Centre for Educational Research

Funder

Organizational Unit

Publications

Invented spelling intervention programmes: Comparing explicit and implicit instructions

Publication . Almeida, Tiago; Silva, Ana Cristina; Rosa, João

This study aims to compare the effectiveness of two invented spelling intervention programs, one with explicit instruction of graph-phonetics matches and another based on questioning and reflection on the graph-phonetic correspondences (implicit instructions). Ninety pre-school children, whose invented spellings use conventional letters unconventionally to represent sounds, were allocated to three groups, two experimental and one control. All groups were equivalent in age, intelligence, letter knowledge, and phonological awareness. We manipulated the type of instructions (implicit vs. explicit) between the pre- and post-tests in two experimental groups where children participated in an intervention programme of invented spelling. Children who participated in the implicit intervention programme showed a significant improvement in the number of correct letters mobilized in their spelling and phonemic awareness compared with children of control and explicit instruction group. Children from explicit instruction group showed significant more improvements than the children from the control group. These results suggest that questioning and reflection applied to invented spelling programmes seems to enhance a more significant knowledge about the relations between the oral and written code.

2021Journal article

Open access

One step back or one step forward? Effects of grade retention and school retention composition on portuguese students’ psychosocial outcomes using PISA 2018 Data

Publication . Pipa, Joana; Peixoto, Francisco

Grade retention is a common practice applied to academically struggling students within the Portuguese context. Studies investigating the psychological experiences of grade-retained students are still scarce. In addition, most studies tend to neglect the multilevel nature of the school context. This study examines the effects of grade retention in grades 1–9 on Portuguese students’ psychosocial outcomes by the age of 15, using PISA 2018 data. Using a quasi-experimental design through full matching, we reduced the bias between 1362 retained and 4189 promoted students in relevant background variables. Results from the multilevel models showed that retained students, by the age of 15, present lower task orientation and school belonging. In addition, we found that the high retention rates negatively relate to students’ reading self-concept, task orientation, and school valuing and that school retention rates moderate the relationship between students’ retention and the psychosocial variables considered. Overall, these findings suggest detrimental effects of grade retention and that grade retention also affects the promoted peers of retained students.

2022Journal article

Open access

“To give someone a fish or teach them how to fish?”: effects of a self-reflection tool on orthographic performance in Portuguese children

Publication . Silva, Ana Cristina; Peixoto, Francisco; Salvador, Liliana

Our aim was to assess the effect of a self-correction spelling tool based on orthographic revision procedures on third-grade children’s orthographic performance. This tool consisted of grids displaying explicit contextual, phonological and morphological rules. Participants were 70 third-grade students, randomly assigned to an experimental (N = 35) and control group (N = 35). A pretest and post-test were performed a week before the training programme and two weeks after the end of it, consisting of a 76-word spelling test that referred to contextual (32 words), phonological (32 words) and morphological (12 words) rules. The experimental training programme was carried out with children in class and consisted of nine sessions in which children had to spell words dictated by an adult, who then underlined their misspellings with a specific colour (a different colour was assigned to each rule) and asked them to self-correct the misspellings using the grid. None of the words present in the pre- and post-test were used in the training programme. The same words were used in the control group, but instead of self-correcting the misspellings, children were shown the correct spelling and had to copy it three times. The post-test results showed that the experimental group decreased significantly the number of misspellings when compared with the control group, with statistically significant differences for each rule. Nevertheless, the morphological misspellings, after the intervention, were superior to the other types of misspellings. These results show the importance of inducing self-correction spelling strategies in educational contexts.

2021Journal article

Restricted access