Progress in Education

The ongoing Progress in Education series presents substantial results from around the globe in selected areas of educational research. Schools are institutions that sail in the tempest of educational issues, reforms, strategies, data and tools, as well as reflect changes in society. Embedded in all of these are technology, diversity, and innovation - their inevitability has been demonstrated in our schools and communities. Chapter One examines the relation among need for cognition (NFC), openness to experience and conscientiousness, predicting that individuals with higher NFC would also show higher degrees of openness to experience and conscientiousness. Chapter Two provides a corpus-based analysis of adjectives and adverbs in Charlotte Brontë''s novel, Jane Eyre. Chapter Three reviews the applicability of the science, technology, and society concept towards the pedagogic didactics of the natural sciences. Chapter Four analyses and synthesises research findings from three large bodies of research, using cognitive load and orthographic complexity perspectives, towards useful research directions for optimising Anglophone reading, literacy development and instruction. Chapter Five provides recommendations for increasing teacher self-efficacy at both the preservice and inservice stage to better meet the literacy needs of diverse learners and to ensure that teachers feel confident and capable to teach students who may struggle learning to read; and also discusses implications for future research studies and methods for providing evidence-based literacy instruction to diverse learners. Chapter Six explores the challenges faced by students with disabilities at higher education institutions. Chapter Seven discusses relevance, motivation and meaningful learning in mathematics education.