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Published: 21 March 2025

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Using Literacy Quotes Effectively

Compiled by Dr Kerry Hempenstall

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Over the years, as I read a research paper, I looked for a quote that triggerd my memory of the gist of this paper or at least of a finding that can act as a building block in the support of evidence-based instruction. This strategy which commenced in about 1999 developed into a very large file of about 400 pages of (mostly) literacy quotes. Though not in strict chronological order of publication, they do largely reflect articles published from 2021 back to around 1999.

When I decide to address a topic for my blog or for a journal article, the first action is to perform a keyword search of this document. For example, if I do an advanced pdf search for fluency, by pressing shift-control-f, I find it is mentioned 389 times and phonological 483 times. Using this facility, I can quickly find all the relevant quotes and identify the articles that then form the starting point for a subsequent broader literature search.

I hope it is of some use to others too.

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“Even the most powerful EBPs for improving student academic and behavior outcomes can be ineffective if implemented haphazardly or partially. The term implementation (or treatment) fidelity is often used as an overall construct to measure the degree to which EBPs are implemented as intended. Implementation fidelity is commonly assessed by implementation teams using self-report or direct observation measures (Harn et al., 2013; Sanetti et al., 2014). In addition to the overall construct, teams can also measure different dimensions of implementation fidelity (Harn et al., 2013). Two of the more commonly measured dimensions include adherence to delivering EBP procedures as prescribed and the quality of EBP delivery by educators and researchers (Carroll et al., 2007; Sanetti et al., 2014). Previous experimental research in schools has shown that both teachers’ adherence and quality of implementation of EBPs can be improved through targeted implementation supports (e.g., implementation planning to address future potential barriers; Sanetti et al., 2014).” (p. 396-397)

Rowe, D. A., Collier-Meek, M. A., Kittelman, A., & Pierce, J. (2021). Ensuring effective implementation of evidence-based practices. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 53(6), 396–399. https://doi.org/10.1177/00400599211025642

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“Special education service provision depends upon referral for evaluation, corresponding evaluation procedures, and resulting eligibility decisions. However, how school districts and decision-makers (e.g., school psychologists) apply special education evaluation procedural rules is largely unknown. Through a survey of practicing school psychologists, the current study examined the most common special education referral concerns, multidisciplinary team (MDT) members’ roles in eligibility decision-making, the value of various assessment data sources in determining special education eligibility, and differences in those variables across participants’ years of experience, degree level, and geographic region. Participants reported that reading was the most common special education referral, school psychologists primarily made special education eligibility decisions with some input from other MDT members, and test scores were the most valued source of assessment data in determining special education eligibility. There were no reported differences in these variables across degree or US geographic region, but there were differences in reported perceptions of the most important sources of assessment data across years of experience. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.”

Maki, K.E., & Adams, S.R. (2020). Special education evaluation practices and procedures: Implications for referral and eligibility decision-making. Contemp School Psychol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-020-00335-4

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“Our data suggested that questionable methods for the identification of SLD, most notably (though not exclusively) the use of AAD (Benson et al., 2020; Francis et al., 2005), continue. This is in part because there is no consensus regarding which method is defensible and therefore districts are depending on methods that rely on instructionally irrelevant tests (i.e., tests of cognitive ability; Burns et al, 2015) that lead to unreliable identification (Maki et al., 2017). Relatedly, while most districts report administering standardized CBMs, roughly half indicated that they do not use this data in the majority of SLD determinations. Districts that engage in AAD or PSW are highly encouraged to shift to a hybrid model that incorporates RtI data into their SLD identification method. Finally, as previously noted, identification methods vary greatly between districts. This lack of consistency may prove problematic for students relocating from one district to another as they may lose services simply by moving a few miles away. To address the use of problematic practices and inconsistency in determination methods, it would appear necessary to adopt uniform SLD identification criteria across the USA or at least within individual states.” (p.8)

Lockwood, A.B., Farmer, R.L., Winans, S. et al. (2021). Specific learning disability identification practices in the USA: A survey of special education administrators. Contemporary School Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-021-00375-4

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“Although assessment for special education services continues to be a primary role of school psychologists, an increased role in behavioral assessment and treatment has been noted over time. This indicates a need for behavior analytic research within the school psychology literature. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the frequency of articles consistent with the theories and practices of applied behavior analysis published in four school psychology journals between 2000 and 2020. A total of 2765 original research articles were reviewed by looking for the presence of ABA focused content within the title or abstract. Results indicate that only 5.5% of articles (n=153) had a primary focus reflective of ABA theory or practice. These data were lower than would have been expected given the current job roles reported by practicing school psychologists.”

Cicero, F.R., Luczaj, P., Younger, A. et al. (2021). The frequency of behavior analysis in school psychology literature: A review of 20 years. Contemporary School Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-021-00385-2

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“In the area of reading, school psychologists have provided significant research in evidence-based reading instruction (e.g., Torgesen et al., 1994), publishing these results and sharing them at conferences and within their schools (Sanetti & Collier-Meek, 2019). Unfortunately, we have been less successful in widespread changes in practice in spite of the widespread implementation of Response to Intervention (RTI) and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). Davidson et al. (2017) iterative process for de-implementation provides guidance on de-implementing that can be applied to whole language instruction. Through decades of research, whole language has clearly been identified as a practice that does not serve students well which is the first phase of de-implementation (Davidson et al., 2017). Explicit direct instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics are evidence-based alternatives for early reading instruction. In the second phase, (identifying the prevalence), it is clear that this practice is quite prevalent across North America (Moats, 2000; Slavin et al., 2011). The prevalence of whole language instruction in individual systems where it will be de-implemented should be determined by local researchers or practitioners within those systems. Phase 3 includes investigating the context, reinforcements, and beliefs that maintain the practice. This will require training, addressing the challenges with the face validity of whole language, and using school data to demonstrate reading performance of students who are taught to read using whole language compared with those receiving evidence-based reading instruction, using consultation skills to support this process. As whole language is an entrenched practice with significant buy-in from educators, this phase, focusing on outcomes for their students, will be important in helping to increase teacher willingness to abandon whole language for systematic, explicit, direct instruction. In phase four, determining how to change teacher/interventionist behaviors requires significant administrative support in determining how to reinforce the move away from whole language (closely related to phase 3). In a qualitative study on translating evidence-based reading strategies into practices, teachers noted several components that supported their adoption of these practices (Grima-Farrell et al., 2019). Examples included focusing on addressing the needs of students in teachers’ classrooms, ensuring that the strategies are usable in classroom contexts, and giving agency to teachers, especially in the context of university school research partnerships. Relatedly, phase six involves conducting a de-implementation experiment, removing the practice from one school, and implementing EBP in reading— explicit direct instruction. Phases seven and eight involve evaluating the difference in student outcomes and related cost savings. Finally, phase 9 involves determining if there is another non-EBP that should be de-implemented next (Davidson et al., 2017)”

Wilcox, G., Chatlos, S.B., McClure, E., et al. (2021). De-Implementation: A missing piece in bridging the research to practice gap in school psychology. Contemporary School Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-021-00399-w

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“Evidence-based practice is foundational to school psychology; as a field, we have contributed a great deal of evidence for specific practices. However, school psychologists must continue to find ways to more effectively reduce the gap between research and practice, supporting educational outcomes for all students. Two interconnected strategies that may help bridge this gap include implementation and de-implementation science. Implementation science focuses on adopting practices that have a strong evidence base, and there is some evidence of this practice in school psychology research. However, we identified no research in school psychology in the area of de-implementation science, which focuses on identifying and removing practices that do not have a strong evidence base. We urge school psychology researchers to actively engage not only in implementation but also in de-implementation in order to inform practice and to reach these goals. We provide two examples where school psychology can contribute to this area: reading instruction and mental health services. We conclude with recommendations to extend the evidence base for de-implementation in school psychology.”

Wilcox, G., Chatlos, S.B., McClure, E., et al. (2021). De-Implementation: A missing piece in bridging the research to practice gap in school psychology. Contemporary School Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-021-00399-w

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“Published in the journal Research in Developmental Disabilities, the study discovered that text with increased space between each letter provided a benefit to both groups of children. On average, the dyslexia group showed a 13% increase in reading speed, while the comparison group of non-dyslexic children showed a 5% increase in reading speed.

The study involved 59 children aged between 11-15, 32 of whom had a statement of dyslexia, with 27 non-dyslexic children forming a control group. The participants were recruited from six UK schools in Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and London.

Participants read four texts with either standard or extra-large letter spacing, both with and without a coloured overlay. The children were instructed to read the text out loud while being recorded. The recording was used to measure the number of errors they made -- specifically missed words, added words, wrong words, and pronunciation -- as well as the participants' reading time.

In addition to improved reading speed for both children with dyslexia and the non-dyslexic group, the larger letter spacing also resulted in a significant reduction in the number of words being missed by the children with dyslexia. However, the study found that coloured overlays had no significant impact on reading speed or the reduction of errors for either group of children.”

Stagg, S.D., & Kiss, N. (2021). Room to read: The effect of extra-large letter spacing and coloured overlays on reading speed and accuracy in adolescents with dyslexia. Research in Developmental Disabilities. 104065 DOI: 10.1016/j.ridd.2021.104065

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“A new study has found that a child's reading speed can be improved by simply increasing the space between letters within a piece of text. The study discovered that text with increased space between each letter provided a benefit to both dyslexic and non-dyslexic children. On average, the dyslexia group showed a 13% increase in reading speed, while the comparison group of non-dyslexic children showed a 5% increase in reading speed.”

Anglia Ruskin University. (2021, September 29). Extra spacing can boost children’s reading speed: New study finds significant benefits for both dyslexic and non-dyslexic children. ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210929212202.htm

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“This systematic review examined 12 studies of interventions with opportunities for parents to learn and practice shared book reading strategies with their infants and toddlers. Following our search, we identified multiple studies that evaluated ISBR programs for infants and toddlers. However, few studies included opportunities for parents to practice or receive feedback on their ISBR [Interactive shared book reading] practices, both of which were inclusionary criteria for our review due to their impact on adult learning and maintenance of strategy use (Trivette et al., 2009). Despite the small number of studies in this review, results suggested parent training and coaching in ISBR can support effective parent strategy use and infant/toddler language outcomes were reported in two studies. … The findings from this systematic review offer a summary of the state of research on interventions for parent–child ISBR with infants and toddlers. While this body of work is limited, evidence points to the potential of early interactive book sharing interventions to increase child outcomes in the earliest stages of language development.” (p.8, 9)

Lorio, C.M., Delehanty, A.D., & Romano, M.K. (2021). A systematic review of parent–child shared book reading interventions for infants and toddlers. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education. April 2021. doi:10.1177/0271121421998793

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“Consensus on methods for measuring children’s engagement using standardized, direct observational measures does not appear to exist, given the variability in selection of tools and subdomains. The lack of consensus on tools and tool subdomains may prohibit researchers’ understanding of how to consistently and reliably measure individual engagement of young children with disabilities. The absence of a “typical” engagement measure may contribute to the limited strength of the relation between engagement and achievement in this review. Effects from primary studies may reflect variability in engagement measures, although the measurement method (e.g., direct observation vs. self-report) did not moderate outcomes. As tool selection and number of measurement occasions varied across studies, lack of a typical engagement measure may also contribute to stability of the estimates of engagement and invites further examination.” (p. 12)

.Lindström, E.R., Chow, J.C., Zimmerman, K.N., Zhao, H., Settanni, E. &, Ellison A. (2021). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the relation between engagement and achievement in early childhood research. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education. August 2021. doi:10.1177/02711214211032720

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“Respondents from schools where PSC results had fallen provided fewer written explanations for changes, compared with those in schools with improved results, suggesting a lack of meta-knowledge. Professional training must reach schools who do not know what they do not know: the problems associated with limited meta-knowledge in weaker schools are well documented (OfSTED, 2012). The thinking that pupil characteristics can of themselves be blamed for poor outcomes may well have been related to teachers' own false confidence in their limited subject knowledge (Cohen, Mather, Schneider, & White, 2017; Joshi et al., 2009; Stark et al., 2016) and this suggests a persisting problem, albeit with a minority of practitioners. Moreover, lack of any reference to teaching phonics in KS2 in the follow-up data demonstrates there is still a need to upskill all primary school professionals in the teaching of phonics. … At the time of writing, the DfE had designated 35 schools, recognised as successful in phonics teaching, as training hubs to further tackle professional development for the teaching of English, with a substantial focus on phonics in the first year of activity. The choice of a regionally embedded model, with hubs serving specific geographical areas, is a step in the right direction because training will be delivered by practitioners sensitive to local need. However, reference to research-informed criteria governing training content is missing. Our study suggests that this fractured approach to professional development might not produce confident teachers who can tackle reading failure. This is crucial if schools are to subvert loss of progress in reading after school closure for the COVID-19 pandemic and respond confidently to the sharpened focus on phonics teaching in school inspections (OfSTED, 2019). More studies are needed exploring how and whether research-based teacher training fosters sustainable improvements in children’s reading performance. This should provide professionally relatable insights into how research-informed teaching for early reading can empower teachers to make the difference for children otherwise at risk from reading failure.” (p.315, 316)

Flynn, N., Powell, D., Stainthorp, R., & Stuart, M. (2021) Training teachers for phonics and early reading: developing research-informed practice. Journal of Research in Reading, 44(2), 301– 318.

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“In this study, predictors of reading and spelling difficulties among children learning more transparent (Norwegian/Swedish) and less transparent (English) orthographies were examined longitudinally from preschool through Grade 2 using parallel versions of tests. A series of logistic regression analysis indicated three main findings. First, phonological awareness as a predictor of reading difficulties in the Scandinavian sample was time-limited to Grade 1, but remained as a significant predictor in the English-speaking sample. Second, phonological awareness predicted spelling difficulties similarly across orthographies. Third, preschool and kindergarten RAN was a significant predictor of reading and spelling difficulties at both Grades 1 and 2 across orthographies. The authors conclude that phonological awareness diminishes as a predictor of reading difficulties in transparent orthographies after the first years of schooling, that RAN is a better long-term predictor of reading difficulties, and that phonological awareness is associated with spelling difficulties similarly in transparent and opaque orthographies.” (p. 119)

Furnes, B., & Samuelsson, S. (2010). Predicting reading and spelling difficulties in transparent and opaque orthographies: A comparison between Scandinavian and US/Australian children. Dyslexia, 16(2) 119-142. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/10.1002/dys.401

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“Precocious readers and code-related skills In alphabetic orthographies, reading is first a process of decoding, during which the child is required to understand that speech sounds are represented by symbols. Mapping sounds onto the letter symbols is fundamental to the decoding process. In order to do this, children need a solid base of letter knowledge and phonological awareness (Dickinson, Nesbit, & Hofer, 2019; Strang & Piasta, 2016). The PRs in this study outperformed their SA peers on both letter knowledge and phonological awareness.

Letter knowledge and phonological awareness. Hebrew-speaking PRs’ success in letter knowledge and phonological awareness compared with their SA peers is similar to the results of studies examining English-speaking, Greek-speaking, Finnish-speaking and Czech-speaking PRs (Málková, 2017; Silven et al., 2004; Tafa & Manolitsis, 2008, 2012). These results expand the universality of precocious reading into the abjad writing system and highlight the importance of these code-based skills that have been shown to be important predictors for learning to read and write (Ehri, 2017; Treiman, 2017). It is important to note that some research indicates a reciprocal relationship between phonological awareness and reading (Castles & Coltheart, 2004; Landerl et al., 2019), where phonological awareness develops as reading progresses. This may be an alternative explanation for the high level of PRs’ phonological awareness rather than being a prerequisite for learning to reading.

Word reading. Results showed that the PRs scored higher not only than the SA group on word reading but also than the SRL group. When children learn to read Hebrew in school, they read with diacritics, which makes the writing system absolutely transparent. Around the middle of second grade, they start gradually dropping the diacritics. Children in the SRL group, who learned to read in school, could primarily read words with diacritics. Interestingly, the PRs were able to read words both with and without the diacritics. Within the PRs’ surroundings, all the environmental print is without diacritics and adults read without diacritics. PRs express interest in the writing system, and their parents talk with them about it (Aram & Besser-Biron, 2016). It may be that PRs’ curiosity and the pleasure from decoding drive them to seek literacy knowledge and help them crack the code in its opaque version.” (p. 567-568

Bergman Deitcher, D., Aram, D., & Besser-Biron, S. (2021). A broad view of precocious reading. Journal of Research in Reading, 44(3), 554– 573. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/10.1111/1467-9817.12355

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“The cognitive neuroscientist, Stanislas Dehaene, expresses concern about how pedagogical reforms are developed without due consideration of the brain's ability to learn, claiming that teachers know more about the mechanics of their cars than about the mechanics of children's brains (Dehaene, 2009) 1 . He firmly maintains that knowledge about learning must involve knowledge about how the brain functions but observes that teacher education tends to present the cortical surface as basically equipotent and independent of domain-specific structure (Dehaene, 2009:6). The plasticity of the brain, Dehaene continues, has been taken too naively to mean that there are no universal constraints for learning because the human brain is shaped by cultural impregnation. This naïve model of the brain has led to the development of various teaching methods of reading that, allegedly, would fit the pedagogical needs within specific cultures and languages. The application of some of those methods, such as the ‘global or whole word reading method’ (cf. section 2.1), has had dire consequences for reading education, because they do not match the brain's ‘natural preference’ for learning. Further, Dehaene argues, such methods do not just have an impact on the pace of reading and reading acquisition, but also on the neural circuits that are being activated during reading. When the brain is confronted with what could be called ‘a brain unnatural method’ such as global reading, it generates interfaces in the right hemisphere visual word form area of the brain (rather than in the left where the paths are much shorter), which in this view constitutes a less direct route from vision to meaning (Dehaene, 2009). In other words: reading in brain-unnatural ways becomes more challenging, and an economically more expensive cognitive activity, than if other methods were applied.” (p.1-2)

Trasmundi, S.B., Kokkola, L., Schilhab, T., & Mangen, A. (2021). A distributed perspective on reading: implications for education. Language Sciences, in press.

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“Mathematical competence is a key competence, and thus considered necessary for personal development and fulfilment (Nasser & Birenbaum, 2005; Passolunghi et al., 2007). As claimed by Boudon (1974), inequality of educational opportunities predicts inequality of social opportunities. Therefore, exploring factors (such as socioeconomic status) affecting learning mathematics is considered a priority for the educational policy agenda. Students’ attainment in mathematics can be significantly affected by a number of contextual factors (Fowler & Walberg, 1991; Lamb & Fullarton, 2002; Shin et al., 2009) as well as by several personal students’ characteristics, such as: (a) their cognitive functions (e.g., Passolunghi et al., 2007); (b) affective variables (Hyde, Fennema, Ryan, et al., 1990; Kiray et al., 2015; Pampaka et al., 2013; Radovic et al., 2018); (c) background factors, such as gender (Friedman, 1989; Hyde, Fennema, & Lamon, 1990; Lindberg et al., 2010; Meinck & Brese, 2019), citizenship status (Organisation for EconomicCo-operation and Development [OECD], 2015a, 2016), and their – or their peer groups’ – socioeconomic status (Coleman et al., 1966; Sirin, 2005; van Ewijk & Sleegers, 2009; White, 1982); and (d) their other skills, such as reading skills (Abedi & Lord, 2001). The relationship between students’ reading skills and their attainment in mathematics has received increasing attention over time. For example, in the United States, Grimm (2008) claimed that “reading achievement is the primary concern over math … [as it] leads to improvements in other areas of achievement” (p. 410). Such a claim has been supported by recent studies showing that the higher the reading skills, the better the students’ attainment in mathematics (e.g., OECD, 2016). The relationship between students’ reading skills and their attainment in mathematics is complex because reading skills significantly interplay with other students’ background characteristics and, in particular, with: (a) socioeconomic status (SES; high-SES students show better attainment in mathematics compared with low-SES students; e.g., Cascella, 2020; Coleman et al., 1966; Reardon et al., 2006); (b) gender (girls typically outperform boys in reading, but the reverse occurs in mathematics in six out of 10 OECD countries; OECD, 2015a); and, naturally, (c) citizenship (native students are advantaged in reading compared with first- and/or second-generation students; e.g. INVALSI, 2017).” (p. 126-127)

Cascella, C. (2020). Exploring the complex relationship between students’ reading skills and their performance in mathematics: A population-based study. Educational Research and Evaluation, 26(3-4), 126-149. DOI: 10.1080/13803611.2021.1924790

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“ … a program or approach that is effective in other settings can be ineffective in yours if the way it is being implemented takes it far away from its original design” (p. 40).

Protheroe, N. (2008). The impact of fidelity of implementation in effective standardsbased instruction. Principal, September/October, 38-41.

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“Goodman rejected the idea that you can make a distinction between skilled readers and unskilled readers; he doesn't like the value judgment that implies. He said dyslexia does not exist — despite lots of evidence that it does.52 And he said the three-cueing theory is based on years of observational research. In his view, three cueing is perfectly valid, drawn from a different kind of evidence than what scientists collect in their labs.

"My science is different," Goodman said.”

Hanford, E. (2019). At a loss for words: How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers. APM Reports, August 22, 2019. https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading

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“Research does not suggest that OG interventions do not work. Instead, research findings do not provide firm evidence of effectiveness for OG interventions, although the mean effect size of 0.22 in favor of OG interventions constitutes evidence of promise and suggests the need for future research. Importantly, it should be noted that there is a strong evidence base for early word reading instruction. In particular, explicit and systematic instruction for students with reading difficulties has a robust research evidence base (for example, Gersten et al., 2008; Swanson, 1999; Vaughn et al., 2012). There are mountains of evidence that reading instruction for students with wordlevel reading difficulties should include systematic instruction in phonological awareness, grapheme-phoneme correspondences, decoding, and word reading (Foorman et al., 2016; Gersten et al., 2020, Wanzek et al., 2016). Because the OG philosophy is inclusive of explicit and systematic phonics-based instruction, it is plausible that the mean effect size of 0.22 is rooted in the delivery of this kind of instruction that has been shown to work for students with reading difficulties. The one component of OG approaches for which there is less research evidence is the kinesthetic/tactile instructional component, often called the “multisensory” component (Al Otaiba et al., 2018). There is little research to suggest this component adds value to explicit and systematic phonics-based instruction.” (p. 6-7)

Solari, E., Petscher, Y., & Hall, C. (2021). What does science say about Orton-Gillingham interventions? An explanation and commentary on the Stevens et al. (2021) meta-analysis. Psyarxiv. https://psyarxiv.com/mcw82/download?format=pdf

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“The findings from this meta-analysis raise concerns about legislation mandating OG. The findings from this synthesis suggest “promise” but not confidence or evidence-based effects given the research findings currently available. Future intervention studies that utilize high quality research designs, sufficiently large samples, and report multiple dimensions of treatment fidelity will determine whether OG interventions positively impact the reading outcomes for students with or at risk for WLRD. … It appears that multisensory instruction may be the defining feature that sets OG interventions apart from other programs providing direct instruction in reading and spelling, but there is still a lack of clarity about how OG interventions differ from non-OG interventions that provide direct instruction in decoding and encoding. … Current evidence suggests promise but not confidence that this approach significantly impacts reading outcomes for this population; furthermore, current evidence does not suggest confidence that this is the only approach to remediating word-reading difficulties for these students. It is our hope that this meta-analysis can serve as an impetus for future research and provide evidence-based guidance to practitioners, parents, and policymakers regarding instruction for this population of students. … Finally, many practitioners, parents, and policymakers value the multisensory component of OG instruction (International Dyslexia Association, 2020). The majority of states have legislation mandating the use of multisensory reading interventions for students with WLRD. It is possible that many OG interventions are used with students with WLRD because they are marketed as providing that multisensory instruction required in state dyslexia legislation. In addition, it is possible that OG interventions continue to be used in practice, despite the limited evidence supporting their effectiveness, because there remains a prevailing myth that individuals with dyslexia require specialized, multisensory instruction that is inherently different than the instruction required by other students experiencing word-level reading difficulties (Thorwarth, 2014). We argue that there are two reasons to question promoting multisensory instruction as a necessary component reading intervention for students with WLRD. There is little consensus in the field around how we define and operationalize multisensory reading instruction. There is no universal definition of this type of instruction beyond the simultaneous use of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic/tactile learning experiences during reading and spelling instruction. One concern with identifying the multisensory component as the critical ingredient in OG instruction is that there is not a clear understanding of what multisensory instruction includes across OG programs, how it is applied, and the proportion of instruction it occupies.

Effective literacy instruction, in general, involves all of a reader’s senses – visual and auditory experiences seeing and reading words aloud and kinesthetic/tactile experiences spelling and writing words. In fact, substantial evidence supports the integration of phonics and spelling instruction to improve students word reading (e.g. Graham and Santangelo, 2014), which would lead many to believe that most early reading programs offer multisensory instruction. Current research does not indicate that the simultaneous use of these senses positively impacts students reading outcomes, but additional research is needed to understand what this type of instruction looks like in OG interventions and whether this type of instruction has added benefit for students with and at risk for WLRD. Conclusion In summary, the findings from this meta-analysis do not provide definitive evidence that OG interventions significantly improve the reading outcomes of students with or at risk for WLRD, such as dyslexia.” (20-24)

Stevens, E. A., Austin, C. R., Moore, C., Scammacca, N., Boucher, A., & Vaughn, S. (2021). Current state of the evidence: Examining the effects of Orton-Gillingham reading interventions for students with or at-risk for word-level reading disabilities. Exceptional Children. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014402921993406

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“As students transition out of the early elementary grades, reading instruction commonly shifts away from explicit decoding instruction to a focus on understanding text (Wanzek, Wexler, Vaughn, & Ciullo, 2010). For students who read accurately and fluently, this instructional shift is appropriate, allowing for increased opportunities to read independently and develop the fluency, background knowledge, and vocabulary required to comprehend complex texts. However, reading instruction that assumes all upper elementary students mastered foundational decoding skills will be inadequate for those who continue to demonstrate word-level reading difficulties. Few struggling readers after the early elementary grades have isolated difficulties in comprehension (Catts, Adlof, & Weismer, 2006); rather, 85%-95% of students with poor reading comprehension also demonstrate poor decoding (Cirino et al., 2013; Clarke, Snowling, Truelove, & Hulme, 2010; Elwér et al., 2015; Nation, Cocksey, Taylor, & Bishop, 2010). Word reading remains a primary source of difficulty even after the early elementary grades, underscoring the need for additional word-level reading instruction for most students with reading difficulties (Scammacca et al., 2015; Vaughn, Denton, & Fletcher, 2010).” (p. 1, 2)

Austin, C.R., Vaughn, S., Clemens, N.H., Pustejovsky, J.E., & Boucher, A.N. (2021). The relative effects of instruction linking word reading and word meaning compared to word reading instruction alone on the accuracy, fluency, and word meaning knowledge of 4th-5th grade students with dyslexia. Scientific Studies of Reading, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2021.1947294

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“Compared to WR instruction alone, WR+WM [word meaning] significantly improved accuracy (d = 0.65), fluency (d = 0.43), and word meaning knowledge (d = 1.92) immediately following intervention, and significantly improved accuracy (d = 0.74), fluency (d = 0.84), and word meaning knowledge (d = 1.03) at posttest. Findings support the premise that word meaning knowledge facilitates accurate and fluent word reading, and that instruction explicitly integrating word reading and word meaning may be an effective support for upper elementary students with dyslexia.” (p. 1)

Austin, C.R., Vaughn, S., Clemens, N.H., Pustejovsky, J.E., & Boucher, A.N. (2021). The relative effects of instruction linking word reading and word meaning compared to word reading instruction alone on the accuracy, fluency, and word meaning knowledge of 4th-5th grade students with dyslexia. Scientific Studies of Reading, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2021.1947294

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“In the best-evidence synthesis conducted by Cheung and Slavin (2012), the authors identified 18 studies with the majority of participants in Grades K–3. While not all effect sizes reported were positive (ES range on combined reading outcomes, −0.38 to 0.68), there were promising findings for a number of programs, including Direct Instruction (DI; Adams & Engelmann, 1996), English Language and Literacy Acquisition (ELLA; Irby et al., 2010), and Success for All (Slavin et al., 2009), as well as for instructional approaches that incorporated cooperative learning, small-group instruction, and one-to-one (1:1) interventions.” (p.3)

Roberts, G.J., Hall, C., Cho, E. Coté, B., Lee, J., Qi, B., & Van Ooyik, J. (2021). The state of current reading intervention research for English learners in grades K–2: A best-evidence synthesis. Educational Psychology Review https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09629-2

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“Critiques of evidence-based research, policy and practice in education are emphasised by Shahjahan (2011), who offers an anti-colonial perspective. This position argues that proponents of evidence-based education unknowingly promote a colonial discourse and material relations of power that continue from the American-European colonial era. This colonial discourse is evident in at least three ways: (1) the discourse of civilizing the profession of education, (2) the promotion of colonial hierarchies of knowledge and monocultures of the mind, and (3) the interconnection between neoliberal educational policies and global exploitation of colonised labour. Therefore, the call for the decolonising implications of revealing some of the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research and neoliberal reform arc very important in contemporary times.” (p. 244)

Peters, M.A., & Tesar, M. (2017). Bad research, bad education: The contested evidence for evidence-based research, policy and practice in education. In J. Lynch, J. Rowlands, T. Gale, & A. Skourdoumbis (Eds.), Practice theory: Diffractive readings in professional practice and education, Chap, 14, (231-246). London, UK: Routledge.

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“There is a growing body of literature discussing evidence-based education, practice, policy, and decision-making from a critical perspective. In this article, drawing on the literature and policy documents related to evidence-based education in the USA, Britain, and Canada, I join this critique and offer an anticolonial perspective. I argue that proponents of evidence-based education unknowingly promote a colonial discourse and material relations of power that continue from the American-European colonial era. I posit that this colonial discourse is evident in at least three ways: (1) the discourse of civilizing the profession of education, (2) the promotion of colonial hierarchies of knowledge and monocultures of the mind, and (3) the interconnection between neoliberal educational policies and global exploitation of colonized labor. I conclude with the decolonizing implications of revealing some of the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research, and neoliberal reform.”

Shahjahan, R.A. (2011). Decolonizing the evidence-based education and policy movement: Revealing the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research, and neoliberal reform. Journal of Education Policy, 26(2), 181-206.

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“It is estimated that an 18-month-old learns an average of five new words a day in order to develop a receptive vocabulary of around 8,000 words by the time the child is six years old. At the time of high school graduation … the average student knows approximately 40,000 words. In order for a child to increase his vocabulary from 8,000 to 40,000 words in roughly 12 years, he needs to learn approximately 32,000 words between first grade and twelfth grade (i.e., seven words a day, every day of the year for 12 years) … When we consider that the average school program of direct vocabulary instruction covers only a few hundred words and word parts per year, it seems evident that the type of vocabulary development that is necessary for skilled reading is beyond the scope of even the most intensive programs of vocabulary instruction.”

Cunningham, A., & Zibulsky, J. (2014). Book smart. How to develop and support successful, motivated readers. New York: Oxford University Press.

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“Vocabulary is critical to academic and social outcomes. Most vocabulary is learned incidentally, without direct instruction. After children become skilled at reading words (by about grade four), this incidental word learning typically happens while reading. However, readers differ in how easily they can infer new word meanings from context. Reading purpose, or the reader’s goals for comprehension of the text, affects reading comprehension, and is also thought to affect the quality of this semantic inferencing. Reading instruction to improve fluency, which is common in schools, may shift the reader’s focus from text comprehension to speed and accuracy. It is unknown if these instructions to read quickly and accurately have the unintended effect of negatively impacting word learning while reading.  … A linear mixed effects model found no significant differences between the two conditions in performance on the post-test language outcome measures. Similarly, eye-tracking data did not reveal any significant statistical differences between participant groups in measures of either active, reader-initiated reading processes or passive reading processes. … Analyses of the present data do not offer support for the theory that a priority on reading speed and accuracy sacrifices the quality of incidental word learning.” (p.iv, v)

Snyder, M.C. (2021). The effect of reading purpose on semantic inferencing about new words. Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, University of Pittsburgh.

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“Our results confirm and extend Hanushek, Rivkin, and Kain (2002) and Hurwitz et al. (2019), indicating that special education works to improve outcomes for students with learning disabilities. We find substantively and statistically significant improvements in test scores of more than 0.1 standard deviation in both math and ELA over all LDs, with larger effects among those first classified in grades 4 or 5 than in later grades. The magnitude is substantively important, representing roughly 18 and 16 percent of the mean LD-GEN achievement gaps in math and ELA, respectively.”

Schwartz, A. E., Hopkins, B. G., & Stiefel, L. (2021). The effects of special education on the academic performance of students with learning disabilities. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 40(2), 480-520. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22282

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“The research is unequivocal: successful problem-solving requires deep knowledge in the discipline. Problem-solving occurs within a domain, and accomplished problem-solvers cannot assume their skill will be transferable to other disciplines. Accomplished problem-solvers have extensive knowledge and experience in their domain. They can solve problems effectively because they know the terrain intimately, have ingrained knowledge of facts and detail, and have practised relentlessly to hone and refine their skills.

No matter how engaging or challenging the problems we set them to solve, students will fail without the prerequisite knowledge, an understanding of key facts and concepts, and expert instruction and direction from teachers. Problem-solving, like creativity, must occur at the end of the process, not at the beginning.

Similarly, neuroscience leaves no doubt about how we learn to read. Engaging graphics and exciting imagery might motivate students to read, but without learned and accomplished reading skills, based predominantly on phonics, they too will flounder when confronted with unfamiliar words and texts.

If we are looking to high-achievers overseas, and we should, let’s make sure we take careful note of all the things they are doing, especially their focus on knowledge, practice, and school culture. If we seek to learn from Singapore’s world-leading practices in the teaching of mathematics, then we also need to adopt the Singaporean adage of “I shall become creative once I have become a master”.” (p.14)

Adams, P. (2021). To improve Australian schools, cut-and-paste won’t cut it. The Age, National Education Opinion, p.14. https://www.theage.com.au/education/to-improve-australian-schools-cut-and-paste-won-t-cut-it-20210531-p57wnx.html

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“Across all 327 studies and almost 3,500 effects, the average effect size was .56 (the first line in Table 1). The 95% confidence interval ranged from .50 to .61. Thus, the entire confidence band falls within the range that Lipsey et al. (2012) indicated only rarely occurs in studies of educational programs—the level that they described as “huge.” Effect sizes can be translated into an “Improvement Index,” based on percentiles, and these values help depict the magnitude of the results. An average effect of .56 is equivalent to an improvement index of 21 percentile points. This indicates that, based on results from thousands of effect sizes and hundreds of studies, an average student taught with DI would be expected to score 21 percentile points higher than an average student taught with other methods.” (p.7)

Stockard, J. (2021). Building a more effective, equitable, and compassionate educational system: The role of Direct Instruction. Perspectives on Behavior Science. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/10.1007/s40614-021-00287-x

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“Time is the great enemy of the at-risk child. He must learn more in less time, he is less experienced at learning, and he needs more practice. You can’t reproduce the form of the middle-class upbringing; you’ve got to try to reproduce the function. That means teaching kids the fast way.” (p.23)

Barbash, S. (2012). Clear teaching. Education Consumers Foundation.

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“Behavioral skills training (BST) has been demonstrated to be an effective method for training staff to perform skills with high fidelity in a relatively short amount of time. In the current study, three components of direct instruction (DI) were trained using BST. The participants were two classroom instructors with prior experience implementing DI with students with autism. The targets for staff training were accuracy with signal delivery, error correction, and delivery of praise. A multiple-baseline design across skills was used to evaluate the effects of BST for each participant. Generalization probes were conducted with a student with autism during baseline and after mastery with each skill was demonstrated. BST rapidly increased staff performance across skills, with generalization demonstrated during classroom probes. This study extends the use of BST to training staff to implement DI, and the results suggest that BST resulted in improved teacher performance of the targeted skills during generalization probes with students.”

Sherman, J., Richardson, J. & Vedora, J. (2021). The use of behavioral skills training to teach components of Direct Instruction. Behav Analysis Practice. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-021-00594-4

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"… a strategic approach would be to teach ten letter-sound relations and the skill of sounding out words. When students have learned these ten sounds and the sounding-out skill, they can read 720 words made up of three sounds (e.g., cat), 4,320 words of four sounds (e.g., cram), and 21,600 words of five sounds (e.g., scram) for a total of over 25,000 words. Not all of these words would be real words, some would be pseudowords (e.g., blums), but the example illustrates the power of strategic instruction." 

Becker, W. C. (1971). An empirical basis for change in education. Chicago, Ill: Science Research Associates.

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It was also described in Watkins and Slocum:

“Becker (1971) illustrated the power and efficiency of strategy-based instruction with an example from the area of basic reading. A nonstrategic or rote teaching approach would teach students to recognize whole words. In this rote approach, each word would be taught as a separate entity with no system for teaching generalizable strategies for decoding new words. In the rote approach, after the teacher has taught 10 words, students should be able to read (at best) 10 useful words. In contrast, a strategic approach would be to teach 10 letter–sound relations and the skill of sounding out words. When students have learned these 10 sounds and the sounding-out skill, they can read 720 words made up of 3 sounds (e.g., cat), 4,320 words of 4 sounds (e.g., cram), and 21,600 words of 5 sounds (e.g., scram) for a total of over 25,000 words. Not all of these words would be real words, some would be pseudowords (e.g., blums), but the example illustrates the power of strategic instruction. (This strategy and other reading strategies are described in more detail in Chapter 4.) The efficiency that results from teaching generalizable big ideas is the goal of the content analysis that underlies Direct Instruction. This example also illustrates that even in difficult content areas that are fraught with exceptions, such as reading in English, powerful generalizations are possible.” (p.76) 

Watkins, C, & Slocum, T. A. (2003). Components of Direct Instruction. Journal of Direct Instruction, 3, 4-32. 

This quote was also published on p.63 in: 

Watkins, C, & Slocum, T. A. (2004). Components of Direct Instruction. In N.E. Marchand-Martella, T.A. Slocum, and R.C. Martella (Eds.), Introduction to Direct Instruction (pp. 28-63). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

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“In a review of the literature, documented in Chapter 2, seven single-subject studies implemented a teacher-as-coach model where paraeducators are trained using varying combinations of didactic training, online training, role-play, self-monitoring, video modeling, live coaching, remote coaching, and performance feedback (Brock et al., 2016; Giles et al., 2018: Hall et al., 2010; Mason et al., 2017, 2018; Scheeler et al., 2018; Wermer et al., 2018). All of the referenced studies described licensed special education teachers in the role of coach for classroom staff. Skills coached in these studies include discrete trial teaching, peer support arrangements, response interruption and redirection, behavioral strategies, specific praise, communication, and data collection.” (p.19)

Carter, P.J. (2021). Coaching paraeducators to accurately record student response data during direct instruction. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth. University. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7682&context=etd

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“At its simplest, synthetic phonics refers to the process whereby pupils state the phonemes represented by graphemes in a word and then blend them orally to pronounce the word. There are different ways of teaching SSP and it should be remembered there are alternatives to the approach recommended by the UK government. Although, the SSP programs used by the schools (ESPO, 2011, 2012) share a number of common features, they vary considerably in terms of: (1) the number of GPCs taught, (2) the number of graphemes that represent multiple phonemes, (3) whether pupils are taught to synthesise phonemes and segment words into phonemes as phonological skills (i.e., skills taught in the absence of print), (4) teaching methodology, (5) assessment arrangements, and (6) the broader literacy skills taught. Currently, discussions about synthetic phonics generally fail to recognise these crucial differences, which it would be helpful to investigate empirically to establish whether or not they are significant.” (p. 129)

Solity, J.E. (2020). Instructional psychology and teaching reading: Ending the reading wars. The Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 37, 123–132. doi: 10.1017/edp.2020.18

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“RR is as an evidence-based practice for younger students with reading disabilities (Stevens et al., 2016). The mixed findings surrounding RR for struggling readers in the secondary grades may be explained that secondary readers are likely to have more persistent and intractable reading difficulties and reading fluency may possibly be a less malleable construct. For comprehension, it may also be that students are becoming proficient readers in the elementary grades, but in the upper grades perhaps background knowledge and vocabulary are more important for reading comprehension. With regard to the impact of fluency interventions on comprehension outcomes, the findings of this synthesis strongly align with Wexler et al (2008). Wexler et al. (2008) found that although RR interventions for secondary readers generally improved overall reading rate and accuracy, they did not improve comprehension outcomes. As the link between improved fluency and improved comprehension remains unclear for secondary students, it is important to consider the results from the current studies. The majority of studies in this synthesis reported an increase in reading fluency outcomes, with four SCD studies reporting increased reading comprehension outcomes after RR (Alber-Morgan et al., 2007; Barnes & Rehfeldt, 2013; Escarpio & Barbetta, 2016; Vandenberg et al., 2008) and two studies reporting improved reading comprehension after a non-RR intervention (Keehn et al., 2008; Lingo et al., 2006). However, this reporting of results must be taken with aforementioned concerns about quality standards in mind. … A key finding that aligned with Wexler et al. (2008) was that wide reading could have similar impacts on reading fluency. Teachers in secondary grades may wish to generally increase the amount of text read and vary the type of text as opposed to specifically utilizing RR. Equivalent wide reading (reading equivalent word amounts to RR) may be a preferable option for teachers in the secondary grades, as RR was not shown to be more or less effective for older students, and wide reading may be more feasible given the expectations of reading for content knowledge. Teachers may wish to focus on building background knowledge and teaching vocabulary as levers to improve comprehension for students with fluency deficits. Wide reading for content knowledge could potentially also address concerns teachers may have about the generalization of RR, such as when improvements in fluency are not seen to be maintained after the intervention itself.” (p. 15-16, 17)

Steinle, P. K., Stevens, E., & Vaughn, S. (2021). Fluency interventions for struggling readers in grades 6 to 12: A research synthesis. Journal of Learning Disabilities. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219421991249

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“Teachers’ implementation of differentiated supplemental instruction is critical to help students with or at risk for reading-related disabilities acquire early reading and vocabulary skills. This study represents an initial investigation of whether classroom teachers’ intervention fidelity (exposure, adherence, and quality) of targeted reading instruction (TRI, formerly called targeted reading intervention), a professional development program with embedded student intervention and weekly webcam literacy coaching support, was related to spring reading and oral vocabulary gains for students at risk for readingrelated disabilities. The study also examined whether teachers’ years of participation in TRI (1 year vs 2 years) moderated associations between intervention fidelity and students’ reading and oral vocabulary outcomes. Findings suggested that teachers’ adherence to TRI strategies was directly associated with students’ vocabulary gains as well as word reading skills for teachers in their second year of participation. Furthermore, when teachers provided students with more TRI exposure during their second year of participation, students made greater gains in word reading and reading comprehension. … Classroom teachers’ implementation of differentiated reading intervention often determines its effectiveness in improving early reading skills for students at risk for reading-related disabilities (Swanson et al., 2013). In line with existing research, how teachers implement reading interventions is an important part of understanding why interventions are or are not successful. Ongoing PD for teachers can help teachers implement interventions more effectively, which can thereby improve student reading outcomes” (p.1, 11)

Varghese, C., Bratsch-Hines, M., Aiken, H., & Vernon-Feagans, L. (2021). Elementary teachers’ intervention fidelity in relation to reading and vocabulary outcomes for students at risk for reading-related disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities. April 2021. doi:10.1177/0022219421999844

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“Despite these caveats, our meta-analytic results are broadly informative in that they are the first to provide a component of a unifying empirical basis supporting the hypothesis of no mean and variance differences in creativity between groups with and without dyslexia. Such findings not only serve to underscore the absence of a dyslexia-enhanced creativity link but also highlight the need for school practitioners not to assume that, on average, any superior creativity will be expressed in academic achievement outcomes. What our results do not suggest is that educators should fail to support and nurture creativity. As indicated, creativity runs on a continuum, suggesting that some individuals will be greater creative talents than others, irrespective of their dyslexia status.” (p.10)

Erbeli, F., Peng, P., & Rice, M. (2021). No evidence of creative benefit accompanying dyslexia: A meta-analysis. Journal of Learning Disabilities. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222194211010350

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“Wanzek and Vaughn (2007) identified at least 100 sessions of reading intervention (i.e., 20 weeks of daily intervention) as a proxy for interventions that have a positive impact on student achievement. In our studies, lowperforming students might not have worked enough with the RS to reveal large positive effects on their reading achievement.” (p.10)

Peters, M. T., Förster, N., Hebbecker, K., Forthmann, B., & Souvignier, E. (2021). Effects of data-based decision-making on low-performing readers in general education classrooms: Cumulative evidence from six intervention studies. Journal of Learning Disabilities. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222194211011580

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“Intervention: When I think about the influence of your work, I think about how you have either codified practice recommendations or gathered people together for the purpose of identifying what works. Can you say more about that?

Lloyd: Much of that work started in the 1990s when Doug Carnine and I were a part of the Division for Research. People were saying that research can’t prove anything (or, “you can prove anything with research”), so we decided to have the Division for Research take the lead on identifying what trustworthy research had yielded in terms of a better understanding of teaching and learning. We put on a several-year campaign with the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) where we asked divisions to send their chairs of research or knowledge utilization committees to us to determine what we did, in fact, know. Of course, Steve Forness and Ken Kavale were doing their “mega-analysis” (Forness’ term for meta-analysis) work at the time. I invited Steve to do the DR Showcase at CEC in ’93 or ’94. It was a packed room and the title of his presentation was something like “Can 1,000 studies be wrong?” It was great to bring this type of awareness of research to the field. Steve slayed it! Relatedly, I do feel like, as editor of EC [Exceptional Children], I am in a unique position to “bump ideas along.” As such, being the editor of EC feels like an extension of this earlier work I did with DR. I am very honored to have that opportunity.

Intervention: The history of special education can sometimes feel like “one step forward, two steps back.” What are some current trends that are moving special education back and what is the antidote for moving forward?

Lloyd: What I see pushes special education back stems from a misinterpretation of the law. Particularly, the notion of the “supremacy of place”—that place is more important than individualized, educational program—is really hurting us. The second one is accommodations—all we have to do is accommodate these kids, and they will be fine. These two concepts go hand-in-hand. For example, providing a picture schedule can be helpful but it is not instruction; providing a paraeducator to be with a student so that the student can be in the general education setting can be wasteful. Students who have difficulty learning are the students who need the very best instruction we can muster. The antidote to these missteps is preparing teachers to understand this is what your job is. This is what good instruction looks like and feels like. To do that, I believe a clear-eyed look at instruction is paramount. To take that clear-eyed view, one has to make the leap of faith that we can measure outcomes in micro and macro ways so that we can check our egos at the door and try instructional practices, make instructional changes, and see what happens as a result.” (p.326)

Sayeski, K.L. (2021). What can we learn from trustworthy data? An interview with John Wills Lloyd. Intervention in School and Clinic, 56(5), 322–327.

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“Reading comprehension assessments carry considerable weight in schools; however, research challenges their consistency in assessing students with LD in reading (Colenbrander et al., 2017; Keenan & Meenan, 2014). This article explains four steps educators can follow to comprehensively evaluate student performance on reading comprehension assessments. The steps are intended to help educators make sense of how a student’s score on one reading comprehension assessment may not match outcomes on another. Increasing educators’ knowledge on how foundational skills, text types, and assessment methods lead to different student scores is necessary for translating research on comprehension assessments to school practice. Educators who complete the steps outlined in this article will be better equipped to align their practices with empirical research, and thus more prepared to make informed decisions that reflect a student’s instructional needs.” (p.8)

Collins, A.A., & Lindström, E.R. (2021). Making sense of reading comprehension assessments: Guidance for evaluating student performance. Intervention in School and Clinic, First Published 23 Feb 2021. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/10.1177/1053451221994806

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“First, the body of work referred to as “the science of reading” is not an ideology, a philosophy, a political agenda, a one-size-fits-all approach, a program of instruction, or a specific component of instruction. It is the emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don’t learn, and what kind of instruction is most likely to work the best for the most students. Mark Seidenberg’s (2017) book, Language at the Speed of Sight, summarizes that science as well as any.”

Moats, L. (2019). Of ‘hard words’ and straw men: Let’s understand what reading science is really about. Edview 360 Blog Series. https://www.voyagersopris.com/blog/edview360/2019/10/16/lets-understand-what-reading-science-is-really-about

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“It is helpful to begin with a framework in order to contextualise the place of spelling within text writing. A Simple View of Writing1 (SVW) was proposed, which paralleled the Simple View of Reading2 (SVR). The SVR proposes that reading is the product of processes that enable the individual words on the page to be identified and processes that enable the language locked in the words on the page to be understood. According to the SVW, writing is the product of two sets of complex skills: text generation (ideation) and transcription (handwriting/ keyboarding and spelling). Text generation involves the generation and organisation of ideas and their translation into internal verbal language, which then has to be transcribed into words on the page. However, this simple view did not capture the complexity of all the processes that have to be orchestrated for writing sufficiently well, so it was expanded into the Not So Simple View 3, 4 by the addition of self-regulatory processes and working memory as set out in Figure 1.” (p. 78)

Stainthorp, R. (2020). Spelling: From words in the head to word on the page. In James Murphy (Ed.), The researchEd guide to literacy: An evidence-informed guide for teachers (pp. 77-93). Woodbridge, England: John Catt Educational Limited. http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/87806/1/Stainthorp%20Spelling.pdf

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“We explain the methodological approaches and summarize the main research findings on the accuracy of teacher judgments of student characteristics and task difficulties. Furthermore, we empirically demonstrate that teachers tend to overestimate student achievement on standardized tests. We discuss possible moderators of teachers’ judgment accuracy and show the effects on teaching and the learning of students. We present the main theoretical approaches that can explain the empirical findings and describe ways to improve teacher judgment accuracy. In the discussion, we address important implications for research and practice.” (p. 1)

Urhahne, D., & Wijnia, L. (2021). A review on the accuracy of teacher judgments. Educational Research Review, 32, 100374 1-26.

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“Abstract Specific learning disabilities (SLD) identification has consistently been shown to be problematic; however, research has largely focused on SLD identification using test scores only. The present study, therefore, examined SLD identification decisions across identification methods and student evaluation data levels, including test scores, background information, and observations. Participants included 461 school psychologists who were randomly assigned to one of 12 conditions to make identification decisions. Results indicated that response to intervention (RtI) methods resulted in greater identification consistency than ability-achievement discrepancy while pattern of strengths and weaknesses (PSW) resulted in lower identification consistency than ability-achievement discrepancy. However, background information and observation data did not impact SLD identification consistency. Implications for practice and research are also discussed.” (p.63)

 

Maki, K.E., & Adams, S.R. (2020). Specific learning disabilities identification: Do the identification methods and data matter? Learning Disability Quarterly, 43(2) 63–74.

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“ELs with LD continue to have deficits in word reading, vocabulary, and comprehension, even after receiving intensive reading intervention for 1 year. Although there were some positive effects on word reading and the proximal vocabulary measure, these results were in the small-tomoderate range. Furthermore, there were minimal effects on the standardized GMRT-4 subtests of vocabulary and comprehension (MacGinitie et al., 2000). Although the RIA is a phased, multicomponent reading intervention that targets word reading, vocabulary, and comprehension, it had limited impact on reading outcomes for ELs with LD. These findings are aligned with previous research, which suggest that it is difficult to improve reading comprehension outcomes for adolescent ELs, including those with LD (Denton et al., 2008; Hall et al., 2017; Richards-Tutor et al., 2016). The findings are similar to those in previous studies of the skills of struggling readers who are ELs, in that many adolescent ELs may have heterogeneous deficits in reading (Lesaux & Kieffer, 2010), which makes it difficult to design an intervention to address those needs. In the current study, ELs with LD had below average word reading and vocabulary skills, which also may have impacted their ability to comprehend text. Although the current intervention allowed for students to practice using academic vocabulary orally and in writing, oral language instruction was not included in the intervention. ELs with LD may need continued reading intervention that targets word reading, oral language, vocabulary, and comprehension, across multiple school years to make improvements in reading outcomes.” (p.163)

Williams, K.J., & Vaughn, S. (2020). Effects of an intensive reading intervention for ninth-grade English learners with learning disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 43(3), 154–166.

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“This study examined the Double-Deficit Hypothesis (DDH) by classifying students with dyslexia into four distinct groups, comparing group differences on text-level reading tasks, and examining group stability across one school year (fall to spring). Elementary students (N = 109) were administered measures of reading fluency, reading comprehension, and phonological processing across the school year. DDH group membership was determined by the presence of phonological awareness deficits (PD), naming speed deficits (NSD), double-deficits (DD) in both skills, or no deficits for typically developing (TD) readers. The McNemar test was used to determine the stability of DDH group membership. Analysis of covariance was used to compare DDH groups on text-level reading tasks at each time point after controlling for gender. Overall, reading profiles across the fall DDH groups were congruent with DDH theory, but instability was found in the reading patterns and group membership across time. Nearly half (47.71%) of participants changed DDH groups across the school year and reading skill differences between the single-deficit groups dissipated in the spring. Results provide partial support for the DDH subgroups. More research is needed to understand the utility of the DDH subtypes for future assessment and intervention practices.” (p.1)

 

Younger, R., & Meisinger, E.B. (2021). Group stability and reading profiles of students with dyslexia: A Double-Deficit perspective. Learning Disability Quarterly. Online First.

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“Two methods of decoding instruction were compared. Participants were kindergartners who knew letter sounds but could not decode nonwords, M = 5.6 years. The segmented phonation treatment taught students to convert graphemes to phonemes by breaking the speech stream (“sss – aaa – nnn”) before blending. The connected phonation treatment taught students to pronounce phonemes without breaking the speech stream (“sssaaannn”) before blending. The CVC nonwords contained continuant consonants that could be stretched and connected. Following learning to criterion, students completed a transfer task to decode CVCs with stop consonants that are harder to blend because of intrusion from schwa vowels. Results showed that connected phonation training facilitated learning to decode as well as reading nonwords accurately on the transfer task compared to segmented phonation training. An error analysis suggested that breaking between phonemes caused students to forget initial phonemes during blending. Findings suggest how to teach decoding more effectively.” (p.1)

Gonzalez-Frey, S.M., & Ehri, L.C. (2020). Connected phonation is more effective than segmented phonation for teaching beginning readers to decode unfamiliar words. Scientific Studies of Reading, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2020.1776290

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"Writing is a necessary skill that students must develop, and students struggling in writing require early, evidence-based interventions not only to keep up with increasingly complex writing demands at school but also to ward off long-lasting negative consequences that can result from writing difficulty (Graham & Perin, 2007). By pinpointing a student’s specific needs and developing an instructional plan that targets those needs, teachers have an opportunity to ameliorate students’ writing difficulties in an efficient and effective manner. Through the careful examination of student data over time, teachers can adjust writing interventions to match the changing needs of their students and ensure successful attainment of individual writing goals. We encourage educators to follow the steps outlined in this article to conceptualize their student’s writing needs, develop actionable writing intervention plans, and improve the writing outcomes for their students struggling to meet grade-level writing standards.” (p.8)

Lam, E. A., Kunkel, A. K., McKevett, N. M., & McMaster, K. L. (2021). Intensifying instruction to meet students’ early writing needs. Teaching Exceptional Children. https://doi.org/10.1177/00400599211005165

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“Robust evidence supports strong predictive relations between emergent literacy skills assessed in preschool and conventional literacy skills assessed in kindergarten and beyond (e.g., Furnes & Samuelsson, 2010; Lonigan & Shanahan, 2010). This evidence demonstrates that children with well-developed emergent literacy skills in preschool are those who learn to read sooner, and children who learn to read sooner develop greater mastery in both reading comprehension and general academic skills (e.g., Kaplan & Walpole, 2005; Sparks, Patton, & Murdoch, 2014). Conversely, children who have difficulty learning to read have substantial and sustained risk for continued problems in reading and general academic skills. Given this evidence, the imperative to ameliorate the weaknesses in early skills of preschool students and to alter their learning trajectories is compelling. Results from the current studies indicate that explicit, small-group instruction can be an effective tool to support skill gains during the preschool period for children with significant risk of reading acquisition difficulties. … The results of the current studies suggest that it is harder to remediate the skill deficits of children who continue to experience such weaknesses despite exposure to effective classroom practices than those of children with general risk for later academic difficulties. In large measure, this is likely because the children identified as qualifying for our Tier II interventions had lower skills, on average, than many who might be identified as qualifying in the context of a weaker Tier I environment. In studies of intervention with children at general risk of academic difficulties--often because of conditions associated with poverty, at least some of the children make gains as a result of the interventions because these interventions are these children's first sustained exposure to learning opportunities that promote literacy-related skills. In contrast, prior to being evaluated for inclusion in the Tier II subgroup, children in the two studies reported herein had exposure to between three and four months of an effective literacy-focused curriculum. Consequently, identified children's low scores were not a function of lack of exposure to the types of learning opportunities that promote literacy-related skills.” (p.19-20)

Lonigan, C.J., & Phillips, B.M. (2016). Response to instruction in preschool: Results of two randomized studies with children at significant risk of reading difficulties. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108(1), 114–129. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4746015/pdf/nihms-691239.pdf

 

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“The study randomly assigned Head Start classes in rural Tennessee to one of three conditions. Some were assigned to use a program called Bright Beginnings, which had a strong pre-literacy focus. Some were assigned to use Creative Curriculum, a popular constructive/developmental curriculum with little emphasis on literacy. The remainder were assigned to a control group, in which teachers used whatever methods they ordinarily used. … The results immediately after the preschool program were not astonishing. Bright Beginnings students scored best on literacy and language measures (average effect size = +0.21 for literacy, +0.11 for language), though the differences were not significant at the school level. There were no differences at all between Creative Curriculum and control schools. … . In the Bright Beginnings/Creative Curriculum study the outcomes were measured again when students were in third grade, four years after they left school. … On third grade reading, former Bright Beginnings students now scored significantly better than former controls, and the difference was statistically significant and substantial (effect size = +0.27). … Whatever the reason, the evidence suggests that effects of particular preschool approaches may show up later than the end of preschool. This observation, and specifically the Bright Beginnings evaluation, may indicate that in the long run it matters a great deal how students are taught in preschool.”

 

Slavin, R. (2017). Little sleepers: Long-term effects of preschool. Huffington Post, 28/9. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/59ccf2efe4b0b99ee4a9cad9

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“According to earlier studies, reading abilities develop as sequential stages by acquiring mastery in reading constructs (Chall, 1983; Frith, 1985; Spear-Swerling and Sternberg, 1994). Chall (1983), in particular, argued that reading mastery follows five stages. Firstly, stage 0–1 involves pre-reading and text decoding phase in which children use visual, auditory and information processing mechanisms to acquire phonological awareness and start decoding words for recognizing printed materials. Once these stages are mastered, children move on to stage 2 where fluency of literal reading emerges, which increases their reading accuracy. Then, stage 3 involves reading in relation to finding meanings of contextual knowledge through acquiring new vocabulary and more advanced comprehension. Thereafter, children emerge into stage 4 during which children read for extending perspectives and begin to compare and contrast within texts. Finally, in stage 5, with added skills acquired thus far, reading occurs in a synthesized process for more complex text evaluation along with critical thinking skills. For this complete mastery of reading, essential constructs of reading abilities – phonological awareness, word recognition, fluency, vocabulary acquisition, and comprehension – cannot be underestimated in any parts of the reading process.” (p.1)

Dongil, K., An, Y., Shin, H-Y.G., Lee, J., & Park, S. (2020). A meta-analysis of single-subject reading intervention studies for struggling readers: using Improvement Rate Difference (IRD), Heliyon, 6(11), 1-8.

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“The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of a brief experimental intervention that integrated spelling practice into a systematic phonics approach to initial reading instruction for at-risk children. The effects of this intervention were studied by means of a randomized controlled trial design that compared the experimental condition to two trained control conditions and a further business-as-usual condition. The two trained control conditions were phonics-based interventions without spelling but with additional time spent on letter-sound practice. One emphasized letter-sound production, the other letter-sound recognition. Participants were 65 kindergartners with limited letter knowledge and no reading skills. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. Children were taught individually in four 20-min sessions in all three trained conditions. Analyses of the gains in abilities from pre- to posttest revealed that the integrated spelling condition was associated with significantly larger gains in phoneme awareness, spelling, and reading than were either the trained letter-sound recognition condition (d = 0.38–0.86) or the business-as-usual condition (d = 0.54–1.21). The results also favored the integrated spelling condition over the trained letter-sound production condition. Regarding the two trained control conditions, the letter-sound production condition was associated with slightly better reading and spelling outcomes than the letter-sound recognition condition. These findings indicate that integrated spelling may improve systematic phonics for children at risk of early reading difficulties, and that activities that encourage letter-sound production may be more beneficial than those which only require letter-sound recognition.” (p.

Møller, H.L., Mortensen, J.O., & Elbro, C. (2021) Effects of integrated spelling in phonics instruction for at-risk children in kindergarten. Reading & Writing Quarterly, DOI: 10.1080/10573569.2021.1907638

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“Structured literacy practices are particularly important in the early grades when students are developing foundational skills for decoding that support accurate and fluent word reading (Ehri & Flugman, 2018; Spear-Swerling, 2019a). Given the inherent complexities of the English language, however, teachers cannot rely on their own reading skills to know how to teach students to read (Washburn, Joshi & Binks-Cantrell, 2011). Rather, they need direct instruction themselves to acquire this specialized knowledge (Moats, 2014). Teachers must develop expertise about “basic language constructs,” including “phonological and phonemic awareness, the alphabetic principle and phonics instruction, and morphology and morpheme awareness” in order to successfully teach all students to read (Washburn, Binks-Cantrell, Joshi, Martin-Chang & Arrow, 2016, p. 8). Professional literacy organizations, including the IDA (2018) and the International Literacy Association (ILA, 2017a), have developed research-based standards to guide how teachers should be prepared with the knowledge they need to deliver effective reading instruction. The IDA’s (2018) Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading in particular focus explicitly on the knowledge and skills teachers need in order to deliver structured literacy in the classroom. Despite the availability of research-based teacher preparation standards and the strong evidence supporting the efficacy of structured literacy practices, many preservice teacher candidates are not exposed to the scientific knowledge base that indicates how students learn to read (National Council on Teacher Quality [NCTQ], 2018, 2020). As a result, many studies have shown that teachers frequently lack the content knowledge necessary to effectively teach reading using structured literacy practices (Joshi, Binks, Hougan, Dahlgren, Ocker-Dean & Smith, 2009; Lyon & Weiser, 2009; Moats, 1994; Moats & Foorman, 2003; Spear-Swerling & Cheesman, 2012; Walsh, Glaser & Wilcox, 2006; Washburn, et al., 2011; Washburn et al., 2016). It is therefore essential that in-service teachers have access to effective professional development programs that provide them with the research-based knowledge and skills necessary to address the needs of beginning readers using structured literacy methods.” (p. 2-3)

 

Toglia, M. (2021). Examining the impact of one professional development program in structured literacy on teacher knowledge: a quasi-experimental study. Drexel University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 28320320.

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“Advocates of the science of reading have argued that (a) teacher preparation programs do not provide adequate preparation to teach code‐related reading skills; (b) as a result, teachers lack knowledge of this area of literacy development; and (c) without that knowledge, teachers are unable to effectively teach students to read. In this integrative literature review, we assessed the research evidence for the first claim. We identified 27 studies examining preservice general elementary preparation in code‐related instruction, including phonological/phonemic awareness, phonics/decoding, spelling/orthography, and morphology, published between 2001 and 2020. We analyzed the studies to determine (a) how preservice knowledge of code‐related instruction has been studied, (b) how preservice teachers’ literacy knowledge was defined and assessed in these studies, and (c) primary findings across studies and implications for teacher preparation and future research. We found that the research base largely relied on quantitative multiple‐choice assessments that privileged linguistic content knowledge over pedagogical and situated knowledge. The body of research was constrained by narrow definitions of science and knowledge, repetition across studies in methods and data sources, limited samples that overlooked diversity in preservice teachers and elementary contexts, and methodological problems. Thus, we caution against considering the issue of teacher preparation settled, and we offer recommendations for teacher preparation programs and directions for future research.” (p. 1)

 

Tortorelli, L.S., Lupo, S.M., & Wheatley, B.C. (2021). Examining teacher preparation for code‐related reading instruction: An integrated literature review. Read Res Q, 00(00), 1– 21. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.396

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“Although much is known of the impact of systematic reading instruction on writing performance and of systematic writing instruction on reading comprehension, little is known regarding the reading–writing connection based on independent reading and writing. This systematic review identified 13 experimental studies published between 1970 and 2019 that purported to investigate the impact of independent reading on writing performance and of independent writing on reading comprehension. Findings conclusively suggest that independent reading enhances the overall quality of narrative and descriptive writing and increases output, mechanics, spelling accuracy, content, grammatical accuracy, and text organization. However, independent reading failed to enhance vocabulary ratio, length of T-units and sentences, and sentence structure at a statistically significant level. Moreover, independent writing improves literal reading comprehension for beginning, low-performing, and at-risk students, and improves literal and inferential reading comprehension for normally achieving students. The findings suggest that the writing-to-reading connection may be moderated by the level of language proficiency.

Jouhar, M.R., & Rupley, W.H. (2021). The reading–writing connection based on independent reading and writing: A systematic review. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 37(2), 136-156. DOI:10.1080/10573569.2020.1740632

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“Reading acquisition has been suggested to drive the lateralization of the face processing system to the right cerebral hemisphere. To investigate whether this developmental co-dependency has a behavioural cost, at least in the short run, we tested whether learning to read reduced face recognition ability. In a longitudinal design, 82 children (5–7 years) were tested twice, at the beginning and end of their first year in school. In both sessions, visual letter recognition, word recognition, sentence reading, and immediate face recognition were tested. Reliable increases were found across all four measures, suggesting no absolute cost of literacy acquisition on face processing efficiency. In addition, we found no evidence suggesting a negative relationship between literacy acquisition and face recognition performance. Indeed, our results were most supportive of the null hypothesis suggesting independence in the development of literacy and face processing skills on the behavioural level.” (p. 1)

 

Kühn, C.D., Wilms, I.L., Dalrymple, K.A., Gerlach, C., & Starrfelt, R. (2021). Face recognition in beginning readers: Investigating the potential relationship between reading and face recognition during the first year of school. Visual Cognition, DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2021.1884151

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“For students with disabilities, literacy is crucial to future independence given that nearly every aspect of adult life—from following a bus schedule to filling out a job application to deciphering the instructions on a medication bottle—is dependent upon the ability to read. Extensive research has demonstrated that children with ID learn to read using the same evidence-based strategies employed with other struggling readers (Allor et al., 2010; Bradford et al., 2006; Browder et al., 2013; Burgoyne et al., 2012; Lemons et al., 2012). Yet, many teachers have not been trained to apply what is known about effective reading instruction with children with ID (Ricci & Osipova, 2018) and often resort to limited, functional sight-word programs (Browder et al., 2009).” (p.2)

Whitbread, K.M., Knapp, S.L., & Bengtson, M. (2021). Teaching foundational reading skills to students with intellectual disabilities. Teaching Exceptional Students, Online First, First Published 7 Jan 2021.https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/10.1177/0040059920976674

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“Dyslexia has a strong online presence. Around the world, numerous organizations and schools provide support for parents, educators, and individuals with dyslexia. Although the quality and availability of assessments vary from country to country, one universal factor that emerged is that the selected cognitive assessments should measure more than just phonological processing or a large number of students will be excluded who should receive services (Brady, 2019). Thus, across all languages, there is not one single cause of dyslexia and multiple factors must be considered (Fletcher, Lyon, Fuchs, & Barnes, 2019). A further consideration is that diagnostic accuracy is also affected by the presence of poverty, disadvantage, a lack of opportunity, and language and dialectal variations (Washington & Lee-Jones, 2020). Many countries are basing their practices on established knowledge derived from peer-reviewed studies, yet others appear to be using advertised practices that are not backed by scientific research. In addition, countries still exist where students are not identified and do not receive evidence-based early interventions. Despite the clear evidence supporting the need for systematic phonics instruction, controversy still exists regarding the teaching of phonics and the role that phonics should play in reading instruction. Thus, both teachers and parents require information about the need for systematic, explicit reading and spelling instruction. Teachers around the world also feel under prepared to help students with dyslexia. As a final thought, our efforts must increase to promote universal understanding of dyslexia among both teachers and parents, so that children are not punished or chastised for their difficulties learning to read and spell. Instead, they should be understood, supported, and helped.” (p.15)

 

Mather, N., White, J., & Youman, M. (2020). Dyslexia around the world: A snapshot. Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 25(1), 1-17. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nancy-Mather/publication/338910143_Dyslexia_Around_the_World_A_Snapshot/links/5ec2c9bb299bf1c09ac54328/Dyslexia-Around-the-World-A-Snapshot.pdf

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“Early literacy skills play an important role in children’s success in school. Especially important to better literacy skills may be the quality of the classroom environment (emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support) across the early years of schooling. This study used an a priori threshold of quality approach to understanding the possible link between the number of years of better classroom quality over four years, from kindergarten through third grade, in relation to children’s literacy skills by third grade. This study examined a representative sample of 1292 children followed from birth who lived in low-wealth rural counties in the United States. These children were followed into school with classroom observations conducted each year from kindergarten through third grade and literacy related achievement measures in pre-kindergarten and third grade. Findings suggested that even after controlling for poverty related variables, the quality of the home environment, school entry literacy skills, and teacher rated literacy instruction, children who had more years of better classroom quality had higher third grade literacy scores. Additionally, we found an interaction effect, suggesting that children who entered kindergarten with lower emergent literacy skills benefited more from a greater number of years of better classroom quality in relation to reading comprehension in third grade. Thus, more years of better classroom quality may help in narrowing the gap between those who enter kindergarten with higher literacy skills and those who enter with lower literacy skills.” (p. 531)

Vernon-Feagans, L., Mokrova, I.L., Carr, R.C., Garrett-Peters, P.T., & Burchinal, M.R. (2019). Cumulative years of classroom quality from kindergarten to third grade: Prediction to children’s third grade literacy skills. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 47, 531-540,

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“So then, “does DI work?” It depends on what is meant by “work.” If one sets aside the deeply flawed design of much of the DI research, some studies in this review suggest that DI might allow children to make small, temporary gains on measures of specific word-level reading skills. However, widely accepted contemporary theories of reading view reading as a complex act of meaning making undertaken in wide-ranging cultural and social contexts. DI does not claim to account for this complexity. Even if DI produced meaningful changes in a child’s ability to match letters with sounds—and DI research is mixed even on this issue—this is still insufficient evidence to support the claim that DI “works.” A reading approach that works supports students’ engagement with rich, connected texts as they make sense with and from what they read. If we wish students to become engaged readers they need regular opportunities to read connected, authentic texts. Ultimately, students learn what they are taught and DI’s emphasis on low-level skills limits students’ affordances for learning what readers actually do in the process of reading meaningful texts. From this point of view, DI not only does not work, it will likely exacerbate the learning difficulties endemic in high-poverty schools and special education classrooms where DI is most often used.” (p.49-50)

Eppley, K., & Dudley-Marling, C. (2019) Does direct instruction work?: A critical assessment of direct instruction research and its theoretical perspective. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 16(1), 35-54, DOI: 10.1080/15505170.2018.1438321

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“The authors investigated the influence of teaching letter names and sounds in isolation or in the context of storybook reading on preschool children’s early literacy learning and engagement during instruction. Alphabet instruction incorporated paired-associate learning of correspondences between letter names and sounds. In decontextualized treatment activities, children practiced saying the letter names and sounds that matched single letters presented on cards and in letter books, and speeded recognition of taught letters. In contextualized treatment activities, letter names and sounds were taught and practiced during oral reading of storybooks, recognizing letters in children’s printed names, and speeded recognition of taught letters in words. Subjects were 127 preschool children, including 48 dual-language learners, in five public schools with low-income eligibility thresholds. Children were randomly assigned within classrooms to small groups randomly assigned to one of the two treatments. Research assistants provided 10 weeks of instruction, 12–15 minutes per day, four days per week. Both groups made statistically significant growth from pretest to posttest on measures of alphabet learning and phoneme awareness. Children in the decontextualized treatment small groups had statistically significantly higher gains than did children in the contextualized treatment small groups on taught letter sounds and phonemic awareness measured by identification of initial sounds in spoken words. There were no treatment differences between dual-language learners and non-dual-language learners. Children’s engagement during instruction was statistically significantly higher in the decontextualized treatment. Findings support explicit decontextualized alphabet instruction emphasizing the relation between verbal letter labels and letter forms that enlists pairedassociate learning processes.” (p. 573)

Roberts, T.A., & Sanders, P.F. (2021). Preschool instruction in letter names and sounds: Does contextualized or decontextualized instruction matter? Reading Research Quarterly, 55(4), 573–600.

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“Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is a systematic, ongoing assessment framework that allows special educators to monitor students’ progress and determine the need for instructional adaptations. Jenkins and colleagues examined the accuracy and timeliness of six different schedules of CBM progress monitoring (PM). The authors found that weekly and intermittent PM schedules were similarly accurate and timely. This study replicated and extended the work of Jenkins and colleagues by examining the accuracy and timeliness of different PM schedules for 51 students with disabilities. Results indicated that the accuracy and timeliness of the PM schedules for the current sample was poorer than the accuracy and timeliness reported by Jenkins and colleagues. In line with the results of the original study, however, these results indicated that intermittent PM schedules sufficiently predicted student true growth compared to weekly PM schedule.” (p.

Gesel, S. A., & Lemons, C. J. (2020). Comparing schedules of progress monitoring using curriculum-based measurement in reading: A replication study. Exceptional Children, 87(1), 92–112. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014402920924845

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“Over the past decade, parent advocacy groups led a grassroots movement resulting in most states adopting dyslexia-specific legislation, with many states mandating the use of the Orton-Gillingham approach to reading instruction. Orton-Gillingham is a direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive approach to reading for students with or at risk for word-level reading disabilities (WLRD). Evidence from a prior synthesis and What Works Clearinghouse reports yielded findings lacking support for the effectiveness of Orton-Gillingham interventions. We conducted a meta-analysis to examine the effects of Orton-Gillingham reading interventions on the reading outcomes of students with or at risk for WLRD. Findings suggested Orton-Gillingham reading interventions do not statistically significantly improve foundational skill outcomes (i.e., phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, spelling; effect size [ES] = 0.32; p = .24), although the mean ES was positive in favor of Orton-Gillingham-based approaches. Similarly, there were not significant differences for vocabulary and comprehension outcomes (ES = 0.14; p = .57) for students with or at risk for WLRD. More high-quality, rigorous research with larger samples of students with WLRD is needed to fully understand the effects of Orton-Gillingham interventions on the reading outcomes for this population.” (p.1)

Stevens, E. A., Austin, C., Moore, C., Scammacca, N., Boucher, A. N., & Vaughn, S. (2021). Current state of the evidence: examining the effects of Orton-Gillingham reading interventions for students with or at risk for word-level reading disabilities. Exceptional Children. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014402921993406

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“RR seems to accelerate the reading fluency of students with LD but only under certain conditions, that is, when an explicit model of fluent reading is presented, when students are offered multiple opportunities to read and reread familiar text with corrective feedback, and when guidelines are established for increasing text difficulty. Chard et al.’s message, in short, was that RR’s strength and value seem to pivot on the specifics of its design and implementation, and research provides program developers and practitioners with important design specifications. … we mean to say that, despite the helpful prior research and development, many questions about RR remain unanswered. In addition to those just mentioned, for example, how much text at what level of difficulty should be part of RR? Should it occur at the sentence, phrase, or word level; and should these levels be considered mutually exclusive, or might they be combined in some manner? How can practitioners promote transfer from reading familiar texts to unfamiliar texts? More work is necessary to establish procedures to strengthen RR’s efficacy and to broaden its application to a variety of school settings.” (p.157-158)

Fuchs, D., Cho, E., Toste, J., Fuchs, L.S., Gilbert, J.K., McMaster, K.L., Svenson, E., &Thompson, A. (2021). A quasiexperimental evaluation of two versions of first-grade Pals: one with and one without repeated reading. Exceptional Children; 87(2), 141-162.

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“Reading for understanding depends in part on word recognition and reading fluency (i.e., the fast, effortless, automatic reading of connected text; Laberge & Samuels, 1974). Although many educators believe that fluency develops naturally as children read silently and become proficient at word-level reading (cf. E. Stevens et al., 2017), there is substantial evidence that such proficiency does not guarantee fluency (L. Fuchs et al., 2001). Rather, some children require explicit instruction in this regard (National Reading Panel [NRP], 2000), and repeated reading (RR) is one of the more commonly used fluency-building strategies (NRP, 2000).” (p. 141)

Fuchs, D., Cho, E., Toste, J., Fuchs, L.S., Gilbert, J.K., McMaster, K.L., Svenson, E., &Thompson, A. (2021). A quasiexperimental evaluation of two versions of first-grade Pals: one with and one without repeated reading. Exceptional Children; 87(2), 141-162.

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“A commonly cited use of Learning Styles theory is to use information from self-report questionnaires to assign learners into one or more of a handful of supposed styles (e.g., Visual, Auditory, Converger) and then design teaching materials that match the supposed styles of individual students. A number of reviews, going back to 2004, have concluded that there is currently no empirical evidence that this “matching instruction” improves learning, and it could potentially cause harm. Despite this lack of evidence, survey research and media coverage suggest that belief in this use of Learning Styles theory is high amongst educators. However, it is not clear whether this is a global pattern, or whether belief in Learning Styles is declining as a result of the publicity surrounding the lack of evidence to support it. It is also not clear whether this belief translates into action. Here we undertake a systematic review of research into belief in, and use of, Learning Styles amongst educators. We identified 37 studies representing 15,405 educators from 18 countries around the world, spanning 2009 to early 2020. Self-reported belief in matching instruction to Learning Styles was high, with a weighted percentage of 89.1%, ranging from 58 to 97.6%. There was no evidence that this belief has declined in recent years, for example 95.4% of trainee (pre-service) teachers agreed that matching instruction to Learning Styles is effective. Self-reported use, or planned use, of matching instruction to Learning Styles was similarly high. There was evidence of effectiveness for educational interventions aimed at helping educators understand the lack of evidence for matching in learning styles, with self-reported belief dropping by an average of 37% following such interventions. From a pragmatic perspective, the concerning implications of these results are moderated by a number of methodological aspects of the reported studies. Most used convenience sampling with small samples and did not report critical measures of study quality. It was unclear whether participants fully understood that they were specifically being asked about the matching of instruction to Learning Styles, or whether the questions asked could be interpreted as referring to a broader interpretation of the theory. These findings suggest that the concern expressed about belief in Learning Styles may not be fully supported by current evidence, and highlight the need to undertake further research on the objective use of matching instruction to specific Learning Styles.”

Newton, P.M., & Salvi, A. (2020). .How common is belief in the learning styles neuromyth, and does it matter? A pragmatic systematic review. Frontiers in Education, 5. DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2020.602451

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“After the report and the creation of IES, the WWC began as a clearinghouse for summarizing educational research using an inclusive approach, but it shifted to using the threshold approach as the WWC evolved. … we would recommend that a WWC evaluation be considered one piece of evidence. However, it is not definitive and other, more inclusive empirical syntheses may offer a more balanced and complete perspective on the effectiveness of a program or practice. In general, we prefer empirical syntheses that are more inclusive and treat variations in study design as moderators of effectiveness, for which Stockard and Wood provide an example. Many educators may find the WWC practice guides more useful because of their attention to a broader range of evidence and issues related to successful implementation. For educators, the key question is less about a categorical determination of effective versus ineffective programs, and more about which intervention principles are associated with effective outcomes and for which students a particular program may be effective. These questions require stepping beyond empirical evaluations of programs and considering contextual, sociodemographic, and school factors related to implementation and how they might affect the effectiveness of a program. The bottom line is that no single source should be considered a basis for determining the effectiveness of an educational program.”

Fletcher, J. (2016). Determining ”Best Available Evidence." Education Research Matters, October 2016 https://www.texasldcenter.org/education-research-matters/item/october-2016

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“Olagbaju’s (2019) study examined the effect of Direct Instruction strategy and Cognitive styles on senior secondary school students’ achievement in summary writing. … The results revealed significant main effect of treatment on student’s achievement in summary writing, with the Direct Instructional Strategy being more effective at improving students’ achievement in summary writing than the conventional method. … This study investigated the effects of three summary writing strategies; Direct Instruction, Cognitive Strategy and ReadTest Strategy on senior secondary school student’s achievement in English language summary writing. The results showed that the experimental group performed better with Direct Instruction strategy being the most effective for teaching students summary writing.” (p.14, 1)

Okome, E.O., Danner, R.B., & Ofuani, F.N. (2021). Effects of three instructional strategies on senior secondary school students’ achievement in summary writing. Journal of Teaching and Teacher Education, 9(1), 11-20.

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“Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have comorbid learning difficulties in reading comprehension, an essential skill in accessing any area of the curriculum. The aim of this systematic review is to analyze the effectiveness of reading comprehension interventions in students with ASD. … After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 25 studies were selected. The content analysis of these studies shows that when specific interventions are carried out, students with ASD are able to take advantage of the instruction they receive and compensate for difficulties. Understanding inferences and the main idea of the text are the most common reading comprehension topics, and direct instruction is the most widely-used intervention method in the reviewed studies. … The results show that a large number of studies used direct instruction, some of them as the only technique [27, 30–33, 40, 41] and others as a part of the intervention [26]. Direct instruction consists of a teaching approach based on breaking down tasks into sequences of more concrete steps with the aim that students acquire the different skills worked in sequence. It is an approach that emphasizes the structuring of the teaching processes through scripts that guide the teaching process. The results of this review confirm that, according to previous reviews [14,20], this is a positive methodology for teaching school content to children with ASD, considering that these children need individualized attention, and that this systematic methodology is particularly well adapted to the order and structuring needs of students with ASD.” (p.1, 8)

Tárraga-Mínguez, R., Gómez-Marí, I., & Sanz-Cervera, P. (2021). Interventions for improving reading comprehension in children with ASD: A systematic review. Behavioral Sciences, 11(3). https://doi.org/10.3390/ bs11010003

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“The two major medical classifications (ICD-11 and DSM-5), define diagnostic criteria for developmental dyslexia that partly differ and that are open to multiple interpretations, inducing different prevalence estimates and discordant cases. The present study evaluates the prevalence of developmental dyslexia for the first time in France in an extensive population representative of French sixth-graders (N=25,000), investigating the consequences of using one classification or the other, and of the different ways of implementing each criterion. Moreover, students diagnosed with dyslexia were compared with the reference population in the other available characteristics. Overall, prevalence estimates ranged from 1.3% to 17.2% depending on the criteria and thresholds used. A reasonable set of criteria and thresholds (-1.5 SD below mean for reading score, -0.5 SD for achievement) yielded a prevalence of dyslexia in France of 6.6% according to DSM-5 and 3.5% according to ICD-11. Factors that had the greatest influence on prevalence estimates were the criteria relative to 1) IQ, and 2) impact on academic achievement. DSM-5, being more liberal than ICD-11 on the IQ criterion, included more cases with relatively low IQ and thus yielded higher prevalence estimates. Compared with the reference population, children with dyslexia were more likely to be boys, to be schooled in a disadvantaged area, and to have lower SES, IQ, and math results. Our results emphasize that the choice of classification and the operationalization of specific criteria have a large impact on who is diagnosed with dyslexia.” (p.

Di Folco, C., Guez, A., Peyre, H., & Ramus, F. (2020). Epidemiology of developmental dyslexia: A comparison of DSM-5 and ICD-11 criteria. medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.18.20248189

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“In this study, primary school students with developmental disabilities were exposed to computer assisted reading instruction lessons focused on letter sound correspondence and sound blending. Student performance was measured using weekly curriculum-based measures of reading, specifically, letter sound fluency and first sound fluency. Although much of the data were highly variable, generally students made little or no progress as measured through progress data collected by ALL and weekly CBM-R.” (p.138)

Snyder, S.M. (2020). An investigation of computer assisted reading instruction to teach phonics skills to young students with developmental disabilities. DADD Online Journal, Journal of the Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities, Council for Exceptional Children, 7(1), 130-143. http://www.daddcec.com/uploads/2/5/2/0/2520220/doj_7_2020.pdf#page=130

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“Often, people will ask why it is important to use specific proven programs. Why not figure out the characteristics of proven programs, and encourage tutors to use those consensus strategies? The answer is that because the details matter. … We might come to agreement about factors such as group size, qualifications of tutors, amount of PD, and so on, but dozens of details also have to be right. An effective program has to get right crucial features, such as the nature and quality of training and coaching, student materials and software, instructional strategies, feedback and correction strategies when students make errors, frequency and nature of assessments, means of motivating and recognizing student progress, means of handling student absences, links between tutors and teachers and between tutors and parents, and much more. Getting any of these strategies wrong could greatly diminish the effectiveness of tutoring.”

Slavin, R. (2020). The details matter. That’s why proven tutoring programs work better than general guidelines. Robert Slavin's Blog. https://robertslavinsblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/10/the-details-matter-thats-why-proven-tutoring-programs-work-better-than-general-guidelines/

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“The use of a pedagogical practice known as ‘differentiation’ has become more common over time as educators have sought to respond to increases in the diversity of students enrolling in their local school. However, there are now so many misperceptions and definitional inconsistencies that it is difficult to know what is being enacted in the name of differentiation or indeed what is being researched internationally. The aim of this scoping review was to identify key characteristics of and conceptualisations within peer‐reviewed empirical research on differentiation published between 1999 and 2019, as well as to map the ways in which this body of research was produced. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were used to inform a systematic screening process and resulted in a final sample of 34 articles focusing on differentiation in regular schools. Half were conducted in the United States and most in the elementary school phase. Survey and case study designs were dominant, as was research of and influences on teacher practice. Only a small group of studies focused on differentiation's impact on student outcomes and these typically only examined specific elements of differentiation or its use in specific academic domains. The diversity of focus and methodological approaches across the 34 studies prevents comparison of findings and weakens the evidential basis to make claims of either differentiation's effectiveness or indeed its ineffectiveness. The review concludes with recommendations for future research and practice in this important area of practice.” (p.1)

Graham, L.J., de Bruin, K., Lassig, C., & Spandagou, I. (2020). State‐of‐the‐art review: A scoping review of 20 years of research on differentiation: Investigating conceptualisation, characteristics, and methods used. Review of Education, Early View.

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“In the journal article Did DI do it? The impact of a programme designed to improve literacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in remote schools, Guenther and Osborne (2020) compare schoolwide NAPLAN reading scale scores for 25 Very Remote Indigenous schools implementing Direct Instruction through the Flexible Literacy for Remote Primary Schools Program (‘Flexible Literacy’ or ‘the program’) with those for 118 Very Remote Indigenous schools not involved with the program, to assert the program has not improved literacy outcomes. Good to Great Schools Australia (GGSA) undertook an analysis of the same school data for Reading, Writing, Spelling and Grammar and Punctuation scores. Our findings contradict theirs. In all areas, schools participating in the program show significant growth compared with all Australian and all Very Remote Indigenous schools. In Reading, schools involved in the program from 2015 to 2017 averaged 124% growth, while the average growth for comparable ages was 19 and 34% for Australian and Very Remote Indigenous schools, respectively. In Grammar and Punctuation schools involved in the program in the same period grew 180%, whilst growth for Australian schools was 15%, and for Very Remote Indigenous schools, 28%. These contrasting results illustrate the importance of evaluating growth to assess the impact of educational programs, rather than achievement alone, particularly in the case of Very Remote Indigenous schools where achievement levels are far below Australian grade levels. Guenther and Osborne’s comparison of achievement across schools rather than measuring growth within schools obscures real gains and is misleading.” (p.1)

“Hattie (2009, p. 205) attributed an effect size of 0.59 to Direct Instruction, commenting:

Every year I present lectures to teacher education students and find that they are already indoctrinated with the mantra ‘constructivism good, direct instruction bad’. When I show them the results of these meta-analyses, they are stunned, and they often become angry at having been given an agreed set of truths and commandments against direct instruction. Too often, what the critics mean by direct instruction is didactic teacher-led talking from the front; this should not be confused with the very successful ‘Direct Instruction’ method as first outlined by Adams and Engelmann (1996). Direct Instruction has a bad name for the wrong reasons, especially when it is confused with didactic teaching, as the underlying principles of Direct Instruction place it among the most successful outcomes.” (p.1-2)

Pearson, N. (2020). Yes, DI did it: the impact of Direct Instruction on literacy outcomes for Very Remote Indigenous schools. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1017/jie.2020.20

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“Unfortunately, the word ‘synthetic’ has connotations other than this technical usage. It can mean artificial or man-made as against natural; nylon or plastic, for example. It should not be surprising, then, that it is to this meaning that those not closely connected to scientific reading research might be drawn. In our experience, it is a distinction that many teachers have not encountered. This creates fertile ground for discussion to be occurring at cross-purposes. This particularly applies in the context of the proposed Phonics Screening Check, which includes non-words or pseudowords to test for generalisation of letter sound learning (poth, shan, veen, etc). It almost begs the (false) assumption that the underlying idea is to teach and test artificial, synthetic, non-real, pseudowords. Hence, the myth is born that synthetic phonics involves teaching phonics by teaching pseudowords. This is simply not true and those teachers in the UK who have attempted to teach possible pseudowords that might crop up in the check are inadvertently distorting the purpose of the whole exercise: to test whether their regular phonics instruction is sufficiently effective so that it generalises to previously unseen pseudowords, and provides all children with the critical decoding skills they need to be effective readers.”

Wheldall, K., Snow, P., & Graham, L. (2017). Explainer: What does the term ‘synthetic phonics’ really mean? Learning Difficulties Australia Bulletin, 49(1), 6-7.

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“In general, the reviewed literature suggested that, in the absence of extensive research, it is appropriate to adapt practices proven to be effective for native English speakers with significant cognitive disabilities to support the English proficiency of individual learners.” (p. 1)

Liu, K. K., Thurlow, M. L., Lazarus, S. S., & Dosedel, M. (2020). A literature review of evidence-based literacy assessment and instruction practices for English learners with significant cognitive disabilities (NCEO Report 422). National Center on Educational Outcomes.

