Neena’s Top Reading Research Picks for August

Welcome to the Reading Research Recap!

I am Dr. Neena Saha, Vice President of Science of Reading at MetaMetrics and founder and CEO of Elemeno, now a part of MetaMetrics. My focus as an executive is the same as it is as a researcher–to bridge the research-practice gap so that educators can access real-time tools to support reading success. In my role expanding the understanding of research to inform teaching and learning strategies, I put together this monthly compendium of the relevant and must-read research that impacts the reading and learning landscape. I offer research highlights in digestible summary slices. Hopefully, the data and findings you see here are useful to you as researchers, educators, and district and edtech leaders. Email me at nsaha@lexile.com to share what you find insightful, and how we can make this regular installment more useful to you in your work supporting early learning success.

A quick note…

The lull in studies that I mentioned in July’s blog post is more than made up for in this edition! Also, I promised a recap of the Society of the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR) conference in this version, and boy are you guys in for a treat! For those of you who are not familiar with SSSR – it is one of the best conferences covering the latest in (mostly quantitative) reading research (you can get a sense of the type of research that is covered by looking at this program). I went to SSSR for 3 years as a doc student at Vandy, and this year I got to attend along with my colleague, Jeff Elmore, as part of MetaMetrics. Jeff, also a longtime SSSR-goer, took amazing notes and is happy to share with all of you. So, make sure to scroll down and get an insider’s view on the very latest developments in the world of reading research!

Trends in the Selection of Primary Grade (K-3) Reading Programs and Assessments in the United States

Why This is Important: Research has clearly shown that certain instructional strategies/practices are better/more effective than others. The publication of the National Reading Panel’s report in 2000 clearly laid out which practices were effective. Yet, whether, and to what extent these research-based strategies are being employed in practice remains unknown. The authors issued a survey to 300 people (most school administrators) to see which curricula and which assessments they were using in their schools.
Key Findings:
- Reading Programs: The majority of the respondents preferred using basal programs (44%), with leveled programs coming in second (27%).
- Importance of National Reading Panel Recommendations: 96% of the respondents said research was important when choosing reading materials.
- Selecting Assessments: 51% of respondents used leveled assessments, while 38% used skills-based assessments like CBMs, and the rest were ‘other.’
- There is still confusion when it comes to choosing reading materials aligned with research. The following quotes from the paper were really interesting:

“Whatever they know about research, the majority are selecting basal programs for their reading instruction, a result that we argue is aligned with the recommendations of the National Reading Panel. However, that choice is followed closely by the leveled literacy programs (38%).”

“It does appear that there is either confusion about what the recommendations mean when selecting programs and assessments or the respondents are comfortable with contraindicated, and even contradictory practices. Perhaps the myriad of curriculum and assessment choices available to educators is such that it is difficult to make selections that are aligned in philosophy and intent. Regardless of their selections, the majority of respondents continue to like the idea of balance, whatever that might mean to them.”

What We Can Do: I think that a clue might lie in the quote above about the many “...choices available to educators is such that it is difficult to make selections that are aligned in philosophy and intent.” Perhaps the field needs better curriculum review guides. I know EdReports examines the usability of materials and alignment to standards, but it does not (as far as I know) rate evidence of effectiveness. The What Works Clearinghouse, on the other hand, does examine the available research studies on a given program, but their website is clunky, isn’t always up to date, and sometimes there is no research study on a given program. The Best Evidence Encyclopedia, like the WWC, examines evidence of effectiveness, but does so through meta-analytic techniques. Sourcing different information across websites is time-consuming and quickly gets confusing when different methods are used. I think there is some room for improvement in this area…

Building a framework to understand and address vulnerability to reading difficulties among children in schools in the United States

Why This is Important: Only 1 in 5 African American and Hispanic children were at or above proficient levels of reading on the NAEP, whereas 1 in 2 White students were. While vulnerability is accounted for in some models of reading, the exact sources of this vulnerability are not often not discussed. I liked this paper because it talks specifics about the factors that disproportionately affect African American and Hispanic children and how they impact reading development.
Key Findings: The authors list 4 sources of vulnerability:
- Reading and health: prenatal indicators such as preterm birth, lower birth weights and access to care during pregnancy have a negative relationship with later reading performance.
- Reading and violence: Black and Brown children are exposed to more gun violence than their white peers and researchers have found that gun violence predicted 28% of 3rd grade reading performance across 19 elementary schools.
- Reading and neighborhoods: researchers have found that neighborhood context (social, economic and physical resources) were directly related to decoding performance in elementary school children.
- Reading and child welfare: African American children growing up in poverty are more likely to be involved in maltreatment investigations (some districts had up to 50% of children involved in maltreatment investigations by third grade). Research has found that students who are involved in maltreatment investigations score significantly lower on standardized tests of reading and are more likely to be held back in school.
What We Can Do: This section is mostly aimed at researchers: we need to work with stakeholders to collect more comprehensive/longitudinal data sets, we need Black and Brown children to be represented in these data sets, we need more interdisciplinary teams in scientific research circles, and we need to employ more sophisticated statistical models that can account for the sources of vulnerability listed above.

