Analyses carried out on a large corpus of eye movement data were used to comment on four contentious theoretical issues. The results provide no evidence that word frequency and word predictability have early interactive effects on inspection time. Contrary to some earlier studies, in these data there is little evidence that properties of a prior word generally spill over and influence current processing. In contrast, there is evidence that both the frequency and the predictability of a word in parafoveal vision influence foveal processing. In the case of predictability, the direction of the effect suggests that more predictable parafoveal words produce longer foveal fixations. Finally, there is evidence that information about word class modulates processing over a span greater than a single word. The results support the notion of distributed parallel processing.

Contextualizing character educationIn England the Education Inspection Framework (OFSTED, 2019) states that school inspectors will: 'make a judgement on the personal development of learners by evaluating the extent to which . . . the curriculum and the provider's wider work support learners to develop their character' (OFSTED, 2019, p. 12 our italics). Foregrounding the importance of character development in the English school inspection criteria follows decades of work by academics to gain an acknowledgement of the importance of addressing this through the school curriculum.The importance of 'character education' has been emphasized in the UK by politicians on both the right and the left of the political spectrum. The increasing attention to educating for character has also come from academics and educators in the US (see, for instance,

This is a repository copy of Parents' perspectives on home-based character education activities.

No abstract

This study evaluated two 20-week reading interventions for pupils entering secondary school with reading difficulties. The interventions were delivered by trained teaching assistants (three, 35-minute sessions per week). 287 pupils (aged 11-13) from 27 schools were randomly allocated to three groups; Reading Intervention (targeting word recognition and decoding skills), Reading Intervention plus Comprehension, or a waiting list control group. Neither intervention produced statistically significant gains in word reading but the Reading Intervention plus Comprehension intervention produced significant gains in reading comprehension (d =.29) and vocabulary (d = .34). Further evaluations of methods to improve word reading in this population are needed.