Growth in literacy and numeracy achievement: evidence and explanations of a summer slowdown in low socio-economic schools

English L3 learning in a multilingual context: the role of parental education and L2 exposure within the living community

“…Low performance in school is not, however, associated with language knowledge or background, but with socioeconomic status (SES) and sociocultural factors (Miller & Warren, 2011) which are closely linked to one another and are very difficult to tease apart in most circumstances (Paret, 2006). SES is widely recognized as a key predictor of low school performance (Adesope et al, 2010;Krashen, 2005;Polidano, Hanel, Buddelmeyer, 2013;Vale et al, 2013) and has been linked to high dropout rates in school (Rosenblum, Goldblatt, & Moin, 2008). Not all evidence, however, indicates that students from disadvantaged backgrounds underperform in school.…”

Equity, Social Justice and Ethics in Mathematics Education

“…Links between educational achievement including aspiration and socio-economic context are predictably consistent (Jorgensen, 2012b;Jorgensen, Gates, & Roper, 2014;Thomson et al, 2013;Thomson, Hillman, & Wernert, 2012;Thomson, Hillman, Wernert, Schmid, et al, 2012;Vale, Weaven, Davies, Hooley, Davidson, & Loton, 2013). Contributing factors include: student mix, student family background, parental connection(s) to school, teacher quality, student language skill(s), curriculum alienation, and so on (Jorgensen, 2012b;Jorgensen et al, 2014).…”

“…The achievement outcomes arising from initiatives to provide curriculum leadership to networks of disadvantaged primary and secondary schools and to develop whole school and network approaches to teaching were investigated by Vale et al (2013) using longitudinal statistical analysis of achievement data. They found that growth exceeded expectations during Terms 2 and 3 of the school year, but decreased and tended to be below expectations in school terms 4 and 1 (the Spring/Summer months), mirroring US data on the "summer slowdown" phenomenon.…”

The role of invitations to parents in the completion of a child’s home reading challenge

“…Beyond other populations, the impact of invitations for other educational purposes might be investigated; for example, invitations to read sent home towards the end of the final school term might play a role in arresting the 'summer slide' in literacy (Vale et al, 2013). Comparing both the child and teacher invitations to control groups within one particular grade, while not possible in this study, would also be of interest to investigate in future research.…”