Evdokia Pittas | University of Nicosia (original) (raw)

Papers by Evdokia Pittas

Innovations and Tendencies of State-of-Art Science, 2021

The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine the contribution of phonological, morphological... more The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine the contribution of phonological, morphological and dialect awareness to the prediction of reading and spelling in a Greek bi-dialectal setting. The target group (N=404) consisted of children, aged 6 to 9 years at the start of the project, who learn literacy in Cyprus, where a dialect is spoken in certain contexts but where Standard Modern Greek is also widely used. At present there are few studies with Greek Cypriot children on how phonological, morphological and dialect awareness relates to reading and spelling. Because there are no standardised measures of phonological, morphological and dialect awareness with Greek Cypriot children, measures of these factors were developed during the pilot study and their internal consistency was assessed. With the larger sample the measures were validated by examining their construct validity. The first wave of data collection showed that morphological and dialect awareness make unique contribution to the prediction of reading and spelling in Greek. The second wave of data collection showed that the measures of morphological and dialect awareness predicted performance in reading and spelling eight months later, even partialling out grade level, estimation of verbal intelligence and initial scores in reading and spelling. A model with dialect awareness as a mediator between phonological and morphological awareness and reading and spelling fitted the data better than a model with phonological or morphological awareness as mediators, and hence, phonological awareness and morphological awareness help children to become aware of the differences between their dialect and the standard variety, and dialect awareness in turn facilitates reading and spelling. Cross-lagged correlations showed that the more experience children have with reading and spelling, the more likely they are to develop morphological and dialect awareness. This study makes theoretical, empirical and practical educational contributions. The established mediational model contributes to the theoretical knowledge of the connection between dialect awareness and phonological and morphological awareness and reading and spelling while the longitudinal study contributes to theory the long term relation of morphological and dialect awareness with reading and spelling in Greek. Empirically, the study established the plausibility of a causal link between morphological and dialect awareness and reading and spelling, which must be tested in further research using intervention methods. In practice, this study contributes valid measures for assessing morphological and dialect awareness in the Greek Cypriot setting.

International journal of special education, Mar 31, 2022

Early childhood teachers' beliefs and practices about the inclusion of children with Autism in Ja... more Early childhood teachers' beliefs and practices about the inclusion of children with Autism in Jamaica: An exploration study.

International Journal of Special Education (IJSE)

In view of the need for more cross-sectional studies in different socio-geographical contexts to ... more In view of the need for more cross-sectional studies in different socio-geographical contexts to investigate teachers’ perceptions regarding inclusion, the present study sets to explore early childhood teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion in a context where research on this topic is limited; Kingston, Jamaica. The target group consisted of nine (N=9) early childhood teachers working with children with Autism in an established pre-primary inclusive setting. Teachers’ qualitative responses, elicited through semi-structured interviews, were analysed through Content Analysis. Results showed that teachers generally uphold positive beliefs towards inclusion. A key theme that emerged from the data is that in-service training and teaching experience positively influence practices and beliefs as well as differentiated instruction. This study makes theoretical and practical educational contributions. The research provides an understanding of inclusion in Jamaica and contributes to the limite...

Lumat: International Journal of Math, Science and Technology Education, 2019

This cross-sectional study examined primary and secondary teachers’ and students’ views regarding... more This cross-sectional study examined primary and secondary teachers’ and students’ views regarding technology integration into teaching and learning in Muscat, Oman. The target group consisted of teachers (N=44) and students (N=219) from two bilingual and two international schools in Oman. Results showed that the majority of students use technology to do projects and research. Both teachers and students enjoy the use of technology in teaching and learning, they feel competent in using it and they similarly evaluate the effectiveness of available technologies. Although the majority of teachers agreed that teaching has become easier and faster with technology, only a small percentage integrates technology into teaching. Factors hindering technology integration concern curriculum design, network issues, time constraint and other. In theory, the study contributes to our understanding of the reasons why teachers’ and students’ find it challenging to use technological innovations in school...

