Pre-service teachers' reading habits and their literacy abilities affect their views toward teaching reading and writing and how they implement literacy instruction. This study explored the relationship between the past and current reading habits of pre-service teachers in relation to their reading and writing abilities. Participating teacher candidates completed a questionnaire regarding their reading habits, completed two reading comprehension components of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test and provided a writing sample. Teacher candidates who received higher scores on the comprehension subtest of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test recalled a higher degree of early school emphasis on enjoying stories and mastering reading skills, frequent childhood visits to the library, frequently being read to as a child and a higher degree of enjoyment associated with reading.

Written expression is an essential skill to actively function in today's society. For many learners, especially those with a learning disability (LD), writing can be a source of frustration. Technology in its various forms, holds promise to assist students in this area. The current study examines the role that tablet technology, specifically, iPads, has on the writing skills of students who have an LD. Using a visual analysis approach and paired-sample t-tests, the current study examines how the writing of nine (female = 1, age = 12.5; male = 8; mean age = 11.5) grade six Caucasian students from Northern Ontario with an LD differs when they write by hand versus writing with an iPad. Specifically, the study examines whether there is a difference in (a) writing productivity; (b) spelling accuracy; (c) lexical diversity; (d) syntactical complexity; and, (e) ideas expressed. Results revealed that digital writing using an iPad was effective in significantly improving spelling accuracy, number of T-units and number of ideas expressed. There was also an insignificant improvement in the areas of writing productivity, number of sentences written, and grammatical errors. The results of the current study suggest that the use of iPads has a positive influence on' writing. Therefore, the use of iPads may have long-term effects that cannot be measured sufficiently in a short-term study.

This research was conducted to determine pre-service science teachers' views related to misconceptions and conceptual change strategies at an urban university in Aegean Region, Turkey. It was a 5-week study with 28 students. Before the implementation, students were given a test which consisted of open-ended questions aiming to determine the pre-service science teachers' ideas about misconceptions and conceptual change strategies. On the first week of the study, students were given information on how to identify and remove the misconceptions by using conceptual change strategies. Different kinds of activities based on conceptual change strategies were also presented to them. Seven groups were formed with 28 people and they were asked to prepare activities based on conceptual change strategies related to a unit in middle school science curriculum. They chose a unit and prepared activities for two weeks. Secondly, they presented their activities in the classrom during two weeks. After presentations, a test which had the same questions with the 1st test was given to the pre-service science teachers. Also the 2nd test had three different questions, which was related to their opinions about the applications from the 1st test. The results of tests were analyzed qualitatively. Before the study, pre-service science teachers didn't know how to identify and remove misconceptions exactly. Thanks to this study, they learned conceptual change strategies and their applications. After the study, they said that they liked the activities based on conceptual change strategies.