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Item The home literacy environment of school-age autistic children with high support needs.(John Wiley and Sons, 2024-08-01) Westerveld MF; Malone SA; Clendon S; Bowen R; Hayley G; Paynter JBACKGROUND: As a group, autistic children with high support needs (with adaptive functioning in the range of an intellectual disability) are at risk of significant literacy difficulties. We investigated the parent-reported home literacy environment of this group of children. METHOD: Sixty-two parents of autistic children (4.5 to 18.25 years) attending an autism-specific school completed a home literacy survey reporting on their child's: (1) alphabet knowledge, (2) interest in reading, (3) activities/interactions around books, (4) reading ability, and (5) writing ability. RESULTS: We found significant positive correlations between parent-reported child interest in reading and literacy-related interactions and skills, but not with child age. Children using spoken words to communicate obtained significantly greater scores on four home-literacy subscales, but not on reading interest. CONCLUSIONS: A better understanding of the home literacy activities of autistic children with high-support needs is needed to inform educational practices aimed at promoting literacy development in this vulnerable population.Item What effect does teaching a generic planning strategy have on student writing? : a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Psychology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand(Massey University, 2014) Salisbury, Andrew RaymondWriting is viewed as applied metacognition. Metacognition is conceptualised as a conscious use of strategies to carry out a process. By using planning as a central metacognitive tool, the researcher has examined the link between the quality of student writing and the use of a generic planning strategy. Participants were 11-year-old students in mainstream classes at an intermediate school in New Zealand. Results indicate that there is a link. This link is discussed in terms of the cognitive construct of conditional knowledge. Conditional knowledge is defined as knowing why, when and where an action is necessary or useful. It is also explored as a social construct of roles and interactions between hypothetical selves. Recommendations are made for further exploration of generic planning instruction. Keywords: metacognition, writing, e-asTTle, planning, primaryItem What is the socio-linguistic context for teaching English writing to senior high school students in Fiji? : a thesis completed in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy (Humanities and Social Sciences) in Second Language Teaching, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand(Massey University, 2014) Nicholls, LynnThis study explores teaching practices for expository writing in a developing world context. A qualitative approach draws on a grounded theory model with three different high school case studies in Suva, Fiji. The participants were teachers and students from Form 6 English classes. The linguistic landscape is diverse, with the two majority ethnicities comprising of indigenous Fijian and Fijian both learning different vernacular languages as mediums of instruction for the first three years of school. Standard Fijian and Standard Hindi taught in schools are not always the languages these students speak at home. While English is the medium of instruction taught in schools from Class 4, there is no official language of instruction policy. Students who have English as their second language face challenges in achieving the academic genre of writing. A pass criterion for English proficiency comes with high stakes for success in tertiary studies, with writing for examinations being the only method of assessment. The study found that teachers lacked appropriate resources for teaching this genre of writing, and therefore resorted to teaching more simple formal writing options. Teacher training and professional development in the areas of second language teaching and unit writing appear inadequate in supporting the teaching and learning writing process, and as a result students may not be adequately prepared for their aspirations of going to university.Item Dialoguing with dragons. assisting Chinese students' academic achievement(Waikato University, 2004) Kavan, Heather; Kavan, HeatherNo abstractItem