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Purpose – To present the Assessment to Instructional Planning (ATIP) framework that uses assessment to guide instructional planning.

Design/methodology/approach – The ATIP framework is comprised of three interconnected processes: data collection, data analysis and interpretation, and instructional planning.

Findings – In the ATIP framework, data collection includes reviewing background information and developing and implementing an assessment plan. The data analysis and interpretation process begins with scoring assessments and progresses to contextualizing results and making decisions. Instructional planning moves from setting goals to selecting instructional methods and materials, implementing instructional checkpoints, and monitoring and adjusting instruction.

Research limitations/implications – The ATIP framework provides a step-by-step process that educators can follow to use assessment to plan instruction. ATIP requires that educators already have knowledge of literacy assessment and instruction to apply the Framework appropriately.

Practical implications – The ATIP framework can be applied for students in grades K-8 in clinical settings, school-based intervention programs, and elementary and middle school classrooms.

Originality/value – This chapter provides three profiles to illustrate the ATIP framework in clinical, small-group intervention, and classroom settings with different levels of readers with varying strengths, needs, and backgrounds.

During the past decade, amid the current context emphasizing educational standards and accountability, the practice of grade retention has increased. The call for an end to social promotion has generated a variety of recommendations and legislation regarding promotion policies. This context has served as a catalyst for numerous debates regarding the use of grade retention and social promotion. In an era emphasizing evidence-based interventions, research indicates that neither grade retention nor social promotion is a successful strategy for improving educational success. Meta-analyses of studies during the past 100 years reveal deleterious outcomes associated with grade retention. Moreover, research also reveals prevention and intervention strategies that are likely to promote the social or academic competence of students at-risk of poor school performance. It is essential that educational professionals are familiar with the research when implementing interventions to promote student success. This chapter provides a brief synthesis of contemporary concerns and empirical studies examining student outcomes associated with grade retention, and also describes alternatives to grade retention. Particular consideration is given to implications for students with learning and behavioral disabilities, and the importance of focusing empirically supported strategies to promote student social and cognitive competence. Overall, educational professionals are encouraged to incorporate evidence-based programs and policies to facilitate the success of all students.

To summarize and evaluate John Levi Marin’s recent book, The Explanation of Social Action (2011), the central thesis of which is that the actions of other people cannot be explained without first understanding those actions from the point of view of the actors themselves. Martin thus endeavors to reorient social science toward concrete experience and away from purportedly useless abstractions.

This review chapter employs close scrutiny of and applies immanent critique to Martin’s argumentative claims, warrants, and the polemical style in which these arguments are presented.

This chapter arrives at the following conclusions: (1) Martin unnecessarily truncates the scope of sociological investigation; (2) he fails to define the key concepts within his argument, including “explanation,” “social action,” and “understanding,” among others; (3) he overemphasizes the external or “environmental” causes of action; (4) rather than inducing actions, the so-called “action-fields” induce experiences, and are therefore incapable of explaining actions; (5) Martin rejects counterfactual definitions of causality while defining his own notion of causality in terms of counterfactuals; (6) most of his critiques of other philosophical accounts of causality are really critiques of their potential misapplication; (7) the separation of experience and language (i.e., propositions about experience) in order to secure the validity of the former does not secure the validity of sociological inquiry, since experiences are invariably reported in language; and, finally, (8) Martin’s argument that people are neurologically incapable of providing accurate, retrospective accounts of the motivations behind their own actions is based on the kind of third-person social science he elsewhere repudiates; that he acknowledges the veracity of these studies demonstrates the potential utility of the “third-person” perspectives and the implausibility of any social science that abandons them.

To date Martin’s book has received much praise but little critical attention. This review chapter seeks to fill this lacuna in the literature in order to better elucidate Martin’s central arguments and the conclusions that can be reasonably inferred from the logical and empirical evidence presented.

Purpose – This chapter explores how teachers and learners can use technology in powerful and agentive ways for literacy development. It presents information about communication technologies (ICTs) that can be used to develop student literacy skills in each of the major areas of literacy learning: emergent to beginning literacy, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. It also addresses how assistive technologies fit within a literacy development program.

Design/methodology/approach – A brief overview of the breadth of technologies available for instructional uses and the pedagogical perspective used is followed with specific ideas for free or inexpensive technologies that can be used to address literacy development. Additionally, websites for professional reviews of software are included to help readers learn about emerging technologies and software applications as they become available.