Society of the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR) Conference Notes

Notes from the Early-literacy session, entitled “Building a Science of Early Literacy Instruction” chaired by Sonia Cabell (FCRR)

Neena’s notes:

The first paper was entitled “The Science of Alphabet Instruction” and presented by Dr. Shayne Piasta from Ohio State. She went through 9 different alphabet instruction “practices” and pointed out that the research was beginning to show converging evidence for 4 of these practices in improving children’s alphabet outcomes: 1) teaching letter names and sounds simultaneously is best, 2) teaching 2-5 letters a week, not 1 letter a week is best, 3) embedded phonics works (I think I meant embedded mnemonics here) 4) explicit instruction in isolation (of teaching through texts) is better than even explicit instruction in context.

Jeff’s notes:

Annemarie Hindman presented “Using Data to Balance Effectiveness and Efficiency” She compared several curricula (I had in my mind that they were interventions, but program notes do not comport. In any event, she, like others, discussed the need for more attention on vocabulary, even as we prioritize code-related instruction as a necessary first step in learning to read, we can simultaneously incorporate vocabulary and knowledge development, particularly through other modalities primarily oral language, discussions, etc. Her talk also emphasized the kind of cost-benefit analysis we need to keep in mind as we attend to many pressing instructional needs. As the field evaluates instructional practices, we should consider the cost, complexity, etc. not just the learning outcomes themselves.

Kristen McMaster from the University of Minnesota, presented “Supporting Students’ Early Writing Development through Data-based Instruction” which described a comprehensive effort to design a data-based instructional approach (DBI) to early writing instruction. I was intrigued by the CBM-esque early-writing assessment tasks which were able to measure growth over short spans of time. She also described the professional development and coaching necessary to implement the program.

Beth Phillips, who won the Jeff Elmore Heart-Eyes award for most urgent and compelling presentation, “Language Interventions in Preschool and Elementary Grades – Summary and Implications from a Multi-Study Program of Research.” The talk itself was at a high level and involved a synthesis of their findings rather than a complete presentation of them.

Here are some quotes and paraphrases:

There is no comprehension without oral language.
It helps to tell if you have decoded a word correctly if you know what that word means.
Teaching kids words should be fun.
Repair capacity to learn incidentally – for students struggling, etc.
Don’t assume any knowledge but don’t underestimate children’s ability to learn words.
Distal effects are rare – how did these few studies achieve them? Kids engaged in conversational exchanges. Active participation – need to measure.
Preschool / K and Primary grades communities do not communicate.

Later, when she visited us at Jackie’s poster, she dropped some more knowledge on me about the fundamentally developmental character of vocabulary… for example, in the earliest phases, vocabulary IS syntax. While learning words, kids are also learning the syntactic role various words play, how words can be combined or modified to alter their meaning, etc. It was an interesting perspective, kind of obvious in retrospect but I don’t think I appreciated this fundamental developmental difference in the emergent literacy phase of development. Anyway, another reminder that vocabulary is not something that happens separately from language development. it is inextricably linked to language and reading at all levels, and so vocabulary instruction can be incorporated regardless of developmental phase, or other instructional focus. Teaching words should be fun! You can do it any time, all the time!

Sonia organized the session and was the discussant. Something that stuck with me that Sonia said was that, even in her own experience, she found it hard to change how we talk to students (her example was asking engaging rather than simple closed questions)— therefore, especially in this time of renewed energy on bringing research to practice, the most efficient vehicle is teacher education.

Neena’s notes on The Set for Variability Session

This session featured a series of talks out of Laura Steacy and Don Compton’s lab at Florida State University (they are also affiliated with the Florida Center for Reading Research). It was a pretty popular session.

So, what is Set for Variability (or, set for V as they referred to it)?

Set for V is the ability to hear an imperfectly decoded word and figure out which actual word it corresponds within the language (there is much better description in this abstract). So, set for V tasks will state a slightly mispronounced word, such as, “deevil” and then ask the child: “what word do you think they were trying to say?” (the correct answer would be “devil”).

