Neena’s Top Reading Research Picks for January - MetaMetrics Inc.
Skip to main content
Post Category:
Lexile, MetaMetrics
Post Tags:
Reading Research Recap

Neena’s Top Reading Research Picks for January

Neena’s Top Reading Research Picks

Welcome to the Reading Research Recap!

I am Dr. Neena Saha, Research Advisor at MetaMetrics. My focus is bridging the research-practice gap so that you can access useful resources that support reading success, expand awareness of the latest reading research, and inform your teaching and learning strategies. This monthly compendium offers the most relevant and must-read research impacting the reading and learning landscape, including easy-to-view digestible highlights. We want the data and findings to be as useful to you as possible, so please do connect with me with any ideas and comments for next month. Enjoy the latest Reading Research Recap!


📚 Deep Dive: Brief Experimental Analysis and Data-Based Individualization

🎉Happy New Year!☃️🥂

I ended last year with 2 studies that were large in scope so to start the new year I want to zoom in and cover this study which only had one subject!

Rationale:

Why would I cover a study with a single student? 

Sometimes you have students that you’ve tried everything with and nothing seems to work! This article talks about a data-based method of gathering information to find a successful intervention. It is called Brief Experimental Analysis. 

Brief Experimental Analysis

Implementing interventions is time and resource-intensive and ideally, you would want to know it will be successful before you spend all the time and money implementing one. 

Brief experimental analysis (BEA) allows you to quickly test several interventions by “…manipulating environmental or instructional conditions to implement interventions and test their immediate impact on important outcomes (Riley-Tillman et al., 2020).”

Research Question & Sample

Which intervention:

  • story mapping,
  • reinforcement + corrective feedback, or
  • comprehension prompts

Improved the reading comprehension of an 8th-grade male student performing below grade-level expectations in reading?

Method

The researcher combined  Daly et al. (1997) 5 potential reasons for student failure with brief experimental analysis (BEA)

Results

The “reinforcement + corrective feedback” turned out to be the best intervention (i.e., it led to the best outcomes on the comprehension questions):

“Reinforcement plus feedback had the highest mean score (M = 86%), indicating that using reinforcement and feedback led to the student scoring above 80% correct on average.”

“The results suggested that reinforcement plus feedback was  the most effective intervention in increasing levels of reading comprehension.”

Side Note: Given the design, the researchers are unable to know whether it was the corrective feedback or the reinforcement (providing a reward after the session) that was the driving force or “active ingredient.”

Limitations

The paper mentions quite a few limitations (that I suggest reading before implementing a similar study). One limitation was the time of day that the intervention sessions took place. The student was noticeably more tired during the early morning sessions, which could have affected the results.

Take-Home Message

Brief Experimental Analysis (BEA) is a way to conduct data-based individualization (DBI) for readers in an MTSS system! Be sure to read the paper to get all the details!


Additional Research of Interest

Teacher Professional Development, Training, Education Policy

Learning Disabilities, Dyslexia, Reading Difficulties, At-risk Readers, Etc.

Phonics, Word Recognition, Morphology, Etc.

Fluency

Comprehension

Writing


Sign up!

Want to start receiving monthly notifications for this series?

Create or log in to your Lexile® & Quantile® Hub account. Once logged in, navigate to your account to update your mailing list preferences.

Lexile and Quantile HubSpeaking of the Lexile & Quantile Hub — Exciting news!

A completely new version of the Lexile & Quantile Hub is here! The redesign features a streamlined user experience and enhanced accessibility to support a range of abilities.