Effects of a Structured Decoding Curriculum on Adult Literacy Learners’ Reading Development

Abstract

This article reports the results from a randomized control field trial that investigated the impact of an enhanced decoding and spelling curriculum on the development of adult basic education (ABE) learners’ reading skills. Sixteen ABE programs that offered class-based instruction to Low-Intermediate level learners were randomly assigned to either the treatment group or the control group. Reading instructors in the 8 treatment programs taught decoding and spelling using the study-developed curriculum, Making Sense of Decoding and Spelling (MSDS), and instructors in the 8 control programs used their existing reading instruction. A comparison group of 7 ABE programs whose instructors used K-3 structured curricula adapted for use with ABE learners were included for supplemental analyses. Seventy-one reading classes, 34 instructors, and 349 adult learners with pre- and posttests participated in the study. The study found a small but significant effect on one measure of decoding skills, which was the proximal target of the curriculum. No overall significant effects were found for word recognition, spelling, fluency, or comprehension. Pretest to posttest gains for word recognition were small to moderate, but not significantly better than the control classes. Adult learners who were born and educated outside of the U.S. made larger gains on 7 of the 11 reading measures than learners who were born and educated within the U.S. However, participation in the treatment curriculum was more beneficial for learners who were born and educated in the U.S. in developing their word recognition skills.

Linking Root Words and Derived Forms for Adult Struggling Readers:A Pilot Study

“…With low literacy skills directly affecting 90 million adults in America (NRC, 2012) and posing challenges to public health and employment, there is a serious need for more rigorous research on the effects of adult literacy interventions. The current randomized pilot study contributes to the literature on adult literacy interventions and supports prior recommendations to provide morphological instruction for adult struggling readers (Alamprese et al, 2011;Fracasso et al, 2015;Law et al, 2015).…”

“…Third, morphological teaching may have been even more powerful if new words had been taught within the context of meaningful passages. Similar studies placed morphological instruction within thematic passages with positive results (Kieffer & Lesaux, 2010;Alamprese, 2011). Fourth, the brief duration of the intervention likely limited the impact of the interventions.…”

“…Beyond correlational studies, there is also evidence that morphological instruction benefits adult struggling readers. Alamprese et al (2011) investigated the effects of a morpho-phonemic reading intervention program on the literacy skills of low to intermediate adult readers. Using a program based on Venezky's (1999) study of English orthography, students were taught a structured approach to word analysis that focused on phonemes, morphemes and spellings, as well as a metacognitive strategy for decoding complex words.…”

Dispositional factors affecting motivation during learning in adult basic and secondary education programs

“…Further evidence of poor learner persistence is found in the results of four recent adult literacy intervention studies (Alamprese, MacArthur, Price, & Knight, 2011; Hock & Mellard, 2011; Greenberg et al, 2011; Sabatini, Shore, Holtzman, & Scarborough, 2011). As these studies tested efficacy of reading instruction interventions with samples of adult learners, each research program encountered serious sample attrition, which ranged between 38 and 50 %.…”

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.…”