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“A meta-analysis of the resulting 49 studies corrected by Hedge’s g showed that motivational reading interventions were associated with an effect size of g = 0.20, p < .001 on reading achievement outcomes and an effect size of g = 0.30, p < .001 on reading motivation outcomes. However, analysis of funnel plots strongly suggested that publication bias was present in reporting of reading achievement outcomes. Analysis of moderators indicated that effect sizes varied significantly depending on content approaches to intervention, intensity of training given to intervention providers, study quality, and type of measures used. However, effect sizes did not vary significantly depending on group size or student population (e.g., age, at-risk status).” (p.1)

McBreen, M., & Savage, R. (2020). The impact of motivational reading instruction on the reading achievement and motivation of students: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Educ Psychol Rev https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09584-4

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“Having a good teacher as opposed to an average teacher for three to four years in a row would, by available estimates, close the income achievement gap. Closing the black-white achievement gap, which is a little larger than the average income gap, would take good teachers three and a half to five years in a row” (Hanushek, 2014, p. 85).

Hanushek, E. (2014). Boosting teacher effectiveness. In Chester E. Finn and Richard Sousa (eds.), What lies ahead for America’s children and their schools. Hoover Institution Press

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“We investigated the contributions of multiple strands of factors—individual characteristics (struggling reader status, working memory, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, knowledge-based inference, theory of mind, comprehension monitoring), a text feature (narrative vs. expository genre), and question types (literal and inferential)—to one’s performance on discourse comprehension in oral language (listening comprehension), using data from 529 second graders. Results from explanatory item response models revealed that substantial variance in listening comprehension was attributable to differences between items, texts, and children, respectively. Narrative versus expository genre distinctions explained almost all of the variance attributable to text differences. In contrast, literal versus inferential question distinctions did not explain item responses after accounting for text and reading comprehension status. However, there was a moderation between struggling reader status and question type such that struggling readers had a slightly higher (2%) probability of getting inferential questions right compared to typically developing readers, after accounting for individual and text factors. Struggling readers have a lower probability of accurate item responses than typically developing readers, but the difference disappeared once language and cognitive skills (e.g., working memory, vocabulary) were taken into consideration. The effects of text genre and question type on item responses did not differ as a function of children’s language and cognitive skills. Overall, these results underscore the importance of considering individual, text, and assessment factors for children’s performance in listening comprehension.” (p.1)

Kim, YS.G., & Petscher, Y. (2020). Influences of individual, text, and assessment factors on text/discourse comprehension in oral language (listening comprehension). Ann. of Dyslexia https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-020-00208-8

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“I propose the following baseline benchmarks for effect sizes from causal studies of preK–12 education interventions evaluating effects on student achievement: less than 0.05 is small, 0.05 to less than 0.20 is medium, and 0.20 or greater is large. These proposed benchmarks are based on the distribution of 1,942 effect sizes from 747 RCTs evaluating education interventions with standardized test outcomes (for source data and coding details, see Appendix A available on the journal website). As shown in Table 1, these values divide the overall distribution, with a median of 0.10 SD, into approximate thirds (37th and 69th percentiles). If calling an effect size of 0.20 SD large seems overly enthusiastic, consider this: By fifth grade, student achievement improves about 0.40 SD or less over the course of an academic year (Bloom et al., 2008), and schools only account for around 40% of these achievement gains (Chingos et al. 2015; Konstantopolus & Hedges, 2008; Luyten et al., 2017). Formal schooling, our society’s defining education intervention, is delivered over more than 1,000 hours a year, costs over $10,000 per student, and barely qualifies as producing large effects in middle and high school. Alternatively, raising student achievement by 0.20 SD results in a 2% increase in annual lifetime earnings on average (Chetty et al., 2014). Others might object to characterizing a 0.05 SD as a medium-sized effect, but raising academic achievement is difficult. One in four effect sizes from RCTs of education interventions with standardized test outcomes described in Table 1 are zero or negative, with many more small, positive effects that cannot be distinguished from zero. Even this likely understates the failure rate among interventions given publication bias against null findings. These baseline benchmarks provide a simple, general heuristic but in doing so, average across heterogeneity in effects related to study characteristics such as sample size, subject, grade level, and test type. Thus, they provide an informed starting point that should be adapted based on specific study characteristics, not the definitive interpretation of an effect size from causal studies of education interventions with preK–12 achievement outcomes.” (p. 247)

Kraft, M. A. (2020). Interpreting effect sizes of education interventions. Educational Researcher, 49(4), 241-253. https://doi>. org/10.3102/0013189X20912798

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“In this commentary, we complement other constructive critiques of educational randomized control trials (RCTs) by calling attention to the commonly ignored role of context in causal mechanisms undergirding educational phenomena. We argue that evidence for the central role of context in causal mechanisms challenges the assumption that RCT findings can be uncritically generalized across settings. Anchoring our argument with an example from our own multistudy RCT project, we argue that the scientific pursuit of causal explanation should involve the rich description of contextualized causal effects. We further call for incorporating the evidence of the integral role of context in causal mechanisms into the meaning of “evidence-based practice,” with the implication that effective implementation of practice in a new setting must involve context-oriented, evidence-focused, design-based research that attends to the emergent, complex, and dynamic nature of educational contexts.” (p.285)

Kaplan, A., Cromley, J., Perez, T., Ting D., Mara, K., & Balsai, M. (2020). The role of context in educational RCT findings: A call to redefine “Evidence-Based Practice”. Educational Researcher, 49(4), 285-288.

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“Children in the decontextualized treatment small groups had statistically significantly higher gains than did children in the contextualized treatment small groups on taught letter sounds and phonemic awareness measured by identification of initial sounds in spoken words. There were no treatment differences between dual-language learners and non-dual-language learners. Children’s engagement during instruction was statistically significantly higher in the decontextualized treatment. Findings support explicit decontextualized alphabet instruction emphasizing the relation between verbal letter labels and letter forms that enlists paired associate learning processes.” (p.573)

Roberts, T.A., Vadasy, P.F., & Sanders, E.A. (2020). Preschool instruction in letter names and sounds: Does contextualized or decontextualized instruction matter? Reading Research Quarterly, 55(4), 573–600.

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“The Australian government provided $1.2 billion through the Medical Research Endowment Fund and the Medical Research Future Fund in 2019 — roughly 1% of the $103 billion Australian governments spend annually on health care. While the $11.2million of education funding provided by the Australian Research Council in 2019 is only 0.02% of the $58 billion Australian governments spend annually on school education.”

Lawrence, D., & Fitzgerald, T. (2020). First, do no harm: education research should answer to the same standards as medicine. The Conversation, October 30, 2020.

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“The results from this research support the efficacy of using Direct Instruction programs, such as Reading Mastery, to improve the reading outcomes for adolescent students who are struggling to read. However, they also highlight the complexity of influencing reading success for students in secondary schools, with factors such as attendance and fidelity of delivery influencing the success of the program.” (p.152)

Main, S., Backhouse, M., Jackson, R., & Hill, S. (2020). Mitigating reading failure in adolescents: Outcomes of a Direct Instruction reading program in one secondary school. The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 43(2), 152-166.

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“The findings of this systematic review provide evidence in support of those in the field of early childhood education who believe that it is beneficial to provide some direct instruction in language and literacy to children before they begin elementary school, including the observations of the National Early Literacy Panel (2008). This is particularly important for children from 23 disadvantaged communities, where they are less likely to be talked with, and read to, at home. All of the programs included in this review were evaluated in implementations in high poverty communities. For this reason, the results may be more generalizable to those populations.” (p. 22-23)

Chambers, B., Cheung, A. C. K., & Slavin, R. E. (2016). Literacy and language outcomes of comprehensive and developmental-constructivist approaches to early childhood education: A systematic review. Educational Research Review, 18, 88-111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2016.03.003 http://www.bestevidence.org/word/early_child_ed_Mar_13_2016.pdf

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“Preservice teacher knowledge of research evidence supporting the essential components of early literacy instruction and the strategies used to teach these foundation skills are explored in this study. Responses to survey questions provided both quantitative and qualitative data. Results suggest that although preservice teachers have some knowledge of the components of early literacy identified in research, they are less knowledgeable about the subject specific pedagogical strategies identified as necessary for implementing evidence-based practices. These results are not surprising given the findings of recent research into the quality of literacy units in teacher education courses.” (p.1)

Meeks, L., Madelaine, A., & Kemp, K. (2020). Research and theory into practice: Australian preservice teachers’ knowledge of evidence-based early literacy instruction. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 25(2), 215-233. DOI: 10.1080/19404158.2020.1832128

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“Individual telephone interviews with 11 Australian beginning teachers who were newly appointed, or seeking a teaching position, were used to explore their perceptions of their preparation to teach early reading. Interviewees provided self-ratings of preparedness and ability to teach early reading, information about their knowledge of early reading instruction and information regarding their opinions of the quality and content of their teacher education courses in relation to the teaching of beginning reading. The results indicate that most of the interviewees demonstrated inadequate knowledge of the subject-specific content of beginning reading and that they were generally critical of their preservice preparation, especially with regard to translating theory into classroom practice. These findings have serious implications for the quality of student learning in early years classrooms and for those students who struggle to learn.” (p.1)

Meeks, L., Madelaine, A., & Stephenson, J. (2020). New teachers talk about their preparation to teach early literacy. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 25(2), 161-181. DOI: 10.1080/19404158.2020.1792520

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“The ability of these tools [Lexile Framework and Flesch–Kincaid Grade-Level formula] to predict measured text difficulties within any single grade band below University was low. … Results suggest these two text tools may lack adequate validity for their current uses in educational settings.” (p. 813)

Cunningham, J.W., Hiebert, E.H., & Mesmer, H.A. (2018). Investigating the validity of two widely used quantitative text tools. Reading and Writing, 31, 813–833. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-017-9815-4

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“At the national level, the share of Indigenous students at or above national minimum standards in reading and numeracy has improved over the past decade and the gap has narrowed (Figure 4.1 and Figure 4.2). Between 2008 and 2018, for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9: • the share of Indigenous students at or above national minimum standards increased by 3 to 14 percentage points in reading, and by 4 to 12 percentage points in numeracy.16 • the gap in reading and numeracy outcomes narrowed by between 3 and 11 percentage points. The largest improvement in the gap was for Years 3 and 5 reading (11 and 10 percentage points respectively), and Year 5 and Year 9 numeracy (10 and 9 percentage points respectively). Despite these improvements, in 2018 about one in four Indigenous children in Years 5, 7 and 9, and one in five in Year 3, remained below national minimum standards in reading (Figure 4.1). Between 17 to 19 per cent of Indigenous students were below national minimum standards in numeracy (Figure 4.2)” (p. 46-47)

Commonwealth of Australia, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. (2020). Closing the Gap Report. https://ctgreport.niaa.gov.au/sites/default/files/pdf/closing-the-gap-report-2020.pdf

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“The initially rudimentary decoding network generates a phoneme sequence that potentially activates entries in the phonological lexicon (i.e., phonological candidates). Critically, we assume that context, meaning, and morphosyntactic information are used to select the correct candidate among the activated phonological competitors (for a review, see Tunmer & Chapman, 2004). Although the specification of these mechanisms was beyond the scope of our model, there is substantial evidence to suggest that children can use their oral vocabulary to correct a partial decoding attempt (Tunmer & Chapman, 2012) and can correct imperfect decoding attempts by reference to the known pronunciation and meaning of a word (Dyson, Best, Solity, & Hulme, 2017). Importantly, the internally generated phonological representation is then used as a teaching signal (i.e., self teaching) to improve the decoding network. This leads to the learning of a richer, more complex, and context sensitive set of spelling–sound associations.” (p. 293-294)

Ziegler, J.C., Perry, C., & Zorzi, M. (2020). Learning to read and dyslexia: From theory to intervention through personalized computational models. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(3), 293-300.

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“Although the ultimate goal of learning to read is to comprehend what we read (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018), the initial stages of learning to read are all about cracking the orthographic code. That is, writing systems code spoken language, and to some extent meaning, through morphology and etymology. Children have to understand how this code works in their language. In alphabetic writing systems, children have to learn how letters or groups of letters (graphemes) map onto their corresponding phonemes. In some alphabetic writing systems, such as English, there is a trade-off between the extent to which spellings prioritize the consistent spelling of morphemes over the consistent spelling of phonemes (see Bowers & Bowers, 2018). This creates inconsistencies at the phoneme level, which are a major hurdle for learning to read (Ziegler & Goswami, 2006). Yet in most alphabetic writing systems, including English, learning instruction starts through the explicit teaching of letter–sound or grapheme–phoneme rules. Children can then use these rules or associations to decode words they have heard but never seen before. This process is referred to as phonological decoding (Share, 1995). Phonological decoding is at the heart of reading acquisition in all alphabetic writing systems because it provides an extremely parsimonious and straightforward way to retrieve the spoken form and therefore the meaning of the thousands of words children have stored in their phonological lexicon (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005).

In fact, such a theory predicts that inconsistency in the mapping between letters and sounds (i.e., when the same letter has multiple pronunciations) should slow down the initial stages of reading acquisition (decoding, reading aloud, word identification, spelling). As can be seen in Figure 1, comparisons of the rate of single-word reading aloud across different languages show that this is indeed the case. The more inconsistent a writing system is, the longer it takes children to acquire basic reading skills. Thus, the difficulty with which basic grapheme–phoneme correspondences can be taught and learned predicts the speed of reading acquisition in different languages.

Once children have learned basic decoding skills, explicit teaching is largely replaced by self-teaching (Share, 1995). That is, children start to decode words autonomously. If they find a word in the phonological lexicon that fits the context, they create an orthographic representation for the decoded and retrieved word. Every successfully decoded word provides children with an opportunity to acquire the word-specific orthographic information that is the foundation of skilled word recognition. Thus, phonological decoding provides a powerful self-teaching device because the explicit learning of a small set of spelling-sound correspondences allows children to decode an increasingly large number of words or, as Share (1995) puts it, “minimum number of rules, maximum generative power” (p. 156). We refer to this learning loop as the phonological decoding self-teaching theory (Ziegler et al., 2014).” (p.2)

Ziegler, J.C., Perry, C., & Zorzi, M. (2020). Learning to read and dyslexia: From theory to intervention through personalized computational models. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(3), 293-300.

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“The authors investigated the influence of teaching letter names and sounds in isolation or in the context of storybook reading on preschool children’s early literacy learning and engagement during instruction. … Children in the decontextualized treatment small groups had statistically significantly higher gains than did children in the contextualized treatment small groups on taught letter sounds and phonemic awareness measured by identification of initial sounds in spoken words. There were no treatment differences between dual-language learners and non-dual-language learners. Children’s engagement during instruction was statistically significantly higher in the decontextualized treatment. Findings support explicit decontextualized alphabet instruction emphasizing the relation between verbal letter labels and letter forms that enlists paired associate learning processes.”

Roberts, T.A., Vadasy, P.F., & Sanders, E.A. (2020). Preschool instruction in letter names and sounds: Does contextualized or decontextualized instruction matter? Reading Research Quarterly, 0(0), 1–28. doi:10.1002/rrq.284

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“ … steady improvements in NAPLAN were observed, particularly for reading, writing and spelling.” (p. 94)

Dawson, G.K., Clinton, J., Koelle, M., & McLaren, P. (2018). Evaluation of the Flexible Literacy for Remote Schools Program: Main Report. June 2018. Melbourne: Centre for Program Evaluation, the University of Melbourne. https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/flexible_literacy_evaluation_2018_final_accessible_0.pdf

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“The federal government commissioned the Centre for Program Evaluation (CPE) at Melbourne University to evaluate the FLRPS program during its implementation. Their final report states, with reference to the time frame, that ‘steady improvements in NAPLAN were observed, particularly for reading, writing and spelling’ (Dawson et al., 2018, p. 94). Although statistically significant positive gains compared to control schools were not found across all NAPLAN domains, intervention schools had substantially stronger progress in writing and spelling, with high effect sizes for change from 2015 to 2017 for spelling and reading in the intervention schools. The evaluation also found that extenuating factors led to widely differing program impacts among the intervention schools, making it important to look beyond the averaged results to identify the school and community variables that were related to success.” (p.1)

Buckingham, J. (2020). Direct Instruction in very remote schools: A rejoinder to Guenther and Osborne (2020). The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 1–2.

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“Rescind the idea that all children are different. The idea that each of us has a distinct learning style is a myth. Brain imaging shows that we all rely on very similar brain circuits and learning rules. The brain circuits for reading and mathematics are the same in each of us, give or take a few millimetres-even in blind children. We all face similar hurdles in learning, and the same teaching methods can surmount them. Individual differences, when they exist, lie more in children’s extant knowledge, motivation, and the rate at which they learn. Let’s carefully determine each child’s current level in order to select the most relevant problems-but above all, let’s ensure that all children acquire the fundamentals of language, literacy, and mathematics that everyone needs” p.240-241

Dehaene, S. (2020). Why brains learn better than any machine . . . for now. Penguin Publishing Group.

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"The evidence for the cerebellar deficit theory was never particularly strong, yet people have jumped on the idea and even developed treatment approaches targeting the cerebellum," says senior author and neuroscientist Guinevere Eden, D. Phil, professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Georgetown University Medical Center and director for its Center for the Study of Learning. "Standing on a wobble board -- one exercise promoted for improving dyslexia that isn't supported by the evidence -- is not going to improve a child's reading skills. Such treatments are a waste money and take away from other treatment approaches that entail structured intervention for reading difficulties, involving the learning of phonologic and orthographic processing."

MLAGeorgetown University Medical Center. (2019, October 9). Finding upends theory about the cerebellum's role in reading and dyslexia. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 9, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191009131759.htm

Ashburn, S.M., Flowers, L., Napoliello, E.M., & Eden, G.F. (2019). Cerebellar function in children with and without dyslexia during single word processing. Human Brain Mapping, 2019 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24792

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“In the 2018 ABS Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers (SDAC), 4 per cent of 0-4 year olds, 10 per cent of 5-19 year olds and 13 per cent of 15-64 year olds were reported as having a disability. Overall in 2018, people with disability made up 17.7 per cent of the Australian population which equates to more than 4.3 million people. Further, in 2019, nearly one in five (19.9 per cent) school students across Australia received an adjustment due to disability according to the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD).” (p.2)

Department of Education, Skills and Employment. (2020). Review of the Disability Standards for Education 2005: Summary Discussion Paper. https://www.education.gov.au/2020-review-disability-standards-education

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“The entire Direct Instruction curriculum is field-tested before it is made commercially available and then periodically field-tested thereafter (Goral, 2001). Instructional scripts, in particular, are revised constantly to ensure that most students within a particular performance group achieve a 90% success rate when instructed according to the script (“Directing Direct Instruction,” 1997).” (p.115)

Kim, T. & Axelrod, S. (2005). Direct Instruction: An educators’ guide and a plea for action. The Behavior Analyst Today, 6(2), 111- 120. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1072120.pdf

Goral, T. (2001). The fight about reading. Curriculum Administrator, 37(5), 35-40.

Directing Direct Instruction. (1997, October). Education Digest, 63 (2), p. 58-62.

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“For example, the average child at the 90th percentile reads almost two million words per year outside of school, more than 200 times more words than the child at the 10th percentile, who reads just 8,000 words outside of school during a year. To put it another way, the entire year’s out-of-school reading for the child at the 10th percentile amounts to just two days reading for the child at the 90th percentile! These dramatic differences, combined with the lexical richness of print, act to create large vocabulary differences among children.” (p.141)

Cunningham, A.E., & Stanovich, K.E. (1998). What reading does for the mind. American Educator, 22(1–2), 8–15.

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“While this year’s report found governments were on track to improve year 12 attainment and ensure 95 per cent of Indigenous four-year olds were enrolled in early education, Mr Wyatt said the emphasis on year 12 disguised problems with the attrition rate prior to year 8. He cited an Australian National University study of communities in South Australia that found Indigenous children had 200 to 400 English words in their vocabulary in their first year of school, while non-Indigenous children had 600 words.” (p. 5-6)

Crowe, D. (2020). Minister eyes fresh bid to lift Indigenous education. The Age, 22/6/2020

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“Common instructional approaches that lack generalizable empirical support include such practices as close reading (Welsch et al., 2019), use of decodable text (Jenkins et al., 2004), sustained silent reading (NICHD, 2000), multisensory approaches (Birsh, 2011), and the three cueing system to support word recognition development (Seidenberg, 2017). Some of these instructional approaches rest on sound theoretical and pedagogical grounds. For example, giving beginning readers the opportunity to read decodable texts provides practice applying the grapheme-phoneme relations they have learned to successfully decode words (Foorman et al., 2016a), thus building lexical memory to support word reading accuracy and automaticity (Ehri, this issue). However, the only study to experimentally examine the impact of reading more versus less decodable texts as part of an early intervention phonics program for at risk first graders found no differences between the two groups on any of the posttest measures (Jenkins et al., 2004). Such a result does not rule out the possibility of the usefulness of decodable texts but rather indicates the need to disentangle the active ingredients of effective interventions to specify what to use, when, how often, and for whom. Similarly, multisensory approaches (e.g., Orton-Gillingham) that teach reading by using multiple senses (i.e., sight, hearing, touch, and movement) to help children make systematic connections between language, letters, and words (Birsh, 2011) are commonplace and have considerable clinical support for facilitating reading development in children who struggle to learn to read. However, there is little scientific evidence that indicates that a multisensory approach is more effective than similarly structured phonological-based approaches that do not include a strong multisensory component (e.g., Boyer & Ehri, 2011; Ritchey & Goeke, 2006; Torgesen et al., 2001). With further research, we may find that a multisensory component is a critical ingredient of intervention for struggling readers, but we lack this empirical evidence currently.” (p.16-17)

“Other instructional practices go directly against what is known from the science of reading. For example, the three-cueing approach to support early word recognition (i.e., relying on a combination of semantic, syntactic, and graphophonic cues simultaneously to formulate an intelligent hypothesis about a word’s identity) ignores 40 years of overwhelming evidence that orthographic mapping involves the formation of letter-sound connections to bond spelling, pronunciation, and meaning of specific words in memory (see Ehri, this issue). Moreover, relying on alternative cuing systems impedes the building of automatic word-recognition skill that is the hallmark of skilled word reading (Stanovich, 1990; 1991). The English orthography, being both alphabetic-phonemic and morpho-phonemic, clearly privileges the use of various levels of grapheme-phoneme correspondences to read words (Frost, 2012), with rapid contextfree word recognition being the process that most clearly distinguishes good from poor readers (Perfetti, 1992; Stanovich, 1980). Guessing at a word amounts to a lost learning trial to help children learn the orthography of the word and thus reduce the need to guess the word in the future (Castles et al., 2018; Share, 1995).” (p.18)

“The science of reading should be informed by an evolving evidence base built upon the scientific method. Decades of basic research and randomized controlled trials of interventions and instructional routines have formed a substantial evidence base to guide best practices in reading instruction, reading intervention, and the early identification of at-risk readers. The recent resurfacing of questions about what constitutes the science of reading is leading to misinformation in the public space that may be viewed by educational stakeholders as merely differences of opinion among scientists. Our goals in this paper are to revisit the science of reading through an epistemological lens to clarify what constitutes evidence in the science of reading and to offer a critical evaluation of the evidence provided by the science of reading. To this end, we summarize those things that we believe have compelling evidence, promising evidence, or a lack of compelling evidence. We conclude with a discussion of areas of focus that we believe will advance the science of reading to meet the needs of all students in the 21st Century.” (p.1)

Petscher, Y., Cabell, S., Catts, H. W., Compton, D., Foorman, B., Hart, S. A., Lonigan, C.J., Phillips, B.M., Schatschneider, C., Steacy, L.M., Terry, N.P., & Wagner, R. (2020, May 10). How the science of reading informs 21st Century education. https://psyarxiv.com/yvp54

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“All children, especially those with dyslexia, respond best to reading instruction that includes the components of structured literacy…. The instruction or instructional targets [do] not change for children with dyslexia. What changes is the duration and intensity of the instruction” (para.6-7).”

Banks, S., Topple, J., & Huppertz, K. (2019). IDA corrects inaccuracies in Bacallao opinion column. International Dyslexia Association.

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“This study provides evidence that structured intervention for reading at secondary school level can be effective for a range of students. Significant gains in reading level were achieved with students who had experienced a history of being unable to read with the consequent negative impacts on motivation to engage in learning that repeated failure engenders. The teaching staff reported that the coaching and mentoring were essential to the delivery and sustainability of the program and the structure of the program supported them to deliver instruction in a subject of which they had limited knowledge. Teachers noted other benefits to students outside of the Reading Mastery lessons, including students’ confidence in reading and ability to access written material in other subjects. There are, however, clear limitations” (p.161)

Main, S., Backhouse, M., Jackson, R., & Hill, S. (2020). Mitigating reading failure in adolescents: Outcomes of a Direct Instruction reading program in one secondary school. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 43(2), 152-166.

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"Ability, cognitive capability, and cognitive processes are not segments of behavior but abstractions we have applied to an indivisible flow of behavior. One cannot distinguish between reasoning, retrieval, perception, and detection...The behavior one sees indicates all of these, as well as motivation, emotion, drive, apprehension, feeling, and more...Specifying different features of cognition is like slicing smoke- dividing a continuous, homogeneous, irregular mass of gray into…. what? Abstractions.”

Horn, J., & Blankson, A.N. (2012). Foundations for better understanding of cognitive abilities. In D. P. Flanagan & P. L. Harrison (Eds.), Contemporary Intellectual Assessment: Theories, Tests, and Issues, Ch. 3, pgs. 73-98.

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“Implementation challenges. For teachers and paraeducators that had been required to implement Corrective Reading, Wilson Fundations or Wilson Reading System with their students, all of them (100%) stated that it had been harder than they had anticipated, at least initially. Some of their difficulties they attributed to the fact that the curriculum was new and they were still learning. However, all of them (100%) also expressed they had difficulties with finding ways to keep the repetitive lessons from getting boring. With time, the teachers and paraeducators came to realize that the students didn’t find the repetitious activities and lessons as boring. Therefore, as they began to see the level of success their students demonstrated, they came to value the repetition and routine as it was benefiting the students. Further, all of the teachers and paraeducators who had used Corrective Reading, Wilson Fundations or Wilson Reading System with their students stated they valued (33%) or highly valued (67%) the success that the explicit and sequential programs offered to their students and for that reason they were willing to deal with the repetition and routine even if they personally found it boring. In the words of one teacher that implemented the Wilson Reading System, “a well thought out curriculum makes the teacher job easier that (than) what we've done in the past since all of the materials are provided. There is a clear sequence and we have the confidence that we are doing what is needed for students, particularly when we see the level of success that our kids are having.” Another teacher who had implemented the Corrective Reading with her students stated, “I feel like it works. It’s very clear and specific. It can be very dry and kids, and myself, can get bored so being able to incorporate extra things helps. But the bottom line is students are successful.” (p. 107-108)

Fritts, J.L. (2016). Direct Instruction and Orton-Gillingham reading methodologies: Effectiveness of increasing reading achievement of elementary school students with learning disabilities. A thesis presented to The School of Education In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the field of Education. College of Professional Studies Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts May 2016. https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/files/neu:cj82nq86s/fulltext.pdf

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“While there is research that shows scripted Direct Instruction to be a successful means of teaching students basic skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics, many teachers are resistant to using the instructional pedagogy with their students (Becker & Engelmann, 1973; Engelmann, 1999; Engelmann, 2011; Grossen, 2004; Shippen, Houchins, Steventon, & Sartor, 2005; U.S. Department of Education, 2002). Studies conducted which have looked at teacher perceptions and attitudes about the use of scripted Direct Instruction programs with students 43 have cited reasons for resistance such as personal beliefs that the programs are ineffective, unresponsive to student needs, and fail to teach students higher level thinking and reading skills beyond just basic memorization and decoding (Vanderlinde & van Braak, 2010).” (p. 42-43)

Fritts, J.L. (2016). Direct Instruction and Orton-Gillingham reading methodologies: Effectiveness of increasing reading achievement of elementary school students with learning disabilities. A thesis presented to The School of Education In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the field of Education. College of Professional Studies Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts May 2016. https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/files/neu:cj82nq86s/fulltext.pdf

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“Students in disadvantaged schools perform well below their peers in high advantage schools by Year 3, but the gaps grow much larger as they move through school. As shown in Figure 13, the gap grows from one year and three months in Year 3 to a dramatic three years and eight months in Year 9.” (p.29)

“These findings refer to the spread in achievement across all students in the Victorian population. When data is analysed at the school level, the spread is only slightly smaller. In a typical school, the spread in Year 9 is around seven years.” Goss et al., 2016, p. 18)

“Shift the focus in NAPLAN to proficiency. Either raise the national minimum standard or remove it entirely It is hard to aim high when the bar is set low. We do students no favours by defining acceptable performance or progress using inadequate benchmarks. Yet a Year 9 student reading at the national minimum standard is achieving below the typical Year 5 student. No wonder only 8 per cent of Year 9 students failed to meet this standard in 2015.102 Worse, a student performing just above the national minimum standard in Year 3 needs to make only about one Year of progress every two years to stay above the minimum standard in Years 5, 7, and 9.103 The bar we are setting with the national minimum standard is just too low. Importantly, setting such low standards increases the risk of overlooking students who require additional support to make adequate progress. Australia must raise its sights.” (p.42)

Goss, P., & Sonnemann, J. (2016). Widening gaps: What NAPLAN tells us about student progress. Grattan Institute. https://grattan.edu.au/report/widening-gaps/

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“This study presents a meta-analysis of the relation between language and mathematics. A moderate relation between language and mathematics was found in 344 studies with 393 independent samples and more than 360,000 participants, r = .42, 95% CI [.40, .44]. Moderation and partial correlation analyses revealed the following: (a) More complicated language and mathematics skills are associated with stronger relations between language and mathematics; after partialling out working memory and intelligence, rapid automatized naming showed the strongest relation to numerical knowledge; (b) The relation between language and mathematics was stronger among native language speakers than among second-language learners, but this difference was not found after partialling out working memory and intelligence; (c) Working memory and intelligence together explained over 50% of the variance in the relation between language and mathematics and explained more variance in such relations involving complex mathematics skills; (d) Language and mathematics predicted the development of one another even after controlling for initial performance. These findings suggest that we may use language as a medium to communicate, represent, and retrieve mathematics knowledge as well as to facilitate working memory and reasoning during mathematics performance and learning. With development, the use of language to retrieve mathematics knowledge may be more important for foundational mathematics skills, which in turn further strengthens linguistic thought processes for performing more advanced mathematics tasks. Such use of language may boost the mutual effects of cognition and mathematics across development.”

Peng, P., Lin, X., Ünal, Z. E., Lee, K. J., Namkung, J., Chow, J. & Sales, A. (2020). Examining the mutual relations between language and mathematics: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin. doi:DOI: 10.1037/bul0000231. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peng_Peng25/publication/339777602_Examining_the_Mutual_Relations_between_Language_and_Mathematics_A_Meta-analysis/links/5e66d3ee4585153fb3d1c0ac/Examining-the-Mutual-Relations-between-Language-and-Mathematics-A-Meta-analysis.pdf

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“The effect of linguistic comprehension instruction on generalized outcomes of linguistic comprehension skills is small in studies of both the overall immediate and follow‐up effects. Analysis of differential language outcomes shows small effects on vocabulary and grammatical knowledge and moderate effects on narrative and listening comprehension. Linguistic comprehension instruction has no immediate effects on generalized outcomes of reading comprehension. Only a few studies have reported follow‐up effects on reading comprehension skills, with divergent findings.

1.5 | What do the findings of this review mean?

Linguistic comprehension instruction has the potential to increase children’s general linguistic comprehension skills. However, there is variability in effects related to the type of outcome measure that is used to examine the effect of such instruction on linguistic comprehension skills. One of the overall aims of linguistic comprehension intervention programs is to accelerate children’s vocabulary development. Our results indicated that the type of intervention program included in this review might be insufficient to accelerate children’s vocabulary development and, thus, to close the vocabulary gap among children. Further, the absence of an immediate effect of intervention programs on reading comprehension outcomes indicates that linguistic comprehension instruction through the type of intervention program examined in this study does not transfer beyond what is learned to general types of text. Despite clear indications from longitudinal studies that linguistic comprehension plays a vital role in the development of reading comprehension, only a few intervention studies have produced immediate and follow‐up effects on generalized outcomes of reading comprehension. This indicates that preventing and remediating reading comprehension difficulties likely requires long‐term educational efforts.” (p.1-2)

Rogde, K., Hagen, Å. M., Melby‐Lervåg, M., & Lervåg, A. (2019). The effect of linguistic comprehension instruction on generalized language and reading comprehension skills: A systematic review. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 15(4), 1-37. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/cl2.1059

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“Rise of the machines threat to jobs” The Age Feb 10, p.9. It refers to an OECD The Future of work report (https://www.oecd.org/employment/future-of-work/) that “around 35% of the jobs cited by Australian high school students as their prospective career were at risk of automation.”

OECD. (2019). OECD Employment Outlook 2019: The Future of Work, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9ee00155-en

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Best Evidence in Brief Issue No. 53

“A report from the Institute of Education Sciences has found that an intensive approach to providing support for using student data to inform teaching did not improve student achievement, perhaps because the approach did not change teachers' use of data or their reported classroom practices.

For the study, researchers recruited 102 elementary schools from 12 U.S. districts. Schools were randomly assigned to either a treatment or control group. Treatment schools received funding for a half-time data coach of their choosing, as well as intensive professional development for coaches and school leaders on helping teachers use student data to inform their teaching. The control schools received no additional funding for a data coach or professional development. Impacts on teacher and student outcomes were measured after a 1.5 year implementation period. The results suggest that :

Despite the additional resources, teachers in the treatment schools did not increase how often they used data or change their teaching practices in response to that data. Similar percentages of teachers in treatment and control schools reported data-related activities, such as analyzing data to understand student needs. The intervention also had no effect on student achievement. On average, students in treatment and control schools had similar achievement in math and English.”

Philip, G., Crissey, S., Chojnacki, G., Zukiewicz, M., Silva, T., Costelloe, S., & O'Reilly, F. (2019). Evaluation of support for using student data to inform teachers' instruction (NCEE 2019-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

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“Previous research has revealed conflicting results with regard to the role of the magnocellular visual system in reading and dyslexia. In order to investigate this further, the present study examined the relationship between performance on two magnocellular tasks (temporal gap detection and coherent motion), reading rate (oral and silent), and rapid letter naming (serial and isolated naming). Results showed that in a sample of 83 college students magnocellular performance was not significantly correlated with reading rate or rapid letter naming. Equivalence test analyses showed all correlations between magnocellular performance and reading rate or rapid letter naming to be within the bounds of −0.3 to 0.3. This provides evidence against the idea that having low magnocellular performance will result in poor reading ability. In opposition to the magnocellular deficit theory of dyslexia, these results suggest that a magnocellular deficit is unlikely the primary cause of individual differences in reading rate in adults.” (p. 1)

Edwards, A.A., & Schatschneider, C. (2019). Magnocellular pathway and reading rate: An equivalence test analysis. Scientific Studies of Reading. Published online: 09 Sep 2019

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“ … while mastery of around 4000 characters is considered sufficient for full literacy in Chinese, the average English reader is able to recognise around 70,000 printed words by the time they are 20.”

Rastle, K., (2020). The journey to skilled reading. In James Murphy (Ed.), The researchEd guide to literacy: An evidence-informed guide for teachers (pp. 12-20). Woodbridge, England: John Catt Educational Limited.

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“In the current meta-analysis, we show that, while there is an effect of shared reading on language development, this effect is smaller than reported in previous meta-analyses (g ‾ = 0.194, p = .002) and that the effect is near zero when active control groups are used (g ‾ = 0.028, p = .703). The meta-analysis also indicates no differences between type of language outcome, no effect of SES, and no significant effect at follow-up. Taken together, these findings suggest that current evidence for the effectiveness of shared reading interventions is much weaker than was previously thought and may reflect non-specific effects. However, given the low dosage of many of the studies included in the present meta-analysis, we caution against the conclusion that shared reading interventions have no real benefits and make a series of recommendations for the design of future studies. These will allow researchers to determine whether shared book reading interventions have any real impact on early language skills, as well as to determine how any such impact varies as a function of outcome variable and participant SES.” (p.9)

Noble, C., Sala, G., Peter, M., Lingwood, J., Rowland, C., Gobet, F., & Pine, J. (2019). The impact of shared book reading on children’s language skills: A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review. Advanced online publication. doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2019.100290

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“Young children who are in the process of learning to read will already have an auditory vocabulary of 10,000 words or more (Shipley & McAfee, 2015; cited by Law et al., 2017). Given this, how often would a word that is in text that the beginning reader is given to read not be a word that is already familiar to that child in speech? Virtually never. It's a matter of probability.”

Law F, Mahr T, Schneeberg A, Edwards J. 2017. Vocabulary size and auditory word recognition in preschool children. Applied Psycholinguistics 38(1):89-125

Shipley KG, McAfee JG. 2015. Assessment in Speech–Language Pathology: A Resource Manual (Fifth Edition). Boston: Engage Learning.

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“The lack of explicit and effective phonic instruction in the new entrant classroom is less problematic for children who come to school with already high levels of reading-related knowledge. They will continue to learn to read by building on this existing body of knowledge. Students, predominantly in low-decile schools, who have low levels of reading related knowledge, benefit from explicit teaching of the phonic elements required to transition from being a non-reader to a beginning reader.” (p.11)

Chapman, J.W., Arrow, A.W., Braid, C., Greaney, K.T., & Tunmer, W.E. (2018). Early literacy research project: Final Report to the New Zealand Ministry of Education. College of Humanities and Social Sciences Massey University. Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/194532/Early-Literacy-Research-Project.pdf

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“It is reasonable therefore to expect that all initial teacher education (ITE) degrees for primary teaching include these core elements of the research literature on reading instruction in their curricula. A recent review of compulsory literacy units in undergraduate ITE courses around Australia suggests that this is not the case.

The review looked at the published content outlines of 116 literacy units in 66 ITE degrees in 38 universities. It found that:

Only five (4%) of the 116 literacy units reviewed had a specific focus on early reading instruction or early literacy; that is, how to teach beginning readers in the first few years of school. In a further 30 (26%) of the unit outlines, early reading or early literacy was mentioned in some form but was included with other literacy content.

• In 81 (70%) of the 116 literacy units reviewed, none of the five essential elements of effective evidence-based reading instruction were mentioned in the unit outlines. All five essential elements were referred to in only 6% of literacy unit outlines.
• None of the unit outlines contained references to the Simple View of Reading. The specific model or theory mentioned most frequently in the unit outlines was the Four Resources / Four Roles of a Reader model which was referred to eight times. The sociocultural model or view of reading was referred to nine times.
• Thirteen (15%) of the lecturers and unit coordinators that could be identified had specific expertise in early reading instruction or literacy, most with a particular interest in early literacy development among Indigenous and other children from non-English speaking backgrounds. Forty-seven (55%) had research interests and expertise in other aspects of literacy, most often digital and multi-modal literacies. Twenty-five (30%) of the literacy lecturers or unit coordinators had research interests and expertise in areas other than literacy, such as maths or music.” (p. 12-13)

Buckingham, J. (2019). Graduate teachers are short changed on evidence-based reading instruction. Nomanis, 8, 12-13.

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“Many meta-analyses have shown that distinctions between “good” and “bad” studies have proven to be irrelevant in accounting for differences in the results. As heretical as that may sound, it is nonetheless true. I suspect it arises from the fact that most collections of studies are not composed of “good” and “bad” studies, but of studies that can be classified as “good,” “better,” and “best. … meta-analyses in medicine have often shown consistent results across studies (e.g., clinical trials of a new drug) while meta-analyses in education do not. Surely this arises from the fact that interventions in medicine (e.g., intravenous injection of 10 mg of Nortriptyline) are uniform and well defined whereas even interventions that carry the same label in education are subject to substantial variation from place to place, or time to time. Giving students Feedback can take many different forms, some of which are effective and some of which are not.” (p.3, 4)

Glass, G.V. (2019). The promise of meta-analysis for our schools: A Q&A with NEPC Fellow Gene V Glass. National Education Policy Center (NEPC) Newsletter August 1, 2019. Retrieved from https://nepc.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Newsletter%20glass_1.pdf

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“Through the two studies related to the relationship of handwriting, keyboarding and writing measures, we stressed the need for incorporating handwriting as an essential part of instruction in classrooms. Handwriting and keyboarding both significantly positively associated with the development of writing, for a variety of writing measures. This further supports the simple view of writing, which emphasizes the contribution of transcription skills on text generation. Besides, handwriting did no worse than keyboarding on writing quality and actually significantly related to keyboarding performance, particularly on speed. In addition to identifying the significance of handwriting, the current studies also indicated additional research needs on handwriting to explore its implementation and effectiveness.” (p.59)

Feng, L., Lindner, A., Ji, X.R., & Joshi, R.M. (2019). The roles of handwriting and keyboarding in writing: a meta-analytic review. Reading & Writing, 32, 33–63.

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“The results of this study may have important implications for researchers and practitioners invested in the field of adult literacy. The findings help to build a more informative and comprehensive model of adults’ reading comprehension. All included component skills accounted for the majority of the reading comprehension variance (91%) and the metalinguistic skills [phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic knowledge] exerted direct and indirect effects (via decoding and oral vocabulary knowledge) on reading comprehension. This indicates that interventions and instructional practices aimed at improving metalinguistic skills may build decoding skills, broaden vocabulary knowledge, and subsequently, increase reading comprehension skills. Past intervention research and meta-analyses investigating explicit morphological instruction with children (many that were exclusive to struggling readers), have reported growth in vocabulary knowledge (Bowers & Kirby, 2010; Goodwin & Ahn, 2010, 2013; Nunes & Bryant, 2006), word reading (Berninger etal., 2008; Goodwin & Ahn, 2013; Katz & Carlisle, 2009; Nunes & Bryant, 2006) and reading comprehension (Bowers, Kirby, & Deacon, 2010; Goodwin & Ahn, 2010; Katz & Carlisle, 2009). Some of the morphological intervention research has paired or supplemented instruction with the additional metalinguistic skills of PA (Nunes & Bryant, 2009) and OK (Berninger et al., 2008) and this idea of integrated instruction has been reported as effective to improving multiple literacy outcomes (Bowers et al., 2010; Reed, 2008). Moreover, Wolter and Collins (2017) highlight multiple evidence-based MA activities (some of which also integrate PA and OK) that have been used with K-12 students at-risk for learning disabilities. Thus, an integrated instructional approach targeting aspects of all three metalinguistic skills may also help improve several literacy outcomes for struggling adult readers and should be explored in an adult literacy context. … the current study has enhanced the recently growing body of literature on component reading skills of struggling adult readers. Jointly, metalinguistic skills, decoding, and oral vocabulary knowledge accounted for 91% of the variance in adults’ reading comprehension skills, with decoding, oral vocabulary knowledge, and a second-order metalinguistic awareness factor emerging as unique contributors. This study has also provided evidence for significant, indirect effects of metalinguistic awareness to reading comprehension via decoding and oral vocabulary knowledge as mediators. These findings suggest that the integration of direct, metalinguistic instruction into adult literacy programs may improve students’ decoding, vocabulary, and concurrently and subsequently, their reading comprehension skills.” (p. 811-813)

Tighe, E.L., Little, C.W., Arrastia‑Chisholm, M.C., Schatschneider, C., Diehm, E., Quinn, J.M., & Edwards, A.A. (2019). Assessing the direct and indirect effects of metalinguistic awareness to the reading comprehension skills of struggling adult readers. Reading and Writing, 32, 787–818

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“Despite guidelines for identifying EBPs that are influenced by study quality, and the knowledge that study quality leads to greater confidence or trustworthiness of findings, our analysis did not identify a systematic relationship between study quality and effect sizes of 364 supplemental reading interventions. With the exceptions of studies with exemplary study design yielding significantly smaller effect sizes on standardized measures of foundational reading skills, other quality indicators were not related to the effect sizes of supplemental reading interventions. This finding indicates the possibility that study quality might be less important than we hypothesized. We are not yet ready to say with certainty that study quality does not matter until additional research investigates the relationship between study quality and effect sizes utilizing a more heterogeneous corpus of studies; however, if study quality is not related to the effect sizes of supplemental reading interventions, it is worth considering the implication this finding has on future research. For example, there may be a threshold of study quality above which effect sizes are not correlated with further quality, and only meeting these minimum quality standards is needed to identify effective practices. If so, researchers might reconsider spending large amounts of money to conduct research that is far above the threshold of needed quality. In addition, many current syntheses and meta-analyses exclude studies not considered high quality according to current standards. Given our finding that study quality is not systematically related to the effect sizes of supplemental interventions, researchers might reconsider including both low and high quality to represent the full range of research related to a topic.” (p. 363-364)

Austin, C.R., Wanzek, J., Scammacca, N.K., Vaughn, S., Gesel, S.A., Donegan, R.E., & Engelmann, M.L. (2019). The relationship between study quality and the effects of supplemental reading interventions: A meta-analysis. Exceptional Children, 85(3), 347–366.

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“Results suggested that the US norms for the TOWRE may overestimate the reading level of Australian children in lower grades” (p. 199)

Marinus, E., Kohnen, S., & McArthur, G. (2013). Australian comparison data for the Test of Word Reading Efficiency. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 18(2), 199-212.

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“The National Institute of Health (NIH) indicates that nearly all children have the cognitive capacity to learn to read, estimating that only 5% of young readers have severe cognitive impairments that would make acquiring reading skills extremely difficult. While the remaining 95% of students have the capacity to read, not every student will learn to read under the same conditions. An estimated 30% of students will learn to read regardless of how they were taught. However, roughly half of students will need high-quality Tier 1 instruction in foundational skills, and an additional 15% of students will require additional time and support to meet their reading potential.” (p.6)

EAB—District Leadership Forum. (2019). Narrowing the third-grade reading gap: Embracing the science of reading. Retrieved from https://eab.com/research/district-leadership/on-demand-webconference/narrowing-the-third-grade-reading-gap/

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“Writing is especially challenging for students with disabilities, as 19 out of every 20 of these students experience difficulty learning to write. In order to maximize writing growth, effective instructional practices need to be applied in the general education classroom where many students with special needs are educated. This should minimize special education referrals and maximize the progress of these students as writers. Evidence-based writing practices for the general education classroom include ensuring that students write frequently for varying purposes; creating a pleasant and motivating writing environment; supporting students as they compose; teaching critical skills, processes, and knowledge; and using 21st-century writing tools.

It is also important to be sure that practices specifically effective for enhancing the writing growth of students with special needs are applied in both general and special education settings (where some students with disabilities may receive part or all of their writing instruction). This includes methods for preventing writing disabilities, tailoring instruction to meet individual student needs, addressing roadblocks that can impede writing growth, and using specialized writing technology that allows these students to circumvent one or more of their writing challenges.”

Longa, A., & Graham, S. (2019). Effective practices for teaching writing to students with disabilities in the United States. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1208

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“This study investigated whether presenting a picture before reading can encourage situation-model construction. We compared two conditions (n ¼ 30) which differed in whether a picture of the initial situation described in a narrative text was presented before reading (i.e. pictorial-support condition) or not (i.e. no-picture condition). Situation-model construction was measured using both process- and product-oriented measures. Eye-tracking data indicated online resource allocation to the different levels of text representation: surface, textbase, and situation model. Literal text questions and inference questions were used as an offline indication of textbase and situation-model processing, respectively. The results showed that a picture presented before reading led to a redistribution of processing resources during reading, evidenced by a shift from textbase to situation-model processing. This attentional shift did not translate into higher comprehension scores.” (p.1)

Wassenburg, S.I., de Koning, B.B., Bos, L.T., & van der Schoot, M. (2019). Inspecting a picture before reading affects attentional processing but not comprehension. Educational Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/01443410.2019.1645306

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“Printed words may tend to invoke left-lateralized activation within the FG because the development of writing systems has led to mappings between visual graphic units and linguistic knowledge (e.g., speech segments) acquired through spoken language. The sector of the FG that has been associated with the VWFA may be special because it is uniquely positioned, by virtue of its anatomical connections, to serve as a bridge to left-lateralized language areas (Reinke, Fernandes, Schwindt, O!Craven, & Grady, 2008; Vigneau, Jobard, Mazoyer, & Tzourio-Maxzoyer, 2005). Because automatic word identification is a central feature of skilled reading (Perfetti & Hart, 2002), a logical extension is that the VWFA may thus play a central role by acting as a bridge between visual perception and preexisting linguistic knowledge.” (p. 896)

Moore, M.W., Durisko, C., Perfetti, C.A., & Fiez, J.A. (2014). Learning to read an alphabet of human faces produces left-lateralized training effects in the fusiform gyrus. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 26(4), 896–913

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“Rigorous studies included in the current review indicate that comprehensive NRP instruction is effective in improving reading outcomes when administered to relatively diverse groups of children with ASD. … We conducted a systematic review of the literature on reading instruction for children with ASD, following the recommendations of the National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000). Our study provides an updated review for the years 2009–2017 along with an analysis of effect sizes and research quality using the Evaluative Method for Determining Evidence-Based Practices in Autism (Reichow et al. 2008). The 19 studies that met our inclusion criteria reported gains in phonics, reading accuracy, reading fluency, and/or reading comprehension skills. … One high-quality study investigated multi-component NRP [National Reading Panel] instruction as applied to a relatively large, diverse sample (Kamps et al. 2016). … Literacy instruction was delivered using a commercially available program [Reading Mastery] designed to target phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, and reading comprehension skills. Over an extended period of 2 years, children who received instruction targeting these skills exhibited statistically significant, large gains in reading accuracy as compared to children in a control group. … Comprehensive literacy instruction encompassing all of the NRP Big Five was the focus of one adequate-quality study (Bailey et al. 2017). Similar to Kamps et al. (2016), participants in this study were required to meet relatively broad inclusion criteria: 5 to 12 years of age, confirmed diagnosis of ASD, no hearing or vision impairments, measurable language abilities, and ability to sustain attention to task for 15 min. Results showed that participants who received comprehensive NRP instruction achieved statistically significant gains in word and passage reading accuracy and comprehension relative to children in a control group, with each of these gains associated with a large effect size.4 This suggests that fully implemented (comprehensive) NRP instruction may be effective in promoting reading accuracy and reading comprehension skills for school-aged children with ASD. … Only comprehensive instruction incorporating a focus on all of the NRP Big Five was effective in improving both reading accuracy and comprehension skills in a diverse sample of children with ASD. Based on these adequate and high quality studies, we recommend that professionals consider using comprehensive NRP instruction incorporating phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, reading fluency, and reading comprehension strategies when working with children with ASD.” (p.18, 19)

Bailey, B., & Arciuli, J. (2019). Reading instruction for children with autism spectrum disorders: A systematic review and quality analysis. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Online First. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40489-019-00185-8

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“The media often overstates the need to teach phonics. Phonics is the relationship between letters and sounds and is not the only strategy children use when reading unfamiliar words. There are other effective ways to assist children identify unfamiliar words, which includes the practice of encouraging children to look for meaning. Prior to saying anything to assist the reader, allow sufficient wait time. Readers need to look around for clues. The aim is to move the reader towards independence as quickly as possible and that does mean getting out of the way. The reader has to look around to locate clues. Too often, their only clue is to look to the parent to fill the gap. Rescuing won’t help! Keep your eyes on the book and avoid eye contact. After waiting sufficient time, try saying:

• Read on and collect other clues.
• Go back to the beginning of the sentence and re-read what you read.
• Look at the illustration and see if there are clues there.
• What do you think would make sense here?

Avoid saying ‘sound it out’, or giving a clue that takes the child away from the text such as ‘[That word]…it is the colour of the sweater you were wearing last Tuesday’. If the word is an uncommon word or outside of the child’s vocabulary such as ‘camouflage’ drop it in, don’t have a vocabulary lesson. Keep the reading flowing because it is paramount that the reader comprehends the text. Keep on reading. The issue was not necessarily a reading issue but a vocabulary problem. If on the other hand, the child fills the gap with a word similar in meaning, for example, ‘hide’ instead of camouflage, celebrate. The child is telling you that he comprehends what is happening. That is what good readers do! Don’t stop and correct it! Avoid poking at words. Struggling readers often think the clue is in the word and fixate. The clue is in looking ahead, re-reading, and making sense of the text. For those words outside the reader’s vocabulary, for example, ‘camouflage’ you can always go back and talk about it at the end.”

Lowe, K. (2017). Parents’ guide to helping children with reading and writing at home. Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA). Retrieved from http://www.petaa.edu.au/imis_prod/w/Teaching_Resources/Parents_guide.aspx/

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“This chapter explores a reading program that I believe can significantly aid Indigenous EAL/D learners to meaningfully grasp the secret keys to Standard Australian English (SAE). It is clear that there is some merit regarding the literacy program in the effectiveness of the Direct Instruction program. Moreover, it is reasonable to suggest that with community support, Direct Instruction programs can play a significant role in facilitating the effective learning of SAE amongst EAL/D Indigenous learners. It is evident that the success or otherwise of the program is in part dependent on its facilitation and that teacher hostility to the program will result in limited positive outcomes for learners.” (p.39)

Hunt, J.R. (2019). Direct Instruction with EAL/D Learners in the Northern Territory. In: G. Geng, P. Smith, P. Black, Y. Budd, and L. Disney (Eds.), Reflective Practice in Teaching, pp.39-44. Springer, Singapore.

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‘Off to a good start’ is not enough to assume that children’s ongoing written literacy learning will develop and progress without sustained, direct handwriting instruction. This finding is underscored consistently by others in the research community (Graham, 2009; Moats, n.d.). Our findings corroborate those reported by others. There is something to be said about handwriting that demonstrates control of execution that suggests more than a matter of neatness. Far more important is its connection to fluency and in turn, the ability to unlock the higher order and more complex skills associated with text generation, in Berninger’s (1999) simple view of writing model.” (p.56)

Roessingh, H., & Nordstokke, D. (2019). Handwriting at Grade 3: More than a matter of ‘neatness’ Language and Literacy, 21(3), 38-63.

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“In a meta-analysis of 180 effect sizes from 23 studies, we examined access-asoutcomes by estimating the size of the gap in reading achievement between students with and without disabilities. Findings indicated that SWDs performed 1.17 standard deviations, or more than 3 years, below typically developing peers. The reading gap varied by disability label, but not by other student and assessment characteristics.” (p.

Gilmour, A. F., Fuchs, D., & Wehby, J. H. (2019). Are students with disabilities accessing the curriculum? A meta-analysis of the reading achievement gap between students with and without disabilities. Exceptional Children, 85(3), 329-346. doi:10.1177/0014402918795830

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“The prevalence of dyslexia amongst primary schoolchildren ranges between 2% and 4% when ICD-10 criteria are used (Klicpera et al. 2017). Although the share of students with dyslexia in higher education (HE) is generally low (Richardson and Wydell 2003; Stampoltzis and Polychronopoulou 2008), their numbers have increased over the last decade (Callens, Stevens, and Brysbaert 2014; Ghisi et al. 2016; Olofsson, Ahl, and Taube 2012; Olofsson, Taube, and Ahl 2015; Pino and Mortari 2014). University students with dyslexia (StD) face a number of challenges. They report problems understanding specialized literature, identifying the key ideas in a text, understanding instructions (e.g., on exams), taking notes, organizing essays and reports, and expressing ideas in a written format (Kirby et al. 2008; Olofsson, Ahl, and Taube 2012; Webster 2016). Overall, it is difficult for StD to meet basic criteria for academic success. Consequently, first-year dropout among StD is higher than among students without dyslexia (Taylor, Duffy, and England 2009). … about the half of the instructors reported tentativeness about how to manage reading problems among their students in the free answer format. Therefore, the instructors’ relatively good basic (declarative) knowledge about dyslexia stands in contrast to their poor (self-estimated) ‘procedural’ competence in managing dyslexia. Lacking various kinds of information was also a major point when UI were asked about what support they would need.” (p.1, 7)

Schabmann, A., Eichert, H-C., Schmidt, B.M., Hennes, A.K., & Ramacher-Faasen, N. (2019). Knowledge, awareness of problems, and support: University instructors’ perspectives on dyslexia in higher education. European Journal of Special Needs Education, DOI: 10.1080/08856257.2019.1628339

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From interview with Goodman.

"Word recognition is a preoccupation, I don't teach word recognition. I teach people to make sense of language. And learning the words is incidental to that."

"My science is different"

Hanford, E. (2019). At a loss for words: How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers. APM Reports, August 22, 2019. Retrieved from https://www.apmreports.org/story/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading

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“Already well documented for hearing children, schooling’s effects on early literacy skills for young students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) were examined for the first time in the present study. Piecewise growth curve modeling was used to describe 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old students’ growth in phonological awareness, letter-word identification, and vocabulary during 2 years of schooling and the intervening summer (N = 56). Amplification mode was cochlear implants for 45% of the sample and hearing aids for 54%. Classroom communication mode was spoken language only (for 61%) or sign language (39%). Across all skills, significant growth occurred during the 2 years of schooling but not during the summer. These findings underscore early education’s importance in promoting DHH children’s critical early skills. Universal preschool intervention, including during summer, may be important in ensuring that DHH children have an adequate foundation when schooling begins. … The present study underscores that for young DHH children, even those as young as 3 years, schooling matters. The significant effect of schooling on children’s early literacy skills may indicate a need to establish early educational opportunities during the summer, or perhaps provide support for parents as they incorporate language and literacy experiences into the child’s home environment. Our findings indicated that 3-year-olds demonstrated significant rates of growth in all three areas while in school; therefore, beginning school at a younger age may play a critical role in supporting DHH children’s development.” (p.596, 615)

Scott, J. A., Goldberg, H., Connor, C. M., & Lederberg, A. R. (2019). Schooling effects on early literacy skills of young deaf and hard of hearing children. American Annals of the Deaf, 163(5), 596–618.

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“Like earlier research, more recent studies demonstrate that d/Deaf children learn best through explicit and direct instruction (Cannon, Fredrick, & Easterbrooks, 2010; Davenport, Alber-Morgan, Clancy, & Kranak, 2017; Dimling, 2010; Lund & Schuele, 2013; Lund, Douglas, & Schuele, 2015) in meaningful contexts (Lederberg, Miller, Easterbrooks, & Connor, 2014), rather than through incidental exposure. … As has been recommended by others (Ayantoye & Luckner, 2016; Luckner, 2017; Luckner & Cooke, 2010; Luckner et al., 2005; Webb et al., 2015; Williams, 2012; Trezek & Wang, 2017), research-based practices and guidelines identified for hearing children should be employed with d/Deaf children. They should be extended to include the evidence-based interventions for teaching academic language that have been validated with hearing children to teaching d/Deaf children, at least until rigorous research can be conducted specifically with d/Deaf students.” (p. 517, 528-529)

Strassman, B.K., Marashian, K., & Memon, Z. (2019). Teaching academic language to d/deaf students: Does research offer evidence for practice? American Annals of the Deaf, 163(5), 501-533.

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“All readers, from five year old beginners on their first books to the effective adult reader need to use: the meaning, the sentence structure, order cues, size cues, special features, special knowledge, first and last letter knowledge before they resort to left to right sounding out of chunks or letter clusters, or in the last resort, single letters.” (p. 9)

Clay, M. (1998). An observation survey of early literacy achievement. Auckland, Heinemann..

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“In general, teachers revealed a mixed understanding of the literacy-related language structures required for effective teaching. As Mather, Bos, and Babur (2001) commented, teachers with insufficient grasp of such crucial language structures are unlikely to effectively teach reading skills explicitly to those children who show early signs of developing reading difficulties, which in New Zealand includes at least 20% of the junior primary school population. The evidence from this study strongly suggests that teachers would benefit from systematic professional learning and development workshops to improve their understanding of key language constructs involved in literacy acquisition, and how to use this knowledge effectively in literacy instruction.” (p.99)

“The data on teacher prompts from the six reading error scenarios showed that overall, 40% of the first prompts were word-level cues. In general, context and neutral cues together were used more frequently by teachers (60%). This preference probably reflects the advice presented in publications on literacy teaching for beginning readers (e.g. Reading in Junior Classes, The Learner as a Reader, Effective Literacy Practices in Years 1 to 4.) This advice focuses on the use of multiple cues for assisting children identify unfamiliar words in text. However, a stronger weighting of word-level cues is considered essential for most children, and especially for those children who commence school with more limited literate cultural capital (Arrow & Tunmer, 2012; Prochnow, Tunmer, & Arrow, 2015).” (p.99)

Chapman, J.W., Greaney, K.T., Arrow, A.W., & Tunmer, W.E. (2018). Teachers' use of phonics, knowledge of language constructs, and preferred word identification prompts in relation to beginning readers. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 23(1), 87-104.

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“While teachers maintain that all sources of information are equally important and that no one cue is more or less important than another, the findings in this investigation suggest otherwise. There were a total of 96 initial prompts analysed in this investigation. Thirty-three of these initial prompts emphasised phonological-based cues compared with 63 context-based and neutral cues. The teachers' initial prompts were likely to focus on context-based cues more often than they were on phonological-based sources.” (p.28)

Greaney, K. (2001). An investigation of teacher preferences for word identification strategies. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 24, 21–30. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ 

“Nonword reading measures are widely used to index children’s phonics knowledge, and are included in the Phonics Screening Check currently implemented in England and under consideration in Australia. However, critics have argued that the use of nonword measures disadvantages good readers, as they will be influenced by their strong lexical knowledge and err by making word errors (e.g. reading flarm as “farm”). We tested this claim by examining the errors made by a group of 64 Year 2 children when reading aloud a set of simple nonwords. We found that stronger word readers were less likely to make a word error response than weaker word readers, with their most prevalent type of error being another nonword that was highly similar to the target. We conclude that nonword reading measures are a valid index of phonics knowledge, and that these tests do not disadvantage children who are already reading words well.” (p.

Castles, A., Polito, V., Pritchard, S., Anandakumar, T., & Coltheart, M. (2018). Do nonword reading tests for children measure what we want them to? An analysis of year 2 error responses. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties 23(2), 153–165.

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“Although there is a substantial body of observation research investigating the manner in which reading instruction is provided to students with learning disabilities, there is little research in this area involving students with and at risk for emotional disturbance. The purpose of this investigation was to contribute to the limited corpus of observation studies investigating school-based practice in reading for this student population. In this investigation, 11 teachers from two states were systematically observed while providing reading instruction over the course of the 2017-2018 school year. Participating students were also observed over the course of the year and completed two standardized reading assessments at the beginning and end of this investigation. Teachers were also interviewed to identify contextual factors that promote or impede the provision of high quality reading instruction to this student population. Study findings suggest that teachers are in need of additional training, support, and resources to maximize instructional time. Students in this sample tended to make no or minimal progress in reading and were frequently observed displaying low levels of academic engagement across settings. Implications for school practice and areas for future research are discussed.” (p.1)

McKenna, J.W., Adamson, R., & Solis, M. (2019). Reading instruction for students with emotional disturbance: A mixed-methods investigation. Behavior Modification. Online First.

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“The concept of productive failure posits that a problem-solving phase prior to explicit instruction is more effective than explicit instruction followed by problem-solving. This prediction was tested with Year 5 primary school students learning about light energy efficiency. Two, fully randomised, controlled experiments were conducted. In the first experiment (N = 64), explicit instruction followed by problem-solving was found to be superior to the reverse order for performance on problems similar to those used during instruction, with no difference on transfer problems. In the second experiment, where element interactivity was increased (N = 71), explicit instruction followed by problem-solving was found to be superior to the reverse order for performance on both similar and transfer problems. The contradictory predictions and results of a productive failure approach and cognitive load theory are discussed using the concept of element interactivity. Specifically, for learning where element interactivity is high, explicit instruction should precede problem-solving.” (p.1)

“However, while there are considerable data indicating the importance of full guidance, the effects of the sequence of providing more and less guidance are far less clear. Assuming that full guidance is given at some point, it remains a question as to whether it is optimal to provide this guidance at the start of an instructional sequence or to allow learners to first experiment with possible solution methods with little or no guidance. An approach known as ‘productive failure’ has been developed in which learners first struggle to solve a problem on their own before being given full guidance in the canonical method (Kapur and Bielaczyc 2012). However, cognitive load theory (Sweller et al. 2011) predicts that problem-solving first should be less effective than an approach involving full guidance from the outset, for all but the simplest learning objectives. The main aim of the current study was to conduct fully randomised, controlled experiments investigating the effectiveness of a problem-solving first approach compared with an alternative model where full guidance is provided at the start of the sequence of instruction.” (p.2)

Ashman, G., Kalyuga, S., & Sweller, J. (2019). Problem-solving or explicit instruction: Which should go first when element interactivity is high? Educational Psychology Review. Online First.

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“Barriers to changing teaching practice included beliefs about how to teach reading, based on the primacy of using multiple cues when identifying unknown words in text and minimal value on the role of word-level decoding skills. These beliefs were reflected in set teaching practices that some teachers found difficult to change … .” (p.20)

Chapman, J.W., Arrow, A.W., Braid, C., Greaney, K.T., & Tunmer, W.E. (2018). Enhancing literacy learning outcomes for beginning readers: Research results and teaching strategies. College of Humanities and Social Sciences Massey University. Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/194575/Enhancing-Literacy-Learning-Outcomes-for-Beginning-Readers.pdf

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“This study evaluated whether or not teachers of students with severe disabilities reported implementing specific data-based decision guidelines to make instructional decisions (Browder, Liberty, Heller, & D’Huyvetters, 1986; Browder, Demchak, Heller, & King, 1989) following completion of their teacher preparation program. A cross-sectional survey regarding reported accuracy was followed by examination of teacher-submitted student performance data sheets to determine actual accuracy. A majority of respondents reported currently using the decision guidelines or using the guidelines in the past. Survey results indicated teacher perception of accurate use was high, while data sheet evaluation indicated actual accuracy was questionable and generally low. Teachers reported having lower confidence and accuracy in their actions related to data analysis than data collection. The actual data sheets supported their reports; steps and actions of the decision guidelines with the lowest accuracy of use were related to data analysis and instructional decisions.” (p. 175)

Demchak, M.A. & Sutter, C. (2019). Teachers’ perception of use and actual use of a data-based decision-making process. Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 54(2), 175–185. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar_url?url=http://www.daddcec.com/uploads/2/5/2/0/2520220/etadd_june_54_2_2019.pdf%23page%3D46&hl=en&sa=X&d=12219797095198605083&scisig=AAGBfm1U5Zv0UpmkpO4CG7c2MEufU33qeA&nossl=1&oi=scholaralrt

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“The vast majority of English words are built from stems (e.g. book) combined with other stems (e.g. bookworm), or affixes (e.g. bookish). This morphological structure turns out to be important for learning the direct spelling-meaning mapping because this is an area of non-arbitrariness within that mapping. This is because stems occur and reoccur with highly-similar meanings (e.g. unclean, cleaner, cleanly, cleanliness), and affixes alter the meanings of stems in highly-predictable ways (e.g. teacher, builder, banker). If a child understands the morphological structure of the writing system, then the task of orthographic learning becomes much simpler; for example, the words unclean, cleaner, cleanly, and cleanliness all become variations of a single word. Estimates suggest that this knowledge reduces the orthographic learning challenge around seven-fold, to learning around 11,000 stems on average.27,28”

Rastle, K. (2019). The journey to skilled reading. In James Murphy (Ed.). The researchED guide to literacy.

27. Rastle, K. (2019). The place of morphology in learning to read in English. Cortex, 116, 45-54.

28. Rastle, K. (2019). EPS mid-career prize lecture 2017: Writing systems, reading, and language. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 4, 677-692.

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“The importance of phonological skills in reading development has also been emphasized in neurodevelopmental models of reading development. Pugh and colleagues (2001, Sandak et al., 2004) first proposed that reading acquisition starts with the emergence of a dorsal reading circuit in the left temporo-parietal cortex (LTPC) for the development of phonological processing skills. A dorsal network, connecting the LTPC and the left inferior frontal cortex (LIFC), is then gradually formed to support the integrative process of phonological and lexical-semantic features of learned words. This phonological route enables beginning readers to decode new words they encounter. Meanwhile, the left occipitotemporal cortex interacts increasingly with higher-order cortices responsible for phonological and semantic processing (e.g., LTPC and LIFC) most likely facilitated by decoding and reading experiences during the time course of learning to read, which results in a specialization for words and word-like stimuli (Interactive Account, Price & Devlin, 2011). As a result, the visual word form system (VWFS, Cohen et al., 2000; Vinckier et al., 2007) emerges for fast-paced word recognition in fluent readers (e.g., McCandliss et al., 2003; Shaywitz et al., 2002).” (p. 2048)

Yu, X., Raney, T., Perdue, M.V., Zuk, J., Ozernov-Palchik, O., Becker, B.L.C., Raschle, N.M., & Gaab, N. (2018). Emergence of the neural network underlying phonological processing from the pre-reading to the emergent reading stage: a longitudinal study. Human Brain Mapping, 39(5), 2047–2063.

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“Several studies have shown that RD and ADHD frequently co-occur at greaterthan-chance levels, with 15–50% of children with ADHD also meeting criteria for RD diagnosis and vice versa (e.g., Gayan et al., 2005; Langberg, Vaughn, Brinkman, Froehlich, & Epstein, 2010; Willcutt et al., 2013). Numerous studies have shown that RD, ADHD, and their comorbid manifestation have a severe long-lasting clinical, psychological and social impact (Birnbaum et al., 2005; Quinn, Rutherford, & Leone, 2001; Sexton, Gelhorn, Bell, & Classi, 2012). Their co-occurrence raises questions as to how the disorders interact and to what extent they can be differentiated, yet the causal pathways and underlying mechanisms leading to comorbidity of RD and ADHD are not understood.” (p. 1)

Langer, N., Benjamin, C., Becker, B.L.C., & Gaab, N. (2019). Comorbidity of reading disabilities and ADHD: Structural and functional brain characteristics. Human Brain Mapping, 1–22. PMID 30784139 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24552

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“Hearing loss reduces audibility, impacts the perception of temporal fine structure cues, and degrades the spectral characteristics of auditory signals (Moore, 2008; Souza, Wright, Blackburn, Tatman, & Gallun, 2015). Whether receiving amplified acoustic signals through hearing aids (HAs) or electrical signals through cochlear implants (CIs), complete restoration of the original auditory signal is not achieved with the use of amplification devices (Nittrouer et al., 2012; Sininger, Grimes, & Christensen, 2010). Thus, children with hearing loss do not have the same access to spoken language as children without hearing loss and, as a result, may experience perceptual processing deficits (Nittrouer & Burton, 2001; Tomblin, Oleson, Ambrose, Walker, & Moeller, 2014).” (p.17)

Runnion, E., & Gray, S. (2019). What clinicians need to know about early literacy development in children with hearing loss. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 50, 16–33.   

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“Alphabet knowledge outcomes in children with hearing loss. Preschool and kindergarten children with hearing loss may learn alphabet knowledge skills at a similar pace as children without hearing loss (Easterbrooks, Lederberg, Miller, Bergeron, & Connor, 2008; Werfel, 2017). For example, Werfel (2017) found that 4-year-old children with hearing loss and 4-year-old children without hearing loss did not differ significantly on letter naming skills and knowledge of sound–letter correspondences and improved on these skills at the same rate over a 6-month period. Children with hearing loss knew approximately 15 letter names and seven letter sounds at the first testing point and 19 letter names and 10 letter sounds at the second testing point. Although alphabet knowledge outcomes in children with hearing loss are encouraging, there are some children who may exhibit deficits (Cupples et al., 2014; Easterbrooks et al., 2008). Easterbrooks et al. (2008) reported that the standard deviation on a sound–letter correspondence assessment was approximately 10 for a group of young children with hearing loss who achieved an average score of 10 in the beginning of an academic school year. This indicates that there may be children with hearing loss who need more intensive intervention in sound–letter correspondences than others.” (p. 19)

Runnion, E., & Gray, S. (2019). What clinicians need to know about early literacy development in children with hearing loss. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 50, 16–33.   

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“According to findings by Piasta, Petscher, and Justice (2012), preschool children who knew at least 10 letter names had a strong probability that they would not be at risk for literacy deficits in the first grade. Those who knew at least 18 uppercase letters and 15 lowercase letters were best classified as not at risk, yet the majority of children with typical development who receive continued instructional support will master letter naming skills and sound–letter correspondences by first grade (Beach & Robinson, 1992; Piasta & Wagner, 2010), which in turn prepares them for phonics instruction.” (p.19)

Runnion, E., & Gray, S. (2019). What clinicians need to know about early literacy development in children with hearing loss. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 50, 16–33.

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“Since the reading habits of both preservice and inservice teachers have been linked to their abilities as reading teachers, aliteracy among teachers is particularly distressing. The purpose of this study was to investigate the amount of leisure time elementary teachers spend reading literature for pleasure. … Results or paired samples t-tests indicated that participants spent significantly less time reading newspapers/magazines (t = 2.696, p < .013) and reading blogs (t = 2.783, p < .011) and significantly more time watching movies (t = -3.287, p < .003) than reading literature for pleasure. It appears that lack of motivation may be a factor in participants’ decision to read literature for pleasure as opposed to either lack of time or technological distractions. (p.1)

Giles, R.M., & Tunks, K.W. (2019). Aliteracy among teachers? Investigating the reading habits of elementary and early childhood educators. Journal of Contemporary Educational Research, 3(3), 1-7. Retrieved from http://ojs.bbwpublisher.com/index.php/JCER/article/view/384/pdf

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“Cogmed Working Memory Training (CWMT) is a commercial cognitive-training program designed to foster working-memory capacity. Enhanced working-memory capacity is then supposed to increase one's overall cognitive function and academic achievement. This meta-analysis investigates the effects of CWMT on cognitive and academic outcomes. The inclusion criteria were met by 50 studies (637 effect sizes). Highly consistent near-zero effects were estimated in far-transfer measures of cognitive ability (e.g., attention and intelligence) and academic achievement (language ability and mathematics). By contrast, slightly heterogeneous small to medium effects were observed in memory tasks (i.e., near transfer). Moderator analysis showed that these effects were weaker for near-transfer measures not directly related to the trained tasks. These results highlight that, while near transfer occurs regularly, far transfer is rare or, possibly, inexistent. Transfer thus appears to be a function of the degree of overlap between trained tasks and outcome tasks.” (p. 229)

“These outcomes corroborate the Fig. 6. Funnel plot of observed outcomes (gs) and standard errors of very-near-transfer measures at follow-up. 6 Interestingly, the lack of follow-up far-transfer effects also seems to reject the hypothesis that some time is needed in order for generalized results reported in most recent meta-analyses and systematic reviews in the broader field of WM training (e.g., Dougherty, Hamovits, & Tidwell, 2016; Gillam, Holbrook, Mecham, & Weller, 2018; Melby-Lervåg et al., 2016; Sala & Gobet, 2017a, b; Soveri, Antfolk, Karlsson, Salo, & Laine, 2017). Conversely, our findings contradict the more optimistic conclusions of those meta-analyses and systematic reviews specifically examining the impact of CWMT on far-transfer measures (Nutley & Ralph, n.d.; Pearson, 2016; Shinaver et al., 2014; Spencer-Smith & Klingberg, 2015). … . In fact, poor design quality is often associated with more optimistic results in the field of cognitive training (Simons et al., 2016). … To date, the empirical evidence indicates that the possibility of enhancing general cognition by training is scientifically implausible (e.g., Moreau, Macnamara, & Hambrick, 2018; Sala & Gobet, 2019). As pointed out by some scholars (e.g., Engle, 2015), human cognition is the product of a biological system. Thus, it is very unlikely that any short-term cognitive-training program could significantly affect it. CWMT appears to be no exception. Consequently, to date, CWMT cannot be recommended as an educational tool at any age and for any population. Furthermore, since the overall idea of fostering cognitive skills by training seems substantially implausible, these findings cast some doubts about the claimed positive effects of other commercial cognitive-training programs (e.g., Neuroracer, Cognifit, and Lumosity, just to mention some). In this respect, the present meta-analysis is in line with the general skepticism about the alleged benefits of commercial cognitive-training programs expressed by Simon et al. (2016) and reported in large trials (e.g., ACTIVE; Rebok et al., 2014).” (p.239)

Aksayli, N.D., Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2019). The cognitive and academic benefits of Cogmed: A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 27, 229–243.

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“Finally, there must be closer collaboration between researchers and teachers so that a reciprocal relationship exists. Researchers must shift their focus from simply passing down results of their studies and expecting automatic implementation to actually hearing and addressing the concerns of teachers of the reading impaired to improve practice and drive future research. Teachers would be more open to applying research to practice if the following needs could be met: (a) results could be applied across diverse settings and grades, (b) additional time provided for training and planning, (c) school-level support available for answering questions and translating new research into practice, and (d) teacher-researcher collaboration to address concerns and maintain the integrity of implementation (Vanderlinde & van Braak, 2010).” (p.92)

Vanderlinde, R., & van Braak, J. (2010). The gap between educational research and practice: Views of teachers, school leaders, intermediaries and researchers. British Educational Research Journal, 36(2), 299-316. doi:10.1080/01411920902919257

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“Research on stress and dyslexia has mainly focused on chronic and contextual stress caused by the school environment. Our goal was to test individual differences in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis reactivity of dyslexic and non-dyslexic children and the related emotional manifestations associated with exposure to a psychosocial stressor. … Dyslexic children did not show the expected cortisol response, as the highest percentage of children who were non-reactive to stress was found in this group. Cortisol reactivity to stress was related to higher levels of anxiety and lower positive affect in the non-dyslexic children.” (p.1)

Espina, L., García, I., Sánchez, M.P., Román, F., & Salvador, A. (2019). Effects of psychosocial stress on the hormonal and affective response in children with dyslexia. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 15, 1-9.

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“The present study followed up the reading development of 209 Finland Swedish students from kindergarten until Grade 9, half of whom participated in an 8-month phonological intervention in kindergarten. The intervention group outperformed the control group in both word reading and reading comprehension in Grades 1 through 9. … In Grade 6, altogether 60% of the nontrained readers at risk still belonged to the lowest quartile in reading comprehension as opposed to 24% of their peers in the intervention group. The pattern was repeated in Grade 9, with trained readers at risk performing at the level of nontrained mainstream readers.” (p.1)

Kjeldsen, A-C., Saarento-Zaprudin, S.K., &Niemi, P.O. (2019). Kindergarten training in phonological awareness: Fluency and comprehension gains are greatest for readers at risk in grades 1 through 9. Journal of Learning Disabilities, On-line First. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219419847154

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“Decades ago, special education researchers constructed a class of treatments that targeted specific cognitive deficits among low-achieving special-needs students. The treatments, they promised, would remediate the children’s cognitive deficits and strengthen their academic performance. A well-known product from this endeavor was the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA; e.g., Kirk, McCarthy, & Kirk, 1968). Its developers depended on an information processing model as inspiration and guide to generate learner deficits in areas like “visual decoding” and “auditory associations.” Educators were encouraged to use the ITPA to assess children’s strengths and weaknesses in these areas and, once a deficit was identified, to find a corresponding treatment within its pages to strengthen it. Different deficits called for different treatments. By the early 1970s, the ITPA was one of many programs claiming the capacity to help instructors match students’ cognitive deficits with treatments designed to remediate them. These programs became popular nationwide and they collectively represented the “abilities training” movement.

A key assumption of the developers of these programs was that children’s cognitive deficit(s) had to be strengthened prior to engaging them in academic instruction, which often resulted in long delays before they received the intensive direct instruction in reading, math, writing, and so forth that they needed. Sadly, the abilities training movement, despite its popularity, was a profoundly naïve and flawed attempt at ATI that hurt rather than helped many academically-vulnerable students. By the end of the 1970s, it had been convincingly debunked (cf. Mann, 1979). Its assessments of cognitive deficits were shown to lack validity; its treatments to strengthen the putative deficits and to improve academic performance were proved ineffectual (e.g., Arter & Jenkins, 1979).

With the repudiation of the abilities training movement, many also rejected ATI (cf. Reschly & Ysseldyke, 1995). Ever since, the two have often been linked, understood as a joint phenomenon, described as a cautionary tale for those who would take account of individual differences when developing instructional programs. This despite that researchers are (a) finding ATIs in various areas of inquiry (cf. L. Fuchs et al., 2014), and (b) recognizing the very real limits of direct instruction as they work to help students with serious learning problems.

The longstanding view of ATI as an intellectually bankrupt concept, we believe, is tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bath. In comparison to the developers of abilities training programs decades ago, researchers today understand that ATI research is a difficult multi-step process requiring substantive expertise, technical sophistication, humility, and persistence. ATI will be an important dimension of the future of instructional psychology and educational practice, despite what many educational researchers may think. Medical researchers have taken hold of the basics of ATI with both hands. They call it “personalized medicine.”” (p.14)

Fuchs, D., Kearns, D.M., Fuchs, L.S., Elleman, A.M., Gilbert, J.K., Patton, S., Peng, P., & Compton, D.L. (2019). Using moderator analysis to identify the first-grade children who benefit more and less from a reading comprehension program: A step toward aptitude-by-treatment interaction. Exceptional Children, 85(2), 229–247.

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“Research has shown that the ‘phonics first’ system for teaching in English leads to a lower incidence of dyslexia (1.0 to 1.5%, Chall, 1967, 1985; Clark, 1970; SED, 1978; Ferarro, 1982; Read, 1986). If the ‘Look and Say’ system is used then the same researches showed an incidence of 4%. The British Dyslexia Association (2018) now reports an incidence of 4 % cases of severe dyslexia and 10 % less severe. This suggests that the ‘phonics first’ agenda (Rose, 2006; DfE, 2014) is not being implemented. However even if it were we should still have a significant number of dyslexic children in our schools and usually there are more than the numbers predicted from the researches. It also shows that phonics as currently undertaken, whether basic, analytic or synthetic is not the answer to the dyslexic problem. It would appear to be necessary but not sufficient.” (p.1)

Montgomery, D. (2018). Part 1: The three educational faces of dyslexia: Some key findings from logographic and alphabetic phases. Global Journal of Human-Social Science: G Linguistics & Education, 18(1), 1-15.

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“In the RUS [Research Use Survey] report (Nelson et al., 2017) we discovered that information based on academic research had only a small to moderate influence on teachers’ decision making. Findings from this recent survey were very similar. We found that teachers were much more likely to draw ideas and support from their own experiences (60 per cent of respondents identified ‘ideas generated by me or my school’), or the experiences of other teachers/schools (42 per cent of respondents identified ‘ideas from other schools’), when deciding on approaches to support pupil progress. In addition, non-research-based continuing professional development (CPD) was also cited as an important influence (54 per cent of respondents identified ‘information from CPD’ and of these, 84 per cent said that the CPD was based on information other than academic research). This suggests that there has been no particular growth in the use of research evidence as a source of influence in school decision making since the RUS was administered in 2014. Across both surveys, the three most commonly cited influences (teacher/schoolgenerated ideas; information from CPD; and ideas from other schools) were the same. However, teachers believe that their schools have climates that support evidence use, and teachers generally have positive dispositions towards research” (p.4)

Walker, M., Nelson, J., Bradshaw, S., & Brown, C. (2019). Teachers’ engagement with research: What do we know? A research briefing. National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). Retrieved from https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Evaluation/Teachers_engagement_with_research_Research_Brief_JK.pdf

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“This synthesis documented the complex ecological context of literacy instruction within upper elementary classrooms participating in two research studies. Our goal was to seek possible causes for teacher knowledge and instructional practices in reading and writing classrooms. The picture that emerged shows that while teachers may have not received appropriate pre-service preparation and infrequently used evidence-based practices in their classrooms, the school context does little to remediate the situation. This is one of a few studies where administrator knowledge and actions have been documented and show the important role that they play in changing teacher practice. Textbooks, assessments, and administrator decision-making also factor into the causes for a lack of support for teachers that may cause poor learning outcomes for students. Until all these factors are addressed, it is unlikely that teachers by themselves have the authority and autonomy to make the changes necessary to make a big difference in their knowledge and instructional practices.” (p.17)

 

Wijekumar, K., Beerwinkle, A.L., Harris, K.R., & Graham, S. (2019). Etiology of teacher knowledge and instructional skills for literacy at the upper elementary grades. Annals of Dyslexia, 69(1), 5–20.

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“Elementary school students are often placed into groups with peers of similar reading ability in a practice called within-class ability grouping for guided reading instruction. Through this practice, students are differentially exposed to reading skills, strategies, and texts that are presumed to match their current level of ability. This widespread practice is particularly problematic given that (1) current notions of matching early readers to texts for reading instruction are based on traditional instructional practice rather than empirical evidence, (2) poor, minority students are overrepresented in the lowest ranked groups, (3) students in higher ranked groups make greater academic gains than those in lower ranked groups, and (4) teacher perceptions of students’ abilities are often inaccurate. Conversely, several studies have shown that when students are presented with texts of increased difficulty and given appropriate instructional support, they are able to make accelerated reading progress. (p.ii)

Young, T.T. (2019). Redesigning guided reading instruction: Achieving equity through heterogeneity. The University of Nebraska - Lincoln, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2019. 13861841. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1105&context=teachlearnstudent

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“Our study capitalized on the experimental control provided by artificial language learning methods to quantify the relative benefits of print-to-sound versus print-to-meaning focused training for learning to read aloud and comprehend single written words. In our experiment, as for children learning to read alphabetic languages, oral vocabulary was pretrained and print–sound mappings were systematic. Under these circumstances, the benefits of print-tosound, relative to print-to-meaning, training were striking and can be summarized as follows: (a) reading aloud trained words was faster and more accurate, (b) generalization in reading aloud untrained words was faster, and (c) comprehension of written words was more accurate earlier in learning. These findings therefore provide experimental support for the importance of phonics instruction in early years teaching. In particular, our findings contradict the suggestion that phonics teaching does not aid learning to read for meaning (e.g., Davis, 2013). Brain imaging data revealed considerable overlap between neural activity when reading aloud the artificial languages and when reading English words and pseudowords. This increases our confidence that data from artificial languages can provide insight into the cognitive and neural systems that contribute to natural language learning. Given this overlap, a crucial finding was that activity in the phonologically mediated dorsal pathway during reading aloud was greater following print-to-meaning than print-to-sound training. This likely reflects increased effort in mapping from spelling to sound. Furthermore, this neural disadvantage was not compensated by increased engagement of, or reduced effort in, the direct ventral pathway, either during reading aloud or reading comprehension. These data therefore imply that learning that focuses on arbitrary associations between print and meaning may not promote use of direct print-to-meaning associations, and instead hinders use of print-to-sound relationships. These print-to-sound relationships have been shown by our work to be crucial not only for successful reading aloud but also for accurate written word comprehension. In sum, this experiment investigated the behavioral and neural consequences of different methods of reading instruction for learning to read single words in alphabetic writing systems, in the case where oral vocabulary is relatively secure. Under these circumstances, our findings suggest that interventions aiming to improve the accuracy of reading aloud and/or comprehension in the early stages of learning should focus on the systematicities present in print-to-sound relationships, rather than attempting to teach direct access to the meanings of whole written words. Alongside broader oral language teaching, this means embracing phonics-based methods of reading instruction, and rejecting multicuing or balanced literacy approaches which, our results suggest, may hinder the discovery of spelling–sound relationships essential for reading aloud and comprehension.” (p. 847)

Taylor, J. S. H., Davis, M.H. & Rastle, K. (2017). Comparing and validating methods of reading instruction using behavioural and neural findings in an artificial orthography. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 146(6), 826-858.

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“This experimental study compared the effects of a transition intervention with standard school-based interventions on the reading development of ELs in first grade who were receiving native reading instruction for at least 45 min a day. Results suggest that both, a transition intervention and a standard school-based explicit intervention were equally effective in improving student reading skills in English. These results suggest that interventions currently on the market for at-risk monolingual students might be also effective with ELs with the adaptations suggested by the publisher. Furthermore, our results suggest that there is no need to wait until students have achieved a certain level of language proficiency in English to include them in small-group instruction that targets their specific reading difficulties as identified by formative assessments. In other words, ELs at risk of reading difficulties can receive explicit supplemental instruction that targets their weak skills as soon as they are screened and identified. (p.237)

Baker, D. L., Burns, D., Kame’enui, E. J., Smolkowski, K., & Baker, S. K. (2016). Does supplemental instruction support the transition from Spanish to English reading instruction for first-grade English learners at risk of reading difficulties? Learning Disability Quarterly, 39(4), 226-239. doi:10.1177/0731948715616757 _______________________________________________________________________________________________ 

“Another persistent trend is that teachers continue to spend greater amounts of time monitoring reading comprehension than time devoted to teaching reading comprehension strategies. Researchers and professional development providers could consider more innovative approaches to bridging research-to-practice gaps related to reading comprehension. … . First, it is incumbent on educators to integrate modes of reading that are supported by evidence. Peer-mediated reading is an alternative to round-robin reading worthy of consideration because peer reading and reading in small groups has been associated with improved reading outcomes for students with LD (e.g., Fuchs et al., 2000). Only one teacher in the current study engaged students in peer-reading activities. Second, special educators should increase the frequency of reading comprehension strategy instruction. Professional development providers can support this by modeling strategies including main idea identification, providing coaching with feedback, and explaining the associations between explicit instruction and improved student outcomes. Previous professional development in schools that are economically disadvantaged has improved teacher knowledge of reading instruction, as well as student outcomes (Gersten, Dimino, Jayanthi, Kim, & Santoro, 2010; Klingner, Vaughn, Arguelles, Hughes, & Leftwich, 2004; Podhajski, Mather, Nathan, & Sammons, 2009). Low-performing schools can improve students’ reading outcomes through professional development that prioritizes effective interventions and instructional practices (e.g., collaborative strategic reading). Professional development should include the opportunity for teachers to receive feedback after being observed (Klingner et al., 2004), and to participate in teacher study groups to collaborate on implementing new reading approaches (Gersten et al., 2010). Furthermore, professional development should include training on how to model reading strategies for students (Podhajski et al., 2009).” (p. 77)

Ciullo, S., E., McKenna, J.W., Alves, K.D., & Kennedy, M.J. (2019). Reading instruction for students with learning disabilities in grades 4 and 5: An observation study. Learning Disability Quarterly, 42(2), 67–79.

