| 1. |
- Brkovic, Irma, 1977, et al.
(author)
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Teachers ́ assessment of children’s oral language and literacy achievement: a multilevel approach
- 2017
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In: 18th European Conference on Developmental Psychology. Utrecht, Netherlands: August 29 - September 1.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Most of the research addressing relations between oral language and reading and writing competencies has been conducted with children having reading and/or writing difficulties. Oral language was mostly measured through its various components, such as vocabulary, with predictor(s) and criteria often sharing method variance. Also, traditional approach to data analyses often fail to account for clustered nature of data collected at both pupils´ and teachers´ level. The aim of this study was to investigate the contribution of oral language to explaining variance in three reading and writing achievement indicators in general population (word decoding speed, reading comprehension, and word spelling accuracy), taking data nesting into account. A total of 723 students (48% girls) from 2nd and 3rd grades participated, together with 31 of their teachers. Teachers assessed the quality of student´s overall use of oral language on six indicators. Reading and writing competencies were assessed by group tests: Word chains, Spelling test and Reading comprehension test, as part of a larger intervention project. Applying hierarchical linear modelling allowed us to control for data nesting and dependence of teacher´s assessments on classroom-level. Average class size was 23 pupils (ranging from 14 to 29). Intraclass correlations (ICC) were calculated for all three outcomes and predictor, and appropriateness of multilevel approach to data analysis was is confirmed. ICC for word-spelling accuracy and word decoding speed was significant for 2nd graders, and word-spelling accuracy and teachers´ assessment of oral language for 3rd graders (ranging from .07 to .24). In both grades, oral language had a significant contribution to reading and writing achievement, when controlling for gender and classroom level nesting. Gender moderated the relationship between oral language and reading comprehension in 3rd grade, with a stronger correlation among girls. The results confirmed the significant contribution of oral language for explaining reading and writing competencies.
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| 2. |
- Butkovic, Ana, 1977, et al.
(author)
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Individual-level multiculturalism and cultural intelligence
- 2023
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In: ISSID 2023 Conference.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Cultural intelligence (CQ) refers to an individual’s capability to function effectively in situations characterized by cultural diversity (Ang & Van Dyne, 2008). A relatively new antecedent of CQ that has been examined is multiculturalism (Ang et al., 2020), so far in a sample of employees in the Netherlands where only a total CQ score was used (Korzilius et al., 2017) and business students with bicultural identity in the US where only cognitive and metacognitive aspects of CQ were examined (Dheer & Lenartowicz, 2018). The aim of this study was to examine the association between individual-level multiculturalism and four different aspects of CQ in a sample of teachers and teacher students in Sweden. Data were collected for 99 participants (68% female; 79% teacher students; Mage = 34.20, SD = 10.51) using The Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS; Van Dyne et al., 2008), and following Vora et al. (2019), three items for multiculturalism measuring knowledge, identification and internalization. Individual-level multiculturalism was positively and significantly associated with three aspects of CQ: metacognitive (r = .43, p < .001), cognitive (r = .54, p < .001) and motivational (r = .49, p < .001). Results have the implication for the development programs for CQ.
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| 3. |
- Butkovic, Ana, 1977, et al.
(author)
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Travel experiences and cultural intelligence : Travel experiences and cultural intelligence
- 2022
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In: XXIII. Psychology Days in Zadar, Book of Abstracts, Zadar, 2022..
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Cultural intelligence is defined as an individual’s capability to function and manage effectively in culturally diverse settings, and it includes four aspects: metacognitive, cognitive, motivational and behavioral cultural intelligence. The majority of studies investigating antecedents of cultural intelligence have included a measure of international experience and/or cultural exposure. While some studies have indicated that international experience and cultural exposure are associated with higher cultural intelligence, the associations were not found in all studies and for all aspects. We conducted two studies to examine the associations of international experience and cultural exposure with cultural intelligence in the Croatian context. In the first study data were collected for 93 high-school students who reported the number of visited countries as a measure of international experience and cultural exposure, and were divided into two groups with a median split. In the second study data were collected for 482 university students who were divided into two groups based on their intention to study abroad. In both studies cultural intelligence aspects were measured with The Cultural Intelligence Scale. Differences in cultural intelligence aspects were examined between the groups formed to capture international experience and cultural exposure differences. In study 1, high-school students who visited more countries had higher cultural intelligence scores in metacognitive (t = 2.46, p = .016, d = 0.51) and cognitive (t = 2.76, p = .007, d = 0.57) aspects, while differences were not found for motivational (t = 1.33, p = .189, d = 0.28) and behavioral (t = 0.61, p = .546, d = 0.13) aspects. In study 2, students who intended or already had an experience of studying abroad had higher cultural intelligence in metacognitive (t = 4.61, p < .001, d = 0.45), cognitive (t = 2.33, p = .020, d = 0.23), motivational (t = 7.64, p < .001, d = 0.74) and behavioral (t = 3.12, p = .002, d = 0.29) aspects. Results of our studies indicate that differences in international experience and cultural exposure are associated with differences in cultural intelligence aspects, but that these findings are not consistent for different types of international experiences, and in different groups of participants.
