BACKGROUND: Students who have limited skills in decoding and comprehension and who lack motivation to read present difficulties for practitioners. Difficulties may be compounded when these students lack access to age-appropriate and interesting text and have lost the notion of reading as a process of obtaining meaning from print. AIMS: This research examined the effects of a modified reciprocal teaching intervention for readers with poor decoding skills and poor comprehension. Tape-assisted reciprocal teaching was used to help students with poor decoding skills develop cognitive and metacognitive strategies and improve their comprehension of high interest expository texts. METHODS: Two single-subject research design studies involving four groups of students were conducted. Study I involved one experimental group and Study II was a multiple baseline design involving three experimental groups. SAMPLE: Each experimental group comprised a heterogeneous mix of six students, three with poor decoding skills and three with adequate decoding skills, all of whom showed poor comprehension. RESULTS: As a result of the tape-assisted reciprocal teaching, the poor decoders demonstrated improved application of cognitive and metacognitive strategies and improved comprehension. These improvements were shown on both researcher-developed and standardised tests as well as on maintenance and transfer measures. The students with adequate decoding skills also showed improvements in comprehension. CONCLUSIONS: The success of the intervention for poor decoders suggests that tape assisted reciprocal teaching may be seen as a form of 'cognitive bootstrapping' to enable poor readers to escape the cycle of reading failure and engage more meaningfully in the process of reading.
BACKGROUND: Students who have limited skills in decoding and comprehension and who lack motivation to read present difficulties for practitioners. Difficulties may be compounded when these students lack access to age-appropriate and interesting text and have lost the notion of reading as a process of obtaining meaning from print. AIMS: This research examined the effects of a modified reciprocal teaching intervention for readers with poor decoding skills and poor comprehension. Tape-assisted reciprocal teaching was used to help students with poor decoding skills develop cognitive and metacognitive strategies and improve their comprehension of high interest expository texts. METHODS: Two single-subject research design studies involving four groups of students were conducted. Study I involved one experimental group and Study II was a multiple baseline design involving three experimental groups. SAMPLE: Each experimental group comprised a heterogeneous mix of six students, three with poor decoding skills and three with adequate decoding skills, all of whom showed poor comprehension. RESULTS: As a result of the tape-assisted reciprocal teaching, the poor decoders demonstrated improved application of cognitive and metacognitive strategies and improved comprehension. These improvements were shown on both researcher-developed and standardised tests as well as on maintenance and transfer measures. The students with adequate decoding skills also showed improvements in comprehension. CONCLUSIONS: The success of the intervention for poor decoders suggests that tape assisted reciprocal teaching may be seen as a form of 'cognitive bootstrapping' to enable poor readers to escape the cycle of reading failure and engage more meaningfully in the process of reading.
Authors: Binita D Singh; Dennis W Moore; Brett E Furlonger; Angelika Anderson; Margherita L Busacca; Derek L English Journal: J Autism Dev Disord Date: 2017-10