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“It is interesting that the literature on instruction suggests pure discovery and programs with minimal guidance do not really work (Fyfe, McNeil, Son, & Goldstone, 2014; Kirschner et al., 2006; Mayer, 2004). While pure discovery has been thought to help children arrive at the relevant knowledge by themselves and so to promote better storage in long-term memory, surprisingly, guided instruction and direct instruction were found to work best (Kirschner et al., 2006; Stockard, Wood, Coughlin, & Rasplica Khoury, 2018). In other words, children need structured guidance to learn the content of a domain well (guidance that includes scaffolding in various ways; Hmelo-Silver, Duncan, & Chinn, 2007; Samarapungavan, Patrick, & Mantzicopoulos, 2011). Hmelo-Silver et al. (2007) pointed out two other interesting facts: (1) Just-in-time direct instruction is indeed needed from time to time in problem-based and inquiry learning; and (2) students learn more from a lecture after an initial exploratory problem-solving phase. On the one hand, the VSF approach can help clarify the idea of “just-in-time” (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007) for certain methods in education (Kirschner et al., 2006). The differential need for guidance (i.e., different amounts at different moments of teaching (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007) can be linked to the child's current VSF state and the passage from one state to another: A lot of guidance is needed when the child is variable, less and less guidance when stable, and only some hints when flexible. This may be why the current literature offers contradictory results: Children may have been in different states, states that were not evaluated in the respective studies. Knowing a child state or whether he or she is at transition from one state to another is helpful because intervention seems most effective at transition points (Thelen, 1995): Just in time can become a known moment in time for when to provide direct instruction, for example when passing from variability to stability.” (p.20)

Ionescu, T. (2019). Putting the variability–stability–flexibility pattern to use: Adapting instruction to how children develop. New Ideas in Psychology, 55, 18-23.

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“Although we found that deficits in speech perception are associated with both poor reading and poor language skills, the causal relationships remain unclear. Categorical speech perception tasks require both perceptual and decision-making skills (Treisman, 1999). Many children with dyslexia have comorbid language problems (McArthur, Hogben, Edwards, Heath, & Mengler, 2000) and problems of attention control are strongly associated with preschool language difficulties (Gooch, Hulme, Nash, & Snowling, 2014). Such comorbidities may go some way toward explaining the occurrence of speech perception deficits in dyslexia, at least when measured using the categorical perception task. Future research testing developmental models of dyslexia that trace its origins to infancy (Goswami, 2015; Zhang & McBride-Chang, 2010) will need to consider how related processes, such as attentional skills, contribute to the developmental pathways that lead to reading and its disorders. An important finding of the present study is that, while speech perception is a predictor of reading, speech perception deficits are evident in children with DLD regardless of whether or not they are dyslexic. Furthermore, those deficits are more marked in children with DLD than in children with dyslexia in the absence of a language impairment. It is important for future studies to clarify both the specific and general effects of poor speech perception on development if we are to understand the heterogeneity of neurodevelopmental disorders.” (p.9)

Snowling, M.J., Lervåg, A., Nash, H.M., & Hulme, C. (2019). Longitudinal relationships between speech perception, phonological skills and reading in children at high-risk of dyslexia. Developmental Science, 22(1), 1-12. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/desc.12723

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“Word callers are children who efficiently decode words but do so without comparable comprehension taking place (Stanovich, 1986), so that words are called out without an understanding of the meaning of the text. Word callers are assumed to develop because there is an over-emphasis on pedagogical strategies that focus on basic reading skills instruction such as phonics (Nathan & Stanovich, 1991; Stanovich, 1986, 2000) and fluency (Hamilton & Shinn, 2003) rather than comprehension. However, a balanced instructional approach (i.e., one that focuses on decoding and fluency at the appropriate stages along with an emphasis on comprehension) is often utilized in today’s classroom and is supported by the reading education literature (Pressley, Roehrig, Bogner, Raphael, & Dolezal, 2002). Furthermore, both word reading (Gough, Hoover, & Peterson, 1996; Shankweiler et al., 1999; Stanovich, 1980) and oral reading fluency (Fuchs et al., 2001; Jenkins, Fuchs, van den Broek, Epsin, & Deno, 2003b; Shinn, Good, Knutson, & Tilly, 1992) are closely related to reading comprehension.

The validity of the word caller phenomenon has been questioned by researchers (Hamilton & Shinn, 2003; Nathan & Stanovich, 1991; Stanovich, 1986, 2000), and has been described as a “red herring” of the reading literature (Nathan & Stanovich, 1991, p. 177). Despite the frequent use of the term (e.g., Walczyk & Griffin-Ross, 2007), there is almost no research to indicate what the actual prevalence of word calling among developing readers is and what teachers’ understanding of the term is.” (p.147)

In summary, our results suggest that word calling occurs infrequently among early developing readers but emerges as a discernible phenomenon toward the end of elementary school. However, teachers are not accurate at identifying children as word callers. Despite repeated attempts at discerning the conceptual basis for the term among teachers, the rationale for teachers’ word caller nominations remains unclear.

Meisinger, E.B., Bradley, B.A., Schwanenflugel, P.J., Kuhn, M.R., & Morris, R.D. (2009). Myth and reality of the word caller: The relation between teacher nominations and prevalence among elementary school children. School Psychology Quarterly, 24(3), 147-150.

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“This article reviews research on the outcomes of diverse reading approaches on the achievement of struggling readers in elementary schools. 61 studies of 48 different programs met rigorous standards. 84% were randomized experiments and 16% quasi-experiments. Outcomes were positive for one-to-one tutoring and were positive but not as large for one-to-small group tutoring. There were no differences in outcomes between teachers and teaching assistants as tutors. Whole-class approaches (mostly cooperative learning) and whole-school approaches incorporating tutoring obtained outcomes for struggling readers as large as those found for one- to-one tutoring, and benefitted many more students. Technology-supported adaptive instruction did not have positive outcomes, however. The article concludes that approaches mixing classroom and school improvements with tutoring for the most at-risk students have the greatest potential for the largest numbers of struggling readers.” (p.1)

Inns, A.J., Lake, C., Pellegrini, M., & Slavin, R. (2019). A synthesis of quantitative research on programs for struggling readers in elementary schools. Best-evidence Encyclopedia. Retrieved from bit.ly/2J4aZXc

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“ … the James-Burdumy et al. (2005) federally commissioned evaluation of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program is frequently cited as evidence – from a set of rigorous quasi-experimental tests – that afterschool programs are ineffective. However, it is also likely that some outcome effects were missed because the study did not include adequate measurement and modeling of program implementation and other proximal indicators of instructional quality, student skill learning needs, and student skill change. In addition to the overall pattern of nil effects on student outcomes, it is also possible that (a) program or instructional quality was too low to produce an effect on student outcomes in a large proportion of the sample, masking real effects that occurred in a smaller number of programs or (b) real skill gains occurred in different skill domains (e.g., emotion management, empathy, mathematics, ecology) for small subgroups of students such that focusing on the average effect of program participation on growth of any single skill masked simultaneous effects in different domains (Smith, Peck, Pittman, McGovern, 2015).” (p.2)

Smith, C., Peck S., Roy, R., & Smith, L. (2019). Measure once, cut twice: Using data for continuous improvement and impact evaluation in education programs. Meetings of the American Education Research Association, Toronto, ON, CA. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332301235_Measure_once_cut_twice_Using_data_for_continuous_improvement_and_impact_evaluation_in_education_programs

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“Over the past 30 years attempts to replicate the model's functional form have had mixed results and studies have reported a wide range in the variance explained in reading comprehension (e.g., 65% in Aaron, Joshi, & Williams, 1999; 98–100% in Adlof, Catts, & Little, 2006; 71–85% in Hoover & Gough; 59–80% in Kershaw & Schatschneider, 2012; and 90% in Language and Reading Research Consortium, 2015). A recent meta-analysis of SVR studies reports an average explained variance in reading comprehension of 60% (Quinn & Wagner, in press). … As described earlier, the structural form of SVR is more strongly supported by an additive rather than a product model. In this revised version of SVR, it is the sum of the decoding component and the linguistic comprehension component that predicts reading comprehension better than the product. Also, as described earlier, there is support for the SVR view that the unique prediction of each component to reading comprehension changes over time, with the contribution of decoding decreasing and the contribution of linguistic comprehension increasing. This does not mean that decoding relinquishes an important role given that it remains strongly correlated with reading comprehension into the secondary grades (e.g., Braze et al., 2016; Garcia and Cain, 2014; Author, 2015b; Protopapas et al., 2013). What it means is that decoding cannot account for unique variance in predicting reading comprehension because all of its variance is shared with linguistic comprehension (see also Adlof et al., 2006). What has not been considered in this revised structural form of SVR is that the three-dimensional model can and should, for the sake of accurate interpretation, be decomposed into unique and common variance among decoding, language, and reading comprehension. … Thus, for students who are weak in one of the SVR components—decoding or linguistic comprehension—interventions should target the weakness. However, researchers who have examined the structure of linguistic comprehension and its increasingly large contribution to explaining variance in reading comprehension encourage interventions that target fundamental skills involved in both word recognition and linguistic comprehension (e.g., Adlof et al., 2006; LARRC, 2015). Other researchers go a step further and suggest that both classroom literacy instruction and intervention emphasize the integration of skills in word recognition and linguistic comprehension (e.g., Foorman et al., 2016; Foorman, Herrera, & Dombek, 2018; Herrera, Truckenmiller, & Foorman, 2016; Lesaux, Kieffer, Kelley, & Harris, 2014). Encouraging the integration of word knowledge skills—words' pronunciations, meanings, structure, spellings—with knowledge of the linguistic devices for making text cohesive (e.g., Foorman et al., 2017; Lawrence, Crosson, Paré-Blagoev, & Snow, 2015) follows logically from this study's findings that reading comprehension is explained by the large proportion of common variance at all grades and of unique variance in linguistic comprehension above the primary grades.” (p.12, 14, 19)

Foorman, B.R., Petscher, Y., & Herrera, S. (2018). Unique and common effects of decoding and language factors in predicting reading comprehension in grades 1–10. Learning and Individual Differences, 63, 12-23.

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“This study used a relatively new and advanced meta-analytic SEM approach to analyze correlation matrices from 155 studies with over 1 million students. The two-stage modeling approach supported a three-factor model that accounted for 57% of the variance in RC in the full sample. This estimate is similar to other relevant accounts of the SVR (e.g., Hoover & Gough, 1990). Once decoding and linguistic comprehension were accounted for, a cognitive factor made of reasoning and inference and working memory was a separable, but nonsignificant predictor of additional variance in RC. The factor structure was different across development: For the younger sample of students, the original specifications of the SVR were supported, whereby a two-factor model (decoding and linguistic comprehension) was the best fit to the data and accounted for 60% of the variance in RC. For the older students, the three-factor solution with a separate cognitive factor accounted for approximately 53% of the variance in RC. That we accounted for 50%–60% of the variance in RC is impressive in itself: the portion of variance unaccounted for included error and measurement variance due to differences in samples, measures, and missing constructs.” (p.1964)

Quinn, J. M., & Wagner, R. K. (2018). Using meta-analytic structural equation modeling to study developmental change in relations between language and literacy. Child Development, 89(6), 1956–1969.

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“ … , there is some evidence that there is a reciprocally predictive relation between reading comprehension and fluency and that fluency is both a contributor to (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974), and a product of (Kuhn & Stahl, 2003; Young & Bowers, 1995) proficient comprehension. Jenkins et al. (2003) posited that this relation might vary for poor versus skilled readers, with comprehension facilitating fluency more for children with higher reading ability while weak word recognition skills could limit both fluency and comprehension development for poor readers. … Considering the depressed listening comprehension skills in our at-risk group, it seems imperative these skills be explicitly taught during the early elementary years. When we consider the extraordinary amount of time it takes to improve reading performance in the later grades, estimates suggest that if intervention is not initiated until fourth grade, it takes four times as much instruction as it would have in first grade (Lyon & Fletcher, 2001) to see similar rates of improvement; early intervention in both word level reading and listening comprehension is essential. With respect to reading fluency specifically, researchers have suggested that reading fluency instruction is often neglected in classroom settings (Allington, 1983; Chard et al., 2002; Kameenui & Simmons, 2001). Our data offer some evidence that fluent reading is an important factor in reading comprehension for both at-risk and not at-risk readers, therefore, it would be important that teachers are able to effectively implement instruction that directly impacts fluency.” (p. 204)

Solaria, E.J., Grimma, R.P., McIntyrea, N.S., & Denton, C.A. (2018). Reading comprehension development in at-risk vs. not at-risk first grade readers: The differential roles of listening comprehension, decoding, and fluency. Learning and Individual Differences, 65, 195–206.

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“ … the present study provides evidence that automaticity of word recognition – in the sense that word recognition is obligatory – develops in tandem with the development of word decoding. When the classic Stroop effect was adjusted for children’s (lack of) inhibition, automaticity was found to be a significant factor in French children after only five months of reading instruction. In English first grade children, automaticity did not emerge before the end of the first grade, and it was not significant even at the beginning of second grade. Yet, the same developmental trajectories were found across orthographies when basic decoding ability was taken into account.” (p.22-23)

Megherbi, H., Elbro, C., Oakhill, J.V., Segui, J., & New, B. (2018). The emergence of automaticity in reading: Effects of orthographic depth and word decoding ability on an adjusted Stroop measure. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 166, 652-663. Retrieved from http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/70459/3/__smbhome.uscs.susx.ac.uk_ellenaj_Desktop_SRO_after%20august_JECP_2017_33_Manuscript-R2_submitted%2009_15_1917.pdf

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“Students understood more of what was read orally than silently and showed improved comprehension across the year. The development-level by modality interaction was significant. Early elementary students benefited from oral reading in terms of comprehension, whereas equivalent comprehension was observed for late elementary students across modalities.”

Robinson, M.F., Meisinger, E.B., & D, Joyner, R.E. (2019). The influence of oral versus silent reading on reading comprehension in students with reading disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly. Online First

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“Orthographic learning reshapes one’s mental lexicon making it finely tuned with respect to orthographic representations of words (Binder, Medler, Westbury, Liebenthal, & Buchanan, 2006; Castles, Davis, Cavalot, & Forster, 2007; Perfetti & Hart, 2002). Skilled readers rely strongly on their facility for “sight word reading”, as orthographic representations of words are acquired to such an extent that they become fully integrated into one’s mental lexicon (Acha & Carreiras, 2014; Castles et al., 2011; Ehri, 2013; Perfetti & Hart, 2002), and letter strings corresponding to familiar words are instantly matched to their corresponding phonological and semantic and grammatical features (Carr & Pollatsek, 1985; Grainger & Jacobs, 1996). These skills allow readers to develop sensitivity to recurring orthographic sequences or “graphotactics”, i.e., the knowledge of which sequences of letters are permitted and which ones are not in a specific orthography (Pacton et al., 2013; Verhoeven, Schreuder, & Baayen, 2006). Efficient reading of novel or low frequency words is facilitated via the recognition of recurring orthographic sublexical chunks, i.e., orthographic units larger than single graphemes – written syllables, onset and rime units, word roots, affixes, and other orthographic stable letter sequences that comprise written words. There is substantial evidence that mastering decoding is not sufficient for achieving high reading fluency (Chard et al., 2002; Torgesen, 2005) and that the process of reading development is a gradual progression to operating with larger, consolidated letter-sound chunks to a greater and greater extent. Moreover, unlike in English, where low reading rate in typically developing beginning readers and individuals with reading disability is confounded with low reading accuracy, in orthographies with consistent letter-sound correspondences, it manifests itself as a reading rate disorder characterized by accurate but slow and effortful reading (Landerl & Wimmer, 2008; Landerl et al., 1997; Serrano & Defior, 2008; Zoccolotti et al., 1999).” (p.257)

Rakhlin, N.V., Mourguesc, C., Cardoso-Martins, C., Korneve, A.N., & Grigorenkob, E.L. (2019). Orthographic processing is a key predictor of reading fluency in good and poor readers in a transparent orthography. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 56, 250–261.

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“…many students enter middle school without adequate EFL literacy skills. This may indicate a gap between EFL literacy instruction theory and the classroom practice that is occurring in elementary school classrooms”

“Similar to English L1 students, EFL students also benefit from the explicit instruction of the five pillars (August & Shanahan, 2006). In addition, comparable programs to those used in L1 have been shown to be effective, especially when some adaptations are made (August & Shanahan, 2006; August, McCardle, & Shanahan, 2014; Lipka & Siegel, 2012).”

“In both L1 and EFL literacy development, students must be able to identify the orthographic patterns that make up words and store them efficiently in their memory (Kahn-Horwitz, Sparks, & Goldstein, 2011). This allows for direct access to the new lexicon (Kahn-Horwitz, Shimron & Sparks, 2005), making phonics instruction an essential component in EFL literacy.”

Fuchs, S., Kahn-Horwitz, J., & Katzir, T. (2019). Theory and reported practice in EFL literacy instruction: EFL teachers’ perceptions about classroom practices. Annals of Dyslexia, 69(1), 114–135. https://doi-org.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/10.1007/s11881-018-00172-4

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“The second part of the text focuses on ‘Historical, Cultural and Psychological Issues.’ ‘History of Fad, Pseudoscientific, and Dubious Treatments in Intellectual Disabilities’, provides a captivating overview of the history of questionable treatments and key components of sound research methodology. Here is where several chapters analyze the most appalling illustrations of bad practice. They include: psychomotor processing, gentle teaching, sensory integration theory, auditory integration therapy, facilitated communication, nonaversive interventions, positive behavioral support, biological or alternative medical interventions, and energy based and paranormal-based therapies. The discussion outlines longstanding factors that can lead to practitioner acceptance without evidence of effective outcomes. ‘The Delusion of Full Inclusion’, is a must read as is ‘Explaining Gullibility of Service Providers Toward Treatment Fads.’ ‘Developmental Disabilities and the Paranormal’ explains why autism attracts dubious therapies. … In part five, ‘Intervention Specific Issues’, the writers offer detailed analysis of several questionable therapies in chapters titled ‘Sensory Integration Therapy’, ‘Auditory Integration Training’, Facilitated Communication’, ‘Positive Behavior Support’, ‘Non-aversive Treatment’, ‘Gentle Teaching’, ‘Pet Me, Sniff Me, Squeeze Me’, ‘Relationship Based Therapies’, ‘Old Horses in New Stables’, ‘The Gluten Free, Casein Free Diet’ … . The contributing authors cover separate topics, but agree that interventions utilizing the principles of applied behaviour analysis have produced wide-ranging, long-lasting benefits to individuals with autism and ID.” (p.184)

Mckeithan, G. (2017). Controversial therapies for autism and intellectual disabilities: Fad, fashion, and science in professional practice. International Journal of Developmental Disabilities, 63(3), 184-185.

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“The use of controversial practices unsupported by research is a concern in special education, especially for students with high support needs. Internet sites of Australian schools enrolling students with moderate to severe intellectual disability (moderate to severe learning difficulties) were located and reviewed to determine the kinds of controversial practices employed and the number of schools reporting their use. Almost half the sample reported utilising at least one unsupported practice and in general there were few convincing rationales provided for the adoption of these practices. The use of unsupported practices in schools may be related to the inaccessibility of research, teacher mistrust of research, teacher reliance on more informal and personal sources of information, and teacher desire to achieve results and build positive relationships. More research is needed to understand why these practices are adopted and the ways in which they are used.” (p. 58)

Stephenson, J. (2004). Controversial practices in the education of students with high support needs. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 4(1), 58-64.

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“Among all educational disability categories, those with ID demonstrated the lowest performance in reading comprehension and letter–word identification—a measure of decoding skill (Wei, Blackorby, & Schiller, 2011). Even though many studies show people with ID can make progress in reading after intensive intervention instruction (Allor, Mathes, Roberts, Cheatham, & Champlin, 2010; Allor, Mathes, Roberts, Cheatham, & Otaiba, 2014; Lundberg & Reichenberg, 2013; van den Bos et al., 2007), this potential has often been overlooked by educators and researchers (Joseph & Seery, 2004). Consequently, many children with ID have been mainly taught “sight–word instruction” to recognize words to survive. This strategy uses results from the false assumption that individuals with ID do not receive benefit from various reading instructions, such as phonics, due to their lack of language and cognitive abilities (Hua, Woods-Groves, Kaldenberg, & Scheidecker, 2013). Wise, Sevcik, Romski, and Morris (2010) noted that phonological processing skills are highly correlated with reading achievement in children with Mild ID, similar to typically developing readers (Sermier Dessemontet & de Chambrier, 2015), suggesting the use of early phonological processing interventions (Channell, Loveall, & Conners, 2013). One longitudinal study showed that elementary students with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities made significant progress in all reading measures after 2 or 3 years of intensive reading interventions (Allor et al., 2014). In this study, the researchers argue that relatively long-term reading interventions can help the students with Mild ID develop their skills. Another study reports that adults with Mild ID successfully transferred from the level of isolated linguistic skills (such as phonological processing and decoding) to the level of reading comprehension after explicit reading instructions (van den Bos et al., 2007).” (p.96)

Root, M.M., Marchis, L., White, E., Courville, T., Choi, D., Bray, M.A., Pan, X., & Wayte, J. (2017). How achievement error patterns of students with mild intellectual disability differ from low IQ and low achievement students without diagnoses. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 35(1-2), 94–110.

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“Our review illustrated that it is possible to integrate several evidence-based strategies such as direct instruction, time delay, repeated trials, and read aloud into a multicomponent program. … Students who master phonemic awareness skills in their early grades are more likely to become effective readers than students who do not have these skills (Browder et al., 2009). Providing phonemic awareness instruction in early grades is vital for the reading development of students with ID because they do not easily develop phonemic awareness skills (Gombert, 2002). Teachers in the studies reviewed were able to successfully improve their students’ phonemic awareness skill through multicomponent interventions. This is particularly important because past research suggested that mastery of phonemic awareness skills improved the reading success of students with ID in other reading skills (e.g., vocabulary, Wise, Sevcik, Romski, & Morris, 2010). … In those studies in which improvement in reading comprehension was observed, it was only observed after systematic and explicit instruction had been implemented over an extended period of time (e.g., over 4 years; see Allor et al., 2014). … These findings demonstrated that all students, including students with nonverbal skills who used augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), could be included in multicomponent reading instruction and that their progress could be measured via specially designed assessments. It is clear this research area is in its infancy but holds great potential for improving reading instruction and outcomes for students with ID. Findings from the intervention studies are promising as they provide evidence of students with ID improving their reading skills across multiple reading components. Six studies reported that students receiving multicomponent reading instruction outperformed students receiving traditional sight word instruction in all reading measures (Allor et al., 2014; Allor, Mathes, Roberts, Cheatham et al., 2010; Allor, Mathes, Roberts, Jones et al., 2010; Browder et al., 2008; Browder et al., 2012; Coyne et al., 2012). This finding calls into question the sole use of a sight word approach in reading instruction for students with ID, as the multicomponent approach was shown to be more effective than only sight word instruction across multiple studies.” (p.10-11)

Afacan, K., Wilkerson, K.L., & Ruppar, A.L. (2017). Multicomponent reading interventions for students with intellectual disability. Remedial and Special Education, 39(4), 229-242.

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“When facing a text, students with intellectual disabilities experience many difficulties. For instance, for these students the processing of information is slower, and they frequently fail at establishing meaningful relationships among a set of ideas (Banikowski & Mehring 1999; Guzel-Ozman, 2006). They also show limitations using effective memory and rehearsal strategies and they do not spontaneously organize, chunk, or elaborate in ways that facilitate the learning process (Belmont & Butterfield 1971; Turner, Dofny & Durka, 1994). Finally, they exhibit little use of metacognitive processes such as control, monitoring, planning, or awareness of their own cognitive processes (Erez & Peled, 2001).” (p.234)

Soto, C., Poblete, M.F.R., & de Blume, A.P.G. (2018). Exploring the meta-comprehension abilities of students with intellectual disabilities. International Journal of Special Education, 33(2), 233-247.

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“Mild intellectual disability includes about 85 percent of people with intellectual disabilities. Individuals at this level often become selfsupportive, as they have the ability to adapt to social norms. Many individuals within this group can achieve some level of academic success. Moderate intellectual disability includes around 10 percent of the individuals with intellectual disabilities. Individuals at this level can achieve independent employment that involves limited conceptual or social skills. They may require guidance during stressful life situations. Most selfcare activities can be performed independently with occasional support. Severe intellectual disability describes 3 to 4 percent of this population. These individuals have minimal communication skills, although they typically can learn a few self-help skills. They can take minimal care of themselves and require complete supervision. Profound intellectual disability describes a very small portion of the persons with intellectual disabilities. Individuals at this level experience little cognitive or motor ability and often require 24-hour care and support.” (p.53)

Saad, M.A.E., & EIAdl, A.E. (2019). Defining and determining intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder): Insights from DSM-5. International Journal of Psycho-Educational Sciences, 8(1), 51-54.

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“Literacy experiences (shared reading, writing activities) in typical development influence the acquisition of reading and associated skills (letter knowledge, phonological skills, oral language) (Burgess et al. 2002; Phillips and Lonigan 2009). However, these experiences are compromised, and sometimes even inaccessible, for children with ID (Martini–Willemin 2013). Katims (2001) found that only one in five children with mild or moderate ID had literacy skills. … At present, not all children with ID become expert readers, owing to unknown etiological factors. For example, the mean reading level of individuals with ID aged 16–22 years is equivalent to that of typically developing children aged 6–10 years (Fajardo et al. 2013; Morgan and Moni 2008). … Conners et al. (2001) demonstrated in persons aged 8–12 years with light-to-profound ID of unknown etiology that good decoders have better word reading performances (88.9%) than poor decoders (54.5%), especially during identification via the sublexical route (75.1% vs. 9.3%). Finally, the second activity of reading (comprehension) remains relatively poor in ID. Berger (2002) found that despite their relatively good reading skills, 192 adolescents aged 11–15 years with ID (IQ 63–80) still had problems accessing semantic representations (for DS, see Groen et al. 2006; Nash and Heath 2011). Despite their considerable heterogeneity (sample, age range, type of ID, syndrome, etc.), these initial studies indicate that individuals with ID have the capacity for reading acquisition. … We found that individuals with ID experience a general cognitive slowdown that causes a delay in the development of the cognitive and behavioral skills needed to acquire reading (Schuchardt et al. 2011). Atypical functioning is also observed in the main cognitive dimensions involved in learning to read, namely perception (Majerus et al. 2010), oral language (Laws and Bishop 2003; Rondal 2009), phonology (Saunders and DeFulio 2007; Wise et al. 2010), memory (Henry and Winfield 2010; Schuchardt et al. 2011), and attention (Danielsson et al. 2012; Martens et al. 2008). Learning to read therefore involves several interrelated variables.” (p.)

Pezzino, A.S., Marec-Breton, N., & Lacroix, A. (2019). Acquisition of reading and intellectual development disorder. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2019 Jan 2. doi: 10.1007/s10936-018-9620-5. [Epub ahead of print]

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“Within the framework of effective instruction, several critical teacher behaviors have been identified. Rosenshine and Stevens (1986), for example, indicate that one common behavior of effective teachers is that they ask many questions. This dimension of effective instruction is often referred to as maintaining a brisk pace. Early work by Doug Carnine (1976) as part of the Follow Through Project demonstrated that fast -paced lessons, lessons in which teachers presented a greater number of opportunities for students to respond, resulted in more frequent student responding. Additionally, the percentage of accurate student responses was substantially greater during fast-paced lessons than during lessons that were slow-paced (80.5% and 28.13% respectively). This finding has also been reported in other settings (c.f., Sainato, Strain, & Lyon, 1987).

In Carnine's (1976) study, students' correct responses occurred at a rate of approximately 1.88 per min during slow-paced teacher presentation and approximately 9.7 per min during fast-paced lessons. The fast pace used in the study is almost identical to the 10 choral responses per minute found effective by Johnson and Layng (1994) to establish beginning academic skills of students with academic deficits. Specific recommendations regarding desired responding rates for students with mild disabilities indicate that at least 4-6 responses per minute with at least 80% accuracy should occur during instruction regarding new information or content and 8-12 responses per minute with at least 90% accuracy when students are practicing previous introduced information (Council for Exceptional Children, 1987). However, classroom observations involving students with mild disabilities have seldom revealed student responding rates along these lines; for example, Shores et al. (1993) found that students with behavior disorders instructed in general education classrooms responded positively to teacher directives at a rate less than once every three minutes. Yet it appears that attending to this variable may have substantial impact on academic achievement. For example, Englert (1984) found that students with learning disabilities and mild mental retardation who produced 4.5 correct responses per min during instruction achieved significantly greater academic progress than students who produced 2.4 correct responses per min.” (p.105)

Gunter, P.L., Reffel, J.M., Barnett, C.A., Lee, J.M., & Patrick, J. (2004). Academic response rates in elementary-school classrooms. Education & Treatment of Children, 27(2), 105–113.

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“Although an OG-based approach to reading would be considered research based (i.e., aspects of the approach have been demonstrated as effective by research), research on the effectiveness of an OG-based intervention, as a whole, is challenged by threats to internal and external validity (Alexander & Slinger-Constant, 2004; Ritchey & Goeke, 2006; What Works Clearinghouse, 2010). Internal validity is how well confounding variables are controlled for by the research design, and external validity is the capacity of the findings generated by the study to be applied to similar populations (e.g., other students with reading disabilities). Specific challenges to internal and external validity include variation in implementation and context of delivery, respectively. … The challenge with OG is that it is not a standardized program, and implementation varies due to differences in student need and teacher selection of particular instructional activities. Although advocates of OG note that the individualization of intervention delivery is a strength of the program (Davis, 2011; Sheffield, 1991), it does present challenges for research. Other common, uncontrolled variables in prior research on OG have included variation in duration of intervention session, intensity of intervention, and focus of intervention (Ritchey & Goeke, 2006). In addition to the challenge of establishing strong internal validity, research on OG is also hampered by threats to external validity. One way to increase the external validity of a study is through random assignment of participants from a target population to either a treatment or control condition. Many OG studies fail to randomly assign students to condition (Richey & Goeke, 2006). … Although an OG-based approach to reading would be considered research based (i.e., aspects of the approach have been demonstrated as effective by research), research on the effectiveness of an OG-based intervention, as a whole, is challenged by threats to internal and external validity (Alexander & Slinger-Constant, 2004; Ritchey & Goeke, 2006; What Works Clearinghouse, 2010).” (p.246-247)

Sayeski, K.L., Earle, G.A., Davis, R., & Calamari, J. (2019). Orton Gillingham: Who, what, and how. Teaching Exceptional Children, 51(3), 240-249. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329761545_Orton_Gillingham_Who_What_and_How

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“In conclusion, we found significant evidence that children as young as 6 and 7 years of age engage in morphological processing as they prepare to spell in response to dictation. This supports theories that point to the role of morphemes in consolidation of lexical memory (Harm & Seidenberg, 2004; Nation, 2009; Perfetti, 2007) and statistical-learning theories of spelling development proposing that young children make use of multiple regularities in the orthography, including morphology (Deacon et al., 2008; Pacton & Deacon, 2008; Treiman, 2017). A great deal of further research is necessary to understand when and how morphological processing occurs during spelling production, and how these processes develop through childhood and into adulthood.” (p.189)

Breadmore, H.L., & Deacon, S.H. (2019). Morphological processing before and during children’s spelling. Scientific Studies of Reading, 23(2), 178-191.

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“A meta-analysis of studies focusing on reading intervention for upper-elementary and adolescent students with reading difficulties yielded generally low effect sizes and found no differences in the magnitude of effects for interventions that focused primarily on comprehension, studies that focused primarily on word-level skills, or multicomponent studies (Flynn et al., 2012). Furthermore, the study found no meaningful patterns related to the instructional features used in the interventions (e.g., modeling, control of level of difficulty, explicit practice opportunities). … What are the implications for teachers and policy? We think that the findings from this study, contextualized within the theoretical framework of both Chall’s (1996) developmental model of reading and SVR (Gough & Tunmer, 1986), suggest that students with significant reading difficulties require intensive reading instruction for many years. Students in fourth grade and beyond with intractable reading difficulties may require intensive interventions provided by highly qualified clinicians throughout their schooling. Many of these students may require intensive interventions well into secondary schooling.” (p. 14, 15)

Vaughn, S., Roberts, G.J., Miciak, J., Taylor, P., & Fletcher, J.M. (2019). Efficacy of a word- and text-based intervention for students with significant reading difficulties. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 52(1), 31–44.

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“Some reading components, such as phonemic awareness (e.g., the ability to segment spoken words into speech sounds) and recoding printed words as speech (e.g., decoding words by associating printed letters with speech sounds), are considered constrained reading skills because they can be mastered as a complete set in a year or two of instruction (Paris, 2005). Others, such as vocabulary and reading comprehension, are unconstrained and continue to grow over time with sufficient text exposure. Learning in these areas is never complete (Paris, 2005; Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). Fluency, and particularly oral reading fluency, falls in between the constrained and unconstrained components because reading rate grows rapidly over the first several years of instruction (Hasbrouck & Tindal, 2006; Kim, 2015), improves gradually through the middle grades (Kim & Wagner, 2015; Silberglitt, Burns, Madyun, & Lail, 2006), and takes several years to attain optimal levels (Silberglitt & Hintze, 2007), which many researchers suggest is the rate of speech (Samuels, Ediger, & Fautsch-Patridge, 2005). … . Improving fluency for second graders with RD related to improved comprehension in the band between 35 and 75 wcpm. For fourth graders, achieving rates up to 90 wcpm were related to improved comprehension. Beyond these oral reading rates, the two skills uncoupled for the students with RD.” (p. 124-125, 133)

O’Connor, R.E. (2018). Reading fluency and students with reading disabilities: How fast is fast enough to promote reading comprehension? Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1(2), 124–136.

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“This synthesis extends Chard, Vaughn, and Tyler’s (2002) review, synthesizing fluency intervention research from 2001 to 2014. The search yielded 19 studies examining reading fluency and comprehension outcomes of reading fluency interventions for students with LD in kindergarten through 5th grade. Results showed repeated reading (RR), multicomponent interventions, and assisted reading with audiobooks produced gains in reading fluency and comprehension. Providing a model of fluent reading and performance feedback, using easier level text, setting a performance criterion, and practicing RR with peers also contributed to improved outcomes. Findings suggest that RR remains the most effective intervention for improving reading fluency for students with LD. … In spite of the increase in technology-based literacy interventions within the past decade (Ihnot, Matsoff, Gavin, & Hendrickson, 2001; Kennedy & Deshler, 2010), no studies examining computerized fluency interventions met the inclusion criteria of this synthesis. … Sustained silent reading is widely implemented as a mechanism to increase reading fluency, but it is not supported as an effective method for improving oral reading fluency.” (p. 576, 588, 589)

Stevens, E.A., Walker, M.A., & Vaughn, S. (2017). The effects of reading fluency interventions on the reading fluency and reading comprehension performance of elementary students with learning disabilities: A synthesis of the research from 2001 to 2014. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 50(5), 576–590.

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“Abstract. We estimate the effects of receiving additional schooling before age 5 on cognitive and noncognitive outcomes, exploiting unique school entry rules in England that cause variation in the age at school entry and the effective length of the first school year, and combining survey data with administrative school records up to 6 years after exposure. We find significant effects on both cognitive and noncognitive outcomes at ages 5 and 7, particularly so for boys with a disadvantaged parental background. At age 11, effects on cognitive outcomes have disappeared, while there is still evidence for effects on noncognitive outcomes.” (p.1)

Cornelissen, T., & Dustmann, C. (2019). Early school exposure, test scores, and noncognitive outcomes. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (Forthcoming). Retrieved from http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_03_19.pdf

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“The most notable academic deficit for retained students is in reading (NASP, 2003). Reading is a strong intervening factor in academic areas across the disciplines. Students who are unprepared in reading have a 15% chance of succeeding in math and a 1% chance of succeeding in science, while students who are good readers have a 67% chance of succeeding in math and a 32% chance in science (ACT, 2008).”

ACT (2008). The forgotten middle: Ensuring that all students are on target for college and career readiness before high school. Iowa City, IA: Author. Retrieved from https://www.cdl.org/retention/

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“Students from disadvantaged social backgrounds perform worse on average academically than more advantaged students. This study investigated Australia's top-performing disadvantaged schools in terms of literacy and numeracy results, with the aim of finding any common policies and practices which have led to their success. Nine top-performing disadvantaged schools were visited by a researcher for this study, involving interviews with school principals and staff, and observations of literacy and numeracy lessons. These schools do not receive more funding than other similarly disadvantaged schools. Six common themes were found across the nine schools:

1. School discipline.
2. Direct and explicit instruction.
3. Experienced and autonomous school leadership.
4. Data-informed practice.
5. Teacher collaboration and professional learning.
6. Comprehensive early reading instruction.

These six consistent themes indicate how disadvantaged primary schools could potentially improve significantly, without necessarily requiring more taxpayer funding.”

Joseph, B. (2019). Overcoming the odds: A study of Australia's top-performing disadvantaged schools. Centre for Independent Studies, RR39. Retrieved from https://www.cis.org.au/publications/research-reports/overcoming-the-odds-a-study-of-australias-top-performing-disadvantaged-schools/

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“Our findings are relevant for the debate over optimal school starting age; that is, the concern that expanding universal schooling to ever earlier ages must necessarily have negative effects because school is simply not the right child care environment for the very young. Our results show that the effect of additional early schooling at age 4 to 5 achieved by bringing the school starting age slightly forward is positive, and has especially large effects up to age 7 for boys from weaker socioeconomic backgrounds. … [Developmental psychologists have noted that boys and girls may react differently to risk factors such as poverty, family breakup, and parental mental illness (see Werner 2000, Rutter 2000). They have also shown that during the first decade of life, boys are more vulnerable than girls to certain risk factors, including poverty and disharmony at home (Werner and Smith 1989, 1992), and that being raised by a single mother has stronger and more long-lasting adverse effects on boys (Hetherington et al. 1989). There is also evidence that females benefit more from protective factors that lie within the individual (personality traits, cognitive skills), while males benefit more from protective factors provided by the environment. These latter include the structure, organization, and rule enforcement that can be provided at school, which has been identified as a stronger protective factor for boys than for girls (Werner, 2000).] … It also has persistent effects on noncognitive skills until age 11 that are more uniform across SES for boys. This finding is particularly relevant from a U.S. perspective where only about two thirds of 4-year-olds are enrolled in any educational preprimary program (McFarland et al. 2017), and coverage to 4-year-olds of the major public preschool programs has largely stalled at around 40 percent since 2010 (Barnett et al. 2016).” (p. 29-30)

Cornelissen, T., & Dustmann, C. (2019). Discussion paper series: Early school exposure, test scores, and noncognitive outcomes. Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration Department of Economics, University College London. Retrieved from http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_03_19.pdf

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“These reforms are easy to enumerate: a strong, demanding, and well-structured knowledge-based curriculum, frequent student evaluation, rigorous initial teacher training, school autonomy, support for failing students, vocational paths, and results-based school incentives. … We clearly had to design a way out; ‘obtain more with less’ became the motto. To put this into practice without hurting education simply meant we had to concentrate our efforts on the essentials. And the essentials are not teachers’ salaries, school buildings, or computer equipment. The essentials are students’ learning, students’ skills development, and students’ ethical growth. In a word: students. … Throughout this first year we prepared the ground for the second one by restructuring the mandatory curriculum structure to give more class time to the fundamental subjects. To begin with this meant reading and mathematics, then history, geography, sciences, then English. This was made at the expense of vague and unstructured subjects/themes such as ‘learning in company’, the ‘project area’, ‘civic education’ and the sort. Although these topics may have corresponded to important activities and ethical development, they were not structured. Frequently they were just a source of vague politically correct indoctrination – or simply a waste of time. They were not grounded in any substantive subject knowledge. …In parallel, we set up new standards, and by that we meant detailed lists of learning outcomes. Those lists needed to be precise, well structured, and conducive to sequential learning. Moreover, the listed contents should be precise enough to convey unambiguously to students, teachers, parents, textbook authors, and examiners what the desired outcomes were. This definition stands in sharp contrast to the previously adopted ‘competences’ approach. … . In 2015 we put in place standardised tests in the 4th, 6th, 8th, and 12th grades. These tests were closely aligned with the curricular standards. They were public, and schools’ average results were made public, and action was taken as a result. Failing and near- to-failing students received special help and schools received resource incentives whenever they were able to show that these resources were used to improve students’ results.” (p. 26, 27)

Crato, N. (2019). Everything starts with the curriculum. researchEd, Feb, 2019. 26-27. Retrieved from https://researched.org.uk/everything-starts-with-the-curriculum/

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“Key features of SL approaches include (a) explicit, systematic, and sequential teaching of literacy at multiple levels— phonemes, letter–sound relationships, syllable patterns, morphemes, vocabulary, sentence structure, paragraph structure, and text structure; (b) cumulative practice and ongoing review; (c) a high level of student– teacher interaction; (d) the use of carefully chosen examples and nonexamples; (e) decodable text; and (f) prompt, corrective feedback.” (p. 212)

Spear-Swerling, L. (2019). Structured literacy and typical literacy practices: Understanding differences to create instructional opportunities. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 51(3), 201–211. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/content/pdfs/structured-literacy.pdf

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“The results of this study indicated that the majority of preschool children who are at significant risk for reading-related academic difficulties can be identified early in the preschool year. That is, depending on the type of preschool and level of severity of risk classification, between one half and two thirds of children identified as at risk for reading-related difficulties in language and print knowledge domains had stable risk from the beginning of preschool to the middle of the preschool year. Risk was most stable for children in Title I preschools, despite these children’s exposure to a skills-focused, evidence-based, early-literacy curriculum that was delivered by degreed and certified teachers. Whereas the traditional RTI protocol includes the use of early screening or assessment to identify children who are at-risk followed by a period of monitoring their responsiveness to Tier I instruction as a way of improving sensitivity and specificity of risk-status classification (e.g., Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006), the results of this study indicate that this approach delays the provision of supplemental instruction that the majority of children initially identified as at-risk need. Indeed, some researchers have expressed concerns that this monitoring period is one aspect of the RTI protocol that undermines its responsiveness by creating a period of “waiting to fail” for children who could be identified early in the school year (Al Otaiba et al., 2014; O’Connor et al., 2010). Consequently, it seems likely that an approach that provides supplemental instruction to students identified as at-risk initially would represent a better approach and result in better outcomes for children who are at-risk (e.g., Al Otaiba et al., 2014; Milburn, Lonigan, & Phillips, 2017).” (p. 8)

Milburn, T.F., Lonigan, C.J., & Phillips, B.M. (2019). Stability of risk status during preschool. Journal of Learning Disabilities. 1-11. Online First.

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“This study set out to compare patterns of relationships among phonological skills, orthographic skills, semantic knowledge, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension in English as a first language (EL1) and English language learners (ELL) students and to test the applicability of the lexical quality hypothesis framework. Participants included 94 EL1 and 178 ELL Grade 5 students from diverse home-language backgrounds. Latent profile analyses conducted separately for ELLs and EL1s provided support for the lexical quality hypothesis in both groups, with the emergence of two profiles: A poor comprehenders profile was associated with poor word-reading-related skills (phonological awareness and orthographic processing) and with poor language-related skills (semantic knowledge and, to a lesser extent, listening comprehension). The good comprehenders profile was associated with average or above-average performance across the component skills, demonstrating that good reading comprehension is the result of strong phonological and orthographic processing skills as well as strong semantic and listening comprehension skills. The good and poor comprehenders profiles were highly similar for ELL and EL1 groups. Conversely, poor comprehenders struggled with these same component skills. (p.1)

O’Connor, M., Geva, E., Koh, P.W. (2019). Examining reading comprehension profiles of grade 5 monolinguals and English Language Learners through the lexical quality hypothesis lens. Journal of Learning Disabilities. Online First.

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“Multitiered frameworks for instruction and assessment, such as response to intervention, are widely implemented in school settings in the primary grades and beyond (Vaughn & Fletcher, 2010) as a means of providing timely prevention and intervention for students at risk for learning disabilities (e.g., D. Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006; Vaughn, Linan-Thompson, & Hickman, 2003). Teachers implementing these models typically screen all students at the beginning of the year to identify those who require intervention and to collect ongoing progress-monitoring data for students struggling to perform at the benchmark level. Within multitiered instructional systems, progress monitoring is a key mechanism for determining whether a student demonstrates an adequate response to instruction and for evaluating the effectiveness of instruction (Christ, 2008; L. S. Fuchs, 2004; D. Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006; Stecker, Fuchs, & Fuchs, 2005; Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003). Research findings show that systematic progress monitoring leads to improved identification of struggling students, better-designed instructional programs, and greater student achievement (L. S. Fuchs & Fuchs, 2002; L. S. Fuchs, Fuchs, Hamlett, & Phillips, 1994; Stecker et al., 2005). Progress monitoring is critical for students at risk for reading disabilities, given the substantial evidence indicating that reading difficulties can be prevented through early intervention (e.g., Torgesen, 2004).” (p. 565)

Cho, E., Capin, P., Roberts, G., & Vaughn, S. (2018). Examining predictive validity of oral reading fluency slope in upper elementary grades using quantile regression. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 51(6), 565–577.

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“Studies investigating students from preschool through high school have reported that high levels of motivation are positively associated with reading (e.g., Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000; Logan, Medford, & Hughes, 2011; Morgan & Fuchs, 2007). There is likely bidirectionality between motivation and reading success in that development of reading skills can significantly influence motivational processes related to a student’s sense of worth as a learner, active engagement within the classroom environment, and overall interest in one’s school success. For example, students who report lower feelings of perceived competence are less likely to initiate tasks and more likely to show poor task persistence, resulting in lower levels of achievement (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2006). … In summary, the absence of differences between the MWR-only and MWR+MB interventions raises a question about the value added of the MB component in its current form—and the training of motivational processes in general. How are studies of reading defining motivation? Are various motivation constructs differentially related to reading performance? Are specific reading domains (e.g., word reading vs. comprehension) differentially associated with motivation? How do student-level characteristics influence relations between reading and motivation? None of these questions, of course, suggests that motivation is an unfruitful direction for future research. Rather, more work is necessary to establish procedures to train complex cognitive processes and the measurement of these processes to promote efficacy of use.” (p.46, 56)

Toste, J.R., Capin, P., Williams, K.J., Eunsoo C., & Vaughn, S. (2019). Replication of an experimental study investigating the efficacy of a multisyllabic word reading intervention with and without motivational beliefs training for struggling readers. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 52(1), 45–58.

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“There is a growing body of literature discussing evidence-based education, practice, policy, and decision-making from a critical perspective. In this article, drawing on the literature and policy documents related to evidence-based education in the USA, Britain, and Canada, I join this critique and offer an anticolonial perspective. I argue that proponents of evidence-based education unknowingly promote a colonial discourse and material relations of power that continue from the American-European colonial era. I posit that this colonial discourse is evident in at least three ways: (1) the discourse of civilizing the profession of education, (2) the promotion of colonial hierarchies of knowledge and monocultures of the mind, and (3) the interconnection between neoliberal educational policies and global exploitation of colonized labor. I conclude with the decolonizing implications of revealing some of the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research, and neoliberal reform. (Contains 2 notes.)

Maki, K.E., Burns, M.K., & Sullivan, A.L. (2018). School psychologists’ confidence in learning disability identification decisions. Learning Disability Quarterly, 41(4), 243–256.

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“This study examined the effects of reading modality (oral vs. silent) on comprehension in elementary school students with a specific learning disability in reading (N = 77). A 2 (development-level) × 2 (reading modality) × 2 (time) mixed factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine the influence of these variables on comprehension. Significant main effects were found for reading modality and time on comprehension, but the main effect for developmental level was not significant. Students understood more of what was read orally than silently and showed improved comprehension across the year. The development-level by modality interaction was significant. Early elementary students benefited from oral reading in terms of comprehension, whereas equivalent comprehension was observed for late elementary students across modalities. No other two- or three-way interactions were significant. Results from this study suggest that reading modality is an important variable to consider for researchers and educators who are interested in the construct of reading comprehension.” (p.1)

Robinson, M.F., Meisinger, E.B., & Joyner, R.E. (2019). The influence of oral versus silent reading on reading comprehension in students with reading disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 1–12.

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“We found that children and adults use context to some extent when pronouncing initial ‹c› and ‹g›—both the adjacent vowel and, to a lesser extent, an aspect of nonadjacent context, the presence of a Latinate suffix versus a basic suffix. However, our results are not as optimistic as suggested by the view that people are ideal statistical learners who adapt themselves optimally to the structure of their environment, as Brown’s (1998) ROAR (rational, adaptive, optimal reading) model maintains. Nor are our results as optimistic as suggested by the computational model of Ziegler, Perry, and Zorzi (2014) that, initialized with a small set of grapheme–phoneme correspondences, rapidly learns about more complex spelling–phoneme relationships without training or feedback from an external source. Our data show that it takes many years for children to use context in some cases where it is potentially extremely helpful. Even highly skilled readers do not use context as much as would be anticipated given its effects in the vocabulary. … According to our findings, it is unrealistic to expect that children will rapidly learn to use sublexical context on their own through exposure to words as they read. To improve children’s ability to decode words such as cinnamon and generous, it could be helpful to teach them that ‹c› and ‹g› have more than one possible pronunciation and that consideration of other parts of the word can help in determining the correct pronunciation. Such teaching should be rather straightforward in the case of ‹c›, where children can be taught to use the /s/ pronunciation before ‹e› and ‹i› and to use the /k/ pronunciation before other letters. Conveying the role of nonadjacent context, a necessity in the case of ‹g›, is more challenging. However, such teaching could be incorporated into the kinds of lessons about morphology and vocabulary that Carlisle (2003) and others have recommended. It would take a good deal of time to cover all of the ways in which sublexical context affects English spelling–sound translation. However, teaching children about some of the more reliable associations should help them to decode words that include the taught patterns. Such teaching may have broader effects as well, encouraging children to consider other parts of a word when sounding out a letter and helping them to discover untaught contextual patterns.” (p.123-124)

Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2019). Development of context-sensitive pronunciation in reading: The case of ‹c› and ‹g›. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 182, 114–125.

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“In this study of 6- and 7-year-old English-speaking children, we tested key predictions from the self-teaching hypothesis (Share, 2011), integrating the importance of semantic representations as suggested by the lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti & Hart, 2002). Children independently read texts containing novel words with novel meanings; we tracked the accuracy of their decoding during this reading. Children then completed choice tasks assessing their learning of the spellings and meanings of these new words; these were our metrics of orthographic and semantic learning, respectively. Children also completed measures of word reading and multiple control variables. We found that children in both Grades 1 and 2 can acquire orthographic and semantic information about novel words at the same time through their self-teaching. The extent of learning increased between Grades 1 and 2, but there was no evidence of a substantive shift in the nature of this learning between these grades. These findings provide novel empirical support for the idea that early reading is early self-teaching (e.g., Share, 1999; but see Share, 2004), extending the limited evidence in prior studies. Contrary to theoretical predictions (Share, 1995), we also found that decoding is beneficial, but not required, for orthographic and semantic learning to occur. Finally, in terms of individual differences, we found that, beyond the effects of decoding, skill in orthographic learning was associated with word reading and that skill in semantic learning was associated with reading comprehension. As such, our work offered a strict test of multiple aspects of the self-teaching hypothesis (Share, 2011) within the context of the orthographic and semantic representations that young readers can establish through their selfteaching. Our evidence that young readers can learn the spellings and meanings of words at the same time through their independent reading shifts our current understanding of young readers’ learning capacities. In our study, children’s performance on the choice tasks assessing the orthographic and semantic representations established through self-teaching was above chance levels for children in both Grades 1 and 2. It is a small but substantial step to show that these effects are statistically significant, as has been demonstrated in studies of older readers (Mimeau et al., 2018; Ricketts et al., 2011). The few studies to date with 7-year-old children have reported a mix of marginal and nonsignificant evidence of learning during independent reading (Cunningham, 2006; Share, 2004). We extend these bodies of work by demonstrating that children in both Grades 1 and 2 (6 and 7 years of age, respectively) can learn the orthographic and semantic forms of novel words at the same time during their independent reading. As such, we offer much-needed empirical evidence that early reading is indeed early selfteaching (e.g., Share, 1999), at least for children learning to read in English. In terms of our second research question, we uncovered that children in Grades 1 and 2 can learn spellings and meanings of novel words through self-teaching even in the absence of accurate decoding. This conclusion is supported by our findings that children were above chance in their performance on the orthographic and semantic choice tasks even when they had not accurately decoded the novel words a single time during the self-teaching experience. These results are surprising in the face of repeated suggestions that decoding is the sine qua non of orthographic learning (Share, 1995, p. 151). Our study provides empirical evidence that accurate decoding might not be necessary for orthographic learning to occur for children in Grades 1 and 2, nor might it be required for semantic learning either. These findings are consistent with other possibilities raised in the literature. Share (1999) wrote that ‘‘some rudimentary self-teaching skills, perhaps sufficient to establish primitive orthographic representations of the kind discussed by Perfetti (1992), may exist at the very earliest stages of learning to read even before a child possesses any decoding skill in the conventional sense” (p. 97). Our findings confirm that self-teaching is possible for young readers even when they cannot decode words. Our findings are also consistent with evidence of orthographic learning even in the face of reduced decoding or absent decoding with older readers (Share, 1999; Tucker et al., 2016). We do not contend that there is no role for decoding; certainly, our study and several other studies have shown stronger orthographic learning when phonological decoding does occur because of either natural variation or experimental manipulation (Share, 1999; Tucker et al., 2016). The same effects also appear for semantic learning. Clearly, there is room for empirical investigation into the nature of early self-teaching, including the necessity of decoding in supporting this learning.” (p. 69-70)

Deacon, S.H., Catherine Mimeau, C., Chung, S.C., & Chen, X. (2019). Young readers’ skill in learning spellings and meanings of words during independent reading. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 181, 56–74.

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“ … every successful decoding of a new word provides the child (and the network) with an opportunity to set up an orthographic representation and improve the decoding network without an external teacher or teaching signal. Indeed, we showed in previous simulations that 80% of words from an English corpus of more than 32,000 words can be learned through decoding alone (Ziegler, Perry, & Zorzi, 2014). The remaining 20% are too irregular (e.g., yacht, aisle, chef) to be learned through decoding.” (p. 2)

Perry, C., Zorzi, M., & Ziegler, J.C. (2019). Understanding dyslexia through personalized large-scale computational models. Psychological Science, Feb 7:956797618823540.

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“ … knowing a child’s performance on only three component tasks of reading [orthographic choice, phoneme deletion, vocabulary] allows the model to predict his or her learning outcomes on regular words, irregular words, and nonwords with high accuracy. In addition to examining the accuracy of the model, we examined its reliance on decoding versus direct instruction for word learning. This is an interesting analysis because a large number of studies have suggested that good readers are initially efficient decoders and poor readers tend to be poor decoders (e.g., Gentaz, Sprenger-Charolles, Theurel, & Colé, 2013; Juel, 1988). Poor readers are thus more reliant on direct instruction when learning to read than are good readers. The results of our simulations show that the predictions of the multideficit model are consistent with these findings. In particular, Figure 3a presents the proportion of words that entered the lexicon through decoding or direct instruction as a function of overall reading skill (the average performance of each child across all word types). Figure 3b complements the analysis by presenting the number of direct instruction attempts as a function of overall reading skill. As can be seen from the simulations of poor readers, only a small proportion of the words were learned through decoding compared with direct instruction, and there were far more attempts at direct instruction compared with the simulations of good readers. Alternatively, in the simulations of good readers, most of the words were learned via decoding. … The results of the simulations show that increasing vocabulary tends to be more beneficial for irregular word reading (i.e., sight word reading) than nonword reading (i.e., decoding), whereas increasing the efficiency of phonological processing shows the opposite pattern. Increasing orthographic efficiency helps all word types. However, Figure 6 shows important interindividual differences, which suggest that the choice of an optimal intervention depends on the initial conditions, that is, the individual starting point in the 3-D deficit space. … Our results show that large-scale simulations with a developmentally plausible computational model of reading acquisition allow us to predict learning outcomes for individual children and reading profiles of children with dyslexia on the basis of performance on three component tasks (orthographic choice, phoneme deletion, vocabulary). The multideficit model is superior to alternative single-deficit models in all respects, which suggests that future research needs to take into account the multidimensional nature of the deficits that cause dyslexia. This novel computational approach establishes causal relations between deficits and outcomes that can be used to make long-term predictions on learning outcomes for at-risk children. Importantly, the model can be used to predict how changing the efficiency of one component might change reading performance for an individual child.” (p.4, 8)

Perry, C., Zorzi, M., & Ziegler, J.C. (2019). Understanding dyslexia through personalized large-scale computational models. Psychological Science, Feb 7:956797618823540.

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“The meta-analysis by Santangelo and Graham (2015) has already shown that students with handwriting instruction would perform significantly better on writing quality, writing productivity, and writing fluency compared to their peers without handwriting instruction. The practical importance of handwriting instruction is further supported through the current meta-analysis, as we found the consistency of the relationship between handwriting fluency and writing. Although the contribution of handwriting fluency varied across different writing measures, handwriting fluency was identified as a significant factor of students’ performance on writing quality, writing fluency, and substantive quality. … Through the two studies related to the relationship of handwriting, keyboarding and writing measures, we stressed the need for incorporating handwriting as an essential part of instruction in classrooms. Handwriting and keyboarding both significantly positively associated with the development of writing, for a variety of writing measures. This further supports the simple view of writing, which emphasizes the contribution of transcription skills on text generation. Besides, handwriting did no worse than keyboarding on writing quality and actually significantly related to keyboarding performance, particularly on speed.” (p. 57, 59)

Feng, L., Lindner, A., Ji, X.R., Joshi, R.M. (2019). The roles of handwriting and keyboarding in writing: A meta-analytic review. Reading & Writing, 32, 33–63.

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“Listening comprehension and reading comprehension are highly related (Cain, Oakhill & Bryant 2000; Diakidoy, Stylianou, Karefllidou, & Papageorgiou, 2005; Protopapas, Simos, Sideridis, & Mouzaki, 2012; Tilstra, McMaster, Van Den Broek, Kendeou, & Rapp, 2009). Specifcally, in opaque languages such as English the infuence of listening comprehension as a measure of linguistic comprehension on reading comprehension increases over time, whereas the predictive strength of word reading fuency on reading comprehension decreases (Catts, Adlof, Hogan, & Weismer, 2005; Diakidoy et al., 2005; Vellutino, Tunmer, Jaccard, & Chen, 2007; Verhoeven & van Leeuwe, 2008). For transparent languages, such as Dutch, even for beginning readers listening comprehension is a stronger predictor of reading comprehension than decoding, because decoding is already acquired at a younger age (Florit & Cain, 2011).”

Wolf, M.C., Muijselaar, M.M.L., Boonstra, A.M. & de Bree, E.H. (2019). The relationship between reading and listening comprehension: Shared and modality‑specific components. Reading and Writing, On-line First.

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“Over the last two decades, several studies have explored teacher knowledge through the use of surveys. In a landmark study, Moats (1994) developed and administered The Informal Survey of Linguistic Knowledge (Moats, 1994; Moats & Lyon, 1996). This survey was designed to assess teacher knowledge of language concepts needed to provide effective reading instruction. Survey content included defining phonological awareness; identifying blends, syllable types, and spelling rules; and counting the number of phonemes and morphemes within words. With teachers’ scores generally ranging from 10 to 45 % of items correct, Moats concluded that the participants did not have a well-developed understanding of spoken or written language and would therefore be unable to teach these skills and concepts explicitly to emergent or struggling readers. Unfortunately, the findings of research designed to assess teachers’ knowledge of language-based concepts have improved only modestly since then. In studies using instruments similar to the Moats survey, assessments of primary grade teachers’ knowledge of language-based concepts have produced mean scores ranging from 50 to 68 % of items correct (Mather, Bos, & Babur, 2001; McCutchen et al., 2002b; Spear-Swerling & Cheesman, 2012; Spencer et al., 2008). In addition, throughout multiple surveys, language concepts such as counting phonemes and morphemes; identifying syllable types, blends, digraphs and spelling rules; and distinguishing between phonological awareness and phonics continue to elude both general and special education teachers (Bos, Mather, Dickson, Podhajski, & Chard, 2001; Cunningham et al., 2004; Mather et al., 2001; McCutchen et al., 2002b; Moats & Foorman, 2003; Piasta, Connor, Fishman, & Morrison, 2009; Spear-Swerling, Brucker, & Alfano, 2005; Spencer et al., 2008; Washburn, Joshi, & Binks-Cantrell, 2010, 2011). Although the majority of this type of research has been conducted within the United States, recently research on teacher knowledge has been conducted in other countries and with other languages than English with similar findings (Joshi, Washburn, & Kahn-Horwitz, 2016).

Teacher educator knowledge and textbook content have also been explored as possible factors affecting teacher knowledge (Binks-Cantrell, Washburn, Joshi, & Hougen, 2012; Joshi et al., 2009). Many teacher educators themselves lack the explicit knowledge of language structure and code-based concepts required to prepare teachers to teach struggling readers effectively. A seminal study found similar patterns of performance on a survey of basic language constructs between teacher educators and their students, indicating that teacher educators with more in-depth knowledge of code-based concepts were better able to provide teachers with in-depth knowledge of code-based concepts (Binks-Cantrell et al., 2012). Unfortunately, the converse also applied. Those teacher educators whose knowledge was less extensive appeared unable to provide teachers with the understanding of language-based concepts required to effectively teach struggling readers (BinksCantrell et al., 2012). Moreover, an analysis of university textbooks used in reading courses revealed large disparities in their coverage of evidence-based content and effective instructional practices (Joshi et al., 2009). A preponderance of evidence suggests that teacher preparation varies widely in quality, and many teachers enter the field unprepared to teach struggling readers. It would, however, be unfair to blame teachers for this sorry state of affairs. Teachers cannot teach what they do not know, and they are unlikely to know what they have not been taught (Binks-Cantrell et al., 2012; Joshi et al., 2009; Moats, 2009; Moats & Foorman, 2003).

If teachers are aware of what they do not know about reading instruction, they can seek additional training to help fill in the gaps (Brady et al., 2009). Unfortunately, teachers’ perceptions of how well they are able to teach a concept do not always correlate with their actual knowledge of that subject (Bos et al., 2001; Cunningham et al., 2004). Teachers are often unaware of what they do not know and tend to inaccurately assess their knowledge of reading instruction (Cunningham et al., 2004, 2009; McCombes-Tolis & Feinn, 2008; Washburn et al., 2010). Thus, a gap continues to exist between the expected knowledge and the actual knowledge of many teachers, and teachers often overestimate their reading and literacy related knowledge (Stark, Snow, Eadie, & Goldfield, 2016). Unfortunately, teachers who overestimate their knowledge often have a false sense of their own teaching competence and may consequently be less open to opportunities for additional learning (Cunningham et al., 2004; SpearSwerling et al., 2005).” (p.656, 657-658)

“The results of this study support the contention that teachers are not provided with knowledge of the structure of language and code-based concepts adequate to provide effective instruction to struggling readers. The knowledge base needed to teach the speech-to-print relationships is not easily obtained and cannot be mastered through in-class experience alone (Moats, 2012). Therefore, colleges and universities must provide students with intensive coursework in code-based reading concepts that provide teachers with the necessary skills and pedagogy to become experts in reading (Lyon, 1999). Teacher preparation programs must also provide teachers with extensive opportunities to practice what they have learned. This practicum should involve interaction with students in the classroom setting under the supervision of mentor teachers trained to provide guided feedback (Brady & Moats, 1997; Lyon, 1999; Moats, 1995; Moats & Foorman, 2003; Spear-Swerling & Brucker, 2004). This problem is not unique to the United States. Stark et al. (2016) reported that 91 % of the surveyed Australian teachers disagreed with this statement: Most teachers receive intensive training to work with children with reading difficulties.” (p.678, 679)

Cohen, R., Mather, N., Schneider, D., & White, J. (2017). A comparison of schools: Teacher knowledge of explicit code-based reading instruction. Reading and Writing, 30, 653–690.

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“Shared book reading is thought to have a positive impact on young children’s language development, with shared reading interventions often run in an attempt to boost children’s language skills. However, despite the volume of research in this area, a number of issues remain outstanding. The current meta-analysis explored whether shared reading interventions are equally effective (a) across a range of different outcome variables; (b) for children from different SES groups; and (c) across a range of study designs. Our results show that, while there is an effect of shared reading on language development, this effect is smaller than reported in previous meta-analyses (????̅ = 0.231, p < .001). They also show that this effect is moderated by the type of control group used and is negligible in studies with active control groups (????̅ = 0.038, p = .584). Finally, they show limited effects of differences in outcome variable, no effect of socio-economic status and near zero effects for studies with follow-ups (????̅ = 0.089, p = .218). On the basis of these results, we make a number of recommendations for researchers and educators about the design and implementation of future shared reading interventions. … Taken together, these findings suggest that current evidence for the effectiveness of shared reading interventions is much weaker than was previously thought and may reflect no more than placebo effects. However, given the low dosage of many of the studies included in the present meta-analysis, we caution against the conclusion that shared reading interventions have no real benefits and make a series of recommendations for the design of future studies.” (p.1, 23)

Noble, C., Sala, G., Peter, M., Lingwood, J., Rowland, C., Gobet, F., & Pine, J. (2019). The impact of shared book reading on children’s language skills: A meta-analysis. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/cu7bk Retrieved from https://psyarxiv.com/cu7bk/

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“Recent research studies have shown that increased letter spacing has a positive effect on the reading ability of dyslexic individuals. This study aims to investigate the effect of spacing on the readability of different fonts for children with and without dyslexia. Results did not support the hypothesis of better performance among children with dyslexia when reading text in Dyslexie than in other fonts. They, however, revealed that only spacing plays a role in enhancing dyslexic individuals’ reading performance because Dyslexie and the Times New Roman interspaced font have no difference. Furthermore, the negative effect of the unfriendly fonts Times New Roman Italic and Curlz MT was eliminated through increased interletter spacing.” (p. 218)

Duranovic, M., Senka, S., & Babic-Gavric, B. (2018). Influence of increased letter spacing and font type on the reading ability of dyslexic children. Annals of Dyslexia, 68, 218–228.

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“Guiding students to use the alphabetic principle, and teaching systematic, explicit phonics, is necessary to support all beginning readers. This study has found that teacher’s explicit knowledge of linguistic constructs, while necessary for effective literacy instruction, is not sufficient on its own. Teachers also need guidance in how to use and apply careful and systematic integration of phonics instruction in which their knowledge is best applied.” (p.13)

Arrow, A.W., Braid, C., & Chapman, J.W. (2019). Explicit linguistic knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient, for the provision of explicit early literacy instruction. Annals of Dyslexia, Online First, 1-15.

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“Remediation of early literacy skills at an early stage can enhance effects of systematic instruction in reading skills that, in the Netherlands, does not begin until children are in first grade. We also found that some children are more susceptible to early remedial interventions than are other children. Children with mild perinatal adversities are vulnerable to developing persistent delays in literacy skills, but they also seem to thrive and are quick in acquiring high levels of elementary literacy skills when presented with a chance to catch up and outrun their peers prior to the start of beginning reading instruction by participating in an enriched, computer-based literacy environment in kindergarten. These susceptible children seem to have not only risk factors but also unexpected learning potentials when a rearing environment includes elements that make children attentive to the basic ingredients of reading. For the children who did not suffer from perinatal adversities, the intervention did not result in short- or long-term elevated levels of literacy skills.” (p.8)

van der Kooy-Hofland, V. A. C., van der Kooy, J., Bus, A. G., van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Bonsel, G. J. (2012). Differential susceptibility to early literacy intervention in children with mild perinatal adversities: Short- and long-term effects of a randomized control trial. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104, 337–349.

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“The worked example effect, according to which learners who study worked examples perform better on test problems than learners who solve the same problems themselves, also derived from the reasoning that conventional problem solving interfered with learning because it concentrated on reaching a problem goal rather than transferring knowledge to long-term memory.” (p. 4)

Sweller, J. (2016). Story of a research program. In S. Tobias, J. D. Fletcher, & D. C. Berliner (Eds.), Acquired wisdom series. Education Review, 23.

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“Surveys were conducted in the final year of the teacher training courses and targeted students attending teacher education institutions providing teacher training in the area of early literacy. Although preservice teachers generally rated themselves as prepared to teach early reading, most demonstrated minimal to very poor knowledge of the components of early reading, indicating a substantial discrepancy between the general confidence of preservice teachers to teach, and their limited content knowledge of beginning reading skills.” (p.1)

Meeks, L., & Kemp, C.R. 2017). How well prepared are Australian preservice teachers to teach early reading skills? Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42(11), 1-17.

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“The history of writing has seen a consistent trend toward alphabetic systems and away from logographic ones (Gleitman and Rozin, 1977). It appears that an alphabetic system has an inherent advantage during the process of acquisition that may explain this historical trend. We know that skilled readers can access their mental lexicons without necessarily using phonological recoding (see Coltheart, 1980; McCusker et al., 1981). We also know that for the skilled reader the phonological route is slower than the visual route (Coltheart, 1978). So what is the advantage of having a script which permits phonological recoding? The advantage of the alphabet, and the phonological recoding it allows, may lie in the aid it gives the beginning reader in learning to visually identify words. Although Chinese characters generally contain a part suggesting the meaning (the radical) and a part suggesting the sound (the phonetic), these provide less explicit information for decoding unfamiliar words compared to those provided by the alphabet. The problem with learning a logography is the time involved in memorising thousands of logographs. As a result, in the People's Republic of China today children are first introduced to an alphabetic script (pinyin) which is used to facilitate the acquisition of characters (Liu, 1978). Throughout primary school both writing systems are taught simultaneously. Children are expected to have mastered pinyin by the end of primary school together with approximately three thousand of the four and a half thousand characters in daily use. In Japan the learning of Japanese Kanji (borrowed Chinese characters) also extends well beyond primary school. Kanji are learned batch-by-batch; 46 in Grade 1, 105 in Grade 2, 187 in Grade 3, etc., until 966 of the official 1,850 Kanji are expected to be mastered by the end of primary school (Sakamoto & Makita, 1973). As in China, a script which permits phonological recoding (the syllabic Kana) is used to teach Kanji. The acquisition of Kana appears to be extremely rapid. Muraishi (1976) reports that close to 90% of 5-year-olds can read 60 or more of the 69 Hiragana letters (the most widely used Kana script). It appears then that the acquisition of logographies is facilitated by a companion script that permits phonologically mediated access to the lexicon.” (p.113-114)

Jorm, A.F., & Share, D.L. (1983). Phonological recoding and reading acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 4(2), 103-147.

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“Researchers have begun to study beliefs in neuromyths—“misconceptions about mind and brain functioning” (Pasquinelli, 2013, p. 1)—among pre-service and in-service teachers (Dekker, Lee, Howard-Jones, & Jolles, 2012; Deligiannidi & Howard-Jones, 2015; Ferrero, Garaizar, & Vadillo, 2016; Gleichgerrcht, Lira Luttges, Salvarezza, & Campos, 2015; Karakus, Howard-Jones, & Jay, 2015; Macdonald, Germine, Anderson, Christodoulou, & McGrath, 2017; Papadatou-Pastou, Haliou, & Vlachos, 2017; Pei, Howard-Jones, Zhang, Liu, & Jin, 2015; Rato, Abreu, & Castro-Caldas, 2013; Tardif, Doudin, & Meylan, 2015). Results indicate that a majority of pre- and in-service teachers across multiple countries support the use of several neuromyth-based instructional practices including those founded on learning modalities (i.e., learning styles), hemispheric dominance (i.e., left brain versus right brain theory), and perceptual motor training (e.g., Brain Gym).” (p.1)

Ruhaak, A.E. & Cook, B.G. (2018). The prevalence of educational neuromyths among pre-service special education teacher. Mind, Brain, and Education, Online First.

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“To summarise, this meta-analysis has confirmed that decoding and reading comprehension are related from childhood to adulthood in readers of English, although there is a point early in reading development where the strength of the relationship undergoes a significant change. This result confirms the relevance of instruction in both decoding and language comprehension in the classroom, even with adolescent readers. Nevertheless, our analysis has also shown that variables associated with the assessment of decoding and reading comprehension will also influence the strength of the relation. Critically, for our assessment of reading ability, the influence of the moderators associated with the procedure of assessing reading comprehension (providing help with the decoding of the material, and asking the participant to read aloud or not) was restricted to young readers. On the contrary, the influence of the genre was only found for the whole sample of studies (before splitting by age). An accurate assessment of reading ability is necessary to diagnose reading difficulties early and to inform instruction and intervention. Our analysis strongly suggests that the nature of the assessment may influence the reading profile obtained. Thus, to get a good picture, it is important to combine different measures of decoding and different materials and procedures to assess reading comprehension.” (p. 36)

García, J. R., & Cain, K. (2014). Decoding and reading comprehension in English: A meta-analysis to identify which reader and assessment characteristics influence the strength of the relationship Review of Educational Research, 84(1), 74–111.

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“A substantial body of literature reports high reliability and validity coefficients for ORF probes among elementary grade readers and middle-grade readers (Reschly, Busch, Betts, Deno, & Long, 2009; Ticha et al., 2009; Wayman, Wallace, Wiley, Ticha, & Espin, 2007). … ORF probes for the first minute of reading or for the full passage are reliable and valid measures of indexing reading ability among struggling middle-grade readers and may be used as part of a secondary-school teachers’ intervention design to measure reading abilities and inform instructional decisions.” (p.62)

Barth, A. E., Stuebing, K. K., Fletcher, J. M., Denton, C. A., Vaughn, S., & Francis, D. (2014). The effect of reading duration on the reliability and validity of middle school students' ORF performance. Assessment for Effective Intervention, 40(1), 53–64.

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“Chomsky and Halle (1968) famously remarked that “English orthography, despite its often cited inconsistencies, comes remarkably close to being an optimal orthographic system for English” (p. 49). They were referring to the fact that, among other things, morphological information is sometimes more consistently represented in the orthography than in the phonology. For example, the plural morpheme is consistently spelled with S in CATS and DOGS despite being realized with different phonemes (cat/s/ and dog/z/). Regardless of one’s view of the optimality of English orthography, their position highlights that the independence of orthographic representation extends to higher-level aspects of linguistic representation.”

Rapp, B., Fischer-Baum, S., & Miozzo, M. (2015). Modality and morphology: what we write may not be what we say.Psychological Science, 26(6), 892-902.

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“Since knowledge and skills related to curriculum content and pedagogy are crucial for teachers, it is of interest to explore the research relating to what preservice teachers know and can do. Refereed journal articles published between 2005 and 2015 that reported on the assessment of the knowledge or skills of Australian preservice teachers are reviewed. Data were extracted from 52 articles relating to the context of the research, participants in the research and the adequacy of the knowledge and skills of preservice teachers. Most authors expressed some concern about the level of knowledge and skills of preservice teachers and where both were reported there was often a discrepancy between perceived and actual knowledge. … The results of some of the studies reported here would certainly provide ammunition for those who criticise the quality of PST preparation. For example, many PSTs had very poor basic literacy skills (Moon, 2014), lacked knowledge of the basic content knowledge required for teaching of reading (Fielding-Barnsley, 2010) and lacked basic numeracy knowledge (White et al., 2006). Some of the specific areas assessed also indicate a lack of ability to think critically and a disturbing lack of comprehension. For example, Moon reported that some PSTs in the third or fourth years of their courses were unable to define “pedagogy” and Livy and Vale (2011) reported that over 30% of the PSTs they assessed thought that 6 cm on a map of a small area of Victoria would be equivalent to more than 15,000,000 km and were “not able to think about the reasonableness of their answer” (p. 38). There were no studies of more sophisticated areas of mathematics, such as the critical statistics literacy skills needed by teachers to make sense of data such as NAPLAN results (Chick & Pierce, 2013). The single study addressing PST knowledge of evidence-based practices (Carter et al., 2015) found that PSTs tended to believe that all practices presented to them had a sound research base, regardless of the actual evidence base. At the same time, there is evidence that when the content of units is appropriate, or when remediation is provided, PSTs can acquire the necessary content and skills. See, for example, Yeigh (2013) who reported changes in PST knowledge of and attitudes to the factors influencing student behavior and effective intervention and Thwaite (2008) who reported on a remedial program addressing text writing, including spelling and grammar. These findings reflect international research that shows completion of units with specific relevant content can improve PST content knowledge (Jensen et al., 2016). The research on pedagogical content knowledge is less clear, but some of the studies here indicate that practice teaching, analysis of actual teaching, and practice in writing lesson plans and program sequences (Beswick & Muir, 2013; Dawkins et al, 2009; Fenwick et al., 2014; Lloyd & Mukerjee, 2012) may help pedagogical skills and knowledge. The study by Cavanagh et al. (2014), even though the skills were judged inadequate based on the results, showed that PSTs can improve practical and essential communication skills when provided with multiple opportunities for practice with feedback.” (p. 121, 130-131)

Stephenson, J. (2018). A systematic review of the research on the knowledge and skills of Australian preservice teachers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 43(4), 121-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2018v43n4.7

” (p.1)

Stephenson, J. (2018). A systematic review of the research on the knowledge and skills of Australian preservice teachers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 43(4).

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“For the purpose of the present investigation, we define knowledge as information stored in memory (e.g., Anderson, 1983; Weinert, 1999). In line with how the term knowledge is typically used in the psychological and educational research literature, this definition includes declarative knowledge about abstract and relational concepts (Goldwater & Schalk, 2016) and more isolated facts (M. Schneider & Grabner, 2012) as well as procedural knowledge about how to solve problems (Anderson et al., 2004). It also includes scientifically incorrect misconceptions as well as scientifically correct concepts (Shtulman & Valcarcel, 2012; Smith III., diSessa, & Roschelle, 1993). Knowledge is domain specific when it relates to the key principles in a domain, for example, the concept of equivalence in mathematics or the concept of force in physics (Carey & Spelke, 1994; Wellman & Gelman, 1992). Domain-specific knowledge is sometimes also termed content knowledge (Chi & Ceci, 1987) and has been described as a component of academic achievement, expertise, and similar cognitive learning outcomes (Gobet, 2005; Hunter, 1986; OECD, 2016; Steinmayr, Meißner, Weidinger, & Wirthwein, 2014). We define prior knowledge as the knowledge available in a person’s longterm memory at the onset of learning (cf. Dochy & Alexander, 1995). … Many studies have investigated the role of prior knowledge in learning, but most of them have only reported how prior knowledge correlates with posttest knowledge. Our metaanalysis demonstrates that this correlation is positive and strong, in general, as well as for many levels of knowledge-, learner-, and environment-related moderators. Thus, individual differences in knowledge are highly stable, so prior knowledge, measured before learning, has high predictive power for knowledge and achievement after learning. Randomized controlled trials indicate that this relation is causal rather than merely correlational.” (p. 4-5, 36)

Simonsmeier, B.A., Flaig, M., Deiglmayr, A., Schalk, L., & Schneider, M. (2018). Domain-specific prior knowledge and learning: A meta-analysis.

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“Discovery learning is an ineffective way to teach content as well as skills (Kirschner & van Merriënboer, 2013). Without any knowledge of background information, it is challenging and overwhelming for students to arrive at a well-structured and well-researched question (Kirschner et al., 2006). The lack of background knowledge students have on a topic often leads them down unproductive lines of questioning (Mayer, 2004), while the mass amounts of information can be overwhelming without guidance and feedback (Hardiman, Pollatsek, & Weil, 1986; Brown & Campione, 1994). In addition, having teachers consistently teaching “on their feet” is not feasible for the teaching profession given the limited time teachers already have to plan lessons and activities. It would be impossible for a teacher to be knowledgeable on every topic a student may have a question about without adequate planning and preparation. Finally, the lack of guidance or feedback offers no opportunity for students to progress. Students are poor judges of what they know and what they do not know (Yue, Castel, Bjork, 2013). Thus, in order for any type of learning model to be effective, it must include feedback so that students can be aware of where they need to fine-tune their thinking (Hays, Kornell, & Bjork, 2010). Discovery learning lacks the structure and guidance that allows inquiry based learning to be successful, and thus lacks its effectiveness.” (p.15-16)

Sadik, M. (2018). Exploring the development of teacher understanding and use of inquiry-based instruction in Canadian and world studies. A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Educational Leadership and Policy Department of Leadership, Higher, and Adult Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto. Retrieved from https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/91545/3/Sadik_Marina_201811_MA_thesis.pdf

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“Parents’ ratings of the extent of their children’s involvement in activities that led to practice in reading and writing most consistently predicted the development of emerging literacy skills, including understanding of the conventions of the English writing system. Little relation between print knowledge and the frequency of storybook reading by adults was observed.” (p. 63)

Levy, B.A., Gong^, Z., Hessels, S., Evans^, M.A., & Jared, D. (2006). Understanding print: Early reading development and the contributions of home literacy experiences. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 93(1), 63-93.

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“ … elements of traditional education attacked by progressive theorists, including drill, memorisation, and teacher-led instruction, appear crucial for successful learning because they allow pupils to transfer information from their working memory to their long-term memory. Without this transfer, no learning can take place whatsoever. This is because all information that is added to our working memory disappears within 30 seconds. However, with direct instruction, drill, and repetition, the information can be transferred to our long-term memory. And once stored there, we can quickly transfer the information back to our working memory when necessary, for example when we need it to solve a problem (see Clark et al. 2012). Direct instruction, drill, and memorisation are crucial aspects of traditional education, and are neither fun nor inspiring. Yet they are necessary components for successful learning, both in terms of factual knowledge and more complex processes, such as problem-solving and critical thinking. Such features are therefore not fundamental flaws of a traditional education system, as progressive educationalists have argued, but rather essential if learning is to occur at all.” (p. 17-18)

Sahlgren, G.H. (2018). The achievement–wellbeing trade-off in education. Research report 14, Centre for Education Economics, London. Retrieved from http://www.cfee.org.uk/trade-offs

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“However, as this monograph has highlighted, the story from Finland backs up the increasing amount of evidence, which suggests that pupil-led methods, and less structured schooling environments in general, are harmful for cognitive achievement. Finnish teachers were, for many decades, traditional in their approach, reinforcing a hierarchical educational culture. While difficult to entirely disentangle from the effects of societal changes in general, the move towards less structured methods and authoritative school practices is likely to have had a causal effect, in and of itself, on the recent Finnish decline.” (p.64)

Sahlgren, G.H. (2015). Real Finnish lessons The true story of an education superpower. Centre for Policy Studies, ISBN No. 978-1-910627-08-2. Centre for Policy Studies. Retrieved from https://www.cps.org.uk/files/reports/original/150410115444-RealFinnishLessonsFULLDRAFTCOVER.pdf

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Print Awareness and Reading Achievement

A new study indicates that making one small change in how we read aloud to preschoolers can make a big difference in literacy achievement. The small change? Pointing out printed words as we read aloud. Researchers have been studying the impact of this simple intervention on a group of preschoolers from at-risk communities. So far, the kids have been followed for two years and according to the most recent findings (published in the journal Child Development), these small changes make a measurable difference. "Children who focused their attention on print … had better literacy outcomes than those who did not," says Shane Piasta, one of the researchers. "It was very clear."

Piasta, S. B., Justice, L. M., McGinty, A. S. and Kaderavek, J. N. (2012). Increasing young children’s contact with print during shared reading: Longitudinal effects on literacy achievement. Child Development, 83(3), 810–820. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01754.x

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“Music training is commonly thought to have a positive impact on overall cognitive skills and academic achievement. This belief relies on the idea that engaging in an intellectually demanding activity helps to foster overall cognitive function. In this brief review, we show that, while music skill positively correlates with cognitive ability, music training does not enhance non-music cognitive skills or academic achievement. Interestingly, no significant effect on cognitive outcomes is observed even when music training leads to changes in the participants’ functional neural patterns. Crucially, the conclusion that music skills acquired by training do not generalize to non-music skills has been reached by several independent research groups via different methodologies. Such converging evidence suggests that the outcomes are highly reliable. The results have major implications. First, implementing music-training programs with the purpose of boosting individuals’ academic achievement or domain-general cognitive skills is not recommendable. Second, neural patterns induced by music training probably denote improvements in music-specific skills rather than overall cognitive function. Third, Thorndike and Woodworth’s (1901) common elements theory and theories based on chunking find further support. To date, far transfer remains a chimera.”

Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2018). Elvis has left the building: Correlational but not causal relationship between music skill and cognitive ability. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17808.66569. Preprint

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“Results indicated that students identified as typical readers significantly outperformed inadequate and adequate responders on a common EF factor, and significantly outperformed inadequate responders on the BRIEF/ Metacognition factor, a teacher report measure. All other comparisons were not significant. Additional contrasts investigating whether EF predicted responder status above and beyond initial reading status were null, suggesting that observed mean differences in EF by group may reflect differences in reading ability. These results suggest that EF may not be a robust predictor of intervention response in reading comprehension. Thus, routine assessment of EF in school practice is currently not informative for predicting a student’s likely response to intensive reading interventions.” (p. 11-12)

Miciak, J., Cirino, P. T., Ahmed, Y., Reid, E., & Vaughn, S. (2019). Executive functions and response to intervention: Identification of students struggling with reading comprehension. Learning Disability Quarterly, 42(1), 17–31.

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“There is a general agreement that learning disabilities are neurobiologically based, involve cognitive processes, and affect learning. Learning disabilities persist in various forms across the life span, frequently with precursors— most often, language delays or language deficits in early childhood—appearing before formal schooling begins and continuing into adulthood (NJCLD, 2008). Furthermore, learning disabilities occur regardless of such factors as an individual’s culture, race, language, gender, or socioeconomic status.” (p. 195)

Gartland, D., & Strosnider, R. (2018). Learning disabilities: Implications for policy regarding research and practice: A report by the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 41(4), 195–199.

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“Findings from this study coincide with previous studies suggesting that school psychologists exhibit high levels of confidence in identification decisions (e.g., Aspel et al., 1998; de Mesquita, 1992; Gnys et al., 1995). Results within the medical field suggested that high confidence may lead to more diagnostic errors (Norman & Eva, 2010), and the present study similarly found that confidence may be associated with inconsistent decision-making.” (p. 252)

Maki, K.E., Burns, M.K., Sullivan, A.L. (2018). School psychologists’ confidence in learning disability identification decisions. Learning Disability Quarterly, 41(4), 243–256.

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“To summarize, we found that oral reading fluency measures are reliable and valid measures for middle school stu dents for both good and poor readers (Barth et al., 2012). The mean and median scores were comparable and there was little additional value of longer assessments lasting more than 1 min, including assessments that require reading entire passages (Barth et al., in press). However, results also indicated that equating different probes is essential to deal with form effects. Passage difficulty accounted for more than 50% of the variance in fluency rates (Barth et al., 2012). In addition, our research indicated that growth rates in oral reading fluency were much lower than those observed in elementary students. Grade 8 students read only 15 words correct per minute faster than Grade 6 students. Growth over the five administrations across the school year was about 12 words correct per minute. This small amount of growth observed in oral reading fluency among middle school students has two important implications for assessment. First, it suggests that progress monitoring could be conducted less frequently and at longer intervals than is typically done with early elementary students. In addition, there was a little evidence of value-added information from computations of the slope for a determination of inadequate Rtl (Tolar, Barth, Francis, Fletcher, & Vaughn, 2013). Instead, multiple final status indicators in different reading domains may represent a practical and sensitive battery for determining individual Rti” (p. 224-5)

Solis, M., Miciak, J., Vaughn, S., & Fletcher, J. (2014). Why intensive interventions matter: Longitudinal studies of adolescents with reading disabilities and poor reading comprehension. Learning Disability Quarterly, 37(4), 218-229.

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“Consistent with the distinction between STM and WM, Redick, Broadway, et al. (2012) differentiated between simple span tasks, such as digit span and Corsi Blocks, and complex span tasks, such as operation and symmetry span. Simple span tasks measure only the capacity of a short-term storage system, whereas complex span tasks also involve the processing of information, and therefore seem appropriate to assess WMC (Redick, Broadway, et al., 2012). For instance, in the automated operation span task, a mathematical operation is presented at first and the participant has to decide whether the result presented is right or wrong. Subsequently, a letter is presented, and after a variable number of operation-letter pairs, the participant has to remember the letters in their original order (Unsworth, Heitz, Schrock, & Engle, 2005). Unsworth and Engle (2007b) argued that “simple and complex span tasks largely measure the same basic subcomponent processes (e.g., rehearsal, maintenance, updating, controlled search) but differ in the extent to which these processes operate in a particular task” (p. 1038). The distinction between simple and complex span tasks made by Redick, Broadway, et al. (2012), however, is useful for separating measures of STM and WM. … Attention capabilities seem to be important for the explanation of differences in WMC. Thus, unsurprisingly, differences in WMC are considered to be related to differences in performance in several basic attention tasks (Unsworth & Engle, 2007a). Differences in WMC have also been associated with a variety of higher cognitive achievements, such as mathematical abilities (Gathercole, Pickering, Knight, & Stegmann, 2004), reading comprehension (Daneman & Merikle, 1996), and chemistry performance (Tsaparlis, 2005). WMC has been found to be associated with problem solving (B€uhner, Kr€oner, & Ziegler, 2008), multitasking (B€uhner, K€onig, Pick, & Krumm, 2006), and knowledge acquisition from hypermedia materials similar to Wikipedia (Banas & Sanchez, 2012). In addition, a strong association between WMC and fluid intelligence has been demonstrated repeatedly (e.g., Engle, Tuholski, Laughlin, & Conway, 1999; Oberauer, S€uß, Wilhelm, & Wittmann, 2008; Redick, Unsworth, Kelly, & Engle, 2012).” (p. 139)

Schwaighofer, M., Fischer, F., & Bühner, M. (2015). Does working memory training transfer? A meta-analysis including training conditions as moderators. Educational Psychologist, 50(2), 138–166.

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“....our culture’s emphasis on the importance of reading to children creates the impression that it plays the same role in learning to read as speaking to children plays in their learning to talk.

That’s not correct. Whereas talking with children guarantees that they will learn to speak (in the absence of pathological interference), reading to children does not guarantee that they will read. Children learn a spoken language through exposure and use, but reading requires systematic guidance and feedback, more than occurs in casual reading to children. In short, reading to children is not the same as teaching children to read. I emphasize this point because the mantra about reading to children makes it seem that this is all that is required. A child who has difficulty learning to read therefore must not have been read to enough. Among the first questions that will be asked of the parents of a child who is struggling is whether they read to the child and if there are books in the home. Reading to children is important but not sufficient; some children benefit from it, some quite a lot, but it neither obviates the role of instruction nor vaccinates against dyslexia. Children who are read to until the cow jumps over the moon can still have difficulty in becoming readers.”

(See Seidenberg page 114).

