Abstracts - Earli

The aim of the present study was to identify early correlates of word reading and passagecomprehension in a Greek-speaking population. 320 children participated in this study. Measuresrepresenting rapid naming (RAN), phonological awareness, nonverbal and verbal ability, speechrate, working memory, and word reading were administered in kindergarten. Following a yearlater, the same measures in addition to a passage comprehension measure were administered inGrade 1. The analysis showed that in kindergarten, although all measures were highly interrelated,only rapid naming, phonological awareness, and working memory directly predicted word reading.In Grade 1, all measures also were interrelated. Word reading was directly predicted byphonological awareness, working memory, and nonverbal ability. Passage comprehension wasdirectly predicted by phonological awareness, nonverbal ability, and word reading. These findingsare important for two reasons: (a) they indicate that phonological (as tapped by phoneme elisionand sound isolation) more than the rapid automatized naming measures have higher predictivepower on passage comprehension, a striking finding countered to what predicts word reading inGreek, and (b) they strongly support the notion of word recognition modularity in a salientorthography as far as the prediction of reading comprehension is concerned.P 1501 September 2007 11:00 - 12:20Room: HarmóniaPaper SessionComputer-supported learning environmentsChair:Constantinos P. Constantinou, University of Cyprus, CyprusTracing evolving technology-enhanced learning community and its territorial reference points inhigher education milieuJohanna Poysa, University of Jyväskylä, FinlandJoost Lowyck, University of Leuven, BelgiumPäivi Häkkinen, University of Jyväskylä, FinlandThe aim of this study was to search for the conceptual origin of learning community and itsreference points in the context of technology-rich higher education milieu: to explore what mightcreate appropriate conditions for successful higher education practices to emerge; based on thevalues of community and collective learning. To encapsulate the concept of community, a spatialmetaphor associated with an emotional attachment to Place (Tuan, 1977; Casey, 1996) were seento offer fundamental grounds and diverse perspectives for this work. The study examined first,what constituted the ‘territorial’ reference points of the participants’ unity over a technologyenhanceduniversity course: how on- and offline learning environments were experienced to cometogether over the course (hybrid Place experiences and its relational patterns; Mitchell, 1997).Second, the study aimed to visualise the process over which these relational patterns wereproduced: how participants constructed their shared experience of ‘Learning Place’ over the course(Ganbernini & Mantovani, 2003).To study individual participants’ perspectives in collectiveactivities, an ethnographically oriented approach with its multiple methods was applied. Data setinvolved personal process notebook data, accompanied with observations in the on- and offlinelearning environments. From the data, first, thematic categories for the experiences of hybriditywere identified, followed by a descriptive polyvocal account of social construction of Place. The– 852 –