Implementation and effects of explicit reading comprehension instruction in fifth-grade classrooms.

Second research reading report

Implementation and effects of explicit reading comprehension instruction in fifth-grade classrooms.

By Rune Andreassen, Ivar Bråten

The central purpose of this study was to explore the effects of explicit reading comprehension instruction on students’ strategy use, reading motivation, and comprehension performance in relation to the quality of program implementation. The main theoretical basis for this investigation of reading comprehension instruction was Guthrie and Winfield’s (2000) engagement model of the development of reading comprehension. According to this model, good reading comprehension is expected to follow from engaged reading, that is, fundamentally motivated, and strategic reading to shape conceptual experience in teamwork. The first idea taken into account for this study is Explicit Reading Comprehension Instruction (ERCI), was based on a careful review of the literature on the three multiple-strategy programs, Reciprocal Teaching (RT; Palincsar & Brown, 1984), Transactional Strategy Instruction (TSI; Pressley et al., 1992), and Concept- Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI; Guthrie et al., 1996). The second idea is reading comprehension strategies, which holds that direct instruction of a restricted number of reading strategies may give readers with the tools they need to construct deep-level, inferential understanding of text. The third theory are the four approaches originally recommended by Palincsar and Brown (1984), that is, predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing, still seem to be main ingredients in many comprehension education programs, including TSI and CORI. And the fourth idea is the promotion of reading motivation and reading engagement feature prominently in CORI. In that approach, students collaboratively read and discuss interesting self-selected texts to increase their knowledge about science topics and concepts introduced through hands-on science activities. While quite large positive effects of CORI on reading strategies and reading comprehension have been found in many studies, there is also substantial effect size variation across studies, primarily with respect to reading motivation (Guthrie, McRae, & Klauda, 2007).

The research study use is an experimental study. It is a kind of evaluation that seeks to determine if a program or intervention had the intended causal effect on program participants. Experimental research is guided by a hypothesis (or several hypothesis) that states an expected relationship between two or more variables. An experiment is conducted to support or disconfirm this experimental hypothesis. For instance, many of this author's research has been involved with the physiological effects of step training with and without hand weights. With this kind of experimental research, I have randomly selected group of subjects, decided the exercise program (step training with hand weights, step training without hand weights, and a control group which remained physically active but did no action training), tried to manage all relevant factors (e.g. no other aerobic programs, no change in diet, no additional resistance training, etc.), and then measured the effect of the action training with and without hand weights on a number of variables (such as cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular strength, body composition, blood lipids and lipoproteins, etc.). Experimental research, although very demanding of time and resources, often produces the soundest evidence concerning hypothesized cause-effect relationships (Gay, 1987).

The intervention group consisted of 55 girls and 48 boys in five mixed-ability fifth-grade classes; the overall mean age at pre-test was 10.5 years. The teachers of these students (4 female, 1 male) volunteered to participate in the intervention, and students participated with permission from their parents. Data was collected by means of classroom observation and questionnaires at the beginning and at the end of the intervention period. The observations used a checklist, which was filled out in each lesson by marking the record when an observed practice matched a description (i.e., check point) on the list. After each observed lesson, the teacher was asked to what extent that particular lesson was representative of his or her ERCI education and in what way. The questionnaire given to all teachers contained a combination of open-ended and Liker-type questions concerning teacher characteristics related to education and relevant experience as well as asked the teachers to judge the ease/difficulty of implementing each of the four principles in their classrooms and their success (or lack of it) in promoting strategic reading comprehension and cooperative learning among their students during the intervention period.

There are three key components of an experimental study design: (1) pre-post test design, it requires the collection of data on study participants’ level of performance before and after the intervention takes place. (2) A treatment group (22 students in this situation) and a control group (21 students in this situation), and (3) random assignment of study participants.

Findings in this study were: the study indicates that the results of reading comprehension instruction may depend on how an intervention is implemented in classrooms; also pinpointing which of the underlying theoretical principles that may represent particular challenges for the teachers. The improvement in students’ use of reading comprehension strategies resulting from the intervention seems to be in line with teachers’ adequate implementation of the principles of relevant background information and reading comprehension strategies in the classroom. Middle-school children, in particular, seem to prefer topics and texts experienced as interesting and debatable for cooperative group discussions (Alverman et al., 1996). It may be particularly relevant to try to modify teachers’ attitudes towards particular instructional principles and practice. All options are not necessarily motivating, and that teachers should give students options that are adapted to their interests and goals. In particular, group work must be organized to insure that group members explain or model to-be-learned material for each other. In order to insure better implementation of educational interventions, it may be necessary that the school’s administration play a more active role.