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“Overall, the results of this meta-analysis indicate that intensive interventions result in positive gains in reading performance for struggling readers in Grades K through 3. There is limited variability in the effects, indicating that intervention commonalities may be driving the positive effects more than differences such as group size or duration. Intervention commonalities across studies included the following: (a) a high level of standardization in which all students received the same instruction using a set of well-prescribed lessons and materials for modeling and guiding students in learning new reading practices; (b) instructional content addressing phonological awareness (e.g., syllable segmentation, phoneme identification and manipulation), phonics and word recognition (e.g., lettername and letter-sound correspondence, blending and segmenting the sounds in words, reading decodable words and high-frequency words), and fluency (e.g., initial reading, Wanzek et al. 621 rereading, and shared reading of decodable texts); and (c) school staff or community members implemented the interventions. Thus, generally standardized, explicit instruction including reading foundational skills provided for more than 100 sessions has a positive effect for students with reading difficulties in Grades K through 3. These interventions can be feasibly implemented by school personnel.” (p. 620-621)

Wanzek, J., Stevens, E.A., Williams, K.J., Scammacca, N., Vaughn, S., & Sargent, K. (2018). Current evidence on the effects of intensive early reading interventions. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 51(6), 612–624.

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“To provide effective differentiated instruction in reading, teachers require an understanding of how reading and writing develops for emergent readers through to fluent readers. The level of knowledge required by teachers includes understanding what students need to learn and a deeper appreciation of that content knowledge, as well as ways to provide effective literacy instruction (Moats, 1999; Snow, Griffen, & Burns, 2005).

There is often a gap between the research-based findings about how children learn to read, and classroom teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge about effective literacy-related teaching strategies. Cunningham, Perry, Stanovich, and Stanovich (2004) refer to the difference between teachers’ actual and perceived content knowledge for literacy as knowledge calibration. Cunningham et al. found that among teachers of beginning readers there was low knowledge calibration in the areas of phonological awareness and knowledge for phonics instruction. In line with this, several studies have reported low levels of content knowledge in phonic and linguistic knowledge for teachers (Carroll, Gillon, & McNeill, 2012; Spear-Swerling & Cheesman, 2012; Washburn, Joshi, & Binks-Cantrell, 2011). Yet, as Moats (2009) points out, teacher knowledge is crucial for the implementation of differentiated instruction, because it “depends on the teacher’s ability to explain concepts explicitly, to choose examples wisely, and to give targeted feedback when errors occur” (p. 393).

Differentiated instruction refers to literacy instruction that is based on learner needs using relevant assessment data to identify more effectively needs and to provide explicit instruction to develop learner knowledge (see chapter 8 of this volume). The provision of explicit instruction requires instructional frameworks that enable teachers’ instructional decisions that are appropriate for students’ instructional levels. Teachers also should have sufficient knowledge about literacy development to provide the appropriate linguistic content instruction, appropriate approaches for meeting the different needs of students, and the ability to interpret the assessment data in a manner that guides effective instructional decisions.” (p. 1-2)

Arrow, A. W., McLachlan, C. J., & Greaney, K. T. (2015). Teacher knowledge needed for differentiated early reading instruction. In W. E. Tunmer, & J. W. Chapman (Eds.), Excellence and equity in literacy education: The case of New Zealand (Vol. Part III, pp. 194-213). Palgrave Macmillan.

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“Reading comprehension tests can vary along many dimensions, including mode of administration. Measures of reading comprehension can be individually administered (i.e., as part of a comprehensive evaluation to determine eligibility for special education services) or group administered, such as state-mandated assessments of reading. Comprehension measures also vary in the type of text students are expected to read (e.g., narrative, informational, or persuasive material), time constraints and pressure for speed, whether or not students can refer back to the text in answering comprehension questions, and response format or how students are expected to demonstrate comprehension of what they have read. It is important to note that students may perform differently depending on the mode of administration, type of text, and format of the test. Three response formats are especially common: cloze, question answering, and retellings. Cloze format tests (e.g., Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Achievement Passage Comprehension; Schrank et al., 2014a) present sentences or passages with blanks in them (e.g., “The birds were flying in the ____”); the student is expected to read the text and provide an appropriate word to go in the blank (for the previous example, a word such as sky or air). In tests with a question/answer format, the student reads passages and answers questions about them; the questions may involve multiple-choice or open-ended items and may be answered orally (e.g., Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, 3rd ed.; Wechsler, 2009) or in writing. Retellings require a student to read a text and then orally tell about what was just read, usually with some sort of coding system for scoring the quality of the retelling. Reading comprehension tests that use a multiple-choice format require the student to answer questions based on a passage the student just read. One of the concerns with this format involves passage independence, that is, the likelihood that on some items, a student could respond correctly (based on prior knowledge or educated guessing) without having read the accompanying passage (e.g., “What colors were on the American flag?”; Keenan & Betjemann, 2006). Despite decades of ongoing attempts by researchers to alert test developers to passage independence and its consequences, studies have consistently uncovered passage-independent items on standardized reading comprehension measures, including the Minnesota Scholastic Aptitude Test (Fowler & Kroll, 1978), Stanford Achievement Test (Lifson, Scruggs, & Bennion, 1984), SAT (e.g., Daneman & Hannon, 2001; Katz, Lautenschlager, Blackburn, & Harris, 1990), Test of English as a Foreign Language (Tian, 2006), Nelson-Denny Reading Test (Coleman, Lindstrom, Nelson, Lindstrom, & Gregg, 2009), and Gray Oral Reading Test (Keenan & Betjemann, 2006).” (p.6-7)

Lindstrom, J.H. (2018). Dyslexia in the schools: assessment and identification. TEACHING Exceptional Children, XX(X), 1–12.

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“Working-memory capacity is typically characterized as the range of information that individuals can process at the same time to perform complex tasks (see Miyake & Shah, 1999, for an overview). The greater one’s capacity, the more robustly attention can be controlled to effectively manipulate information and avoid processing interference (Engle, 2002). This mental multitasking is accomplished by concurrent processing that emerges from coordinated and timely control of one’s attention to information accessed from highly activated long-term memories or temporarily maintained short-term memories (Barrouillet, Bernardin, & Camos, 2004). In this way, working memory functions like a mental “spotlight” that selectively shines on relevant information from one moment to another to actively keep relevant material in mind as needed for processing (Rohrer, Pashler, & Etchegaray, 1998). Ineffective functioning of this working-memory spotlight increases the risk that distracting information will disrupt thinking by allowing nonrelevant information to be processed, which can overload limited capacities (Engle, 2002) or obstruct efficient spotlight shifting in ways that cause forgetting (Barrouillet et al., 2004). Students with poor working memory are less successful at completing complex tasks, exhibit greater distractibility and forgetfulness, and need teacher redirection or reteaching more often than their peers (Alloway, Gathercole, Kirkwood, & Elliott, 2009). Thus, poor working memory can contribute to learning difficulties through the burden it places by surreptitiously fragmenting task engagement. Students who forget what they are doing or become easily distracted when performing complex tasks are likely to experience undetected but repeated disruptions that result in disjointed learning and confusion. Classroom observations of children with poor working memory have revealed clear difficulties in keeping up and effectively using what they know during lessons (Gathercole, Lamont, & Alloway, 2006). Students with learning disabilities may particularly struggle with classroom activities that require mental construction and integration of, or modifications to, information in real time because the challenges associated with the disability can place additional constraints on their working memory capacity, making them more vulnerable to mental overload or forgetting. Decades of research have shown that children with various learning disabilities experience working-memory difficulties (deJong, 1998; Siegel & Ryan, 1989; Swanson & Jerman, 2006), and recent findings indicate that successful intervention outcomes may partially depend on working-memory capacity (Swanson, Lussier, & Orosco, 2015). For example, Swanson et al. (2015) found an effect of workingmemory capacity among children with math difficulties, in that greater growth in postintervention problem-solving accuracy was associated with higher capacity. Moreover, the researchers also reported differential intervention strategy effectiveness that was associated with working-memory capacity. It is important to note that the intervention approach used by Swanson and colleagues employed elements of explicit and systematic instructional design, which we address in our recommendations. Because concurrent processing facilitates the self-management of information flow, working memory functions best when the design and delivery of academic information effectively controls students’ attention to prevent mental overload and promote efficient remembering (Artino, 2008). Because the self-regulation of thinking and doing is not visible, methods that help to make the learning process more observable may be particularly beneficial for optimizing working-memory functioning.” (p.251-252)

Smith, J. L. M., Saez, L., & Doabler, C. T. (2018). Using explicit and systematic instruction to support working memory. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 50(4), 250-257.

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“Organizations such as the International Dyslexia Association (IDA, 2018a) currently use the term structured literacy to describe an explicit and systematic instructional approach. However, historically, beginning as early as the 1920s, some in the community have argued that some students with dyslexia learn differently and require explicit and systematic phonetic instructional approaches employing multisensory techniques to develop word reading (e.g., Fernald & Keller, 1921; Monroe, 1932; Orton, 1937). Common characteristics of such approaches include not only explicit and systematic instruction but also emphasis on building connections across the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic/tactile domains. However, to date, there have been few methodologically sound studies from which to determine the effectiveness of multisensory approaches, despite theoretical support and wide-spread adoption of these methods. … Given the widespread use of multisensory interventions, SLPs should also be aware of the somewhat limited research about their efficacy. Although there is certainly plenty of anecdotal support for these methods, there is a need for more rigorous studies.” (p. 832)

“A majority of students in Grades 4, 8, and 12 in the United States do not demonstrate grade-level writing skills (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2012; Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003). In the most recent assessment years, only 28% of fourth graders (Persky et al., 2003) and 27% each of eighth and twelfth graders (NCES, 2012) met or exceeded grade-level writing expectations on the NAEP writing assessment. Furthermore, compared to their nondisabled peers, only 7% of fourthgrade students with disabilities and 5% each of eighth- and twelfth-grade students with disabilities performed at or above grade-level expectations on the most recent NAEP writing assessments (NCES, 2012; Persky et al., 2003). These statistics are particularly disconcerting given the writing difficulties many students who struggle with writing or who have disabilities demonstrate.” (p. 829)

“The prevalence of students with specific learning disabilities (SWSLD) varies widely within the United States from 5% to 20%, depending on the criteria for identification. This variability in prevalence rates may be related to confusion about identification criteria. For example, states have not yet adopted a universally accepted definition of dyslexia (cf. Tolson & Krnac, 2015; Youman & Mather, 2015). In some states with dyslexia laws, dyslexia refers to struggling readers and writers generally; in other states, the term dyslexia is reserved for students with a profile that includes struggles with phonemic awareness, rapid naming, spelling, decoding, encoding, and fluency despite having typical intelligence.” (p.830)

“Our purpose in writing this narrative review was to describe intensive reading and writing interventions for elementary grade students with dyslexia, SWSLD, and students with intensive reading and writing needs. Across these interventions, SLPs, teachers, and interventionists will notice common characteristics of effective reading and writing instruction include (a) explicit and systematic instruction, (b) extensive modeling and daily practice opportunities, (c) frequent and timely feedback, and (d) use of multiple modalities for practice and retention of skills.” (p. 838-9)

Otaiba, S., Rouse, A.G., & Bakera, K. (2018). Elementary grade intervention approaches to treat specific learning disabilities, including dyslexia. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 49, 829–842. Retrieved from https://lshss.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=2711414

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“In 1655, French mathematician Blaise Pascal invented synthetic phonics. (Rodgers, 2001) Pascal's synthetic phonics referred to an approach associated with the teaching of reading in which phonemes (sounds) associated with particular graphemes (letters) are pronounced in isolation and blended together (synthesised). For example, children are taught to take a single-syllable word such as cat apart into its three letters, pronounce a phoneme for each letter in turn, and blend the phonemes together to form a word. (literacytrust.org.uk - Phonics- Methods of Teaching)

Chrysler, K. (2014). History of phonics timeline. Retrieved from https://prezi.com/49qircw8p0qk/history-of-phonics-timeline/

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“Deficits in executive functions as risk factors for repeated academic difficulties Deficits in EF, or cognitive processing impairments relating to self-regulation, organization, and goal-oriented behavior, have been hypothesized or reported to increase children’s risk for academic difficulties, including repeatedly across elementary school (e.g., Bull, Espy, & Wiebe, 2008; Bull & Scerif, 2001; Pham & Hasson, 2014; Pickering & Gathercole, 2004; Swanson & Sáez, 2003; Swanson, Zheng, & Jerman, 2009; Toll, van der Ven, Kroesbergen, & van Luit, 2011; van der Ven, Kroesbergen, Boom, & Leseman, 2012). Children with EF deficits often experience repeated struggles to organize and self-regulate their learning in classroom environments (Geary et al., 2009; Geary, Hoard, Nugent, & Bailey, 2012; Peng, Congying, Beilei, & Sha, 2012). Children’s EF are considered “inherently malleable” through school-based interventions (Blair, 2016, p. 3). Three specific types of EF theorized to be related to children’s academic achievement are (a) working memory, or the ability to hold and then manipulate information during a brief time; (b) cognitive flexibility, or the ability to shift attention among multiple aspects of a task as well as update responses using newly acquired information; and (c) inhibitory control, or the ability to delay some initial response while attempting to complete a task (Best, Miller, & Jones, 2009; Cantin, Gnaedinger, Gallaway, Hesson-McInnis, & Hund, 2016; Diamond, 2012; Miyake et al., 2000; Monette, Bigras, & Guay, 2011; Monette, Bigras, & Lafrenière, 2015). Inhibitory control grows rapidly during preschool but then slows as children age. In contrast, working memory displays a more linear growth trajectory until adolescence (Best & Miller, 2010). Cognitive flexibility also develops from about age four through adolescence in a linear fashion (Best & Miller, 2010), and may build upon the other two specific types of EF over time (Garon, Bryson, & Smith, 2008; Senn, Espy, & Kaufmann, 2004).” (p. 1-2

Morgan, P. L., Farkas, G., Wang, Y., Hillemeier, M. M. , Oh, Y., & Maczuga, S. (2019). Executive function deficits in kindergarten predict repeated academic difficulties across elementary school. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 46, 20–32. doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.06.009

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Reading is “the most natural activity in the world … it is only through reading that children learn to read. Trying to teach children to read by teaching them the sounds of letters is literally a meaningless activity.”

Smith, F. (2006). Reading without nonsense (4th ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.

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“Direct Instruction has also been successful in a wide array of types of schools. In fact, I’d argue that it is rare to find programs that have been proven to be effective in rigorous research that then fail to generalize to other schools, even ones that are quite different. Of course, there is great variation in outcomes in any set of schools using any innovative program, but that variation has to do with leadership, local support, resources, and so on, not with a fundamental limitation on generalizability to additional populations.”

Slavin, R. (2016). What schools in one place can learn from schools elsewhere. Retrieved from https://robertslavinsblog.wordpress.com/category/direct-instruction/

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“In 2016, the Grattan Institute published the report Widening Gaps: What NAPLAN Tells Us About Student Progress, which demonstrated that the top performing students at disadvantaged schools were up to two and a half years behind the top performing students at advantaged schools.8” (p.9)

Holden, R., & Zhang, J. (2018). The economic impact of improving regional, rural & remote education in Australia: Closing the human capital gap. Retrieved from http://research.economics.unsw.edu.au/richardholden/assets/gonski-report-final.pdf

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“The authors report findings from a systematic observational study of middle school educators (Grades 6–8) in two states who provided reading interventions within Tier 2 and Tier 3 of a Response to Intervention (RTI) framework. Intervention sessions were coded and analyzed to understand (a) the frequency and type of evidence-based strategies implemented for students with learning disabilities and reading difficulties, and (b) whether observed practices within secondary and tertiary intervention settings align with researcher recommendations regarding middle school reading instruction based on extant research. The findings indicated that more than 12% of time was devoted to logistical and nonacademic activities, and evidence-based interventions including explicit instruction, cognitive strategy instruction, content enhancements, and independent practice opportunities were reported infrequently, although instructional differences across sites were demonstrated.

Ciullo, S., Lembke, E. S., Carlisle, A., Thomas, C. N., Goodwin, M., & Judd, L. (2016). Implementation of evidence-based literacy practices in middle school response to intervention an observation study. Learning Disability Quarterly, 39(1), 44–57.

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[Margaret Zhang] - her work pattern is to bring disparate elements together, then join up the dots. “That’s how I approach everything,” In that breadth and approach, she exemplifies Steve Jobs’ key beliefs. … “creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something … That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesise new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.” “When you get stuck,” Zhang explains, “you can go to other parts of your knowledge. What’s really important is understanding the big picture.” … While it’s agreed there’s no such thing as a single creative personality, there are certainly shared traits: intense focus, passion for what is being worked on, rigour, mastery of the basics so there is a foundation of knowledge (interviewees stress this repeatedly), spontaneity, an openness to one’s own inner life and emotions, a questioning, curious outlook and the courage to be independent. … [Nick] Crocker stresses people need to stop thinking of creativity as if it’s something beautiful, aspirational. “It’s about trying something … working out why it didn’t work … fixing it, trying again … working out why it didn’t work ... fixing it again … It’s stepping into a deep pool. It’s changeable, uncertain, it takes longer than you think. You’re never really happy. There’s always fighting and scrapping … That’s what real creativity looks like.”

Gare, S. (2018). Risky business: In search of those aha! moments. Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald. 6 October 2018. Retrieved from https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/risky-business-in-search-of-those-aha-moments-20181001-p5073g.html

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“If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it’s better never to really understand those problems. There is an upside to ignorance, and a downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview. (p.77)

Lewis, M. (2018). The fifth risk. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-1-324-00264-2

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“Neural specialization for reading is experientially driven and occurs through utilizing and repurposing distributed brain structures that support vision, audition, and language (Dehaene, 2009). The efficient integration across these spatially disparate brain regions is made possible by long-range white matter connections that form across development (Wandell, Rauschecker, & Yeatman, 2012). Three white matter tracts in particular have a documented association with reading and reading-related skills in adults and children as early as preschool (1) arcuate fasciculus (AF), connecting the superior temporal lobe with the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG); (2) superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), connecting the inferior parietal with the inferior frontal/premotor regions; and (3) inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), connecting the posterior inferior temporal gyrus with the ventral anterior and medial temporal lobe (Deutsch et al., 2005; Frye et al., 2011; Klingberg et al., 2000; Lebel & Beaulieu, 2009; Myers et al., 2014; Niogi & McCandliss, 2006; Travis, Adams, Kovachy, Ben-Shachar, & Feldman, 2017; Yeatman, Dougherty, Ben-Shachar, & Wandell, 2012a; Yeatman et al., 2011; Saygin et al., 2013; Vandermosten, Boets, Wouters, & Ghesquiere, 2012; Wang et al., 2016; Zhao, de Schotten, Altarelli, Dubois, & Ramus, 2016; Supporting Information Figure S1). The left ILF passes in close proximity to the visual word form area (Yeatman, Rauschecker, & Wandell, 2013), a cortical region that becomes left-lateralized and specialized for word recognition through experience (Cohen et al., 2002; Dehaene & Cohen, 2011). … One possible interpretation of these findings is that SES can exaggerate or mitigate the links between early brain connectivity and reading outcomes. For example, higher quality childcare and schools, better housing, and higher quality and quantity of cognitive and linguistic stimulation could lead to successful reading outcomes even in the face of neuroanatomical variations—namely reduced white matter FA of bilateral ILF (Brito et al., 2017).” (p.1, 10)

Ozernov-Palchik, O., Norton, E.S., Wang, Y., Beach, S.D., Zuk, J., Wolf, M., Gabrieli, J.D.E., & Gaab, N. (2018). The relationship between socioeconomic status and white matter microstructure in pre-reading children: A longitudinal investigation. Human Brain Mapping, 1–14. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327944343_The_relationship_between_socioeconomic_status_and_white_matter_microstructure_in_pre-reading_children_A_longitudinal_investigation

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"Rather than attempting to teach explicitly all letter-sound relationships, one of the main functions of phonics instruction should be to help activate the process by which beginning readers learn untaught spelling-sound patterns through implicit learning. In this sense, phonics instruction is a means to an end rather than an end in itself (Tunmer et al., 2015; Venezky, 1999). Phonics, therefore, can be defined as “an approach to, or type of, reading instruction that is intended to promote the discovery of the alphabetic principle, the correspondences between phonemes and graphemes, and phonological encoding” Scarborough & Brady, 2002, p. 20)."

Chapman, J.W., Greaney, K.T., Arrow, A.W., & Tunmer, W.E. (2018) Teachers’ use of phonics, knowledge of language constructs, and preferred word identification prompts in relation to beginning readers. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 23(1), 87-104.

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“In research over the past decade, including five-year and seven-year follow-up studies (de Graaff, Bosman, Hasselman & Verhoeven, 2009; Johnson & Watson, 2003; 2005), this [synthetic] method of teaching has been shown to be more effective in building both reading accuracy and comprehension than other approaches, particularly for children who do not come from rich literate backgrounds. In the Johnson and Watson studies, boys achieved equally as well as girls, in many cases outperforming them.” (p.158)

Konza, D. (2014). Teaching reading: Why the “Fab Five” should be the “Big Six”. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 39(12), 153-169. Retrieved from http://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol39/iss12/10

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“LLI had no impact on students’ reading comprehension and a negative impact on their mastery of English language arts/literacy standards.” (p.1)

Gonzalez, N., MacIntyre, S., & Beccarvarela, P. (2018). Challenges in adolescent reading intervention: Evidence from a randomized control trial. Working Paper 62. Oakland, CA: Mathematica Policy Research, June 2018. pp. 1-20. Retrieved from https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/-/media/publications/pdfs/education/2018/adolescent-reading-intervention-wp62.pdf

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“Studies that compare instruction with and without the traditional multisensory components do not indicate differences in outcomes (Clark & Uhry, 1995, Moats & Farrell, 1999.) Wise, Ring, and Olson 1999 also did not find that a multisensory articulatory component, as in the Lindamood program, was a necessary component of their own intervention. The strength of these programs likely involves the intense, systematic approach to instruction, the link with specific types of struggling readers, and possibly the explicit attention to the structure of language.” (p. 152-153)

Fletcher, J.M., Lyon, G.R., Fuchs, L.S., & Barnes, M.A. (2007). Reading disabilities: Word recognition. In Learning disabilities: From identification to intervention. (pp. 85-163). New York: The Guilford Press.

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“The Problem with “Leveled” Books. Most striking in our classrooms is the popularity of “leveled” book libraries that are often the main tool for teaching students how to read. Leveled texts originated in New Zealand to accompany Reading Recovery lessons (Clay, 1991). They are the centerpiece of Guided Reading (Fountas & Pinnell, 1999). Leveled texts are assigned a rank (level) on a difficulty scale, such as A–Z, according to four major characteristics judged by a panel of experts: a) book and print features; b) content, themes, and ideas; c) text structure; and d) language and literary elements. These judgments are necessarily subjective, because readability formulas that calculate sentence length and word frequency cannot be meaningfully applied to beginning texts. Several studies have shown that primary grade students in the bottom 40% of reading skill often cannot read these leveled texts because they have not acquired the requisite phonic decoding skills (Cunningham et al., 2005; Foorman, Francis, Davidson, Harm, & Griffin, 2004; Hoffman, Roser, Patterson, Salas, & Pennington, 2001). The leveled texts do not control for phonic patterns and do not follow a scope and sequence of decoding skill instruction, so there are few opportunities for students to apply and solidify phonics skills through cumulative practice. Further, leveled texts do not consistently increase in word-level demands as their levels increase and the need for consistent phonic patterns is ignored when new words are introduced. Phonic patterns are introduced at too fast a rate for beginning readers who need repeated exposures to words to store them in memory. Therefore, when leveled texts are used for instruction, students must rely on (and are often encouraged to rely on) memorization, pictures, and guesswork to read. If phonic correspondences have not been taught, then contextual guessing is the only strategy available to a student who cannot figure out print-to-speech correspondences through incidental exposure and self-teaching. It is well established that guessing from context is the default strategy of students who cannot decode and who read poorly (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Seidenberg, 2017).” (p. 18)

Moats, L. (2017). Can prevailing approaches to reading instruction accomplish the goals of RTI? Perspectives on Language and Literacy; 43(3), 15-22.

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“Our results speak to the potential for flexibility in intervention implementation. In the case of multicomponent interventions, depending on the skill profiles of subgroups of students, researchers might tailor the intervention such that certain components are emphasized over others. With the CCT intervention, greater overall treatment effects may have been observed if students with stronger initial text-reading fluency skills were advanced to lessons in which text was longer and more complex (i.e., stretch text), and the decoding or reading fluency activities were replaced by instruction and practice in higher-order comprehension processes. Connor and colleagues (e.g., Connor et al., 2011) have shown that aligning instructional content, practice activities, student groupings, and the role of the teacher based on students’ entry-level skill profiles is associated with compelling effects on student achievement. We suspect that similar considerations would be pertinent to other multicomponent interventions. Rather than all students receiving the same intervention regardless of skill profile, interventions may be tailored to address needs that are more prevalent or pose greater obstacles to reading comprehension.” (p. 12)

Clemens, N.H., Oslund, E., Kwok, O-M., Fogarty, M., Simmons, D., & Davis, J.L. (2018). Skill moderators of the effects of a reading comprehension intervention. Exceptional Children, 1–15.

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“With the exceptions of studies with exemplary study design yielding significantly smaller effect sizes on standardized measures of foundational reading skills, other quality indicators were not related to the effect sizes of supplemental reading interventions. This finding indicates the possibility that study quality might be less important than we hypothesized. We are not yet ready to say with certainty that study quality does not matter until additional research investigates the relationship between study quality and effect sizes utilizing a more heterogeneous corpus of studies; however, if study quality is not related to the effect sizes of supplemental reading interventions, it is worth considering the implication this finding has on future research. For example, there may be a threshold of study quality above which effect sizes are not correlated with further quality, and only meeting these minimum quality standards is needed to identify effective practices. If so, researchers might reconsider spending large amounts of money to conduct research that is far above the threshold of needed quality. In addition, many current syntheses and meta-analyses exclude studies not considered high quality according to current standards. Given our finding that study quality is not systematically related to the effect sizes of supplemental interventions, researchers might reconsider including both low and high quality to represent the full range of research related to a topic.” (p. 2)

Austin, C.R., Wanzek, J., Scammacca, N.K., Vaughn, S., Gesel, S.A., Donegan, R.E., & Engelmann, M.L. (2018). The relationship between study quality and the effects of supplemental reading interventions: A meta-analysis. Exceptional Children, 1–20.

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“Males are more likely to be identified as having difficulties with reading, with the ratio of males to females with reading difficulties ranging from a low of 1.2:1 to a high of 6.78:1 (e.g., Finucci & Childs, 1981; Miles, Haslum, & Wheeler, 1998; Quinn & Wagner, 2015; Rutter, Caspi, Fergusson, Horwood, Goodman, Maughan, Moffitt, Meltzer, & Carroll, 2004).” (p.1040)

“Girls are more motivated to read and have a better attitude towards reading (Logan & Johnston, 2009; McGeown, Goodwin, Henderson, & Wright, 2012). As a result, teachers may inadvertently show more interest and support for girls’ reading over boys, negatively affecting boys’ reading performance (Retelsdorf, Shchwartz, & Asbrock, 2015). … Males are more likely to be identified as having a reading difficulty, and males are more likely to have this difficulty because of genetic, prenatal, and environmental influences. Although it was not possible to directly assess the effects of these influences, this study provides a strong rationale for the inclusion of gender as a predictor variable in identification methods.” (p.1056-7)

“IQ-D definitions are also subject to measurement unreliability (Cotton et al., 2005). Psychometricians have criticized using difference score techniques as the effects of measurement unreliability are doubled when two sources of variance are considered (Cattell, 1982). Instead of considering one source of measurement unreliability, unreliability using a discrepancy definition is sourced through both the IQ measure and the reading measure (Lord, 1958). Further, as the correlation between the IQ test and the reading test increases, the reliability of the difference score decreases (Caruso & Witkiewitz, 2002).” (p. 1042)

“ … teacher recommendations for evaluation may be affected by the typically more challenging behaviors exhibited by males rather than solely by their reading difficulty. Males are more likely to externalize their frustrations, potentially calling more attention to their difficulties and increasing the likelihood that teachers would recognize them. Additionally, reading difficulties often co-occur with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Willcutt & Pennington, 2000; Willcutt, Pennington, & DeFries, 2000), leading to more male referrals and increasing the clinical ratio of males to females, which may reflect a difference in behavior instead of a difference in reading.” (1042-3)

Quinn, J.M. (2018). Differential identification of females and males with reading difficulties: A meta-analysis. Reading and Writing, 31(5), 1039–1061.

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“In conclusion, it is widely accepted that parents’ SES and genetics are tied to children’s reading performances (Aram et al., 2013; Ladd et al., 2011; Olson et al., 2014). However, a convincing body of research has accumulated showing that literacy experiences within the home also impact children’s reading development (e.g., Arya et al., 2014; Ladd et al., 2011; Kim, Im, & Kwon, 2015; Se´ne´chal & LeFevre, 2002). Moreover, the findings outlined above suggest that the frequency, intensity, and quality of those experiences may vary as a function of parents’ reading-related knowledge. This raises the possibility that augmenting parents’ reading-related knowledge may create new inroads for improving children’s reading outcomes.” (p. 1245)

Segal, A., & Martin-Chang, S. (2018). The apple doesn’t fall from the tree: Parents’ reading-related knowledge and children’s reading outcomes. Reading and Writing, 31(5), 1231–1247.

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“School texts, at least those in grades one and three (Gamson, Lu, & Eckert, 2013), appear to have increased in complexity since the 1960s. Therefore, first- through third-grade texts in Bormuth’s sample may not represent current primary-level texts. However, since text complexity beyond the primary grades appears to have remained fairly stable over past decades (Gamson et al.), higher-level texts in the Bormuth criterion may be relatively representative of current texts. … When readability researchers began to use traditional cloze rather than multiple-choice questions as the criterion measure, correlations between predictors and criterion increased (Miller, 1975), usually into the .80–.89 range (Klare, 1974). For these two reasons, in this study we expected each text tool to predict Bormuth’s criterion variable with a correlation of at least .80. This anticipated level was not attained by either the Lexile Framework (r = .70; r2 = .49) or the Flesch–Kincaid (r = - .76; r 2 = .57). These results suggest that the two widely used tools, especially Lexile, may lack adequate validity for their current high-stakes uses in schools.” (p. 828-829)

Cunningham, J.W., Hiebert, E.H., & Mesmer, H.A. (2018). Investigating the validity of two widely used quantitative text tools. Reading and Writing, 31(4), 813-833.

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“As the skilful teaching of writing is difficult and challenging, teachers should be supported. Therefore, writing research should provide teachers and schools with evidence-based guidelines (Graham et al., 2016). Based on the present findings, several educational implications can be formulated. First, it appears important for teachers to review and assess their own writing practices in terms of the quality of their instruction and not solely in terms of the quantity of writing instruction. In this respect, teachers should be aware of the fact that students do not learn to write automatically; they need explicit instruction and guidance. The present study more specifically showed the effectiveness of explicitly teaching students writing knowledge (by means of compare-and-contrast tasks) and strategies (by means of explicit strategy instruction). Further, it appears essential to create supportive writing environments in which students can apply what they have learned. Such an environment in which students practice individually or collaboratively enables them to actively engage in their writing process.” (p. 349)

De Smedt, F., & Van Keer, H. (2018). Fostering writing in upper primary grades: A study into the distinct and combined impact of explicit instruction and peer assistance. Reading and Writing, 31(2), 325–354.

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“Findings reinforce (a) vocabulary knowledge plays a primary role in explaining individual differences in adolescent reading comprehension, (b) the need to differentiate intervention to address underlying difficulties of struggling readers, and (c) the relations of reading component skills (e.g., word reading and silent reading efficiency) to reading comprehension may be different based on reader proficiency.” (p. 355-356)

“Indeed, our findings suggest several possibilities from an instructional perspective. Vocabulary instruction appears to be a valuable target area of instruction for both struggling and adequate adolescent readers as it was a statistically and practically significant predictor for both groups. Understanding the meaning of words is crucial as text complexity increases for older students, especially in content areas where greater depth and breadth are required to facilitate understanding. Because adequate readers are more fluent and are likely to read more (thereby encountering more words while reading), they may still benefit from instruction that teaches them how to learn vocabulary while reading. Struggling readers, on the other hand, may benefit more from direct instruction in vocabulary as both their fluency and comprehension are likely to be impeded by low vocabulary skills. While results indicate vocabulary to be a valuable target for instruction, further research is needed to examine whether the type of instruction (e.g., explicit instruction) reaps the same rewards based on reader proficiency. Word reading, on the other hand, was a statistically significantly predictor of reading comprehension for struggling readers but had no impact on reading comprehension for adequate comprehenders. This suggests that struggling adolescents should still receive and would likely benefit from targeted word reading instruction as it had a strong effect on each of the higher-order reading skills in our model. This reflects the key role of word reading on higher-order reading skills as struggles at the word level can inhibit adequate performance on downstream reading-related skills. Consistent with the Lexical Quality hypothesis (Perfetti, 2007), word-level instruction for struggling comprehenders should include multiple facets such as spelling, word reading accuracy and fluency, and word meaning to foster word-level proficiency.” (p. 375)

Oslund, E.L., Clemens, N.H., Simmons, D.C., & Simmons, L.E. (2018). The direct and indirect effects of word reading and vocabulary on adolescents’ reading comprehension: Comparing struggling and adequate comprehenders. Reading and Writing, 31(2), 355–379.

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“Structural equation model results showed that prosodic sensitivity was not directly related to word reading. Instead, its relation was completely mediated by phonological awareness and morphological awareness. Furthermore, once word reading, listening comprehension, and working memory were accounted for, prosodic sensitivity was not related to reading comprehension. Therefore, it appears that prosodic sensitivity makes a contribution to word reading primarily via phonological awareness and morphological awareness, and its influence on reading comprehension is via word reading and listening comprehension.” (p.630)

Kim, Y. S. G., & Petscher, Y. (2016). Prosodic sensitivity and reading: An investigation of pathways of relations using a latent variable approach. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108(5), 630-645.

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“Employers have sounded the alarm over the low literacy and numeracy abilities of job seekers as skills shortages start to bite across the economy.

The Australian Industry Group survey of 298 companies with a total of 111,209 employees across manufacturing, construction, mining and service industries found 99 per cent reported that low levels of literacy and numeracy were affecting the business.

The service industry includes medium sized companies in the retail, wholesale, transport, professions, real estate, IT, media, health, education, cafe and hotel sectors.

"Widespread issues with workplace literacy and numeracy are leading to critical errors on workplace documents and general communication problems which negatively impact on productivity and teamwork," Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said.

"This is disturbing at a time when the workforce increasingly needs higher levels of literacy and numeracy skills, as well as more advanced digital skills for our changing workplaces.”

Mr Fox said some workers had difficulty filling out safety forms and transitioning to office roles because of literacy problems.”

Patty, A. (2018). 99pc of employers report low literacy and numeracy skills, study finds. Sydney Morning Herald, 12/9/2018. Retrieved from https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/99pc-of-employers-report-low-literacy-and-numeracy-skills-study-finds-20180910-p502xp.html

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“Reading Mastery provides a series of activities to teach sounding-out. These tasks consolidate the skills of reading sounds, saying words slowly, and saying words fast. Teachers model the blending skills. Then students repeat the process. Letters are blended together without stopping between the sounds, a technique referred to as the “Engelmann Blending Strategy” (Hastings, Tangel, Bader, & Billups, 1995). The blending strategy is initiated once students have learned the first two sounds presented in the program.” (p.10)

Schieffer, C., Marchand-Martella, N., Martella, R., & Simonsen, F. (2003). The research base for Reading Mastery. Direct Instruction Reading. Retrieved from http://sraonline.com

Hastings, E., Tangel, D., Bader, B., & Billups, L. (1995). Early reading interventions. Washington, DC: American Federation of Teachers.

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“Implications on three levels will be discussed here. Concerning school leadership, two implications follow from our study. First, school leaders have the responsibility to create an organisational culture and structure within their schools in which research knowledge can connect to teacher knowledge, because AKU [academic knowledge utilization] is largely a matter of how organisations operate, which deeply affects the way how individual teachers work (e.g. Brown & Zhang, 2016; Levin, 2011, 2013). This includes providing time, opportunities and support for teachers’ AKU, and acknowledging and rewarding these efforts as part of their professional development (e.g. Pareja Roblin et al., 2014).

Second, one way of promoting AKU is for school leaders to search for opportunities for structural collaboration with research institutes in ways that fits the specific situation of their schools. A study by Schenke et al. (2016) identifies four types of crossprofessional collaboration between teachers, school leaders and researchers: (a) school-directed collaboration; (b) school- and researcher- directed collaboration; (c) school- and adviser-directed collaboration; and (d) researcher-directed collaboration. The identification of these four different types of cross-professional collaboration can support schools in choosing a type of collaboration that fits their specific situation.

As concerns teacher education, an implication of our study is the need for more engagement with research activities and the further introduction of research skill training in pre-service teacher education. New teachers should become familiar with systematically researching and evaluating their own teaching practice and linking this to what they learn about (pedagogical) content knowledge. In this context, Winch et al. (2015), conclude that partnerships could provide opportunities for increasing teachers’ AKU, both in initial and continuing teacher education. Therefore, initial teacher education should aim for models that develop professional teachers who are scholars of educational research. Furthermore, continuing education for teachers may include masters’ level programmes that endow teachers with the capacity to carry out practice-based research in partnerships (Winch et al., 2015).

Lastly, concerning government policy, our study calls for more research funds and support for the further establishment of research partnerships between schools and universities, innovative communication networks, and more time for teachers to engage with research activities in addition to their daily work. Although this could be viewed as an implication at a school-organisational level, government policymakers could be of major importance through assigning more of teachers’ time to searching, finding, translating and discussing research findings.” (p. 58-59

Schaik, P. van, Volman, M., Admiraal, W., & Schenke, W. (2018). Barriers and conditions for teachers’ utilisation of academic knowledge. International Journal of Educational Research, 90(1), 50-63.

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“Epidemiological studies have shown that among school-age children and youth not all reading disabilities are the same. Some reading disabilities are related to early emerging problems in oral language (Stoeckel et al., 2013). Some reading disabilities emerge at time of transition to school and formal reading instruction (Katusic, Colligan, Barbaresi, Schaid, & Jacobsen, 2001). Other specific learning disabilities involving written language acquisition (SLDs-WL) do not even involve reading (Katusic, Colligan, Weaver, & Barbaresi, 2009). … these specific learning disabilities have been referred to as oral and written language learning disabilities (OWL LD) or specific language impairment (SLI) in the research literature. (p.3) … For an organ as complex as the human brain with multiple levels ranging from molecular to emergent functional systems along bottom-up, top-down, and right-left axes, and as plastic as the brain may be across development and in response to learning environments, the results of the current study are heartening. Even in students with persisting reading disabilities, gray matter clustering coefficients related to the CO network involved in cognitive control of the reading brain changed at multiple levels of language during reading and new white matter-gray matter relationships emerged in response to reading instruction. Both behavioral and brain data can contribute to understanding of the complex functional reading system and inform practices to help optimize reading achievement in students with diagnosed specific reading disabilities.” (p.16)

Richards, T.L., Berninger, V.W., Yagle, K., Abbott, R.D., & Peterson, D. (2018), Brain’s functional network clustering coefficient changes in response to instruction (RTI) in students with and without reading disabilities: Multi-leveled reading brain’s RTI. Cogent Psychology, 5, 1-19. Retrieved from https://www.cogentoa.com/article/10.1080/23311908.2018.1424680.pdf

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“In our study, poor readers were three times more likely than typical readers to consider or attempt suicide and six times more likely to drop out of school. Educators and parents should be aware of the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors among adolescents with reading problems.”

Daniel, S.S., Walsh, A.K., Goldston, D.B., Arnold, E.M., Reboussin, B.A., & Wood, F.B. (2006). Suicidality, school dropout, and reading problems among adolescents. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 39(6), 507-514.

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“The multicomponent nature of writing demands that teachers have a comprehensive toolkit of instructional strategies to meet the individual needs of children who experience difficulty with writing. Findings of this review indicate that such tools do exist and that a number of intervention options are supported by high-quality research and strong evidence of effects. These findings are encouraging given the importance of early intervention in preventing long term negative consequences of writing difficulties. In addition to a toolkit of research-based early writing interventions, it is essential to identify students with writing difficulties accurately, diagnose problems, and monitor progress to provide timely and appropriate interventions. … Practitioners may be especially interested in the finding that explicit transcription instruction (handwriting and spelling) leads to improved writing composition. Indeed, such foundational skills–based instruction might be needed for students who struggle with writing, to free up cognitive attention needed to engage in the more complex writing tasks that are currently required in school. These skills are often underemphasized in state standards and popular curricula (e.g., those that use a writer’s workshop approach) yet are essential for many students’ attainment of writing proficiency. Instruction that incorporates SRSD also shows great promise to benefit many young children. SRSD may be particularly appealing, given that it incorporates explicit instruction focused on critical writing strategies that are of focus in the early grades (e.g., planning, organizing, adding details), provides a structure for supporting students’ independent use of these strategies, and can be applied to multiple genres (e.g., stories and essays).” (p.377)

McMaster, K.L., Kunkel, A., Shin, J., Pyung-Gang Jung, P-G., & Lembke, E. (2018). Early writing intervention: A best evidence synthesis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 51(4), 363–380.

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“Extensive research demonstrates that well-implemented, supplemental, evidence-based reading interventions support achievement for the majority of struggling readers (Mathes et al., 2005; Vaughn et al., 2009). However, up to 10% of the general population of students (O’Connor & Fuchs, 2013) and up to 50% of students with disabilities do not respond adequately to these same reading interventions and, as such, require more intensive intervention (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2015; McMaster, Fuchs, Fuchs, & Compton, 2005). Intervention can be intensified by increasing the frequency, length, and duration of sessions; increasing the expertise of the instructor; decreasing the group size; or varying the type or delivery of treatment (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2015; Fuchs, Fuchs, & Malone, 2017). Research indicates that, for many struggling readers in the primary grades, intensifying intervention in these ways has a positive effect on academic outcomes (Vaughn, Denton, & Fletcher, 2010; Vaughn & Wanzek, 2014). However, a number of young students demonstrate persistent inadequate response to intervention despite this intensification (McMaster et al., 2005; Vaughn et al., 2010), and there is limited evidence that increasing dosage or reducing group size improves the reading performance for students in Grades 4 to 12 (Vaughn et al., 2010; Vaughn & Wanzek, 2014; Wanzek et al., 2013). For these groups of students, the recommended best practice is intervention intensification using student data—a process referred to as data-based decision making (DBDM; Deno & Mirkin, 1977; National Center on Intensive Intervention [NCII], 2013; Vaughn et al., 2010).” (p. 1)

Filderman, M.J., Toste, J.R., Didion, L.A., Peng, P. & Clemens, N.H. (2018). Data-based decision making in reading interventions: A synthesis and meta-analysis of the effects for struggling readers. The Journal of Special Education, 1–14.

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“ … educational research generally suggests that effect sizes as small as .20 in randomized controlled trials have practical implications (Hedges & Hedberg, 2007) and may represent substantial gains for typically “hard to reach” students.” (p.11)

Filderman, M.J., Toste, J.R., Didion, L.A., Peng Peng, P. & Clemens, N.H. (2018). Data-based decision making in reading interventions: A synthesis and meta-analysis of the effects for struggling readers. The Journal of Special Education, 1–14.

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“This paper reviews the research literature on the relationship between parental involvement and students' academic achievement with 75 studies published between 2003 and 2017. … Interestingly, these results challenge the common underlying assumption that parental involvement is directly related to students’ academic achievement. The findings indicate that parental involvement could contribute to academic achievement indirectly through the influence of other proximal student outcomes, such as motivation, attitudes, and learning strategies. That is consistent with the assumptions of the parental involvement process model (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995, 1997, 2005, 2010). In this model, students are seen as the authors of their academic success. And their parents involvement does not contribute directly to their academic achievement in school, however, they do contribute to the development of their learning attributes (academic self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation to learn, self-regulatory strategies and social self-efficacy for relating to teachers), which are, in turn, used by students in support of their academic success…. According to this review, the benefits of involvement clearly depend on the developmental level of the children that were assessed. For example, involvement in the form of reading with children or being involved in learning activities at home such as singing or playing games together is consistently positively associated with the academic achievement of young children. These involvement behaviors are no longer beneficial when the child grows older. Instead, older children seem to benefit from high parental expectations in combination with academic encouragement and support from their parents, such as praising their children's performance and efforts. And children who experience greater levels of communication with their parents about school related topics are academically more successful in comparison with those who talk less with their parents. … The findings of this review suggest that rather than assuming that any form of involvement is a good thing, educators, parents, and researchers should be aware that some forms of involvement that parents employ just do not work or might actually lead to declines in achievement.” (p. 10, 26-27)

Boonka, L., Gijselaers, H.J.M., Ritzen, H., & Brand-Gruwela, S. (2018). A review of the relationship between parental involvement indicators and academic achievement. Educational Research Review 24, 10–30.

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“We confirmed that individual differences in reading ability were mostly due to genetic differences, while print exposure was equally genetic and environmental in origin. Importantly, we found evidence that children’s reading level fuels how much they choose to read – it follows, as practitioners know, that children tend to avoid reading if they find it difficult. Interventions should focus not only on promoting reading skills but also motivation to read.” (p.8)

van Bergen, E., Snowling, M.J., de Zeeuw, E.L., van Beijsterveldt, C.E.M., Dolan, C.V., & Boomsma, D.I. (2018). Why do children read more? The influence of reading ability on voluntary reading practices. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 59(11), 1205–1214.

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“The current paper explored two research questions. The first question was ‘What is the effect of teacher professional development on reading measures among elementary school students?’ The meta-analysis showed the reported effect size was of 0.225, which was significant at p < 0.5. The sub-questions referred to candidate moderators and we were able to explore ‘Does the length of the PD moderate this effect?’ The answer through the meta-analysis showed that shorter PD produced a larger effect size of 0.367, p < .001. The findings also showed that quality of the PD was more of an influence than the PD length in itself. Weight of evidence showed that high-quality PD, which was generally shorter in duration, produced a larger effect size of 0.347, p < 0.001, while PD studies with generally longer hours in which they were of medium quality reported no significant effects (g = 0.077, p > 0.5). For future directions, research needs to take a more rigorous approach with regard to the quality of studies that are to be conducted in terms of design quality, length, and the type and content of PD delivery undertaken. This review has shown that while most studies have used the traditional approach of workshop and summer institutes, PD studies that have produced better results took a non-traditional path, using coaching.” (p.470)

Basma, B., & Savage, R. (2018). Teacher professional development and student literacy growth: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 30, 457–481.

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“In order to make sense of the chaotic variety of interventions that claim to help poor readers, it may again be helpful to use the proximal and distal schema outlined above to subdivide interventions into two types: “proximal interventions” that focus training on proximal causes of a reading behaviour that are proposed to be part of the cognitive system for reading (e.g., phonics training, vocabulary training) and “distal interventions” that focus on distal causes of a reading behaviour (e.g., coloured lenses, inner-ear medication). The idea of making a distinction between proximal and distal interventions is supported by the outcomes of a systematic review of all studies that have used an RCT to assess an intervention in poor readers.47 These studies assessed the effect of coloured lenses or overlays, medication, motor training, phonemic awareness, phonics, reading comprehension, reading fluency, sound processing, and sunflower therapy on poor readers. One key finding of this review is that it only identified 22 RCTs, which is a small number of gold-standard intervention studies given the huge number of interventions that claim to help poor readers. A second key finding is that the majority of RCTs of interventions for poor readers have assessed the efficacy of phonics training, which trains the ability to use letter-sound mappings to learn to read new or novel words. A third key finding is that only one type of intervention produced a statistically reliable effect. This was phonics training, which focuses on improving a proximal cause of poor word reading (i.e., letter-sound mappings). In contrast, interventions that focused on distal causes of poor reading did not show a statistically reliable effect in poor readers. The outcomes of this systematic review suggest that interventions that focus on phonics—a proximal cause of reading behaviour—are more likely to be effective than interventions that focus on a distal cause. In other words, the “closer” the intervention is to an impaired reading behaviour, the more likely it is to be effective.” (p. 3)

McArthur, G., & Castles, A. (2017). Helping children with reading difficulties: Some things we have learned so far. npj Science of Learning, 2(7), 1-4.

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“The “half-life of knowledge” is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete. Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months according to the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD). To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”

Gonzalez, C., (2004). The role of blended learning in the world of technology. Retrieved from http://www.unt.edu/benchmarks/archives/2004/september04/eis.htm

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“While the null effects are disappointing, they are not entirely surprising when we examine the level of intensity of the interventions that schools delivered to students with protracted reading difficulties in the middle grades. For example, many of the interventions determined to be effective in reviews of adolescent literacy interventions involved support for teachers to implement the intervention, whereas the current study evaluated districts’ existing intervention practices and did not provide teachers with coaching or professional development. Additionally, the interventions in the Striving Readers evaluation (Boulay et al., 2015) that were shown to be effective for improving reading achievement were typically delivered for 90 minutes per day, five days per week, whereas reading interventions schools selected and implemented in the current study were administered for 47 minutes per day, 4.3 days per week.” (p. 46)

“A final implication for practice of this study involves the level of intensity that is necessary for solving such intractable issues as improving adolescent reading achievement. Although the evidence base is converging on the level of intensity that should be brought to bear to improve reading outcomes for older readers, and the schools and districts involved in the current study indicated they were acutely aware of the level of intensity necessary for reading interventions to be efficacious in the middle grades, they chose to implement intervention plans that fell quite short of the these evidencebased recommendations (Boulay et al., 2015; Herrera et al., 2016). As evidenced by the few studies of adolescent reading interventions that have improved reading achievement for students in middle school, the intensity required to turn the dial on student outcome is substantial. In addition, districts seeking to improve adolescent literacy outcomes should consider matching interventions to student need, using interventions that employ explicit instruction, and providing ongoing support for teachers to implement interventions.” (p.48)

Fien, H., Anderson, D., Nelson, N.J., Kennedy, P., Scott K. Baker, S.K., & Stoolmiller, M. (2018). Examining the impact and school-level predictors of impact variability of an 8th grade reading intervention on at-risk students’ reading achievement. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 33(1), 37–50.

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“To disentangle genetic and environmental effects on children’s academic achievement requires data from genetically sensitive designs. A meta-analysis of genetically sensitive studies estimated the heritability of reading to be .73 and spelling .64, whereas shared environmental influences accounted for only 10% of the variance in reading (de Zeeuw, de Geus, & Boomsma, 2015). Similarly, a review by Olson, Keenan, Byrne, and Samuelsson (2014) concluded that although environmental influences are in general statistically significant for reading disability, the average influence of genes is about twice as strong as the shared environmental influence.” (p.499-500)

“We assessed five components of the home literacy environment: number of children’s books, frequency of shared reading, maternal familiarity with children’s books, maternal familiarity with adult fiction, and direct literacy instruction. We expected direct literacy instruction to predict reading/spelling skills (Martini & Sénéchal, 2012) and the other informal measures, which we labelled storybook exposure, to have broader associations with measures of both children’s language and reading/spelling skills (e.g., Bus, van Ijzendoorn, & Pellegrini, 1995)” (p.500) … we found that direct instruction in the home predicted child reading/spelling skills, whereas storybook exposure influenced child language, in line with the model of Senechal and Lefevre (2002).” (p. 510)

“This is the first study to quantify the amount of variance in the home literacy environment explained by maternal language skills. We showed, similar to other studies, that children’s language and reading/spelling skills are related to storybook exposure, but we propose that this could be interpreted as a proxy for genetic effects or ge (gene-environment) correlations. Direct literacy instruction, however, is not influenced by parents’ skills and might represent a true environmental effect on children’s reading and spelling.” (p.511)

Puglisi, M.L., Hulme, C., Hamilton, L.G., & Snowling, M.J. (2017) The home literacy environment is a correlate, but perhaps not a cause, of variations in children’s language and literacy development. Scientific Studies of Reading, 21(6), 498-514.

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“In this study we measured the impact of a professional development model that included directive coaching on the instructional practices of Western Australian primary school teachers taking up explicit instruction. We developed and validated protocols that enabled us to measure teachers’ fidelity to the salient elements of explicit instruction and interviewed participants about the impact of the coaching program on student learning, their feelings of self efficacy and attitudes to being coached. Numerical scores to indicate teachers’ demonstration of explicit instruction lesson design and delivery components changed positively over the five observed lessons and directive coaching had a positive impact on teachers’ competence and confidence. The elements of the coaching process that the teachers found valuable were the coach’s positive tone, the detailed written feedback, and the specificity, directness and limited number of the suggestions. Implications for schools with reform-based agendas wanting to change teachers’ instructional practices through instructional coaching are discussed.” (p. 110)

Hammond, L., & Moore, W.M. (2018). Teachers taking up explicit instruction: The impact of a professional development and directive instructional coaching model. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 43(7), 110-133. Retrieved from http://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3969&context=ajte

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“The results of the random-effects models showed (a) a small overall effect size d = 0.16; (b) slightly greater effect sizes with regard to intelligence d = 0.35 and memory-related outcomes d = 0.34; and (c) an inverse relation between the size of the effects and the methodological quality of the study design. These results suggest that music training does not reliably enhance children and young adolescents' cognitive or academic skills, and that previous positive findings were probably due to confounding variables.” (p. 55)

Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2017). When the music's over. Does music skill transfer to children's and young adolescents' cognitive and academic skills? A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 20, 55-67.

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“One approach to determining whether a causal relationship exists between phonics instruction and broader literacy performance was described in a report by the U.K. Centre for Economic Performance (Machin, McNally, & Viarengo, 2016). Specifically, because the phonics policy in England was piloted and then implemented across different school districts at different times, it is possible to assess the impact of this change on children’s performance on national tests of reading comprehension administered at ages 5, 7, and 11 relative to children in “untreated” districts. Using this approach, Machin et al. (2016) documented strong impacts of the policy change on reading comprehension up to the age of 7. There was also a longer-term benefit at age 11, years after the original intervention occurred, for those children who had a high probability of starting school as struggling readers because they were nonnative speakers of English or were economically disadvantaged. These results are consistent with the view that explicit teaching of phonics assists all children to access text material relatively early in reading instruction and that this explicit instruction is particularly vital for some children (e.g., Snow & Juel, 2005).” (p.13)

Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19, 5–51.

Machin, S., McNally, S., & Viarengo, M. (2016). Teaching to teach literacy (Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper No. 1425). Retrieved from http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1425.pdf

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“Historically, university-based educational research has been of little use to school teachers (Kennedy 1997; Randi 2007; Vanderlinde and van Braak 2010). Key reasons why teachers do not engage with research include a lack of time, a lack of access, and the research being hard to understand (Borg 2009). Many teachers perceive research ‘to be irrelevant, unhelpful and too theoretical’ (Hemsley- Brown and Sharp 2003, 454). With the increasing popularity of the concept of evidence-based practice, the usefulness of research has been one of the most debated topics in educational circles over the past decade. There are competing interpretations of the meaning of evidence-based practice and varying opinions about the origin of this concept. A number of factors seem to have contributed to the growing interest in evidence-based practice. Examples include, but are not limited to, strong scepticism in actions of professionals providing public services (Davies, Nutley, and Smith 2000), the rise of an accountability culture, and ‘the political attention given to several reports in the late nineties denouncing the quality of educational research’ (Simons 2003, 304–305). Wiseman (2010) argued that heavy emphasis on evidence for curriculum, pedagogy, and policies has stemmed from ‘two common beliefs: One is the belief that school knowledge is abstract and universal, and the other is the belief that empirical evidence is an efficient indicator of knowledge and learning’ Ultimately, these beliefs have resulted in a perpetual search for ‘what works’ in education. … Understanding practitioner responses to research may be an important way of shedding light on the crisis of representation that the textual nature of research dissemination poses. Such responses may also provide new lenses to look at the dominant tendency in KM that ‘assumes a one-way flow of information from research to practice, and views research users as relatively passive consumers of evidence’ (Nutley, Walter, and Davies 2009, 554).” (p. 314-315, 318)

Anwaruddin, S.M. (2016). Language teachers’ responses to educational research: Addressing the ‘crisis’ of representation. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 39(3), 314-328.

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“Eric Hanushek has estimated that if the United States were able to remove somewhere between 5% and 12% of its worst teachers and replace them just with average teachers, the net effect after one educational cohort (thirteen years) would be to catapult the U.S. from its current position as one of the lowest-performing developed countries in the world toward the top of the international rankings. … we now live in the era of standards-based school reform, wherein many schools collect and analyze mountains of data (albeit to arguable degrees of certainty) to discern how much student learning gains individual teachers contribute to over time—so called “value-added” data.31 These data have allowed educational experts to distinguish high-performing teachers from low-performing ones; it turns out that teachers who produce strong learning gains (for example, greater than one year’s worth each year) in prior years typically continue to do so in future years, and that the same is true of teachers who struggle to improve their students’ learning.” (p.421, 426)

Hutt, E., & Tang, A. (2013). The new education malpractice litigation. Virginia Law Review, 99(3), 420-464.

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“The need for scientifically-based research has been punctuated by the results of the most recent Nation’s Report Card (Institute of Education Sciences [IES], 2015) showing that 64% of fourth-graders and 66% of eighth-grade students are still performing below proficient levels on reading comprehension on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Of those reading below proficient levels, 31% and 24% of fourth- and eighth-grade students, respectively, perform below even a Basic level of reading comprehension. Furthermore, the results of the new computer-based assessment of students’ writing skills in the Nation’s Report Card Writing 2011 show that only 24% of students in grades 8 and 12 write at the proficient level. However, 54% of grade 8 students and 52% of grade 12 students write only at a basic level, leaving only 3% of grades 8 and 12 students writing at the advanced level (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). The results from the Nation’s Report Cards (IES, 2015) for reading and writing and mandates of NCLB and IDEA stress the need for sound evidence based pedagogical practices for literacy instruction.” (p.3)

Schlesinger, N.W. (2016). The impact of multisensory instruction on learning letter names and sounds, word reading and spelling. A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy. Arizona State University August 2016. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d432/67b7649de43c68cce460b65cfbebc66d2b36.pdf

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“Simply immersing students in interesting stories or providing the occasional and unsystematic clue from time to time does not constitute effective teaching.” (Hempenstall, 2001).

Hempenstall, K. (2001). Some issues in phonics instruction: Implicit and explicit phonics instruction.

Education News. Retrieved from https://archive.li/jof42

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“As the skilful teaching of writing is difficult and challenging, teachers should be supported. Therefore, writing research should provide teachers and schools with evidence-based guidelines (Graham et al., 2016). Based on the present findings, several educational implications can be formulated. First, it appears important for teachers to review and assess their own writing practices in terms of the quality of their instruction and not solely in terms of the quantity of writing instruction. In this respect, teachers should be aware of the fact that students do not learn to write automatically; they need explicit instruction and guidance. The present study more specifically showed the effectiveness of explicitly teaching students writing knowledge (by means of compare-and-contrast tasks) and strategies (by means of explicit strategy instruction). Further, it appears essential to create supportive writing environments in which students can apply what they have learned. Such an environment in which students practice individually or collaboratively enables them to actively engage in their writing process.” (p. 349)

De Smedt, F., & Van Keer, H. (2018). Fostering writing in upper primary grades: A study into the distinct and combined impact of explicit instruction and peer assistance. Reading and Writing, 31(2), 325–354.

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“Findings reinforce (a) vocabulary knowledge plays a primary role in explaining individual differences in adolescent reading comprehension, (b) the need to differentiate intervention to address underlying difficulties of struggling readers, and (c) the relations of reading component skills (e.g., word reading and silent reading efficiency) to reading comprehension may be different based on reader proficiency.” (p. 355-356)

“Indeed, our findings suggest several possibilities from an instructional perspective. Vocabulary instruction appears to be a valuable target area of instruction for both struggling and adequate adolescent readers as it was a statistically and practically significant predictor for both groups. Understanding the meaning of words is crucial as text complexity increases for older students, especially in content areas where greater depth and breadth are required to facilitate understanding. Because adequate readers are more fluent and are likely to read more (thereby encountering more words while reading), they may still benefit from instruction that teaches them how to learn vocabulary while reading. Struggling readers, on the other hand, may benefit more from direct instruction in vocabulary as both their fluency and comprehension are likely to be impeded by low vocabulary skills.While results indicate vocabulary to be a valuable target for instruction, further research is needed to examine whether the type of instruction (e.g., explicit instruction) reaps the same rewards based on reader proficiency. Word reading, on the other hand, was a statistically significantly predictor of reading comprehension for struggling readers but had no impact on reading comprehension for adequate comprehenders. This suggests that struggling adolescents should still receive and would likely benefit from targeted word reading instruction as it had a strong effect on each of the higher-order reading skills in our model. This reflects the key role of word reading on higher-order reading skills as struggles at the word level can inhibit adequate performance on downstream reading-related skills. Consistent with the Lexical Quality hypothesis (Perfetti, 2007), word-level instruction for struggling comprehenders should include multiple facets such as spelling, word reading accuracy and fluency, and word meaning to foster word-level proficiency.” (p. 375)

Oslund, E.L., Clemens, N.H., Simmons, D.C., & Simmons, L.E. (2018). The direct and indirect effects of word reading and vocabulary on adolescents’ reading comprehension: Comparing struggling and adequate comprehenders. Reading and Writing, 31(2), 355–379.

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“School texts, at least those in grades one and three (Gamson, Lu, & Eckert, 2013), appear to have increased in complexity since the 1960s. Therefore, first- through third-grade texts in Bormuth’s sample may not represent current primary-level texts. However, since text complexity beyond the primary grades appears to have remained fairly stable over past decades (Gamson et al.), higher-level texts in the Bormuth criterion may be relatively representative of current texts. … When readability researchers began to use traditional cloze rather than multiple-choice questions as the criterion measure, correlations between predictors and criterion increased (Miller, 1975), usually into the .80–.89 range (Klare, 1974). For these two reasons, in this study we expected each text tool to predict Bormuth’s criterion variable with a correlation of at least .80. This anticipated level was not attained by either the Lexile Framework (r = .70; r2 = .49) or the Flesch–Kincaid (r = - .76; r 2 = .57). These results suggest that the two widely used tools, especially Lexile, may lack adequate validity for their current high-stakes uses in schools.” (p. 828-829)

Cunningham, J.W., Hiebert, E.H., & Mesmer, H.A. (2018). Investigating the validity of two widely used quantitative text tools. Reading and Writing, 31(4), 813-833.

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“As the skilful teaching of writing is difficult and challenging, teachers should be supported. Therefore, writing research should provide teachers and schools with evidence-based guidelines (Graham et al., 2016). Based on the present findings, several educational implications can be formulated. First, it appears important for teachers to review and assess their own writing practices in terms of the quality of their instruction and not solely in terms of the quantity of writing instruction. In this respect, teachers should be aware of the fact that students do not learn to write automatically; they need explicit instruction and guidance. The present study more specifically showed the effectiveness of explicitly teaching students writing knowledge (by means of compare-and-contrast tasks) and strategies (by means of explicit strategy instruction). Further, it appears essential to create supportive writing environments in which students can apply what they have learned. Such an environment in which students practice individually or collaboratively enables them to actively engage in their writing process.” (p. 349)

De Smedt, F., & Van Keer, H. (2018). Fostering writing in upper primary grades: a study into the distinct and combined impact of explicit instruction and peer assistance. Reading and Writing, 31(2), 325–354.

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“Males are more likely to be identified as having difficulties with reading, with the ratio of males to females with reading difficulties ranging from a low of 1.2:1 to a high of 6.78:1 (e.g., Finucci & Childs, 1981; Miles, Haslum, & Wheeler, 1998; Quinn & Wagner, 2015; Rutter, Caspi, Fergusson, Horwood, Goodman, Maughan, Moffitt, Meltzer, & Carroll, 2004).” (p.1040)

“Girls are more motivated to read and have a better attitude towards reading (Logan & Johnston, 2009; McGeown, Goodwin, Henderson, & Wright, 2012). As a result, teachers may inadvertently show more interest and support for girls’ reading over boys, negatively affecting boys’ reading performance (Retelsdorf, Shchwartz, & Asbrock, 2015). … Males are more likely to be identified as having a reading difficulty, and males are more likely to have this difficulty because of genetic, prenatal, and environmental influences. Although it was not possible to directly assess the effects of these influences, this study provides a strong rationale for the inclusion of gender as a predictor variable in identification methods.” (p.1056-7)

“IQ-D definitions are also subject to measurement unreliability (Cotton et al., 2005). Psychometricians have criticized using difference score techniques as the effects of measurement unreliability are doubled when two sources of variance are considered (Cattell, 1982). Instead of considering one source of measurement unreliability, unreliability using a discrepancy definition is sourced through both the IQ measure and the reading measure (Lord, 1958). Further, as the correlation between the IQ test and the reading test increases, the reliability of the difference score decreases (Caruso & Witkiewitz, 2002).” (p. 1042)

“ … teacher recommendations for evaluation may be affected by the typically more challenging behaviors exhibited by males rather than solely by their reading difficulty. Males are more likely to externalize their frustrations, potentially calling more attention to their difficulties and increasing the likelihood that teachers would recognize them. Additionally, reading difficulties often co-occur with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Willcutt & Pennington, 2000; Willcutt, Pennington, & DeFries, 2000), leading to more male referrals and increasing the clinical ratio of males to females, which may reflect a difference in behavior instead of a difference in reading.” (1042-3)

Quinn, J.M. (2018). Differential identification of females and males with reading difficulties: A meta-analysis. Reading and Writing, 31(5), 1039–1061.

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“In conclusion, it is widely accepted that parents’ SES and genetics are tied to children’s reading performances (Aram et al., 2013; Ladd et al., 2011; Olson et al., 2014). However, a convincing body of research has accumulated showing that literacy experiences within the home also impact children’s reading development (e.g., Arya et al., 2014; Ladd et al., 2011; Kim, Im, & Kwon, 2015; Se´ne´chal & LeFevre, 2002). Moreover, the findings outlined above suggest that the frequency, intensity, and quality of those experiences may vary as a function of parents’ reading-related knowledge. This raises the possibility that augmenting parents’ reading-related knowledge may create new inroads for improving children’s reading outcomes.” (p. 1245)

Segal, A., & Martin-Chang, S. (2018). The apple doesn’t fall from the tree: Parents’ reading-related knowledge and children’s reading outcomes. Reading and Writing, 31(5), 1231–1247.

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“Results showed that inference instruction was effective for increasing students’ general comprehension, d _ 0.58, inferential comprehension, d _ 0.68, and literal comprehension, d _ 0.28. Although skilled and less skilled readers responded similarly on general and inference outcomes, less skilled readers benefited more on literal outcomes, d _ 0.97, than skilled readers, d _ 0.06. Findings suggest that students can increase their inference ability and that less skilled readers gain the extra benefit of increases in literal comprehension. Findings also suggest that instruction provided in small groups is beneficial for increasing readers’ inferential understanding of text.” (p. 761)

Elleman, A.M. (2017). Examining the impact of inference instruction on the literal and inferential comprehension of skilled and less skilled readers: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(6), 761-781.

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“The conservative estimate of maintenance of comprehension performance in this synthesis is large (ES = .95). This is a critically important finding, considering that researchers have long expressed concern that while students can learn and benefit from strategy instruction, students with LD typically do not continue to use these strategies after instruction ends (Gersten et al., 2001; Vaughn et al., 2000). This finding suggests that strategy use was internalized and sustained by students who received instruction in reading comprehension strategies that contain self-regulation elements. It also implies that fostering development of self-regulation may have a long-lasting impact on student performance. … Self-regulation elements found in studies in the current review included using “think aloud” when teaching students strategies so that they can “see” the cognitive process involved. It may also be important for teachers to not only teach students the steps of the strategy, but also teach why strategies can be helpful for comprehension and when to use them. Because some strategies only lend to certain types of text (e.g., story grammar lends specifically to narrative text), it may be worthwhile to help students understand that some strategies lend themselves to certain texts better than others. Additionally, students with LD may need overt practice in mastering the strategy steps themselves—either through rehearsal or through the assistance of a mnemonic device.” (p.9, 10)

Berkeley, S., & Larsen, A. (2018). Fostering self-regulation of students with learning disabilities: Insights from 30 years of reading comprehension intervention research. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 00(0), 1–12.

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“ … researchers should begin to more broadly investigate the contribution of additional socioemotional domains, including anxiety, into existing intervention programs for children at-risk for reading difficulties. It may be that the inclusion of such anxiety/stress management programs provides children with additional skills that can enhance their ability to learn and/or implement learned academic material…. the findings add to the emerging database on characteristics of inadequate responders to instruction, suggesting that anxiety may be a prominent non-cognitive characteristic of some inadequate responders.”

Grills-Taquechel, A. E., Fletcher, J. M., Vaughn, S. R., Barth, A.E., Denton, C.A., & Stuebing, K. K. (2014). Anxiety and response to reading intervention among first grade students. Child and Youth Care Forum, 43(4), 417-431.

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“A small body of research has investigated potential effects of literacy on RAN. Not surprisingly, early letter knowledge (a robust early reading predictor) influences later alphanumeric RAN (naming of numbers or letters) (Lervåg & Hulme, 2009; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994) but no such effect has been detected for nonalphanumeric RAN (naming of pictures or color swatches). A handful of longitudinal studies have followed grade school children learning different orthographies and have tested whether the relationship between reading and RAN is bidirectional. Existing studies have included 1st to 5th grade children learning Norwegian (Lervåg & Hulme, 2009), 1st to 2nd grade children learning Dutch (Verhagen et al., 2008), and 2nd to 5th grade children learning Chinese (Wei, Georgiou, & Deng, 2015). In each case, earlier RAN was related to later reading, but no influence of earlier reading on later RAN was detected. In contrast to these null findings, some evidence suggests that there may be an influence of earlier reading on later RAN for children with weak decoding skills. Compton (2003) studied 1st graders at multiple points throughout the year and reported that earlier literacy influenced later RAN numbers for “late decoders” but not for “early decoders”. Wolff (2014) recently reported that the relationship between reading speed and RAN was reciprocal from 3rd to 4th grade in Swedish children with poor decoding skills; the RAN composite used in this study included primarily, but not exclusively, alphanumeric measures. In sum, existing data have yielded mixed results with regard to whether learning to read influences later RAN. Significant effects have been detected only for young children in the very beginning of literacy acquisition or weaker readers. Across languages, RAN relates to reading fluency more strongly than accuracy (Araújo, Reis, Petersson, & Faísca, 2015; Norton & Wolf, 2012), likely in part because it is speeded. Indeed, RAN and reading fluency both correlate with non-linguistic speeded measures, such as Wechsler Processing Speed (McGrath et al., 2011). … . From a clinical standpoint, evaluating children at risk for dyslexia for poor RAN would be less meaningful if low performance was largely a consequence, rather than a cause, of weak reading development. There are several mechanisms through which learning to read might promote superior RAN. For alphanumeric RAN, an obvious candidate is increased automaticity of letter and digit knowledge. In addition, becoming a fluent reader should lead to improved left-to-right visual scanning and redeployment of visual attention. Supporting this notion is the fact that isolated naming (naming one centrally presented object at a time) and serial naming show different growth patterns over the school years, with serial naming having the steeper learning slope (Logan, Schatschneider, & Wagner, 2011; Protopapas, Altani, & Georgiou, 2013). By approximately 2nd grade, serial naming is more strongly related to reading fluency than is isolated naming (de Jong, 2011; Georgiou, Parrila, Cui, & Papadopoulos, 2013). One interpretation is thus that the process of becoming a fluent reader improves children’s ability to process multiple targets, which in turn supports better serial RAN. Finally, experimental work has demonstrated that literate adults mandatorily activate orthographic codes in picture naming (Rastle et al., 2011). As children learn to read, such a process could lead to higher activations of lexical phonology (and hence faster naming times) for items in the RAN response set.” (p. 2, 3)

Peterson, R.L., Arnett, A.B., Pennington, B.F., Byrne, B., Samuelsson, S., & Olson, R.K. (2018). Literacy acquisition influences children's rapid automatized naming. Developmental Science, 21(3), 1-9.

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“It is assumed that phonological deficits strongly depend on genetic factors, but a link between the best validated dyslexia risk genes, KIAA0319, DCDC2 and DYX1C1, and phonological awareness, which takes intermediate neural phenotypes into account has not been established yet (Galaburda et al., 2006; Giraud and Ramus, 2013). In a recent genome-wide screening, however, two variants on chromosome 4 affecting expression levels of SLC2A3 were found to be specifically associated with a late left-lateralized auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) component peaking around 300 to 600 ms (Roeske et al., 2011) that is considered a specific functional neural marker of phonological processing deficits (Korpilahti et al., 1995; Stoodley et al., 2006). The available neuroimaging literature provides converging evidence that difficulties in phonological processing are characterized by a reduced hemodynamic reactivity and functional connectivity of left superior temporal, inferior parietal and inferior frontal cortices (Boets et al., 2013; Koyama et al., 2011; Raschle et al., 2012). These functional differences are corroborated by structural findings in the same regions indicating an altered gray matter morphometry (Silani et al., 2005) and white matter fractional anisotropy (FA) (Klingberg et al., 2000). Furthermore, the left arcuate fasciculus, which forms the connection of these cortical areas, was also linked to phonological processing (Vandermosten et al., 2012a; Saygin et al., 2013; Myers et al., 2014). The picture emerging from the literature is that variation in phonological processing skills is based on brain-structural and brain-functional factors, which in turn depend on genetic factors (Peterson and Pennington, 2012).” (p. 414)

Skeide, M.A., Kirsten, H., Kraft, I., Schaadt, G., Müller, B., Neef, N., Brauer, J., Wilcke, A., Emmrich, F., Boltze, J., & Friederici, A.D. (2015). Genetic dyslexia risk variant is related to neural connectivity patterns underlying phonological awareness in children. Neuroimage, 118, 414-421.

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“Since rapid automatic naming is predictive of orthographic functioning, it is possible that interventions targeting these abilities may help increase a student's orthographic functioning. However, there does not appear to be very many published studies in which researchers have examined interventions aimed at increasing rapid naming abilities. In one study of first grade children, de Jong & Vrielink (2004) reported that a 10-session intervention in letter- sound naming totaling 2 to 2 ½ hours did not substantially improve rapid naming abilities. In contrast, Nelson, Benner, and Gonzalez (2005) found that kindergarten children receiving a pre-reading intervention significantly improved their rapid naming abilities from pre- to post-test. It should be noted, however, that the reading intervention was comprehensive and targeted multiple components to reading, including letter identification, sentence meanings, phonological awareness, and rapid naming. Thus, it is possible that the gains in rapid naming may have been as a result of training in one or more of the other areas. Even though existing research has not definitively concluded that rapid automatic naming abilities can readily be improved, research is necessary to examine whether improvements in orthographic functioning can be attained via training in rapid automatic naming.” (p. 12)

Mesman, G.R., & Kibby, M.Y. (2010). An examination of multiple predictors of orthographic functioning. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 44(1), 50-62. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44698378_An_Examination_of_Multiple_Predictors_of_Orthographic_Functioning

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As education researcher John Hosp has said, “You don’t bring data to a faith fight”. (Personal Communication, 2017)

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“Where feelings meet facts, truth is the first casualty. … When truth becomes malleable and contestable regardless of evidence, a mere tussle of manufactured narratives, it becomes less about conveying facts than about picking sides. … In “On Truth,” Cambridge University philosopher Simon Blackburn writes that truth is attainable, if at all, “only at the vanishing end points of enquiry,” adding that, “instead of ‘facts first’ we may do better if we think of ‘enquiry first,’ with the notion of fact modestly waiting to be invited to the feast afterward. … In order to move people, objective facts must become personal beliefs.” … It is easy to identify a truth that someone else does not want to see. But how many of us are prepared to do this with our own beliefs? To doubt something that we want to believe, even though a little piece of us whispers that we do not have all the facts?”

Lozada, C. (2018). Can truth survive this President? An honest investigation. Washington Post, July 13. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2018/07/13/feature/can-truth-survive-this-president-an-honest-investigation/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c12f59b5103c

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“Critics of scripted programs worry that curriculums are too narrowly focused on the basics and teachers are being turned into robots rather than working as creative professionals. “A trained monkey could do this program,” says Janice Auld, president of the North Sacramento Education Association, about adopting a reading program in her district in California. As an experienced teacher she found the process of adopting her district’s program “humiliating and demeaning.””

Colt, S. (2005). Do scripted lessons work - or not? Making Schools Work. Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/makingschoolswork/sbs/sfa/lessons.html

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“This study evaluated the impact of simultaneous multisensory input on developing basic reading skills within an Orton-Gillingham based structured language frame work. It is one of the first studies to evaluate simultaneous multisensory input in a well-controlled study. This scientific study supported structured language instruction, within Orton-Gillingham based programs, as efficacious in promoting basic decoding and encoding skills for children with typical development and dyslexia. However, this study did not show that simultaneous multisensory input improved learning over structured language intervention alone. In fact, results suggested that other components within the Orton-Gillingham framework, such as phonemic spelling, or reciprocal teaching of reading and spelling, may play critical roles in the effectiveness of structured language programs.” (p. 253)

Schlesinger, N.W., & Gray, S. (2017). The impact of multisensory instruction on learning letter names and sounds, word reading, and spelling. Annals of Dyslexia, 67, 219–258.

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“Overall, PSTs did not demonstrate strong content knowledge of basic language constructs as measured in this study. Mean percent correct scores on the total survey were all below 70 %, and ranged from 49 to 67%. The group that had the highest total survey score, Canadian PSTs, were also the group who was exposed to coursework that included focused instruction in basic language constructs. Upon analysis of all knowledge and all ability items, we found that all four groups scored higher on items that were designed to assess ability compared to those designed to assess knowledge.” (p. 20-21)

Washburn, E. K., Binks-Cantrell, E. S., Joshi, R. M., Martin-Chang, S., & Arrow, A. (2016). Preservice teacher knowledge of basic language constructs in Canada, England, New Zealand and the United States. Annals of Dyslexia, 66(1), 7-26.

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“We often hear the comment, “Of course schools use phonics”, from teachers, education officials, and some politicians. The comment appears to be supported by the data in this study. However, lower levels of teachers’ knowledge of the basic language constructs involved in effective literacy teaching may limit the usefulness of phonics instruction. Compounding the limited value of phonics is the widespread use of natural language levelled readers in the Ready to Read series. Well-meaning teachers who see the value of phonics instruction appear to be stymied in their goals to improve the literacy learning outcomes of beginning readers.” (p. 101)

Chapman, J.W., Greaney, K.T., Arrow, A.W. &. Tunmer, W.E. (2018). Teachers’ use of phonics, knowledge of language constructs, and preferred word identification prompts in relation to beginning readers. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 23(1), 87-104.

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“If the written code is impenetrable to the would-be reader, then a message’s meaning is inaccessible. If the code is only partly penetrable, then its meaning is likely compromised. Thus, mastery of the phonological code is a necessary condition. However, that attainment doesn’t guarantee the message’s meaning is retrieved, because the reader must also be adept in the language that was encoded by the writer. This is in essence the Simple View of Reading.”

Me 7/18

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“However, the functional role of left vOT (left ventral occipitotemporal cortex or VWFA) is still actively debated (e.g., Dehaene and Cohen, 2011; Price and Devlin, 2011). First, specificity of left vOT to orthographic processing is contested by studies showing that left vOT is equally activated by pictures of objects and by words (Sevostianov et al., 2002; Wright et al., 2008; Vogel et al., 2012; Kherif et al., 2011). Second, meta-analyses have shown that several other language-related brain regions localized in the left hemisphere are also activated during reading (Turkeltaub et al., 2002; Jobard et al., 2003; Vigneau et al., 2006). These regions include the temporo-parietal cortex, including inferior parietal and superior temporal regions, as well as the inferior frontal cortex. Concerning the inferior parietal regions, the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) has been associated with phonological processing (Church et al., 2011; Stoeckel et al., 2009; Price et al., 1997; Wilson et al., 2011) while the angular gyrus (AG) has been associated with semantic processing (Price et al., 1997). Concerning the superior temporal regions, the superior temporal gyrus (STG) has also been associated with phonological processing (Price et al., 1996; Rumsey et al., 1997; Simos et al., 2002). The inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and specifically its opercular part, has been considered as being implicated in articulatory representations (Gitelman et al., 2005; Klein et al., 2015; Mainy et al., 2008; Pugh et al., 1996; Sandak et al., 2004). Contributions of these brain regions are consistent with early neurological models of reading (e.g., Ben-Shachar et al., 2007) proposing that visual processing in the occipital cortex is relayed to the AG before converging to the left posterior superior temporal cortex (for a contrasting view concerning AG, see Price, 2000; Price and Mechelli, 2005).” (p.360-361)

Madec, S., Le Goff, K., Anton, J-L., Longcamp, M., Velay, J-L., Nazarian, B., Roth, M., Courrieu, P., Grainger, J., & Rey, A. (2016). Brain correlates of phonological recoding of visual symbols. NeuroImage, 132, 359-372.

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“The orthographic learning mechanism that brings about these more precise representations is phonological feedback during reading. Thus, all words, regardless of the consistency of their spelling patterns, activate their word-specific phonology and this binds to the orthographic representation of the word. The self-teaching mechanism proposed by Share (1995) is a basis for initiating an orthographic representation. Added to that initial learning process is, with experience the repeated retrieval of word-specific phonology on the basis of a word-specific spelling—a practice effect that robustly binds orthography with phonology.”

Harris, L.N., & Perfetti, C. (2017). Individual differences in phonological feedback effects: Evidence for the orthographic recoding hypothesis of orthographic learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 21(1), 31–45.

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“Given the evidence from this tertiary review, what are the implications for teaching, policy and research? It would seem sensible for teaching to include systematic phonics instruction for younger readers – but the evidence is not clear enough to decide which phonics approach is best. Also, in our view there remains insufficient evidence to justify a ‘phonics only’ teaching policy; indeed, since many studies have added phonics to whole language approaches, balanced instruction is indicated. For policy, encouragement of phonics instruction within schools is justified unless and until contrary evidence emerges. Finally, in terms of research: given the uncertainties in the evidence base over publication bias, the ‘phonics’ status of some included studies, and how best to calculate effect sizes, there may be a case for conducting a large and even more rigorous systematic review. But what is required above all are large field trials of different phonics approaches and different phonics ‘dosages’. We called for such an approach in our review of phonics teaching in 2006, and a decade later we make the same call. In conclusion, there have been a significant number of systematic reviews of experimental and quasi-experimental research evaluating the effectiveness or otherwise of phonics teaching since 2000. Most of the reviews are supportive of phonics teaching, but this conclusion needs to be tempered by two potential sources of bias: design and publication bias. Both of these problems will tend to exaggerate the benefit of phonics teaching. Furthermore, there is little evidence of the comparative superiority of one phonics approach over any other. Ideally, each country should establish a programme of large RCTs that are adapted to local circumstances that will test different phonics approach to reading and writing acquisition. If this was adopted then we might finally end the ‘reading wars’.” (p. 27)

Torgerson, C., Brooks, G., Gascoine, L., & Higgins, S. (2018). Phonics: Reading policy and the evidence of effectiveness from a systematic ‘tertiary’ review. Research Papers in Education, DOI: 10.1080/02671522.2017.1420816

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“Nevertheless, significant consistencies, regularities and patterns do exist (Carney, 1994; Hanna, Hanna, Hodges, & Rudorf, 1966; Kessler, 2009; Kessler & Treiman, 2003; Venezky, 1970). According to Fischer, Shankweiler, and Liberman (1985), consistency in English orthography works at three broad levels. At the first level are words whose orthographic realisation is relatively close to their phonetic form, and whose spelling patterns have a high degree of occurrence (i.e., regular sound–letter associations such as cat, step, and take). At the second level are words whose sound–letter mappings are more or less straightforward, except that they contain a segment that is ambiguous or problematic, where the relationship between the symbols, sound and/or the morphemic structure is not transparent in the spelling. This typically occurs when rule-governed morphological changes are applied. For example, when the past tense morpheme <-ed> is added to the verb tap, the sound /p/ is represented not by <p> but by <pp>, the doubled consonant signalling that the letter is pronounced /æ/ rather than /ei/ as in taped. The third level consists of words whose foreign or archaic origins make it difficult to derive their spelling from morphophonemic knowledge alone. Such words contain one or more segments which either do not normally occur in English, or which occur infrequently, such as the words debt, indict, bourgeois, Fahrenheit, or zeitgeist.” (p. 173)

"Although rote visual memorisation works well as a strategy for learning irregular or ‘hermit’ spellings, it tends to be insufficient to establish spelling patterns in long-term memory, especially where weaker spellers are concerned. The same applies to incidental learning approaches (where spelling is believed to be best learned from broad reading and writing alone). Neither rote visual memorisation or the incidental learning approach lead to the automaticity of recall needed for both reading and writing (Schlagal, 2002; Templeton, 1991; Templeton & Morris, 1999). What is required for automaticity of recall is spelling instruction that is explicit and systematic, focusing on exploring patterns that can be detected in the sound, structure, and meaning features of words, and thus reinforcing and consolidating children’s understanding of how the spelling system works (Graham et al, 2008; Hammond, 2004; Schlagal, 1992; Westwood, 2005, 2008a)." (p. 173)

Mullock, B. (2012). An examination of commercial spelling programs for upper primary level students. Australasian Journal of Special Education, 36 (2), 172-195.

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“The challenges of learning to spell in English are widely documented in literature (Goswami, 2005, Graham Morphy, Harris, Fink-Chorzempa, Saddler, Moran, Mason, 2008; Mullock, 2012; O’Sullivan, 2000; Reed, 2012; Westwood, 2013). Up to one third of students fail to read and spell to a reasonable standard (Graham et. al., 2008; Westwood, 2008). A lack of understanding can make the English language seem like a chaotic and formidable mountain to climb (Simonsen & Gunter, 2001). However there are consistencies, regularities and patterns that provide some scaffolding and order to the learning experience (Invernizzi & Hayes, 2004; Kessler, 2009; Kessler & Trieman, 2003; Mullock, 2012).”

Russo, A., & Pike, K. (2014). Reading Eggspress Spelling Program, Scientific Research Base, November, 2014. Retrieved from

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“What is required for automaticity of recall is spelling instruction that is explicit and systematic, focusing on exploring patterns that can be detected in the sound, structure, and meaning features of words, and thus reinforcing and consolidating children’s understanding of how the spelling system works.” (Mullock, 2012, p.173).

Mullock, B. (2012). An examination of commercial spelling programs for upper primary level students. Australasian Journal of Special Education, 36 (2), 172-195.

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“We suggest Seigler’s (2005) overlapping waves model may be more applicable to reading and spelling development than models based on notions of ‘stage’. In the overlapping waves model children make use of a variety of strategies to cope with a variety of cognitive tasks rather than moving sequentially from one strategy to another depending on stage.” (p. 92)

Devonshire, V., Morris, P., & Fluck, M. (2013). Spelling and reading development: The effect of teaching children multiple levels of representation in their orthography. Learning and Instruction, 25, 85-94.

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“ … evidence that internalizing symptoms (Sideridis, 2007; Valâs, 2001) and dysfunctional cognitive-emotional processes (Bauminger & Kimhi-Kind, 2008; Conradi, Jang, & McKenna, 2014; Katzir, Lesaux, & Kim, 2009) are common among students experiencing academic difficulties, regardless of the nature of their core academic deficit. Although research linking cognitive and emotional regulation processes is still in its infancy and the current study was not designed to address this topic, our results are generally consistent with a generic shutdown of the system that controls reading performance, caused by the additive effects of limited cognitive resources and print-related skills and compounded by cognitive and emotion self-regulation difficulty. … a student’s motivational/emotional sphere does not function in a linear way and that the accumulated effects of failure and frustration may lead to dramatic changes in students’ behaviors, such as choosing to withdraw from a task, competency, or skill area overall. Educators need to be sensitive to changes in students’ emotionality and mood to prevent such episodes and to help students maintain a level of integrity and achievement that is necessary for them to maintain proper levels of engagement.” (p.9)

Sideridis, G.D., Simos, P., Mouzaki, A., Stamovlasis, D., & Georgiou, G.K. (2018). Can the relationship between rapid automatized naming and word reading be explained by a catastrophe? Empirical evidence from students with and without reading difficulties. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1–12.

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“A growing literature indicates that children with reading difficulties are at elevated risk for both internalizing (emotional) and externalizing (behavioural) problems. Longitudinal studies have demonstrated that reading difficulties are prospectively associated with later internalizing (Arnold et al., 2005) and externalizing (Halonen et al., 2006; Snowling et al., 2007) symptoms, suggesting that reading difficulties are a risk factor for the development of later mental health problems. With regard to internalizing symptoms, reading difficulties have been shown to be associated with depression (Arnold et al., 2005; Eissa, 2010; Maughan & Carroll, 2006), anxiety (Arnold et al., 2005; Carroll & Iles, 2006; Carroll et al., 2005; Eissa, 2010; Whitehouse et al., 2009), somatic complaints (Arnold et al., 2005; Eissa, 2010), low mood (Carroll et al., 2005) and general socio-emotional problems (Terras et al., 2009). With regard to externalizing symptoms, reading difficulties have been associated with behavioural problems (Maughan & Carroll, 2006; Snowling et al., 2007; Terras et al., 2009), conduct disorder (Carroll et al., 2005; Thambirajah, 2010), and both anger and aggression (Eissa, 2010; Morgan et al., 2012).” (p. 263)

Boyes, M.E., Leitao, S., Claessen, M., Badcock, N.A., & Nayton, M. (2016). Why are reading difficulties associated with mental health problems? Dyslexia, 22, 263–266.

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“It may be the case that mental health problems arise as a direct consequence of reading difficulties. If this is the case, then remediation of reading skills should also improve child self-esteem and mental health. Many child mental health measures (such as the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire; Goodman, 1997) are short, easy to administer, and can be completed by children, parents, or teachers. These measures could be included as secondary outcomes in trials of interventions to remediate reading. Of particular interest would be investigating whether reading intervention improves reading/academic-related selfesteem, and whether this is linked with improvements in mental health.” (p. 265)

“If embedded into the curriculum and delivered by school staff, school-based prevention and intervention programs are cost-effective and can reduce risks for later mental health problems in primary school children generally (Neil & Christensen, 2009). However, universal mental health or prevention programs typically yield small effect sizes (Durlak et al., 2011). Given that the majority of children will not develop a mental health problem, it would be helpful to see if such programs are particularly effective for potentially vulnerable subgroups such as children with reading difficulties. If this is the case, the skills targeted by these interventions may be salient risk and resilience-promoting factors moderating and/or mediating associations between reading difficulties and mental health.” (p.265)

Boyes, M.E., Leitao, S., Claessen, M., Badcock, N.A., & Nayton, M. (2016). Why are reading difficulties associated with mental health problems? Dyslexia, 22, 263–266.