Practical implications – Specific ideas for instruction that addresses student literacy development while integrating 21st-century technology are included. Teachers and teacher educators will find immediately useful, practical ideas for boosting literacy learning with technologies matched to specific literacy needs such as sight words, fluency, and comprehension.

Social implications – Struggling readers and writers deserve and need experiences that help them acquire technology skills. Too often these students are excluded from technology activities because they are participating in intervention instruction or do not finish seatwork and have no available “free” or “choice” time. Technology can be a powerfully motivating tool for literacy instruction. It can also provide engaging practice, targeted specifically at the learning needs and developmental stage of the literacy learner. Most importantly, struggling readers and writers need exposure to the academic possibilities of technology.

This study aims to explore and provide empirical evidence for ways that teachers can simultaneously support students’ literary reading and analytic writing through dialogic assessment, an approach to conferencing with writers that foregrounds process and integrates assessment and instruction.

This study uses qualitative research methods of three high school teachers’ dialogic assessment sessions with individual students to investigate how these teachers both assessed and taught literary reading moves as they observed and supported the students’ writing. An expanded version of Rainey’s (2017) scheme for coding literary reading practices was used.

The three teachers varied in the range and extent of literary reading practices they taught and supported. The practices that they most commonly modeled or otherwise supported were making claims, seeking patterns and articulating puzzles. The variation we observed in their literary reading practices may be attributed to institutional characteristics of the teachers’ contexts.

This study illustrates how the concept of prolepsis can be productively used as a lens through which to understand teachers’ instructional choices.

The descriptive findings show how individualized coaching of students’ writing about literature can also support literary reading. Teachers of English need not worry that they have to choose between teaching writing and teaching reading.

This study presents dialogic assessment as a useful way to guide students through the writing process and literary interpretation simultaneously.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the bespoke resource list management system (MyReading) at the University of Huddersfield.

An online survey was designed to assess student use of MyReading and their views on potential improvements. The survey used closed questions designed to obtain quantitative data. Thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data obtained from open questions.

The paper supports findings of another recent study which found that reading lists are perceived as more important by students than by lecturers. A variety of positive and negative themes emerged which pointed to this conclusion. Positive themes were: the perceived helpfulness of reading lists, students’ view of MyReading as a starting point for independent further reading, ease of use of MyReading and the time saving afforded to students and the value students place on their reading lists as being “quality assured” by lecturers. Negative themes were: inconsistency in the length and structure of lists; concerns that some lists are not regularly updated; lack of awareness of functionality, revealing training needs for students and lecturers; and suggestions for future enhancements to MyReading. Another finding from the quantitative data is the clear link between low use of reading lists by students in certain schools and low use of other library resources.

The research provides guidance to universities regarding future development of resource list management systems and promotional and training needs.

The study adds rich information to the existing body of qualitative research on students’ perceptions of their reading lists.

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.

This chapter explores inclusive approaches to reading instruction for Australian Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children. Drawing from the literature on effective reading instruction, culturally appropriate instructional practices, and the authors’ research on reading interventions in remote communities in Australia we assert that to be inclusive you must provide a learning environment that supports all students to learn. Further, that the approaches used in this learning environment should be evidence-based.

With an ever-expanding focus on reading and mathematics, many elementary schools have chosen to reduce time previously reserved for social studies. Elementary teachers who understand both the relevance of social studies content and the effectiveness of interdisciplinary teaching regularly incorporate applicable history-based children’s tradebooks in their curricula. Locating developmentally appropriate books is simple. Teaching history using children’s literature can be effective. It can be counterproductive, however, if the selected book is replete with historical misrepresentations. Teaching historical thinking in elementary school is problematic no matter what the teaching tool, and there are few methodological roadmaps for elementary teachers. Here, I first suggest ways for teachers to nurture elementary students’ historical thinking using anecdotes from everyday activities and literature with themes germane to history and multiculturalism. Then, I suggest ways for elementary educators to locate and develop engaging, age-appropriate, and historically accurate curricular supplements. Using literature on Christopher Columbus as a reference point to facilitate young students’ historical thinking, I propose an interdisciplinary approach, discipline-specific historical literacy strategies, and history-themed authentic assessments.