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The purpose of this work is to describe the current sociopolitical context and complex consequences surrounding elementary literacy education in one Midwestern US state and consider how power works through language.

Using qualitative methods and critical discourse analysis as a theory and method, surveys and interview data from teachers, administrators and parents, policy documents and other artifacts were analyzed and described to explain the sociopolitical climate.

Using Fairclough (2015) and Gee’s (2015) tools, the authors identified the discourses of deficiency, efficiency and gatekeeping in the data. Foucault’s ideas about governmentality and regimes of truth are used to explain the ways teachers took up the policies and resisted them.

The authors argue that a new testing regime is on the move, and more unity and critique by elementary and secondary teachers and administrators will be important for restoring and sustaining quality literacy instruction and decision-making in all classrooms.

Continued research is needed to understand how particular reading assessments exacerbate and perpetuate the ranking and sorting in schools and the loss and struggle children face when they are denied literacy experiences that validate their lives outside of school and give meaning and purpose to reading in school.

As the reality for secondary education language arts teachers begins to shift to a more restrictive curriculum, a loss of academic freedom and frequent testing, the authors see an opportunity for new professional alliances to form in support of a complex theory of literacy.

Scholars who advocate for equity-oriented educational practices have argued that the accountability era in the USA, now in place for two decades, has failed in its intended goal to improve student performance for traditionally marginalized student populations. This study aims to use a sociocultural lens to trace how a century-old conceptualization of reading – that discrete skills comprise comprehension and that multiple-choice questions can measure mastery of those skills – predominates today’s standardized reading tests.

This essay draws on the authors’ collective experiences as literacy educators, school leaders and researchers.

The authors critique two beliefs rooted in Eurocentric thinking borne from a long-held conceptualization of reading – that logical reasoning and the right background knowledge can promote achievement on standardized tests. The authors link the critique to their lived experiences and situate test design features in the broader sociopolitical educational landscape. Then, by presenting examples from an urban public high school, the authors encourage educational leaders to revisit the potential of authentic assessments as complex and meaningful activities that foster the critical thinking necessary for participating in democracy.

Committing to authentic assessments takes the work characteristic of transformative school leadership, especially serving diverse student populations: A clear and ambitious vision that centers social justice and cultural relevance, frequent, shared opportunities for professional growth and shared norms for instructional practice and student growth.

This essay encourages educational leaders, researchers and policymakers to revisit the potential of authentic assessments as tasks that can surpass external measures in informing teachers about how students’ develop their literacy in school.

The purpose of this paper is to extend and improve prior readability and obfuscation research by investigating the effect of connotation on readability and obfuscation. Furthermore, the paper aims to develop and apply a novel connotation‐based obfuscation assessment approach.

In total, 87 chairman reports of firms included in the Standard & Poor's ASX200 index were analyzed. The readability of sections and connotation‐based groups of sentences within these narratives were assessed using the Flesch readability formula. The presence or absence of obfuscation within the analyzed chairman addresses was determined using a novel connotation‐based obfuscation assessment approach.

The study demonstrates that the mid section within the analyzed chairman addresses was significantly more difficult to read than the first and last sections. However, the notion that these reading difficulty differences were due to the prevalence of positive and negative news within these sections could not be supported. A subsequent analysis of the reading difficulty differences between connotation‐based groups of sentences identified the largely positive group of sentences as an important source of reading difficulty. Finally, the advantages resulting from an application of the connotation‐based obfuscation assessment developed in this paper over the traditional obfuscation assessment techniques used in prior literature are demonstrated.

This paper provides a substantial contribution to the literature by establishing a direct link between the connotation of information provided in financial reporting narratives and the readability and obfuscation exhibited by these narratives. The novel assessment approach developed in this paper can be used to benefit preparers and users of financial reporting information by identifying types of sentences whose preparation and/or analysis should be approached cautiously.

This paper aims to investigate the individual difference on digital reading, by examining the eye-tracking records of male and female readers with different reading ability (including their pupil size, blink rate, fixation rate, fixation duration, saccade rate, saccade duration, saccade amplitude and regression rate).

A total of 74 participants were selected according to 6,520 undergraduate students’ university entrance exam scores and the follow-up reading assessments. Half of them are men and half are women, with the top 3% good readers and the bottom 3% poor readers, from different disciplines.

Results indicated that the major gender differences on reading abilities were indicated by saccade duration, regression rate and blink rate. The major effects on reading ability have a larger effect size than the major effect on gender. Among all the indicators that have been examined, blink rate and regression rates are the most sensitive to the gender attribute, while the fixation rate and saccade amplitude showed the least sensitiveness.

This finding could be helpful for user modeling with eye-tracking data in intelligent tutoring systems, where necessary adjustments might be needed according to users’ individual differences. In this way, instructors could be able to provide purposeful guidance according to what the learners had seen and personalized the experience of digital reading.

This conceptual paper relates disparate evidence on the factors influencing reading format choice and preference, whether print or digital, in order to inform educational practice and scholarship.

The authors propose a reading event analysis model (REAM) to help guide practitioners and scholars through a consideration of relevant factors, as evidenced by empirical research, to predicting whether print or digital formats will best support the reading and/or learning objectives of a reader in a given reading event in the current technological era.