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“Reading difficulties are highly comorbid with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Willcutt & Pennington, 2000a), with as many as 15–40% of children with reading difficulties also meeting criteria for ADHD (Maughan & Carroll, 2006; Willcutt & Pennington, 2000a). However, the relationship between reading ability and ADHD appears to be specific to attentional problems with less evidence of a link between reading ability and hyperactivity (Carroll et al., 2005).” (p. 126)

Boyes, M.E., Tebbutt, B., Preece, K.A., & Badcock, N.A. (2018). Relationships between reading ability and child mental health: moderating effects of self‐esteem. Australian Psychologist 53(2), 125–133.

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“A number of studies have examined relationships between reading ability and global self-esteem, as well as self-esteem in specific domains (McArthur, Francis, Caruana, Boyes, & Badcock, 2016). With regard to general self-esteem, the findings are mixed. A number of studies have reported poor general self-esteem, general self-concept, or general self-worth in children with reading difficulties (Alexander-Passe, 2006; Humphrey & Mullins, 2002); however, other studies have reported no deficits in general self-esteem (Frederickson & Jacobs, 2001; Terras et al., 2009). There are also mixed findings regarding relationships between reading ability and social (Alexander- Passe, 2006; Boetsch et al., 1996; Terras et al., 2009), parent home (Alexander-Passe, 2006; Humphrey & Mullins, 2002), and physical self-esteem (Boetsch et al., 1996; Humphrey & Mullins, 2002; Terras et al., 2009). In contrast, findings regarding academic self-esteem are more equivocal with the majority of studies reporting that reading difficulties are associated with poorer academic self-esteem (Alexander-Passe, 2006; Boetsch et al., 1996; Casey, Levy, Brown, & Brooks-Gunn, 1992; Frederickson & Jacobs, 2001; Humphrey & Mullins, 2002; McArthur, Castles, Kohnen, & Banales, 2016; Snowling, Muter, & Carroll, 2007; Terras et al., 2009). … the current study demonstrates that reading ability is associated with internalising symptoms and that self-esteem moderates the impact of reading ability on externalising symptoms and total difficulty scores. This is an important and novel finding, which suggests that children’s self-esteem can help buffer against the negative mental health impacts of poor reading ability.” (p. 126-7, 131)

Boyes, M.E., Tebbutt, B., Preece, K.A., & Badcock, N.A. (2018). Relationships between reading ability and child mental health: moderating effects of self-esteem. Australian Psychologist 53(2), 125–133.

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“Children with reading and spelling disorder are often seen in outpatient healthcare services—for example, in pediatric practices or public health services—for psychosomatic symptoms, such as headaches or stomach aches, nausea, and lack of motivation/drive. If children or adolescents repeatedly experience failures at school, the may develop severe fear of failure and negative self-conception of their own ability. The comorbidity with externalizing and internalizing disorders is correspondingly high (6). Some 20% of children and adolescents with a reading disorder develop an anxiety disorder, but depression and conduct disorders are also common (7–10). Untreated and without specific support, reading and spelling disorder often results in failure at, or absenteeism from school, with grave consequences for professional education and training and for psychological wellbeing in adulthood (11–13).” (p. 279)

“The role of comorbidities for the effectiveness of therapeutic methods in the setting of reading and spelling disorder has thus far been underestimated. These comorbidities often include anxiety disorders, depressive symptoms, hyperkinetic disorder or attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and absenteeism from school, and conduct disorders in adolescents. ADHD is four times more common in children and adolescents with reading and spelling disorder, and the prevalence in children whose reading and spelling disorder has already been diagnosed is 8–18% (7, 9, 32). Furthermore, a notably increased prevalence of anxiety disorders (20%) and depressive disorders (14.5%) was found in young persons with reading and spelling disorder. The risk for being found to have an anxiety disorder in existing reading and spelling disorder is quadrupled. For social phobia, there are indications that the risk increases sixfold (7, 9, 10). The comorbid occurrence of reading and spelling disorder and specific disorder of arithmetical skills is significantly increased. The prevalence rate was between 20% and 40% in children who had already been diagnosed with reading and spelling disorder. The risk of a disorder of arithmetical skills is increased by four to five times (33). The prevalence of both disorders in the total population is 3–8% (33–37).” (p.283)

Galuschka, K., & Schulte-Korne, G. (2016). The diagnosis and treatment of reading and/or spelling disorders in children and adolescents. Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, 113(16), 279-286.

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“Atomoxetine treatment improved reading scores in patients with dyslexia only and in a randomized, double-blind trial. Improvements for patients with dyslexia only were in critical components of reading, including decoding and reading vocabulary. For patients with dyslexia and comorbid ADHD, improvements in reading scores were distinct from improvement in ADHD inattention symptoms alone.” (p.25)

Shaywitz, S., Shaywitz, B., Wietecha, L., Wigal, S., McBurnett, K., Williams, D., Kronenberger, W.G., & Hooper, S.R. (2017). Effect of atomoxetine treatment on reading and phonological skills in children with dyslexia or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and comorbid dyslexia in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 27(1), 19-28.

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“ … all measures indicated less favorable outcomes among the LD group than among the control group, suggesting that a notable share of individuals with LD have problems with mental health, are unable or delayed in attaining degrees after compulsory education, and have difficulties gaining (or keeping) employment. Second, LD subgroup differences were found: MD was more strongly associated with antidepressant use and unemployment than RD. Moreover, gender-related subgroup differences emerged, indicating that RD was a more prominent risk for males, while for females, MD with or without RD resulted more often than RD in the use of antidepressants and the lack of a secondary degree. … All our indicators of mental health problems, that is, having received sickness allowances or disability pensions on the basis of psychiatric diagnoses and having received reimbursements for psychoactive medication expenses, indicated more problems among the group with childhood LD diagnosis than among the population-based reference group. The higher percentage of individuals receiving sickness allowances or disability pensions indicates that mental health problems were a more common reason for incapacity to work among the LD group than the controls.” (p. 9)

“The findings suggest that strategies and personal attributes aimed at circumventing difficulties should be a priority in special education early on, and they should be given at least equal attention as efforts to enhance academic skills. Earlier research suggests that certain interpersonal factors, such as community and social support (e.g., Miller, 2002; Panicker & Chelliah, 2016; Raskind et al., 1999), and intrapersonal factors—such as self-awareness, proactivity, self-esteem, perseverance, and effective coping strategies (e.g., Gardynik & McDonald, 2005; Idan & Margalit, 2014; Miller, 2002; Raskind et al., 1999; Spekman, Goldberg, & Herman, 1992; Werner, 1993)—are relevant predictors of coping with LD, and they predict success better than variables like IQ, academic achievement, life stressors, age, gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity (Raskind et al., 1999). When these “success attributes” are understood as a set of skills that can be rehearsed and learned, rather than specific or stable individual characteristics, it opens new horizons and prospects for developing supportive programs or therapeutic approaches to enhance psychological well-being in, for example, special education settings or psychotherapeutic relationships.” (p. 11)

Aro, T., Eklund, K., Eloranta, A-K., Närhi, V., Korhonen, E., & Ahonen, T. (2018). Associations between childhood learning disabilities and adult-age mental health problems, lack of education, and unemployment. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1–13.

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“One-on-one instruction may improve students’ response to intervention in primary grades but may not necessarily be more effective than small group instruction, which was not implemented in enough studies for examination. Additional research examining small group instruction is needed to better ascertain the effect of intensity of intervention based on group size. Researchers might consider examining the long-term implications of one-on-one and small group instruction. Do the long-term benefits of one-on-one and small group instruction differ? Given the cost and resource demands associated with one-on-one instruction, it may be more economically and practically feasible to implement small group intervention, particularly if the long-term benefits are similar.” (p. 10)

Wanzek, J., Stevens, E.A., Williams, K.J., Scammacca, N., Vaughn, S., & Sargent, K. (2018). Current evidence on the effects of intensive early reading interventions. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1–13.

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“ … efficient RAN performance primarily reflects the degree of automatization: precise and timely coordination of the various linguistic and print-specific skills (e.g., articulatory, lexical, phonological, orthographic) with executive and attentional processes and resources (Georgiou, Parrila, & Kirby, 2009).” (p.9)

“ … evidence that internalizing symptoms (Sideridis, 2007; Valâs, 2001) and dysfunctional cognitive-emotional processes (Bauminger & Kimhi-Kind, 2008; Conradi, Jang, & McKenna, 2014; Katzir, Lesaux, & Kim, 2009) are common among students experiencing academic difficulties, regardless of the nature of their core academic deficit. Although research linking cognitive and emotional regulation processes is still in its infancy and the current study was not designed to address this topic, our results are generally consistent with a generic shutdown of the system that controls reading performance, caused by the additive effects of limited cognitive resources and print-related skills and compounded by cognitive and emotion self-regulation difficulty. … a student’s motivational/emotional sphere does not function in a linear way and that the accumulated effects of failure and frustration may lead to dramatic changes in students’ behaviors, such as choosing to withdraw from a task, competency, or skill area overall. Educators need to be sensitive to changes in students’ emotionality and mood to prevent such episodes and to help students maintain a level of integrity and achievement that is necessary for them to maintain proper levels of engagement.” (p.9)

Sideridis, G.D., Simos, P., Mouzaki, A., Stamovlasis, D., & Georgiou, G.K. (2018). Can the relationship between rapid automatized naming and word reading be explained by a catastrophe? Empirical evidence from students with and without reading difficulties. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1–12.

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“Overall, the results of this meta-analysis indicate that intensive interventions result in positive gains in reading performance for struggling readers in Grades K through 3. There is limited variability in the effects, indicating that intervention commonalities may be driving the positive effects more than differences such as group size or duration. Intervention commonalities across studies included the following: (a) a high level of standardization in which all students received the same instruction using a set of well-prescribed lessons and materials for modeling and guiding students in learning new reading practices; (b) instructional content addressing phonological awareness (e.g., syllable segmentation, phoneme identification and manipulation), phonics and word recognition (e.g., letter name and letter-sound correspondence, blending and segmenting the sounds in words, reading decodable words and high-frequency words), and fluency (e.g., initial reading, rereading, and shared reading of decodable texts); and (c) school staff or community members implemented the interventions. Thus, generally standardized, explicit instruction including reading foundational skills provided for more than 100 sessions has a positive effect for students with reading difficulties in Grades K through 3. These interventions can be feasibly implemented by school personnel.” (p.9-10)

Wanzek, J., Stevens, E.A., Williams, K.J., Scammacca, N., Vaughn, S. & Sargent, K. (2018). Current evidence on the effects of intensive early reading interventions. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1–13.

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“Using the trim and-fill method (Duval & Tweedie, 2000), we evaluated the potential impact of publication bias based on a random effects model. The trim-and-fill method removes effect sizes that cause asymmetry in a funnel plot of the effect sizes included in the meta-analysis, calculates a mean effect, and then imputes the effect sizes needed to make the plot symmetrical. The results indicate how many studies may be missing from the meta-analysis due to publication bias and produces an adjusted effect size based on including the missing studies. Results of the trim-and-fill analysis for the present meta-analysis found that publication bias might have inflated the mean effect size estimate. Seven studies with effect sizes that were smaller than the mean effect of 0.39 likely were missing from the data set. When effect sizes from these missing studies were included, the adjusted mean effect size was 0.28 (95% CI [0.20, 0.37]).” (p.8)

Wanzek, J., Stevens, E.A., Williams, K.J., Scammacca, N., Vaughn, S. & Sargent, K. (2018). Current evidence on the effects of intensive early reading interventions. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1–13.

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“The present article addresses the development of reading comprehension in a group of children with mixed-aetiology intellectual disabilities. The average levels of reading comprehension, decoding, and listening comprehension that were observed in the participants at an age of 12 years were all comparable to the levels of typical children at an age of 6 years. Their scores on the precursor measures were also below those otherwise expected for children in this age range. The effects of the children’s cognitive limitations on skills related to reading comprehension are thus widespread. The low levels of overall performance that we found are in line with earlier findings (Lemons et al., 2013; Nash & Heath, 2011) and show that general cognitive limitations affect the acquisition and development of reading comprehension on many levels. In line with the simple view of reading (Hoover & Gough, 1990), decoding and listening comprehension were the key precursors of reading comprehension and its development. The stronger contribution of decoding relative to listening comprehension among this group is consistent with the pattern found for early readers without disabilities (Ouellette & Beers, 2010; Vellutino et al., 2007). … foundational literacy skills and nonverbal reasoning exerted an additional, direct effect on the longitudinal reading comprehension of children with intellectual disabilities, over and above decoding, listening comprehension, and prior reading comprehension. The final pattern is very similar to the long-term precursors for reading comprehension that have been found by Fuchs et al. (2012) in children who were poor readers despite a normal intelligence. It seems that the pattern observed in the present analysis is not specific to children with low intelligence but can also be observed in other children who struggle to read.” (p. 330)

van Wingerden, E., Segersa, E., van Balkoma,H., & Verhoevena, L. (2018). Cognitive constraints on the simple view of reading: A longitudinal study in children with intellectual disabilities. Scientific Studies of Reading, 22(4), 321–334.

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“When observed growth approximates target growth, however, measurement error and related factors are much more influential on decision rule accuracy. Results from simulation studies suggest that when collecting one observation per week using commercial probe sets and standardized administration and scoring procedures, measurement error is minimized and 12–14 weeks’ worth of data is required to obtain a sufficiently reliable estimate of growth (Christ, Zopluoglu, Monaghen, & Van Norman, 2013). When CBMR probes are not of roughly equal difficulty and consistent standardized data collection procedures are not followed, as much as 18–20 observations may be necessary to obtain a sufficiently reliable estimate of growth (Christ et al., 2013). Collecting more observations per week decreases the amount of time required to obtain reliable estimates of growth; however, the duration of data collection and the measurement error are more influential factors on the reliability of CBM-R growth estimates (Christ, 2006; Christ et al., 2013).” (p.1-2)

Parker, D.C., Van Norman, E., & Nelson, P.M. (2018). Decision rules for progress monitoring in reading: accuracy during a large-scale Tier II intervention. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice. First published: 22 April 2018 https://doi.org/10.1111/ldrp.12170

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“There is considerable evidence that students who demonstrate significant reading difficulties, like those participating in this study, will require considerably more intensive and extensive interventions than are typically provided. Wanzek and colleagues (2013) identified intervention studies with 75 or more hours as extensive and reported that on standardized reading comprehension measures such as those used in this study, results were small, ranging from ES =.10 –.16. These findings, as well as those from our study, suggest that we may need to consider other factors to intensify interventions for students with significant reading difficulties, including but not limited to: (a) providing interventions for even longer time periods, (b) reducing group size, (c) customizing interventions to meet the individual learning needs of students, (e) considering including reading instruction across the curriculum, and (f) providing supplemental reading time after school or during the summer. … A meta-analysis of studies focusing on reading intervention for upper-elementary and adolescent students with reading difficulties yielded generally low effect sizes and found no differences in the magnitude of effects for interventions that focused primarily on comprehension, studies that focused primarily on word-level skills, or multicomponent studies (Flynn et al., 2012). Furthermore, the study found no meaningful patterns related to the instructional features used in the interventions (e.g., modeling, control of level of difficulty, explicit practice opportunities). …We think that the findings from this study, contextualized within the theoretical framework of both Chall’s (1996) developmental model of reading and SVR (Gough & Tunmer, 1986), suggest that students with significant reading difficulties require intensive reading instruction for many years. Students in fourth grade and beyond with intractable reading difficulties may require intensive interventions provided by highly qualified clinicians throughout their schooling. Many of these students may require intensive interventions well into secondary schooling.” (p.9, 12)

Vaughn, S., Roberts, G.J., Miciak, J., Taylor, P., & Fletcher, J.M. (2018). Efficacy of a word- and text-based intervention for students with significant reading difficulties. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 52(1), 31–44. doi: 10.1177/0022219418775113

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“Using an RCT design, this study examined the relative effects of supplementing typical school day reading instruction with two contrasting text-processing afterschool reading interventions for third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students with significant reading difficulties. Findings revealed that students receiving an intensive afterschool reading intervention did not outperform students assigned to the BaU condition, despite previously encouraging results from tex processing approaches implemented during the school day (Barth et al., 2016; McKeown et al., 2009; Vaughn et al., 2013).” (p.10)

Roberts, G.J., Capin, P., Roberts, G., Miciak, J., Quinn, J.M., & Vaughn, S. (2018). Examining the effects of afterschool reading interventions for upper elementary struggling readers. Remedial and Special Education, Online First.

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“Evidence from high-quality studies (Kamil et al., 2008) also indicates there is strong support for the assertion that explicit instruction is a necessary foundation for reading interventions with struggling adolescent readers (e.g., Duffy et al., 1987; Fuchs et al., 1997; Herrera et al., 2016; Klingner, Vaughn, & Schumm, 1998; Schumaker & Deshler, 1992). Explicit and systematic instruction involves a series of sequenced instructional steps that include: (a) teachers explaining and modeling strategy use, (b) teachers guiding students in using the strategy or strategies (i.e., guided practice), and (c) students demonstrating their ability to use the strategies independently under the supervision of the teacher (Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Kamil et al., 2008). The power of explicit instruction cuts across multiple content areas as a method for providing effective reading instruction for adolescent readers (and younger readers), as it can be used to teach word-level reading, reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension (Biancarosa & Snow, 2006; Kamil et al., 2008; Scammacca et al., 2007; Torgesen, et al., 2007).

One conclusion from the recent spate of research on reading interventions for older students is how difficult it is to improve outcomes for struggling readers in the upper grades Solis et al., 2014). For example, in a recent synthesis of extensive reading interventions that lasted a minimum of 75 sessions delivered to students in Grades 4 through 12 only small, positive effects were indicated on such outcomes as reading comprehension, reading fluency, word reading, and spelling (Wanzek et al., 2013). Interestingly, hypothesized moderators of intervention effects related to intervention group size, hours of intervention, and grade level of intervention were found to be significant. While a good number of seemingly promising interventions have been tested, many have not demonstrated significant and meaningful improvements under rigorous research conditions. In the last 20 years, more than 7,000 peer reviewed studies of adolescent literacy interventions have been published, yet only 33 of these studies have met WWC standards with or without reservations (Herrera et al., 2016). Of these 33 rigorous studies, 12 were identified as having a positive or potentially positive effect on vocabulary, reading comprehension, or general literacy skills, and all of these involved explicit instruction or the use of instructional routines to teach reading. The vast majority of the studies demonstrating positive or potentially positive effects also involved ongoing support or coaching for instructors, who were most likely to be typically hired school staff. Importantly, eight of the 12 studies observed small to moderate effects on a high-stakes assessment, such as a state accountability measure. It is also important to note that the Herrera et al. (2016) review summarized research findings from all studies of adolescent literacy interventions that met review criteria, which includes studies planned and conducted by researchers to test the effects of particular interventions under ideal conditions, as opposed to only studies that are implemented under naturalistic conditions (i.e., those in which districts select the programs and practices they will implement, even if the evaluation is conducted through support from an external evaluator, as is the case in the current study). In reviews of studies of literacy interventions where districts and schools select and implement interventions, even fewer studies demonstrate positive or potentially positive effects on student literacy outcomes.” (p.39)

Fien, H., Anderson, D., Nelson, N.J., Kennedy, P., Baker, S.K., & Stoolmiller, M. (2018). Examining the impact and school-level predictors of impact variability of an 8th grade reading intervention on at-risk students’ reading achievement. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 33(1), 37–50.

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“Consistent with other research findings, the interventions that were identified as being effective incorporated explicit instruction to teach reading skills. In addition, dosage and intensity were higher for the interventions that were effective (e.g., 90 minutes of supplemental intervention per day) compared to those that were not.” (p.39)

Fien, H., Anderson, D., Nelson, N.J., Kennedy, P., Baker, S.K., & Stoolmiller, M. (2018). Examining the impact and school-level predictors of impact variability of an 8th grade reading intervention on at-risk students’ reading achievement. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 33(1), 37–50.

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“Currently, approximately 30 percent of students drop out of school and never graduate (Editorial Projects in Education (EPE), 2008; Laird, KewalRamani, & Chapman, 2008). In Oregon, an estimated 75 students drop out of school each day (Diplomas Count, 2008). Dropouts are at substantially higher risk than graduates for life-long difficulties associated with unemployment, poverty, illiteracy, incarceration, and chronic stress (Finn & Owings, 2006; Harlow, 2003; McCaul, 1989). Nationally, dropout rates are substantially elevated for specific student groups, including students from high-poverty and minority backgrounds (Greene & Winters, 2005; Neild & Balfanz, 2006; Rumberger, 1995). In Oregon, 72 percent of White students graduate from high school, while the graduation rate is only 50 percent for Hispanic students, and 61 percent for African American students (Greene &Winters, 2005). The costs associated with dropping out of school are measurable in terms other than diminished postsecondary education opportunities as well. Nationally, 1.23 million dropouts from the graduating class of 2007 will cost the nation nearly $329 billion in lost income, taxes, and productivity over their lifetimes (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2007; EPE, 2008). In Oregon alone, the 13,500 dropouts from the graduating class of 2008 are expected to cost the state $3.5 billion in lost wages, taxes, and productivity over their lifetimes (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2009).” (p.38)

Fien, H., Anderson, D., Nelson, N.J., Kennedy, P., Baker, S.K., & Stoolmiller, M. (2018). Examining the impact and school-level predictors of impact variability of an 8th grade reading intervention on at-risk students’ reading achievement. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 33(1), 37–50.

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“There has been a surge in research with young deaf children using Visual Phonics and Direct Instruction. The results to date have been promising, but with the caution that most of the work has been done with children who are second graders or younger” (p.101).

Moores, D. F. (2013). One size does not fit all: Individualized instruction in a standardized educational system. American Annals of the Deaf, 158(1), 98-103.

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“Many children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit difficulties with complex language and social communication. Direct Instruction (DI) is an empirically supported curriculum designed to teach complex language skills to children with and at risk of learning disabilities. Only recently, the effectiveness of DI has been evaluated among children with autism. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of the DI Language for Learning curriculum among 18 children diagnosed with ASD. Immediate post-intervention language scores on curriculum post-tests were significantly higher than pre-intervention scores and remained significantly higher than pre-intervention scores up to 6 to 8 months following the intervention. Comparing language skills across groups, children already exposed to the intervention exhibited significantly higher language skills than their non-exposed waitlist counterparts.” (p. 44)

Shillingsburg, M. A., Bowen, C. N., Peterman, R. K., & Gayman, M. D. (2015). Effectiveness of the Direct Instruction Language for Learning curriculum among children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 30(1), 44–56.

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“This research demonstrates that DI is a promising practice for students with ASD. … there appears to be a gap in the extant literature on using DI to teach language skills to high school students with ASD in a group format. … The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of DI, and specifically the SRA Reading Mastery Signature Edition language program, in teaching high school students with ASD in a small group setting to answer ‘‘who,’’ ‘‘where,’’ and ‘‘what’’ questions. An additional purpose of this study was to determine whether any effects demonstrated during the intervention would maintain after instruction was removed. The results indicated that the DI curriculum, as modified, was effective in teaching all participants to answer ‘‘who’’ and ‘‘what’’ questions to mastery. In addition, the data revealed that the participants maintained these improvements at both the 2- and 4-week post-intervention follow-up assessments.” (p. 2969, 2976)

Cadette, J.N., Wilson C.L., Brady, M.P., Dukes, C., & Bennett, K.D. (2016). The effectiveness of Direct Instruction in teaching students with autism spectrum disorder to answer "wh-" questions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46(9), 2968-78.

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“DI has been shown to be effective in teaching diverse groups of students; however, no studies have examined the effects of complex comprehension skills for students with autism and developmental delay or for students who can decode but have deficits is comprehension. … The results of this study indicate that students with disabilities, specifically those with autism, can make significant academic gains when provided with appropriate instruction. … the findings of this study support the efficacy of DI for students with autism and will eventually help establish DI as an evidenced based practice for this population.” (p. 177, 190)

Head, C.N., Flores, M.M., & Shippen, M.E. (2018). Effects of Direct Instruction on reading comprehension for individuals with autism or developmental disabilities. Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 53(2), 176–191.

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“In 2010, SPELD(SA) commenced a 13-year study to investigate what effect the systematic teaching of synthetic phonics, and a systematic spelling and grammar program had on students in the first three years of school. The main goals of the study were:  to monitor the progress of students who were receiving synthetic phonics and systematic spelling and grammar teaching through use of the Jolly Learning (1992) framework;  to monitor participating students through to the end of their Year 12 by measuring the development of their reading and spelling skills.  to review the effects on these students of the teaching of synthetic phonics, and the systematic teaching of spelling and grammar. The study is following two cohorts of students from the first year at school through to completion of Year 12. The students in the 2010 cohort were in Reception in 2010 and the 2011 cohort were in Reception in 2011. This report describes the progress of the 2010 cohort over the first two years of the study. … By the end of their second year of formal schooling, students in this study, aged between 6 years 5 months and 8 years 2 months (average age 7 years 1 month), had made a very strong start with the development of their reading and spelling skills. The average gain in reading (14 months above chronological age) and spelling (17.7 months above chronological age) is greater than that of the students in the Clackmannanshire study whose reading and spelling scores were 11 months above chronological age at the end of their second year at school.” (p.1, 9)

Weeks, A. & Ozols, J. (2012). SPELD(SA) Longitudinal study of the effects on reading and spelling of a synthetic phonics and systematic spelling and grammar program. Kensington: The Specific Learning Difficulties Association of South Australia. Retrieved from http://auspeld.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/2012studySA.pdf

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“We compared the impact of two synthetic phonics programmes on early reading. … Children received Letters and Sounds (L&S; 7 schools) which teaches multiple lettersound mappings or Early Reading Research (ERR; 10 schools) which teaches only the most consistent mappings plus frequent words by sight. … We measured phonological awareness (PA) and reading from school entry to the end of the second (all schools) or third school year (4 ERR, 3 L&S schools). … PA was significantly related to all reading measures for the whole sample. However, there was a closer relationship between PA and exception word reading for children receiving the L&S programme. The programmes were equally effective overall, but their impact on reading significantly interacted with school-entry PA: children with poor PA at school entry achieved higher reading attainments under ERR (significant group difference on exception word reading at the end of the first year), whereas children with good PA performed equally well under either programme. … The more intensive phonics programme (L&S) heightened the association between PA and exception word reading. Although the programmes were equally effective for most children, results indicate potential benefits of ERR for children with poor PA. We suggest that phonics programmes could be simplified to teach only the most consistent mappings plus frequent words by sight.” (p. 2)

Shapiro, L., & Solity, J. (2016). Differing effects of two synthetic phonics programmes on early reading development. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 86(2), 182-203. Retrieved from http://publications.aston.ac.uk/27197/3/ShapiroSolityBJEP2015.pdf

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“The most interesting finding here is that there are long-term effects at age 11 for those with a high probability of starting their school education as struggling readers. Specifically, the results suggest that there is a persistent effect for those classified as non-native English speakers and economically disadvantaged (as measured by free school meal status). The effect persists for these children who enter school with significant literacy deficits and is at least 0.10 standard deviations on the reading test at age 11. This is impressive given that the phonics approach is only actively taught up to the age of seven. … Our empirical analysis shows that intensive training in the use of a “new pedagogy” produced strong effects for early literacy acquisition amongst young school children. We are able to provide convincing evidence of causal effects from the introduction of synthetic phonics in English primary schools because of the way in which training was staggered across different local authorities (and hence different schools). … This paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, we estimate how teacher skills can be improved and the effect this has on students in the short and medium term. Such policies have not often been rigorously evaluated, especially in a context of both a pilot and a national policy. This is useful because it shows that, if effective, this is a low-cost intervention likely to be scalable. Second, our evidence contributes to discussions and research that focus upon the relative merits of targeted versus universal interventions.5 Third, this evidence shows a low-cost way to reduce inequalities within the education system between groups with a higher and lower propensity to start out their schooling as struggling readers.” (p. 219, 240-241)

Machin, S., McNally, S., & Viarengo, M. (2018). Changing how literacy is taught: Evidence on synthetic phonics. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 10(2), 217–241. Retrieved from http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/846338/1/pol.20160514.pdf

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“This paper reports the results of an experimental evaluation of Evidence Based Literacy Instruction

(EBLI). Developed over 15 years ago, EBLI aims to provide teachers with instructional strategies to improve reading accuracy, fluency and comprehension. Sixty-three teachers in grades 2-5 in seven Michigan charter schools were randomly assigned within school-grade blocks to receive EBLI training or a business-as-usual control condition. Comparing students in treatment and control classrooms during the 2014-15 school year, we find no significant impact on reading performance. Teacher survey responses and interviews with program staff suggest that several implementation challenges may have played a role in the null findings.” (p. 5)

Jacob, B. (2017). When evidence is not enough: Findings from a randomized evaluation of Evidence-Based Literacy Instruction (EBLI). Labour Economics, 45, 5–16. Retrieved from www.nber.org/papers/w21643

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“ … We have recently added preschool studies to our Evidence for ESSA website. In reviewing the key studies, I was once again reading an extraordinary 2009 study by Mark Lipsey and Dale Farran.

The study randomly assigned Head Start classes in rural Tennessee to one of three conditions. Some were assigned to use a program called Bright Beginnings, which had a strong pre-literacy focus. Some were assigned to use Creative Curriculum, a popular constructive/developmental curriculum with little emphasis on literacy. The remainder were assigned to a control group, in which teachers used whatever methods they ordinarily used.

Note that this design is different from the usual preschool studies frequently reported in the newspaper, which compare preschool to no preschool. In this study, all students were in preschool. What differed is only how they were taught.

The results immediately after the preschool program were not astonishing. Bright Beginnings students scored best on literacy and language measures (average effect size = +0.21 for literacy, +0.11 for language), though the differences were not significant at the school level. There were no differences at all between Creative Curriculum and control schools.

Where the outcomes became interesting was in the later years. Ordinarily in education research, outcomes measured after the treatments have finished diminish over time. In the Bright Beginnings/Creative Curriculum study the outcomes were measured again when students were in third grade, four years after they left school. Most students could be located because the test was the Tennessee standardized test, so scores could be found as long as students were still in Tennessee schools.

On third grade reading, former Bright Beginnings students now scored significantly better than [both] former controls, and the difference was statistically significant and substantial (effect size = +0.27). … In a review of early childhood programs at www.bestevidence.org, our team found that across 16 programs emphasizing literacy as well as language, effect sizes did not diminish in literacy at the end of kindergarten, and they actually doubled on language measures (from +0.08 in preschool to +0.15 in kindergarten). … the evidence suggests that effects of particular preschool approaches may show up later than the end of preschool. This observation, and specifically the Bright Beginnings evaluation, may indicate that in the long run it matters a great deal how students are taught in preschool.”

Slavin, R. (2017). Little sleepers: Long-term effects of preschool. Huffington Post, 28/9. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/59ccf2efe4b0b99ee4a9cad9

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“Scientists and philosophers should be shocked by the idea of post-truth, and they should speak up when scientific findings are ignored by those in power or treated as mere matters of faith. Scientists must keep reminding society of the importance of the social mission of science — to provide the best information possible as the basis for public policy. And they should publicly affirm the intellectual virtues that they so effectively model: critical thinking, sustained inquiry and revision of beliefs on the basis of evidence.”

Higgins, K. (2016). Post-truth: A guide for the perplexed. Nature, 540, 9. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/news/post-truth-a-guide-for-the-perplexed-1.21054

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“The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of cognitive versus multisensory interventions on handwriting legibility of elementary school students referred to occupational therapy for handwriting difficulties. In this randomized controlled trial, 72 first- and second-grade students were assigned to either a cognitive intervention, multisensory intervention, or control (no intervention) group. Letter legibility was measured using the Evaluation Tool for Children's Handwriting before and after 10 weeks of intervention. Analysis of variance of change scores showed no statistically significant difference across the three groups. First-grade students improved with or without intervention, but second-grade students showed sizeable improvement with cognitive intervention compared to multisensory intervention (d = 1.09) or no intervention (d= .92). These results challenge current occupational therapy practice of using a multisensory approach for remediation of handwriting difficulties for students in second grade. A cognitive approach to handwriting intervention shows greater promise and is worthy of further investigation.” (p. 40)

Zwicker, J.G., & Hadwin, A.F. (2009). Cognitive versus multisensory approaches to handwriting intervention: A randomized controlled trial. OTJR: Occupation, Participation & Health, 29(1), 40–48.

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“The results were consistent with the findings of Hilte and Reitsma (2011) that explicit teaching of a spelling rule not only improved learning of trained words but also enabled transfer to spelling of novel words. Our findings were also consistent with Kemper et al. (2012) who found that teaching rules explicitly helped with spelling of taught words and transfer words. Our results differed in that our no-rule group did learn to spell the trained words. This might have been because we used the look, say, cover, write, check, fix strategy for the no-rule group, which has previously been found to be effective (Erion, Davenport, Rodax, Scholl, & Hardy, 2009; Jaspers et al., 2012; Zielinsky, McLaughlin, & Derby, 2012). … In terms of practical implications, it can be argued that English spelling is more regular than is sometimes supposed, and that teachers can easily develop students’ knowledge of common spelling rules (Henry, 2010). Teaching the “Big 8” spelling rules as in this study would likely be of benefit.” (p. 183)

Dymock, S., & Nicholson, T. (2017). To what extent does children’s spelling improve as a result of learning words with the look, say, cover, write, check, fix strategy compared with phonological spelling strategies?, Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 22(2), 171-187.

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“Results from simulation studies suggest that when collecting one observation per week using commercial probe sets and standardized administration and scoring procedures, measurement error is minimized and 12–14 weeks’ worth of data is required to obtain a sufficiently reliable estimate of growth (Christ, Zopluoglu, Monaghen, & Van Norman, 2013). When CBMR probes are not of roughly equal difficulty and consistent standardized data collection procedures are not followed, as much as 18–20 observations may be necessary to obtain a sufficiently reliable estimate of growth (Christ et al., 2013). Collecting more observations per week decreases the amount of time required to obtain reliable estimates of growth; however, the duration of data collection and the measurement error are more influential factors on the reliability growth estimates (Christ, 2006; Christ et al., 2013).” (p. 1-2)

Parker, D.C., Van Norman, E., & Nelson, P.M. (2018). Decision rules for progress monitoring in reading: Accuracy during a large-scale tier ii intervention. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 00(0), 1–10

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“Regardless of how one defines teacher quality, historically disadvantaged students are less likely to be taught by high-quality teachers—as measured by level of education, years of experience, or value-added measures (Kalogrides & Loeb, 2013). Even more disturbingly, disadvantaged students are more likely to be taught by low-quality teachers every year (Goldhaber, Quince, & Theobald, 2018). This inequity—being taught by low-quality teachers—can be accumulative as disadvantaged students’ progress through their grades, which, in turn, can have a serious impact on a student’s educational experience and success. Therefore, considering the cumulative and accumulative nature of education, in a system in which students are exposed to a dozen or more teachers during their schooling, more attention is needed to understand the cumulative importance of high-performing, highly qualified teachers in students’ educational outcomes (DiPrete & Eirich, 2006). We know much less about the consequences of being taught by low-performing, less qualified teachers sequentially, in part, because we tend to focus on a single teacher’s contribution while neglecting the cumulative nature of education (Potter & Morris, 2017).” (p. 1)

“The previous literature has documented how sorting students by ethnicity, SES, language proficiency, or achievement can have repercussive effects on students’ educational experience across and within schools (Conger, 2005; Lucas & Berends, 2002). This also aligns with a study by Kalogrides and Loeb (2013) in which the authors state that “Sorting within schools is smaller than sorting among schools but a non-trivial amount of within school sorting occurs, particularly at the middle and high school levels” (p. 1). Therefore, to resolve and understand the inequities that are prevalent in education, we must address not only the teacher quality issues across schools and districts but also pay attention to the inequitable distribution of teacher quality occurring within schools cumulatively—an important topic that has been overlooked in the literature. … In addition, cumulative teachers’ subject-matter expertise was the only qualification measure shown to have a positive and significant relationship with students’ short- and long-term educational success. This was the case even after considering all of the model’s cumulative teacher quality indices. In other words, being taught by teachers who majored or minored in their teaching subject not only has a significant positive relationship with students’ short-term achievement but also has an enduring relationship with those students’ long-term educational success. It may seem obvious that it is preferable for a student to be taught by a teacher with subject-matter expertise. However, we must reconcile this notion with the fact that, in practice, many students are not exposed to such teachers. As many as one-in-three classrooms in most high-poverty and minorityconcentrated schools tend to have teachers teaching out-of-field and a greater proportion of students who—compared with their more advantaged peers—are low performing and less likely to enroll in and graduate from 4-year colleges (Aud et al., 2010; Clotfelter, Ladd, Vigdor, & Wheeler, 2006; Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2002). In this sense, this study reveals an opportunity to address educational problems in schools with student populations that have historically seen low achievements and low college degree attainment. By staffing our schools with teachers with subjectmatter expertise, schools may be able to expand the high-school-to-college pipeline significantly. Moreover, considering that this information is readily available for school leaders to review during the hiring process, teachers’ subject-matter expertise may be a ready policy lever and play a vital role when determining the effectiveness of one’s teaching.” (p. 17)

Lee, S.W. (2018). Pulling back the curtain: Revealing the cumulative importance of high-performing, highly qualified teachers on students’ educational outcome. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, XX(X), 1–23. DOI: 10.3102/0162373718769379

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“New analysis, taking socioeconomic factors into account, shows that about 8% of schools have “beaten their odds” for all five cohorts for which we have reliable NAPLAN progress data. Given this would only occur 3% of the time for a coin toss, we can confidently say that at least 5% of Australia’s schools are routinely out-performing.”

Goss, P. (2018). Five things we wouldn’t know without NAPLAN. The Conversation, May 15. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/five-things-we-wouldnt-know-without-naplan-94286

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“Fourth grade is a critical time in the development of reading proficiency. Chall and Jacobs (1983) first identified the “fourth grade slump”, a phenomenon in which many 3rd grade students who were previously reading on grade level experienced a drop in normative reading scores in 4th grade. They suggested that these students were not going “backwards” in reading, but were instead failing to meet grade-level expectations as text complexity increased and the reading task became more difficult. Compton, Fuchs, Fuchs, Elleman, and Gilbert (2008) described students whose reading performance was relatively typical prior to 4th grade but then demonstrated significant reading problems in grade 4 as students with late-emerging reading disability. Thus, the upper elementary grades (4th and 5th) may be particularly good targets for reading interventions because these grades are the last in which formal reading instruction traditionally occurs and also are grades in which reading to learn and understand complex texts is initially most apparent. … From this study, we can form hypotheses about more effective ways to remediate upper elementary students with reading difficulties. It may be necessary to provide even more intensive intervention for some students (e.g., longer time, smaller groups, intervention even more specifically focused to meet students’ needs). For example, it is possible to consider ways to integrate text reading throughout the school day and thus relying less on the reading intervention time to compensate for the vocabulary, background knowledge, and text-based challenges these students demonstrate. We also think it may be important to consider ways to provide individualized treatments to better align with the individual learning needs of students. This might be accomplished with even smaller groups (e.g., one-on-one, pairs), but these approaches may be less feasible for schools to implement. We are also examining ways to increase impact by considering mechanisms for improving attention and self-regulation within the reading intervention treatment.” (p.23, 40)

Vaughn, S., Solis, M., Miciak, J., Taylor, W. P. & Fletcher, J. M. (2016). Effects from a randomized control trial comparing researcher and school-implemented treatments with fourth graders with significant reading difficulties. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 9(1), 23–44.

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“No previous empirical study has investigated whether the learning disabilities (LD) identification decisions of proposed methods to operationalize processing strengths and weaknesses approaches for LD identification are associated with differential treatment response. We investigated whether the identification decisions of the concordance/discordance model (C/DM; Hale & Fiorello, 2004) and cross-battery assessment approach (XBA method; Flanagan, Ortiz, & Alfonso, 2007) were consistent and whether they predicted intervention response beyond that accounted for by pretest performance on measures of reading. Psychoeducational assessments were administered at pretest to 203 4th graders with low reading comprehension and individual results were utilized to identify students who met LD criteria according to the C/DM and XBA methods and students who did not. Resulting group status permitted an investigation of agreement for identification methods and whether group status at pretest (LD or not LD) was associated with differential treatment response to an intensive reading intervention. The LD identification decisions of the XBA and C/DM demonstrated poor agreement with one another (κ = −.10). Comparisons of posttest performance for students who met LD criteria and those who did not meet were largely null, with small effect sizes across all measures. LD status, as identified through the C/DM and XBA approaches, was not associated with differential treatment response and did not contribute educationally meaningful information about how students would respond to intensive reading intervention. These results do not support the value of cognitive assessment utilized in this way as part of the LD identification process.” (p. 898)

Miciak, J., Williams, J. L., Taylor, W. P., Cirino, P. T., Fletcher, J. M., & Vaughn, S. (2016). Do processing patterns of strengths and weaknesses predict differential treatment response? Journal of Educational Psychology, 108(6), 898-909.

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“Students with reading difficulties may lag behind their average performing grade level peers in vocabulary acquisition by as much as two years by the end of 2nd grade (Biemiller, 2005). Therefore, students with low reading comprehension may benefit from interventions provided later in their educational career, specifically during upper elementary school that focus on both vocabulary and reading. The grade-level demands of text become increasingly difficult in 4th grade as indicated by the “fourth grade slump” with many 3rd grade students who were reading on grade level experience a drop in normative reading scores in 4th grade (Chall & Jacobs, 1983). More recently Compton et al. (2008) identified students with typical reading performance in 3rd grade who begin to demonstrate reading problems in 4th grade with late emerging reading disability. Since 4th grade is typically the year that students are introduced to more complex text, it is an appropriate year to consider vocabulary and reading interventions for students who have low reading comprehension.” (p.103)

Solís, M., Scammacca, N., Barth, A.E., &. Roberts, G.J. (2017). Text-based vocabulary intervention training study: Supporting fourth graders with low reading comprehension and learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal, 15(1), 103–115.

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“Chall's seminal study of low-income students compared with middle-income students (Chall & Jacobs, 1983) clearly defines the continual regression in reading for students with low vocabulary. These researchers reported a decrease beginning in fourth grade in low-income students' knowledge of word meanings (i.e., words that are abstract, academic, and less common) that became more pronounced as children progressed through the grades. The text demands in fourth grade and beyond require students to know and acquire many words and concepts. Thus, interventions that include vocabulary and concept development are of particular importance as students enter the upper elementary grades. Results of intervention studies in vocabulary development with older students with reading difficulties yield positive outcomes using a variety of approaches, including mnemonics, cognitive strategy instruction, direct instruction, activity-based methods, and computer-assisted instruction (Jitendra, Edwards, Sacks, & Jacobson, 2004). Approaches that use explicit instruction combined with activities that engage students in manipulating words and word meanings (e.g., mnemonics, word associations) appear to be the most effective for increasing vocabulary and maintaining the use of the newly learned words (Mastropieri, Scruggs, & Graetz, 2003; Bryant, Goodwin, Bryant, & Higgins, 2003).” (p.339)

Vaughn, S., Fletcher, J. M., Francis. D. J., Denton, C. A., Wanzek, J., Wexler, J., & Romain, M. A. (2008). Response to intervention with older students with reading difficulties. Learning and Individual Differences, 18(3), 338–345.

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“Numerous studies have documented the superiority of DI in promoting reading achievement. These results have appeared with the general student population (e.g., Becker & Carnine, 1980; O’Brien & Ware, 2002; Stebbins, St. Pierre, Proper, Anderson, & Cerva, 1977; Vitale & Joseph, 2008) and with students with disabilities. Studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of DI reading programs with students with learning disabilities (Benner, 2007; Benner, Kinder, Beaudoin, Stein, & Hirschmann, 2005; Cooke, Gibbs, Campbell, & Shalvis, 2004; Kuder, 1990, 1991; Malmgren & Leone, 2000; Scarlato & Asahara, 2004), students with intellectual disabilities (Flores, Shippen, Alberto, & Crowe, 2004; Haring & Krug, 1975; Maggs & Morath, 1976; Malmgren & Leone, 2000; Riepl, Marchand-Martella, & Martella, 2008), children who demonstrate developmental delays (Flores & Ganz, 2007; Riepl et al., 2008), and students identified with emotional disturbance (Benner, 2007; Cook et al., 2004; Malmgren & Leone, 2000; Scarlato & Asahara, 2004; Strong, Wehby, Falk, & Lane, 2004). Additionally, DI reading programs have been effectively implemented outside of traditional elementary schools in a variety of settings, including middle schools (Dowdell, 1996; Grossen, 2004; Lewis, 1982; Shippen, Houchins, Steventon, & Sartor, 2005), high schools (Harris, Marchand-Martella, & Martella, 2000; Marchand-Martella, Martella, Orlob, & Ebey, 2000), a residential treatment center (Scarlato & Asahara, 2004), alternative schools (Steventon & Fredrick, 2003), and juvenile corrections facilities (Drakeford, 2002; Houchins, Jolivette, Krezmien, & Baltodano, 2008; Malmgren & Leone, 2000;). Last, DI programs have been shown to be effective in increasing reading achievement with English Language Learners (Grossen, 2004; Gunn, Smolkowski, Biglan, & Black, 2002; Kamps et al., 2007). As would be expected, studies have also found that the magnitude of the results is stronger when the program is implemented with greater fidelity (e.g., Ross et al., 2004; Stockard, 2009).” (p.220)

Stockard, J. (2010). Promoting reading achievement and countering the “fourth-grade slump”: The impact of direct instruction on reading achievement in fifth grade. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), 15(3), 218-240.

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“Phonic work is best understood as a body of knowledge and skills about how the alphabet works, rather than one of a range of optional 'methods' or 'strategies' for teaching children how to read. For example, phonic programmes should not encourage children to guess words from non-phonic clues such as pictures before applying phonic knowledge and skills.” (p.2)

Department for Education (2010). Phonics teaching materials: Core criteria and the self-assessment process. Retrieved from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/298420/phonics_core_criteria_and_the_self-assessment_process.pdf

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“As recommended by the Rose review, all teachers in England are now expected to teach synthetic phonics as the first and main strategy for reading. The approach replaces the searchlights multi-cueing model advocated by the 1998 National Literacy Strategy. … The review found much convincing evidence to show that 'synthetic' phonics was the form of systematic phonic work that offered the vast majority of beginners the best route to becoming skilled readers and made a convincing case for the inadequacy of the existing 'searchlights' model for beginner readers.” (p.2)

The General Teaching Council for England. (2007). Research for teachers: Teaching phonics effectively. Retrieved from http://www.ntrp.org.uk/sites/all/documents/Teaching%20phonics%20effectively.pdf

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“Therefore it is claimed that literacy acquisition may be easier with transparent languages because these languages only require children to learn one-to-one correspondences between spoken and written units (Wyse & Goswami, 2008). There is much evidence to support this view. Finnish children read with 90% accuracy after a very short period of formal instruction (approximately 10 weeks) whereas English children take four or five years to achieve the same level of accuracy (Goswami, 2005). Seymour, Aro, and Erskine (2003) compared reading development across 14 European languages. Their findings revealed striking differences between languages. At the end of grade one English-speaking children performed poorly (34% correct word reading). In contrast, children learning to read in transparent orthographies (Greek, Finnish, German, Italian, and Spanish), were close to ceiling performance. Furthermore, a recent study of Italian children by Desimoni, Scalisi and Orsolini (2012) also provides further evidence ‘that the consistency of an orthography affects the characteristics of reading and spelling acquisition’ (p12)” (p.85)

Devonshire, V., Morris, P., Fluck, M. (2013). Spelling and reading development: The effect of teaching children multiple levels of representation in their orthography. Learning and Instruction, 25, 85-94.

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“Learning correct spelling is important for several reasons: First, misspellings can cause errors and difficulties in comprehension. Second, readers may develop negative impressions of a writer’s arguments if his prose contains misspelled words (1). And finally, learning conventional spellings of words allows people to read the words more quickly (2) and concentrate on ideas rather than spelling.” How children should learn to spell is controversial. … In this article, I have argued that the goal of spelling instruction is for children to understand how their writing system works. Children learn about some aspects of spelling on their own, including from exposure to written words while reading, but reading experience is insufficient for children to spell proficiently. The traditional instructional method—having children look at spellings, visualize them mentally, and try to reproduce them—does little to help them understand the workings of the writing system. Phonics instruction goes some way toward this goal, but more comprehensive instruction is needed to present a full picture. (p. 1, 5)

Treiman, R. (2018). Teaching and learning spelling. Child Development Perspectives, 0(0), 1–5.

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“Six main conclusions can be drawn from these analyses about low SES reading acquisition: (1) listening comprehension is at the heart of the reading acquisition process; (2) word reading depends directly on phonemic awareness and indirectly on listening comprehension; (3) decoding depends on word reading; (4) Morphological awareness and vocabulary have an indirect influence on word reading via both listening comprehension and phoneme awareness; (5) the components of morphological awareness assessed by our tasks have independent relationships with listening comprehension; and (6) neither phonemic nor morphological awareness influence vocabulary directly.” (p. 1-2)

Colé, P., Cavalli, E., Duncan, L.G., Theurel, A., Gentaz, E., Sprenger-Charolles, L. (2018). What is the influence of morphological knowledge in the early stages of reading acquisition among low SES children? A graphical modelling approach. Frontiers in Psychology 9(547), 1-15.

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“There is accumulating evidence that the degree of myelination in left hemisphere cortico-cortical tracts correlates positively with reading skill (Hoeft et al., 2011; Niogi and McCandliss, 2006). Moreover, there is evidence (using Diffusion Tensor Imaging; DTI) of reduced myelination in left hemisphere white matter tracts connecting inferior frontal, temporal, occipital, and parietal regions among adults with a history of reading disability (Vandermosten et al., 2012). Both increased and decreased anatomical (using DTI) and functional connectivity (using task-related fMRI) within a network of dorsal and ventral brain regions have been reported in struggling readers compared to typically achieving readers (Richards et al., 2015). Other task-related fMRI studies reported reduced connectivity within the reading network in adults with a history of reading difficulties compared to non-impaired readers (Schurz et al., 2014; Van der Mark et al., 2011). fMRI evidence of a less integrated brain network has also been found in Chinese dyslexic children compared to typically achieving readers which was characterized by reduced long-range communication and increased local processing (Liu et al., 2015).” (p. 20)

Dimitriadis, S.I., Simos, P.G., Fletcher, J.M., & Papanicolaou, A.C. (2018). Aberrant resting-state functional brain networks in dyslexia: Symbolic mutual information analysis of neuromagnetic signals. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 126, 20-29.

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“The results of the present meta-analysis are generally in line with earlier research suggesting that decoding skills are a relative strength in children with Down syndrome, and adding that the limited number of studies in this area means that more research is needed. The role of vocabulary knowledge in learning to decode words has also been highlighted. Children with Down syndrome perform in line with typically developing children at the same word recognition level on measures of nonword decoding, but show deficits on measures of the two underlying skills: vocabulary and phonological awareness. Differences in vocabulary explain substantial variance in nonword decoding skills, while phonological awareness did not have as much impact as traditionally seen in studies of typically developing children. We suggest that early vocabulary interventions for children with Down syndrome may be beneficial to their development of decoding skills, but such programmes need to be rigorously evaluated in future research studies.” (p.745)

Naess, K., Melby-Lervag, M., Hulme, C. & Lyster, S. (2011). Language and verbal short-term memory skills in children with Down syndrome: A meta-analytic review. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 33(12), 737-747.

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“These findings are novel in applying a data-driven analysis approach to demonstrate the robustness of RAN, PA, VSTM, and LSK tasks administered in early kindergarten in differentiating the discrete subtypes of dyslexia and predicting later reading performance with high accuracy. Current results carry important implications for improved early identification, differentiated remediation, and an evolving understanding of dyslexia. The high stability of group membership supports the feasibility of early identification of risk, prior to reading failure. This is important for optimizing the educational and psychosocial outcomes of children with dyslexia. Performance on the non-verbal IQ measure of the different groups was proportional to the general level of performance across measures, showing no supporting evidence for the IQ–discrepancy model of dyslexia. Finally, the over-representation in low-SES schools of PA and RAN deficit profiles, but not double-deficit or surface-deficit profiles, provides insight both into the environmental factors influencing dyslexia risk, and also possible hereditary factors.” (p.14-15)

Ozernov-Palchik, O., Norton, E.S., Sideridis, G., Beach, S.D., Wolf, M., Gabrieli, J.D.E., & Gaab, N. (2017). Longitudinal stability of pre-reading skill profiles of kindergarten children: Implications for early screening and theories of reading. Developmental Science, 20(5). e 12471.

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“Much of the research and practice of the past 20 years has dealt with how to support students with instructional level reading, consistent with Betts’ (1946) view, described earlier. Researchers have addressed instructional level reading as part of intervention (e.g., Schwartz 2005) as well as more general classroom instruction (e.g., Iaquinta 2006), but there is little research, and certainly no consensus, on the best ways to support students in reading more challenging texts (i.e., frustration level, according to Betts 1946). At the same time, there is little evidence to suggest that Betts’ guidelines––or various adaptations of Betts, like those used by Fountas and Pinnell (1996), Leslie and Caldwell (2011), or Morris (2008)—hold any standing (e.g., Cunningham 2013). While there is a long history of employing thresholds for accuracy in considering text difficulty, no definitive word recognition percentage exists to guide matching readers with texts. Instead, research on reading instruction should likely consider how aspects of the text, (such as its structure, cohesion, or narrativity) might interact with the reader’s word recognition and comprehension skills.

This review was instigated by the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, which call for an increase in the complexity of texts that students encounter in U.S. classrooms. Although the goal of having elementary students read more complex texts may be worthy, the design and enactment of the corresponding state and federal policies was based on a limited evidence base (Hiebert 2011/2012); in fact, some argue that the text reading levels recommended by the CCSS actually preceded a clear evidence base (Pearson, 2013; Pearson and Hiebert, 2013). A review of the research, such as the present one, suggests that the implications of this policy may not be necessarily positive. When students read texts that are more challenging, various reading outcomes tend, as a whole, to decline. If we give students more complex texts without any support, we are unlikely to see the intended benefits of the policy. Any future instantiations, therefore, need to be considerate of the types of contexts necessary to facilitate students’ successful reading of complex texts. Specifically, we draw attention to the importance of scaffolds and instructional supports to assist students as they read more challenging texts.

Appropriate evidence-based instructional techniques for supporting students’ reading of more complex texts must be established. Moreover, it is likely that these supportive techniques will vary according to students’ developmental stage of reading, characteristics of the text itself, as well as characteristics of the instructional task or activity (RAND Reading Study Group 2002). If students are to read more complex texts, commensurate with the CCSS guidelines for text complexity (see NGACBP and CCSSO 2010, Appendix A)—we must attend to the types of scaffolds necessary in order to avoid negative repercussions. Three intervention studies (Morgan et al. 2000; O’Connor et al. 2002, 2010) included in this review demonstrated no significant differences for reading comprehension when students read texts that were more difficult than others. In each of these studies, students were receiving fluency support, whether from peers (Morgan et al. 2000) or in a supportive small-group setting from their teacher (O’Connor et al. 2002, 2010). These findings echo previous work (Stahl and Heubach 2005) about the benefits of reading difficult texts with others within supportive instructional contexts. … Furthermore, the expectation that teachers include more complex texts in their classrooms must be accompanied by professional development for teachers to build a clearer understanding of what makes one text more complex than another. Teachers are often left to rely on disparate and even competing metrics—that often privilege certain aspects of text complexity (word and sentence length) over others. ” (p.145-6)

Amendum, S.J., & Conradi, K., & Hiebert, E. (2018). Does text complexity matter in the elementary grades? A research synthesis of text difficulty and elementary students’ reading fluency and comprehension. Educational Psychology Review, 30(1), 121–151.

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“Concomitant language and behavioral deficits in children and youth have been well documented in the research literature (Benner et al. 2002; Hollo et al. 2014; Yew and O’Kearney 2013). In spite of these known relations, the majority of children with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) are likely to have unidentified language deficits, as the immediate need for behavioral intervention may eclipse focus on diagnosis and intervention targeting language deficit; that is, problem behavior is often a more immediate concern relative to the impact it can have on classroom and school environments. Researchers have estimated that 68 to 97 % of students with emotional disturbance (ED) experience clinical language deficits (Camarata et al. 1988; Nelson et al. 2005), and a recent meta-analysis estimated that 81 % of students with EBD had language deficits that were unidentified (Hollo et al. 2014), highlighting that language deficits in these children went untreated, and these children likely only received services for their behavioral problems.” (p.62)

Chow, J.C., & Wehby, J.H. (2018). Associations between language and problem behavior: A systematic review and correlational meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 30(1), 61–82. DOI 10.1007/s10648-016-9385-z

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“Our meta-analysis, like those published earlier, supports the conclusion that constructing and studying concept maps are effective learning activities relative to a variety of other teaching and learning strategies. Constructing and studying concept maps are effective in group and individual activities, in STEM and non-STEM subjects, and at all levels of schooling. Although Nesbit and Adesope (2006) found differences in the efficacy of using concept maps in individual and cooperative tasks, and across different map types, the present review analyzed far more studies and found no such differences. … Nesbit and Adesope (2013) proposed seven cognitively oriented hypotheses that could explain the advantages of using concept maps for teaching and learning in comparison with reading text, listening to lectures, participating in discussions, writing summaries, and other instructional activities. First, using concept maps may enable dual coding of information in verbal and visual components of longer-term memory and thereby support more effective retrieval. Second, in comparison with text, they may allow cognitive load to be distributed across the visual and verbal channels of working memory, thus avoiding an overload of verbal working memory. Third, concept maps tend to consolidate multiple references to a concept at a single point in space, while in text, audio or other sequential formats the references would be spread over the sequence. Consolidating all relationships to a concept around a single point, a kind of spatial contiguity, may promote a more semantically integrated understanding of the concept. Fourth, in some types of concept maps, particularly those specified by Novak and Cañas (2008), superordinate and subordinate semantic relationships (e.g., mammal-squirrel) are signaled more strongly than they typically are in text. Fifth, the noun-verb-noun syntax used to express propositions in concept maps is much simpler and more accessible to poor readers and writers than the typical prose of expository text. Sixth, the decisions required to construct a concept map (e.g., determining which nodes should be placed close together) entail greater elaborative or germane processing than the decisions required to construct expository text. Finally, because concept maps take up more space than text, they may demand a greater degree of concision or summarization which in turn prompts greater elaborative processing.”

Schroeder, N.L., Nesbit, J.C., & Anguiano, C.J., & Adesope, O.O. (2018). Studying and constructing concept maps: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review. On-line First. DOI 10.1007/s10648-017-9403-9

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“The first question was ‘What is the effect of teacher professional development on reading measures among elementary school students?’ The meta-analysis showed the reported effect size was of 0.225, which was significant at p < 0.5. The sub-questions referred to candidate moderators and we were able to explore ‘Does the length of the PD moderate this effect?’ The answer through the meta-analysis showed that shorter PD produced a larger effect size of 0.367, p < .001. The findings also showed that quality of the PD was more of an influence than the PD length in itself. Weight of evidence showed that high-quality PD, which was generally shorter in duration, produced a larger effect size of 0.347, p < 0.001, while PD studies with generally longer hours in which they were of medium quality reported no significant effects (g = 0.077, p > 0.5). For future directions, research needs to take a more rigorous approach with regard to the quality of studies that are to be conducted in terms of design quality, length, and the type and content of PD delivery undertaken. This review has shown that while most studies have used the traditional approach of workshop and summer institutes, PD studies that have produced better results took a non-traditional path, using coaching.”

Basma1, B., & Savage, R. (2018). Teacher professional development and student literacy growth: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review. On-line First. DOI 10.1007/s10648-017-9416-4

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“It has often been observed that students learn steps in a procedure without understanding how each step relates to others or contributes to the goal of the procedure (Siegler 2002). Consequently, learners are less able to transfer the procedure to tasks with differing conditions. Similarly, students studying an expository text may read each sentence but neither connect new information to prior knowledge nor consider implications arising from new information. Both situations can be characterized by absent or ineffective metacognition whereby a learner fails to recognize (metacognitive monitoring) and repair gaps (metacognitive control) in understanding.” (p.1)

Bisra1, K., Liu, O., Nesbit, J.C., Salimi1, F., & Winne1, P.H. (2018). Inducing self-explanation: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review. On-line First. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-018-9434-x

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“Domain-general cognitive knowledge has frequently been used to explain skill when domain-specific knowledge held in long-term memory may provide a better explanation. An emphasis on domain-general knowledge may be misplaced if domain-specific knowledge is the primary factor driving acquired intellectual skills. We trace the long history of attempts to explain human cognition by placing a primary emphasis on domain-general skills with a reduced emphasis on domain-specific knowledge and indicate how otherwise unintelligible data can be easily explained by assumptions concerning the primacy of domain-specific knowledge. That primacy can be explained by aspects of evolutionary educational psychology. Once the importance of domain-specific knowledge is accepted, instructional design theories and processes are transformed.” (p. 265)

Tricot, A., & Sweller, J. (2014). Domain-specific knowledge and why teaching generic skills does not work. Educational Psychology Review, 26(2), 265-283.

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“ … the findings suggest that children with deficits in critical oral language skills should receive targeted oral language instruction and intervention. Intervention studies focusing specifically on children with SCD have indicated that interventions containing an oral language component are more effective. For example, Clarke, Snowling, Truelove, and Hulme (2010) randomly assigned three groups of 8- and 9-year-olds with SCD to receive three different types of interventions: text comprehension training, oral language training (without reading or writing), and a combined text comprehension-oral language training format. All three groups showed reliable and statistically significant gains in reading comprehension compared with the control group; however, the group that received the oral language training maintained the greatest gains after an 11-month follow-up (for a review, see Snowling & Hulme, 2012). These outcomes are also aligned with the findings of the present review. Thus, classroom instruction and intervention that incorporate elements that encourage comprehension proficiency, such as reading fluency (NICHD, 2000) and oral language (Snow et al., 1998), will likely be more effective at remediating reading comprehension difficulties.” (p.22-3)

“As is emphasized by the simple view and interactive models of reading comprehension, oral language is a critical component of reading comprehension. This assertion is supported by the current findings and previous studies (Kendeou et al., 2009; Roth et al., 2002). For instance, two studies included within the present meta-analysis, Catts et al. (2006) and Nation et al. (2004), found that a substantial portion of children who are identified as having specific language impairment (SLI) also have coexisting reading comprehension difficulties. … the findings suggest that children with deficits in critical oral language skills should receive targeted oral language instruction and intervention. Intervention studies focusing specifically on children with SCD have indicated that interventions containing an oral language component are more effective. … Thus, classroom instruction and intervention that incorporate elements that encourage comprehension proficiency, such as reading fluency (NICHD, 2000) and oral language (Snow et al., 1998), will likely be more effective at remediating reading comprehension difficulties.” (p. 21-23)

Spencer, M. &. Wagner, R.J. (2018). The comprehension problems of children with poor reading comprehension despite adequate decoding: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, Online First.

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“Differences in identification criteria are potentially problematic because it can lead to over- or underidentification. Such differences can also potentially lead to different groups of children being identified as having SCD over time.” (p.23)

Spencer, M. &. Wagner, R.J. (2018). The comprehension problems of children with poor reading comprehension despite adequate decoding: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, Online First.

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“It is clear that there are many things that can be done to enhance the literacy learning of ELL students. Some are specific actions for this population, such as using the home language as the basis of instruction or providing ELLs with feedback on grammatical errors that result from their limited English proficiency. There are also many things that can be done that are not specialized at all but are just good teaching practices with greater intensity of effort, such as providing sufficient repetition and reinforcement, differentiating individual and small group teaching, and offering adequate scaffolding.” (p.496)

August, D., McCardle, P., & Shanahan, T. (2014). Developing literacy in English Language Learners: Findings from a review of the experimental research. School Psychology Review, 43(4), 490-498.

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“The purpose of this study was to investigate differences between readers with different levels of comprehension skill when engaging in a causal questioning activity during reading, and the varied effects on inference generation. Fourth-grade readers (n = 74) with different levels of comprehension skill read narrative texts aloud and were asked causal questions at specific points during reading. Responses to questions were examined for the types of inferences the readers made during reading. There was no main effect of comprehension skill in terms of readers’ text-based inferences made in response to the causal questions. However, readers differed in their use of knowledge-based inferences in response to the causal questions, and in particular knowledge-based inferences that connected to related text information.” (p.258)

Carlson, S.E., van den Broek, P., McMaster, K., Rapp, D.N., Bohn-Gettler, C.M., Kendeou, P., & White, M.J. (2014). Effects of comprehension skill on inference generation during reading. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 61(3), 258-274.

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“Failure to activate relevant, existing background knowledge may be a cause of poor reading comprehension. This failure may cause particular problems with inferences that depend heavily on prior knowledge. Conversely, teaching how to use background knowledge in the context of gap-filling inferences could improve reading comprehension in general. This idea was supported in an experimental study comprising 16 sixth-grade classes (N = 236) randomly assigned to experimental or control conditions. In the experimental condition, students' contribution to “gap-filling” inferences with expository texts were made explicit by means of graphic models and inference-demanding questions. After eight 30-min sessions, a large training effect was found on students' inference making skills with a substantial and sustained transfer effect to a standard measure of reading comprehension. The effects were not mediated by students' motivation, decoding ability, vocabulary, or nonverbal IQ.” (p.435)

Elbro, C., & Buch-Iversen, I. (2013) Activation of background knowledge for inference making: Effects on reading comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17(6), 435-452.

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“The act of inferencing is paramount for text comprehension because it makes possible for readers to establish a representation of the meaning of the text in memory on the basis of its coherence relations and the readers’ general knowledge (Gernsbacher, 1990, 1997; Halldorson & Singer, 2002; Linderholm, 2002; Long, Oppy, & Seely, 1997; Magliano, Trabasso, & Graesser, 1999; Noordmann & Vonk, 1992; Trabasso & Magliano, 1996; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). Hence, if readers fail to execute processes that integrate different portions of a text and to make inferences based on their general knowledge to elaborate on the text representation, they may fail to understand the text and have difficulties in remembering it (Horiba, 2000; Linderholm & van den Broek, 2002; Long et al., 1997; Trabasso & Suh, 1993; Trabasso, Suh, Payton, & Jain, 1995).” (p. 138)

Baretta, L., Tomitch, L.M.B., MacNair, N., Lim, V.K. & Waldie, K.E. (2009). Inference making while reading narrative and expository texts: An ERP study. Psychology & Neuroscience, 2(2), 137 – 145. Retrieved from http://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2011-14939-005.pdf

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“We have separated reading comprehension into the two distinct domains of reading = decoding text (i.e., inside-out components) and understanding text (i.e., outside-in components) purposefully. This conceptualization allows us to consider instruction that supports students’ understanding of text independent from instruction that helps students become better decoders. Specifically, we provide examples from current intervention research that illustrate how strategies for constructing meaning can be taught directly to students with very different levels of decoding proficiency (i.e., first graders and adolescents). … Students who received direct instruction on summarization strategies performed significantly better on factual questions than a control group of students with learning disabilities, and they demonstrated significantly higher performance on questions addressing main ideas, cause-and-effect relationships, concepts, and inferences.” (p. 222-223, 238)

Coyne, M.D., Zipoli Jr., R.P., Chard, D.J., Faggella-Luby, M., Ruby, M., Santoro, L.E., & Baker, S. (2009). Direct instruction of comprehension: Instructional examples from intervention research on listening and reading comprehension. Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 25(2-3), 221-245.

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“Pathways of relations of language, cognitive, and literacy skills (i.e., working memory, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, inference, comprehension monitoring, word reading, and listening comprehension) to reading comprehension were examined by comparing four variations of direct and indirect effects model of reading. Results from 350 English-speaking second graders revealed that language and cognitive component skills had direct and indirect relations to listening comprehension, explaining 86% of variance. Word reading and listening comprehension completely mediated the relations of language and cognitive component skills to reading comprehension and explained virtually all the variance in reading comprehension. Total effects of component skills varied from small to substantial. The findings support the direct and indirect effects model of reading model and indicate that word reading and listening comprehension are upper-level skills that are built on multiple language and cognitive component skills, which have direct and indirect relations among themselves. The results underscore the importance of understanding nature of relations.” (p.310)

Young-Suk, G.K. (2017). Why the Simple View of Reading is not simplistic: Unpacking component skills of reading using a direct and indirect effect model of reading (DIER). Scientific Studies of Reading, 21(4), 310-333.

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“Results showed specific efficacy of the two interventions, with participants trained in one ability outperforming those from the other group on this specific ability at post-test. Moreover, the PA intervention revealed transfer effects on the sub-lexical processes of spelling, while the RAN intervention enhanced word reading speed. Finally, the results demonstrated the efficacy of a RAN-objects’ intervention for the first time. These findings provide a new piece of evidence showing the independence of PA and RAN, each process influencing the acquisition of literacy skills in a different way. The efficacy and the specific transfer effects of both interventions open up new perspectives for prevention and targeted remediation of reading disabilities.” (p.1)

Stappen, C.V., & Van Reybroeck, M.V. (2018). Phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming are independent phonological competencies with specific impacts on word reading and spelling: An intervention Study. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1-16.

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“This well - controlled study provided important missing information regarding simultaneous multisensory input as efficacious reading intervention. Results supported structured language instruction within an Orton - Gillingham based program as effective in promoting basic literacy skills. However, simultaneous multisensory input did not provide a treatment effect above and beyond the structured language effect. Other components inherent to structured language may have directly impacted treatment effects. This study supported extant literature that explicit systematic language instruction is important for developing foundational decoding and encoding skills for both children with TD and DYS. Importantly, the multifactorial nature of dyslexia was amplified in this study. The critical need for individuals with dyslexia, especially treatment resisters, to be provided with differentiated instruction that is diagnostic, prescriptive, and empirically based was accentuated.” (p. 81-2)

Schlesinger, N.W. (2016). The impact of multisensory instruction on learning letter names and sounds, word reading and spelling. A dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy, Arizona State University, August 20. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d432/67b7649de43c68cce460b65cfbebc66d2b36.pdf?_ga=2.124510216.382175552.1522738269-1490882834.1522738269

The study also published in Annals of Dyslexia:

“The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the use of simultaneous multisensory structured language instruction promoted better letter name and sound production, word reading, and word spelling for second grade children with typical development (N = 6) or with dyslexia (N = 5) than structured language instruction alone. The use of non-English graphemes (letters) to represent two pretend languages was used to control for children's lexical knowledge. A multiple baseline, multiple probe across subjects single-case design, with an embedded alternating treatments design, was used to compare the efficacy of multisensory and structured language interventions. Both interventions provided explicit systematic phonics instruction; however, the multisensory intervention also utilized simultaneous engagement of at least two sensory modalities (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic/tactile). Participant's graphed data was visually analyzed, and individual Tau-U and weighted Tau-U effect sizes were calculated for the outcome variables of letter name production, letter sound production, word reading, and word spelling. The multisensory intervention did not provide an advantage over the structured intervention for participants with typical development or dyslexia. However, both interventions had an overall treatment effect for participants with typical development and dyslexia, although intervention effects varied by outcome variable.”

Schlesinger, N.W., & Gray, S. (2017). The impact of multisensory instruction on learning letter names and sounds, word reading, and spelling. Annals of Dyslexia, 67(3), 219-258.

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“If phonic programmes do not represent a progression from simple to more complex phonic knowledge and fail to include all the major grapheme/phoneme correspondences, then children may be left ‘high and dry’ and resort to guessing. Such a strategy becomes increasingly unreliable as texts become more complex and the number of visually unfamiliar words that children confront steadily grows. … In relation to programmes not maintaining a consistent focus in how they deal with grapheme-phoneme correspondences, our experience suggests that the effects of recent policy changes has sometimes led to teachers becoming distracted from the fact that phonics is a means to an end, comprising skills and knowledge that need to be constantly rehearsed, practised and applied in facilitating the comprehension and composition of text. Programmes that do not provide for the development of both blending and segmenting skills risk losing sight of the importance of children embedding these skills in the uses of literacy across the curriculum. … One further point relates to programme fidelity (Rose, 2006, para. 55). It is apparent in some schools that further confusion is being risked by the teaching of a specific GPC and then immediately using a book from a programme first published many years ago and based on a whole-word teaching approach. This ‘mismatching’ is still a surprisingly common practice and is inconsistent with the advice that “It is important that texts are of the appropriate level for children to apply and practise the phonic knowledge and skills that they have learnt” (Department for Education, 2014). … In the view of the authors of the present article, the number and range of the linguistic errors in current phonics programmes pose a significant risk, not only to the implementation of the national curriculum, but also to the quality of the teaching and learning of early reading.” (p.7-8)

Beard, R., Brooks, G., & Ampaw-Farr, J. (2018). How linguistically-informed are phonics programmes? Literacy, 00(00), xxxx.

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“ … for reforms that ask teachers to think about their work in significantly different ways, the salience of very large changes may actually help teachers shift their thinking in ways that promote high fidelity implementation. … by and large, those teachers who reported being required to make larger changes also implemented the reforms with higher fidelity, especially in the program that requires more interpretation to implement.” (p.1309)

Anderson, E.R. (2017). Accommodating change: Relating fidelity of implementation to program fit in educational reforms. American Educational Research Journal, 54(6), 1288–1315.

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“ … observational data sometimes meet the assumptions of a quasi-experimental design, at least approximately, such that causal conclusions are credible. If so, the estimates of quasi-experimental designs—which exploit naturally occurring selection processes and real-world implementations of the treatment—are frequently better generalizable than the results from a controlled laboratory experiment. Thus, if external validity is a major concern, the results of randomized experiments should always be complemented by findings from valid quasi-experiments.” (p.404)

Kim, Y., & Steiner, P. (2016). Quasi-experimental designs for causal inference. Educational Psychologist, 51(3–4), 395–405.

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“Findings from this body of work indicate that children and adolescents with ID can obtain higher levels of reading achievement than previously anticipated (Allor, Mathes, Roberts, Cheatham, & Al Otaiba, 2014). Recent research also suggests that the historic focus on functional reading (e.g., signs, restaurant words) for this population of learners is likely too limited of a focus for many (Browder et al., 2009). Research outcomes suggest that integrating components of traditional reading instruction (e.g., phonics, phonemic awareness) into programs for students with ID will lead to increases in independent reading skills for many (Allor, Al Otaiba, Ortiz, & Folsom, 2014). These increased reading abilities are likely to lead to greater postsecondary outcomes, including employment, independence, and quality of life. Unfortunately, many teachers remain unsure of how to best design and deliver reading intervention for students with ID.” (p.19)

Lemons, C.J., Allor, J.H., Al Otaiba, S., & LeJeune, L.M. (2016). 10 research-based tips for enhancing literacy instruction for students with intellectual disability. Teaching Exceptional Children, 49(1), 18– 30.

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“The over-arching evaluative concept educational practitioners should hold is that replicability of findings is the most important scientific standard for research findings to meet. That is, replicability of findings is the most useful form of evidence-based information of effectiveness, not the findings of a single study, no matter how well such studies are designed. In emphasising replicability, the logical structure of multiple-baseline designs (see Sidman, 1960) is a far more appropriate design framework for the evaluation of the effectiveness of instructional interventions than traditional group designs because they involve intrastudy replications of the effects of experimental interventions across what Campbell and Stanley (1963) call “time series”. (p. 28-29)

Vitale, M. R., & Kaniuka, T. S. (2012). Adapting a multiple-baseline design rationale for evaluating instructional interventions: Implications for the adoption of Direct Instruction reading curricula for evidence-based reform. Journal of Direct Instruction, 12, 25-36.

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“This study’s findings shed light on important considerations for crafting effective teacher preparation experiences, as well as bolster empirical-based arguments that teacher preparation makes a difference in promoting special education teacher preparedness and efficacy. Specifically, findings point to the importance of pre-service preparation coursework relying less on lecture-based models and, instead, providing more practical experiences—a position argued by experts who advocate a practice-based approach to teacher education (Ball & Forzani, 2009; Grossman et al., 2009; Leko, Brownell, Sindelar, & Kiely, 2015).” (p.11)

Knackstedt, K.M., Leko, M.M., & Baustien Siuty, M. (2017). The effects of secondary special education preparation in reading: Research to inform state policy in a new era. Teacher Education and Special Education, 1–16.

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“ … it is clear that the roots of explicit instruction come directly from Direct Instruction and direct instruction, both of which have a history of effectiveness, especially for students with, and at-risk for, LD.” (p.145)

Hughes, C.A., Morris, J.R. Therrien, W.J., & Benson, S.K. (2017). Explicit instruction: Historical and contemporary contexts. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 32(3), 140–148.

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“There is no big thing. It’s all pick, pick, picky details. Direct Instruction is just attention to a lot of tiny details (Engelmann, 1977).”

Stockard, J. (Ed.). (2014). The science and success of Engelmann’s Direct Instruction. NIFDI Press. Retrieved from https://www.nifdi.org/hikashop-menu-for-categories-listing/product/43-engelmann-s-direct-instruction-selected-writings-from-the-past-half-century

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Mem Fox’s comment: " … if we read three storybooks a night to our infant children, by the age of five they'll be able to read" (Albrechtsen, 2004, p.13).

Albrechtsen, J. (2004, April 28). Latham stutters over reading revolution. The Australian, p.13.

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“The components of effective reading instruction are the same whether the focus is prevention or intervention: phonemic awareness and phonemic decoding skills, fluency in word recognition and text processing, construction of meaning, vocabulary, spelling, and writing.”

Foorman, B. R., & Torgesen, J. K. (2001). Critical elements of classroom and small-group instruction promote reading success in all children. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 16(4), 203–212.

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“Any well-founded educational intervention must be based on a sound theory of the causes of a particular form of learning difficulty, which in turn must be based on an understanding of how a given skill is learned by typically developing children.”

Snowling, M. J., & Hulme, C. (2011). Evidence-based interventions for reading and language difficulties: Creating a virtuous circle. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 1–23.

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“Although the synthetic phonics approaches collectively resulted in the largest of the three effect sizes, the analysis did not detect a significant difference among the effect of synthetic phonics compared with analytic phonics. The NRP concluded that, although systematic phonics programs are significantly more effective than nonphonics-based programs, there is no evidence favoring one type of phonics instruction over the other.” (p.3)”

Henbest, V.S. & Apel, K. (2017). Effective word reading instruction: What does the evidence tell us? Communication Disorders Quarterly, 1–9.

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THE ROOTS OF EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION: Direct Instruction and direct instruction Direct Instruction (sometimes referred to as “big DI” due to the capitalization of both words) is an instructional model first developed in the 1960s under the leadership of Siegfried Engelmann and Wesley Becker at the University of Illinois Institute for Research on Exceptional Children. Direct Instruction is based on an analysis of three knowledge systems (Engelmann & Carnine, 1982). Analysis of communications between teacher and student were used to develop the clarity of language by which teachers present concepts in ways that allow students to identify critical attributes or features of the content and how related content is similar or different. A second analysis examined how knowledge is organized, and used this information to select the scope and sequence of the curriculum so that students learn both effectively and efficiently (e.g., teaching skills that are generalizable, focusing on big ideas). Finally, applied behavior analysis was used to identify universal principles about how the environment influences behavior. The process of using these analyses as the basis for designing and delivering instruction is described in greater detail by Engelmann and Carnine (1982) and Watkins and Slocum (2003)

 Over the next five decades, and continuing in the present, Engelmann and his colleagues developed curricula for a variety of academic areas (e.g., reading, math, science, social studies), although by far the most widely used are the curricula that teach beginning reading. These curricula use most of the explicit instruction components described above (e.g., clear models, active participation/frequent responses followed by feedback, guided and independent practice, use of examples and nonexamples)

While Direct Instruction and explicit instruction share similar instructional components, Direct Instruction is different in that it includes scripted lessons and displays very highly organized and carefully sequenced progression through curriculum content. Thus, Direct Instruction includes both curriculum (what to teach) and instruction (how to teach), whereas explicit instruction focuses primarily on how to teach.

 Most of the research on Direct Instruction was conducted in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Recently, Hattie (2009) reviewed over 300 studies of Direct Instruction that included over 40,000 students. Hattie calculated an overall effect size of .59, putting Direct Instruction in the high range in terms of its effect on learning

 Another similar instructional approach, also referred to as “direct instruction” (but using lower-case letters), was developed as a result of a number of large-scale, national research efforts conducted during the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike big “DI,” little “di” does not involve scripted instruction or packaged curricula. Instructional components of direct instruction were initially identified through correlational research (e.g., observations of what effective teachers do when they teach), and were followed by experimental research to verify the effectiveness of the identified teaching behaviors. These studies and their findings were summarized in the 1980s by Brophy and Good (1986) as well as others (e.g., Gage & Needles, 1989; Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986), and were followed by discussions of implications for special education (e.g., Christenson, Ysseldyke, & Thurlow, 1989; Gersten, 1998; Gersten, Baker, Pugach, Scanlon, & Chard, 2001)

 Explicit instruction and direct instruction overlap greatly, and some might argue that they are basically the same thing. So when and why did much of the field move from “direct” to “explicit?” (p.143-4)

Hughes, C.A., Morris, J.R. Therrien, W.J., & Benson, S.K. (2017). Explicit instruction: Historical and contemporary contexts. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 32(3), 140–148.

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“Explicit instruction is a group of research-supported instructional behaviors used to design and deliver instruction that provides needed supports for successful learning through clarity of language and purpose, and reduction of cognitive load. It promotes active student engagement by requiring frequent and varied responses followed by appropriate affirmative and corrective feedback, and assists long-term retention through use of purposeful practice strategies.” (p.143)

Hughes, C.A., Morris, J.R. Therrien, W.J., & Benson, S.K. (2017). Explicit instruction: Historical and contemporary contexts. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 32(3), 140–148.

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“Most interestingly, [ for synthetic phonics] there are long-term effects at age 11 for those with a high probability of starting their school education as struggling readers. The results for our study suggests that there is a persistent effect for those classified as non-native English speakers and economically disadvantaged (as measured by free school meal status). The effect persists for these children who enter school with significant literacy deficits and is at least 0.10 of a standard deviation on the reading test at age 11. This is impressive given that the phonics approach is only actively taught up to the age of 7.” (p.20-21)

Machin, S., McNally, S., & Viarengo, M. (2016). “Teaching to Teach” Literacy. CEP Discussion Paper No 1425. Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science, London

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“The relationship between 2nd and 3rd grade teachers’ linguistic knowledge and spelling instructional practices and their students’ spelling gains from fall to spring was examined. Second grade (N = 16) and 3rd grade (N = 16) teachers were administered an instructional practices survey and a linguistic knowledge test. Total scores on the two instruments were not significantly related (r = 0.20), indicating two different constructs. Students (N = 331 2nd graders, N = 305 3rd graders) completed a 40 item spelling dictation test in the fall and spring. HLM analyses were conducted on subsamples of weaker spellers (Ns = 226 2nd graders and 50 3rd graders) who spelled fewer than 20 words correctly on the pretest. Limiting the sample to weaker spellers eliminated ceiling effects on pre- to posttest gains. Results revealed that 2nd grade teachers’ linguistic knowledge of phonemic units in words, their teaching of spelling strategies, the time they spent in weekly spelling instruction, and the greater the number of weaker spellers in their classrooms, were significant predictors of weaker spellers’ improvement in spelling. For 3rd grade teachers, HLM analyses were not significant perhaps due to lack of power. However, 3rd grade teachers’ phonemic knowledge was significantly correlated with weaker spellers’ gain scores. Results while correlational provide tentative support for the conclusion that teachers who are more knowledgeable about phonemes in words and who utilize more effective, research based spelling instruction are more successful in teaching spelling to weaker spellers.” (p. 239)

Puliatte, A., & Ehri, L.C. (2018) Do 2nd and 3rd grade teachers’ linguistic knowledge and instructional practices predict spelling gains in weaker spellers? Reading & Writing 31(2), 239–266.

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“Teaching systematic phonics effectively to beginning readers requires specialized knowledge and training which many primary grade teachers lack. The current study examined effects of a year-long mentoring program to improve teachers’ knowledge and effectiveness in teaching phonics and the extent that it improved students’ achievement in reading and spelling. Teachers in urban, lower SES schools completed a 45 h course followed by 90 h of in-school training. Mentors (N = 29) worked with kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade teachers (N = 69) twice a week for 30 weeks during the year. Each visit included a 45 min prep period plus 45 min of modeling and feedback in the classroom. Mentors taught teachers how to provide systematic phonics instruction to their students (N = 1,336). Monthly ratings by mentors revealed that teachers improved their phonics teaching skills with many reaching the highest ratings by May. Teachers who were non-native speakers of English took a bit longer to learn the English sound system for letters, mainly because they lacked sufficient knowledge of English sounds and had to learn them. Given the increasing diversity of the teacher work force, future research is needed to study this difficulty, its solution, and impact on students. Teachers’ agreement with principles of phonics instruction remained strong or increased from fall to spring. Students’ reading and spelling skills showed large gains during the year and far exceeded effect sizes from comparable data sources. Students met grade-level expectations at the end of kindergarten and first grade but fell short in second and third grades. General education students outperformed bilingual/ELL and special needs students although all subgroups made large gains. Findings reveal the effectiveness of an intensive mentoring model of professional development applied to a subject that is difficult to teach and to a student population known for lower reading achievement. Findings point to the need for better pre-service teacher preparation coupled with appropriate curricula and PD from districts in order to improve students’ reading achievement.” (p. 425-426)

Ehri, L.C., & Flugman, B. (2018). Mentoring teachers in systematic phonics instruction: Effectiveness of an intensive year-long program for kindergarten through 3rd grade teachers and their students. Reading & Writing, 31(2), 425–456.

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“What we do know from research is that people are able to encode and represent information in multiple ways, and the activation of the multiple representations increases memory, learning and achievement…. The activation of multiple representations including visual and verbal representations is linked to better learning in mathematics and reading (DeStefano & LeFevre, 2004; Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1997). In sum, it is not matching instruction to a learning style that produces good learning, but the activation of multiple representations. The more representations activated, the better the learning. … Likewise, reading achievement is dependent not only on verbal skills (Edwards, Walley, & Ball, 2003; Eldredge, 2005; Stanovich & Siegel, 1994), but also visuo-spatial skills (Denis, 1996; Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1997; Pressley, Cariglia-Bull, Deane, & Schneider, 1987).” (p.412)

An, D., & Carr, M. (2017). Learning styles theory fails to explain learning and achievement: Recommendations for alternative approaches. Personality and Individual Differences, 116, 410–416.

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“We also examined who benefits most from instruction. Results suggest statistically significant larger effects for preschool and early elementary students through second grade followed by middle school and upper elementary students. Similar to Bowers et al. (2010), results suggest that early morphological instruction may be particularly helpful perhaps because of the synergistic relationship between phonology and morphology and the larger repertoire of root and affix meanings available for use. If a reciprocal relationship exists between morphological knowledge and literacy (i.e., better morphological knowledge supports better reading, which then supports improved morphological knowledge; see Levin, Ravid, & Rapaport, 1999), it makes sense to jump-start this knowledge from an early age. Also moderate effects were shown for upper elementary and middle school students, possibly because this is where text includes a higher percentage of morphologically complex words and where a student’s morphological knowledge is developed enough to take advantage of morphological relationships. Although greatest effects were noted for ELLs, poor readers and spellers, and children with learning disabilities, these differences were not statistically meaningful. … This analysis suggests that various types of morphological instruction support literacy achievement, including instruction that builds morphological knowledge by identifying, segmenting, and building with morphemes; teaching students affix and root meanings; teaching morphological patterns that support spelling; and teaching students to analyze compound words (see Goodwin, Lipsky, & Ahn, 2012, for more details).” (p.279-280)

Goodwin, A.P., & Ahn, S. (2013). A meta-analysis of morphological interventions in English: Effects on literacy outcomes for school-age children. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17(4), 257-285.

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“Taylor, Davis and Rastle (2017) reported an artificial language learning study designed to compare methods of reading instruction that emphasise learning the relationship between spelling and sound versus learning the relationship between spelling and meaning. Behavioural and neural data supported emphasis on spelling-sound knowledge, and the authors therefore advocated use of phonics in the initial stages of learning to read. Bowers and Bowers (2018) argue that these conclusions are not justified because the authors (a) mischaracterised the English writing system; and (b) mischaracterised the meaning-based instruction used in schools. We respond to the first point by showing that the novel words used by Taylor et al. (2017) were a good approximation to the types of written words that children are exposed to in the first year of reading instruction. We respond to the second point by showing that while enhancements to meaning-based instruction can assist pupils to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words, these methods actually disadvantage long-term learning of those words. We conclude by suggesting that reading instruction should be based on an understanding of the writing system, properly characterised across the trajectory of learning. This means emphasis on spelling-sound regularities in the initial stage of learning to read, and increasing emphasis on spelling-meaning regularities as children gain greater experience with text.” (p.1).

Rastle, K., & Taylor, J.S.H. (2018). Print-sound regularities are more important than print-meaning regularities in the initial stages of learning to read: Response to Bowers & Bowers (2018). Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

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“Morphology is a major organising principle of English and other alphabetic languages, but has been largely neglected in theories of reading acquisition. In this article, I develop the view that learning to appreciate morphological relationships may be a vital part of acquiring a direct mapping between printed words and their meanings, represented in the ventral brain pathway of the reading network. I show that morphology provides an important degree of regularity across this mapping in English, and suggest that this regularity is directly associated with irregularity in the mapping between spelling and sound. I further show that while children in primary school display explicit knowledge of morphological relationships, there is scant evidence they show the rapid morphological analysis of printed words that skilled readers exhibit. These findings suggest that the acquisition of long-term morphological knowledge may be associated with the ongoing development of reading expertise. Implications for reading instruction are discussed.” (p.1)

Rastle, K. (2018). The place of morphology in learning to read in English. Cortex, xxx, 1-10

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“Finally, although there are certainly children with poor comprehension who are accurate readers (Cain & Oakhill, 2006), there are very few who read with low accuracy and high comprehension (Meisinger, Bradley, Schwanenflugel, & Kuhn, 2010).” (p. 443)

Burns, M.K., Pulles, S.M., Maki, K.E., Kanive, R., Hodgson, J., Helman, L.A., McComas, J.J., & Preast, J.L. (2015). Accuracy of student performance while reading leveled books rated at their instructional level by a reading inventory. Journal of School Psychology, 53(6), 437-45.

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“The High Scope Project by Schweinhart and Weikart (1997) researched the impact of playful learning on social outcomes. They found that children who had attended play-based preschools rather than preschools focused on more direct instruction, were eight times less likely, by age 23, to have emotional disturbances that required treatment and three times less likely to be arrested for a felony.” (p.2)

Sparks, C. (2018). The importance of play for infant and toddler mental health. Early Years Bulletin, 5(3), 1-11.

