This paper analyzes the reliability and validity of a questionnaire designed by Archbold, Lutman, Gregory, O'Neil, and Nikolpoulos (2002) for the assessment of pediatric cochlear implantation. Parents of 61 youngsters (age range 5 to 16 years), who had the implant for at least 3 years, responded to the questionnaire and to an interview. The alpha reliability of the 11 questionnaire scales varied between .41 and .74. Content validity was assessed by comparison with parents' responses to an interview. In general, there was agreement between parents' concerns and views expressed in the interview and as assessed by the questionnaire. However, extra issues were identified in the interview, which suggest the need for increasing the breadth of the questionnaire. Criterion validity was assessed by identifying contrasting cases, with very low or very high scores in each scale, and analyzing the descriptions obtained in the interviews. For nine scales this analysis provided support for the validity of the questionnaire; two scales did not produce positive results. Correlations with interview scores were calculated for only four scales: two were positive and significant whereas two were not significant. A factor analysis of the questionnaire scales identified four components, interpreted as the child's functioning in social situations, attitudes to the process of implantation, support required in the long term, and effective use of the implant. Suggestions for further research and descriptive comments provided by parents are included.

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Research suggests that the explicit teaching of morphological principles will improve children's spelling. Despite the fact that reference is made to morphology in English policy documents, teachers make limited use of morphology when teaching spelling, relying more heavily on phonic and visual strategies. After attending a course on role of morphemes in spelling, teachers' own awareness of morphology increased and this was reflected in their practice. This in turn caused their pupils to make significant gains in spelling, compared to a control group. This reinforces the proposition that explicit instruction about morphemes is helpful to children's learning. It demonstrates the fact that research can be transformed into teacher practice, but it also illustrates the difficulties. Policy documentation alone is insufficient. Professional development can effect change but this may be hard to sustain. Children's gains are contingent on teacher's continuing to dedicate class time to focussed intervention. BACKGROUND The role of morphemes in children's reading and spellingOur starting point is a desire to improve children's literacy skills. We have taken a particular theoretical position, that enabling children to understand underlying principles will be a powerful way of improving their performance in practical tasks.Foregrounding the power of conceptual understanding has a long tradition (eg. Piaget, 1978; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). In the context of literacy, the importance of understanding the alphabetic principle is a well-known example of the significance of conceptual understanding (eg. Frith, 1985). A less well-researched concept, which is our focus here, is that of morphology.A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that carries meaning, so that can be a whole word, like "cat" or just part of a word like the "s" in "cats" or the suffix "less" in "careless". Our language is a morphological jigsaw which we manipulate all the time to increase our word power: eg. verbs created from nouns -paint balling, texting, etc. But despite the fact that morphemes are one of the key building blocks of words in any language, many of us are unconscious of our morphological expertise. This is frequently the case with skills that are learnt early in our development. We argue that if children's attention is explicitly drawn to the morphemic structure of English it will provide a conceptual base which will support their learning to read and spell. Jane Hurry Senior Lecturer in Research Methods Psychology and Human Development