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| 4. |
- Fälth, Linda, 1973-, et al.
(author)
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The Effects of a Multimodal Intervention on the Reading Skills of Struggling Students : An Exploration Across Countries
- 2023
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In: Reading Psychology. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 0270-2711 .- 1521-0685. ; 44:3, s. 225-241
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of a multimodal program, designed for practicing reading, on reading development in struggling readers in two different countries. The research question was whether one specific training method will have a positive effect on pupils’ reading development in two different countries with different educational systems and as diverse orthographies as the shallow Croatian and the relatively deep Swedish orthography. It became clear that Swedish teachers have a tradition of implementing interventions as opposed to Croatia where there is no tradition of teachers conducting intervention studies in school. Comparing different school systems is difficult which is evident in the results that differ between the two countries. However, the results indicate that the multimodal reading training program used in the intervention had positive effects on pupils’ literacy development, including decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension in both countries.
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| 5. |
- Keresteš, Gordana, et al.
(author)
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How family environment and child's attitudes toward reading relate to Croatian children's reading and writing skills in early schooling
- 2011
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In: 15th European Conference on Developmental Psychology, 23-27 August, Bergen, Norway.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of the study was to examine how family demographics, parental literacy activities with preschool children and children’s attitudes toward reading relate to Croatian children’s performance in reading and writing in second and third grade of primary school. Participants were 587 pupils from 7 primary schools, along with one of their parents taking part in an international study also aiming at investigating literacy skills in relation to working memory within different orthographic structures (English, Swedish, Estonian and Croatian). Hierarchical regression analyses revealed significant contribution of all studied predictors (demographic variables including child’s gender, mother’s education and number of family members ; parental literacy activities ; and child’s attitudes toward reading) to performance in reading and writing. However, relations between predictor variables and reading and writing scores differ for younger and older children. Proximal measures (parental literacy activities in preschool period and children’s attitudes toward reading) contributed more to children’s reading and writing in second grade, whereas distal, demographic variables (child’s gender and the number of family members) were more contributing in third grade. Mother’s educational level was an important predictor in both grades. Results suggested that both individual and family characteristics are important contributors to early reading and writing of Croatian children.
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| 6. |
- Kerestes, Gordana, 1965, et al.
(author)
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Literacy development beyond early schooling: a 4‑year follow‑up study of Croatian
- 2019
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In: Reading and writing. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0922-4777 .- 1573-0905. ; 32:8, s. 1955-1988
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The purpose of this study was to investigate literacy development beyond the early school years. We investigated mean-level and rank-order changes in two reading (word decoding speed and reading comprehension) and two spelling (word and pseudoword spelling accuracy) tasks during a 4-year period from beginning to the later grades of elementary school, and examined whether rank-order changes in liter- acy skills could be predicted from verbal working memory, phonological awareness, and morpho-syntactic awareness. The sample consisted of Croatian speaking chil- dren, poor (n = 50) and good (n = 61) readers. Croatian is a language with a highly transparent orthography but a rather complex grammar. Word decoding speed and word spelling accuracy improved significantly over the study period, word decoding speed more so among good than among poor readers, supporting the Matthew effect hypothesis. Literacy skills were moderately stable, with the highest stability coef- ficients obtained for word decoding speed, and the lowest for pseudoword spelling. The predictors of rank-order changes varied across literacy outcomes, but did not differ for poor and good readers. Morpho-syntactic awareness predicted rank-order development of all outcomes except for word spelling. Phonological awareness pre- dicted rank-order development of reading comprehension and word spelling. Ver- bal working memory predicted rank-order development of word spelling only, and at a low level. The finding that the more language related cognitive variables, i.e., morpho-syntactic and phonological skills, were stronger predictors of literacy devel- opment than working memory, for both poor and good readers, suggests remedial focus on these more predictive variables.