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“In this study, researchers examined the extent to which several fundamental measures of reading proficiency from kindergarten students (N = 3180) were linked to reading comprehension in tenth grade while controlling for third grade vocabulary and oral reading fluency. Analyses tested the direct and indirect relations between and among kindergarten, third grade, and tenth grade measures. Results showed significant direct effects from kindergarten nonsense word fluency and letter naming fluency to tenth grade reading comprehension, along with significant indirect effects of kindergarten nonsense word fluency and vocabulary to tenth grade reading comprehension. Findings suggest that fundamental precursors maintain strong impact upon reading comprehension into the secondary school years. (p. 133) … Findings from this analysis lend partial support to key literacy theory. For instance, support is lent to the SVR framework—particularly decoding—in relation to reading proficiency measures linked with decoding skills and vocabulary acquisition in kindergarten impacted reading comprehension in tenth grade. Results underscore the need for researchers and practitioners to carefully consider reading proficiency in kindergarten. Moreover, the DIME [direct and inferential mediation] model suggests fundamental reading skills and vocabulary acquisition support text-processing skills, which in turn impacts the ability to comprehend text in later years. The findings from this study would appear to support the notion that indirect effects are apparent between fundamental literacy skills and vocabulary in early elementary school, and consequent reading comprehension in secondary school. In this particular case, third grade ORF perhaps being indicative of text-processing skills. The results from this study may also help inform theories and approaches to identification of learning disabilities (LD) and subsequent intervention given that some of the first signs of difficulty may be apparent in kindergarten. To illustrate, discrepancy models necessitate an achievement test of reading to be administered and evaluated prior to LD detection, which may take considerable time. This lag may cause parents and teachers to lose valuable time in supporting students who need support. In the context of reading, decoding skills can be enhanced well before formal reading assessments may be administered (e.g., Spencer et al., 2014). Therefore, there is evidence that meaningful assessments may be made before some form of ‘‘failure’’ is apparent. Other contemporary methods of intervention, including response to intervention and hybrid approaches similarly benefit from incorporating early decoding skill assessments; not only in terms of enhancing proximal reading outcomes such as third grade ORF, but also distal measures of reading comprehension in secondary school. These may be particularly important given the most commonly reported LD appears to be specific to reading skills (Fuchs, Fuchs, Mathes, Lipsey & Roberts, 2002). (p. 148-149)

“In order to help clarify some of the most critical antecedents of reading comprehension in secondary school readers, the direct and inferential mediation (DIME) model has been offered (Cromley & Azevedo, 2007). Briefly, the DIME model posits that relations between background knowledge, strategies, inference, word reading, and reading vocabulary culminate in reading comprehension. The DIME model is subsumed within the SVR; word reading captures decoding, while background knowledge and vocabulary capture the language comprehension component. These factors impact reading comprehension directly, but also indirectly through text-processing skills (i.e., inference and strategies). Originally, Cromley and Azevedo (2007) reported the DIME model explained 66% of the variance in reading comprehension in a cross-sectional analysis of 9th grade students. Vocabulary and background knowledge apparently made the greatest contributions to reading comprehension. Subsequent research validated the applicability of the DIME model in a longitudinal analysis (grades 7–12) with a large and representative sample of students (Ahmed et al., 2016). Together, such research has furthered the understanding of the factors which critically impact reading comprehension for secondary school readers.” (p. 136)

Stanley, C.T., Petscher, Y., & Catts, H. (2018). A longitudinal investigation of direct and indirect links between reading skills in kindergarten and reading comprehension in tenth grade. Reading and Writing, 31, 133–153.

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“This meta-analysis examined if students’ writing performance is enhanced by (a) teaching reading or (b) increasing students’ interactions with words and text through reading or observing others read. This analysis allowed us to determine if specific reading interventions are responsible for improvements in students’ writing. It also provided evidence about one aspect of the theoretical proposition that there is a bidirectional relationship between reading and writing (Shanahan, 2016). This theoretical proposition rests in part on the assumption that reading affects writing. Previous meta-analysis provided support for two other assumptions underlying this theory (i.e., writing affects reading and reading and writing conjointly affect each other), demonstrating that writing interventions improved reading performance (Graham & Hebert, 2011a, 2011b; Graham & Santangelo, 2014) and combined reading/writing interventions improved both reading and writing performance (Graham et al., in press). Does Teaching Reading Improve Students’ Writing Performance? While reading and writing are related but not identical skills (Grabe & Zhang, 2016; Langer, 1986; Langer & Applebee, 1987; Pearson et al., 2012; Shanahan, 2016), teaching readings improved students’ writing performance. When preschool to high school students were taught how to read, 19 out of every 20 studies produced a positive effect at posttest, resulting in meaningful improvements on a composite measures of overall writing performance as well as on specific measures of writing quality, spelling, and writing output. More specifically, phonological awareness, phonics, and reading comprehension instruction strengthened students’ writing performance. Furthermore, in the 20% of studies that assessed the impact of reading instruction over time, observed writing performance gains were maintained at meaningful, but slightly lower levels than what had been observed at posttest (one study found positive effects six years after reading instruction was delivered; Byrne et al., 2000). Most of the maintenance studies (73%) involved phonological awareness and phonics instruction.” (p.26-27)

Graham, S., Liu, X., Bartlett, B., Ng, C., Harris, K.R., Aitken, A., Barkel, A., Kavanaugh, C., & Talukdar, J. (2018). Reading for writing: A meta-analysis of the impact of reading interventions on writing. Review of Educational Research, 88(2), 243–284.

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“As is emphasized by the simple view and interactive models of reading comprehension, oral language is a critical component of reading comprehension. This assertion is supported by the current findings and previous studies (Kendeou et al., 2009; Roth et al., 2002). For instance, two studies included within the present meta-analysis, Catts et al. (2006) and Nation et al. (2004), found that a substantial portion of children who are identified as having specific language impairment (SLI) also have coexisting reading comprehension difficulties. … the findings suggest that children with deficits in critical oral language skills should receive targeted oral language instruction and intervention. Intervention studies focusing specifically on children with SCD have indicated that interventions containing an oral language component are more effective. … Thus, classroom instruction and intervention that incorporate elements that encourage comprehension proficiency, such as reading fluency (NICHD, 2000) and oral language (Snow et al., 1998), will likely be more effective at remediating reading comprehension difficulties.” (p. 21-23)

Spencer, M., &. Wagner, R.J. (2018). The comprehension problems of children with poor reading comprehension despite adequate decoding: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, Online First.

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“A response-based, tiered model for supporting the reading achievement of struggling and at-risk students appears to benefit participants when combined with evidence-based, efficacious reading interventions. Implementing such models is challenging, particularly in middle schools. Ongoing research should consider strategies for making implementation more feasible, supporting ongoing fidelity, and building and maintaining capacity for its effective use.” (p.251-2)

“The different patterns of findings across these two bodies of research may reflect a number of factors. The scale of a program s implementation and its relationship to fidelity generally influence an effects magnitude; as scale increases, fidelity tends to diminish, downwardly biasing effect estimates for the normative model (i.e., the program as designed and implemented as intended). A larger-scale implementation increases the likelihood that individuals or groups in the Ball condition will be exposed to and begin to use elements of the interven- tion, threatening the study's internal validity and poten- tially compromising the estimate of treatment effect. In smaller-scale implementations, investigators are better able to monitor program use and maximize or reliably measure fidelity and condition estimates of effect accordingly. Their greater involvement may also translate into increased opportunities to observe and perhaps influence aspects of the BaU condition, thus minimizing treatment implementation in nonexperimental classrooms, yielding a more reliable treatment effect, and diminishing threats to internal validity. Small-scale studies also tend to focus on a single instructional strategy or on a combination of two or three strategies (see Scammacca et al., 2007), further reducing the complexity of implementation compared with larger-scale trials, which generally feature a multi- faceted intervention. This relative specificity (i.e., the evaluation of a single strategy) generally requires a comparably specific measure of outcome, often researcher developed and closely aligned to elements of the intervention. This specificity contrasts with large-scale trials of multifaceted programs, in which improved reading comprehension is the primary outcome and measurement relies on standardized, normed indexes, which tend to be relatively distal to a given intervention and less sensitive to treatment effects.” (p. 238-9)

Roberts, G., Vaughn, S., Fletcher, J., Stuebing, K, & Barth, A. (2013). Effects of a response-based, tiered framework for intervening with struggling readers in middle school. Reading Research Quarterly, 48 (3), 237-254.

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“We believe that early prevention is important because it potentially affords students identified as at risk for future reading problems greater potential to benefit from regular classroom instruction. Additionally, it increases the likelihood that students will gain content knowledge from text as they read (Gough, 1996). To the extent that results from our 14 weeks of first-grade multitiered supplemental tutoring are representative of what can be expected in schools, we conclude that the intervention was not sufficient to prevent the later reading difficulties of students who are at risk for such outcomes. We infer that the supplemental preventive programs associated with RTI may need to span multiple years to accomplish the preventive intent. As shown in previous work, multiple years (Vellutino et al., 1996) or multiple waves (O'Connor et al., 2005; Vaughn, Linan-Thompson, & Hickman, 2003) of intervention may be required to help these students perform within the average range.” (p.151)

Gilbert, J.K., Compton, D.L., Fuchs, D., Fuchs, L.S., Bouton, B., Barquero, L.A., & Cho, E. (2013).Efficacy of a first grade responsiveness-to-intervention prevention model for struggling readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 48(2), 135–154.

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“Our study showed that adolescents were significantly more likely to read the related derived word if they had read the root word correctly. This extends models of word reading to include a more specific role of morphological knowledge: knowledge of a root word's phonology. It also provides additional evidence that adolescent readers parse morphologically complex words in units. Educators, therefore, may help adolescents improve word reading by emphasizing root word knowledge and parsing challenging words into morphemic units. For example, instead of teaching students to parse thermosphere into syllables, students can search for meaningful units (i.e., morphemes, root words: thermo + sphere) within a word, using knowledge of one unit to support reading the larger unit. … 2010). Our analysis suggests that teaching root-word knowledge and high lighting aspects of awareness of morphemic structure, such as the link between root words and related derived words, will likely support adolescent word reading. … Overall, the current study highlights the role of morphological knowledge and awareness in derived-word reading by bringing together two lines of research: reader level and word-level characteristics that support reading morphologically complex derived words. Results show that being able to read a root word contributes to being able to read a related derived word. Additional word characteristics and reader characteristics explain variability in derived-word reading even after accounting for root-word reading. Word characteristics such as frequency of root word and derived word and transparency suggest that the morphemic features of words change how the words are processed morphologically. In addition, opaqueness seems to make students less successful in using root-word reading to support derived-word reading.” (p. 54, 57, 58)

Goodwin, A.P., Gilbert, J.K., & Cho, S. (2013). Morphological contributions to adolescent word reading: An item response approach. Reading Research Quarterly, 48(1), 39-60.

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“Too many youth leave high school without the literacy skills that colleges and employers demand. In the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), about half of secondary students read multiple years below their grade level. Despite many promising programs designed to increase literacy among younger students, schools struggle with finding effective ways for accelerating older, struggling readers. In search of a solution, OUSD began piloting Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI), an intensive reading program, in secondary schools in 2015. Many school districts across the country have used LLI, which has shown promise in improving outcomes for students in early elementary grades. This research brief summarizes findings on the implementation and impacts of LLI in Oakland, where the district conducted the nation’s first randomized controlled trial of LLI in secondary grades.

• Students experienced different levels of Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) duration and intensity, and most fell short of the recommended minimum number of sessions.
• Schools faced numerous challenges implementing (1) delayed start dates and varying end dates, (2) tradeoffs between pullout groups and scheduled classes, (3) skipped and modified lesson components, (4) limited teacher training, and (5) students’attendance and engagement at the high school level.
• LLI had no impact on students’ reading comprehension and a negative impact on mastery of English language arts/literacy standards.
• Students who received more LLI or were pulled out of other classes to receive LLI were particularly negatively affected, possibly as a result of missing grade-level content.”

Gonzalez, N., MacIntyre, S., Beccar-Varela, P. (2018). Leveled literacy intervention for secondary students: Results from a randomized controlled trial in Oakland schools. Oakland, CA: Mathematica Policy Research. Retrieved from https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/our-publications-and-findings/publications/leveled-literacy-intervention-for-secondary-students-results-from-a-randomized-controlled-trial

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“The findings of the present study have educational implications for the remediation of reading difficulties. The main intervention required for children struggling with decoding is instruction in decoding skills. Meta-analyses of reading intervention studies have found that systematic phonics instruction has the greatest effect on decoding, sight word reading, and reading comprehension compared with other forms of instruction such as whole language and whole word approaches (Ehri et al., 2001; Hattie, 2008). Most poor readers can successfully be taught phonological decoding skills and make gains in reading through participation in evidence-based intervention programmes (Lovett & Steinbach, 1997; Moats & Foorman, 1997; Torgesen et al., 1977). Evidenced-based instructional components include explicit, systematic instruction in phonological decoding, alphabetic coding skills and word-level strategies, with opportunities to practise skills in isolation and while reading connected text (Slavin, Lake, Chambers, Cheung, & Davis, 2009; Vellutino et al., 2004). Focusing intervention on word recognition skills does not discount the importance of developing language skills. They helped with syntactic similarity miscues in this study. Language skills are also important for developing vocabulary size and general knowledge which are known to support the ability to decode unknown words and provide the reader with access to word meanings, conceptual and grammatical structures (Connor et al., 2004; Scarborough, 1991; Snowling et al., 2003).” (p.90)

Blick, M., Nicholson, T., Chapman, J., & Berman, J. (2017). Does linguistic comprehension support the decoding skills of struggling readers? Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 22(2), 75-94.

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“Noticeably absent from these interventions were the direct teaching of phoneme to grapheme correspondences and morphemic approaches, which are often used with students in the elementary grades (Sayeski, 2011; Simonson and Gunter, 2001; Wanzek et al., 2006; Williams et al., 2017). Previous research has also suggested that students who struggle with spelling benefit from being taught explicitly at their developmental level (Simonsen & Gunter, 2001; Schlagal, 2002).” (P. 1)

“Spelling is often included as a part of multi-component interventions and improvements in spelling cannot be attributed to the spelling component only. A fine line exists between reading and spelling instruction and it is often difficult to separate the two (Ehri, 2000). In the future, it may be of interest to conduct component analyses to determine the separate and additive impact of spelling and reading or writing interventions on spelling, reading, and writing outcomes.” (p. 22)

Williams, K.J., Austin, C.R., & Vaughn, S. (2017). A synthesis of spelling interventions for secondary students with disabilities. The Journal of Special Education, 1-38.

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“Leaders seeking to make change in their schools often do so through the adoption of evidence-based interventions intended to establish high quality pedagogical practices in schools and classrooms (Desimone, 2002). Evaluations of such programs in practice, however, have shown uneven implementation of their recommendations (Corcoran, Hoppe, Luhm, & Supovitz, 2000; Desimone, 2002; Sherin & Drake, 2009; Spillane, 2004). Like the frontline workers in other sectors—arguably even more so—teachers often exert wide discretion in interpreting and carrying out the elements Scott & Meyer, 1983). Given strongly entrenched ideas about the nature of teaching and learning, not to mention substantial constraints of time, resources, and organizational support, at times this can result in ‘‘new’’ practices that are only superficially different from old ones (Coburn, 2004; D. K. Cohen, 1988; Mehta, 2015; Spillane, 2004). It is not enough then to simply design or select a program whose goals align with a particular vision for teaching and learning practices. Those seeking to bring their vision to life must also ask to what degree enactment in a given context is likely to match the program’s goals. While the benefits of pursuing strict adherence to a program’s designed elements may need to be weighed against other considerations (McLaughlin, 1987), for those decisions to be well informed, leaders and policymakers need good information about the dynamics that affect fidelity of implementation.” (p.1288-9)

Anderson, E.R. (2017). Accommodating change: Relating fidelity of implementation to program fit in educational reforms. American Educational Research Journal, 54(6), 1288–1315.

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“Adolescents need ongoing literacy instruction in order to support their learning with texts (Carnegie Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy, 2010; Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw, & Rycik, 1999). This is not because most adolescents cannot read. Instead, it is because as students move through the grade levels the concepts under study become more abstract, the purposes for reading and writing become more specialized, and the texts themselves become more complex (Snow & Moje, 2010). Adolescent literacy instruction requires deliberate text selection, careful planning for the specific literacy challenges that students may face as they read and write, and explicit introduction to specialized ways of reading, writing, and reasoning of the academic disciplines (Lee & Spratley, 2010).” (p.937)

Kavanagh, S.S., & Rainey, E.C. (2017). Learning to support adolescent literacy: Teacher educator pedagogy and novice teacher take up in secondary English language arts teacher preparation. American Educational Research Journal, 54(5), 904–937.

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“Closing some of the larger SWD [students with disabilities] achievement gaps, even over the course of several grades, would require reading growth rates with much greater acceleration than those observed in the present study and higher than those found in studies with intensive, multiyear interventions for students with reading difficulties (e.g., Allor, Mathes, Roberts, Cheatham, & Otaiba, 2014; Roberts et al., 2013).” (p.15)

Schulte, A. C., Stevens, J. J., Elliott, S. N., Tindal, G., & Nese, J. F. T. (2016, January 25). Achievement gaps for students with disabilities: Stable, widening, or narrowing on a state-wide reading comprehension test?. Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/edu0000107

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“The distribution of the discrepancy scores in this study suggests that the academic abilities of many children are either under- or overestimated by their teachers. This finding is in line with previous research suggesting that teachers vary considerably in the accuracy of their judgments (Kilday et al., 2012). … Unfortunately, low income children are likely to have lower levels of prior achievement (Brooks-Gunn et al., 2007) and also appear to be the most vulnerable to the effects of negative teacher perceptions (Sorhagen, 2013; Speybroeck et al., 2012). Low-income children may also be more likely to attend overburdened, under resourced child care centers, where the teachers may struggle more than their colleagues at better resourced centers to access and interpret high quality academic feedback about their preschoolers. These effects, when they begin in preschool and cascade across subsequent school years, can explain one foundational process of the achievement gap (Becker & Luthar, 2002).” (p.815-16)

Baker, C. N., Tichovolsky, M., Kupersmidt, J. B., Voegler-Lee, M. E., & Arnold, D. H. (2015). Teacher (mis)perceptions of preschoolers’ academic skills: Predictors and associations with longitudinal outcomes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107, 805-820.

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“ … the most advanced Year 3 students already read at about the same level as the average Year 9 student, and the least advanced Year 9 students still read at about the same level as the average Year 3 student.” (p.4)

Australian Council for Educational Research (2017). Lifting achievement levels and improving the return on Australia’s investment in schooling: Submission to the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools (chair: Mr David Gonski). Retrieved from https://research.acer.edu.au/policy_analysis_misc/27

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“We also tend to valorize teacher autonomy to a fault. In a recent paper on Louisiana’s curriculum reforms, Ashley Berner of Johns Hopkins described how schools of education “turned from academic subject mastery to developmental psychology as the foundational resource for teacher preparation” a century ago. This relegated curriculum to a thing not just beneath the notice of teachers, but beneath their dignity. We are encouraged to “teach the child, not the lesson” and other empty platitudes: Education is not the filling of a pail, it’s the lighting of a fire. Students won’t care what you know until they know that you care. Ad infinitum.”

Pondiscio, R. (2017). Practice what you teach. Thomas B. Fordham Institute.Retrieved from https://edexcellence.net/articles/practice-what-you-teach

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“How malleable are reading skills at this age among students with this degree of difficulty? A second potential explanation for the lack of differential results for reading comprehension outcomes points to the diminished malleability of reading comprehension in comparison to word-level reading skills in late elementary grades and beyond. This interpretation disregards the observed standard score gains as artifacts of measurement error or regression to the mean, and posits that the failure to find between groups differences is because the targeted construct (reading comprehension) demonstrates limited malleability and it is unrealistic to expect robust growth in interventions dosages that are measured in hours rather than years. Standardized mean differences for annual growth in reading achievement diminish dramatically as students progress from early elementary grades into late elementary and beyond (Lipsey et al., 2012; Scammacca, Fall, & Roberts, 2015aa). This phenomenon is most likely due to changes in the reading task over time. In earlier grades, text complexity is limited; constrained word level skills are highly predictive of reading comprehension (Schulte et al., 2016). In later grades, the broader constructs of language and background knowledge are increasingly predictive of reading comprehension (Ahmed et al., 2016; Catts, Adlof, & Weismer, 2006). Thus, to improve reading comprehension in late elementary and secondary grades, it may be necessary to affect the relatively unconstrained constructs of language and background knowledge—a difficult task in under 40 hours of intervention per year. Perhaps the results of this study and others that fail to find robust differential effects in reading comprehension indicate that the task of remediating persistent reading comprehension deficits in late elementary and secondary school will require interventions of greater duration and dosage than previously studied. … This growing body of literature affirms one key takeaway: there is no silver bullet to remediate years of difficulty in reading. With this reality in mind, practitioners should work to avoid isolated, piecemeal intervention strategies. Successful intervention programs will require high-quality, long term interventions in which effects cumulate across years (Fletcher &Wagner, 2014). Similarly, researchers should redouble efforts to maximize the effects of interventions, to identify causal mechanisms, and to study interventions of greater intensity and duration than are typically studied.” (p. 33, 35)

Miciak, K., Roberts, G., Taylor, W.P., Solis, M., Ahmed, Y., Vaughn, S., & Fletcher, J.M. (2018). The effects of one versus two years of intensive reading intervention implemented with late elementary struggling readers. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 33(1), 24–36.

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“Averaging across all 12 studies of technology applications without extra time, the mean effect size was +0.06.” (p.25)

Baye, A., Lake, C., Inns, A., & Slavin, R. E. (2017, August). Effective reading programs for secondary students. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, Center for Research and Reform in Education. Retrieved from http://www.bestevidence.org/reading/mhs/mhs_read.htm

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“While the null effects are disappointing, they are not entirely surprising when we examine the level of intensity of the interventions that schools delivered to students with protracted reading difficulties in the middle grades. For example, many of the interventions determined to be effective in reviews of adolescent literacy interventions involved support for teachers to implement the intervention, whereas the current study evaluated districts’ existing intervention practices and did not provide teachers with coaching or professional development. Additionally, the interventions in the Striving Readers evaluation (Boulay et al., 2015) that were shown to be effective for improving reading achievement were typically delivered for 90 minutes per day, five days per week, whereas reading interventions schools selected and implemented in the current study were administered for 47 minutes per day, 4.3 days per week. … A final implication for practice of this study involves the level of intensity that is necessary for solving such intractable issues as improving adolescent reading achievement. Although the evidence base is converging on the level of intensity that should be brought to bear to improve reading outcomes for older readers, and the schools and districts involved in the current study indicated they were acutely aware of the level of intensity necessary for reading interventions to be efficacious in the middle grades, they chose to implement intervention plans that fell quite short of the these evidence based recommendations (Boulay et al., 2015; Herrera et al., 2016). As evidenced by the few studies of adolescent reading interventions that have improved reading achievement for students in middle school, the intensity required to turn the dial on student outcome is substantial. In addition, districts seeking to improve adolescent literacy outcomes should consider matching interventions to student need, using interventions that employ explicit instruction, and providing ongoing support for teachers to implement interventions.” (p. 46, 48)

Fien, H., Anderson, D., Nelson, N.J., Kennedy, P., Baker, S.K., & Stoolmiller, M. (2018). Examining the impact and school-level predictors of impact variability of an 8th grade reading intervention on at-risk students’ reading achievement. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 33(1), 37–50.

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“The vast majority of the studies demonstrating positive or potentially positive effects also involved ongoing support or coaching for instructors, who were most likely to be typically hired school staff. Importantly, eight of the 12 studies observed small to moderate effects on a high-stakes assessment, such as a state accountability measure. It is also important to note that the Herrera et al. (2016) review summarized research findings from all studies of adolescent literacy interventions that met review criteria, which includes studies planned and conducted by researchers to test the effects of particular interventions under ideal conditions, as opposed to only studies that are implemented under naturalistic conditions (i.e., those in which districts select the programs and practices they will implement, even if the evaluation is conducted through support from an external evaluator, as is the case in the current study). In reviews of studies of literacy interventions where districts and schools select and implement interventions, even fewer studies demonstrate positive or potentially positive effects on student literacy outcomes. For instance, a recent review of the Striving Readers grant program, in which 16 school districts were paired with an external evaluator to study the effects of district-selected and district-implemented literacy interventions, identified only three interventions that resulted in positive or potentially positive effects on a literacy-related outcome, although effect sizes were small, ranging from 0.0 to 0.21 (Boulay et al., 2015).” (p. 39)

Fien, H., Anderson, D., Nelson, N.J., Kennedy, P., Baker, S.K., & Stoolmiller, M. (2018). Examining the impact and school-level predictors of impact variability of an 8th grade reading intervention on at-risk students’ reading achievement. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 33(1), 37–50.

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“Evidence from high-quality studies (Kamil et al., 2008) also indicates there is strong support for the assertion that explicit instruction is a necessary foundation for reading interventions with struggling adolescent readers (e.g., Duffy et al., 1987; Fuchs et al., 1997; Herrera et al., 2016; Klingner, Vaughn, & Schumm, 1998; Schumaker & Deshler, 1992). Explicit and systematic instruction involves a series of sequenced instructional steps that include: (a) teachers explaining and modeling strategy use, (b) teachers guiding students in using the strategy or strategies (i.e., guided practice), and (c) students demonstrating their ability to use the strategies independently under the supervision of the teacher (Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Kamil et al., 2008). The power of explicit instruction cuts across multiple content areas as a method for providing effective reading instruction for adolescent readers (and younger readers), as it can be used to teach word-level reading, reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension (Biancarosa & Snow, 2006; Kamil et al., 2008; Scammacca et al., 2007; Torgesen, et al., 2007).” (p. 39)

Fien, H., Anderson, D., Nelson, N.J., Kennedy, P., Baker, S.K., & Stoolmiller, M. (2018). Examining the impact and school-level predictors of impact variability of an 8th grade reading intervention on at-risk students’ reading achievement. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 33(1), 37–50.

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“Although research specific to adolescent literacy is not as extensive as research on beginning reading (Boulay, Goodson, Frye, Blocklin, & Price, 2015; Herrera, Truckenmiller, & Foorman, 2016; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998), there is a strong and growing consensus that if what we currently know about literacy instruction for adolescents were more broadly applied in practice, there is “little doubt that levels of adolescent literacy would improve” (p. 1, Torgesen et al., 2007). A recent quantitative synthesis of reading programs for adolescents found 33 studies published between 1970 and 2007 involving 39,000 students (Slavin, Cheung, Groff, & Lake, 2008).” (p. 38-39)

Fien, H., Anderson, D., Nelson, N.J., Kennedy, P., Baker, S.K., & Stoolmiller, M. (2018). Examining the impact and school-level predictors of impact variability of an 8th grade reading intervention on at-risk students’ reading achievement. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 33(1), 37–50.

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“Currently, approximately 30 percent of students drop out of school and never graduate (Editorial Projects in Education (EPE), 2008; Laird, KewalRamani, & Chapman, 2008). In Oregon, an estimated 75 students drop out of school each day (Diplomas Count, 2008). Dropouts are at substantially higher risk than graduates for life-long difficulties associated with unemployment, poverty, illiteracy, incarceration, and chronic stress (Finn & Owings, 2006; Harlow, 2003; McCaul, 1989). Nationally, dropout rates are substantially elevated for specific student groups, including students from high-poverty and minority backgrounds (Greene & Winters, 2005; Neild & Balfanz, 2006; Rumberger, 1995). In Oregon, 72 percent of White students graduate from high school, while the graduation rate is only 50 percent for Hispanic students, and 61 percent for African American students (Greene &Winters, 2005). The costs associated with dropping out of school are measurable in terms other than diminished postsecondary education opportunities as well. Nationally, 1.23 million dropouts from the graduating class of 2007 will cost the nation nearly $329 billion in lost income, taxes, and productivity over their lifetimes (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2007; EPE, 2008). In Oregon alone, the 13,500 dropouts from the graduating class of 2008 are expected to cost the state $3.5 billion in lost wages, taxes, and productivity over their lifetimes (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2009). (p. 38)

Fien, H., Anderson, D., Nelson, N.J., Kennedy, P., Baker, S.K., & Stoolmiller, M. (2018). Examining the impact and school-level predictors of impact variability of an 8th grade reading intervention on at-risk students’ reading achievement. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 33(1), 37–50.

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“Even though texts become more complex and dense in novel vocabulary and concepts as students progress through the educational system, students are increasingly expected to learn independently through reading (Scruggs, Mastropieri, Berkeley, & Graetz, 2010;Wiley, Griffin, & Thiede, 2005).” (p.1)

“Although researchers have reported that students with LD can be taught strategies that help them understand more of what they read in the short term, these students often fail to continue using these strategies independently after instruction ends (Vaughn, Gersten, & Chard, 2000). These students are often not aware that they should actively monitor their comprehension, or are unable to do so. Consequently, they do not go back and repair comprehension problems as more proficient readers do (Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001). … students must also be taught how to self-regulate their learning so that they will continue to use strategies independently after instruction ends. This is particularly important beginning in fourth grade and continuing through the secondary grades, because of the instructional shift from teaching students to read in the early elementary grades to expecting students to independently read to understand new information, something that is often referred to as “reading to learn,” starting in the upper elementary grades (Allington & Johnston, 2002).” (p.2)

Berkeley, S., & Larsen, A. (2018). Fostering self-regulation of students with learning disabilities: Insights from 30 years of reading comprehension intervention research. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 00(0), 1–12.

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“A hundred years ago, schools of education turned from academic subject mastery to developmental psychology as the foundational resource for teacher preparation. In this now-dominant view, requiring students to learn a specific sequence within a particular subject is pedagogically suspect (Ravitch 2001); (Steiner 2005); (Hirsch 2006); (Hirsch 2016).” (p. 2, 3)

Berner, A. (2016). The promise of curriculum: Recent research on Louisiana’s instructional reforms. Institute for Education Policy: Johns Hopkins School of Education. Retrieved from http://edpolicy.education.jhu.edu/the-promise-of-curriculum-recent-research-on-louisianas-instructional-reforms/

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“This article reviews 95 publications (based on 21 independent samples) that have examined children at family risk of reading disorders. We report that children at family risk of dyslexia experience delayed language development as infants and toddlers. In the preschool period, they have significant difficulties in phonological processes as well as with broader language skills and in acquiring the foundations of decoding skill (letter knowledge, phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming [RAN]). Findings are mixed with regard to auditory and visual perception: they do not appear subject to slow motor development, but lack of control for comorbidities confounds interpretation. Longitudinal studies of outcomes show that children at family risk who go on to fulfil criteria for dyslexia have more severe impairments in preschool language than those who are defined as normal readers, but the latter group do less well than controls. Similarly at school age, family risk of dyslexia is associated with significantly poor phonological awareness and literacy skills. Although there is no strong evidence that children at family risk are brought up in an environment that differs significantly from that of controls, their parents tend to have lower educational levels and read less frequently to themselves. Together, the findings suggest that a phonological processing deficit can be conceptualized as an endophenotype of dyslexia that increases the continuous risk of reading difficulties; in turn its impact may be moderated by protective factors.” (p.498)

Snowling, M.J., & Melby-Lervåg, M. (2016). Oral language deficits in familial dyslexia: A meta-analysis and review. Psychological Bulletin, 142(5), 498–54.

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“Research suggests that early identification of developmental dyslexia is important for mitigating the negative effects of dyslexia, including reduced educational attainment and increased socioemotional difficulties. The strongest pre-literacy predictors of dyslexia are rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological awareness (PA), letter knowledge, and verbal short-term memory. The relationship among these constructs has been debated, and several theories have emerged to explain the unique role of each in reading ability/disability. Furthermore, the stability of identification of risk based on these measures varies widely across studies, due in part to the different cut-offs employed to designate risk. We applied a latent profile analysis technique with a diverse sample of 1215 kindergarten and pre-kindergarten students from 20 schools, to investigate whether PA, RAN, letter knowledge, and verbal short-term memory measures differentiated between homogenous profiles of performance on these measures. Six profiles of performance emerged from the data: average performers, below average performers, high performers, PA risk, RAN risk, and double-deficit risk (both PA and RAN). A latent class regression model was employed to investigate the longitudinal stability of these groups in a representative subset of children (n = 95) nearly two years later, at the end of 1st grade. Profile membership in the spring semester of pre-kindergarten or fall semester of kindergarten was significantly predictive of later reading performance, with the specific patterns of performance on the different constructs remaining stable across the years. There was a higher frequency of PA and RAN deficits in children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. There was no evidence for the IQ–achievement discrepancy criterion traditionally used to diagnose dyslexia. Our results support the feasibility of early identification of dyslexia risk and point to the heterogeneity of risk profiles. These findings carry important implications for improving outcomes for children with dyslexia, based on more targeted interventions” (p.1)

Ozernov-Palchik, O., Norton, E.S., Sideridis, G., Beach, S.D., Wolf, M., Gabrieli, J.D.E., & Gaab, N. (2017). Longitudinal stability of pre-reading skill profiles of kindergarten children: Implications for early screening and theories of reading. Developmental Science, 20(5).

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“Just as most adults move from place to place without thinking about the muscle movements involved in walking, skilled readers are rarely conscious of coordinating the cognitive processes involved in reading.”

Ashby, J., & Rayner, K. (2006). Literacy development: Insights from research on skilled reading. In David K. Dickinson and‎ Susan B. Neuman (Eds), Handbook of early literacy research (Vol 2, pp. 52–63). New York: The Guilford Press.

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“The principle of converging evidence has been well illustrated in the controversies surrounding the teaching of reading. The methods of systematic empiricism employed in the study of reading acquisition are many and varied. They include case studies, correlational studies, experimental studies, narratives, quasi-experimental studies, surveys, epidemiological studies and many others. The results of many of these studies have been synthesized in several important research syntheses (Adams, 1990; Ehri et al., 2001; National Reading Panel, 2000; Pressley, 1998; Rayner et al., 2002; Reading Coherence Initiative, 1999; Share & Stanovich, 1995; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Snowling, 2000; Spear-Swerling & Sternberg, 2001; Stanovich, 2000). These studies were used in a process of establishing converging evidence, a principle that governs the drawing of the conclusion that a particular educational practice is research-based.” (p. 15)

“As strong as they are methodologically, studies employing true experimental logic are not the only type that can be used to draw conclusions. Correlational studies have value. The results from many different types of investigation, including correlational studies, can be amalgamated to derive a general conclusion. The basis for conclusion rests on the convergence observed from the variety of methods used. This is most certainly true in classroom and curriculum research. It is necessary to amalgamate the results from not only experimental investigations, but correlational studies, nonequivalent control group studies, time series designs, and various other quasi-experimental designs and multivariate correlational designs, all have their strengths and weaknesses. For example, it is often (but not always) the case that experimental investigations are high in internal validity, but limited in external validity, whereas correlational studies are often high in external validity, but low in internal validity.” (p. 20)

Stanovich, P.J., & Stanovich, K.E. (2003). How teachers can use scientifically based research to make curricular & instructional decisions. Jessup, MD: The National Institute for Literacy. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/articles/researchbytopic/4863

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“The finding that morphological and orthographic wordform coding contributed to literacy achievement in addition to phonological coding should not be surprising because English is a morphophonemic orthography (Venezky, 1970, 1999). Thus, although the National Reading Panel emphasizes the importance of phonological coding based on typically developing students, the current results provide further evidence to support that orthographic and morphological coding are also important (consistent with other research, including Niedo et al., 2014), especially for those with language-related SLDs. More research is needed on implementing instructional interventions for SLDs for teaching students in Grades 4 to 9 to read and spell words in English morphophonemic orthography who can learn to do so despite past struggles (Tanimoto, Thompson, Berninger, Nagy, & Abbott, 2015).” (p.154)

Sanders, E.A., Berninger, V.W., & Abbott, R.A. (2018). Sequential prediction of literacy achievement for specific learningdisabilities contrasting in impaired levels of language in grades 4 to 9. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 51(2), 137-157.

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“What do you mean by cueing systems?

Mercifully, if you asked this question, you escaped some very bad ideas that pervade reading education. I suggest looking up some good articles by Kerry Hempenstall, an Australian professor who has been writing critiques for years. www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewtopic.php?t=701”

Moats, L. (2017). Follow Up Questions & Answers with Dr. Louisa Moats. Retrieved from https://www.aimpa.org/uploaded/Institute/Moats_SymposiumFollowUpQ_A.pdf

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“The results of the present study indicate that the cost of orthographic inconsistency to alphabetic reading development is greater for the acquisition of decoding skills than for the growth of real word reading, as evidenced by the relatively low scores of English children on the pseudoword task. However, when considered within the theoretical framework of the self-teaching hypothesis, the cloud of orthographic inconsistency of English may, after all, have a silver lining. That is, to the extent that pseudoword reading is the proxy measure for the foundational skill that drives orthographic learning and efficient word reading (Share, 1995), the present results suggest that English readers are better able to capitalize on their less developed decoding skills to access and acquire orthographic representations of real words than their consistent-orthography-learning counterparts. Despite their considerable lag in pseudoword reading at the end of first grade, the English children had levels of word reading efficiency equivalent to their Czech and Slovak peers; thereafter, their word reading lag remained relatively small. … Finally, the very high correlations observed in the present study between word and pseudoword reading skills across languages and time points, despite clear between language differences in skill levels and growth rates, is consistent with the view that a tight functional relationship between decoding skills and word reading skills comprises the self-teaching mechanism in alphabetic reading development (Share, 1995).” (p.9)

Caravolas, M. (2018). Growth of word and pseudoword reading efficiency in alphabetic orthographies: Impact of consistency. Journal of Learning Disabilities, Online First. DOI 10.1177/0022219417718197

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“Direct Instruction has been the subject of empirical research since its inception in the 1960s and has garnered a strong research base to support it. Despite its proven efficacy, Direct Instruction is not widely implemented and draws much criticism from some educators. This literature review details the components of Direct Instruction, research to support it and reported attitudes towards it. The aspects of Direct Instruction that attract the most criticism are broken down to determine just what it is that educators do not like about it. In addition, this review attempts to outline possible ways to improve the landscape for Direct Instruction by reviewing research on how best to achieve a shift in beliefs when adopting change in schools. This includes pre-service teacher education and professional development and support for practising teachers as a means of improving rates of implementation of Direct Instruction.” (p.137)

McMullen, F., & Madelaine, A. (2014) Why is there so much resistance to Direct Instruction? Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 19(2), 137-151.

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In this study, Spelling Mastery was shown to have a significant effect on trained spelling regular words, morphological words, and words that followed spelling rules and generalized to untaught regularly spelled word and untaught words that followed the spelling rules. Moreover, these 8- to 12-year-old students who had a learning disability in spelling maintained their progress on words that followed spelling rules, suggesting that the Spelling Mastery was effective in teaching students to pay attention to the patterns that occur in words. However, there was a lack of significant findings and smaller effects for irregular words at both posttest and maintenance” (p. 8, 9).

Squires, K.E., & Wolter, J.A. (2016). The effects of orthographic pattern intervention on spelling performance of students with reading disabilities: A best evidence synthesis. Remedial and Special Education, 1-13. Published online before print March 1, 2016, doi: 10.1177/0741932516631115

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“In a study with 112 third- and fourth-grade children, we measured the relative effectiveness of discovery learning and direct instruction at two points in the learning process: (a) during the initial acquisition of the basic cognitive objective (a procedure for designing and interpreting simple, unconfounded experiments) and (b) during the subsequent transfer and application of this basic skill to more diffuse and authentic reasoning associated with the evaluation of sciencefair posters. We found not only that many more children learned from direct instruction than from discovery learning, but also that when asked to make broader, richer scientific judgments, the many children who learned about experimental design from direct instruction performed as well as those few children who discovered the method on their own. These results challenge predictions derived from the presumed superiority of discovery approaches in teaching young children basic procedures for early scientific investigations.” (p. 661)

Klahrl, D., & Nigam, M. (2004). The equivalence of learning paths in early science: Effects of direct instruction and discovery learning. Psychological Science, 15(10), 661-667.

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“An analysis of these 2 approaches suggests that direct instruction principles are effective in supporting students with varied achievement levels and that these principles can be used to enhance comprehension among students at very different points in reading development. These evidence-based approaches also illustrate that direct instruction can be designed to support complex learning and the development of higher order cognitive strategies.” (p.221-2)

Coyne, M.D. Zipoli Jr., R.P., Chard, D.J., Faggella-Luby, M., Ruby, M., Santoro, L.E., & Baker, S. (2009) Direct instruction of comprehension: Instructional examples from intervention research on listening and reading comprehension. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 25(2-3), 221-245.

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“The results obtained in this study largely replicate findings obtained in other studies of Funnix Beginning Reading. Like Parlange (2004) and Watson and Hempenstall (2008), these results indicate significantly stronger gains in pre- and beginning reading skills among Funnix students than among the control students. The results are especially notable given the random assignment of students to conditions and the use of high school-age tutors, rather than college students or parents, as employed in other studies.” (p.45)

Stockard, J. (2010). Promoting early literacy of preschool children: A study of the effectiveness of Funnix Beginning Reading. Journal of Direct Instruction, 10, 29-48.

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“ … the design strategy of using DI programs with above-average student populations has much to recommend it because in such settings, implementations with fidelity can be accomplished more readily, and under such circumstances the academic gains resulting from DI programs can be magnified.” (p.25)

Vitale, M.R., Medland, M.B., & Kaniuka, T.S. (2010). Implementing Spelling with Morphographs with above-average students in Grade 2: Implications for DI of comparisons with demographically similar control students in Grades 2-3-4-5. Journal of Direct Instruction, 10(1), 17-28.

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“The major concerns documented in these reports included the misinterpretation of study findings, inclusion of studies where programs were not fully implemented, exclusion of relevant studies from review, inappropriate inclusion of studies, concerns over WWC policies and procedures, incorrect information about a program developer and/or publisher, and the classification of programs. Multiple inquirers documented how the WWC made conclusions about study findings that did not align with the authors’ conclusions, and in some instances reported totally different conclusions. Over 80 percent of the requests for Quality Reviews involved concerns with misinterpretations of study findings. Misinterpretation of study findings appeared to result from both procedural errors of individual reviewers, but also from WWC policies, often including the WWC’s refusal to consider fidelity of implementation when determining the effectiveness rating of an intervention.” (Wood, 2017, p iii)

Wood, T. (2017). Does the What Works Clearinghouse really work? Investigations into issues of policy, practice, and transparency. Retrieved from https://www.nifdi.org/research/recent-research/whitepapers

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“Direct Instruction is based on over 5 decades of work. The curricular programs are based on extensively formulated and carefully tested theoretical insights and are developed through a painstaking process of research and testing. A great deal of research has shown that they are highly effective in helping all students to increase their levels of achievement. Research also shows that the programs are most effective when they are implemented as designed. This brief report summarizes some of that work. It has three major sections.1 The first gives a brief overview of the development of Direct Instruction and its theoretical basis. The second section gives examples of results from a variety of efficacy studies that document the impact that DI has on students’ learning, and the third section discusses studies of the implementation of the program and factors that can make it more or less effective. The literature on Direct Instruction is very large. While this summary is believed to be representative of the body of work, interested readers are urged to consult the entire literature.” (p.1)

Stockard, J. (2015). A brief summary of research on Direct Instruction. P.1-26. Retrieved from https://www.nifdi.org/research/recent-research/whitepapers/1352-a-brief-summary-of-research-on-direct-instruction-january-2015/file

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“Given the established findings in support of the effectiveness of Direct Instruction programs in general, and the cumulative evaluative findings initiated with Project Follow Through, a possible expectation may be that the use of Direct Instruction programs has been a major focus of school reform initiatives. However, this has not been the case. Despite established evidence of effectiveness, implementation capacity (see Engelmann & Engelmann, 2004), and increased cumulative use with at-risk students (see National Institute for Direct Instruction, 2010a, 2010b), Direct Instruction for the most part-has been excluded from the school reform movement. As Engelmann (2008) detailed, what evolved into a systemic avoidance of using Direct Instruction programs that began with Project Follow Through has been detrimental to both school reform and the potential achievement of at-risk students.” (p.27)

Vitale, M. R., & Kaniuka, T. S. (2012). Adapting a multiple-baseline design rationale for evaluating instructional interventions: Implications for the adoption of Direct Instruction reading curricula for evidence-based reform. Journal of Direct Instruction, 12, 25-36.

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“The primary purpose of this study was to test the effects of the Reading Mastery curriculum on early literacy skills for students with ASD in Kindergarten and First grade. The curriculum was delivered in small groups with peers and compared to “business-as-usual” reading instruction. Analysis showed that children in the treatment group showed significantly more growth on the Reading Mastery curriculum-based word list, letter sound knowledge (DIBELS nonsense word fluency), and on the Word Identification test on the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test. Findings support the use of explicit and Direct Instruction curricula for high risk children who are struggling academically (Kame’enui and Simmons 2001; Kamps et al. 2008); and more specifically children with ASD at risk for learning problems (El Zein et al. 2014; Flores and Ganz 2009; Ganz and Flores 2009; Plavnick et al. 2014, 2016). Findings also support the use of the Reading Mastery curriculum to teach children with ASD basic phonemic awareness, decoding skills and word reading (Plavnick et al. 2016; Spector and Cavanaugh 2015).”

Kamps, D., Heitzman-Powell, L., Rosenberg, N., & Swinburne Romine, R.E. (2016). Effects of Reading Mastery as a small group intervention for young children with ASD. Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, 28(5), 703–722. DOI10.1007/s10882-016-9503-3

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“Quantitative mixed models were used to examine literature published from 1966 through 2016 on the effectiveness of Direct Instruction. Analyses were based on 328 studies involving 413 study designs and almost 4,000 effects. Results are reported for the total set and subareas regarding reading, math, language, spelling, and multiple or other academic subjects; ability measures; affective outcomes; teacher and parent views; and single-subject designs. All of the estimated effects were positive and all were statistically significant except results from metaregressions involving affective outcomes. Characteristics of the publications, methodology, and sample were not systematically related to effect estimates. Effects showed little decline during maintenance, and effects for academic subjects were greater when students had more exposure to the programs. Estimated effects were educationally significant, moderate to large when using the traditional psychological benchmarks, and similar in magnitude to effect sizes that reflect performance gaps between more and less advantaged students.”

Stockard, J., Wood, T.W., Coughlin, C., & Khoury, C.R. (2018). The effectiveness of Direct Instruction curricula: A meta-analysis of a half century of research. Review of Educational Research, 88(4), 479–507. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3102/0034654317751919

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"The results are in line with what would be predicted by theories that link the development of word recognition automaticity to basic decoding skills. For example, in Ehri’s model of sight word acquisition, the acquisition of the basic orthographic code (decoding ability) is a foundation for the development of automaticity (e.g., Ehri, 2015). Letter–sound associations are the ‘‘glue” that connects orthographic representations to the phonological representations of whole words in the mental lexicon. Without this glue, sight word acquisition would develop only very slowly and would continue to be error prone. Similarly, according to Share’s (1999), Share’s (2008) self-teaching hypothesis, acquisition of orthographic representations on a large scale requires that the reader has acquired the basic orthographic code. Phonological recoding (print-to-sound conversion) is the underpinning of an orthographic self-teaching mechanism that enables young readers to memorize orthographic representations and link them to known phonological word forms. One of the features of self-teaching theory is early onset. Beginning reading is beginning self-teaching (Share & Stanovich, 1995). Finally, longitudinal data support the view that the acquisition of the basic orthographic code (as indexed by pseudo-word reading ability) precedes the development of fluency in reading (Juul et al., 2014)."

Megherbi, H., Elbro, C., Oakhill, J., Segui, & New, B. (2018). The emergence of automaticity in reading: Effects of orthographic depth and word decoding ability on an adjusted Stroop measure. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 166, 652-663.

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“The achievement gap between typical and dyslexic readers is evident as early as first grade, and this gap persists into adolescence. These findings provide strong evidence and impetus for early identification of and intervention for young children at risk for dyslexia. Implementing effective reading programs as early as kindergarten or even preschool offers the potential to close the achievement gap.”

Ferrer, E., Shaywitz, B. A., Holahan, J. M., Marchione, K. E., Michaels, R., & Shaywitz, S. E. (2015). Achievement gap in reading is present as early as first grade and persists through adolescence. The Journal of Pediatrics, 167, 1121–1125.

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“More research is needed in determining the factors that work restricting for teachers in putting their knowledge into classroom practice. It is recommended that preservice and in-service teacher training should not be limited to transfer of knowledge, but should also assist teachers in designing and performing effective fluent reading instruction.” (p.1231)

Van den Hurk, H. T. G., Houtveen, A. A. M., & Van de Grift, W. J. C. M. (2017). Does teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge affect their fluency instruction? Reading and Writing, 30(6), 1231-1249.

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“Evidence for ESSA excludes researcher- and developer-made measures because they enormously overstate effect sizes. Marta Pellegrini, at the University of Florence in Italy, recently analyzed data from every reading and math study accepted for review by the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). She compared outcomes on tests made up by researchers or developers to those that were independent. The average effect sizes across hundreds of studies were +0.52 for researcher/developer-made measures, and +0.19 for independent measures. Almost three to one. We have also made similar comparisons within the very same studies, and the differences in effect sizes averaged 0.48 in reading and 0.45 in math.”

Slavin, R. (2017). …But it was the very best butter! How tests can be reliable, valid, and worthless. Huffpost, 11/16/2017. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/5a0d8d87e4b023a796fed43d

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“This study revealed evidence of overlapping genetic and environmental influences shared among prereading and word level reading skills at the beginning of schooling with reading comprehension in middle school, in a large, diverse sample. … The results of this study have implications for reading education, in particular for early detection and intervention of reading problems. If genetic influences are indicative of general reading ability or are related to general cognitive ability that “carry over” from kindergarten to first grade and eventually to middle school, children identified as at risk for future reading problems may need individualizing instruction from kindergarten on, in particular in letter knowledge, as they bring different abilities to a classroom (Byrne et al., 2005).” (p.11-12)

Erbeli, F., Hart, S.A., & Taylor, J. (2017). Longitudinal associations among reading-related skills and reading comprehension: A twin study. Child Development, xxxx(0), 1–14.

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“Our results indicate, first, the presence of developmental differences in etiology on writing components and, second, genetic and environmental overlapping between writing components and writing. These findings have implications for home and school environments. Evidence that genetic effects on writing increase with age, together with the evidence that genetically influenced variation in lexical diversity was related to writing achievement for middle schoolers should not be taken to imply that developing writing is determined by one's genetic makeup. On the contrary, genetic effects may disappear if the environment is changed. For educators, this implies that middle schoolers with genetic make-ups that put them at risk of developing atypically in writing should be provided with strategically designed environmental input, such as educational interventions, to at least partially compensate for genetic constraints. Under a simple intervention view, our results suggest the interventions should be targeted in particular to remediation of oral language knowledge, which underlies writing skills (Berninger & Winn, 2006; Kim et al., 2011, 2014, 2015). Next, we found that shared environmental effects on writing drop with age. Such results indicate that home and school environment are particularly salient in initial phases of writing development. This confirms the findings in the phenotypic literature which showed that informal literacy environment at home predicted growth in English receptive vocabulary from kindergarten to first grade (Sénéchal & Lefevre, 2014), which in turn seems to be related with writing. Finally, our results indicated an increase in non-shared environmental effects with age and a strong non-shared environmental overlap between writing components and writing in beginning and developing phases of writing development. If that is suggestive of twin's individual reading experiences and print exposure which are related to writing, then the goal of the instruction would, in part, be to support elementary and middle schoolers in engaging in such activities. This is in line with previous research which showed that reading and writing draw on similar knowledge, skills, and strategies (Shanahan, 2006). For example, readers acquire knowledge about the basic elements or features of a particular type of text as a result of reading such text (Shanahan, 2006).” (p.19)

Erbeli, F., Hart, S.A., Kim, Y.-S. G., Taylor, J. (2017). The effects of genetic and environmental factors on writing development. Learning and Individual Differences, 59, 11-21.

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“An evidence-based teaching practice is defined as a teaching practice established through meta-analysis with a mean effect size greater than .20 for challenging populations or constructs, and .40 or greater for most teaching purposes, and .80 or higher for most noteworthy levels of effectiveness.”

Burchard, M., Fisler, J., & Dormer, J. (2017). Interactions between teachers’ attribution for student learning and implementation of evidence-based practices. EdDAASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice, 14(3), 28-44. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar_url?url=http://www.aasa.org/uploadedFiles/Publications/JSP-Fall-2017.pdf%23page%3D28&hl=en&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm3MrSlJIflOUyTHTVEeUMU47fd62A&nossl=1&oi=scholaralrt

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“Bloom, Hill, Rebeck Black, and Lipsey (2008) report outcomes that express the annual growth in the United States for language, maths, science, and social studies as effect sizes (based on Cohen, 1988). For language and maths, the yearly gains are approximately 1.00 in the first years of primary education. This implies that the average pupil in Year 2 scores one standard deviation above the average in Year 1. In later years, this growth gradually declines. In the final years of primary school, annual growth has already declined by more than half, and in the final years of high school it is 0.20 or less. These findings can be used as benchmarks for assessing the impact of educational interventions (Lipsey et al., 2012).” (p. 1)

Luyten, H., Merrell, C., & Tymms, P. (2017). The contribution of schooling to learning gains of pupils in Years 1 to 6. School Effectiveness and School Improvement. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2017.1297312

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“My paternal grandparents were illiterate. My father was the only one in his family to get past very basic schooling. He had a very strong sense of the beauty and magic of written words. He saw how oppressive it was when you didn’t have access to the written word, and how liberating and transcendent if you did. He never ceased to marvel till the end of his days that you can divine the universe with these 26 symbols. People who come from generations of literacy might have lost that sense of its transcendent and liberating power, but I got it from my father. Words have been like a magic carpet that have taken me far away from this island.” Australian author Richard Flanagan (winner of the Man Booker Prize 2014).

Knox, M. (2017). We’re constantly imagining and reimagining who we are. The Age, Good Weekend, Sep 23, 18-22.

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“The combination of analyses on the regional functional activation patterns and connections between regions can further address important theoretical issues in RD research. For example, even though phonological processing deficit is the most consistently reported impairment in RD, it is still an open question whether phonological representation, or alternatively, access to these representations, is the central deficit (Ramus & Szenkovits, 2008). One recent study disentangled these two aspects by combining functional MRI multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA), resting‐state functional connectivity, and DWI tractography techniques (Boets et al., 2013). The authors found that the differences between the adult RD and control groups existed in both functional and structural connectivity rather than neural representations of phonemes. They concluded that it is the access to the phonological representation rather than the representation itself that is abnormal in RD (Boets et al., 2013). Such results represent a significant step forward in addressing the nature of the phonological deficit in RD (Ramus, 2014). Due to limitations including sensitivity of the MVPA method and sample characteristics (e.g., examining only one age group), replication of the results is warranted.” (p.8)

Black, J.M., Xia, Z., & Hoeft, F. (2017). Neurobiological bases of reading disorder part II: The importance of developmental considerations in typical and atypical reading. Language & Linguists Compass. e12252. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12252

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“Increasing evidence on the acquisition of reading network can be synthesized by the “neuronal recycling hypothesis,” which proposed that “cultural inventions invade evolutionarily older brain circuits and inherit many of their structural constraints” (Dehaene & Cohen, 2007, p. 384). Reading, which evolved around 5,000 years ago, is a creation of human society. Thus, it is unlikely that humans developed a specific neural basis for reading to respond to the pressure of natural selection. In line with this hypothesis, neuroimaging studies suggest that reading does not have its own devoted network but instead recruits areas (e.g., left FG) from multiple instantiated systems (e.g., the language, visual, and attention networks; Dehaene, Cohen, Morais, & Kolinsky, 2015; Vogel et al., 2013). For example, the putative areas responding specifically to word‐like stimuli are originally responsive to faces and gradually became responsive to print stimuli after receiving reading instruction (Dehaene et al., 2010). In the same study, response to the spoken language in the left planum temporale was shown to be enhanced by literacy experience, suggesting that over reading acquisition, individuals come to recruit this speech-related brain area (Dehaene et al., 2010). Furthermore, brain regions that are recruited during reading are not only dependent on experience but may also depend on the specific age (developmental stage) of the child. For example, the recruitment of a frontoparietal network that includes the superior parietal lobule is stronger in children compared to adults during a reading task. Here, children may require extra top-down attention and control during reading (Church et al., 2008). In brief, it is plausible that the reading network is an integration of functionally specialized and evolutionarily old networks (e.g., language processing and visual processing) and more domain-general networks (e.g., frontoparietal attention or cognitive control network) that flexibly engage with each other depending on the task at hand (Fedorenko & Thompson-Schill, 2014).” (p.6-7)

Black, J.M., Xia, Z., & Hoeft, F. (2017). Neurobiological bases of reading disorder part II: The importance of developmental considerations in typical and atypical reading. Language & Linguists Compass. e12252. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12252

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“Synthesis of functional findings shows that the left temporo‐parietal and occipito‐temporal regions are recruited early (Brem et al., 2010), and reading development is thought to involve the initial engagement of the left and right occipito‐temporal and temporo‐parietal regions simultaneously, followed by disengagement of right hemisphere regions (Brem et al., 2010; Maurer et al., 2005; Turkeltaub et al., 2003; Yamada et al., 2011). In older children and adults, while the phonological left temporo‐parietal region continues to be available for engagement, its recruitment generally declines as visual word recognition becomes more automatic and prominent in fluent reading, and therefore, there is less need for reliance primarily on the phonological system (Martin et al., 2015; Zhu, Nie, Chang, Gao, & Niu, 2014). The ventral occipito‐temporal region associated with automatic word recognition is recruited more in older children and adults than in younger ages (Brown et al., 2005; Church, Balota, Petersen, & Schlaggar, 2011; Church, Coalson, Lugar, Petersen, & Schlaggar, 2008). A recent meta‐analysis of functional MRI studies further confirmed this age‐related shift (Martin et al., 2015).” (p.4, 6)

Black, J.M., Xia, Z., & Hoeft, F. (2017). Neurobiological bases of reading disorder part II: The importance of developmental considerations in typical and atypical reading. Language & Linguists Compass. e12252. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12252

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“ … neuroimaging research has elucidated brain networks involved in typical reading (Price, 2012). These networks include primarily the left ventral system (including the occipito-temporal region-posterior fusiform gyrus [FG] and the inferior temporal gyrus [ITG]) for orthographic processing, the left dorsal system (including the temporo-parietal region-supramarginal gyrus [SMG] and posterior superior temporal gyrus [STG], as well as dorsal inferior frontal gyrus [IFG]) for phonological processing, and a more distributed system across the brain for semantic and sentence/syntactic processing (including the angular gyrus, anterior FG, temporal pole, middle temporal gyrus, and ventral IFG; Graves, Desai, Humphries, Seidenberg, & Binder, 2010; Martin et al., 2015; McNorgan, Chabal, O'Young, Lukic, & Booth, 2015; Price, 2012; Taylor et al., 2013; Vigneau et al., 2006; Vigneau et al., 2011; Figure 1a). It is worth noting that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the activation in a single brain region and a given cognitive function. Reading always relies on the cooperation of distributed brain networks. Different from the language‐specific neural systems such as those for orthographic, phonological, semantic, and sentence/syntactic processing, the functions of some brain regions (e.g., the junction of left inferior frontal and precentral sulci) are thought to be more domain-general and involved in many processes beyond language and reading (Graves et al., 2010)

Black, J.M., Xia, Z., & Hoeft, F. (2017). Neurobiological bases of reading disorder part II: The importance of developmental considerations in typical and atypical reading. Language & Linguists Compass. e12252. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12252

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“These results are consistent with the framework of the Word Experience Model (Reichle & Perfetti, 2003) in which word knowledge is built from the accumulation of individual experiences. Increasing exposures lead to high overlap of core features of form and meaning across repeated instances, leading to lexicalization, and integrated representation of form and meaning features. The current study suggests that within the word experience framework, more skilled readers may be able to establish context-independent representations with fewer exposures to words than less skilled readers require by making better use of each exposure. … a ‘‘rich get richer’’ pattern is evident in which skilled, experienced readers show more facilitation than less experienced readers from the same number of exposures to words. … Experience in reading both develops expertise and reflects it. A reader’s self reported amount of book reading, but not magazine or internet reading, was associated with more efficient reading behavior. That this experience factor couples reading speed with reading experience reflects the outcome of reading experience on reading efficiency. This relationship of experience and efficiency, we suggest, is mediated through the acquisition of high quality word representations that develops largely from sufficiently frequent and effective word reading experiences. … both orthographic and phonological information are accessed quickly, with semantic information retrieved as lexical access occurs (Lee, Rayner, & Pollatsek, 1999; Perfetti, Bell, & Delaney, 1988; Perfetti & Bell, 1991; Rayner, Sereno, Lesch, & Pollatsek, 1995).” (p.1096-8)

Taylor, J.N., & Perfetti, C.A. (2016). Eye movements reveal readers’ lexical quality and reading experience. Reading & Writing, 29(6), 1069–1103.

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“First, the results emphasize that differences between children in prealphabetic phases have immediate influence on the fundamental first steps of the alphabetic reading development. Therefore, full insight and fine grained documentation of cognitive and linguistic abilities of children by the end of kindergarten is relevant for Grade 1 teachers. Cognitive and linguistic information can function as markers for possible difficulties in beginning reading. Teachers should immediately anticipate the responses to instruction based on this information. Second, the current study showed the relevance of fine grained curriculum embedded monitoring of the reading processes of the children during the beginning of word decoding development, in addition to the standardized curriculum based measurements after half a year. The results of the current study emphasizes the relevance to react to small early signs of difficulties in reading development, because this might very well be related to later bigger problems in reading.” (p.1547)

Schaars, M.M.H., Segers, E., & Verhoeven, L. (2017). Word decoding development in incremental phonics instruction in a transparent orthography. Reading and Writing, 30, 1529–1550.

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“From the start of phonics instruction, word decoding development is a matter of growing word decoding efficiency. These findings confirm that word reading efficiency already develops during the first months of reading development, at least in more transparent languages. This finding has been outlined, but not extensively studied, in previous research (e.g., Seymour et al., 2003; Verhoeven & Van Leeuwe, 2008; Ziegler et al., 2010). Despite the incremental character of the monthly measurements, word decoding efficiency continued to improve after each training session. This increasing efficiency might be seen as a reflection of the consolidation of the mappings of orthography with phonology and of the automation of word decoding, as claimed by the self-teaching hypothesis (Share, 2004). The results further showed that a stable path of reading development exists already from the first month of phonics instruction. Verhoeven and Van Leeuwe (2009) have previously evidenced such stability in reading development in later phases. To our knowledge, however, the current study was the first to show that stability in individual differences of reading development has already been established during, instead of after, the fundamental processes involved in mastering the alphabetic principle (see also Caravolas et al., 2013; Simmons et al., 2008; Steacy et al., 2014). The high relation of the curriculum embedded word decoding assessments with the standardized word decoding measure after 5 months indicates that the curriculum embedded measurement was an adequate way of assessing children’s performances. Furthermore, this transfer to new, nontrained words supports the claim by Share (2004) and Ehri (2005) that children should be able to read any regular word in their language as soon as they have mastered baseline word decoding skills.” (p.1545)

Schaars, M.M.H., Segers, E., & Verhoeven, L. (2017). Word decoding development in incremental phonics instruction in a transparent orthography. Reading and Writing, 30, 1529–1550.

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“A critical element of efficacious early childhood language and preliteracy interventions is the provision of systematically organized and explicit instruction that targets children’s development of skills that are predictive of future reading achievement (NELP, 2008). Systematically organized instruction utilizes learning sequences that are guided by a rigorous understanding of how children learn, whereas explicit instruction clarifies to children what they have to attend to within an activity by orienting them toward the goals of the activity (Mesmer & Griffith, 2005). Targeted skills in language and preliteracy interventions often include phonological awareness, print awareness, and oral language skills, as such skills have well documented relations with future reading achievement (Catts, Herrera, Nielsen, & Bridges, 2015). Manualized language and preliteracy interventions that yield positive effects on children’s skills typically feature these elements in some combination (Justice, Kaderavek, Fan, Sofka, & Hunt, 2009; Piasta et al., 2012), resulting in improvements in children’s language and preliteracy skills by about 0.25–0.87 SD units (see NELP, 2008). … An additional and important result derived from this study, and one that stands in contrast to previous research, is that neither SES indexed as maternal education nor DLL background significantly moderated the intervention effect as pooled across the three intervention groups.” (p.2, 16)

Bleses, D., Højen, A., Justice, L. Dale, P.S., Dybdal, L., Piasta, S., Markussen-Brown, J. G., Clausen, M.C., Haghish, E.F. & Andersen, M. K. (2017). The effectiveness of a large-scale language and pre-literacy intervention: The SPELL randomized-controlled-trial in Denmark. Child Development doi:10.1111/cdev.12859

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“While Australia has lagged behind comparable countries over recent decades, the National Partnership Agreement has been a significant turning point. This long-overdue investment from governments to provide all Australian children with access to 600 hours of preschool education in the year before school has paid off enormously. It also shows what can be achieved when federal, state and territory governments work together. However, there is more to do. Now is the time not only to continue this commitment, but to extend that access to high-quality, age-appropriate early education programs for three-year-olds. We need a system that can deliver two years of quality preschool programs, as well as access for all Australian children during their crucial first five years of early development - wherever they live and whatever their family circumstances.”

Pilcher, S. (2017). Early learning report card: Australia is improving rapidly, but there’s more work to do. The Conversation, September 11. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/early-learning-report-card-australia-is-improving-rapidly-but-theres-more-work-to-do-83706

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“In a review of early childhood programs at www.bestevidence.org, our team found that across 16 programs emphasizing literacy as well as language, effect sizes did not diminish in literacy at the end of kindergarten, and they actually doubled on language measures (from +0.08 in preschool to +0.15 in kindergarten). … the evidence suggests that effects of particular preschool approaches may show up later than the end of preschool. This observation, and specifically the Bright Beginnings evaluation, may indicate that in the long run it matters a great deal how students are taught in preschool. Until we find replicable models of preschool, or pre-k to 3 interventions, that have long-term effects on reading and other outcomes, we cannot sleep.”

Slavin, R. (2017). Little sleepers: Long-term effects of preschool. Huffington Post, 28/9. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/59ccf2efe4b0b99ee4a9cad9

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“Studies of typically developing children have found that the quality of handwriting shows a rapid development between ages six and seven, reaches a plateau between ages seven and eight and improves further in that handwriting becomes automated and organized between ages eight and nine (Feder & Majnemer, 2007). Automation is important for handwriting and other academic skills (e.g., reading, arithmetic). For example, if handwriting is unautomated, there will be a reduction in both the quality and quantity of text (Connelly & Hurtst, 2001; LaBerge & Samuels, 1974). Handwriting ability becomes automated when the process can be quickly and precisely executed without the need for conscious attention (Connelly & Hurtst, 2001; LaBerge & Samuels, 1974). Acquisition of a new skill is generally associated with a decrease in the need for effortful control over performance, which leads to the development of automation.” (p.1498)

Stievano, P., Michetti, S., McClintock, S.M., Levi, G., & Scalisi, M.G. (2016). Handwriting fluency and visuospatial generativity at primary school. Reading and Writing, 29, 1497–1510.

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“The teachers’ responses raised some concerns about the quality of writing instruction third- and fourth-grade students receive, as teachers reported spending only 15 min a day teaching writing and students spend only 25 min a day at school writing. While teachers indicated they used a variety of evidence based writing practices in their classroom, a majority of these were applied infrequently. Further, three out of every four teachers reported that their college teacher preparation programs provided no or minimal instruction on how to teach writing.” (p.929)

Brindle, M., Graham, S., Harris, K.R., & Hebert, M. (2016). Third and fourth grade teacher’s classroom practices in writing: A national survey. Reading & Writing, 29, 929–954.

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“Results of this study suggest that the middle and high school years may be important periods for continuing the growth of students’ vocabulary and orthographic knowledge. Although it is likely few would disagree with offering adolescents vocabulary instruction (see, for example, the meta-analysis by Elleman, Lindo, Morphy, & Compton, 2009), there has not been as much research on the effects of spelling for older students. Spelling instruction has reportedly received little attention at any grade level (Cooke, Slee, & Young, 2008), but particularly so in grades 8–12 (Foorman & Petscher, 2010).” (p.652)

Reed, D.K., Petscher, Y., & Foorman, B.R. (2016). The contribution of vocabulary knowledge and spelling to the reading comprehension of adolescents who are and are not English language learners. Reading and Writing, 29(4), 633-657.

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“We found that 14, 8, and 11 compositions, respectively, would be needed to obtain a reliable estimate of these students’ writing capabilities in terms of TNW [total number of words], vocabulary diversity, and writing quality. Furthermore, how well these students wrote in one genre provided a weak prediction of how well they wrote in other genres.” (p.72)

Graham, S., Hebert, M., Sandbank, M. P., & Harris, K. R. (2014). Assessing the writing achievement of young struggling writers: Application of generalizability theory. Learning Disability Quarterly, 39(2) 72–82.

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“ … more than 12% of time was devoted to logistical and non-academic activities, and evidence-based interventions including explicit instruction, cognitive strategy instruction, content enhancements, and independent practice opportunities were reported infrequently …. ” (p.44)

Ciullo, S., Lembke, E. S., Carlisle, A., Thomas, C. N., Goodwin, M., & Judd, L. (2016). Implementation of evidence-based literacy practices in middle school response to intervention an observation study. Learning Disability Quarterly, 39(1), 44–57.

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“Writing provides a means for personal reflection, thinking, creativity, meaning-making and sharing, as well as complementing other modes of communication in a world of multimodal texts. While writing in the digital age has become increasingly fast-paced and exposed to global scrutiny, being able to write efficiently with correct spelling, grammar and punctuation remains a critical part of being a literate writer. This article uses data from 819 Australian primary school students to explore the relationship between three language conventions, namely spelling, grammar and punctuation as measured by the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) Language Conventions Test, and the quality of written composition, as measured by the NAPLAN Writing Test. Results indicate that spelling, grammar and punctuation jointly predict written composition achievement with spelling as the main predictor. Implications for the educational practice of writing in the contemporary context are discussed, emphasising the importance of spelling in relation to writing and how instruction in spelling, during senior primary school, appears to be critical for written composition improvement.” (p.75)

Daffern, T., Mackenzie, N.M., & Hemmings, B. (2017). Predictors of writing success: How important are spelling, grammar and punctuation? Australian Journal of Education, 61(1), 75–87.

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“Parents and preschool teachers help prepare children for formal literacy instruction when they teach them to write and identify alphabet letters. Although such skills are important (e.g., Piasta, Petscher, & Justice, 2012), there is a danger of overemphasizing the mechanical skills that are involved in literacy learning and underestimating the conceptual skills. Our results show that the idea that longer linguistic messages correspond to longer stretches of writing, which is so obvious to literate adults, is surprisingly difficult for children. More attention should be paid to helping young children gain a conceptual understanding of writing, for example, by incorporating writing activities into preschool classrooms and demonstrating that writing communicates linguistic messages (Gerde, Bingham, &Wasik, 2012).” (p.8)

Treiman, R., & Boland, K. (2017). Young children’s knowledge about the links between writing and language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 38(4), 943-952.

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“The findings of this study indicate that although early years’ teachers unanimously believe they should understand literacy precursors and how to teach them, many currently lack the disciplinary knowledge to achieve this and, in fact, tend to overestimate what they know, creating a false sense of security about the efficacy of their classroom practice. … The teacher observations in this research provided a valuable insight into the challenge of teaching literacy precursor skills explicitly, particularly for those early childhood educators with a weak understanding of phonological awareness terminology and its relevance to beginning reading.” (p.12)

Hammond, L. (2015). Early childhood educators’ perceived and actual metalinguistic knowledge, beliefs and enacted practice about teaching early reading. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 3, 853–864.

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“ … environmental changes, such as a specific reading intervention, could change the dynamic genetic

influences through a possible, unmeasured, gene–environmental interplay in the early school years, as

well as affect the environmental influence on the general development of reading” (Hart et al., 2013, p.

1980).

Hart, S. A., Logan, J. A. R., Soden-Hensler, B., Kershaw, S., Taylor, J., & Schatschneider, C. (2013).

Exploring how nature and nurture affect the development of reading: An analysis of the Florida twin

project on reading. Developmental Psychology, 49(10), 1971-1981.

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“Furthermore, vocabulary was positively and uniquely related to word reading and spelling after accounting for phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge fluency, and letter writing automaticity.”

“The systematic reviews can also produce different findings to the two methods (narrative and meta-analysis) described above. One example involves research into repeated reading of passages as an approach to enhancing reading fluency. O’Keeffe, Slocum, Burlingame, Snyder, and Bundock (2012) described how the strong support provided by numerous narrative and meta-analytic reviews of the literature contrasted with the systematic review finding of insufficient quality research to produce a supportive recommendation. For example, the National Reading Panel (2000) noted ‘Guided repeated oral reading and repeated reading provide students with practice that substantially improves word recognition, fluency, and – to a lesser extent – reading comprehension’ (Ch. 3, p. 20). When Chard, Ketterlin-Geller, Baker, Doabler, and Apichatabutra (2009) examined the same corpus of studies for a systematic review, many of the studies accepted in previous narrative and meta-analytic reviews did not meet the chosen methodological standards.” (p.5)

Hempenstall, K. (2014). What works? Evidence-based practice in education is complex. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 19(2), 113-127.

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“Several studies have shown that good quality early years education can have a positive effect on the educational, cognitive, behavioural and social outcomes of children, in both the short and long term (Sylva et al., 2010; Melhuish et al., 2015). From September 2010 all three- and four-year-olds in England have been entitled to funded early education for 570 hours per year (commonly taken as 15 hours per week for 38 weeks of the year). More recently the Government expanded this entitlement to benefit two-year-old children living in the most disadvantaged households in England. From September 2013, two-year-old children living in households that were within the 20% most disadvantaged by household income became eligible for 15 hours of funded early education per week. This was extended in September 2014 to two-year-old children living in households within the 40% most disadvantaged by household income.” (p.8)

“When controlling for home environment and demographic factors, the amount of ECEC [early childhood education and care] received between ages two and three years was associated with differences in cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes at age three years (see Table 1). Beneficial outcomes across all three levels of disadvantage studied suggest that ECEC use has a positive benefit regardless of a child’s household income disadvantage level. Although, given the lower starting point among disadvantaged children (Speight et al., 2015), and reduced likelihood to take up childcare (Speight et al., 2010a) ECEC may be of particular importance for this group. Positive impacts were observed for both formal and informal ECEC settings:

 Cognitive development in the form of higher verbal ability was associated with use of both formal (e.g. childminders) and informal (e.g. relatives) individual ECEC.

 Socio-emotional development was associated with use of formal ECEC. Specifically, formal group ECEC (e.g. nurseries, playgroups) was associated with more Prosocial Behaviour and fewer Emotional Symptoms and Peer Problems, while formal individual ECEC (e.g. childminders) was associated with fewer emotional symptoms and more behavioural Self-regulation.” (p.12)

Melhuish, E., Gardiner, J., & Morris, S. (2017). Study of Early Education and Development (SEED): Impact study on early education use and child outcomes up to age three. Research report, University of Oxford for Department for Education. Retrieved from http://www.seed.natcen.ac.uk/.

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“Accumulating evidence indicates handwriting automaticity is related to the development of effective writing skills. The present study examined the levels of handwriting automaticity of Australian children at the end of kindergarten and the amount and type of writing instruction they experienced before entering first grade. The current study involved 177 kindergarten children enrolled in 23 classrooms from seven government-funded primary schools in Western Australia. Individual child level data (e.g., handwriting automaticity and word-reading skills) were collected and teachers were asked to complete a survey assessing the amount of time and types of writing activities developed in their classrooms (e.g., teaching basic skills and teaching writing processes). Hierarchical linear models were conducted to examine total variance attributable to child and classroom levels. Results showed a total variance of approximately 20% in children’s handwriting automaticity attributable to differences among classrooms when gender and word-reading skills were controlled for. Large variability was noted in the amount and type of writing instruction reported by a subset of participating teachers. Handwriting automaticity was associated with the teaching of revising strategies but not with the teaching of handwriting. Implications for writing development and writing instruction are discussed.” (p.1)

Malpique, A.A., Pino-Pasternak, D., & Valcan, D. (2017). Handwriting automaticity and writing instruction in Australian kindergarten: An exploratory study. Reading and Writing, In Press. 1-24.

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“Evidence is accumulating that handwriting has an important role in written composition. In particular, handwriting automaticity appears to relate to success in composition. This relationship has been little explored in British contexts and we currently have little idea of what threshold performance levels might be. In this paper, we report on two linked studies that attempted to identify performance levels in handwriting automaticity for children at two ages, below which their success in writing composition might be considered to be at risk. We conclude by suggesting interpolated levels for children at different ages, although we recognise the tentative nature of these suggestions.” (p. 34)

Medwell, J., & Wray, D. (2014). Handwriting automaticity: The search for performance thresholds. Language and Education 28(1), 34-51.

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“Handwriting speed is important to the quantity and quality of children's essays. This article reviews research on adult essay writing and lecture note taking that extends this finding to adult writers. For both children and adults, research suggests that greater transcription speed increases automaticity of word production, which in turn lessens the burden on working memory (WM) and enables writers to use the limited capacity of WM for the metacognitive processes needed to create good reader-friendly prose. These findings suggest that models of writing, which emphasize the metacognitive components of writing primarily, should be expanded to include transcription (handwriting automaticity and spelling). The article also evaluates the implications of fluent handwriting to WM, given that even the most fluent handwriting can consume some WM resources and recent research and theory has highlighted the importance of WM to quality writing. Finally, the implications of handwriting and WM to assessment and instruction are discussed.” (p.197)

Peverly, S.T. (2006). The importance of handwriting speed in adult writing. Developmental Neuropsychology, 29(1), 197-216.

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“The development of handwriting speed and legibility in 900 children in Grades 1–9 was examined. Each student completed 3 writing tasks: copying a paragraph, writing a narrative, and writing an essay. The children's speed of handwriting on the copying task typically increased from one grade to the next, but the pace of development was uneven during the intermediate grades and leveled off in Grade 9 as speed began to approximate adult speeds. In contrast, improvement in handwriting legibility on the 3 writing tasks was primarily limited to the intermediate grades. Girls' handwriting was more legible than boys' handwriting, and the girls wrote faster in Grades 1, 6, and 7. Right-handers were also faster than left-handers, but there was no difference in the legibility of their written products. Finally, handwriting speed contributed significantly to the prediction of legibility on the narrative and expository writing tasks, but the contribution was small, accounting for only 1 % of the variance.” (p. 42)

Graham, S., Berninger, Weintraub & Shafer (1998). Development of handwriting speed and legibility in grades 1-9. Journal of Educational Research, 92, 42-52.

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“Handwriting is a complex skill that, despite increasing use of computers, still plays a vital role in education. It is assumed that children will master letter formation at a relatively early stage in their school life, with handwriting fluency developing steadily until automaticity is attained. The capacity theory of writing suggests that as automaticity develops, the proportion of working memory dedicated to the mechanics of handwriting is reduced, releasing capacity for the planning, composing and editing of content. This study examined the handwriting ability of 284 mainstream primary school children and explored possible associated factors. Correlations were found between poor handwriting, lower cognitive and literacy scores, and a longer duration for handwriting tasks. Giving children the opportunity to practise their handwriting sufficiently to increase the level of automaticity may release working memory to be applied to the cognitive demands of the task and may potentially raise their level of attainment.” (p.105)

McCarney, D., Peters, L., Jackson, S., Thomas, M., & Kirby, A. (2013). Does poor handwriting conceal literacy potential in primary school children? International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 60(2), 105-118.

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“There is a strong relationship between orthographic–motor integration related to handwriting and students' ability to produce creative and well structured written text. This relationship is thought to be due to the cognitive load which results when attention is required by writers to write letters and words on the page. Lack of automaticity in orthographic–motor integration means that writers do not have sufficient cognitive resources to accomplish the more demanding aspects of text production such as ideation, text monitoring, and pragmatic awareness. A systematic handwriting program can significantly improve the quality of written text by young children experiencing problems with orthographic–motor integration. This study investigated the effectiveness of a handwriting program in remediating older students' problems in orthographic–motor integration and consequently enhancing their written language skills. Two groups of students in Grades 8 and 9 were provided with either practice in handwriting or daily completion of a written journal. There were no differences between the two groups at pretest. However, at posttest, the handwriting group had significantly higher scores in orthographic–motor integration as well as for the length and quality of the text they wrote.” (p. 441)

Christensen, C.A. (2005). The role of orthographic–motor integration in the production of creative and well structured written text for students in secondary school. Educational Psychology, 25(5), 441-453.

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“Taken together, overall results indicate that some reading curricula seem to be associated with higher ORF scores. Specifically, students in Reading First schools and classrooms using Reading Mastery demonstrated stronger ORF skills when compared to students in classrooms using other curricula. This was particularly apparent in first grade, where effect sizes were greatest (0.44) for using Reading Mastery compared to students using other reading curricula. Reading First schools, by definition, serve a high proportion of children from lower-SES homes with weaker overall academic achievement. Extant research points to the need for greater amounts of explicit, basic reading skill instruction for students who start school with weaker skills (Foorman et al., 2006; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Torgesen et al., 2001). It is possible that the highly scripted structure of Reading Mastery curriculum may provide relatively more explicit instruction than the other curricular series examined in this study.” (p.207)

Crowe, E. C., Connor, C. M., & Petscher, Y. (2009). Examining the core: Relations among reading curricula, poverty, and first through third grade reading achievement. Journal of School Psychology, 47, 187–214.

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“In our view, then, the findings from a wide array of sources – studies of reading development, studies of specific instructional practices, studies of teachers and schools found to be effective – converge on the conclusion that attention to small units in early reading instruction is helpful for all children, harmful for none, and crucial for some.” (p. 518)

Snow, C. E., & Juel, C. (2005). Teaching children to read: What do we know about how to do it? In M. J. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.), The science of reading: A handbook. (pp. 501–520). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

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“This randomized controlled trial focused on 59 struggling readers in the third and fourth grades (30 female, 29 male) and examined the efficacy of an intervention aimed at increasing students’ multisyllabic word reading (MWR). The study also explored the relative effects of an embedded motivational beliefs (MB) training component. Struggling readers were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: MWR only, MWR with an MB component (MWR + MB), or business-as-usual control. Students were tutored in small groups in 24 sessions, three 40-minute lessons each week. Students in both MWR groups outperformed the control group on measures of word-reading fluency. MWR + MB students outperformed MWR only on sentence-level comprehension and outperformed the control group in ratings of attributions for success in reading. Findings are discussed in terms of their relevance to MWR instruction for students with persistent reading difficulties and the potential for enhancing intervention through targeting motivation.”

Toste, J.R., Capin, P., Vaughn, S., Roberts, G.J., & Kearns, D.M. (2017). Multisyllabic word-reading instruction with and without motivational beliefs training for struggling readers in the upper elementary grades: A pilot investigation. The Elementary School Journal, 117(4), 593-615.

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“Laptop computers are widely prevalent in university classrooms. Although laptops are a valuable tool, they offer access to a distracting temptation: the Internet. In the study reported here, we assessed the relationship between classroom performance and actual Internet usage for academic and nonacademic purposes. Students who were enrolled in an introductory psychology course logged into a proxy server that monitored their online activity during class. Past research relied on self-report, but the current methodology objectively measured time, frequency, and browsing history of participants' Internet usage. In addition, we assessed whether intelligence, motivation, and interest in course material could account for the relationship between Internet use and performance. Our results showed that nonacademic Internet use was common among students who brought laptops to class and was inversely related to class performance. This relationship was upheld after we accounted for motivation, interest, and intelligence. Class-related Internet use was not associated with a benefit to classroom performance.” (p. 171)

Ravizza, S.M., Uitvlugt, M.G., & Fenn, K.M. (2017). Logged in and zoned out. Psychological Science, 28(2), 171-180.

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“Overall, the effects of Tier 3 interventions included in this synthesis offer promising results for students who have previously responded inadequately to Tier 2 intervention. Three of four studies (Denton et al., 2006; Denton et al., 2013; Scanlon et al., 2005) included in this synthesis concluded that Tier 3 interventions can help inadequate responders can make statistically significant gains in reading compared with a matched control group including other inadequate responders. These results demonstrate that students who have previously responded inadequately to intervention are capable of making meaningful gains in reading skills, despite their inability to catch up to higher performing peers. The studies demonstrating that inadequate responders failed to catch up to their higher-performing peers suggest that expecting grade-level performance from all students might be unrealistic; however, significant reading growth made by low-performing students has the potential to have a positive impact on students’ academic and non-academic outcomes.” (p.17)

Austin, C.R., Vaughn, S., & McClelland, A.M. (2017). Intensive reading interventions for inadequate responders in Grades K–3: A synthesis. Learning Disability Quarterly, 1– 20. doi.org/10.1177/07319487177144

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Method for Intensifying Intervention From Tier 2 to Tier 3.

• Increase frequency of sessions per week
• Increase length of each session
• Increase duration of intervention from start to finish
• Decrease group size
• Increase expertise of instructor
• Adjust instruction by engaging in the process of data-based decision making (DBDM)

Austin, C.R., Vaughn, S., & McClelland, A.M. (2017). Intensive reading interventions for inadequate responders in Grades K–3: A synthesis. Learning Disability Quarterly, 1– 20. doi.org/10.1177/07319487177144

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“Although there have likely always been students who have responded inadequately to instruction, Vellutino et al. (1996) first conceptualized the term “minimal responder” by classifying students as difficult to remediate based on their minimal response to intervention (RTI). Students can be identified as inadequate responders only after being provided research-based interventions and failing to respond adequately (Vellutino, Scanlon, & Jaccard, 2003). Because research demonstrates that low-quality instruction is occurring too frequently in schools (Vaughn, Levy, Coleman, & Bos, 2002), it is challenging to determine which students are inadequate responders versus those who have not been adequately taught.” (p.1)

“Despite the number of students struggling to make adequate progress, substantial research in beginning reading has documented that providing intensive, early reading interventions can produce significant improvements in reading outcomes for most students, reducing the performance gap between struggling readers and their higher performing peers (Denton, Fletcher, Anthony, & Francis, 2006; Denton et al., 2013; Gilbert et al., 2013; O’Connor, Fulmer, Harty, & Bell, 2005; Scanlon, Vellutino, & Small, 2005; Vellutino, Scanlon, Small, & Fanuele, 2006). For this reason, students responding inadequately to instruction require more intensive reading interventions to determine whether providing additional and more intensive support can help this subset of students achieve reading growth.” (p.2)

“A common approach to RTI is to provide multiple tiers of increasingly intensive interventions in which students are provided with standardized, researchbased interventions (Fuchs, Mock, Morgan, & Young, 2003). Because students are provided with highly standardized interventions, only a subset of students with intractable reading difficulties or disabilities, who fail to respond to multiple tiers of research-based, standardized interventions, will require specialized instruction. Fidelity of implementation, or implementing a standardized, research-based intervention as designed and intended, is critical to ensure that students who have been identified as responding inadequately are true inadequate responders. Without high fidelity, it is unclear what the effects on the students will be (Hill, King, Lemons, & Partanen, 2012).” (p.2)

Austin, C.R., Vaughn, S., & McClelland, A.M. (2017). Intensive reading interventions for inadequate responders in Grades K–3: A synthesis. Learning Disability Quarterly, 1– 20. doi.org/10.1177/07319487177144

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“For educators, “First, do no harm” may be taken to mean, “use programs proven to be effective when they exist, but stick with promising approaches until better ones have been validated.” That is, in areas in which there are many programs with strong, positive evidence of effectiveness, select one of these and implement it with care. But in areas in which few programs exist, use the best available, rather than insisting on perfect evidence.”

Slavin, R. (2017). First, do no harm: The blind duchess. Huffington Post, 06/29/2017. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/5953f20de4b0c85b96c65ea2

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“Nonetheless, results highlight the importance of early environmental influences on shaping children’s reading performance in later years, which is consistent with previous research (e.g., Christopher et al., 2015; Logan et al., 2013). The results of this study have implications for reading education, in particular for early detection and intervention of reading problems. If genetic influences are indicative of general reading ability or are related to general cognitive ability that “carry over” from kindergarten to first grade and eventually to middle school, children identified as at risk for future reading problems may need individualizing instruction from kindergarten on, in particular in letter knowledge, as they bring different abilities to a classroom (Byrne et al., 2005). Our results also indicated additional genetic factors on first-grade word level reading skills outside of the overlap with kindergarten prereading skills. If those are suggestive of general processing skills needed for decoding, then the goal of the early elementary instruction would in part be to ameliorate deficiencies in those skills. We found that shared environmental influences were unique to kindergarten LNF and first-grade reading related skills but also overlapped significantly with middle school reading, indicating that home and school environment are salient for reading-related skills development.” (p.11-12)

Erbeli, F., Hart, S.A., & Taylor, J. (2017). Longitudinal associations among reading-related skills and reading comprehension: A twin study. Child Development, xxxx 00(0), 1–14.