The evidence synthesized and communicated by the REAM model reflects complex interactions between reader characteristics, task characteristics and text characteristics that influence the effects and outcomes of reading in print or digital format.

This model serves to guide scholars in the design of future empirical studies that account for critical performance variables related to reading comprehension and user preference.

In examining the effects of reading format on learning and the relationship of learning to overall reader format preferences, this model will help educators, educational administrators, industry practitioners, technologists and interface developers transfer current findings to practice, make decisions and determine developmental priorities to meet the needs of readers and learners across a variety of contexts and support the pursuit of equity in education.

This model is necessary and contributes important original synthesis and to an area of scholarship that in recent years has yielded results that at times appear contradictory. The model provides possible resolutions to these apparent contradictions in a construct that lends translational value for practice.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the results of continuing professional development sessions delivered to academics on the importance of a properly annotated reading list to the student experience.

As part of the session, the academics were asked to take part in a “pop quiz” providing their interpretation of commonly used reading list labels.

There was quite a broad interpretation of the labels, with several eliciting strongly positive or negative reactions. The similarity of meanings between some reading list labels made them redundant for helping students to prioritise their reading.

This case study could be used to provide sessions on reading lists at other institutions, and the results from the quiz can be used to simplify reading list labels.

The purpose of this study is to explore the implementation of response to intervention (RTI) in elementary schools. RTI is a systematic and comprehensive teaching and learning process intended to identify and prevent student academic failure through differentiated or intensified instruction.

Using an exploratory case study approach, this study observes the philosophical shift from removing students from the classroom for testing and remedial instruction, to incorporating a three‐tiered intervention approach beginning with the classroom teacher.

Findings show the strategies one principal used to implement RTI practices using a whole‐organization structured approach. Teachers and administrators jointly planned the strategies and created venues conducive for the intervention students needed to meet district, local, and national academic expectations.

Research implications relate to the limited sample a single‐case study can provide. Nonetheless, the case brings useful steps at an administrative level in building successful structures for the focused improvement of teaching and learning processes.

Case studies provide a venue for practitioners and researchers to analyze possible approaches based on real examples. This study demonstrates possibilities in the adaptation of mandates to work on behalf of the improvement of children.

This study is significant since there is a growing interest in adopting RTI processes in several countries around the world and in providing possible models of implementation for practitioners and researchers.

This paper aims to explore the individual and social learning experiences of first-year accounting students studying in English as an additional language. The challenges of these students relating to listening, reading, speaking and writing in English, and the impact of these on their academic outcomes, are examined.

A qualitative case study design was used. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 students, both academically successful and unsuccessful, who had completed the first year. A thematic analysis of the data was conducted and a hybrid approach of deductive and inductive coding was used to interpret the data. This entailed the application of a language skills-based framework of teaching and learning to the first-order process of coding. An iterative and reflective process allowed themes to emerge from the data. These themes, in turn, triggered second-order codes that resonated with aspects of the interactionist approach to second language acquisition (SLA).

The themes that emerged indicated that students’ ability to interact with their study material, and their exposure to positive verbal interaction opportunities in both formal and informal contexts, may have contributed to their academic success.

It is recommended that an interactionist perspective be considered when designing curriculum resources and accounting language learning activities for first-year accounting students.

It is anticipated that the results will contribute towards building a bridge between accounting education and SLA research and provide a more informed linguistic foundation for incorporating language skills into the accounting curriculum.

Situates current research on professional development within an organizational perspective. Offers a framework for the study of professional development, and proposes that key factors that affect student achievement be conceptualized as school capacity. Argues that increases in school capacity will lead to gains in student achievement, and that professional development should, therefore, be designed to enhance the following three dimensions of capacity. First, school capacity includes the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of individual staff members. Second, the diverse human and technical resources of a school need to be put to use in an organized, collective enterprise termed school professional community. Finally, a school’s capacity is enhanced when its programs for student and staff learning are coherent, focused, and sustained. To illustrate comprehensive professional development that addresses all aspects of school capacity, describes one school from a current study.

The purpose of this study was to develop a cost- and labor-efficient method for a small library to produce and deliver accessible course reading packages.

Working with approximately 25 courses and instructors in the Fall 2017 semester – including courses in Equity Studies and Disability Studies – the authors produced an inventory of assigned readings and an assessment of the accessibility of scanned texts that were currently being used. Based on this initial inventory, they developed new workflows for providing accessible readings to students that overcame the most common shortcomings and deficiencies.

This project established that it is possible for a small library to produce high-quality accessible course readings and that a PDF file is the most appropriate format for providing accessible scanned readings in an online course reader environment.

This project developed a workflow for producing texts that are designed from the perspective of universal access – that is, all students can engage with these texts without requiring the intervention of accessibility-services-style departments.

Canadian academic institutions are required to provide accessible texts upon request, a process which relies on students to identify required readings, sign up for specialized services and be comfortable disclosing and discussing their specialized needs. The process developed in this project builds upon a conception of equitable access as being a core principle and strives to create accessible readings as a default rather than as the result of an external request. This case study can be used as an example for institutions – especially small libraries – that are interested in developing a proactive approach to creating accessible readings and course packs.