The Effects of a Peer-Mediated Reading Intervention on Juvenile Offenders’ Main Idea Statements About Informational Text

Abstract

There are a significant number of students with disabilities in the juvenile justice system (Quinn, Rutherford, Leone, Osher, & Poirier, 2005). Researchers have found emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) to be the most commonly reported disability among these youth (Gagnon, Barber, VanLoan, & Leone, 2009). Nationally, approximately 33% of youth in the juvenile justice system are students with disabilities; of those, 47% are students with an EBD and 39% are students with learning disabilities (Quinn, Poirier, & Garfinkel, 2005). These students typically have reading abilities that are years behind their nonincarcerated peers (Krezmien, Mulcahy, & Leone, 2008). Low academic achievement, especially in reading, of youth in the juvenile justice system with and at risk for EBD is of particular concern (Mattison, 2008; Nelson, Benner, Lane, & Smith, 2004) because reading difficulties are associated with misbehavior and can lead to further negative outcomes such as recidivism (Zamora, 2005). To provide a context for implementing evidence-based practices (EBPs) for youth in the juvenile justice system with EBD, we describe (a) challenges inherent in juvenile justice facilities related to providing instruction and conducting research and (b) the needs of adolescents with and at risk for EBD who struggle with reading regardless of their instructional setting. Instructional and Research Challenges in Juvenile Justice Facilities Service providers typically encounter a number of challenges when trying to implement systematic instruction and services in juvenile justice facilities (Houchins, Puckett-Patterson, Crosby, Shippen, & Jolivette, 2009). First, educators face the daunting task of teaching students placed in classes based on their level or type of crime rather than academic ability or individual needs (Krezmien & Mulcahy, 2008). Youth in the juvenile justice facilities are typically grouped into living units based on security issues. They stay with these intact groups throughout the day-including school time (Houchins et al., 2009; Krezmien & Mulcahy, 2008). Thus, classes often consist of students from different grade levels with a range of academic needs. Even if 703359B HDXXX10.

Reading Instruction for Secondary Grade Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders: A Focus on Comprehension

“…Get the Gist has also been investigated with students with EBD. Wexler et al (2018) investigated the effects of Get the Gist on main idea statements with four male adolescents from a secure juvenile corrections facility. Participants were 16 to 18 years of age.…”

Reading Instruction for Students with Emotional Disturbance: A Mixed-Methods Investigation

“…Teacher supported text reading was infrequently observed in general education classrooms and day school core instruction, as was partner reading. Teachers also infrequently provided explicit instruction in reading comprehension strategies and repeated reading instruction, which are effective at improving comprehension and fluency, respectively (McKenna & Bettini, 2018; Swanson, 1999; Wexler, Reed, Barton, Mitchell, & Clancy, 2018). In sum, reading data from this sample of students suggests a need for collaborative and sustained efforts to improve the quality of reading instruction and student ability to access it.…”

Supporting Main Idea Identification and Text Summarization in Middle School Co-Taught Classes

“…Reading comprehension interventions that include peer-mediated practice have had positive effects for students with reading difficulties at the secondary level (Wexler et al, 2015). Because of these benefits, we adapted and integrated a peer-mediated strategy, associate gist (Wexler et al, 2018), into the CALI instructional framework to help students improve the accuracy of their gist statements. Associate gist is a natural fit for the co-taught setting because both teachers can work together to model the peer-mediated strategy.…”

“…The CALI (Content Area Literacy Instruction) instructional framework (see the Wexler introduction to this special issue) includes two practices that middle school students in co-taught classes can use to identify main ideas and prepare to summarize texts: get the gist (Vaughn et al, 2011) and associate gist (Wexler et al, 2018). Independently, students use a previously developed evidence-based practice, get the gist, to identify the main idea of a section of text.…”