A Randomized Control Study of Instructional Approaches for Struggling Adult Readers

Abstract

This study measured the effectiveness of various instructional approaches on the reading outcomes of 198 adults who read single words at the 3.0 through 5.9 grade equivalency levels. The students were randomly assigned to one of the following interventions: Decoding and Fluency; Decoding, Comprehension, and Fluency; Decoding, Comprehension, Fluency, and Extensive Reading; Extensive Reading; and a Control/Comparison approach. The Control/Comparison approach employed a curriculum common to community-based adult literacy programs, and the Extensive Reading approach focused on wide exposure to literature. The Fluency component was a guided repeated oral reading approach, and the Decoding/Comprehension components were SRA/McGraw-Hill Direct Instruction Corrective Reading Programs. Results indicated continued weaknesses in and poor integration of participants’ skills. Although students made significant gains independent of reading instruction group, all improvements were associated with small effect sizes. When reading instruction group was considered, only one significant finding was detected, with the Comparison/Control group, the Decoding and Fluency group, and the Decoding, Comprehension, Extensive Reading and Fluency group showing stronger word attack outcomes than the Extensive Reading group.

Adult reading teachers’ beliefs about how less-skilled adult readers can be taught to read.

“…Knowledge and use of instructional best practices: The range of approaches evident in this study supports existing evidence that teachers in the adult literacy sector view bestpractice in different ways (Greenberg et al 2011, McShane 2005, National Research Council 2012. There was no shared, clear vision of what is understood by good teaching.…”

“…Given the complexity of the reading process, to be effective, adult reading teachers must be informed about the reading process and be able to respond to specific reading-skill needs in their teaching (Condelli, Kirshstein, Silver-Pacuilla, Reder andSpruck Wrigley 2010, National Research Council 2012). Despite this, with generic, minimal training often provided, adult reading teachers' practices vary substantially (Kendall and McGrath 2014), commonly reflecting their own idiosyncratic beliefs about how adults learn to read (Beder, Lipnevich and Robinson-Geller 2007, Belzer 2006, Greenberg et al 2011, Van Kan, Ponte and Verloop 2013. In the teaching context, and for the purposes of this paper, belief is taken to be 'an attitude consistently applied to an activity' (Eisenhart, Shrum, Harding and Cuthbert 1988:54).…”

Development of an Evidence-Based Reading Fluency Program for Adult Literacy Learners

“…Researchers have found a structured, repeated reading program to be effective in increasing fluency and comprehension among second through fourth graders (Kuhn et al, 2006;Lo et al, 2011;Musti-Rao et al, 2009;Neddenriep, Fritz, & Carrier, 2011;Nichols et al, 2009;Stahl & Heubach, 2005), including those with learning disabilities (O'Connor, White, & Swanson, 2007). Positive results of fluency training have also been reported for small groups of secondary students (Valleley & Shriver, 2003) and some moderate effects with adults (Greenberg et al, 2011).…”

“…However, most of the attention has been directed toward effective instructional methods for elementary school children (Hudson, Isakson, Richman, Lane, & ArriazaAllen, 2011;Kim, Samson, Fitzgerald, & Hartry, 2010;Lo, Cooke, & Starling, 2011;Musti-Rao, Hawkins, & Barkley, 2009) with some extending to high school learners (Hawkins, Hale, Sheeley, & Ling, 2011;Paige, Rasinski, & Magpuri-Lavell, 2012;Vandenberg, Boon, Fore, & Bender, 2008). Very few fluency intervention investigations, however, have been done on nontraditional adult learners (Greenberg et al, 2011). In addition, studies that have been conducted tend to examine the effects of multifaceted reading packages, programs that incorporate several interconnected reading components.…”

Interventions for struggling adolescent and adult readers: instructional, learner, and situational differences

“…This analytic viewpoint is effective at describing overall gains (or lack thereof) for intervention recipients at the group-level, but because of this strength, it can obfuscate improvement (or lack thereof) that may be present for specific subgroups. Significant gains in key literacy skill development have been hard-earned for struggling adolescent and particularly adult learners (Alamprese, MacArthur, Price, & Knight, 2011;Calhoon, 2005;Calhoon, Sandow, & Hunter, 2010;Greenberg et al, 2011;Sabatini, Shore, Holtzman, & Scarborough, 2011;Vaughn et al, 2010Vaughn et al, , 2011Vaughn et al, , 2012. This difficulty, to find robust responses to intervention, may not be surprising in view of the atypical educational histories of older learners and the heterogeneity of their backgrounds and skill deficits.…”