Things I learned from the symposium:

Set for V has a (shockingly!) high correlation with word reading measures. I forgot to write down the exact correlations, but they were so high that they are not typical in the reading world
Set for V was especially important (mattered the most) for struggling readers on inconsistent items (aka words)
They reported results was from a very very preliminary study (we’re talking only a sample size of about 15-20) that showed Set for V did not transfer to other items/words. So, basically, as of now you can’t “teach” it…but we need to stay tuned on this
There is still a lot we do not know about Set for V, but luckily the Steacy lab has a large grant to study this important skill (phenomenon?), so I’m sure we will be hearing more about this in the coming years!

Hope you enjoyed reading Jeff & My (Neena’s) notes on SSSR! Feel free to reach out with any questions, comments, corrections, etc!

Practitioner Knowledge

The Science of Instruction: Contributions of Special Education Research to Reading Science (open access, manuscript under review). This article explained a lot of my “why doesn’t everyone understand this/know what I’m talking about?” moments. I did not realize the influence that the field of special education had on the current science of reading movement. Since I was a special education teacher, and my PhD was technically via Vanderbilt’s SPED department, I think I had the perfect background to help understand the importance of the current science of reading movement in a way that other gen ed teachers may not have been afforded through their training or classroom experience. Special education has adopted more of a “medical model” of using science and data to inform instructional decisions in a way that general education is now coming around to…

Introduction to the special issue on practitioner knowledge to support reading and writing: new directions and approaches (open access introduction ~ I love introductions to special issues b/c often they provide a nice, brief summary of the main idea of each article) “The goal of this special issue was to highlight work that broadens our current understanding of practitioners’ knowledge to support reading and writing. When establishing the call for papers for the issue, we were especially interested in papers that expanded the focus of the existing literature in one or more ways. First, we wanted to include work that addressed multiple aspects of practitioner knowledge. Drawing on Moats’ (1994) seminal work, much of the published literature on practitioners’ knowledge to support reading and writing has focused on content knowledge related to word recognition skills such as knowledge of phonology, orthography, and morphology…”

Data-based decision-making in schools: Examining the process and effects of teacher support “Results of latent mediation analyses revealed positive associations of teachers’ data analysis with their instructional decision-making and students’ learning progress. Teacher support was positively associated with data analysis and students’ learning progress (mediated by data analysis).”

Can reading practitioners and researchers improve intensive reading support systems in a large urban school system? “One way to provide intensive intervention for students with severe and persistent reading difficulties is to use a systematic data-based decision-making process called data-based individualisation (DBI). DBI is a process for identifying needs and aligning them with specialist support…Mixed methods were used to examine whether there was evidence of success in implementation DBI conducted through a researcher–practitioner partnership in New York City Public Schools, the largest public school system in the United States.”

Phonological Awareness & Phonics

Phonemic Awareness: A Meta-Analysis for Planning Effective Instruction (This is not open access but here’s a note from the corresponding author: I am always happy to share PDFs with anyone who emails and asks as this does not violate copyright restrictions. It just can’t be shared openly on the web! Feel free to let your readers know they can email me (listed on the abstract/title page) if they do not have access to RRQ!!!) “…PA instruction was moderately effective (g = 0.63, p < .001) at improving PA outcomes. No statistically significant difference was found for type of instructor. Other moderator analyses revealed no significant differences for group size, duration, PA skills taught, use of letters, grade level, at-risk for reading difficulties status, or English language learner status. Finally, examination of the interaction between type of instructor and at-risk status suggested teachers, computer programs, and parents are effective instructors for both at-risk and low-risk students…”

Early phonological training preceding kindergarten training: effects on reading and spelling (open access!) (Note: some journals only allow for Table of Contents alerts and not Online First alerts, so a few articles in this Recap from the journal Reading & Writing came out a few months ago, but: better late than never!!) “There were substantial main effects of the early phonological training on phonological skills and early reading skills. For all outcomes the training was, furthermore, most beneficial for children low on Gf (fluid intelligence), who are in the risk zone of developing reading difficulties.”

