Substantial changes have occurred in the types of materials used for instruction in elementary school. Textbooks, for instance, may offer pages showing multiple texts, titles, pictures and schemes, a "composite" patchwork extending the usual meaning of "literacy" and illustrating an emerging "new school literacy". The present research investigated the effects of using these kinds of "composite" reading materials on first grade on students’ comprehension. Two classes of first-graders with contrasted socio-economic backgrounds were taught using the same two-page spread of a science textbook. The analyses of students’ oral productions revealed similar patterns as far as the comprehension of simpler, literal information was concerned. However, some differences appeared when it was a question of understanding more complex information, which required making connections between the textual and iconographic sources of information.

The present article investigates the effects of individual and contextual variables on children's early learning in French nursery schools and German kindergartens. Our study of 552 children at preschools in France (299 children from French nursery schools) and Germany (253 children from German kindergartens) measured skills that facilitate the learning of reading, writing and arithmetic at primary school. We also evaluated educational family practices and parents' expectations of their children's pre-school education. In order to take into account the hierarchical structure of our data, multilevel models were used in the analysis, which was carried out using MLwiN software version 2.02 (Rasbash et al. 2005). Although French nursery schools emphasise academic learning, we did not find any significant differences in overall performances between the French and German samples. However, significant differences were obtained for some subscale results. In addition, our results indicate that individual and contextual variables have an impact on the differences observed between children from the two countries.Resume Cette recherche étudie les effets des variables individuelles et contextuelles sur les apprentissages premiers des enfants à l'issue de l'école maternelle française et du Eur J Psychol Educ (Kindergarten allemand. L'étude porte sur 299 enfants scolarisés en grande section de maternelle en France et 253 enfants scolarisés en dernière année de Kindergarten en Allemagne. Les compétences facilitant les apprentissages fondamentaux des élèves à l'école élémentaire en lecture, en écriture et en calcul ont été mesurées. De même les pratiques éducatives familiales ainsi que des attentes des parents vis-à-vis des institutions qui accueillent leurs enfants ont été évaluées. Les données ont été traitées à l'aide des modèles multiniveaux afin que soit respectée leur structure hiérarchisée. Nous avons utilisé le logiciel MLwiN version 2.02 (Rasbash, Charlton, Browne, Healy, & Cameron, 2005). Bien que les écoles maternelles françaises privilégient les apprentissages scolaires, nous n'avons pas trouvé des différences significatives entre les performances globales des enfants français et allemands. Toutefois, des différences significatives ont été obtenues pour quelques sous-épreuves. Enfin, les résultats indiquent un impact des variables individuelles et contextuelles sur les différences constatées entre les enfants des deux pays.

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