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    The effectiveness of a phonological-based intervention for students in their first year of school : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Literacy Education at Massey University, Hokowhitu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2012) Wild, Sarah Anne
    New Zealand has a long tail of underachievement in reading with the results of international literacy surveys consistently showing that while some New Zealand students are among the best readers in the world, the gap between the best and poorest readers continues to widen. Research evidence indicates that a potential reason for the increasingly large gap is a lack of focus on the explicit teaching of phonologically-based decoding skills in the early years of school. The purpose of this study was to first determine the levels of alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness in a group of students at school entry and compare these levels to a group of slightly older students also in their first year of school. A second aim was to evaluate the efficacy of a nine-week explicit intervention that targeted phonologically-based skills for improving decoding ability. This study is a modified replication of a study conducted by Greaney and Arrow (2012). The study is a non-randomised, pretestintervention- posttest design with one control group. A total of 30 students were included in the study. The intervention group involved a new entrant class while the control group involved a year one class. All students were assessed using a range of phonologically-based assessments. The intervention group received the intervention in addition to their regular literacy programme while the control group only received their regular literacy programme. The results showed that the students within the intervention group entered school with a range of phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge. A key finding was that the students who had received the intervention significantly outperformed the control group on two measures of isolated decoding (the Burt word reading test and pseudoword reading) when pretest letter sound knowledge was controlled. The results of this study highlight the importance of using phonologically-based assessments with students as soon as they start school in order to identify those at risk and plan effective programmes to meet the needs of these students.
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    Storybook reading strategies and academic literate cultural capital : closing the literacy gap before it opens : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2012) Wells, Laura Jean
    While New Zealand reading achievement ranks highly in the international arena, the gap between high- and low-ability readers is far greater than that in most other countries. The lower-ability readers hail disproportionately from homes with low income, and their cultural capital often does not match the culture of their schools. They commonly have less academic literate cultural capital (ALCC), which encompasses skills, knowledge, values and attitudes that are related to conventional literacy. Prior to conventional literacy development, ALCC and emergent literacy skills are similar. Storybook reading is a beneficial parent-child activity which has been harnessed by intervention research as a vehicle through which to build on emergent literacy skills. Much print-referencing and dialogic reading-strategy research has been conducted, showing positive effects on children’s emergent reading development and therefore on their ALCC. The quasi-experimental study, on which this thesis is based, used two DVDs to educate parents from low-income areas about print-referencing and dialogic reading strategies. Thirty parent-child dyads were recruited through kindergartens which were geographically close to a decile one school. Fifteen dyads formed the intervention group, which was given two DVDs over a four week intervention period, and 15 dyads formed the control group. Data was collected before, during, and after the intervention from parents and their young children, using a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures. Parental reading behaviours and beliefs appeared to change as a result of the intervention; parents from the intervention group reported the use of more print-referencing behaviours during storybook reading than their control group counterparts. In particular, intervention parents made significantly more references to letter knowledge (LK). Most parents believed the intervention to have been beneficial to them and their children, and deemed the study material effective. Children from the intervention group reported more reading to occur post-intervention than it did preintervention. While the majority of their tested emergent literacy skills increased more than those of the control children after the study, the differences were not significant. The thesis concludes by recommending more research of a similar nature, taking into account several important changes. Additionally, it recommends qualitative research into the cultural capital of New Zealand’s ethnic minorities.
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    Adult literacy as technique and technology of governmentality : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education in Adult Education at Massey University, Manawatu campus, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2011) Isaacs, Peter Thomas
    This thesis examines the policy for adult literacy in New Zealand, in particular developments since the International Adult Literacy Survey of 1996. It was the findings of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) that led to the problematising of adult literacy in terms of the needs of New Zealand society and economy and the greater engagement of government, businesses and tertiary education providers. Foucault’s (1991a) notion of governmentality provides a lens through which to view adult literacy policy and to analyse a number of policy documents, in particular More than Words, the adult literacy strategy, Te Kāwai Ora, and the subsequent Tertiary Education Strategies 2002-2007, 2007-2012, and 2010-2015. The thesis argues that, in the policy formulation, adult literacy is concerned with the techniques and technologies through which the literacy needs of the population are constructed and controlled. The concerns of policy are how to bring people to a state of literacy so that they can be usefully involved in society, as employable workers. The mainstream discourse of adult literacy defines it as a set of skills without reference to context or culture, that can be applied in a range of contexts. The policy approaches tend to marginalise or silence other discourses, for example literacies for Māori, literacies as social practices, critical literacies and literacies used in a range of settings. The thesis traces adult literacy in New Zealand from pre-European contact and the subsequent developments as part of the colonisation processes. The 1970s to the present saw the development of community responses to adult literacy. The thesis discusses the subsequent tertiary education reforms and the subsuming of adult literacy into the tertiary education sector with increased emphasis on audit and monitoring practices developed by the Tertiary Education Commission and NZQA with implications for the identities and self-government of learners and providers. Finally, the thesis concludes with a discussion of ways for considering the development of a wider policy focus for adult literacy that addresses such issues as culture, context and the needs as identified by learners. This is followed by some recommendations and questions for future research.