Current Debates Over the Teaching of Phonics “Analysis of the most rigorous evidence from research reviews and meta-analyses suggests that systematic phonics teaching is effective for teaching children to read and spell in English, and that the combination of systematic phonics teaching and comprehension-based approaches is probably more effective than either alone. Research has therefore begun on integrated teaching of literacy that incorporates both code and meaning emphases, but currently the requisite professional knowledge and teacher capacity are challenges for many school systems…”

Making Sense of Word Reading Difficulties: Principles of Clinical Assessment “School-based SLPs have repeatedly reported being less familiar or comfortable providing services that support literacy skills—including word recognition and decoding— than services that support speaking and listening… This article provides school-based SLPs with a systematic overview of commonly used components of word reading assessment. Although measures of word reading skills are often embedded within more global language and literacy assessments, rather than performed in isolation, SLPs can nonetheless refine their understanding of students’ overall language and academic performance by advancing their knowledge of word reading measures.”

Cognitive flexibility in beginning decoding and encoding “Results showed that initial cognitive flexibility significantly positively predicted word-level decoding and spelling gains (uniquely explaining an average of approximately 5% of the variance in gains for these measures), but the effect on decoding gains was stronger for children with lower incoming alphabet skills (5-7 letters or fewer). These findings are consistent with the earlier research on EFs and reading acquisition with older children, and also indicate that greater alphabetic skills may compensate for lower initial EF in decoding development for children learning alphabetic languages.”

Predicting Intervention Effects With Preintervention Measures of Decoding: Evidence for a Skill-by-Treatment Interaction With Kindergarten and First-Grade Students “A skill-by-treatment interaction (STI) isolates skill deficits and manipulates conditions to match them to student needs. Based on the learning hierarchy, preintervention scores can help predict which intervention will be most successful for an individual student. This study compared the efficacy of a modeling and practice-based decoding intervention for 29 kindergarten and first-grade students. Results suggested that grade was not a significant predictor of which intervention was more effective, but preintervention accuracy in nonsense word fluency was a significant predictor of the more effective intervention, accounted for 68% of the variance, and correctly identified the more effective intervention 88% of the time.”

Fluency

Task-oriented reading efficiency: interplay of general cognitive ability, task demands, strategies and reading fluency (open access!) “The associations among readers’ cognitive skills (general cognitive ability, reading skills, and attentional functioning), task demands (easy versus difficult questions), and process measures (total fixation time on relevant and irrelevant paragraphs) was investigated to explain task-oriented reading accuracy and efficiency (number of scores in a given time unit)…These findings suggest that high efficiency in task orientation is obtained by relying on a selective reading strategy when reading both irrelevant and relevant paragraphs. The selective reading strategy seems to be specifically learned, and this potentially applies to most students, even those with low cognitive abilities.”

Vocabulary

Oral vocabulary knowledge and learning to read new words: A theoretical review “The theoretical foundations and evidence for two cognitive mechanisms that seek to explain the relationship between spoken and written word knowledge are outlined, drawing attention to a key difference between them: the proposed timing of the effect. Set for variability (or mispronunciation correction) is thought to operate from the point of visual exposure, while orthographic skeletons are thought to exert an influence on written word learning that begins before exposure to written words.”

Compensatory role of verbal learning and consolidation in reading and spelling of children with dyslexia (open access!) “ Results showed that children with dyslexia performed better in verbal learning and equal in verbal consolidation compared to typically developing peers. Regression analyses revealed that verbal learning did not predict reading but did predict spelling ability, across both groups; verbal consolidation did not predict reading, nor spelling. Furthermore, neither verbal learning nor verbal consolidation was related to responsiveness to a phonics through spelling intervention in children with dyslexia.”

Comprehension

Exploring the role of knowledge in predicting reading and listening comprehension in fifth grade students “We found that passage-specific topic familiarity, general academic knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge were all significantly associated with the probability of correctly answering questions about a passage…Results point to the importance of knowledge sources in accounting for variance in comprehension performance.”

Effectiveness of Tier 1 Content-Integrated Literacy Intervention on Early Elementary English Learners’ Reading Comprehension and Writing: Evidence from Randomized Controlled Trial (open access, potentially not peer-reviewed?) “The current study replicated and extended the previous findings of content-integrated literacy intervention focusing on its effectiveness on first- and second-grade English learners’ (N = 1,314) reading comprehension, writing, vocabulary knowledge, and oral proficiency. Statistically significant findings were replicated on science and social studies vocabulary knowledge (ES = .51 and .53, respectively) and argumentative writing (ES = .27 and .41, respectively). Furthermore, treatment group outperformed control group on reading (ES = .08) and listening comprehension (ES = .14). Vocabulary knowledge and oral proficiency mediated treatment effects on reading comprehension, whereas only oral proficiency mediated effects on writing. Findings replicate main effects on vocabulary knowledge and writing, while also extending previous research by highlighting mechanisms underlying improved reading comprehension and writing.”