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“In line with the simple view of reading, listening comprehension, and word decoding, together with their interaction and curvilinear effects, explains almost all (96%) variation in early reading comprehension skills. Additionally, listening comprehension was a predictor of both the early and later growth of reading comprehension skills.” (p.1)

“According to the augmented simple view of reading, certain component language skills (e.g., inference making and verbal working memory skills) make a direct contribution to reading comprehension in addition to any role they might play in fostering listening comprehension. In contrast, the simple view of reading posits that these component language skills only affect reading comprehension via their effects on listening comprehension. Contrary to some earlier studies using observed variables (e.g., Geva & Farnia, 2012; Oakhill & Cain, 2012), we found no support for the augmented simple view because the effects of component language skills on reading comprehension were entirely accounted for by their effects on listening comprehension. Similar findings were obtained by Kim (2015), in a concurrent study. We believe measurement error is a likely reason for the discrepancy between our study and many of the prior studies that found differentiated effects of vocabulary, grammar, verbal working memory, and inference skills on reading comprehension skills (see Cole & Preacher, 2014).” (p.14)

“In summary, our findings indicate that multiple language-related skills are involved in listening comprehension, which in turn is a powerful influence on the development of reading comprehension. Our results give very strong support to the simple view of reading and clarify a number of theoretical issues concerning the relationship between oral language and reading comprehension skills. Our findings also have implications for how to prevent and ameliorate reading comprehension problems. First, for children with poor decoding skills, it seems decoding can be a bottleneck for the development of reading comprehension— interventions to improve decoding in those with poor skills can therefore be expected to lead directly to improvements in reading comprehension. Even fairly minimal improvements in decoding for poor decoders may have functionally important implications for reading comprehension for this group. At a more general level, our results suggest that interventions that also focus on a broad set of oral language skills, including grammar, syntax, narrative skills, and inference making are most likely to be effective in helping children to develop adequate reading comprehension skills. There are now a handful of randomized controlled trials that have examined the effects of interventions to improve language comprehension (e.g., Clarke et al., 2010; Fricke, Bowyer-Crane, Haley, Hulme, & Snowling, 2013; Rogde, Melby-Lervag, & Lervag, 2016; see also Melby-Lervag & Lervag, 2014). Several studies support the claim that interventions can improve language comprehension skills in young children (Fricke et al., 2013; Rogde et al., 2016) and improvements in oral language skills appear to lead directly to improvements in reading comprehension both in younger (Fricke et al., 2013) and older children Clarke et al., 2010). Such findings provide strong support for the simple view of reading, and for the causal theory that the development of reading comprehension is dependent on underlying oral language skills.” (p.15)

Lervag, A., Hulme, C., & Melby-Lervag, M. (2017). Unpicking the developmental relationship between oral language skills and reading comprehension: It’s simple, but complex. Child Development, 00(0), 1–18.

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“The whole notion of differences in learning style among learners has become a sacred cow in education. Even if modality differences do exist (and that is debatable), any notion that individuals learn better when they receive information in their supposed preferred learning style is a myth (Dekker, Howard-Jones, & Jolles, 2012). There is no firm evidence that teachers can teach students according to learning style or preferences (Atherton, 2011; Boyle, 2013; Coffield, Moseley, Hall, & Ecclestone, 2004; Kratzig & Arbuthnott, 2006; Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, & Bjork, 2008; Snider, 2006) – even though 82% of teachers believe that such teaching does improve learning outcomes (Howard-Jones, 2013). But the hard evidence is that teaching all children to spell must inevitably engage their visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic modalities (and brain) in an entirely integrated way.” (p.

Westwood, P. (2015). Spelling: Do the eyes have it? Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 20(1), 3-13.

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“(1) For most learners, spelling is not ‘caught’, and specific time must be allocated for instruction and guided practice, particularly in primary schools. (2) Throughout the school years, spelling needs to be taught as a thinking process. (3) Studies have strongly supported the value of teaching students effective mental strategies to use when spelling, proofreading, and self-correcting. (4) Best practice is reflected in approaches that stress the rationality behind the spelling of most English words, not in approaches that imply all spelling patterns are unpredictable and must be memorized by rote. (5) Effective instruction in spelling usually involves a combination of methods that incorporate vision, hearing, speech, writing, thinking, and word study. (6) Phonetic strategies should be taught alongside visual processing strategies, to ensure that students can use both in a complementary manner. (7) For struggling spellers, multisensory teaching approaches (including computer based technologies) are helpful in combining visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic components of spelling, and thus establishing orthographic awareness.” (p.9)

Westwood, P. (2015). Spelling: Do the eyes have it? Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 20(1), 3-13.

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“To determine whether some methods of scoring children’s early spellings predict later spelling performance better than do other methods, we analyzed data from 374 U.S. and Australian children who took a 10-word spelling test at the end of kindergarten (mean age 6 years, 2 months) and a standardized spelling test approximately two years later. Surprisingly, scoring methods that took account of phonological plausibility did not outperform methods that were based only on orthographic correctness. The scoring method that is most widely used in research with young children, which allots a certain number of points to each word and which considers both orthographic and phonological plausibility, did not rise to the top as a predictor. Prediction of Grade 2 spelling performance was improved to a small extent by considering children’s tendency to reverse letters in kindergarten.” (p.349)

Treiman, R., Kessler, B., Pollo, T. C., Byrne, B., & Olson, R. K. (2016). Measures of kindergarten spelling and their relations to later spelling performance. Scientific Studies of Reading, 20(5), 349–362.

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“ … an assessment procedure that focuses solely on students’ complete spelling abilities (e.g., correct vs. incorrect spelling) may limit the information that can be gained. In contrast, more precise analysis of students’ spelling skills that examines incomplete or inaccurate spelling may provide additional information. For example, students’ partial spelling (e.g., ct〉 for cat) or substitution of phonetically similar letters (e.g., 〈kat〉 for cat) may indicate knowledge of sound-spelling relationships.” (p. 78)

Ritchey, K.D., Coker, D.L., & McCraw, S.B. (2010). A comparison of metrics for scoring beginning spelling. Assessment for Effective Intervention, 35, 78–88.

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“Parents and preschool teachers help prepare children for formal literacy instruction when they teach them to write and identify alphabet letters. Although such skills are important (e.g., Piasta, Petscher, & Justice, 2012), there is a danger of overemphasizing the mechanical skills that are involved in literacy learning and underestimating the conceptual skills. Our results show that the idea that longer linguistic messages correspond to longer stretches of writing, which is so obvious to literate adults, is surprisingly difficult for children. More attention should be paid to helping young children gain a conceptual understanding of writing, for example, by incorporating writing activities into preschool classrooms and demonstrating that writing communicates linguistic messages (Gerde, Bingham, &Wasik, 2012).” (p.8)

Treiman, R., & Boland, K. (2017). Young children’s knowledge about the links between writing and language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 38(4), 943-952.

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“The spelling tests that are often used for educational and research purposes score productions as correct or incorrect, but such scoring is not ideal for young children. For example, although ‹kt› is not the correct spelling of cut, it reveals more knowledge than ‹deba› for cut, which in turns reveals more knowledge than ‹vvvv› or a squiggle. The development of tests and scoring methods that are sensitive to different levels of knowledge can help in grouping children for instruction, predicting which children are likely to have difficulties in the future, and providing extra help to those who need it. Several of our recent studies have examined methods of scoring young children’s spellings and the ability of these measures to predict future performance, and more work along these lines is needed (Kessler et al., 2013; Treiman, Kessler, Pollo, Byrne, & Olson, 2016). With better measures of spelling itself, we may need to rely less on other measures.” (p. 10-11)

Treiman, R. (2017). Learning to spell words: Findings, theories, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading. Published online: 08 Mar 2017

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“Many of the processes that are involved in understanding what we read are similar to the processes involved in understanding what we hear. With both written and spoken language, general knowledge about the world is often needed in order to make sense of and elaborate on the information that is presented. When reading about a wedding, for example, it is helpful to know about the kinds of activities that usually take place on such occasions. The grammatical knowledge that is necessary to understand a sentence is also similar whether the words are read or heard. Differences do arise in some cases. In English, for example, appositional phrases (as in the sentence The wedding cake, which was made by a well-known baker, was beautiful) occur more often in written language than in spoken language. … What mainly distinguishes reading from speech, though, is the need to identify words by eye. Readers must recognize printed words accurately and automatically, linking the printed forms to the representations that are stored in the mental lexicon. This process of written word recognition has been a central focus of reading research.” (Treiman, 2017, p. 6-7)

Treiman, R. (2017). Linguistics and reading, In Mark Aronoff and Janie Rees-Miller (eds.), Blackwell handbook of linguistics (2^nd ed pp. 1-26). Oxford, England: Blackwell

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“ …family interventions that focus on shared storybook reading tend to address “outside in” skills associated with exposure to concepts and vocabulary; whereas, interventions that increase practice opportunities for early lite racy skills and focus on the “inside out” skills of alphabetics instruction may be more effective based on findings of the NRP, and potentially, better aligned with the instruction that takes place in schools.” (p.10)

Donovan, L.K. (2016). Examining the effect of performance feedback on family literacy practices. A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati Lauren Kimener Donovan, M.Ed. University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School Psychology Program of the School of Human Services of the College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services.

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“Initial results from Gordon et al.’s (2015) meta-analysis show that broad category Phonological Awareness outcomes were slightly greater for children who received musical training vs. control groups. Their results reaffirm existing findings demonstrating that musical training and aptitude may enhance language skills. Notably, musicians show improved phonological awareness skills compared to their non-musician counterparts (Forgeard et al., 2008; Zuk et al., 2013b); music aptitude correlates with phonological skills in children (Lamb and Gregory, 1993; Anvari et al., 2002; Peynircioglu et al., 2002; Dellatolas et al., 2009; Chobert et al., 2011; Tierney and Kraus, 2013), and the positive effects of intensive musical training on phonological representations in dyslexics and normal reading children (Chobert et al., 2014; Habib et al., 2016). However, Gordon and colleagues distinguish their work from previous studies by creating subcategories for Rhyming and Other Phonological outcomes that allowed them to more clearly identify the reading-related skills that may benefit from musical training. Gordon et al.’s approach revealed that 40 h or more of musical training specifically improved rhyming skills. Although, they are cautious to not overstate their findings, Gordon et al.’s (2015) work is consistent with previous research connecting rhythm and reading skills (Dellatolas et al., 2009; Strait and Kraus, 2011; Tierney and Kraus, 2013; Woodruff Carr et al., 2014). In addition to arguing in favor of applying more refined measures of reading-related skills, the authors further suggest that our understanding of the relationship between musical training and reading may benefit from studying a broader range of musical experience beyond formal musical training. For example, similar meta-analyses demonstrate positive results for reading education programs that incorporate musical components into the curricula (Standley, 2008). More specifically, when chanting or singing is included in the classroom, children tend to have improved phonological awareness and literacy skills, suggesting that even informal forms of musical training may enhance literacy skills (Standley and Hughes, 1997; Darrow, 2009; Bolduc and Lefebvre, 2012).” (p.1-2)

Jantzen, M.G. (2017). Toward a more conclusive understanding of the relationship between musical training and reading. Frontiers of Psychology, 8(263). doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00263

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Box 7.3 RCTs are not always the answer

Randomised control trials (RCTs) are not the answer in all circumstances. For example:

• if a cheaper, but equally effective, natural experiment was possible, it might be preferred over an RCT
• an existing policy, practice or program in universal use cannot be the subject of a trial because no control group can be identified
• some large-scale policy changes are difficult to trial with an RCT. Hutchison and Styles (2010) nominated the introduction of a new examination system as a policy change that would more effectively be assessed through an observational study, but noted this choice would come at the cost of being able to identify causality
• RCTs may be infeasible for some groups of students. Macquarie University Special Education Centre (sub. DR100, p. 4) noted that ‘[s]ingle-case experimental designs [a form of before and after study] are more appropriate in special education as students may have idiosyncratic characteristics and needs and it is difficult to recruit the large numbers needed for group designs’
• RCTs should not be used if the requirements of a rigorous trial cannot be met, for example, if it is not possible to prevent significant attrition from the trial sample. (Problems of this type, however, are likely to compromise other quantitative research methods)
• ethical concerns might prevent the conduct of a trial.” (p. 210)

Productivity Commission. (2016). National Education Evidence Base, Report no. 80, Canberra.

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“The purpose of this meta-analysis was to summarize the learning benefits of taking a practice test versus other forms of non-testing learning conditions. Specifically, we examined all studies that compared learning benefits on a final test among practice retrieval and nonretrieval learning conditions. Results from 272 independent effects from 118 separate experiments indicate that testing effects across studies (g = 0.61) were robust … As expected, testing effects were much stronger for comparison conditions in which participants did not perform any study activity or performed some filler activity unrelated to the final test (g = 0.93) compared to conditions using a nonretrieval study activity such as restudying or rereading (g = 0.51).” (p.682-3) … Previous studies show that most students rely on rereading textbooks, notes, and other study materials (Karpicke et al., 2009), which has been found to be ineffective (Callender & McDaniel, 2009). Although Roediger and Karpicke (2006b) have advocated for “test-enhanced learning” in mainstream classrooms, it is not surprising that their message is often met with resistance, given the controversy and negative connotations of testing. Indeed, in a review of three policy-oriented journals, Buck, Ritter, Jensen, and Rose (2010) found that 90% of articles were critical of testing. As standardized testing has skyrocketed in recent years, educators may be understandably opposed to more testing. In agreement with Roediger and Karpicke (2006b), we advocate for the use of frequent low-stakes quizzes, as a learning tool so that teachers and students can assess knowledge gaps, rather than high-stakes tests used only for summative purposes and high-stakes decision-making.” (p.687-8)

Adesope, O.O., Trevisan, D.A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the use of tests: A meta-analysis of practice testing. Review of Educational Research, 87(3), 659–701

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“An integrative approach not only allows educational and psychological protocols to be designed with a view to the neurophysiological variables of interest, but also allows neuroscientific experiments to be designed in the light of relevant psychological and educational behavioural parameters. For example, the psychological spacing effect, described above, may not only help to design educational programs to enhance rates of classroom learning but may also help to inform the design of experiments investigating the role of LTP in the brain. Another example is the testing effect, a learning phenomenon derived from educational research, in which memory retention is enhanced by multiple testing sessions during learning (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008; Rawson & Dunlosky, 2012; Roediger & Butler, 2011). The testing effect has a striking parallel in the psychological and neurophysiological phenomenon of reconsolidation, in which associative memory can be enhanced (or degraded) by the unpredictable presentation of a cue or conditioned stimulus without reinforcement, which appears to return the memory trace to a labile state (Lee, 2008; Pedreira, Pe´rez-Cuesta, & Maldonado, 2004). Optimizing the testing effect in the classroom could depend on a better understanding of the neural reconsolidation process occurring as a result of repeated testing; on the other hand, understanding more accurately the conditions and timing that produce the behavioural testing effect may help to design experiments that reveal more detail about reconsolidation in the brain.” (p.151)

Morris, J., & Sah, P. (2016). Neuroscience and education: Mind the gap. Australian Journal of Education, 60(2), 146–156.

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“The results of this research are consistent with earlier findings demonstrating that language convention skills are important in compositional writing, with spelling appearing to be particularly important (see, e.g., Berninger et al., 2002). The study has shown that spelling, grammar and punctuation jointly influenced compositional writing for males and females in Year 3 and Year 5. Notably, spelling was more influential than grammar and punctuation. These results contribute to the literature by focusing on a sample of students in middle to upper primary schools in an Australian context and provide an empirical substantiation of the view that learning to spell is particularly critical to becoming a literate writer (Abbott et al., 2010; Puranik & Al Otaiba, 2012). Difficulty with written language conventions can negatively impact on the overall quality of writing (Berninger et al., 2002) and influence an individual’s motivation and confidence to write (Snowling, 2000). A proficient writer is able to efficiently use and manipulate language conventions when composing a written text (Fang & Wang, 2011). Therefore, it is not surprising that, in the study reported here, as much as 43% of the variance in written composition was explained by the three language convention measures. It follows that if a writer displays autonomy and agency with spelling, grammar and punctuation, they may be more motivated and confident to write.” (p. 83)

Daffern, T., Mackenzie, N. M., & Hemmings, B. (2017). Predictors of writing success: How important are spelling, grammar and punctuation? Australian Journal of Education, 61(1) 75–87.

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“Direct instruction provides the structure necessary to promote effective and efficient acquisition of skills, as well as generalization and maintenance of learning.”

Botts, D., Losardo, A., Tillery, C., & Werts, M. (2014). A comparison of activity-based intervention and embedded direct instruction when teaching emergent literacy skills. Journal of Special Education, 48(2), 1-28. Retrieved from http://thekeep.eiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3687&context=theses

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“For example, Luftig (2003) found that even after a short intervention, children at-risk for reading failure could actually make significant gains in their reading score as compared to the gains of a control group. Other studies also indicated that children who are behind upon entering school can show improvement (e.g., Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997; Lerkkanen, Rasku-Puttonen, Aunola, & Nurmi, 2004; Phillips, Norris, Osmond, & Maynard, 2002; Shaywitz et al., 1995; Snow, Barnes, Chandler, Goodman, & Hemphill, 1991; Spira et al., 2005). At the same time, however, a number of studies have shown a divergent growth over time (e.g., Juel, 1988; Smith, 1997; Torgesen & Burgess, 1998). There is a high probability that children who fall behind in early literacy skills will remain behind at later times (Eamon, 2002). Children in kindergarten with higher levels of code-focused skills and stronger vocabularies demonstrate more growth than their counterparts with lower level skills after intervention (Al Otaiba et al., 2008). Kindergartners identified as having difficulties in early literacy skills were found to continue struggling with difficulties in reading skills in subsequent years (Boscardin, Muthe´ n, Francis, & Baker, 2008). Sharp, Sinatra, and Reynolds (2008) found that the initial gap between higher and lower achieving students widened substantially over a five-month period. However, in studying the trajectories of preschool and first-grade children’s early literacy skills, Leppa¨nen et al. (2004) found that individual differences in reading grew larger during preschool but such differences diminished during the first grade.” (p.279)

Ding, C. (2012). Studying children’s early literacy development: Confirmatory multidimensional scaling growth modelling. International Journal of Educational Research, 53, 278–288.

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“Slavin, Lake, Davis, and Madden (2009) in reviewing approaches for struggling readers in grades K-5, concluded that CAI generally had few effects on reading. Furthermore, Khan and Gorard (2012) reported that previous studies have failed to demonstrate the effectiveness of computer based instruction as a means of improving reading skills. Taken together the evidence suggests that CAI should not be relied on to produce gains in reading ability in secondary school aged students and that in some circumstances using these programmes may have a negative impact on student’s progress (Gorard & Taylor, 2004).” (p. 124)

Paul, S-A.S., & Clarke, P.J. (2016). A systematic review of reading interventions for secondary school students. International Journal of Educational Research, 79, 116 – 112.

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”Even potentially effective programmes may fail to improve outcomes due to how treatment was delivered (Dobson and Cook, 1980; Hawe, Shiel, & Riley, 2004; Mihalic, 2004). Process evaluations add crucial insights to study results (Linnan & Steckler, 2002; Moore et al., 2015). Loenen (1989, p. 310) reported observations of 30 tutoring sessions and characterized them as different from VRH [Volunteer Reading Help charity, currently Beanstalk] presented in the initial VRH training course. What happened in practice was not what the designers had planned. Topping, Miller, Murray, and Conlin (2011) undertook process observations in the Fife Peer Learning Trial and data suggested that tutoring technique was only partly implemented. Lack of assessment of implementation fidelity may produce descriptive ambiguity (Rychetnik, Frommer, Hawe, & Shiell, 2002), and result in researchers evaluating a programme that has not been adequately implemented (Basch, Sliepcevich, Gold, Duncan, & Kolbe, 1985, p. 316). Process observations can further illuminate the theory of change through testing correlation between implementation variables and attainment (Topping, Thurston, McGavock, & Conlin, 2012).” (p.205)

Shenderovich, Y., Thurston, A., & Miller, S. (2016). Cross-age tutoring in kindergarten and elementary school settings: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Educational Research, 76, 190–210.

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“The phonics screening check correlates strongly with teacher judgements of phonic phases (r = .72) and with standardised measures of reading accuracy (nonword reading, single-word reading and prose reading accuracy, r’s = .75–.83) and spelling (r = .72). It also correlates well with phoneme awareness, prose reading rate and comprehension (r’s = .57–.68). In contrast, there are more moderate correlations between the phonics screening check and vocabulary and maths (r’s = .45), indicating that the check is more specific to the domain of literacy and does not simply measure general abilities. Thus, the phonics screening check shows convergent and discriminant validity. … There was one significant difference in favour of the phonics screening check, such that it correlated more highly with a standardised test of nonword reading. This might be a reflection of the fact that both these tasks are highly focused on the reading aloud of fully decodable items. In contrast, the phonic phases correlated more strongly with reading comprehension, which suggests that, although the assessment entirely focuses on phonic skills, the phonic phase judgements are also capturing broader aspects of literacy.” (p.114, 120)

Duff, F.J., Mengoni, S.E., Bailey, A.M., & Snowling, M.J. (2015). Validity and sensitivity of the phonics screening check: Implications for practice. Journal of Research in Reading, 38(2), 109–123.

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“It would be a relief to be able to dismiss the latest evidence (March 2017) of Australia’s declining school performance as nothing more than fake news. Unfortunately, the facts are all too clear. Over recent years a stream of evidence from both NAPLAN scores and international assessments confirms that Australian students are being outperformed by many other countries. Those international “league tables” may not matter much, but Australia’s performance is also falling in an absolute sense (which matters a lot).” (p. 68)

Gannicott, K. (2017). Needs-based funding?: Is not the answer for schools. Quadrant, 61(5), 68-71. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/documentSummary;dn=795384087858719;res=IELLCC

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“A great deal of time in language arts is currently being spent on teaching children formal comprehension strategies like predicting, classifying, and looking for the main idea. (See “Lost Opportunity” on page 24.) In most language-arts textbooks, these exercises persist throughout the year and over many years. Every researcher believes that there is initial value in practicing these comprehension strategies. They teach children to construe a text in the same meaning-seeking way that they already construe the oral speech of adults and their peers. It helps children understand that the text, like a person, is trying to communicate something. But after an initial benefit, further conscious practice of these formal skills is a waste of time, according to Barak Rosenshine, who reviewed the research on the effects of using such methods. Rosenshine found that spending six classes on teaching these skills had the same effect on students’ reading comprehension as spending 25 classes on them. After a quick initial bump, there’s a plateau or ceiling in the positive effects, and little further benefit is derived”. (p.22)

Hirsch, E. D. (2003): Reading comprehension requires knowledge-of words and the world. American Educator, 27(1), 10-13.

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“Longitudinal research from the past two decades has identified alphabet knowledge as critical for the growth of literacy skills (e.g., Adams, 1990; NICHD, 2000; Scanlon & Vellutino, 1996; Scarborough, 1998). Alphabet knowledge helps young children learn to decode words (Ehri, 2005; Muter, Hulme, Snowling, & Stevenson, 2004; Roberts, 2003) and is an important precursor to the development of spelling (Caravolas, Hulme, & Snowling, 2001; Foulin, 2005).” (p.299)

Jones, C.D., & Reutzel, D.R. (2015). Write to read: Investigating the reading-writing relationship of code-level early literacy skills. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 31(4), 297-315.

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“In sum, this experiment investigated the behavioral and neural consequences of different methods of reading instruction for learning to read single words in alphabetic writing systems, in the case where oral vocabulary is relatively secure. Under these circumstances, our findings suggest that interventions aiming to improve the accuracy of reading aloud and/or comprehension in the early stages of learning should focus on the systematicities present in print-to-sound relationships, rather than attempting to teach direct access to the meanings of whole written words. Alongside broader oral language teaching, this means embracing phonics-based methods of reading instruction, and rejecting multicuing or balanced literacy approaches which, our results suggest, may hinder the discovery of spelling–sound relationships essential for reading aloud and comprehension.” (p.22)

Taylor, J. S. H., Davis, M. H., & Rastle, K. (2017, April 20). Comparing and validating methods of reading instruction using behavioural and neural findings in an artificial orthography. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000301

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“The use of a GPS [genomewide polygenic scores] provides novel advantages to the scientific study of reading ability. Twin and family studies provide population estimates of genetic and environmental influence on reading ability and have highlighted that genetic influence is substantial on individual differences in various components of reading (Knopik et al., 2017). However, these estimates refer to only average genetic influence in the population. Although they can predict average risk in a family, they cannot predict genetic propensities for individuals. GWA [genome-wide association] analysis could provide genetic estimates based on an individual’s genotype, but no adequately powered GWA studies of reading have as yet been reported. Rather than trait prediction, it is the aim of GWA studies to identify mechanisms and specific pathways. By remaining agnostic about the mechanisms, the top-down approach of a GPS focuses on individual prediction, which is greatly increased by accumulating the effects of many genetic variants. The availability of individuals’ genetic scores is an excellent research tool and offers new possibilities for prevention and intervention through early prediction of genetic risk. (p.4) …

We also found that EduYears GPS heritability estimates were not significantly different for distinct components of reading ability. For example, EduYears GPS accounted for 3.7% of the variance in both reading efficiency and reading comprehension at age 12. It has been suggested that individual differences in reading comprehension partly depend on reading efficiency (Tunmer & Chapman, 2012), and quantitative genetic research has shown that reading efficiency substantially accounts for the genetic variance in reading comprehension (Keenan, Betjemann, Wadsworth, DeFries, & Olson, 2006). This indicates that both reading efficiency and reading comprehension share much of the same genetic architecture. This finding is further supported by a twin study based on ~5,000 TEDS twins, which showed that reading efficiency and reading comprehension substantially share the same genetic and common environmental factors (Harlaar, Kovas, Dale, Petrill, & Plomin, 2012). Overall, these results may explain why the GPS heritability estimates did not differ significantly for these traits. Our findings show that the strength of EduYears GPS lies in the prediction of overall reading performance, rather than in the differentiation of reading ability at different developmental stages, or in distinguishing different forms of reading ability. …

The findings of this study do not have specific implications for existing theories or applications in themselves. However, they represent a starting point for future research in the scientific study of reading that uses DNA information to further our knowledge of individual differences in reading ability. A key benefit of finding inherited DNA sequence variation associated with individual differences in reading performance is its potential for early prediction of reading problems. Because inherited DNA sequence does not change during development, the prediction of reading ability and disability from the EduYears GPS is just as strong infancy, at birth and even prenatally, long before any cognitive tests can be used to predict reading. The use of GPS in education could facilitate early prediction of reading problems, which could lead to intervention and possible prevention by identifying those at particular genetic risk and tailoring support according to their needs. For example, GPS could enable research on individual differences in resilience to developing reading difficulties despite high GPS risk. Because GPS predict just as accurately from birth, it facilitates research on the developmental mediators and moderators of risk and resilience. For example, it is likely that a combination of early developmental predictors and a GPS is better in predicting later reading ability than either does individually. This could help to identify risk early, paving the way for interventions to decrease negative outcomes linked to reading difficulties. A final example is that research could address whether children with early reading problems and high GPS risk respond differently to interventions than children with comparable problems without high GPS risk. This may elucidate whether different intervention strategies could be profitably employed depending on the children’s unique genetic characteristics.” (p. 11-12)

Selzam, S., Dale, P.S., Wagner, R.K., DeFries, J.C., Cederlöf, M., O’Reilly, P.F., Krapohl, E., & Plomin, R. (2017). Genome-wide polygenic scores predict reading performance throughout the school years. Scientific Studies of Reading, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2017.1299152. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10888438.2017.1299152?needAccess=true

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“In passing, these experiments demonstrate that global word shape does not play any role in reading. If we can immediately recognize the identity of “words,” “WORDS,” and “WoRdS,” it is because our visual system pays no attention to the contours of words or to the pattern of ascending and descending letters: it is only interested in the letters they contain. Obviously, our capacity to recognize words does not depend on an analysis of their overall shape.”

Dehaene, S. (2009). Reading in the brain: The new science of how we read. New York: Penguin.

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“Very few studies have utilized more than one measure of phonological awareness (Wagner, 1986), and those that have done so only partially supported the theoretical hierarchies. For example, deletion and phoneme reversal, which as expected were difficult, were also highly correlated with decoding in several studies, while segmentation and tapping yielded conflicting findings (Backman, 1983; Lundberg et al., 1980; Torneus, 1984; Zifcak, 1981). Two recent studies (Stanovich, Cunningham, & Cramer, 1984; Yopp, 1988) addressed the issue of task comparability directly by administering extensive test batteries to large numbers of subjects. Stanovich et al. (1984) administered 10 measures of phonemic awareness to 58 kindergarten children and found that seven of the measures (those not involving rhyme) correlated with a measure of reading ability given a year later. A factor analysis showed that one major factor accounted for about half of the variance among the phonemic awareness measures. Yopp (1988) gave 10 different tests of phonemic awareness to her subjects (96 kindergarten children), counterbalancing for task sequence. As a criterion measure she used the number of trials required to decode six pseudowords. The data were subjected to factor analysis and multiple regression analysis in relation to the criterion task. Yopp found that with the exception of the word-to-word matching task, all had at least moderate reliabilities. The two deletion tasks were the most difficult and the rhyming and auditory discrimination tasks the easiest. Sound isolation and a phoneme deletion task were the best predictors of learning rate. The factor analysis revealed that two factors accounted for 68% of the variance. Phoneme blending, auditory segmentation, phoneme counting, and sound isolation loaded highly on one factor she labeled "simple phonemic awareness," while the two deletion tasks loaded highly on a second factor, "compound phonemic awareness." The major difference between these two is that the first factor requires only one operation and then a response, while the second factor demands performing an operation and holding a given sound in memory while performing another operation. These results suggest that in addition to basic awareness of phonemes, the ability to manipulate phonemes mentally is important for decoding.” (p.241)

Lenchner, O., Gerber, M. M., & Routh, D. K. (1990). Phonological awareness tasks as predictors of decoding ability: Beyond segmentation. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 23, 240-247.

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“Our results thus clearly reinforce the view that serial order STM plays a key role in the development of decoding abilities. Moreover, they also highlight that the role of this process is not limited to the very beginning of reading instruction, but continues after the first school year and its focus on the basic skills involved in learning to read and spell. This interesting result suggests that although children in the second grade begin to master decoding thanks to improved knowledge of GPC rules, they still rely heavily on order STM when reading nonwords. It also indicates that the measurement of order STM capacity in kindergarten is a consistent predictor of nonword reading ability, which remains robust over this age range. … We observed that order STM capacity assessed in kindergarten was also an independent predictor of nonword spelling abilities 1 and 2 years later, in first and second grade. This result strongly supports the hypothesis that temporary storage of the order of the phonemes is necessary to update the phonological representation as they are successively converted into the respective graphemes in the course of writing (Lervag & Hulme, 2010; Romani et al., 2014).” (p.16)

Binamé, F., & Poncelet M. (2016). Order short-term memory capacity predicts nonword reading and spelling in first and second grade. Reading & Writing, 29, 1–20.

“In summary, this longitudinal study has highlighted that order STM, like phonological processes, is an essential component in learning to read and spell. More precisely, our results have provided supplementary evidence that order STM plays a specific role, that of temporarily maintaining the order of a sequence of phonemes during the application of GPCs in reading or PGCs in spelling. The absence of a link between order STM and word reading and spelling indicates that the serial order component is involved only in the processing of unfamiliar written or spoken sequences, and that it no longer contributes when an orthographic representation can be directly accessed in long-term memory to support subsequent reading or spelling. The fact that order STM capacity before literacy instruction independently predicts nonword reading and spelling in the first and second grades underlines that it is a consistent and robust predictor of reading and spelling development. Whereas phonological awareness is a predictor of literacy acquisition which is related to the language system, order STM capacity has the advantage of being a robust preschool predictor of later reading and spelling skills which is not dependent on the language network. Therefore, in combination with previous studies showing that dyslexic children and adults have difficulties with retaining serial order information, the results reported here emphasize the need to take memory for serial order into account in a clinical context. In particular, they suggest that some measure of order STM should be included in clinical assessment and screening tests, and that the role of this type of memory in literacy development should be taken into account in clinical interventions.” (p. 17)

Binamé, F., & Poncelet M. (2016). Order short-term memory capacity predicts nonword reading and spelling in first and second grade. Reading & Writing, 29, 1–20.

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“In learning to read, two main processes are described: phonological recoding and word recognition. Phonological recoding enables activation of phonological representations of orally known words from effortful sequential grapheme-phoneme conversion. When written words are familiar, phonological recoding is replaced by the process of word recognition, which is usually described as a rapid and automatic activation of orthographic lexical representations from the parallel processing of letters. Numerous studies with expert readers have provided evidence that the phonological code continues to play a role during word recognition. In contrast, the nature of this phonological activation is different: it is rapid and automatic (Ferrand & Grainger, 1992, 1993; Lukatela, Frost, & Turvey, 1998). An interesting question arises when children read familiar written words; do they activate the phonological code rapidly and automatically during the word recognition process like in expert reading? … Our results do not support this proposition and suggest that the slow and serial phonological recoding is rapidly replaced by an automatic phonological process that enables the rapid and automatic activation of sublexical phonological representations from letters. In contrast, the automatic orthographic process, enabling access to the orthographic lexicon, seems to develop more slowly and to become effective later.” (Sauval, Perre, & Casalis, 2017, p.52, 61).

Sauval, K., Perre, L., & Casalis, S. (2017). Automatic activation of phonological code during visual word recognition in children: A masked study in grades 3 and 5. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 30(1), 51-67.

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“Phonological representations are the sound-based codes stored in the lexicon for each word (Anthony et al., 2010; Gillon, 2002). It is generally accepted that phonological representations are initially a holistic articulatory gesture associated with the meaning of a word (Maillart et al., 2004; Snowling and Hulme, 1994). The lexical restructuring (Metsala & Walley, 1998) and segmentation (Fowler, 1991) hypotheses suggest that with the rapid increase in vocabulary during the pre-school years, more finely grained phonological representations are developed and stored. As vocabulary continues to develop, so phonological representations become more specific, with lexical items segmented into increasingly smaller units. Precise, well-defined phonological representa¬tions are important for distinguishing between similar sounding lexical items, retrieving words and performing phonological awareness tasks (Fowler, 1991). It has been suggested that it may be more difficult to segment and manipulate low quality phonological representations (Elbro et al., 1998). Phonological representations are of interest to both clinicians and researchers alike, as there is evidence to suggest that the establishment of precise and well-defined phonological representations is vital for achieving language competence and later for literacy acquisition (Bishop and Snowling, 2004).” (p. 212-214)

Claessen, M. & Leitão, S. (2012). Phonological representations in children with SLI. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 28(2), 211–223.

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“For most researchers in this area, the most parsimonious hypothesis is that dyslexics’ phonological representations are somewhat degraded (i.e., less precise, less well specified, less categorical, and/or noisier). … A new study (Boets et al., 2013) reports that activations of superior temporal regions for speech are normal in dyslexia, although being less well connected to downstream frontal regions. These findings support the hypothesis of a deficit in the access to phonological representations rather than in the representations themselves. … Of course, the most crucial finding, that of normal activations for phonological representations, is a null result and will need to be replicated”. (p. 274-275)

Ramus, F. (2014). Neuroimaging sheds new light on the phonological deficit in dyslexia. Spotlights Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(6), 275-275.

Boets, B. et al. (2013) Intact but less accessible phonetic representations in adults with dyslexia. Science, 342, 1251–1254.

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“Another possible objection is that structured word inquiry will be difficult to implement with struggling readers who exhibit more general learning difficulties. For example, specific language impairment is manifest as a difficulty in acquiring language despite otherwise normal IQ, normal hearing, and an adequate learning environment. The cognitive deficits extend beyond phonology to include deficits in semantics, syntax, and discourse. Important for present purposes, approximately one third of children with specific language impairment in kindergarten are dyslexic in later grades (Catts, Adlof, Hogan, & Weismer, 2005), with some estimates higher still (McArthur, Hogben, Edwards, Heath, & Mengler, 2000; Snowling, Bishop, & Stothard, 2000). Other cases of reading disorders will be attributed to even broader deficits, including low IQs. This raises the question as to whether SWI is appropriate for these populations of children. We agree that future research is needed to answer this question, but there is every reason to believe our theoretical arguments for structured word inquiry apply to these populations as well. Indeed, as far as we are aware, memory and learning is best when information is encoded in a meaningful and organized manner for all individuals. In general support of this claim, meta-analyses show that morphological intervention are more effective for struggling readers (P. N. Bowers et al., 2010; Goodwin & Ahn, 2010, 2013). In our view the default assumption should be that all subgroups of learners will benefit from instruction that correctly represents the writing system

Finally, a skeptic might note that the empirical evidence in direct support of SWI is limited, with only three published SWI intervention studies in total and only one carried out with young children (ages 5–7; Devonshire et al., 2013). In fact, we agree that caution is warranted at present. But given the strong theoretical motivation for SWI that we have just detailed, the growing evidence that morphological instruction is useful, especially for young and struggling readers, and the promising initial evidence for SWI, we think it is time to carry out more empirical research on SWI. This is our goal: to motivate future empirical studies of SWI in order to assess whether indeed this method is more effective than phonics that is currently failing too many children.

SUMMARY In contrast with the vast amount of empirical research on phonics, the research on SWI is only beginning. Nevertheless, we would argue that the theoretical motivation for SWI is extremely strong (see Table 1). Furthermore, the empirical evidence is highly promising. Morphological instruction is a central feature of SWI, and the evidence from the three meta-analyses of morphological instruction (P. N. Bowers et al., 2010; Goodwin and Ahn, 2010, 2013) show that morphological instruction benefits all students, but it is particularly beneficial for less able and younger students. In addition, the three existing SWI studies report improvements in decoding (Devonshire et al., 2013), spelling (Devonshire & Fluck, 2010), and vocabulary knowledge (P. N. Bowers & Kirby, 2010), with morphological instruction directed at children as young as 5 years of age (Devonshire et al., 2013).” (p.139)

Bowers, J.S., & Bowers, P.N. (2017). Beyond phonics: The case for teaching children the logic of the English spelling system. Educational Psychologist, 52, 124-141.

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“Importantly, genetic heritability increases once the children undergo formal instruction especially at school (Asbury and Plomin 2014, pp. 22–30; Samuelsson et al. 2007). There is also evidence that new sets of genes come into play as children grow older and there are specific (e.g. for reading or numeracy) as well as general sets of genes (Byrne et al. 2009; Calvin et al. 2010; Kovas et al. 2013). There is also evidence from longitudinal studies of a strong genetic component to achievement growth (Grasby and Coventry 2016; Pokropek and Sikora 2015). The much larger effects of prior achievement than early cognitive ability on achievement in the LSAC data (Model 3 in Tables 5, 6) may reflect the effects of new sets of genes as children grow older.

Genes are also important for educational attainment. Baker et al. (1996) concluded that 57 % of the variance in educational attainment in Australia was due to genetic factors. Later Australian studies concluded that at least as much of 50 % but possibly up to 65 % of the variation in educational attainment is due to genetic endowments and as little as 8 % due to the shared environment (Le et al. 2011; Miller et al. 2001). These studies which show that the shared environment is a much weaker contributor to variation in educational outcomes are consistent with the other literature cited in this paper that find weak SES effects, net of other influences.

The importance of genes should not be dismissed as some modern version of the eugenics movement. Many behavioural genetic studies led Turkheimer (2000) to conclude that genes are an important component of variation for all behavioural outcomes, but variation among families is not, so it is no surprise that genes are important for education. This does not mean that schooling and teachers have no influence or that some students cannot be taught. Despite 19th-century arguments to the contrary, history shows that just about everyone can be taught to read and write, perform quite advanced mathematical tasks, participate in civil and political society and perform complex cognitive tasks. Given human potential, there is no reason why students should not be taught advanced skills suited to their interests.” (p.122-123)

Marks, G.N. (2016). Is SES really that important for educational outcomes in Australia? A review and some recent evidence. The Australian Educational Researcher, First Online 10 December 2016.

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“The 3-cueing approach is a microcosm of the culture of education. It didn’t develop because teachers lack integrity, commitment, motivation or intelligence. It developed because they were poorly trained and advised. They didn’t know the relevant science or had been convinced it was irrelevant. Lacking this foundation, no such group could have discovered how reading works and how children learn.” (p. 304)

Seidenberg, M. (2017). Language at the speed of sight: How we read, why so many can’t, and what can be done about it (1st Ed.). New York: Basic Books.

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“This paper demonstrates that the emphasis on students’ socioeconomic status (SES) in research and policy circles in Australia is unwarranted. The bivariate relationships between SES and educational outcomes are only moderate and the effects of SES are quite small when taking into account cognitive ability or prior achievement. These two influences have much stronger relationships with students’ outcomes than SES and their effects cannot be attributed to the influence of SES at earlier points of time. The theoretical explanations for socioeconomic inequalities in education (e.g. schools and cultural factors) are problematic and are not supported by empirical work. The much weaker than assumed effects of SES has implications for research and policy.”

Marks, G.N. (2016). Is SES really that important for educational outcomes in Australia? A review and some recent evidence. The Australian Educational Researcher, First Online 10 December 2016.

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“Acknowledging that the effect sizes were small, Vaughn et al. (2011), suggested that we need to question whether multi-component-based approaches are the most beneficial, and instead consider the impact of specific training focussed on vocabulary-building and/or background knowledge. This is a dilemma for those designing intervention approaches intended for use with a heterogeneous sample of students who are struggling with reading. The theories of reading referred to in this paper highlight a wide range of skills and processes needed to read successfully. Some students may have difficulties spanning a number of these components whereas others may have more isolated impairments; different intervention approaches will be more beneficial than others in supporting the underlying components of reading (Duff & Clarke, 2011). If an intervention is created to broadly target struggling readers then it will need to be flexible enough to ensure that a level of personalisation is possible. (p.125)

Paul, S-A.S., & Clarke, P.J. (2016). A systematic review of reading interventions for secondary school students. International Journal of Educational Research, 79, 116–127.

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“It was found that Reading Recovery had a .31 treatment effect on achievement after controlling for baseline achievement and motivational differences among the treatment and comparison students.” (p.47)

Bates, C.B., D'Agostino, J.V., Gambrell, L., & Xu, M. (2016). Reading Recovery: Exploring the effects on first-graders' reading motivation and achievement. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 21(1), 47-59.

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“Our results also indicated that oral reading fluency contributed significantly to comprehension, which is consistent with findings across a variety of diverse samples from students ranging from the primary to the secondary grades (Daane et al., 2005; Fuchs et al., 1988; Jenkins et al., 2003; Pinnell et al., 1995; Yavanoff et al., 2005). This finding was supported at the holistic level, as oral reading was more predictive of students’ reading comprehension within the SEMs. Further, students participating in this study answered on average 1.5more comprehension questions correctly following oral as opposed to silent reading, even as the passages were held constant (see Table 1). Importantly, the silent reading fluency measures did not contribute significantly to reading comprehension. This finding is consistent with some previous literature, which suggests that prior to fifth grade, students comprehend better after oral reading than after silent reading (Elgart, 1978; Fletcher & Pumphrey, 1988; Prior & Welling, 2001).” (p.192)

Price, K.W., Meisinger, E.B., Louwerse, M.M., & D’Mello, S. (2016). The contributions of oral and silent reading fluency to reading comprehension. Reading Psychology, 37(2), 167-201.

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“Reading researchers have acknowledged the shortcomings of existing vocabulary and comprehension measures and have called for the creation of reliable, valid, and sensitive measures (see Paris & Stahl, 2005; Pearson et al., 2007). There has been an emphasis on determining the effectiveness of vocabulary instruction based on attaining gains on standardized comprehension tests. Although creating standardized comprehension measures sensitive enough to detect vocabulary growth will greatly improve our understanding of developmental vocabulary growth and, possibly, effects from long-term interventions, it may be unrealistic to consider gains on standardized tests our only benchmark for determining whether a vocabulary intervention is beneficial. If vocabulary instruction of target words or strategies helps children better understand the local context of what they are reading, it is a worthwhile endeavor. Even if standardized tests are improved and can detect differences due to interventions, it is unlikely that these measures will capture growth from short-term vocabulary interventions. Not only have custom measures been necessary to detect these changes in past studies, they will likely remain important in the future. The good news is that the overall positive effects found for custom measures suggest that vocabulary training does increase comprehension for all students. In addition, students identified as having reading problems made more than three times the gains than students with no indicated reading problem. This pattern, however, was not the same with the vocabulary outcomes. Students with reading difficulties made equivalent gains in vocabulary knowledge as those without. This finding suggests that vocabulary instruction is more beneficial for understanding text for students with reading problems than for those without reading difficulties.” (p.33-34)

Elleman, A.M., Lindo, E.J., Morphy, P., & Compton, D.L. (2009). The impact of vocabulary instruction on passage-level comprehension of school-age children: A meta-analysis. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 2(1), 1-44.

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As education researcher John Hosp has said, “You don’t bring data to a faith fight”. (Personal Communication, 2017)

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“ … we need to question whether multi-component-based approaches are the most beneficial, and instead consider the impact of specific training focussed on vocabulary-building and/or background knowledge. This is a dilemma for those designing intervention approaches intended for use with a heterogeneous sample of students who are struggling with reading. The theories of reading referred to in this paper highlight a wide range of skills and processes needed to read successfully. Some students may have difficulties spanning a number of these components whereas others may have more isolated impairments; different intervention approaches will be more beneficial than others in supporting the underlying components of reading (Duff & Clarke, 2011). If an intervention is created to broadly target struggling readers then it will need to be flexible enough to ensure that a level of personalisation is possible. … There is a significant number of students entering secondary school with very poor reading skills but a paucity of rigorous research into effective interventions for these students. Interventions which focus on improving reading skills via CAI appear to have no benefit. No studies have investigated the impact of tutor led one-to one support in word recognition or decoding using an RCT design. Interventions focussing specifically on reading comprehension skills produce gains in these abilities but effect sizes are small. These studies mostly use strategy based techniques; only one directly targets student’s language comprehension. The feasibility of scaling up interventions in secondary schools needs more consideration.” (p.125)

Paul, S-A.S., & Clarke, P.J. (2016). A systematic review of reading interventions for secondary school students. International Journal of Educational Research, 79, 116–127.

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“Our results indicated that babies did not learn to read. In total, out of 14 different measures of early reading skills, there were 13 null findings. We saw no evidence for the effects on conventional reading, as program developers had indicated on their promotional websites and testimonials, or on any of the pre-alphabetic or partial alphabetic phases of reading. Even with a greater dosage of treatment than in previous studies, there were no effects of the intervention on children’s speech processing efficiency, word learning skills, phonological processing, orthographic knowledge, letter recognition, sight word reading, or reading with meaning.” (p.827-8)

Neuman, S.B., Kaefer, T., Pinkham, A., & Strouse, G. (2014). Can babies learn to read? A randomized trial of baby media. Journal of Educational Psychology, 106(3), 815–830.

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“The major finding was that the treatment group demonstrated a moderate to small effect size advantage on reading and spelling measures over the comparison group more than a decade after a reading intervention that took place when the students were in Grades 2 or 3. The results provided some support for our hypothesis that students who received the 8-month explicit reading treatment would achieve higher reading (although not spelling) outcomes than students who received the regular school-based intervention when the effect size data are considered. … Ideally, one would want to build on the initial large effects seen immediately posttreatment on word recognition, reading rate, spelling, and passage reading (with respective effect sizes of 1.69, .96, 1.13, and .78) by providing the kind of extended instruction that would facilitate an accelerated growth rate over time, especially in fluency (automaticity) and comprehension. To close the achievement gap between struggling readers and typical readers, more extensive efforts are clearly required. … The results from this long-term follow-up provide further support for the hypothesis that reading intervention (especially when provided to remedial students, as opposed to younger at-risk students in kindergarten and first grade) is more appropriately viewed as analogous to insulin therapy, rather than as an inoculation against further reading failure (see Coyne, Kame’enui, Simmons, & Harn, 2004, for a discussion of this debate). That is, students in need of explicit and systematic instruction in the early stages of reading acquisition are likely to require ongoing evidence-based support to acquire more complex skills. The challenge posed by Blachman et al. (2004) almost a decade ago to alter standard instruction so that an accelerated growth trajectory is the norm remains a challenge for the field today.” (p.53-5)

Blachman, B.A., Schatschneider, C., Fletcher, J.M., Murray, M.S., Munger, K.A., &. Vaughn, M.G. (2014). Intensive reading remediation in Grade 2 or 3: Are there effects a decade later? Journal of Educational Psychology, 106(1), 46–57.

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“Currently, measures of ORF are frequently used to monitor reading progress and predict performance on future reading outcomes, which are often used to make decisions about intervention placement and retention (O’Connor, Swanson, & Geraghty, 2010). One of the challenges in measuring ORF ability across time is the selection of passages that are equivalent or parallel within the same grade level (Betts et al., 2009; Christ & Ardoin, 2009; Francis et al., 2008). Historically, ORF passages were selected directly from classroom curriculum materials to ensure high content overlap between assessment and instruction (Deno, 1985; Good & Jefferson, 1998). However, random sampling of curriculum materials or selection of materials based on readability formulae does not adequately control for features of text (i.e., difficulty, length, and genre) previously found to impact the measurement of fluency ability across time (Betts et al., 2009; Christ & Ardoin, 2009; Francis et al., 2008). Such inconsistencies in passage features across alternate passages and assessment time points make it difficult to know whether a student’s ORF is improving, declining, or holding steady when solely examining changes in observed reading fluency scores over time (Francis et al., 2008). Consequently, when measuring ORF, the effects of passage features that extend beyond noninterval assessments of difficulty level must be statistically addressed using procedures that equate alternate forms within grade (see Betts et al., 2009; Francis et al., 2008). Furthermore, results of this study suggest that equating procedures must move beyond simply controlling for text difficulty, genre, and administration order and should include language and discourse features. Finally, text characteristics that affect the assessment of ORF have been typically underestimated in efforts to use these assessments to understand individual differences in student progress, need for intervention, and related issues. Although the assessment of ORF is sensitive to these individual differences, the present study shows that reading is an interaction of reader and text characteristics. More attention to text characteristics in assessing ORF would lead to more rigorous psychometric measures that would improve the precision by which student reading progress is assessed when using measures of ORF.” (p.178)

Barth, A.E., Tolar, T.D., Fletcher, J.M., & Francis, D. (2014). The effects of student and text characteristics on the oral reading fluency of middle-grade students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 106(1), 162–180.

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“In our own work, we, like the authors of previous studies, have found preservice and inservice teachers hold both accurate knowledge and misconceptions about dyslexia. In two studies using a survey on teacher knowledge of basic language constructs (Washburn et al., 2011a, 2011b), we asked preservice and inservice teachers to indicate their understanding of five true and false statements about characteristics and treatment of dyslexia. In both studies we found the majority of preservice and inservice teachers understood that individuals with dyslexia often experience difficulty with language-based activities (decoding, spelling), but an overwhelming majority of teachers indicated that colored overlays and/or tinted lenses would help individuals with dyslexia.” (p.10)

Washburn, E.K., Mulcahy, C.A., Joshi, R.M., & Binks-Cantrell, E. (2016). Teacher knowledge of dyslexia. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, Fall, 2016, 9-13.

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“ … the first alternative and preference is to skip over the puzzling word. The second alternative is to guess what the unknown word might be. And the final and least preferred alternative is to sound the word out. Phonics in other words, comes last” (p.26).

Smith, F. (1979). Reading without nonsense. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

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“Descriptive studies have typically focused on lesson-to-text match (LTTM): the match between the instruction of phonics elements in teacher guides and the words in student texts (Stein et al., 1999). Such a focus began with Chall’s (1967/1983) analyses of four first-grade reading programs: two code emphasis and two meaning emphasis. Chall observed that the teacher guides of the meaning-emphasis basal programs included phonics instruction; however, the phonics elements taught did not systematically match the words in students’ texts as they did in the code emphasis programs. For each of the four decades following Chall’s (1967/1983) work, researchers have analyzed and compared LTTM in meaning- and code-emphasis first-grade reading programs, and, as a result, shifts in various copyrights are evident. In reading programs copyrighted in the 1970s, Beck and McCaslin (1978) reported that patterns of LTTM had not changed from those reported by Chall (1967/1983) and noted that the analysis of two reading interventions code-emphasis programs provided a higher “potential for accuracy” when decoding words, whereas the LTTM of meaning-emphasis programs did not. Four copyrighted programs of the 1980s were analyzed by Meyer et al. (1987), who noted that meaning-emphasis programs continued to have low LTTM. Three out of four of the programs analyzed were meaning-emphasis, and their LTTM was less than 10%. Stein et al. (1999) found that decodable texts and lessons mandated for adoption in California and Texas in the 1990s featured LTTMs similar to the meaning-based programs analyzed by Beck and McCaslin (1978).” (p.483-484)

Murray, M. S., Munger, K. A., & Hiebert, E. H. (2014). An analysis of two reading intervention programs: How do the words, texts, and programs compare? Elementary School Journal, 114, 479-500.

“English words do not always have regular correspondences between letters and sounds (i.e., many speech sounds can be spelled in different ways). These irregularly spelled words tend to occur with great frequency in English (e.g., have, of, they), and in texts read by beginning readers, they account for more than 50% of words (Adams, 1990). A reader’s word-reading accuracy and automaticity are positively influenced by the frequency with which words appear in print (Gernsbacher, 1984; Zinna, Liberman, & Shankweiler, 1986). Texts should feature enough highly frequent words so that they can be learned; however, research has not established guidelines indicating how many of these words should be included or how often they should be repeated within texts (Mesmer et al., 2012).” (p.485)

Murray, M. S., Munger, K. A., & Hiebert, E. H. (2014). An analysis of two reading intervention programs: How do the words, texts, and programs compare? Elementary School Journal, 114, 479-500.

“With respect to LTTM, we examined the programs’ adherence to guidelines such as those proposed by Beck (1997), which were based on her earlier reviews of first-grade texts and programs (Beck & Block, 1979; Beck & McCaslin, 1978). She recommended 70% to 80% decodability, since only 30% to 50% may not provide beginning readers with enough opportunity to practice what they had learned, and 100% would result in a stilted, artificial-sounding text. It should be noted that Beck’s work was descriptive rather than empirical—student performance was not connected to the match of lessons and student texts.” (p.487)

Murray, M. S., Munger, K. A., & Hiebert, E. H. (2014). An analysis of two reading intervention programs: How do the words, texts, and programs compare? Elementary School Journal, 114, 479-500.

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“Repeated readings (RR) has garnered much attention as an evidence based intervention designed to improve all components of reading fluency (rate, accuracy, prosody, and comprehension). Despite this attention, there is not an abundance of research comparing its effectiveness to other potential interventions. The current study presents the findings from a randomized control trial study involving the assignment of 168 second grade students to a RR, wide reading (WR), or business as usual condition. Intervention students were provided with 9–10 weeks of intervention with sessions occurring four times per week. Pre- and post-testing were conducted using Woodcock-Johnson III reading achievement measures (Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001, curriculum-based measurement (CBM) probes, measures of prosody, and measures of students' eye movements when reading. Changes in fluency were also monitored using weekly CBM progress monitoring procedures. Data were collected on the amount of time students spent reading and the number of words read by students during each intervention session. Results indicate substantial gains made by students across conditions, with some measures indicating greater gains by students in the two intervention conditions. Analyses do not indicate that RR was superior to WR. In addition to expanding the RR literature, this study greatly expands research evaluating changes in reading behaviors that occur with improvements in reading fluency. Implications regarding whether schools should provide more opportunities to repeatedly practice the same text (i.e., RR) or practice a wide range of text (i.e., WR) are provided.” (p. 13)

“The most consistent finding across all of the measures employed within this study was that students indeed made huge improvements in reading behavior, as indicated by WJ-III performance, reading rate, reading expression, and eye movement patterns. A second consistent finding was that the magnitude of changes across assessment measures was not reliable across students' skill levels. For the majority of employed measures, the students in the lowest achievement group made the greatest gains across time. Although such great gains are highly favorable in potentially allowing these students to “catch up” to their higher-achieving peers, maximum growth for all students would seem to be a better outcome. … these results are generally consistent with past research suggesting that RR improves students' reading achievement (Therrien et al., 2006). However, it is interesting that RR failed to produce greater gains in students' achievement compared to WR. These results strongly suggest that previously observed improvements in students' reading achievement as a result of RR implementation were largely due to additional time spent reading as opposed to repeatedly reading text. … “Given the lack of differences in outcomes between the RR and WR conditions, practitioners should thoughtfully consider the potential benefits and drawbacks of each set of procedures when providing students with a fluency-based intervention. Although results of this study would suggest that RR might not benefit students more than WR, there is strong evidence to suggest that RR improves students' fluency and comprehension on passages on which intervention is provided. Thus, if intervention will expose students to specific content and/or materials that they may need to read later in class, then RR may be the best set of procedures. However, a drawback of RR is that students may become annoyed with repeatedly reading passages more than once, especially if the material is not of interest to them. WR addresses this issue, as students read materials only once. Furthermore, WR exposes them to a significantly broader range of words. For example, students in the RR condition read an average of 9000 words comprising unique (i.e., non-repeated) text sequences across the 10 weeks of intervention, whereas students in the WR condition read an average of 28,815. One would expect that, by reading a greater variety of texts, students would be exposed to a greater breadth of vocabulary and contextual information. However, ensuring that passages are at an appropriate reading level might be of particular importance for WR intervention given that students are provided with only one opportunity to read words correctly and understand materials. Despite the wide use of RR-based intervention within elementary schools and its extensive literature base, there clearly remains much left unknown regarding RR as an intervention for improving elementary students' reading achievement. This study demonstrates the importance of employing multiple measures, including a true control group, and not assuming that an intervention deemed “empirically valid” will be of great benefit for all students regardless of age and skill level.” (p. 34-5)

Ardoin, S.P., Binder, K.S., Foster, T.E., & Zawoyskia, A.M. (2016). Repeated versus wide reading: A randomized control design study examining the impact of fluency interventions on underlying reading behaviour. Journal of School Psychology, 59, 13–38.

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“In a more recent series of meta-analyses investigating randomised controlled trials of nonpharmacological interventions, the investigators concluded that, along with neurofeedback, cognitive training, and restricted elimination diets, behavioural interventions cannot be recommended as interventions for core ADHD symptoms until better evidence of their effectiveness is reported by blinded assessments.” (p.1245)

Thapar, A., & Miriam Cooper, M. (2016). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Lancet, 387, 1240–50.

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“Reading has been shown to rely on a dorsal brain circuit involving the temporoparietal cortex (TPC) for grapheme-to-phoneme conversion of novel words (Pugh et al., 2001), and a ventral stream involving left occipitotemporal cortex (OTC) (in particular in the so-called “visual word form area”, VWFA) for visual identification of familiar words. In addition, portions of the inferior frontal cortex (IFC) have been posited to be an output of the dorsal reading pathway involved in phonology. While this dorsal versus ventral dichotomy for phonological and orthographic processing of words is widely accepted, it is not known if these brain areas are actually strictly sensitive to orthographic or phonological information. Using an fMRI rapid adaptation technique we probed the selectivity of the TPC, OTC, and IFC to orthographic and phonological features during single word reading. We found in two independent experiments using different task conditions in adult normal readers, that the TPC is exclusively sensitive to phonology and the VWFA in the OTC is exclusively sensitive to orthography. The dorsal IFC (BA 44), however, showed orthographic but not phonological selectivity. These results support the theory that reading involves a specific phonological-based temporoparietal region and a specific orthographic-based ventral occipitotemporal region. The dorsal IFC, however, was not sensitive to phonological processing, suggesting a more complex role for this region.” (p. 248)

Glezera, L.S., Eden, G., Jianga, X., Luetjeb, M., Napoliellob, E., Kima, J., & Riesenhuber, M. (2016). Uncovering phonological and orthographic selectivity across the reading network using fMRI-RA. NeuroImage, 138, 248–256.

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“Results suggest that WM training is ineffective at enhancing TD children’s cognitive or academic skills and that, when positive effects are observed, they are modest at best. Thus, in line with other types of training, far-transfer rarely occurs and its effects are minimal.”

Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2017). Working memory training in typically developing children: A meta-analysis of the available evidence. Developmental Psychology, Online version, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000265

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“One of the intentions from this review was to provide educators instructing middle school students with LD about instructional practices associated with improved outcomes in reading comprehension. There are several instructional practices that teachers can use with confidence to improve reading comprehension. The findings from this synthesis support the use of summarization or main idea strategy instruction as a means to improve understanding of text. Providing students with self-monitoring tools or ways to record the results of their efforts related to a particular behavior also may improve comprehension outcomes. Other strategies that were found to be effective include mnemonics, mapping, and questioning. The most consistent finding across this body of studies was the use of explicit instruction including modeling, feedback, and opportunities for practice. Middle school students with LD will benefit from explicit instruction designed to support better understanding of text.” (p.338)

Solis, M., Ciullo, S., Vaughn, S., Pyle, N., Hassaram, B., & Leroux, A. (2012). Reading comprehension interventions for middle school students with learning disabilities: A synthesis of 30 years of research, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 45, 327-340.

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“While the extent to which students need to explicitly know about grammar is still hotly debated (Locke, 2010), there is widespread agreement that teachers’ grammatical knowledge needs to be richer and more substantive than the grammar they may need to teach to students. Teacher subject knowledge requires ‘a higher degree of grammar consciousness than most direct learners are likely to need or want’ (Leech, 1994: 18), with an ability to be ‘conscious analysts of linguistic processes’ (Brumfit, 1997: 163) and possess ‘conscious awareness’ (Armstrong, 2004: 223) of how texts are structured. It has been argued that teachers who understand grammatical forms may be better placed to support developing writers (Andrews, 2005), to identify linguistic development in their students (Gordon, 2005), and to ‘make the analysis explicit’ (Hudson, 2004: 113) when examining texts with their students. The problem that current English teachers have with attaining the level of grammatical subject knowledge outlined above has arisen for two reasons: first, the fall from favour of grammar teaching in Anglophone countries following the Dartmouth Conference in the USA in 1966, due to the widespread view that the formal teaching of grammar had no beneficial impact on students’ linguistic facility (Hudson and Walmsley, 2005); second, the tendency in the UK for teachers to follow a literature degree route into teaching, along with is a shortage of applicants from a linguistics route (Shortis and Blake, 2010). As a result, many current English teachers were not taught grammar at school or university, a point also noted in the US context by Kolln and Hancock (2005), and by Gordon in New Zealand (2005). Of course, teachers who have literature degrees and are keen readers themselves do have a lot of knowledge about texts that they can draw on in language teaching, and they also have a substantial amount of implicit grammatical knowledge about texts. However, as Andrews (2005) points out, it is likely that ‘a teacher with a rich knowledge of grammatical constructions and a more general awareness of the forms and varieties of the language will be in a better position to help young writers’ (2005: 75). This subject knowledge problem extends into initial teacher training courses, with Kolln and Hancock (2005) complaining that most pre-service programs for English teachers in the USA do not address grammatical knowledge, and a number of UK studies reporting weaknesses in grammatical knowledge (Andrews, 1994, 1999; Bloor, 1986; Burgess et al., 2000; Chandler et al., 1988; Hislam and Cajkler, 2006; Williamson and Hardman, 1995; Wray, 1993). In Australia, Louden et al. (2005) conducted a survey which indicated that teachers do not feel confident about teaching grammar when they complete their training, and Harper and Rennie’s pre-service teachers (2009) ‘showed limited understandings in their ability to analyse the parts and structure of sentences, and their knowledge of metalinguistic terms did not seem to extend past the basic concepts of “noun”, “verb” and “adjective” ’ (2009: 27).” (p.51-2)

Myhill, D., & Watson, A. (2014). The role of grammar in the writing curriculum: A review of the literature. Child Language Teaching and Therapy 30(1), 41-62.

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“Executive Summary

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) was established in 2002 “to be a central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in education.” It has released over 700 intervention reports, quick reviews, and single study reviews, but these reports and the procedures and standards that guide them have received extensive criticism from multiple individuals and organizations. This report reviews criticisms of WWC publications and policies, errors identified in their publications, and issues regarding the transparency and accountability of the WWC. This review is based on findings from a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests submitted by the National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI) and subsequent appeals. Three conclusions appear clear: 1) The WWC suffers from a lack of transparency in their policies and guidelines, 2) the conclusions they create in their reports can be misleading, and 3) the reports are potentially damaging to program developers and ultimately the success of students.

The major concerns documented in these reports included the misinterpretation of study findings, inclusion of studies where programs were not fully implemented, exclusion of relevant studies from review, inappropriate inclusion of studies, concerns over WWC policies and procedures, incorrect information about a program developer and/or publisher, and the classification of programs. Multiple inquirers documented how the WWC made conclusions about study findings that did not align with the authors’ conclusions, and in some instances reported totally different conclusions. Over 80 percent of the requests for Quality Reviews involved concerns with misinterpretations of study findings. Misinterpretation of study findings appeared to result from both procedural errors of individual reviewers, but also from WWC policies, often including the WWC’s refusal to consider fidelity of implementation when determining the effectiveness rating of an intervention.

Although many changes were made in response to these Quality Reviews, multiple errors remained. The WWC primarily corrected minor errors, but not the larger errors that misled readers and tarnished the reputation of program developers and study authors. The most blatant errors remaining involved the misinterpretation of study findings. These errors involved both the inclusion of inappropriate studies and the exclusion of appropriate studies.

One of the major concerns with the inclusion of inappropriate studies involved the issue of poor implementation fidelity in a study. This lack of attention to fidelity is especially disturbing given the key role of fidelity to internal validity of research designs.

The primary cause of these problems is the policies and standards established by the WWC and their focus on an exclusive approach to evaluating research. The WWC uses a “threshold,” rule-based approach to examining studies, excluding those that do not meet a set list of criteria including, most prominently, a preference for randomized control trials (RCTs). Yet, empirical studies show that this approach results in very different results than would come from a more inclusive approach typical of the social sciences.

In general, review of the FOIA documents provided makes it apparent that there is great concern on how WWC reports are conducted and reviewed. It is reasonable to predict additional errors may exist in other WWC reports, but these errors have not been identified and reported, and gone through the Quality Review process. The wide range of errors documented and the multitude of reports with errors create doubt in the ability of the WWC to accurately report on the effectiveness of education programs and be a trusted resource.

The WWC may provide valuable resources that determine what works and doesn’t work in education, but the variety and multitude of errors documented in their reports tarnishes their reputation as a trusted and reliable resource. The actual number of errors in their published reports are unknown, and their negative effect on the field of education is unclear, but troublesome. Educators and school boards rely on WWC reports to provide accurate information on what works and what doesn’t, but these reports can’t be trusted. With a halo of uncertainty surrounding the WWC and their publications, all future reports must be scrutinized to assess whether they accurately reflect the available research and can they be trusted as a useful tool in determining what works.” (p. iii-iv)

Wood, T.W. (2017). Does the What Works Clearinghouse really work?: Investigations into issues of policy, practice, and transparency. Office of Research and Evaluation, NIFDI. Retrieved from http://nifdi.org/research/recent-research/whitepapers/1431-does-the-what-works-clearinghouse-really-work-investigations-into-issues-of-policy-practice-and-transparency/file

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“A further finding from the impact evaluation relates to the effectiveness of instructional coaching as a component of the combined intervention model. The study found that the effectiveness of one-on-one instructional coaching may be dependent on the personal and professional characteristics of individual coaches. This finding complements existing research on the importance of the quality of the institutions implementing programmes.” (p.36)

Fleischa, B., Taylorb, S., Schöerc, V., & Mabogoaned, T. (2017). Failing to catch up in reading in the middle years: The findings of the impact evaluation of the Reading Catch-Up Programme in South Africa. International Journal of Educational Development, 53, 36-47

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Explicit instruction [EX] vs Guided reading [GR]

“We had expected that phonemic decoding and passage reading fluency would be better supported by the explicit phonics instruction and structured repeated reading practice students received in the EX group, but the finding that EX was associated with stronger effects on comprehension was unexpected, as GR students spent more time engaged in text reading and discussion of text. Because the comprehension instruction provided in the EX condition was both explicit and carefully sequenced, our findings align with recommendations by Shanahan et al. (2010) that primary-grade students be provided with explicit instruction in comprehension, beginning with listening comprehension.” (p.287)

“A general implication of this study is that students beyond Grade 1who have substantial reading difficulties likely need fairly intensive intervention. This intervention may be best provided using published programs supported by empirical research rather than instruction developed by teachers or others in the school without the guidance of a program. Even when using published programs, interventions can be individualized by determining the focus of instruction (e.g., decoding, fluency, comprehension), selection of programs that are appropriate for students’ reading levels, and using mastery tests and other progress monitoring measures to determine how quickly students can proceed through a program or when a change of emphasis is warranted.” (p.290)

Denton, C.A., Fletcher, J.M., Taylor, W.P., Barth, A.E., & Vaughn, S. (2014). An experimental evaluation of guided reading and explicit interventions for primary-grade students at-risk for reading difficulties. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 7(3), 268-293, DOI: 10.1080/19345747.2014.906010

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“In recent years, major initiatives in the U. S. and U. K. have added greatly to the amount and quality of research on the effectiveness of secondary reading programs, especially targeted programs for struggling readers. This review of the experimental research on secondary reading programs focuses on 64 studies that used random assignment (n=55) or high-quality quasi-experiments (n=9) to evaluate outcomes of 49 programs on widely accepted measures of reading. Programs using one-to-one and small-group tutoring (ES=+0.23) and cooperative learning programs (mean ES=+0.16), showed positive outcomes, on average. Among technology programs, direct instruction, metacognitive approaches, mixed-model programs, and programs for English learners, there were individual examples of promising approaches. Except for tutoring, targeted extra-time programs were no more effective than programs provided to entire classes and schools without adding instructional time. The findings suggest that secondary readers benefit more from engaging and personalized instruction than from remedial services.”

Baye, A., Lake, C., Inns, A. & Slavin, R. E. (2016, December). Effective reading programs for secondary students. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, Center for Research and Reform in Education. Retrieved from http://www.bestevidence.org/reading/mhs/mhs_read.htm

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“Data were available for 5822 children, of whom 172 (3%) met the criteria for SRI. No association was found between SRI and strabismus, motor fusion, sensory fusion at a distance, refractive error, amblyopia, convergence, accommodation, or contrast sensitivity. Abnormalities in sensory fusion at near were mildly higher in children with SRI compared with their peers (1 in 6 vs 1 in 10, P = .08), as were children with stereoacuity worse than 60 seconds/arc (1 in 6 vs 1 in 10, P = .001). … Four of every 5 children with SRI had normal ophthalmic function in each test used. A small minority of children displayed minor anomalies in stereoacuity or fusion of near targets. The slight excess of these children among those with SRI may be a result of their reading impairment or may be unrelated. We found no evidence that vision-based treatments would be useful to help children with SRI.” (p. 1057)

Creavin, A.L., Lingam, R., Steer, C., & Williams, C. (2015). Ophthalmic abnormalities and reading impairment. Pediatrics, 135(6), 1057-1065.

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“Compared with previous studies, the current study was more robust in that children with reading impairment were compared with a general cohort population rather than with controls selected from schools and clinics. Pediatric clinicians should follow the American Academy of Pediatrics policy recommending instruction in phonics, word analysis, and reading fluency and comprehension as effective, evidence-based treatment for dyslexia. Also, unless results of routine vision screening are abnormal, a referral to an eye specialist is not indicated.” (p.1)

Stein, M.T. (2015). Visual training methods are ineffective for dyslexia. New England Journal of Medicine: Journal Watch, June 2, 2015. Retrieved from http://www.jwatch.org/na38060/2015/06/02/visual-training-methods-are-ineffective-dyslexia

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“While explanations for the impacts of tutoring, cooperative learning, and other promising approaches are somewhat speculative, there is one conclusion from this review that seems well justified. No program that showed positive effects in this review involved anything like traditional teaching. If secondary schools are to make real breakthroughs with struggling readers, they are going to have to do something much more motivating, more personalized, and more likely to give students a belief in their own capacity for learning. Most of the innovations tested in the studies that met the inclusion criteria may have been too much like what students had likely experienced for years before. A secondary student taking a course he or she perceives as remedial, no matter how small the class size, how much extra time is allocated, or how well designed the content and teaching, is likely to be watching the clock and wishing he or she were in the control group, which is usually taking band or art at that time. The research reviewed here provides evidence of what not to do to accelerate the learning of struggling secondary readers. It provides some promising avenues toward more effective approaches, but much remains to be done to understand how to create replicable, cost-effective strategies that can reliably and meaningfully improve reading outcomes for middle and high school students.” (p.74-5)

Baye, A., Lake, C., Inns, A. & Slavin, R. E. (2016, December). Effective reading programs for secondary students. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, Center for Research and Reform in Education. Retrieved from http://www.bestevidence.org/reading/mhs/mhs_read.htm

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“Several research studies suggest that differences in academic performance between socioeconomic as well as racial and ethnic groups trace back to the preschool years (Barnet et al., 2016; Friedman-Krauss et al., 2016; Nores & Barnett, 2014; Zill & Resnick, 2006).” (p.237)

Albritton, K., Anhalt, K., & Terry, N.P. (2016). Promoting equity for our nation’s youngest students: School psychologists as agents of social justice in early childhood settings. School Psychology Forum: Research in Practice, 10(3), 237-250. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar_url?url=https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kizzy_Albritton/publication/310481036_Promoting_equity_for_our_nation%27s_youngest_students_School_psychologists_as_agents_of_racial_and_social_justice_in_early_childhood_settings/links/5846d97408ae61f75ddfdc20.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm2-FcFkimmcWK9MYcSTs1l8BgLATw&nossl=1&oi=scholaralrt

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“Another early intervention meta-analysis focused on who benefits from such interventions. It is often assumed that the interventions work best with kids who possess (or lack) particular cognitive skills. However, in an analysis of 28 studies, early interventions seemed to be equally effective, no matter the children's initial levels of prior knowledge, phonemic awareness, or other cognitive abilities (Stuebing et al., 2015). Likewise, a meta-analysis of 82 studies of reading interventions (Scammacca, Roberts, Vaughn, & Stuebing, 2015) found larger learning effects with the older studies (pre-2004) and smaller ones with the more recent studies. The reason for this wasn't that the interventions are getting less effective or that today's students are less amenable to teaching; rather, that the studies themselves have become more rigorous and that control group kids appear to be getting better classroom instruction these days.” (p.509)

Shanahan, T. (2017). Reading research: The importance of replication. The Reading Teacher, 70(4), 507–510.

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“This paper demonstrates that the emphasis on students’ socioeconomic status (SES) in research and policy circles in Australia is unwarranted. The bivariate relationships between SES and educational outcomes are only moderate and the effects of SES are quite small when taking into account cognitive ability or prior achievement. These two influences have much stronger relationships with students’ outcomes than SES and their effects cannot be attributed to the influence of SES at earlier points of time. The theoretical explanations for socioeconomic inequalities in education (e.g. schools and cultural factors) are problematic and are not supported by empirical work. The much weaker than assumed effects of SES has implications for research and policy.”

Marks, G.N. (2016). Is SES really that important for educational outcomes in Australia? A review and some recent evidence. Australian Educational Researcher, 1-21. First Online: 10 December 2016. doi:10.1007/s13384-016-0219-2.

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“Written language differs in a number of important respects from spoken language. The vocabulary and syntax (Crystal and Davy, 1969), the larger structures (Tannen, 1982) and the use of cohesive devices (Halliday and Hassan, 1976), which knit it into a textured whole, combine to make written language markedly distinct from spoken. Even a story written for young children, such as Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak, 1970) differs in all these respects from the language spoken between parent and child.

Researchers have noted that the processes for making sense of these two forms of language also differ in some important ways (e.g. Kintsch, 1998). The continuing presence of the text on page or screen allows the reader to move around and to vary the reading pace. This makes it possible to repair error and uncertainty, relate what is being read to knowledge gained elsewhere, in a more measured and careful way than speech allows. Readers can apply comprehension strategies not available to listeners. But the SVR takes no account of these different procedures.”

Henrietta Dombey from the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) The simple view of reading – explained. http://www.teachingtimes.com/news/the-simple.htm

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“This study aimed to examine if specific skills that are developed during preschool years could predict the reading performance in the first and second grade of primary school. A series of regression analyses were undertaken to examine the contribution of measurements in kindergarten to students’ reading performance in two first grades of primary school. Our results showed that PA is the strong predictor of reading achievement in Grade 1. This finding verifies our first hypothesis and is consistent with numerous studies that have reported that PA is a powerful predictor of future reading achievement in alphabetic (Manolitsis, 2000; Mouzaki et al., 2008; Schneider, Kuespert, Roth, & Vise, 1997) and non-alphabetic writing systems (Hu & Catts, 1998; McBride-Chang & Kail, 2002). The second hypothesis, which attempted to relate rapid naming performance (RAN) and reading, was not supported from our results. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find a unique connection between RAN and reading although several researchers have argued that RAN is a strong predictor of reading in orthographically consistent languages (Georgiou et al., 2008; Mann & Wimmer, 2002) and in non-alphabetic writing systems (Chow, McBride-Chang, & Burgess, 2005). However, this finding is consistent with studies reporting that rapid naming when assessed in kindergarten does not predict reading achievement in first grade, but in later grades (Puolakanaho et al., 2008). … Overall, our findings indicate that not only the total reading performance, but the accuracy and the fluency of reading as well, are predicted in the first grade of primary school by the PA and the phonological memory scores during kindergarten.” (p.1714, 1717)

Papadimitriou, A.M., & Vlachos, F.M. (2014). Which specific skills developing during preschool years predict the reading performance in the first and second grade of primary school? Early Child Development and Care, 184(11), 1706-1722.

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“Reading research of the past few decades has indicated phonemic awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) as strong predictors of WR skill (Kirby, Desrochers, Roth, & Lai, 2008; Landerl et al., 2013;Wagner, Torgesen, Rashotte, & Pearson, 2013). An influential theoretical framework involving both processes isWolf and Bowers’s (1999) Double Deficit Hypothesis (DDH), which predicts that RAN and PA constitute more or less independent correlates of WR ability. Since the introduction of the DDH, this assumption has been affirmed on numerous occasions (e.g., Compton, DeFries, & Olson, 2001; Kirby et al., 2010; Papadopoulos, Georgiou, & Kendeou, 2009; Schatschneider, Carlson, Francis, Foorman, & Fletcher, 2002; Torppa, Georgiou, Salmi, Eklund, & Lyytinen, 2012; Torppa et al., 2013; Vukovic & Siegel, 2006). The DDH also predicts that a combination of deficient RAN and PA—a “double deficit”—is associated with the poorest level of WR performance (Wolf & Bowers, 1999, p. 424). However, as DDH studies have employed differing criteria for reading disability (RD) and have applied differing cutoffs to RAN and PA to indicate deficit levels, it remains unclear what should be considered as the poorest level of WR as well as what is meant with a double deficit.” … These results are in line with the prediction that a “double deficit” is present among the poorest readers (Papadopoulos et al., 2009; Wolf & Bowers, 1999) and, what is more, suggest that the Double Deficit Hypothesis gains momentum if more severely impaired readers are considered. A further specification of these findings is that the effects for PA seem consistently larger than for RAN, with—conform the prediction (Hypothesis 2)—differences getting larger with the severity of RD. This finding, thus, suggests that PA is a more effective cognitive marker for the poorest readers.” (p. 166, 167, 177)

de Groot, B., van den Bos, K., Minnaert, A., & van der Meulen, B. (2015). Phonological processing and word reading in typically developing and reading disabled children: Severity matters. Scientific Studies of Reading, 19(2), 166-181.

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“As a field, professionals hoped that RTI approaches would reduce current special education caseloads and allow for more individualized reading instruction for students demonstrating the most persistently or chronically inadequate response, who we assumed would form a class of those with true reading disabilities (Vaughn, Moody, & Schumm, 1998). In sum, it was hoped RTI innovations would focus special education services on students who in the past were termed treatment-resistors or nonresponders (Blachman, 1994; Torgesen, 2000). In 2000, Torgesen estimated that only 2% to 6% of the school population might be truly unresponsive to generally effective intervention efforts (note that he based this estimate on students having access to powerful preventive instruction and intervention, but who had not acquired word reading skills above the 30th percentile). At the time, his estimates were very similar to federal incidence figures for children with reading disabilities. … Now with the use of RTI models, more than ever, we understand how hard it may be to help schools develop and sustain sufficiently powerful interventions. We remain mindful that once students fall behind in reading, little evidence exists that even the most powerful remedial interventions make it possible to “close the gap,” particularly in terms of fluency and comprehension, even in studies that have come close to doing so in terms of word reading. This is troubling because we have known for a long while about negative consequences for early difficulties in reading that include relatively weak vocabulary growth (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997), changes in attitude and motivation for reading (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997), and loss of opportunities for developing increasingly sophisticated reading strategies (Brown, Palincsar, & Purcell, 1986).” (p.130-131)

Al Otaiba, S., Wagner, R.K., & Miller, B. (2014). "Waiting to Fail" redux: Understanding inadequate response to intervention. Learning Disability Quarterly, 37(3), 129-133.

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“The salience of fluency is also underscored by study findings by Vaughn et al. (2009), who reported that second graders with ORF scores above 40 words per minute demonstrated stronger RTI than students with lower scores, and by O’Connor et al. (2005), who reported that all first graders who received intervention and reached a speed of 40 words per minute by the end of first grade remained on grade level for reading through third grade.” (p.213-4)

Greulich, L. Al Otaiba, S., Schatschneider, C., Wanzek, J., Ortiz, M., & Wagner, R.K. (2014). Understanding inadequate response to first grade multi-tier intervention: Nomothetic and idiographic perspectives.Learning Disability Quarterly, 37, 204-217.

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“Poor reading comprehension is not always accompanied with word recognition (i.e., decoding) difficulties. One such case is students with specific poor comprehension (SPC) whose reading difficulties are specific to the area of reading comprehension. Although the estimation of the population proportion in the previous studies has varied, studies substantiate that poor reading comprehenders, with good word recognition abilities, exist (Nation, Clarke, Marshall, & Durand, 2004; Yuill & Oakhill, 1988, 1991). Students with SPC could become more prevalent in the upper elementary grades with a well-known phenomenon of the ‘‘fourth-grade slump’’ in a literacy development (Chall & Jacobs, 2003). … their poor reading comprehension could be due to weak meaning-related spoken language abilities, poor metacognitive knowledge, and/or a lack of text structure knowledge.” (p. 918)

Lee, S. H., & Tsai, S. (2017). Experimental intervention research on students with specific poor comprehension: A systematic review of treatment outcomes. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 30, 917-943.

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“Thus, for early intervention purposes, preventative treatment can be tailored towards the individual needs of the child. For instance, a preschool child exhibiting weakness in orthography (e.g., letter knowledge) is at risk for later deficits in word recognition. A deficit in word recognition will also result in overall weakness with reading comprehension (at least in first grade). For this particular profile, treatment can intensively target letter knowledge skills, which is likely to support the primary area of need for that child. In providing early identification as well as targeted early intervention, we may prevent the ‘‘snowball’’ effect by which children with deficits in one or more domains of lexical quality become children with deficits in one or more components of reading comprehension.” (p.1766)

Murphy, K.A., & Farquharson, K. (2016). Investigating profiles of lexical quality in preschool and their contribution to first grade reading. Reading and Writing, 29(9), 1745-1770.

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“Abstract In the present study, we examined patterns of code-focused emergent literacy skill growth for children from lower and higher socioeconomic (SES) families enrolled at a high-quality early childhood center. Measures of letter name knowledge, letter sound knowledge, alliteration, and rhyming were collected at three time points over the course of the year. Additionally, standardized measures of print knowledge and phonological awareness were collected at the end of the year. Growth curve analyses indicated SES-related differences in initial status, but no differences in rate of growth. Initial status predicted end-of-year print knowledge. Both initial status and SES predicted end-of-year phonological awareness. These results suggest that gaps in code-focused emergent literacy skills exist earlier than previously documented with no evidence of compensatory or Matthew effects (p.1337). … We found no differences in rates of growth on measures of AK [alphabet knowledge] and PA [phonological awareness] or in the extent to which growth predicted standardized outcomes. These results are incongruous with a compensatory effect (Sameroff & Chandler, 1975). Children from lower-SES families did not grow at a faster rate than their higher-SES peers such that early gaps in literacy skills were closed at the end of the year. However, the results are also incongruous with a Matthew effect (Stanovich, 1986). Rather, our results show that initial differences did not increase but were maintained throughout the school year. This result suggests that the trajectories for reading skills have largely been established prior to preschool entry. This aligns with the literature showing SES-related differences in the language and literacy experiences of children prior to school (Merlo, Bowman, & Barnett, 2007; Weigel, Martin, & Bennett, 2006). This body of research has pointed to a number of home-related differences, including less access to print (Neuman & Celano, 2001), less experience with rhyming word play and nursery rhymes (Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1986), fewer conversations about letters (Treiman et al., 2015), and less frequent storybook reading (Se´ne´chal, 2006) for children from lower-SES families. … These findings highlight the importance of addressing literacy skill gaps early in children’s life. By preschool, children from lower-SES families are already behind their higher-SES peers in relevant code-focused emergent literacy skills. This finding aligns with calls to provide high-quality early instruction for these children as a means of potentially mitigating gaps. However, as alluded to above, these findings indicate that current early childhood programming, even when deemed of high quality, may not realize intended impacts on emergent literacy skill development and may not be sufficient to realize compensatory effects for children from lower-SES families. … Despite these limitations, this study’s primary findings add to the extant research literature related to SES gaps in literacy skills in demonstrating that such gaps exist in code-focused emergent literacy skills prior to formal schooling and are not mitigated by enrollment in a high-quality early childhood program. Our findings suggest that stronger emphasis may be needed on code-focused skills in preschool programs, particularly in those preschool programs serving children from lower income families.” (p. 1354, 5, 9)

Strang, T.M., & Piasta, S.B. (2016). Socioeconomic differences in code-focused emergent literacy skills. Reading and Writing, 29, 1337–1362

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“ … when writing by pen and by keyboard were compared on alphabet writing, sentence constructing, and text composing, children wrote more words and wrote words faster (Berninger, Abbott et al., 2008) and expressed more ideas (Hayes & Berninger, in press) when composing text by pen than by keyboard from second to sixth grade; but for letter writing and sentence constructing, the keyboard often showed advantages (Berninger, Abbott et al., 2008). Children with learning disabilities need explicit instruction in handwriting as well as keyboarding and both accommodations in the form of using a laptop and ongoing explicit instruction in all aspects of writing from planning to translating to reviewing and revising (Berninger, 2006a, 2008a; Berninger, Abbott et al., 2008).” (p.77)

Berninger, V.W. (2009). Highlights of programmatic, interdisciplinary research on writing. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 24(2), 69–80.

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“The accumulated evidence also supports the proposition that handwriting and spelling play an important role in writing development (Graham, 2006b). First, handwriting and spelling are easier or less cognitively demanding for more skilled than less skilled writers. Second, there is a large body of research demonstrating that handwriting and spelling improve with age. For example, we found that children’s handwriting fluency improves 10 letters or more per minute each year up to high school (Graham, Berninger, Weintraub, & Schafer, 1998). Third, individual differences in handwriting and spelling predict how well students write. In a study with 600 children, we found these two skills accounted for 25% and 42% of the variance in writing quality at the primary and intermediate grades, and 66% and 41% of the variance in writing output at these same grade levels, respectively (Graham, Berninger, Abbott, Abbott, & Whitaker, 1997). Fourth, eliminating these skills through dictation has a positive impact on the writing of specific groups of writers. For instance, MacArthur and Graham (1987) reported that students with LD produced qualitatively better text when dictating stories versus writing them by hand. Finally, there is a small body of studies showing that handwriting or spelling instruction can enhance writing performance. We found that providing extra instruction in these skills to young struggling writers increased how much they wrote and resulted in improved sentence construction skills (Graham, Harris,&Fink, 2000; Graham, Harris, & Fink-Chorzempa, 2002). Graham (2006b) also offered a tentative proposition that sentence construction skills shape writing development. There is some evidence that skilled writers produce more complex sentences than less skilled writers, although these findings do not hold for all comparisons (e.g., good versus poor readers). Developing writers’ sentences become increasingly complex with age, although this finding varies by writing task. Sentence skills are correlated with writing performance (at least in some studies), but this appears to vary by genre. Lastly, efforts to improve sentence construction skills of developing writers can enhance their writing performance, if the right type of instruction is provided. For example, Saddler and Graham (2005) reported that sentence combining instruction had a positive impact on the quality of text produced by struggling writers.” (p.61)

Graham, S., & Harris, K.R. (2009). Almost 30 years of writing research: Making sense of it all with The Wrath of Khan. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 24(2), 58–68.

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“I advance the idea that schools, like religion and the press, need the protection of something like a Constitutional amendment to keep education free of interference in matters of materials, methods, and curriculum from the winds of political change and the passing hysterias of public opinion” (Blau, 1998).

Blau, S. (1998). Toward the separation of school and state. Revision of an inaugural address by the NCTE president presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Council of Teachers. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED417405.pdf.

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“Keith Rayner’s studies of the perceptual span and eye movement control were predicated on the conviction that the experimental investigation of visual information extraction from text should provide the empirical foundation for building a theory of reading. This ‘bottom-up’ approach fit well with his belief that reading was fundamentally a matter of extracting information from the printed page. Such an approach conflicted sharply with the view that was widely accepted when he and his mentor, George McConkie, started to investigate the perceptual span and eye movement control (e.g., McConkie & Rayner, 1975). According to this view, skilled reading was a linguistic guessing game, primarily a function of effective top-down processing, and perceptual processing was cursory, contributing relatively little to reading (Goodman, 1970; Hochberg, 1970; Levin & Kaplan, 1970). Rayner’s work with McConkie and their students and colleagues largely overturned this view with their demonstrations that experienced readers look at essentially every word in text, and that the ability to extract visual information quickly and efficiently is the foundation of skilled reading.” (p.2)

“In Rayner’s view, there are three properties of a word that most strongly influence how easily it can be processed: its frequency (e.g., Rayner & Duffy, 1986), length (e.g., Juhasz, White, Liversedge, & Rayner, 2008) and predictability in context (e.g., Ehrlich & Rayner, 1981). The importance of these properties led Rayner to refer to these as ‘‘The Big Three” of lexical processing. Beginning with the first of the Big Three, the basic word frequency effect is the finding that readers spend less time processing words that occur more frequently in the language than words that occur less frequently in the language. Early Rayner papers demonstrating these effects have been frequently and consistently cited in the literature (e.g., Inhoff & Rayner, 1986; Rayner & Duffy, 1986). Lexical frequency effects are pervasive, occurring not only in word spaced alphabetic languages, but also in unspaced non-alphabetic languages such as Chinese in which words are far less visually obvious units of language (Yan, Tian, Bai, & Rayner, 2006). Rayner was also instrumental in demonstrating that a word’s length, the second of the Big Three, is also a fundamental characteristic that affects how long a reader spends processing that word. Longer words have more constituent letters, and thus the word’s orthography provides more visual and linguistic information to process. The longer a word is, the longer it takes to process, although this effect is often reflected in refixations rather than extended single fixations. Word length affects not only when to move the eyes; it affects where to move them. In an interesting series of studies (e.g., Juhasz, Inhoff, & Rayner, 2005; Juhasz et al., 2008; White, Rayner, & Liversedge, 2005; see also Juhasz, 2008), the boundary paradigm (see previous section) was used to present either correct or incorrect information about the length of upcoming parafoveal words (e.g., backhand appeared as a preview for back and, and vice versa). The results of these experiments showed that saccades are targeted on the basis of the length of the word in the parafovea. Consequently, when a saccade is made to the parafoveal word, if word length information about that word turns out to be incorrect, reading is disrupted. The third variable of the ‘‘Big Three” is the predictability of a word in context (S. Ehrlich & Rayner, 1981). Words that are more predictable are skipped more, fixated for less time, and refixated after a regression less often than are less predictable words (Altarriba, Kroll, Sholl, & Rayner, 1996; Balota, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 1985; Rayner & Well, 1996; Schustack, Ehrlich, & Rayner, 1987). More recently, as with the research investigating frequency effects, these effects have been shown to hold for non-alphabetic unspaced languages (Rayner, Li, Juhasz, & Yan, 2005), and it has also been demonstrated that there are differential effects of predictability for readers of different levels of reading skill (Ashby, Rayner, & Clifton, 2005): less-skilled readers show particularly strong effects of discourse context when they fixate on a relatively rare word.” (p.5)

“One of the central conclusions that emerged from the evaluation of the literature was that, in order for children to become proficient readers, it is necessary for them to master the alphabetic principle, the idea that in the written form of the language, different letters correspond to different sounds. A second important conclusion that the authors formed in the paper was that direct instruction in phonics is an effective technique to allow children to understand the alphabetic principle, while other techniques such as whole word, or whole language approaches that do not adopt this direct approach are less effective. Although they provoked reactions from many individuals with strong views on how reading should be taught, the Rayner et al. (2001, 2002) articles provide excellent examples of scientifically based, translational writing, and they provide a model of how researchers can use findings from basic science to inform discussion and motivate evidence based practice.” (p.6)

Clifton, C. E., Ferreira, F., Henderson, J. M., Inhoff, A. W., Liversedge, S., Reichle, E. D., & Schotter, E. R. (2016). Eye movements in reading and information processing: Keith Rayner’s 40 year legacy. Journal of Memory and Language, 86, 1-19.

