Information about education provided online, with recent results of scientific research and useful information for teachers, parents, students and the general public. Contributing to an informed debate.
Soraia Araújo is an Applied Psychology PhD candidate in the School of Psychology at University of Minho. She earned her degree in Psychology in 2018 from the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, and completed her master’s degree in Applied Psychology in 2020 at University of Minho.
Since 2019, she has been a member of the Learning and Behavior Problems Research Group at the Psychology Research Center of University of Minho. She is also part of the AaZ – Ler Melhor, Saber Mais program, where she contributes to creating support materials on reading instruction for elementary school teachers.
Her research focusses on psychology and education, specifically reading and writing instruction, learning disabilities, neurodevelopmental disorders, teaching methods and teacher training.
Can vocabulary and knowledge be effectively developed in early childhood education? The benefits of a content-rich literacy curriculum
More people are learning to read than ever before. However, pupils’ performance in reading fluently and understanding what they read remains unsatisfactory — a trend aggravated by the covid-19 pandemic. As a result, reading comprehension has become an increasingly important focus of research. A 2025 study focusing on preschool education seeks to address two specific questions in this context. Does integrating vocabulary instruction with content knowledge help preschoolers’ reading comprehension? And do variables such as the children’s prior knowledge when they start preschool, their socioeconomic background, or the fact that they are being taught in a second language influence the outcomes?
Célia Oliveira
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Reading bedtime stories: are parents helping with vocabulary building?
Reading stories to children plays a fundamental role in their acquisition of vocabulary. In “Timing story time to maximize children’s ability to retain new vocabulary”, an article published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology in 2021, a group of researchers at the University of York sought to verify to what extent children between the ages of five and seven learn new words when listening to their parents tell them stories. The study also sought to ascertain whether reading is particularly beneficial in the period prior to sleeping. They reach some interesting conclusions.
João Lopes
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