To develop a software application to help improve Key Stage One (KS1) children phonics skills

by

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would take this opportunity to thank my research supervisor, family and friends for their support and guidance without which this research would not have been possible.

DECLARATION

I, [type your full first names and surname here], declare that the contents of this dissertation/thesis represent my own unaided work, and that the dissertation/thesis has not previously been submitted for academic examination towards any qualification. Furthermore, it represents my own opinions and not necessarily those of the University.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTII

DECLARATIONIII

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW1

Theoretical Orientations1

Socio-cultural views of Reading and learning1

Technologies and Children3

Reading and Children in Key Stage One (KS1)3

Software Learning in Children5

Pedagogical approaches6

Dyslexia7

Treatment of phonological9

Phonics Based Approach10

Phonics Instruction11

The Importance of Phonological Awareness12

Student Teacher Relationship in Reading13

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION14

REFERENCES17

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Theoretical Orientations

This study was situated within the theoretical frameworks of socio-cultural learning (Vygotsky, 1978), situated learning (Lave, 1988; Lave & Wenger, 1991), New Reading Studies (New London Group, 1996), and discourse communities. These theories were chosen for four main reasons. First, they provided the opportunity to explore and begin to understand the dynamic complexity (the overlapping, intertwining) observed in the teaching and learning practices and systems that occur when children use and learn to use new home-based ICTs. Second, they provided the framework from which to draw out and develop important conceptual understandings common to a wide variety of successful learning and teaching contexts, including home and school. Third, as a group, these theories presented the possibility of imagining and re/developing vibrant new "road maps" or approaches to thinking about the theory, pedagogy, and theory-pedagogy that fit within, over, between, and around these current theoretical frameworks and presuppositions.

Socio-cultural views of Reading and learning

Current socio-cultural conceptualizations of reading and learning (e.g., Lave & Wegner, 1991; Rogoff, 2000; Wertsch, 1998) can trace their roots in large part to theoretical and empirical work conducted by cognitive psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1962, 1978). Vygotsky's work contains two core concepts foundational to socio-cultural theory. The first concept is that the development of human learning, thinking, and knowing is an active process that is fundamentally tied to socially, culturally, historically and institutionally situated contexts, groups, and events.

Vygotsky (1978, p. 57) stated, "every function on the child's cultural development appears twice; first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological)". For Vygotsky, what and how children learned was primarily mediated by social experiences and practices as opposed to being solely governed by an individual's natural cognitive development. Thus socio-cultural theorists view reading acquisition and learning as being inextricably associated with "and understood in relation to, the context in which those practices are culturally, historically and ideologically situated" (McTavish, 2010, p. 8).

The second core concept is associated with Vygotsky's belief that biological development occurred alongside humankind's active search to appropriate psychological tools (e.g., language and signs such as writing, pictures, maps, math symbols, and so on), and that the acquisition of ...