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| 7. |
- Kerestes, Gordana, et al.
(author)
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Long-term predictors of reading and writing in transparent orthography: A 4-year longitudinal study of Croatian
- 2015
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In: 17th European Conference on Developmental Psychology, September 8-12, Braga, Portugal.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Although predictors of acquisition of reading and writing at the beginning of schooling have been studied extensively, not much is known about factors that influence literacy development beyond the first years of schooling. Reading and writing are fairly stable skills, but changes in children´s rank-order positions do occur. Some children improve, while others worsen their relative positions over time. This study examined factors that may predict these changes among children speaking Croatian, a language with a highly transparent orthography and complex syntax. Basic reading skills (accuracy and fluency) and several cognitive skills (working memory, phonological and syntactic awareness) were investigated as predictors of changes in rank-order of two reading (word decoding and reading comprehension) and two writing (word and pseudoword spelling) tests. We assessed 111 children at two time points, in grades 3 and 4 (T1), and 4 years later (T2). Predictors were measured at T1, and outcomes at both T1 and T2. Hierarchical regression analyses, in which a stable component of outcomes was controlled, revealed that syntactic awareness at T1 was the most important predictor of rank-order changes in reading and writing from T1 to T2. It explained a statistically significant proportion of change in all outcomes except word spelling. Phonological awareness contributed significantly to explaining change in reading comprehension and word spelling. Working memory and basic reading skills were not predictive of changes in outcomes, except for reading fluency, which significantly predicted changes in word decoding. These findings show that in a language with highly transparent orthography and at later stages of literacy development, syntactic awareness is more predictive for literacy development than phonological awareness. The importance of syntactic awareness may be a result of the complexity of syntactic features of the Croatian language, especially its declension and conjugation rules.
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| 8. |
- Kerestes, Gordana, et al.
(author)
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Predicting reading achievement from reading self-concept, leasure time reading, and gender
- 2017
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In: 18th European Conference on Developmental Psychology. Utrecht, Netherlands: August 29 - September 1.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- There is considerable research evidence showing that reading self-concept is an influential non-cognitive predictor of reading achievement. However, it is not clear whether different reading self-concept components are differently related to reading achievement. Also, not much is known about the processes through which reading self-concept influences reading achievement and factors that moderate this relationship. The aim of this study was to examine the contribution of two components of reading self-concept (reading attitudes and self-perceived reading competence) to variance in three reading achievement measures (word decoding speed, reading comprehension, and word spelling accuracy), and to test possible mediating role of leasure time reading and moderating role of child's gender in the relationship between reading self-concept and reading achievement. Participants were Croatian elementary school children in second and third grade (N = 724, 48.1% girls). Data were collected in the screening phase of a computerized training project aimed at improving literacy skills of poor readers. Results showed that self-perceived reading competence, but not reading attitudes, explained a significant proportion of variance in all reading achievement measures. Leasure time reading did not mediate any of the relationships between self-perceived reading competence and reading achievement. However, gender moderated the relationship between self-perceived reading competence and word decoding speed, as well as the relationship between self-perceived reading competence and word spelling accuracy. Both relationships were stronger among girls than among boys. Gender also independently, although weakly, predicted reading achievement, with girls scoring higher than boys on all reading achievement measures. These gender effects were partly mediated by self-perceived reading competence. Overall, the results support reading self-concept theories but also indicate that different reading self-concept components relate differently to reading achievement and that reading self-concept is more important for girls' than for boys' reading achievement.
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| 9. |
- Kerestes, Gordana, et al.
(author)
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The Importance of Fluency in Reading: A Comparison of English, Swedish, Croatian, and Estonian
- 2024
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In: READING PSYCHOLOGY. - 0270-2711 .- 1521-0685.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We report results from children learning to read in one of four different languages: Croatian, English, Estonian and Swedish. The languages all have an alphabetical script but vary greatly on the dimension deep-shallow (or complexity-simplicity, or opacity-transparency), i.e., how close orthography and phonology are related. These languages also vary in the complexity and type of grammatical structure. We used tasks to measure phonological awareness, morpho-syntactic processing, word and pseudoword identification speed, working memory, and reading comprehension. In English, Swedish, and Croatian, fluency was the most significant predictor of reading comprehension. In Estonian, morpho-syntactic awareness was the most significant predictor, although reading fluency was a close second. Fluency was of primary importance in reading comprehension because the limitations of working memory result in fast decay of input information. Therefore, it is important to read with fluency for proper text comprehension.
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| 10. |
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