they are, what might one conclude on the basis of Johanna Paauw's bookshelves?Show less
Never before were there so many people that can read and have access to reading material on demand. This is a time of great technological innovation, and carrying a small computer in the back...Show moreNever before were there so many people that can read and have access to reading material on demand. This is a time of great technological innovation, and carrying a small computer in the back pocket of your jeans has become a normality, and often even a necessity. An increasing number of people relies on the ability to read, and current literacy numbers are exceptionally high, with a vast majority of the world population being literate. Reading is done on a large scale by a staggering number of people, yet reading enthusiasm and the number of people who read as a leisure activity in its own right is declining. This results in a decline in the number of people able to read a long-form text in the deep reading mode, and this poses a problem. Reading long-form texts in a deep reading mode trains the reading comprehension ability and general reading skill, if these skills are not regularly trained there is a risk of becoming low-literate, which impedes someone to fully participate in society. Being low-literate decreases the chances of being able to think critically, differentiate between real and fake news, understand political party programmes, or the information attached to drugs. The increase of people at risk of becoming low-literate is connected to heavy screen use. Screen reading does not train the deep reading mode, but rather the skimming reading mode. Being well trained to read in the skimming reading mode has made it extremely difficult for people to be able to read long-form texts. In this thesis I address this problem and argue that reading graphic narratives can be a stepping stone to acquiring and improving general comprehensive reading skills and reading enthusiasm for non-graphic text. I support my argument by indicating the characteristics of the graphic narrative and how these enable the reluctant reader to read a graphic narrative in a way that resembles the skimming reading mode, while still being able to read deeply. Additionally I review several research studies that have found the graphic narrative to provide a positive learning experience for students, in the fields of second language acquisition, and reading comprehension ability.Show less
This thesis proposes the notion of reading health as a bridge between scholarly research in reading on one hand and policy on the other. Examining existing research and current dilemmas that...Show moreThis thesis proposes the notion of reading health as a bridge between scholarly research in reading on one hand and policy on the other. Examining existing research and current dilemmas that pertain to reading studies, the author suggests a set of principles and guidelines for the operationalisation of the notion on a transnational level that could aid policy-makers in making use of relevant research to better inform measures aimed at improving the state of reading in society.Show less
In the Netherlands, 8-10% of the population of 16 years and older is low literated. Because literacy is quite important to participate in current and future society, this research investigates if...Show moreIn the Netherlands, 8-10% of the population of 16 years and older is low literated. Because literacy is quite important to participate in current and future society, this research investigates if teacher efficacy has a positive effect on the growth rate of reading. The participants are 23 teachers and 89 students of the 5th to the 8th grade. Teacher efficacy has been measured with a questionnaire translated into Dutch. Reading growth has been measured by a weekly maze task and a pre and post measurement of two reading tests. The results show there is no significant correlation between teacher efficacy and the results on the maze-tasks. The two factorial repeated measures ANOVA’s that have been conducted show both main effects for Measurement time (pre- and post) and ‘Teacher efficacy’. Remarkably, reading test scores of students of teachers with low teacher efficacy are higher than reading test scores of students of teachers with high teacher efficacy. In this research, no support has been found for the hypothesis that teacher efficacy has a positive effect on the growth rate of reading. Because the sample has been small, additional research should be done in order to draw strong conclusions.Show less
It has been argued that handwriting is slowly becoming less important in favour of typing. This is because handwriting seems to take up more time and effort than typing does. The underlying...Show moreIt has been argued that handwriting is slowly becoming less important in favour of typing. This is because handwriting seems to take up more time and effort than typing does. The underlying objective of this study is to examine the importance of handwriting. The aim of this study is to determine what factors are important to take into consideration when it comes to handwriting and to provide further evidence for the importance of handwriting as opposed to typing. This study covered four main topics in order to examine the importance of handwriting. This was done by looking at whether handwriting practice and the teaching of handwriting was decreasing in schools, then by looking at the differences between handwriting and typing, before establishing the importance of handwriting by examining the movement involved. Finally it drew a connection between handwriting and literacy. In order to examine these topics, a multitude of sources were examined and consulted. These ranged from neurological research articles, where the results were achieved by test subjects, to organizations testing the literacy of people, to websites that described concerns voiced by educators. This dissertation aimed to give an accurate representation of these sources by citing them appropriately. Taken together, these sources provided an overview into the main topic of the importance of handwriting. From this study it became clear that cursive handwriting is no longer an obligatory part of school curriculum in both the United Kingdom and the United States, and that there is a decrease in proper handwriting. In addition it also identified that bad handwriting can have disastrous consequences in professional fields. In regards to the differences between handwriting and typing, it has become clear that handwriting has a significant influence on the recognition of characters that typing lacks. Furthermore, handwriting aids people in their memory retention, helps build more complicated sentences than with typing, and leads to a better composition of a written text. Finally it described that handwriting and literacy were connected and a better handwriting performance lead to a better reading performance. It was concluded in the dissertation that handwriting continues to take up an important position in education, and should therefore not be given a secondary place next to typing. Handwriting attributes to academic success and higher literacy rates and bad handwriting would soon lead to a worse literacy rate. The study has indicated that a further education in handwriting should always be present in order to sustain the future for literacy, readability of text, and memorization of characters.Show less
This study examines the technical adequacy of the CBM maze task as an indicator of growth and performance in a sample of 578 Dutch 7th grade students. Maze data was collected during 16 weeks in the...Show moreThis study examines the technical adequacy of the CBM maze task as an indicator of growth and performance in a sample of 578 Dutch 7th grade students. Maze data was collected during 16 weeks in the second semester. A strong alternate-form reliability was found for the first and final three passages (.74 < r < .82). Maze growth-rates could not be predicted from VAS reading comprehension scores (R2 = .02). As well, only a small effect was found for the difference in growth rates between education levels. Maze performance in spring and the end of the year were predicted from VAS reading comprehension scores. Explained variances were respectively 27.6% (β = .53, p < .05) and 29.7% (β = .55, p < .05). Also significant differences in maze performance were found between education levels on both time points, respectively F(2, 556) = 42.29, p < .01, ω2 = .13 in spring and F(2, 251) = 49.14, p < .01, ω2 = .27 at the end of the year. Differences were significant for all groups, being lower, average and higher education levels (p < .01). Summarizing no empirical support was found for the validity of maze as an instrument to monitor growth in 7th grade. Results indicate a moderate validity of maze as an indicator of reading performance.Show less