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“We have seen that reading is an elegantly choreographed dance among a number of visual and mental processes. Modern research has shown that, contrary to some earlier views (Goodman, 1967), reading is not a psycholinguistic guessing game in which we guess the identities of words and other linguistic units based on minimal visual input. Rather, we pick up detailed visual information from the text, moving our eyes so that we fixate most words once and going backward to reread if problems arise. The visual information that we obtain, combined with our knowledge of the language we are reading, allows us to identify the words in the text and to comprehend it.” (p.20)

Rayner, K., Schotter, E. R., Masson, M. E. J., Potter, M. C., & Treiman, R. (2016). So much to read, so little time: How do we read, and can speed reading help? Psychological Science in the Public Interest 17(1), 4–34.

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Steve (Stahl, 1994) observed that scholars in other disciplines tend to regard the internal debates in reading with amusement. While president of Harvard, Derek Bok commented that professors of education do not receive the respect to which they belive they are entitled because they lack an organized body of knowledge on which they all agree. Until we concur on what we know and on how we can add to that knowledge, our profession will continue to teeter and may eventually be toppled by those with the power to do so. I believe that Steve Stahl has nudged us away from this precipice thourgh disciplined inquiry, reasoned interpretation, and fair-minded critical analysis. In his untimely passing we lose not only a friend and collegue but a powerful check on the excesses of what passes for research.

p.7

McKenna, M. (2006). How shall research inform reading instruction? In Stahl, K. A. D., & McKenna, M. C. (Eds.). Reading research at work: Foundations of effective practice, pp 1-35.

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“Classroom management practices are clearly related to reading outcomes for boys with behavior problems, but not girls, and therefore, further investigations into more nuanced approaches to managing a classroom are warranted. Similar to previous research (Nelson et al., 2004; Rice & Yen, 2010), the current study found no significant differences in reading achievement between boys and girls with or at risk for EBD. This leads to the question of why boys, and not girls, benefited from classroom management quality in relation to reading achievement, especially when no significant differences were found in the quality of classroom management they had experienced. The girls in our study scored significantly higher on internalizing behaviors and lower on externalizing behaviors than boys. Although correlations do not allow for causal inferences, externalizing behaviors, but not internalizing behaviors, were negatively correlated with classroom management quality, and classroom management quality was positively correlated with third-grade reading achievement. Internalizing behaviors may go unnoticed or, if identified, unaddressed because teachers are unsure how to intervene (Conley, Marchant, & Caldarella, 2014).” (p.14)

Garwood, J.D., Vernon-Feagans, L., and the Family Life Project Key Investigators. (2016). Classroom management affects literacy development of students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Exceptional Children, 1–20. DOI: 10.1177/0014402916651846

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“There is a general consensus that writing is a challenging task for students with learning disabilities (LD). To identify more precisely the extent and depth of the challenges that these students experience with writing, the authors conducted a meta-analysis comparing the writing performance of students with LD to their typically achieving peers. From 53 studies that yielded 138 effect sizes, the authors calculated average weighted effect sizes, showing that students with LD obtained lower scores than their peers on the following writing outcomes: writing quality (–1.06); organization (–1.04); vocabulary (–0.89); sentence fluency (–0.81); conventions of spelling, grammar, and handwriting (–1.14); genre elements (–0.82); output (–0.87); and motivation (–0.42).” (p. 1)

Graham, S., Collins, A.A., & Rigby-Wills, H. (2016). Writing characteristics of students with learning disabilities and typically achieving peers: A meta-analysis. Exceptional Children, 1–20, DOI: 10.1177/0014402916664070

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“Two professional development (PD) models for teachers were compared on teacher and student outcomes. Special education teachers participated in Literacy Learning Cohorts (LLC), a PD innovation designed to improve content and pedagogical knowledge for providing reading instruction to upper elementary students with learning disabilities. The LLC, based on Desimone’s (2009) framework, included 2 days of initial PD with follow-up meetings, coaching, and video self-analysis. A comparison group received only 2 days of PD. Results of independent t tests and analyses of covariance indicated that LLC teachers demonstrated significant change in instructional time allotted to, and quality of, word study and fluency instruction. LLC teachers also made significantly greater gains on the fluency knowledge measure as compared with the comparison group, but they did not differ in word study knowledge. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses showed that students of LLC teachers made significantly greater gains on word attack skills and decoding efficiency than did students of teachers in the comparison group.” (p. 1)

Brownell, M., Kiely, M.T., Haager, D., Boardman, A., Corbett, N., Algina, J., Dingle, M.P., & Urbach, J. (2016). Literacy learning cohorts: Content-focused approach to improving special education teachers’ reading instruction. Exceptional Children, 1–22. November 4, 2016, doi: 10.1177/0014402916671517

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“Teachers should consider explicitly teaching transcription skills for struggling beginning writers using research-based interventions. In this study, students received a research-based early writing intervention that comprised a variety of handwriting and spelling activities, which likely contributed to students’ improved writing performance. However, research-based intervention may not be sufficient for all students all of the time. In this study, data indicated the need for multiple instructional decisions, about 90% of which were to either increase a student’s goal or change instruction. We strongly recommend that teachers collect ongoing progress-monitoring data and use those data to make instructional decisions based on students’ responsiveness to intervention.” (p.14)

Jung, P-G., Kristen L. McMaster, K.L., & delMas, R.C. (2016). Effects of early writing intervention delivered within a data-based instruction framework. Exceptional Children, 1–17. DOI: 10.1177/0014402916667586

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“Teachers should recognize that traditional text-leveling procedures do not fully account for all factors that affect the difficulty of a text. Even when controlling for text level, type, and structure, there are still naturally occurring topical variations between texts that will render one more difficult than another.” (p.125)

Fawson, P.C., Ludlow, B.C., Reutzel, D.R., Sudweeks, R., & Smith, J.A. (2006) Examining the reliability of running records: Attaining generalizable result. The Journal of Educational Research, 100(2), 113-126.

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“Running records have traditionally been viewed as producing accurate assessment results because they provide an approximation of authentic school and home reading. However, reliability data have not been conclusive regarding the use of running records (Ross, 2004).” (p.114). … “Hoffman, Roser, and Salas (2001) found that teachers using the Fountas and Pennell leveling structure can reliably level text. However, when texts leveled in that manner assess student reading performance, they produce highly unreliable results. Running record scores that are acquired from a single-leveled text reading would not necessarily represent a student’s true reading level. … Making absolute decisions with a running record requires the teacher to average student scores on at least three passages with at least two raters. Our results indicate that the most limiting factor in rendering students’ running record scores reliable is the number of passages used. That finding supports the contention of Ross (2004) that passage might exhibit a sizable source of error variance when scoring running records. Using a single score obtained from reading a single passage to portray that student’s universe score would be highly questionable.” (p. 123)

Fawson, P.C., Ludlow, B.C., Reutzel, D.R., Sudweeks, R., & Smith, J.A. (2006) Examining the reliability of running records: Attaining generalizable result. The Journal of Educational Research, 100(2), 113-126. Retrieved from https://llmotivation.wikispaces.com/file/view/Running+records.pdf

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“This study revealed that children who were reading at or above grade expectations were more likely to make use of graphic and phonic cues when they approached an unfamiliar word in a text. As has been suggested (e.g. De Lemos, 2002; Adams, 1990) the ability to decode graphic and phonic information is a reliable determinant of higher reading ability. Therefore, these findings suggest that Goodman and colleagues may have underestimated the role of the grapho-phonic cueing system and overestimated the role of the semantic and syntactic cueing systems in relation to differentiating reading ability.”

Beatty, L., & & Care, E. (2009). Learning from their miscues: Differences across reading ability and text difficulty. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 32(3), 226-234. Retrieved from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Learning from their miscues: differences across reading ability and...-a0210520844

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“The transparency of a language refers to the mapping of letters and sounds (phonology). In highly transparent languages such as Finnish, Italian and Spanish, there is an almost one-to-one mapping between letters and sounds, and such languages are said to have a shallow orthography. In contrast, English has a deep or opaque orthography since only 56% of its words can be predicted by phonological rules (Crystal, 2000). Therefore it is claimed that literacy acquisition may be easier with transparent languages because these languages only require children to learn one-to-one correspondences between spoken and written units (Wyse & Goswami, 2008). There is much evidence to support this view. Finnish children read with 90% accuracy after a very short period of formal instruction (approximately 10 weeks) whereas English children take four or five years to achieve the same level of accuracy (Goswami, 2005). Seymour, Aro, and Erskine (2003) compared reading development across 14 European languages. Their findings revealed striking differences between languages. At the end of grade one English-speaking children performed poorly (34% correct word reading). In contrast, children learning to read in transparent orthographies (Greek, Finnish, German, Italian, and Spanish), were close to ceiling performance. Furthermore, a recent study of Italian children by Desimoni, Scalisi and Orsolini (2012) also provides further evidence ‘that the consistency of an orthography affects the characteristics of reading and spelling acquisition’ (p12).” (p. 85)

Devonshire, V., Morris, P., & Fluck, M. (2013). Spelling and reading development: The effect of teaching children multiple levels of representation in their orthography. Learning and Instruction, 25, 85-94.

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“Low proficiency levels in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests are deemed to be those at a level insufficient for students to perform the moderate reading tasks that are needed to meet real-life challenges and are below minimum Australian standards. Around one-third of Australian 15 year olds had low reading proficiency levels, with just over one half were in the medium proficiency group.”

Polidano, C., & Ryan, C. (2016). Teenagers with low reading levels don’t find it any harder to get work. The Conversation, October 21, 2016. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/teenagers-with-low-reading-levels-dont-find-it-any-harder-to-get-work-67311

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“Without background knowledge, there is little basis for meaningful reading comprehension; therefore, building background knowledge is at the center of Hirsch’s education reform plan. He advocates the building of background knowledge through a slow, cumulative process (143) that develops the core knowledge required of anyone for participation in the public sphere. Hirsch wants a carefully sequenced core knowledge curriculum in place in K-8 public schools. He advocates direct instruction of the curriculum and of Standard English …. Reading comprehension scores started dropping in 1962, he argues, because students did not have enough shared knowledge to comprehend what they were reading. In order to improve reading scores, then, schools must teach shared knowledge so that students can achieve academic success. For comprehension, a student must know 90% of the words on a page (139). (In the professional development I have received and in my experience as a teacher of ELL students, this number is incorrect – students must know 95% of the words on the page in order to comprehend a text.) Semantic awareness, then, is the foundation of reading comprehension. The foundation of semantic awareness, in turn, is prior or background knowledge (143). … Hirsch says “Wide knowledge and a large vocabulary – the prerequisites to achievement in high school – are gradual accretions. You cannot gain them by sudden intensive incursions in the later grades. With a slow, tenacious buildup of knowledge and vocabulary in elementary school, high school will almost take care of itself” (167).” (p.10, 11, 12)

Vieux, V. (2016). A critical review of E. D. Hirsch’s The Making of Americans. NEH Philosophers of Education Seminar, Boston University, Summer 2016. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar_url?url=http://nehphilosophersofeducationseminar.org/POEMT_2016/PDFS/Vieux_Vanessa_PES.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm3NtQm5AABm9Ftv-nEVeSmNAFvfzQ&nossl=1&oi=scholaralrt

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“ … an aggregation of at-risk adolescents can provoke negative influences between them, resulting in disadvantageous individual outcomes (Dishion & Tipsord, 2011)

Müller, C.M., & Hofmann, V. (2016). Does being assigned to a low school track negatively affect psychological adjustment? A longitudinal study in the first year of secondary school. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 27(2), 95-115.

Dishion, T. J., & Tipsord, J. M. (2011). Peer contagion in child and adolescent social and emotional development. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 189–214.

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“Schanzenbach (2007) reviewed STAR studies and concluded that small classes improved student academic outcomes. Since her review, however, some research has challenged this conclusion. … Because Schanzenbach (2007 ) provided an excellent review of STAR studies before 2007, this paper reviews STAR studies that were published in 2007 and later. If these recent studies had supported the positive results, another review would not have been necessary. However, some of them have cast serious doubt on her conclusions. (p.116) … As Blatchford (2012) suggested, a more fruitful research topic would be the relations between class size and classroom processes – that is, what occurs in the classroom when class size is reduced.” (p.130)

Sohn, K. (2016). A review of research on Project STAR and path ahead. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 27(2), 116-134.

Schanzenbach, D. W. (2007). What have researchers learned from Project STAR? In T. Loveless & F. M. Hess (Eds.), Brookings papers on education policy 2006/2007 (pp. 205–228). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.)

Blatchford, P. (2012). Three generations of research on class-size effects. In K. R. Harris, S. Graham, & T. Urdan (Eds.), APA educational psychology handbook, Volume 2. Individual differences and cultural and contextual factors (pp. 529–554). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.[CrossRef])

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“The effectiveness of this [synthetic phonics] approach has been proven for the development of early reading skills (Dixon et al., 2011; Johnston, McGeown, & Watson, 2012) among struggling readers in the ESL context (Lesaux & Siegel, 2003; Vadasy & Sanders, 2011; Yeung, Siegel, & Chan, 2013). These studies employed experimental research designs for different age groups: kindergarten students (Lesaux & Siegel, 2003; Yeung et al., 2013) and primary school students (Dixon et al., 2011; Johnston et al., 2012; Vadasy & Sanders, 2011). These findings suggest that synthetic phonics may be effective for developing reading skills across gender and language capabilities.” (p.458)

Jamaludin, K.A., Alias, N., Khir, R.J.M., DeWitt, D., & Kenayathula, H.B. (2016). The effectiveness of synthetic phonics in the development of early reading skills among struggling young ESL readers. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 27(3), 455-470.

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Point #3 describes the Michigan state’s new instructional requirement in reading for the early school years. It specifies systematic, explicit, multi-sensory, sequential instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension with guided practice and focused error correction.

Michigan Department of Education. (2016). Smart Promotion: 3rd grade reading proficiency, early literacy coaches, & reading assistance programs. Retrieved from www.ebli.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=d87cdd578fcea9d2499649e72&id=c095b280dd&e=8a808caa97

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“DRAFT RECOMMENDATION 2.1The national education evidence base should:

• meet the varied needs of decision makers at all levels of the education system
• provide high-quality data and evidence to inform decisions
• drive improved student achievement through four interconnected processes — monitoring of performance, evaluation of what works best, dissemination of evidence and application of that evidence by educators and policy makers.”

“Notwithstanding substantial increases in expenditure on education over the past decade, national and international assessments of student achievement in Australia show little improvement and in some areas standards have dropped.”

Productivity Commission report: National Education Evidence Base Inquiry, 2016

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“Working-memory training as currently implemented does not work. One hundred years of research on basic memory phenomena has discovered many procedures that do!” (p.190)

McCabe1, J.A., Thomas S. Redick, T.S., & Engle, R.W. (2016). Brain-training pessimism, but applied-memory optimism. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(3) 187–191. Retrieved from

http://psi.sagepub.com/content/17/3/187.full.pdf+html

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“Practicing a cognitive task consistently improves performance on that task and closely related tasks, but the available evidence that such training generalizes to other tasks or to real-world performance is not compelling.” (p.173).

Simons, D. J., Boot, W. R., Charness, N., Gathercole, S. E., Chabris, C. F., Hambrick, D. Z., & Stine-Morrow, E. A. L. (2016). Do “brain training” programs work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 18, xxx–xxx. Retrieved from http://psi.sagepub.com/content/17/3/187

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Underpowered studies with small sample sizes are more likely to produce inflated effect sizes (Button et al., 2013).

Button, K. S., Ioannidis, J. P. A., Mokrysz, C., Nosek, B. A., Flint, J., Robinson, E. S. J., & Munafò, M. R. (2013). Power failure: Why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14, 365–376.

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Me: Consider the cohort of people who need to be able to read well today, as compared to a hundred or more years ago – it is pretty much everyone. So, our methods to achieve this could begin with simply supplying books, and letting people figure out how the code works. This represents a zero guidance option. Apart from a few extremist whole language dinosaurs this option has been rejected. Some individuals can achieve this outcome – we all know or have heard of people who’ve achieved it. However, it happens that relatively few people can successfully intuit the key to reading with this zero guidance. The second option is to provide minimal guidance – tossing a few cues to beginners who will then bootstrap themselves the rest of the way. This increases the proportion of students who learn to read, but it remains well below the desired universal achievement of reading skill. So, as we increase the explicitness of the instructional approach we begin to have an impact upon those remaining strugglers who haven’t benefitted from the less structured methods. Basically, the better we explain the reading process and supply practice (massed, spaced, supervised, and independent) the more of the population we lead to become skilled readers. One of the components of explicitness is to provide text that is considerate of the degree of skill/knowledge that a student has reached. There is much evidence that indicates an initial focus on teaching the code reaches more children than do other alternatives. Enhancing the preparedness of children to practise and internalise this code-breaking approach is to match the code demands of text to the student’s current code-breaking skills. That is the aim of decodable text.

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“ … practices that are supported by multiple, high-quality studies that utilize research designs from which causality can be inferred and that demonstrate meaningful effects on student outcomes” (Cook & Cook, 2011, p. 73).

Cook, B. G., & Cook, S. C. (2011). Unraveling evidence-based practices in special education. The Journal of Special Education, 47(2), 71-82.

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“In three direct instruction studies, researchers investigated effects of a commercially available program, Expressive Writing (Engelmann & Silbert, 2005), on the written expression of high school–age students with disabilities (Viel-Ruma et al., 2010; Walker et al., 2005; White et al., 2014). In the studies, instruction began with constructing simple sentences to picture-word prompts before progressing to closely related writing skills, such as complex sentences and paragraph composition. Instruction included between 25 lessons to 50 lessons, lasting 30 min to 50 min each (i.e., a total duration of 750 min to 2,500 min). In two of the three Expressive Writing studies, a multiple baseline across participants design was used to investigate effects of direct instruction on students with learning disabilities (Walker et al., 2005) and English language learners with learning disabilities (Viel-Ruma et al., 2010). In both studies, students showed increases in correct word sequences (CWS) and the percentage of CWS on narrative writing probes. CWS is a curriculum-based measure that provides a global indicator of writing: It is the number of words written with correct capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and syntax (Ritchey et al., 2016). One study used a quasi-experimental design, comparing two Expressive Writing treatment groups of high school–age students with emotional behavioral disorders (White et al., 2014). Results suggest both treatment groups improved their percentage of CWS. Two studies investigated effects of a combined direct instruction and precision teaching intervention on the simple sentence construction of elementary and high school students with writing difficulties (Datchuk, 2016; Datchuk et al., 2015). The two studies were smaller in scope than the direct instruction only studies. The two studies only addressed skills specific to simple sentence construction, such as capitalization, punctuation, and simple sentence structure. Intervention lasted 13 to 18 lessons with a total duration of 135 min to 195 min.” (p. 2-3)

Datchuk, S.M. (2016). A direct instruction and precision teaching intervention to improve the sentence construction of middle school students with writing difficulties. The Journal of Special Education, 1–10. Online First. DOI: 10.1177/0022466916665588

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“Two researchers [Diane August and Timothy Shanahan] reviewed many of the same studies as the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth and concluded that “the programs with the strongest evidence of effectiveness in this review are all programs that have also been found to be effective with students in general” and modified for ELs. … These programs include various versions of Success for All (a school-wide program that involves far more than classroom instruction), Direct Instruction, and phonics instruction programs.” (p. 5-6)

Goldenberg, C. (2013). Unlocking the research on English learners: What we know—and don’t yet know—about effective instruction. American Educator, 37(2), 4–11, 38.

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Head, C. (2016). The effects of Direct Instruction on reading comprehension for individuals with autism or intellectual disability. A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama August 6, 2016. Retrieved from https://etd.auburn.edu/bitstream/handle/10415/5272/FINAL_DISS.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

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“Comaskey et al. (2009) found that analytic phonics taught children were better at articulating shared rimes within words, whereas synthetic phonics taught children were better at phoneme blending. The results of the present study also indicate that children can develop phoneme awareness indirectly as a product of their reading instruction, as children received no explicit phoneme awareness training but rather learnt about phonemes only in the context of printed words. The results are also consistent with research suggesting that rhyme awareness typically develops prior to an awareness of phonemes (Carroll, Snowling, Hulme, & Stevenson, 2003; Hulme et al., 2002). Nevertheless, phoneme level instruction did appear to be effective for this group of young readers, despite suggestions that rhyme level teaching may be developmentally more appropriate (Goswami, 1999).” (p.604)

McGeown, S.P., & Medford, E. (2014). Using method of instruction to predict the skills supporting initial reading development: Insight from a synthetic phonics approach. Reading & Writing, 27, 591–608.

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“Hundreds of studies in cognitive and educational psychology have demonstrated that spacing out repeated encounters with the material over time produces superior long-term learning, compared with repetitions that are massed together. Also, incorporating tests into spaced practice amplifies the benefits. Spaced review or practice enhances diverse forms of learning, including memory, problem solving, and generalization to new situations. Spaced practice is a feasible and cost-effective way to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of learning, and has tremendous potential to improve educational outcomes.” (p.12)

Kang, S.H.K. (2016). Spaced repetition promotes efficient and effective learning: Policy implications for instruction. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3(1), 12-19.

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“On the positive side, teachers indicated that the vast majority of students with ASD participated in daily reading instruction and received more comprehensive instruction on the essential components of reading than the sight-word approach that has been used in the past. Of concern, though, were the findings that almost one third of students received primary instruction from a paraprofessional, a sizable percentage of teachers lacked confidence in their preparation and effectiveness in teaching reading to students with ASD, and a majority of students received less than the recommended instructional time for K-3 reading.” (p.343)

Spector, J., & Cavanaugh, B. (2015). The conditions of beginning reading instruction for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Remedial and Special Education. Remedial and Special Education, 36(6) 337–346.

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Stockard and Wood (2016) reported an effect size of 0.79 in a meta-analysis of 131 studies of Reading Mastery.

Stockard, J., & Wood, T.W. (2016). The threshold and inclusive approaches to determining ‘‘best available evidence’’: An empirical analysis. American Journal of Evaluation, 1-22. first published on August 19, 2016, 1098214016662338.

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“In a typical Year 9 class, the top students can be more than seven years ahead of the bottom students, but NAPLAN’s minimum standards are set way too low to identify the stragglers. A Year 9 student meets the minimum standard even if they are reading below the level of a typical Year 5 student.”

Goss, P., & Sonnemann, J. (2016). Widening gaps: What NAPLAN tells us about student progress. Grattan Institute. Retrieved from https://grattan.edu.au/report/widening-gaps/

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“The finding of pronounced left vOT [left ventral occipitotemporal cortex] activation for the orthographic word spelling condition relative to the control condition speaks for the view that activation of left vOT during spelling can be attributed to the retrieval of orthographic whole-word representations. The position that the left vOT serves as memory store for the spellings of known words also finds support in recent neuroimaging studies of spelling showing that left vOT is sensitive to lexical factors such as word frequency [Rapp and Lipka, 2011; Rapp and Dufor, 2011]…. The location of this orthographic spelling cluster corresponds to the left vOT region typically found to be engaged by visual word reading. These results support the position that left vOT may represent the neuronal equivalent of the cognitive orthographic word lexicon.” (p.8, 13)

Ludersdorfer, P., Kronbichler, M., & Wimmer, H. (2015). Accessing orthographic representations from speech: the role of left ventral occipitotemporal cortex in spelling. Human Brain Mapping, 36(4), 1393-406.

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“The current study aimed to examine teachers’ reported spelling assessment and instruction practices. Analysis of the match between teachers’ theoretical beliefs about spelling and their reported pedagogy was conducted to elucidate factors that may support or impede the use of evidence-based teaching strategies in the classroom. An electronic survey was completed by 405 randomly selected (stratified by region and socioeconomic status) elementary school teachers in New Zealand. The survey examined the following areas: spelling assessment, spelling instruction, beliefs about spelling, preparing teachers to teach spelling, and teachers’ perceived strengths and weaknesses of their spelling program. There was large variability in spelling assessment and instructional practices across teachers. Most respondents reported implementing some aspects of a developmental approach to spelling instruction through analysis of children’s spelling errors (64 %) and/or individualization of the spelling program (60 %). There was a large dissociation between teachers’ beliefs about spelling and their frequency of use of specific instructional practices associated with those beliefs (e.g., phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge). The mismatch between beliefs and reported practice appeared to be due to lack of professional knowledge regarding implementing explicit spelling instruction and finding time to teach spelling within the curriculum. Increasing teachers’ knowledge about language structure, practical implementation of key assessment and instruction activities, and the links between spelling and other areas of the curriculum are important factors in improving spelling pedagogical practices.” (p.535)

McNeill, B., & Kirk, C. (2014). Theoretical beliefs and instructional practices used for teaching spelling in elementary classrooms. Reading & Writing, 27, 535–554

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“The most effective spelling instruction teaches spelling as a linguistic (rather than visual) ability by directly facilitating key skills that underlie spelling development (Bourassa & Treiman, 2001). There are three metalinguistic skills that are strongly related to spelling acquisition. One metalinguistic skill that is essential to the acquisition of spelling is phonemic awareness, which refers to the ability to reflect on and manipulate single sounds within words (Gillon, 2004). A second important metalinguistic skill for learning spelling is orthographic awareness which includes (1) alphabetic knowledge, for example, ‘sh’ makes the= R =sound; (2) orthographic pattern knowledge, such as knowing that the grapheme ‘ck’ cannot be used in initial position in a syllable; and (3) storage of mental representations of spellings in longterm memory (Apel, Wolter, & Masterson, 2006; Apel, 2011). A third skill that is fundamental for learning to spell is morphological awareness which involves the ability to recognize the parts of words that convey meaning, such as identifying connections in words sharing the same root, such as heal-health (Berninger, Abbott, Nagy, & Carlisle, 2010).” (p. 536)

Kirk, C. (2014). Theoretical beliefs and instructional practices used for teaching spelling in elementary classrooms. Reading & Writing, 27, 535–554.

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“Both decoding and spelling rely on knowledge of the grapho-phonemic patterns of the language (Robbins, Hosp, Hosp, & Flynn, 2010). A review of research found that integrating decoding and spelling instruction in the lower elementary grades led to significant gains in phonemic awareness, alphabetic decoding, word reading, fluency, and comprehension (Weiser & Mathes, 2011). Moreover, the authors believed the spelling instruction might have fostered closer attention to the details of words’ orthographic representations. This seems supported by the results of a longitudinal study of children from ages 8–9 to ages 12–13 in which independent contributions to reading comprehension were made by children’s ability to use larger graphophonic units and morphemes to decode words (Nunes, Bryant, & Barros, 2012).” (p. 636)

Reed, D.K., Petscher, Y., & Foorman, B.R. (2016). The contribution of vocabulary knowledge and spelling to the reading comprehension of adolescents who are and are not English language learners. Reading and Writing, 29, 633–657.

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“Some UK studies have examined the extent to which behavioural difficulties coexist with reading disability, but most, like the Isle of Wight study, were conducted some time ago (e.g. McGee, Williams, Share, Anderson, & Silva, 1986). Two more recent US studies have emphasized the phenomena of co-occurrence. Morgan, Farkas, Tufis, and Sperling (2008) found that US children with reading problems at age 7 years were more likely to display poor task engagement, poor self-control, externalizing and internalizing behaviour problems 2 years later. More recently, Dahle and colleagues (2010) examined behavioural problems in children with severe dyslexia. They found more behavioural problems in the group with severe dyslexia than in controls, in all areas measured. In addition, parents reported more children with dyslexia tobe anxious and depressed and have social problems and attention problems than teachers did. … Our unadjusted analysis suggests that there are elevated levels of behavioural difficulties in children with specific word reading difficulties. These findings encompassed a broad spectrum of behaviour captured by the SDQ. Clearly, children with SWRD had more difficulties with peer relationships, more emotional and conduct problems, displayed less prosocial behaviour and were rated as more hyperactive and inattentive. Our findings showing co-occurrence of behavioural and specific word reading difficulties correspond not only with older UK studies such as the Isle of Wight cohort, but also with recent US studies (Morgan et al., 2008; Dahle, Knivsberg, & Andreassen, 2011). … There have been several theories as to why developmental delays and specific word reading and other disorders co-occur. First, genetic pleiotropic effects have been implicated. One genetic anomaly may lead to atypical neurological development, in turn manifesting as multiple behavioural difficulties (Reiersen et al., 2008). Similarly, genetic predisposition combined with an early environmental insult or common environmental exposure may affect many developmental outcomes (Finlay & Miller, 1993; Porterfield, 1994; Richardson, 2006). There have also been models at later stages of childhood where one psychological impairment serves as a ‘gateway’ spawning another difficulty (Frith & Happé, 1998). So for example, if a child has a communication deficit, this might lead to social difficulties, or inattention/hyperactivity may lead to reading difficulties. Other theorists have suggested one underlying psychological deficit, such as slow naming/processing speed, may underlie a range of behavioural and cognitive difficulties, including reading difficulties commonly described as dyslexia (Bental & Tirosh, 2007).” (p.125, 135, 136)

Russell, G., Ryder, D., Norwich, B., & Ford, T. (2015). Behavioural difficulties that co-occur with specific word reading difficulties: A UK population- based cohort study. Dyslexia, 21, 123–141.

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“Research has demonstrated a strong positive correlation between behavior problems and low academic achievement (Gest & Gest, 2005; Landrum, Tankersley, & Kauffman, 2003). Above and beyond being correlated, Payne, Marks, and Bogan (2007) report that behavioral and academic problems are reciprocal in nature. In other words, behavior problems may cause a disruption in academic engagement and, as a result, students may fail to master skills because of this lack of academic engagement. The opposite is also true—a classroom where there are high levels of academic achievement will be a classroom with low levels of behavior difficulties. This point is critical. Students do not generally come to school hating to be there. If students experience more failure than success, they frequently learn to hate school. As Scott, Nelson, and Liaupsin (2001) note, “academics become aversive” (p. 313). Therefore, the more students find the classroom aversive, the more likely they will be to exhibit unwanted behaviors (Payne et al., 2007; Scott et al., 2001; Wehby, Lane, & Falk, 2003). Student success or failure are in large part determined by how well teachers provide effective instruction to their students.” (p. 242)

Martella, R.C., & Marchand-Martella, N.E. (2015). Improving classroom behavior through effective instruction: An illustrative program example using SRA FLEX Literacy. Education and Treatment of Children, 38(2), 241–272.

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“This paper has reported a systematic review to investigate the effectiveness of interventions designed to support the reading skills of secondary school students. It has focused only on studies which have used RCTs. The paucity of research is striking; only eight studies met our inclusion criteria. Five of the studies were conducted in the US, two in the UK and one in Australia. This is consistent with the findings of a review conducted by Slavin, Cheung, Groff, and Lake (2008) which argued that more large scale methodologically rigorous studies are needed in this area. With regards multiple component training, three of the four studies reviewed were evaluations of individualised CAI and in each case the findings did not support the use of this approach. Slavin, Lake, Davis, and Madden (2009) in reviewing approaches for struggling readers ingrades K-5, concluded that CIA generally had few effects on reading. Furthermore, Khan and Gorard (2012) reported that previous studies have failed to demonstrate the effectiveness of computer based instruction as a means of improving reading skills.Taken together the evidence suggests that CAI should not be relied on to produce gains in reading ability in secondary school aged students and that in some circumstances using these programmes may have a negative impact on student’s progress (Gorard &Taylor, 2004). An avenue for future intervention design could be to combine computer administered tasks with face-to-face instruction. It is of note that these studies, which all included some focus on word recognition and decoding skills, were delivered to individual students via computer programmes. There is therefore no evidence from RCTs to show the possible effectiveness of tutor led one-to-one instruction in this essential component of reading at secondary school level.” (p.124)

“There is therefore a significant gap in the evidence base from RCT’s concerning the efficacy of language comprehension intervention. Clarke, Snowling, Truelove, and Hulme (2010) demonstrated using an RCT the effectiveness of an oral language intervention (comprising strategy use, vocabulary, figurative language and spoken narrative) in improving the reading comprehension skills of primary school students. To date such an approach has not been evaluated using an RCT in secondary schools.” (p.125)

Paul, S-A.S., & Clarke, P.J. (2016). A systematic review of reading interventions for secondary school students. International Journal of Educational Research, 79, 116–127.

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“Many factors contribute to individual differences in adolescent reading ability. For example, there is a correlation between behavioural and emotional difficulties and reading ability in adolescents (Arnold et al., 2005). … Poor reading ability amongst adolescents has negative implications for psycho-social and educational development. A study by Daniel et al. (2006) showed that fifteen-year old adolescents with poor reading ability were more likely to experience suicidal ideas or attempts, and dropout of school than typical readers, suggesting that adolescents with poor reading ability can be labelled as being at social risk.” (p. 116)

Paul, S-A.S., & Clarke, P.J. (2016). A systematic review of reading interventions for secondary school students. International Journal of Educational Research, 79, 116–127.

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“A growing body of evidence supports the relationship between the implementation of high quality behavior management and increased student engagement and prosocial behaviors (Oliver et al., 2011), while the relationship between behavior management and academic achievement is unclear (Algozzine et al., 2012; Benner et al., 2012). In this study, we examined differences in the effectiveness of small group reading intervention for students receiving that intervention from very good, good to fair, and poor behavior managers. Prior research suggests that the effectiveness of early literacy interventions may be moderated by student problem behaviors (Nelson et al., 2003); therefore implementation of high quality behavior management in targeted early literacy interventions could increase the overall effectiveness of the intervention. The results provide some support for this assumption and initial empirical support that high quality behavior management can improve the effectiveness of targeted early literacy intervention.” (p.534)

 

Gage, N. A., MacSuga-Gage, A. S., Prykanowski, D. A., Coyne, M., & Scott, T. M. (2016). Investigating the collateral effects of behavior management on early literacy skills. Education and Treatment of Children, 38(4), 523-540

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“ … young urban children as young as second and third grade with reading difficulties exhibited elevated rates of problem behaviors, as compared to the nationally representative norm samples of the measures. In this study, a disproportionate percentage of the young urban sample already displayed clinically significant levels of anxiety (50%), social problems (40%), and oppositional behaviors (30%) in the classroom. These results thus support previous studies conducted mainly with older children showing that anxiety, social problems, and conduct problems were closely associated with literacy difficulties (Casey et al., 1992; Conners, 1997; Willcutt & Pennington, 2000). These finding are also consistent with research showing that kindergarten academic variables have been shown to predict problem behavior at the end of elementary school (McIntosh, Chard, Boland, & Horner, 2006), with an increasing relationship over years of schooling (see Algozzine, Wang, & Violette, 2011 for contradictory evidence). The significance of these findings for teachers is highlighted by arguments that “dual deficits of learning and behavior problems may make it difficult for practitioners to provide effective instruction” (Sutherland, Lewis-Palmer, Stichter, & Morgan, 2008, p. 223).” (p. 199-200)

Pierce, M.E., Wechsler-Zimring, A., Noam, G., Wolf, M., & Tami Katzir, T. (2013). Behavioral problems and reading difficulties among language minority and monolingual urban elementary school students. Reading Psychology, 34(2), 182-205.

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“ … it is important to bear in mind that the role of vocabulary in academic success increases through the grades, and that early vocabulary knowledge predicts reading comprehension skill in later grades (S´en´echal, Ouellette, & Rodney, 2006). Moreover, the trajectories of reading development exhibited by LM and L1 students may diverge in the later grades. Thus, early vocabulary deficits should be monitored and remediated.” (p.197)

Pierce, M.E., Wechsler-Zimring, A., Noam, G., Wolf, M., & Tami Katzir, T. (2013). Behavioral problems and reading difficulties among language minority and monolingual urban elementary school students. Reading Psychology, 34(2), 182-205.

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“Educators and researchers have long acknowledged that reading disability status increases a child’s risk for academic, emotional, and behavioral struggles (Heiervang, Stevenson, Lund, & Hugdahl, 2001; Horn & Packard, 1985; Kavale, 1988). Learning to read is directly linked to the young child’s self-concept and mental well-being (Toppelberg, Munir, & Nieto-Casta˜non, 2006). Reading difficulties have been linked to externalizing behaviors, including classroom discipline problems, bullying, and aggression, as well as internalizing behaviors, including depression and anxiety (Catalano et al., 2003; Kellam, Mayer, Rebok, & Hawkins, 1998; Miller & Shinn, 2005). In severe cases, a child may perceive reading failure as a personal threat with harmful consequences (Herman & Ostrander, 2007). … language minority status does not appear to render young poor readers in urban elementary schools more vulnerable to academic, behavioral, or emotional problems beyond the vulnerability associated with being poor readers in urban schools.” (p.183-4, 197)

Pierce, M.E., Wechsler-Zimring, A., Noam, G., Wolf, M., & Tami Katzir, T. (2013). Behavioral problems and reading difficulties among language minority and monolingual urban elementary school students. Reading Psychology, 34(2), 182-205.

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“The findings from this study highlight the need for early intervention that targets not only the reading challenges but also the social, emotional, and behavioral challenges that affect many of these children. Because urban students’ low academic skills are associated with problem behavior, improving students’ academic skill levels might reduce the aversive impact of school and thus the likelihood of problem behaviors at school. This perspective could lead practitioners to consider current academic intervention as a form of future behavior prevention (McIntosh et al., 2006. The reverse is also true; early positive behavior support might protect against future academic problems. In summary, reading and behavior experts must combine their expertise to form an integrated, three-tier model to reach students at risk for reading and behavior problems. Future research should identify the most effective practices for building these skills with these populations, and determine whether these practices are sufficient to maintain healthy academic self-concept and to preserve the behavioral health of LM students.” (p. 200)

Pierce, M.E., Wechsler-Zimring, A., Noam, G., Wolf, M., & Tami Katzir, T. (2013). Behavioral problems and reading difficulties among language minority and monolingual urban elementary school students. Reading Psychology, 34(2), 182-205.

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“Because direct spelling instruction outperforms spelling-is-caught approaches, we chose to investigate two common methods of direct instruction used in the classroom—rainbow writing and retrieval practice. Rainbow writing is a relatively new method that involves repeatedly copying spelling words in different colors, creating a rainbow effect. It is related to another commonly used and older technique, copying, in which spelling words are written without changing colors (Cronnell and Humes 1980; McNeill and Kirk 2014). Retrieval practice involves taking practice quizzes and then checking produced spellings against correct spellings. The selection of these two methods was not arbitrary.We selected retrieval practice because experimental studies conducted in the laboratory, involving undergraduate participants for the most part, provide strong evidence that it is an effective way to promote learning in other domains (for reviews of the retrieval practice literature, also known as the testing effect, see Dunlosky et al. 2013; Roediger and Butler 2011). Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the benefits of retrieval practice, including that retrieval enhances semantic elaboration (Carpenter 2011), that it increases the likelihood learners will use better strategies to encode the correct responses (Pyc and Rawson 2010; 2012), and that it enhances memory for context that improves subsequent retrieval (Karpicke et al. 2014b).” (p.386-7)

Jones, A.C., Wardlow, L., C. Pan, S.C., Zepeda, C., Heyman, G.D., Dunlosky, J., & Rickard, T.C. (2016). Beyond the Rainbow: Retrieval practice leads to better spelling than does Rainbow Writing. Educational Psychology Review, 28, 385-400.

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“This meta-analysis examined true- and quasi-experimental intervention studies conducted with K-12 students to determine if teaching handwriting enhanced legibility and fluency and resulted in better writing performance. When compared to no instruction or non-handwriting instructional conditions, teaching handwriting resulted in statistically greater legibility (ES = 0.59) and fluency (ES = 0.63). Motor instruction did not produce better handwriting skills (ES = 0.10 for legibility and −0.07 for fluency), but individualizing handwriting instruction (ES = 0.69) and teaching handwriting via technology (ES = 0.85) resulted in statistically significant improvements in legibility. Finally, handwriting instruction produced statistically significant gains in the quality (ES = 0.84), length (ES = 1.33), and fluency of students’ writing (ES = 0.48). The findings from this meta-analysis provide support for one of the assumptions underlying the Simple View of Writing (Berninger et al., Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 291–304, 2002): text transcription skills are an important ingredient in writing and writing development” (p. 225)

Santangelo, T., & Graham, S. (2016). A comprehensive meta-analysis of handwriting instruction. Educational Psychology Review, 28, 225–265.

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“In their synthesis of early elementary (K-3) studies, Wanzek and Vaughn (2007) used interventions provided for 100 or more sessions (the equivalent of 20 weeks of daily intervention) as a proxy for intensiveness, explaining that it was the most reliable method of identifying and coding articles. The authors reported reading outcomes for study participants in the 18 studies identified, as well as the intensity features of these extensive interventions (i.e., duration of intervention, instructional group size, grade level, level of standardization) associated with high effect sizes. Findings revealed positive outcomes for students with reading difficulties and disabilities who participated in extensive interventions, with mean effect sizes ranging from 0.34 to 0.56 across various reading constructs. Effect sizes were larger if the intervention involved students in kindergarten or first grade and when the intervention was administered in the smallest group sizes (Wanzek and Vaughn 2007). With its emphasis on extensive, Tier III type interventions, studies were also coded for the level of standardization in the intervention approach. Standardized interventions specified the elements of reading instruction with well-defined daily lessons and materials selection. Conversely, problem-solving (non-standardized) interventions were defined as more individualized, with daily lessons planned based on student needs. Studies examining the effects of non-standardized interventions were not available in the corpus of studies included in the synthesis; thus, all findings represented standardized studies. However, the authors reported no differences in effect between highly standardized interventions (i.e., few or no modifications to the curricula) and those with less standardization (i.e., opportunities for the teacher to respond to students’ needs in the skills and strategies taught).” (p. 553)

Wanzek, J., Vaughn, S., Scammacca, N., Gatlin, B., Walker, M.A., & Capin, P. (2016). Meta-analyses of the effects of Tier 2 type reading interventions in Grades K-3. Educational Psychology Review, 28, 551–576.

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“Reading can engender a highly active mental state, and there is increased evidence that sustained literacy practices, which are engendered by education, sculpt mind and brain. •• It is becoming increasingly apparent that education is the foundation for a strong public health policy, which calls for societal investment in (a) basic and applied science to understand the impact of literacy engagement on health, and (b) the development of life span models of education.” (p.92)

Stine-Morrow, E.A.L., Hussey, E.K, & Ng, S. (2015). The potential for literacy to shape lifelong cognitive health. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2(1), 92– 100.

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“In their domain of expertise, experts do know more facts than other people but more crucial is that the facts are connected and organized into patterns, or schemas, that are meaningful for the content domain (Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, & Hoffman, 2006). Organization of the facts according to important domain principles and frameworks transforms factual information into “usable knowledge” and reflects deep understanding. These organizational patterns, frameworks, or schemas allow experts to see patterns, relationships, or discrepancies that are not apparent to novices. They play an important role in experts’ abilities to plan a task, generate reasonable arguments and explanations, and draw analogies to other problems. Experts’ schematized conceptual understanding allows them to extract a level of meaning from information that is not apparent to novices (Chi, Glaser, & Rees, 1982). This helps them select and remember relevant information. Experts are also able to fluently access relevant knowledge because their understanding of subject matter allows them to quickly identify what is relevant.” (p. 35)

Goldman, S.R., & Pellegrino, J.W. (2015). Research on learning and instruction: Implications for curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2(1), 33-41.

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“When we take a test on which we are asked to retrieve and produce previously learned information, successfully recalling that information increases our ability to retrieve it again later.

… Testing also increases the effectiveness of the way in which we choose to access and organize the tested information. … When taken together, these results help us understand why students who take more tests in the classroom tend to perform better on later exams (Bangert-Drowns, Kulik, & Kulik, 1991). Most of the benefits come from the first few tests, indicating that it does not require much compromise in the allocation of class time to administer periodic tests. In addition, students of all abilities appear to benefit from the opportunity to take tests (Pan, Pashler, Potter, & Rickard, 2015).

… The cognitive benefits of testing are not like a single shot in the arm. Taking a test improves memory for the material, and it also decreases the rate at which we forget that material. What this means is that the benefits of testing are even greater when looking at longer-term retention.

… All of this is particularly noteworthy because, counterintuitively, there are not many cognitive interventions that appear to slow the rate of forgetting. Studying material more leads to a higher initial degree of learning but does not slow forgetting (Anderson & Schooler, 1991; Hellyer, 1962). Employing a “deep” level of processing—in which the learner is encouraged to think about the meaning of the tobe- learned information—does not slow forgetting (Nelson & Vining, 1978). Yet, testing slows forgetting (Carpenter, Pashler, Wixted, & Vul, 2008), sometimes considerably (Wheeler, Ewers, & Buonanno, 2003), which may make it an ideal technique for promoting long-term, durable learning.

… The effective organization of a series of tests on the same material can enhance the benefits of testing yet further. The fact that testing decreases the rate of forgetting can be leveraged to start thinking about how tests can be efficiently sequenced. Because the material will be forgotten a little more slowly after each test, then if all tests were equally difficult from an objective standpoint, each test would actually be subjectively a little easier than the last. To render each test more similar in difficulty from the test taker’s perspective requires each test to be a little more objectively difficult than the last. One way in which this can be done is by using an expanding test schedule, in which each quiz is administered at a slightly longer interval than the last one. Expanding schedules have been shown to enhance memory for names (Landauer & Bjork, 1978) and text (Storm, Bjork, & Storm, 2010). It has been used to aid learning in young children (Fritz, Morris, Nolan, & Singleton, 2007), memory-impaired populations (Camp, 2006; Schacter, Rich, & Stampp, 1985), and even in rehabilitative regimens (Wilson, Baddeley, Evans, & Sheil, 1994). They may be particularly useful for maintaining high levels of retention over long periods (Kang, Lindsey, Mozer, & Pashler, 2014).

… Thus far, we have only considered how tests benefit a student’s ability to remember material. Of course, remembering what is taught is only a small part of the process of becoming educated in a discipline. Being able to generalize and draw new inferences on the basis of the learned material is critically important if we want students to apply their learning to new situations. And there is evidence that quizzing facilitates the generalization and application of knowledge as well.

… So far we have seen that the carefully tailored use of tests can enhance memory for and generalization from previously learned materials. Amazingly, the benefits of tests extend even to materials that are only learned after the test! In this section, we review evidence that retrieving information from memory—that is, exactly what a test forces you to do— allows learners to more effectively segregate their learning and prevent confusions among topics.

… One concern that people have with testing is that test takers will make errors and that the process that leads to those errors will become engrained and will prevent the learner from acquiring the correct solution. Interestingly, this does not appear to be the case; in fact, making errors may even have tangible benefits for learners.

… Tests provide the opportunity for students to tune their confidence in their understanding and mastery of course materials to appropriate levels. Students who receive immediate feedback on the accuracy of their responses by a computerized testing system reveal much more enhanced calibration of confidence than students who do not receive feedback (Zakay, 1992).” (p. 15-18)

Benjamin, A.S., & Pashler, H. (2015). The value of standardized testing: A perspective from cognitive psychology. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2(1), 13–23.

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“Vocabulary interventions in preschool and early elementary school can improve vocabulary skills. In a meta-analysis of vocabulary interventions in preschool and kindergarten settings (Marulis & Neuman, 2010), interventions for vocabulary skills improved vocabulary knowledge, especially those implemented by trained teachers or researchers (effects were largest for researchers), as opposed to child care providers or parents. In addition, intervention that used explicit (i.e., direct instruction) strategies or the combination of explicit and implicit strategies was more impactful, as opposed to implicit strategies alone. However, children from middle- or high-SES households benefited more than children from low-SES households, and the interventions were not powerful enough to close vocabulary gaps for children who needed it the most. The amount of vocabulary learned in some interventions (e.g., 8-10 words per week) is not enough to close vocabulary knowledge gaps with peers (Nagy, 2007).” (p.4)

Clemens, N.H., Ragan, K., & Widales-Benitez, O. (2016). Reading difficulties in young children: Beyond basic early literacy skills. Online First. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1–8. DOI: 10.1177/2372732216656640

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“Adult distaste for decodable books fails to respect the child’s need to exercise a skill. Children want to be self-reliant readers and are delighted when they can apply what they know”. (p.6)

Moats, L. (1998). Teaching decoding. American Educator, 1-9. Spring/Summer, 1998. American Federation of Teachers. Retrieved from www.aft.org/sites/default/files/ae_spring1998_teachingdecoding.pdf

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“I have long been an advocate for providing children with 120-180 minutes per day of literacy instruction. I divide that time roughly in quarters: 25% devoted to words and word parts (e.g., letters, sounds, decoding, PA); 25% to oral reading fluency; 25% to reading comprehension; and 25% to writing. That means that primary grade kids would receive about 60 to 90 minutes per day of foundational skills instruction (combining the word work with the fluency work). There are variants on this scheme. For example, Joe Torgesen touched it up by advocating 2 hours of daily literacy instruction, with up to a third hour dedicated to remediation in those foundational skills. Thus, your idea of giving some kids more foundational work beyond the amount that everyone receives in class makes great sense and can easily be accommodated in this plan. However, ignoring essential skills that can't easily be tested to focus on ones that can be, won't help kids much.”

Shanahan, T. (2016). Why an overemphasis on foundational reading skills isn't healthy for kids. Reading Rockets. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/shanahan-literacy/why-overemphasis-foundational-reading-skills-isnt-healthy-kids

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“What is Systematic Phonics Instruction? Phonics is a method of instruction that teaches students correspondences between graphemes in written language and phonemes in spokenlanguage and how to use these correspondences to read and spell words. Phonics instruction is systematic when all the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught and they are covered in a clearly defined sequence. This includes short and long vowels as well as vowel and consonant digraphs such as oi, ea, sh, th. Also it may include blends of letter-sounds that form larger subunits in words such as onsets and rimes.…When phonics instruction is introduced after students have already acquired some reading skill, it may be more difficult to step in and influence how they read, because it requires changing students' habits. For example, to improve their accuracy, students may need to suppress the habit of guessing words based on context and minimal letter cues, to slow down, and to examine spellings of words more fully when they read them. Findings suggest that using phonics instruction to remediate reading problems may be harder than using phonics at the earliest point to prevent reading difficulties. … Systematic phonics programs might exhibit the very best instructional features. However, if they are not carried out by a knowledgeable teacher, their likelihood of success is diminished. Teachers must understand how to implement a phonics program effectively, how to plan lessons and make sure they are carried out. Teachers must hold expectations about the effects of their instruction on students. They must understand what students should know and be able to do better as a result of their teaching. To verify that their instruction is working, teachers need to use informal testing to monitor students' progress toward the expected accomplishments. Teachers need to understand how to enrich instruction for students who don't get it, and how to scaffold lessons to eliminate their problems. The job of teaching reading effectively to classrooms of students requires a high degree of professional competence indeed.” (p.2, 8, 16)

Ehri, L.C. (2003). Systematic phonics instruction: Findings of the National Reading Panel. Paper presented at the invitational seminar organised by the Standards and Effectiveness Unit, Department for Education and Skills, British Government (London, England, March 17, 2003). Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/ERIC_ED479646/ERIC_ED479646_djvu.txt

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“By learning to read, we learn to access our knowledge of spoken language through a novel modality, one that was never anticipated by evolution: vision. Writing is a remarkably clever encryption device by which we turn spoken language into a rich visual texture of marks on stone, clay or paper. Reading corresponds to the decryption of this texture. During reading acquisition, we transform some of the visual structures of our brain in order to turn them into a specialized interface between vision and language. Because reading is an extremely recent invention in evolutionary terms, and until recently concerned a small minority of humans, the human genome cannot contain any instructions for reading-specific brain circuits. Instead, we have to recycle existing brain systems for this novel use. … When a child first enters primary school, this spoken language system, with its subcomponents of lexical, morphological, prosodic, syntactic and semantic processing, is already in place. What this child has to acquire is the visual interface into the language system.” (p. 20) …

“We now know that, with literacy, this region becomes functionally specialized for reading in a specific script. Not only does it activate more to written words than to other categories of visual knowledge, such as faces (Puce, Allison, Asgari, Gore, & McCarthy, 1996) or line drawings of objects (Szwed, et al., 2011), but it also activates more to a known script (e.g. Hebrew in Hebrew readers) than to other unknown scripts (Baker, et al., 2007). Indeed, it has become attuned to quite specific cultural properties of the learned script, such as the relation between upper and lower-case letters of the Western alphabet: only this region recognizes the identity between, say, the words ‘rage’ and ‘RAGE’, which requires an internalization of arbitrary reading conventions (Dehaene, et al., 2004; Dehaene, et al., 2001). Recently, the VWFA has even been found to be invariant for printed versus handwritten words (Qiao, et al., 2010). Thus, the VWFA is the main region that allows us to recognize a word like radio, RADIO, or  regardless of its exact font, size, and location. Remarkably, these invariant processes are so automated that they are deployed non-consciously.” (p. 21)

“The current thinking is that, during reading of a single word, millions of hierarchically organized neurons, each tuned to a specific local property (a letter, a bigram, or a morpheme), collectively contribute to visual recognition. This massively parallel architecture explains the speed and robustness of visual word recognition. Most importantly, for educators and teachers, it creates an illusion of whole-word reading. Because reading is so fast and takes about the same time for short and long words, some have assumed that the overall whole-word shape is being used for recognition, and that we should therefore teach whole-word reading rather than by letter-to sound decoding. This inference is wrong, however. All the evidence to date suggests that visual words are being analyzed into their elementary components (strokes, letters, bigrams, morphemes) before the whole word can be put back together and recognized. However, this decomposition is so fast, parallel, and efficient as to seem almost instantaneous (it actually takes about one fifth of a second). Educational evidence concurs in showing that teaching of grapheme-phoneme correspondences is the fastest, most efficient way of making children efficient readers, both for pronunciation and for comprehension purposes (Ehri, Nunes, Stahl, & Willows, 2001).” (p. 23)

“It should be clear that I am advocating here a strong ‘phonics’ approach to teaching, and against a whole-word or whole-language approach. Several converging elements support this conclusion (for a longer development, see Dehaene, 2009). First, analysis of how reading operates at the brain level provides no support for the notion that words are recognized globally by their overall shape or contour. Rather, letters and groups of letters such as bigrams and morphemes are the units of recognition. Second, experiments with adults taught to read the same novel script with a whole-word versus grapheme-phoneme approach show dramatic differences (Yoncheva, Blau, et al., 2010): only the grapheme-phoneme group generalizes to novel word and trains the left-hemispheric VWFA. Adults whose attention was drawn to the global shape of words, by whole-word training, showed brain changes in the homolog region of the right hemisphere, clearly not the normal circuit for expert reading. Third, finally, these theoretical and laboratory-based arguments converge with school-based studies that prove the inferiority of the whole-word approach in bringing about fast improvements in reading acquisition. The whole-word approach will certainly not create dyslexia, which is a biological and partially genetic anomaly, but it does lead to avoidable delays in reading acquisition. Another important observation for education is that the speed of reading acquisition varies dramatically with the regularity of grapheme-phoneme relations, which changes across languages (Paulesu, et al., 2000; Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003; Ziegler & Goswami, 2006). In Italy and Germany, children acquire reading in a few months, simply because the writing is highly regular, such that knowledge of the grapheme-phoneme correspondences suffices to read essentially all words. English and French lie on the other end of the scale of alphabetic transparency: they are highly irregular systems in which exceptions abound (e.g. ‘though’ versus ‘tough’) and are disambiguated only by lexical context. Behavioral research shows that English learners have to dedicate at least two more years of training before they read at the same level as Italian children (Seymour, et al., 2003). Neuroimaging experiments show that, to do so, they expand their brain activation in the VWFA and the precentral cortex relative to Italian readers (Paulesu, et al., 2000). Thus, teachers should be aware of the spelling irregularities in the language that they are teaching. They should prepare a rational progression, starting with the more regular and more frequent grapheme-phoneme correspondence, and ending with the exceptions. They should also pay attention to the complexity of syllables and start with the simpler consonant-vowel structures before moving on to more complex multiconsonant clusters. Mute letters, irregular spellings, and spellings inherited from Greek and Roman etymologies (e.g. ‘ph’) should all be addressed across the years, with frequent repetition. A good reading course should not stop at the simplest grapheme-phoneme correspondences: morphology, the understanding of prefixes, suffixes, roots, and grammatical endings is equally important in the brain of expert readers (Devlin, Jamison, Matthews, & Gonnerman, 2004).” (p. 26-27)

“Recently, our growing understanding of how the brain is recycled for reading has led to a clarification of another mysterious phenomenon that occurs during childhood: mirror reading and mirror writing. Many young readers confuse mirror letters such as p and q or b and d. Furthermore, they occasionally write in mirror form, from right to left, quite competently and without seemingly noticing their error. This peculiar behavior can be explained by considering that the function of the ventral visual cortex, prior to reading, is the invariant recognition of objects, faces and scenes. In the natural world, very few objects have a distinct identity for left and right views. In most cases, the left and right views of a natural object are mirror images of each other, and it is useful to generalize across them and treat them as the same object. Single-cell recordings in monkeys show that this principle is deeply embedded in the visual system: many neurons in the occipito- temporal visual cortex fire identically to the left and right views of the same object or face (Freiwald & Tsao, 2010; Logothetis, Pauls, & Poggio, 1995; Rollenhagen & Olson, 2000). Using neuroimaging, my colleagues and I have shown that, in the human brain, it is precisely the VWFA which is the dominant site for this mirror-image invariance (Dehaene, Nakamura, et al., 2010; Pegado, Nakamura, Cohen, & Dehaene, 2011). No wonder, then, that young children confuse b and d: they are trying to learn to read with precisely the brain area that confuses left and right of images! Mirror confusion is a normal property of the visual system, which is seen in all children and illiterate subjects, and which disappears for letters and geometric symbols when literacy sets in (Cornell, 1985; Kolinsky, et al., 2010). Only its prolongation in late childhood is a sign of dyslexia (Lachmann & van Leeuwen, 2007; Schneps, Rose, & Fischer, 2007). Teachers should therefore be aware of the specific difficulty posed by mirror letters, and should take the time to explain why b and d are distinct letters corresponding to distinct phonemes (it is particularly unfortunate that these phonemes are quite similar and easily confused). Interestingly, teaching the gestures of writing can improve reading, perhaps because it helps store view-specific memories of the letters and their corresponding phonemes (Fredembach, de Boisferon, & Gentaz, 2009; Gentaz, Colé, & Bara, 2003).” (p.27-28)

Dehaene, S (2011). The massive impact of literacy on the brain and its consequences for education. Human neuroplasticity and education. Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 117, 19-32.

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“The most advanced 10 per cent of students in any school grade are typically five to six years ahead of the least advanced 10 per cent of students in that grade. If teachers are to provide all students in a class with learning experiences that will stretch and challenge them, they must be able to differentiate their teaching to meet the needs of students who are at quite different points in their long-term progress.”

Masters, G. (2016). Monitoring student growth. Teacher Magazine, ACER, July 25. Retrieved from https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/geoff-masters/article/monitoring-student-growth?utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_medium=bulletin&utm_campaign=August%202%202016

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“When the focus of the analysis narrows to just weaker writers, the evidence from this meta-analysis does not support the claim that the process writing approach is an effective method for improving quality of writing. The average weighted ES in five studies was 0.29, and not statistically different than zero. … We are not suggesting that the process approach to writing as it was characterized in this review be abandoned. First, we think that this is unlikely to happen. Second, there is much to like about the process approach. This includes its emphasis on the critical role of process in writing, collaboration, personal responsibility, authentic writing tasks, and a supportive learning environment. Instead, we suggest that advocates of process writing instruction integrate other effective writing practices into this approach. There is some empirical evidence that this is a fruitful avenue to pursue. For example, impressive improvements in the writing of average and struggling writers were obtained when the amount of explicit and systematic instruction provided in process writing classrooms was increased (Curry, 1997; Danoff, Graham, & Harris, 1993; MacArthur, Schwartz, & Graham, 1991). These studies involved teaching strategies for planning and revising. Other studies are needed to determine if incorporating other evidence-based practices, such as sentence combining (Graham & Perin, 2007) or spelling and handwriting instruction (Graham, 2010), into the process writing instruction further enhances the power of this approach.” (p.404-405)

Graham, S., & Sandmel, K. (2011). The process writing approach: A meta-analysis. The Journal of Educational Research, 104(6), 396-407.

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“There have been no consistent findings that reveal the depression of esteem, social development, ethical development, critical thinking, cognitive ability, or cultural participation through Direct Instruction. Stein et al. (1998) argue that many of the assertions against Direct Instruction contain a fundamental confusion between rote instruction and explicit instruction. Scripted Direct Instruction lessons are not based on the mass memorization of arbitrary facts. Instead, a fundamental design principle within the Direct Instruction curriculum is the conveyance of generalizable strategies and concepts, though this is done in an explicit and sequenced manner with constant review and assessment to ensure mastery.” (p.117)

Kim, T., & Axelrod, S. (2005). Direct Instruction: An educators’ guide and a plea for action. The Behavior Analyst Today, 6(2), 111-120.

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“Word frequency explains the largest part of variance in visual word processing, with words of high frequency being processed more rapidly (e.g., Balota et al., 2004; New et al., 2006; Yap & Balota, 2009). Over and above word frequency, other factors influence processing latencies. Orthographic typicality, as measured by neighbourhood density (i.e., number of words with an orthographic form similar to the target word) or bigram frequency (e.g., summed frequency of bigrams within words), usually facilitates word processing (e.g., Andrews, 1997; Massaro, Venezky, Taylor, 1979). Additionally, words with regular letter-to sound correspondences (i.e., feedforward consistency) or sound-to-letter correspondences (i.e., feedback consistency) are processed more rapidly than inconsistent words (e.g., Stone & Van Orden, 1994; Yap & Balota, 2009; but see Kessler, Treiman, & Mullennix, 2008, for questions about the role of feedback inconsistency). Finally, length of a word in number of letters or syllables has been reported to affect word processing (e.g., Balota et al., 2004; Ferrand & New, 2003; Muncer & Knight, 2012).” (p.1523)

Chetail, F., Balota, D., Treiman, R., & Content, A. (2014). What can megastudies tell us about the orthographic structure of English words? The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68, 1519-1540.

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“The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2004) defines multi-sensory as: ‘using visual, auditory and kinesthetic modalities, sometimes at the same time’. Kinesthetic refers to perceiving through touch and an awareness of body movements.” (p. 75)

Obaid, M.A.S. (2013). The impact of using multi-sensory approach for teaching students with learning disabilities. Journal of International Education Research, 9(1), 75-82.

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“Many of the same instructional programs found to work with native speakers were also found to be effective with ELLs (e.g., Reading Mastery, Early Interventions in Reading, Corrective Reading, Jolly Phonics, Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies, Reading Rescue, Fast ForWord Language, and Orton Gillingham). However, there were particularly strong outcomes for ELLs when the instruction was tailored to their language differences by doing things like devoting more time to those English sounds not in the students’ home language (Giambo & McKinney, 2004; Kramer, Schell, & Rubison, 1983). Other instructional approaches well suited to the decoding needs of ELLs included grouping of students according to their instructional needs, mastery learning with frequent teacher modeling, opportunities for practice, and cumulative review (Gunn, Biglan, Smolkowski, & Ary, 2000; Kamps et al., 2007; Lovett et al., 2008).” (p.492)

August, D., McCardle, P., & Shanahan, T. (2014). Developing literacy in English Language Learners: Findings from a review of the experimental research. School Psychology Review, 43(4), 490–498.

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“In conclusion, differential patterns of memory abilities are documented across different etiological groups of individuals with ID, and the irregularities in the memory profile may reflect discrepancies in the maturation of different cerebral networks linked to a specific genotype.”

Vicari, S., Costanzo, F., & Menghini, D. (2016). Memory and learning in intellectual disability. International Review of Research in Developmental Disabilities. In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 4 July 2016

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“My prediction is that the new ORF norms won't change much from our 2006 norms (or our 1992 norms). My prediction is based on the fact that ORF is, outside of expected measurement error (which Christ & Coolong-Chaffin, 2007 suggest is in the range of 5 wcpm for grades 1 and 2 and 9 wcpm in grades 3-8+), fairly stable. You can see evidence of this on our 2006 norms when looking at the spring 50th %iles for grades 6 (150), grade 7 (150), and grade 8 (151). When you think that these three scores represent approximately 30,000 students reading a variety of grade level passages that pretty darn stable. Other studies of older readers (high school; college) also find that 150 wcpm is a common "average.””

Hasbrouck, J. (2016). Are oral reading norms accurate with complex text? Retrieved from http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/search/label/text%20complexity

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“ … the National Reading Panel (2000) report sparked considerable controversy when the panel reported a lack of research supporting independent, silent reading practice as an effective means for developing students’ reading fluency (e.g., Silent Sustained Reading [SSR] or Drop Everything and Read [DEAR]; Allington, 2002; Coles, 2000; J. W. Cunningham, 2001; Edmondson & Shannon, 2002; Krashen, 2002).” (p. 404)

Reutzel, D.R., Spichtig, A.N. & Petscher, Y. (2012). Exploring the value added of a guided, silent reading intervention: Effects on struggling third-grade readers’ achievement. Journal of Educational Research, 105(6), 404–415. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557881/

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“A persistent fear among classroom teachers is that some students may not keep their eyes on their text when they are assigned silent independent reading tasks (Donovan, Smolkin, & Lomax, 2000; Fresch, 1995; Hiebert, Wilson, & Trainin, 2010). Guidance within silent reading contexts is key, as students achieving in the bottom quartile of their class frequently attend less well when they read silently in an unguided context as compared to a guided context (Hiebert et al., 2010). … Although previous studies have shown silent reading to be an effective way to improve reading skills, more recent studies have shown that the conditions for silent reading practice in school often result in students acting like they are reading when they are not” (Hiebert & Reutzel, 2010). (p.123-4)

Hiebert, E.H. (2015). Teaching stamina & silent reading in the digital-global age. Reading Essentials Original Series, June 2015. Retrieved from http://textproject.org/assets/library/resources/Hiebert-2015-Teaching-Stamina-and-Silent-Reading-PRINT.pdf#page=124

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“The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of reading skill and reading modality (oral versus silent) on reading comprehension. A normative sample of sixth-grade students (N = 74) read texts aloud and silently and then answered questions about what they read. Skill in word reading fluency was assessed by the Test of Word Reading Efficiency, Second Edition (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 2012), and students were identified as either normal or at-risk readers based on those scores. A 2 (reading skill) X 2 (reading modality) mixed factorial ANOVA was conducted. Results revealed that both normal and at-risk readers demonstrated better comprehension of text read orally as compared to text read silently. The middle school curriculum requires independent silent reading, yet students may enter middle school without the literacy skills they need to be successful. These findings suggest that students transitioning to middle school may benefit from additional pedagogical support in silent reading comprehension.” (p. 318)

Dickens, R.H., & Meisinger, E.B. (2016). Examining the effects of skill level and reading modality on reading comprehension. Reading Psychology, 37, 318–337.

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“The Reading Mastery curriculum in particular has a powerful evidence base for its effectiveness with disadvantaged children, English Language Learners, and children with disabilities (Engelmann 1997; Gersten et al.1987; Kamps and Greenwood 2005; Kamps et al. 2008), but limited studies specifically targeting children with ASD. … Findings support the use of explicit and Direct Instruction curricula for high risk children who are struggling academically (Kame’enui and Simmons 2001; Kamps et al. 2008); and more specifically children with ASD at risk for learning problems (El Zein et al. 2014; Flores and Ganz 2009; Ganz and Flores 2009; Plavnick et al. 2014, 2016). Findings also support the use of the Reading Mastery curriculum to teach children with ASD basic phonemic awareness, decoding skills and word reading (Plavnick et al., 2016; Spector & Cavanaugh, 2015).”

Kamps, D, Heitzman-Powell, L, Schwartz, I., Mason, R., Swinburne Romine, R., & Fleming, K. (2016). Effects of Reading Mastery as a small group intervention for young children with ASD. Journal of Developmental Physical Disabilities. DOI 10.1007/s10882-016-9503-3

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“Published instructional programs that incorporate explicit and systematic procedures in a scripted manner allow consistent implementation across instructors of varying skill levels. Scripted programs control instructional delivery, increasing fidelity of implementation (Cooke et al. 2011). According to Watkins and Slocum (2004), scripts accomplish two goals: 1. To assure that students access instruction that is extremely well designed from the analysis of the content to the specific wording of explanations, and 2. To relieve teachers of the responsibility for designing, field-testing, and refining instruction in every subject that they teach. (p. 42) Importantly, Cooke et al. (2011) compared scripted to nonscripted explicit instruction and found increased rates of on-task instructional opportunities during scripted instruction. Additionally, students indicated they enjoyed answering together (i.e., in unison) and instructors shared positive outcomes including greater student attention, consistent routine, and reduced likelihood of leaving out crucial concepts.” (p.56)

Plavnick, J., Marchand-Martella, N., Martella, R., Thompson, J., & Wood, A. L. (2015). A review of explicit and systematic scripted instructional programs for students with autism spectrum disorder. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 2, 55-66. doi:10.1007/s40489-014-0036-3.

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“The best strategy for determining the identity of meaning of an unfamiliar word is to work out what it is from context. … A very poor strategy is to “sound it out.”” (p.4)

Smith F. (2012). Understanding reading: A psycholinguistic analysis of reading and learning. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

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“Peer-reviewed research reporting positive effects of CR (choral reading) on ASR (active student responding), learning outcomes, and deportment has been published since the late 1970s (e.g., McKenzie & Henry, 1979; Pratton & Hales, 1986; Sindelar, Bursuck, & Halle, 1986; and see Haydon, Marsicano, & Scott, 2013). CR has been used successfully with students from preschool through secondarygrades (Rose & Rose, 2001; Sainatoetal.,1987), with general education students (Kretlow, Cooke, & Wood, 2012; Maheady, Michielli-Pendl, Mallette, & Harper, 2002), and with special education students with various disabilities (Alberto, Waugh, Fredrick, & Davis, 2013; Cihak, Alberto, Taber-Doughty, & Gama, 2006; Flores & Ganz, 2009; Sterling, Barbetta, Heward, & Heron, 1997).”

Twyman, J. S., & Heward, W. L. (2016). How to improve student learning in every classroom now. International Journal of Educational Research. doi:10.1016/j.ijer.2016.05.007

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“ … one of the most consistent and important findings in recent educational research: Students who make frequent, relevant responses during a lesson(ASR) learn more than students who are passive observers.” (p.6)

Twyman, J. S., & Heward, W. L. (2016). How to improve student learning in every classroom now. International Journal of Educational Research. doi:10.1016/j.ijer.2016.05.007

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“English learners develop word-level skills in a similar manner to native English speakers, and they benefit from instructional features that have been found effective for native English-speaking children (Shanahan & Beck, 2006). Several early reading interventions for English learners with a strong phonics component have reported benefits for word-level skills (Denton, Anthony, Parker, & Hasbrouck, 2004; Gunn, Biglan, Smolkowski, & Ary, 2000). This growing body of research suggests that young English learners benefit from the same instructional features and phonics components that support early reading development in their native English-speaking peers (Ehri et al., 2001)” (p. 2).

Vadasy, P. F., & Sanders, E. A. (2012). Two-year follow-up of a kindergarten phonics intervention for English learners and native English speakers: Contextualizing treatment impacts by classroom literacy instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(4), 987-1005.

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Children who are behind at the end of third grade only have between a 1:5 to a 1:8 chance of catching up (Hall & Moats, 1999; Becker 1978).

Hall, S.T., & Moats, L.C. (1999). Straight talk about reading: How parents can make a difference during the early years. Chicago: Contemporary Books.

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“More recently, a number of scholars have highlighted the use of the Internet as an important medium of transmission that retains many of the elements of orally transmitted myths (Fernback, 2003; Kibby, 2005). Moreover, although the transmission of myths may seem innocuous, some scholars have pointed out that constant recirculation of some myths can have serious consequences (Kibby, 2005), including causational roles in moral panics and unnecessary fear (Radford, 1999). … Our results also showed that belief in human-related myths was significantly associated with anti-scientific attitudes and the Big Five personality factor of Extraversion. The first association is perhaps unsurprising: in the view of Yates and Chandler (2000), anti-scientific attitudes are exemplified by an aversion to the rational rules of evidence generation and evaluation that are intrinsic to Western models of science. In this view, individuals who score higher on anti-scientific attitudes may be less able to evaluate knowledge claims and may be less skeptical of, and less likely to reject, inappropriate claims.” (p.404, 407)

Swami V., Stieger S., Pietschnig J., Nader I., Voracek M. (2012). Using more than 10% of our brains: Examining belief in science-related myths from an individual differences perspective. Learning & Individual Differences, 22, 404–408.

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“Teachers’ professional development is “fragmented, occasional and insufficiently informed by research”. These were the conclusions of a recent British Educational Research Association (BERA) and Royal Society of Arts inquiry into the issue in the UK. It also found that the most effective teachers were those who used research in their teaching.”

Hayes, D. (2014). Why important education research often gets ignored. Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/why-important-education-research-often-gets-ignored-33040 See BERA reports at https://www.bera.ac.uk/project/research-and-teacher-education

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“It is our hope that finding substantial heritability for high g does not re-ignite controversies in relation to expert training (e.g., Howe et al., 1998). Heritability and expert training address different issues: ‘what is’ versus ‘what could be.’ Heritability describes the extent to which individual differences in g can be attributed to genetic differences between individuals given the genetic and environmental differences that exist in a particular population at a particular time. In contrast, training experiments are not concerned about describing the origins of individual differences; their focus is on the potential for change. That is, heritability of g could be 100% but a training regime or other environmental interventions could improve performance on tests that assess g. Conversely, showing that environmental interventions can improve performance says nothing about the genetic and environmental origins of individual differences. However, beyond this nature vs. nurture level of debate, there are interesting and largely unexplored issues at the interface between training and heritability. For example, are there genotype-environment interactions, differential sensitivity to the quantity or quality of training as a function of genotype? Or genotype-environment correlations, differential exposure to training as a function of genotype, in which children seek, modify and create environments correlated with their genetic propensities? One interesting example of this interface is a study of performance on a motor task which showed that heritability was substantial before, during and after training (Fox, Hershberger, & Bouchard, Jr., 1996). Further analyses of gene-environment interaction and correlation are also needed. As one of many possible examples, these results for high g may be moderated by socioeconomic class as has been suggested for the full range of g (Turkheimer et al., 2003).” (p. 368)

Haworth, C. M. A., Wright, M. J., Martin, N. W., Martin, N. G., Boomsma, D. I., Bartels, M., ... Plomin, R. (2009). A twin study of the genetics of high cognitive ability selected from 11,000 twin pairs in six studies from four countries. Behavior Genetics, 39(4), 359–370. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2740717/

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“Although genetic influence on cognitive functioning late in life appears to be substantial, these data also demonstrate considerable environmental influence. About 40% of the variance for general cognitive ability and even more of the variance for specific cognitive abilities is environmental in origin. Moreover, consistent with results from studies of younger adults, our results indicate that, for the most part, these environmental influences are not shared by twins growing up in the same family nor are they due to adult experiences shared by twins. In other words, environmental influences that contribute to individual differences in cognitive abilities are those that make family members, in this case twins, different (36). The most direct evidence for this conclusion is that identical twin correlations are considerably less than the reliability of the measures (usually given as 0.80 to 0.95), even though identical twins are genetically identical. Differences within pairs of identical twins provide a tool with great potential for identifying these non - shared environmental factors.” (p.1563)

McClearn, G. E., Johansson, B., Berg, S., Pedersen, N. L., Ahern, F., Petrill, S. A., & Plomin, R. (1997). Substantial genetic influence on cognitive abilities in twins 80 or more years old. Science, 276(5318), 1560-1563.

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“Accordingly, we proposed that sensory/neural difficulties in recovering prosodic structure from speech input could lie at the heart of the phonological deficit in dyslexia, across languages. … If supported by future studies across languages, these mechanistic neural insights would support remediation for dyslexia based on musical, motor and language rhythms focused on delta-band rates [76,77]” (p. 94)

Goswami, U. (2016). Educational neuroscience: Neural structure-mapping and the promise of oscillations. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 10(8), 89–96.

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“Good readers tend to be good spellers, and poor readers tend to be poor spellers. Several studies have documented that reading and spelling are strongly associated with each other in different languages and age groups (e.g., Babayiğit & Stainthorp, 2010; Cardoso-Martins & Pennington, 2004; Desimoni, Scalisi, & Orsolini, 2012; Furnes & Samuelsson, 2011; Georgiou, Torppa, Manolitsis, Lyytinen, & Parrila, 2012b; Landerl & Wimmer, 2008; Leppänen, Niemi, Aunola, & Nurmi, 2006; Vaessen & Blomert, 2013; Yeung et al., 2011). However, the imperfect correlation between the two (rs range from 0.60 to 0.80; see meta-analysis by Swanson, Trainin, Necoechea, & Hammill, 2003) leaves open the window for a dissociation in which good readers can also be poor spellers (known as unexpected poor spellers) and poor readers can also be good spellers (known as unexpected poor readers). A few large-scale studies have indeed shown that these two performance profiles are not rare and may each affect 3–7%of school-age children (Fayol, Zorman, & Lété, 2009; Moll, Kunze, Neuhoff, Bruder, & Schulte-Körne, 2014; Moll & Landerl, 2009; Wimmer & Mayringer, 2002). … Research and clinical practitioners have mixed views whether reading and spelling difficulties should be combined or seen as separate. This study examined the following: (a) if double dissociation between reading and spelling can be identified in a transparent orthography (Finnish) and (b) the cognitive and noncognitive precursors of this phenomenon. Finnish speaking children (n = 1963) were assessed on reading fluency and spelling in grades 1, 2, 3, and 4. Dissociation groups in reading and spelling were formed based on stable difficulties in grades 1–4. The groups were compared in kindergarten phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, letter knowledge, home literacy environment, and task-avoidant behavior. The results indicated that the double dissociation groups could be identified even in the context of a highly transparent orthography: 41 children were unexpected poor spellers (SD), 36 were unexpected poor readers (RD), and 59 were poor in both reading and spelling (RSD). The RSD group performed poorest on all cognitive skills and showed the most task-avoidant behavior, the RD group performed poorly particularly on rapid automatized naming and letter knowledge, and the SD group had difficulties on phonological awareness and letter knowledge. Fathers’ shared book reading was less frequent in the RD and RSD groups than in the other groups. The findings suggest that there are discernible double dissociation groups with distinct cognitive profiles. This further suggests that the identification of difficulties in Finnish and the planning of teaching and remediation practices should include both reading and spelling assessments.”

Torppa, M., Georgiou, G.K., Niemi, P., Lerkkanen, M.K., & Poikkeus, A-M. (2016). The precursors of double dissociation between reading and spelling in a transparent orthography. Annals of Dyslexia, First online: 10 June 2016, DOI 10.1007/s11881-016-0131-5

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“Noel Pearson’s “Good to Great” schools have made appreciable differences to the learning lives of Aboriginal students. This year, Coen and Hope Vale have recorded the highest attendance of remote-based indigenous Queensland schools. I analysed the data from 122 of his students. Learning growth effect-sizes were calculated for all students where they completed a NAPLAN test over two occasions (Year 3 and 5, or Year 5 and 7). The average effect-sizes are all substantial. For Years 3-5, there has been greater than the Australian average growth: 181% greater in Reading, 98% greater in Writing, and 181% greater in Numeracy. This is the good news; the program is truly making a difference; but the sobering news is that the students have to make 3+ years growth in a year to catch up. There is more to do, but the nay-sayers want to destroy an evidence based program because it has not performed magic. The performance is a function of the dedication, the hard work, the evidence based cycle of evaluation by the school leaders and teachers in these schools.’ (p.8)

Hattie, J. (2016). Shifting away from distractions to improve Australia's schools: Time for a reboot. Jack Keating Memorial Lecture, University of Melbourne, June, 2016. Retrieved from http://education.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1993904/Deans-lecture-June-2016-Jack-Keating-lecture.pdf

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“The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of reading skill and reading modality (oral versus silent) on reading comprehension. A normative sample of sixth-grade students (N = 74) read texts aloud and silently and then answered questions about what they read. Skill in word reading fluency was assessed by the Test of Word Reading Efficiency, Second Edition (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 2012), and students were identified as either normal or at-risk readers based on those scores. A 2 (reading skill) X 2 (reading modality) mixed factorial ANOVA was conducted. Results revealed that both normal and at-risk readers demonstrated better comprehension of text read orally as compared to text read silently. The middle school curriculum requires independent silent reading, yet students may enter middle school without the literacy skills they need to be successful. These findings suggest that students transitioning to middle school may benefit from additional pedagogical support in silent reading comprehension.” (p. 318)

Dickens, R.H., & Meisinger, E.B. (2016). Examining the effects of skill level and reading modality on reading comprehension. Reading Psychology, 37, 318–337.

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“The newly released results of the Study of Instructional Improvement (SII) document dramatic differences in the kinds of skills and content taught from classroom to classroom. For instance, the study showed that a fifth-grade teacher might teach reading comprehension anywhere from 52 days a year to as many as 140 days a year. Similarly, first-grade teachers spent as little as 15 percent to as much as 80 percent of their time on word analysis. Thus, the study found, students in some classrooms may spend the majority of their classroom time on relatively low-level content and skills, while their peers in the class next door are spending much more time on higher-level content. … The data, released this year, confirmed that the overwhelming majority of the variation occurred within schools, rather than between schools, and that the variations were substantial. Teachers varied widely on the topics they chose to spend time on, such as word analysis, comprehension, or writing; on the materials they used; and on the types of instructional practices they employed. … the level of cognitive demand varied widely from classroom to classroom. In every other aspect, these schools were astonishingly coherent, but they were loose inside the ‘black box’ of instruction. … much of the reason for these wide differences in teaching practice is the lack of clear standards for instruction. Without guidelines for effective practice teachers have wide latitude to try what they believe is effective. … State accountability systems do not eliminate variations in practice because they generally set relatively low targets for instruction. … While few educators argue for eliminating variability in teacher practice altogether, many suggest that the profession needs to do more to make sure all teachers teach at least the core curriculum that all students should learn. … we ought to have strong, assertive statements about what is the core instructional program, and we ought to monitor it.”

Rothman, R. (2009). Behind the classroom door. Harvard Education Letter, 25(6), 1-2. Retrieved from http://hepg.org/hel-home/issues/25_6/helarticle/behind-the-classroom-door_427

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“In addition, the different behavioral manifestation of dyslexia across DO [deep orthographies] and SO [shallow orthographies] suggests different cognitive dysfunctions. That is, dyslexic readers in DO suffer from slow, effortful, and especially inaccurate reading [e.g., Landerl et al., 1997; Ziegler et al., 2003], whereas dyslexic readers in SO primarily suffer from slow and effortful reading [e.g., Wimmer, 1993; Zoccolotti et al., 1999]. This indicates an involvement of different cognitive components. Assuming further a differential weighing of cognitive processes (e.g., whole-word recognition or serial grapheme–phoneme conversion), and hence different brain activation between typical readers of DO and SO, different brain activation abnormalities in dyslexia are expected. … In line with the idea of a universal neurobiological origin of developmental dyslexia [e.g., Pugh, 2006], presumably associated with the common speed impairment in dyslexic readers across DO and SO, we found common underactivation in dyslexic compared with nonimpaired readers in left middle, inferior temporal, and occipitotemporal regions. Differences between DO and SO studies were evident with respect to the degree, spatial extent, and exact anatomical location of the under- and overactivation clusters. … In sum, the present meta-analysis synthesizes and quantifies universal and orthography-specific effects on dyslexic functional brain abnormalities during reading and reading-related tasks in alphabetic writing systems.” (p.13, 20)

Martin, A., Kronbichler, M., & Richlan, F. (2016). Dyslexic brain activation abnormalities in deep and shallow orthographies: A meta-analysis of 28 functional neuroimaging studies. Human Brain Mapping. doi: 10.1002/hbm.23202

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“In a typical Year 9 class, the top students can be more than seven years ahead of the bottom students, but NAPLAN’s minimum standards are set way too low to identify the stragglers. A Year 9 student meets the minimum standard even if they are reading below the level of a typical Year 5 student.”

Goss, P., & Sonnemann, J. (2016). Widening gaps: What NAPLAN tells us about student progress. Grattan Institute. Retrieved from https://grattan.edu.au/report/widening-gaps/

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“These results indicate that although the late emerging poor comprehenders showed below average performance for the first time in Grade 4, they had consistently lower performance on measures of word reading, nonword reading, and spelling across time. … Our findings are supported by other research, which has shown LERD prevalence rates between 2.8% and 13.4% (Catts et al., 2012; Compton et al., 2008; Kieffer, 2010). Together, these results suggest that earlier reports may have overestimated the number of children with late emerging reading problems and that the fourth grade slump is just that—a slump. … the majority, or 67%, of children with newly identified reading comprehension problems in Grade 4 were able to recover by the end of Grade 7. … Longitudinal studies have shown that children with LERD may have poorer phonological awareness, decoding efficiency, listening comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, and sentence imitation on kindergarten or Grade 1 measures (Catts et al., 2012; Compton et al., 2008). Our results indicate that working memory skills may be another indicator of late emerging difficulties in reading comprehension.” (p.33)

Etmanskie, J.M., Partanen, M., & Siegel, L.S. (2016). A longitudinal examination of the persistence of late emerging reading disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 49(1), 21–35.

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“At its core, dyslexia is a problem with a component of spoken language, phonological processing: that is, getting to the elemental sounds of speech, affecting both spoken and written language. As dyslexic children progress in school, given good instruction, reading accuracy often improves; however, lack of fluency (the ability to read not only accurately, but rapidly and with good intonation) persists and remains a lifelong problem.” (p. 1121)

Ferrer, E., Shaywitz, B.A., Holahan, J.M., Marchione, K.E., Michaels, R., & Shaywitz, S.E. (2015). Achievement gap in reading is present as early as first grade and persists through adolescence. Journal of Pediatrics, 167(5), 1121-1125. 

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“When administrators and pre-service teachers underestimate the complexity of teaching scripted DI reading lessons as remediation for students with special needs, they are less likely to exert the necessary efforts needed to fully understand implementation of the curriculum, learning needs of targeted students and the dual roles in the process for learning/teaching of a new program. With the absence of these needed efforts, student learning gains can become less apparent and ineffective.” (p.93)

Liu, K., Robinson, Q., & Braun-Monegan, J. (2016). Pre-service teachers identify connections between teaching-learning and literacy strategies. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 4(8), 93-98. Retrieved from http://redfame.com/journal/index.php/jets/article/viewFile/1538/1699

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“Debunking myths is problematic. Unless great care is taken, any effort to debunk misinformation can inadvertently reinforce the very myths one seeks to correct. To avoid these “backfire effects”, an effective debunking requires three major elements. First, the refutation must focus on core facts rather than the myth to avoid the misinformation becoming more familiar. Second, any mention of a myth should be preceded by explicit warnings to notify the reader that the upcoming information is false. Finally, the refutation should include an alternative explanation that accounts for important qualities in the original misinformation.” (p.1)

Cook, J., & Lewandowsky, S. (2011). The debunking handbook. St. Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland. November 5. ISBN 978-0-646-56812-6. [http://sks.to/debunk]

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“Plan to teach phonics

The information on instruction in phonics provided in the review shows that it is important at some stage in reading development for children to have knowledge of phonics. The research is divided on the form of phonics instruction and the timing of such instruction. However, teachers should be developing programs that incorporate sound and letter association from an early stage.”

http://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/proflearn/pages/litoview.aspx#2

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“The most widely used experimenter administered tests for measuring children’s vocabulary size in English are the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-4; Dunn & Dunn, 2007), the Receptive and Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Tests (EOWPVT-4; Martin & Brownell, 2011a, 2011b), the Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT-2; Williams, 2007), and the Comprehensive Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test (Wallace & Hammill, 2002).

FIGURE 1 Overview of existing measures of expressive and receptive vocabulary, the current measure being investigated (DVAP), and the age ranges covered by each. Experimenter-administered tests are shown in light gray, caregiver questionnaires are shown in darker gray. The DVAP extends the age range of caregiver questionnaires to include preschool and early elementary school years (tested in the current samples) and may be relevant beyond these years as well (not tested here). PPVT-4¼Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (Dunn & Dunn, 2007); EVT-2¼Expressive Vocabulary Test-Second Edition (Williams, 2007); EOWPVT-4¼Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (Martin & Brownell, 2011a); ROWPVT-4¼Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (Martin & Brownell, 2011b); CREVT-2¼Comprehensive Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test-Second Edition (Wallace & Hammill, 2002); LDS¼Language Development Survey (Rescorla, 1989); CDIs¼MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson et al., 2007).

Libertus, M.E., Odic, D., Feigenson, L. & Halberda, J. (2015). A developmental vocabulary assessment for parents (DVAP): Validating parental report of vocabulary size in 2- to 7-year-old children. Journal of Cognition and Development, 16(3), 442-454.

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