Intervention for Schools

Interventions targeting parental involvement with the school and computer-assisted learning to enhance dyslexic students’ reading comprehension
Education has long been recognised as an indispensable part of life, which serves as a platform to convey general knowledge, and develops critical skills for children to achieve their best potential. Given its value to today’s society, there has since been a leap forward in research to identify why the educational system still remains in a state of hiatus (Rumberger & Lim, 2008). The unfortunate reality of today’s economic climate for example, has been recognised to cause a divide in academic success between socio-economically disadvantaged children, from those with highly-educated affluent families (Noble, Norman & Farah, 2005). While there is some empirical evidence to support the above claims, current researchers such as Dubow et al. (2009) are now developing a more sophisticated understanding that the noteworthy disparities in academic performance, may be better explained by the influence of environmental-contextual factors (e.g. parental education, family interaction and household income). Moreover, since Cassen and Kingdon (2007) suggested that schools’ performance contributed to only 14% of the variation of low attainment, it becomes self-evident to examine the influence of family background, which has continually been suggested to be the central significant predictor of child’s cognitive abilities and their subsequent literacy development (Fuchs & Young, 2006). Consequently, the overarching aims of this essay will be to critically review the current literature highlighting the implication of socio-economic and home background disparities on academic performance. Two interventions will then be proposed, in an attempt to: (1) minimise the economic-achievement gap between low-income and affluent families; (2) enhance reading skills of specific children in a context that is meaningful to them, with the ultimate goal

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