A longitudinal analysis of the alignment between children’s early word-level reading trajectories, teachers’ reported concerns and supports provided

Abstract

In this longitudinal study, the word-level reading trajectories of 118 children were tracked alongside teachers' reported concerns and types of support provided through Grades 1, 2 and 3. Results show a significant decline in composite scores relative to age norms over time, with children achieving significantly lower in phonemic decoding than word recognition at the subtest level. Five group trajectories were identified: children who achieved average or above average scores across all 3 years (n = 64), children who consistently bordered on average (n = 11), children who achieved below average in Grade 1 but who then achieved average or above in Grade 2 or Grade 3 (n = 7), children who achieved average or above in Grade 1 but then declined to below average in Grade 2 or Grade 3 (n = 10), and children who achieved below average across all 3 years (n = 26). Appropriately, teachers' concerns were highest for students in the groups that improved, declined or remained persistently below average. However, analysis of the focus of teachers' concerns and the supports they said were provided to the children in these three groups suggests that teachers are not always accurate in their interpretation of children's presenting characteristics, resulting in the misalignment of support provision.

A stitch in time…: Comparing late‐identified, late‐emerging and early‐identified dyslexia

“…Our findings not only relate to the existence of LI dyslexia (Barbiero et al, 2012;Graham, White, Tancredi, Snow, & Cologon, 2020), but also to research findings that point to the challenges that educators face in identifying and shaping literacy interventions: Studies have reported that schools, school psychologists, and teachers were not always sufficiently familiar with the adequate application of the response-to-intervention framework (e.g., Kratochwill, Volpiansky, Clements, & Ball, 2007;Vujnovic et al, 2014). It has also been reported that not all children requiring more intensive literacy instruction actually receive this help (Graham et al, 2020) and that teachers' identification of reading difficulties in children does not always take place on the right information (Schmitterer & Brod, 2021). Consequently, the findings relate to the recent call of devoting more time and effort to translating research to education (Seidenberg, Cooper Borkenhagen, & Kearns, 2020) and supporting both educators' knowledge of literacy development and disorders and classroom implementation (e.g., Piasta, Connor, Fishman, & Morrison, 2009).…”

A Hypothesis of Reading Instruction as a Cause of Dyslexia

“…It is often used as an index of overall achievement" (Chall, 2000, p. 57). Put succinctly in an article from the journal Reading and Writing, deficits in reading skills prevent students from "accessing the academic school curriculum" (Graham, White, Tancredi, Snow, & Cologon, 2020, p. 1896. This is precisely what leads to an elevated drop-out rate for students with dyslexia or other reading issues-without reading skills, they simply can not engage in the tasks required of them in most classes beyond the level of primary school.…”

Can the quality of a school be greater than the quality of its teachers? A case of early grade reading skills in Ugandan refugee context

“…In an international level, examples of how teachers struggle with language components include: 'insufficient development concepts about language and pervasive conceptual weakness in the very skills that are needed for direct, systematic, language focused reading instructions, such as the ability to count phonemes and to identify phonic relationships' (Graham et al, 2020;McMaster et al, 2020;Moat and Lyon, 1996, p. 79). Other language components that are challenging to teachers include: manipulating speech sounds; knowledge of differencing letter-sound combination; conceptualization of functional spelling; common syllable types and division patterns; recognition of children' s difficulties with phonological, orthographic and syntactic learning (Moats and Foorman, 2003).…”