Learning and Instruction, Feb 1, 2018

Dialect users have considerable difficulty with learning literacy in the standard form of the lan... more Dialect users have considerable difficulty with learning literacy in the standard form of the language for a variety of reasons. One aspect of their difficulty relates to phonological differences between the standard and the vernacular form: for example, Arabic dialect users' performance in phonological awareness tasks is lower when the phonemes exist in the standard but do not exist in the vernacular form (Saiegh-Haddad, Levin, Hende, & Ziv, 2011). Sentence comprehension is also affected by dialect use, presumably with consequences for reading comprehension: by the age of five users of Standard American English (SAE) can rely on the final "s" for third person present to determine whether an event is generic or past whereas African American Dialect (AAD) users cannot do so by the age of seven (De Villiers & Johnson, 2007). Education policies to address this linguistic issue have resulted in heated debates (see, for example, Rickford, 1999). Divergent approaches have included, at one extreme, the proposition that dialect users should be allowed to write as they speak, whereas at the other extreme there were suggestions of teaching children to speak, for example "good French", so that they could write correctly. Less radical approaches have involved the systematic exposure of preschool children to story book reading (Feitelson, Goldstein, Iraqi, & Share, 1993), because vernacular forms are not written and story books are written in the standard form.

Reading and Writing, Feb 21, 2014

The aim of this longitudinal study is to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to t... more The aim of this longitudinal study is to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to the prediction of reading and spelling in Greek. The target group (N = 404) consisted of children, aged 6-9 years at the start of the project, who learn literacy in Cyprus. Because there are no standardized measures of morphological awareness for Greek Cypriot children, morphological awareness measures were developed and validated. A concurrent analysis of the first wave of data collection showed that morphological awareness made a unique contribution to the prediction of reading and spelling in Greek. The longitudinal analyses showed that morphological awareness predicted performance in reading eight months later, even after partialling out grade level, verbal intelligence, phonological awareness and initial scores in reading and spelling. This study makes theoretical, empirical and practical educational contributions. It shows the long term and specific relation of morphological awareness with reading in Greek and establishes the plausibility of a causal link between morphological awareness and reading, which must be tested in further research using intervention methods. In practice, this study contributes valid measures for assessing morphological awareness in Greek as well as a new measure of spelling skill.

Reading and Writing, 2014

This study, which took place in a bidialectal setting, examined the extent to which dialect aware... more This study, which took place in a bidialectal setting, examined the extent to which dialect awareness in Time 1 can predict reading and spelling in Time 2. The children (N = 49, 7- to 9-year olds) were learning literacy in Cyprus where a dialect is spoken in certain contexts but Standard Modern Greek is also widely used. Because there are no standardised measures of dialect awareness in Greek, we developed measures of this factor as part of the study. The dialect measures were related to reading and morphological spelling tests six months later. The educational implication of these results, which still must be tested through intervention studies, is that improving children's dialect awareness may lead to enhanced success in literacy learning in bidialectal settings.

Language Matters, 2020

Abstract The goal of the study reported on in this article was to determine whether the current b... more Abstract The goal of the study reported on in this article was to determine whether the current biliteracy programme in Ghana (National Literacy Acceleration Program or NALAP) and the medium of instruction are considered as factors contributing to language and literacy learning of public school students according to teachers and parents. The target group (n = 126) consisted of 63 teachers and 63 parents in the Ashanti region of Ghana. The results drawn from self-administered questionnaires indicated that most of the respondents were positive that the biliteracy programme enhances students’ literacy skills. Most teachers reported that they prefer the use of both the Ghanaian L1 and English as media of classroom interaction and instruction, whereas most parents preferred English to be used as the medium of interaction. The study contributes to understanding the factors which support biliteracy learning based on teachers’ and parents’ views. The study made a methodological contribution in the development of a set of questionnaires.

Learning and Instruction, 2017