Writing

Capturing variations in how spelling is taught in primary school classrooms in England (open access!) “Approaches to teaching spelling were varied and over two-thirds of the sample highlighted that their school did not have a spelling policy. The importance of explicit teaching of spelling was supported by the majority of teachers. This judgement was more frequent and rated more highly by teachers supporting younger children. Teachers largely reported devising their own spelling resources, highlighted that the curriculum spelling lists lack guidance for teaching spelling strategies and questioned their suitability for pupils of varying abilities.”

Examining Human and Automated Ratings of Elementary Students’ Writing Quality: A Multivariate Generalizability Theory Application “All essays were hand-scored by four raters and an AES system called Project Essay Grade (PEG). Both scoring methods were highly reliable, but PEG was more reliable for non-struggling students, while hand-scoring was more reliable for struggling students. We provide recommendations regarding ways of optimizing writing assessment and blending hand-scoring with AES.”

Motivation, Story Reading & Other Articles

Prereaders’ knowledge about the nature of book reading “Although prereaders could generally locate letters and words in a book, they were still learning that it is this print, not the pictures, which a reader reads. Prereaders knew that adults but not animals have the ability to read, but many also indicated that engaging in the activity of reading does not require the ability to read. Children who cannot read are still in the process of learning that print is what a reader reads and that engaging in reading requires a special skill. Therefore, when formal literacy instruction begins, teachers should not overestimate the knowledge about print and reading that children have acquired from prior exposure to books.”

Low-Income Elementary Students Access to Books & Reading Motivation “We surveyed 549 students attending four elementary schools that serve > 98% economically disadvantaged students using this new measure…students who had access to a greater number of books at home read more during OST (Out of School Time), even after adjusting for reading motivation. Consistent with past research, students’ reading motivation related to their reading amount.”

The story so far: A systematic review of the dialogic reading literature “The review findings suggest DR can positively impact a wide range of language and literacy skills for children under 5 years. There is some evidence that DR can have positive effects on enjoyment of reading, reading motivation, parental–child attachment, parental confidence and stress.”

Assessment Methods

Progress Monitoring of Language Acquisition and Academic Content for English Learners (open access!) “This article offers considerations of best practices for educators in K–12 settings interested in learning more about progress monitoring of the academic and language proficiency of ELs receiving instruction in varied settings. Considerations regarding progress monitoring for ELs are reviewed, and tables of resources for instructional activities and supporting materials are provided.”

Reading Difficulties Identification: A Comparison of Neural Networks, Linear, and Mixture Models (open access!) “The results suggested that the neural networks model is the most accurate method, as compared to the linear and mixture models or their combination, for the early prediction of adolescent reading fluency and reading comprehension difficulties. The three models elicited rather similar results regarding the predictors, highlighting the importance of RAN, letter knowledge, vocabulary, reading words, number counting, gender, and maternal education.”

Dynamic assessment as a predictor of reading development: a systematic review (open access!) “Assessments of reading and reading-related skills which measure acquired knowledge may pose problems for the prediction of future reading performance. Such static measures often result in floor effects in the early stages of reading instruction, and may be particularly inaccurate predictors for children from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds. Dynamic assessment (DA), in contrast, focuses on learning potential by measuring response to teaching, and may therefore be a less biased form of assessment…after static predictors were accounted for, dynamic measures of phonological awareness and decoding explained a significant amount of variance in the growth of word reading accuracy (1–21%) and word reading fluency (typically 1–9%)”

On the cusp of predictability: Disruption in the typical association between letter and word identification at critical thresholds of RAN and phonological skills “These findings demonstrate the importance of implementing non-linear models for predicting risk for reading difficulties. There was no evidence for the interactive effects of RAN and phonological processing on reading. Instead, in accordance with the basic tenants of the double-deficit hypothesis, current results suggest that the constructs represent two salient but separable causes of reading impairment, even at the earliest stages of reading ability. These findings suggest that models predicting which at-risk children will develop poor reading must diverge from assumptions of relationships observed in typical reading.”

Is the treatment weak or the test insensitive: Interrogating item difficulties to elucidate the nature of reading intervention effects “This paper examines the question of test sensitivity to treatment effects for experimenter developed and standardized tests for the specific case of reading in grade 8. We examine similarities and differences between a specific experimenter developed test and widely used standardized reading assessment. Analyses show these particular tests to be quite comparable. The paper concludes with an examination of test sensitivity by simulating treatment effects of different magnitudes. These analyses highlight some potential limitations of the standardized test for detecting small to moderate effects depending on the ability range of the students participating in intervention.”