Professional Documents
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Article 3
Quantitative Research Template
12Step
1. CITATION:
Washburn, E. K., Joshi, R. M., & Cantrell, E. B. (2010). Are preservice teachers
prepared to teach struggling readers? Annals of Dyslexia, 6
1 (1), 2143.
doi:10.1007/s118810100040y
2. PURPOSE/GENERAL RATIONALE:
● Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine elementary school
preservice teachers’ knowledge of basic language constructs and their
perceptions and knowledge about dyslexia.
● How did authors make case for general importance ?
A report from National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate on 38% of
children in 4 th grade read at the proficient level. Additionally, 6% of school age
children qualify for special education with 80% receiving services specifically for
reading. Research has shown that all children benefit from explicit, systematic
and sequential instruction in the areas of 1. Phonemic awareness 2. Phonics 3.
Fluency 4. Vocabulary 5. Text comprehension strategies. Early intervention is
key in children’s later reading success. It has been suggested that teachers of
reading have the potential to prevent reading failure with effective instructions.
3. FIT AND SPECIFIC RATIONALE:
● How does this fit into existing research?
Dyslexia is neurobiological in origin , language based, and characterized by poor
phonological processing. Children may not outgrow Dyslexia but it is highly
treatable when they are identified early and receive systematic instruction.
Because of this researchers have proposed that teachers need an explicit
understanding of the constructs related to the English language. They need to
understand the phonological structure of words and it is vital that teachers have
an understanding of phoneme/grapheme correspondences. The English
language does not share the onetoone phoneme/grapheme correspondence
that other languages do. Having explicit knowledge can help move teachers
beyond the basic limitations of phonic instruction.
● How is that provenance used to make a specific case for the
investigation?
There is a growing body of evidence that teachers may not possess sufficient
and/or accurate knowledge to teach struggling readers. Findings indicate that
even though teachers may be literate, experienced, and educated in a university
setting they still may lack knowledge of basic language constructs and structure
that is needed to explicitly teach beginning readers as well as effectively assess
and remediate struggling readers. There is evidence that explicit instruction
whether at a university for preservice teachers or inservices for teachers can
increase teacher knowledge that may affect teacher instructional choices and
behaviors. Teacher preparation programs and teacher educator knowledge have
been examined. Some of the text books examined were not current with up to
date research involving reading.
4. PARTICIPANTS:
● Describe who was studied (# and characteristics)
91 Preservice teachers enrolled in a university in the Southwest USA. The
students were enrolled in a preparation program for early childhood to late
elementary education (K5). All but one of the participants was a females and
ages ranged from 2028 years. Because the participants were in preparation to
teach general education students they were not required to take any special
education course. They were required to take four literacy related courses in the
duration of the program: 1. An overview of the reading process, 2. Children’s
literature, 3. Reading assessment and problems, 4. Reading and language. The
PSTs were enrolled in a class designed to teach the structure of the English
language with a scientific approach to teaching reading. 32% had taken less
than two reading courses, 59% had two reading courses, 9% had three or more
reading classes. 78% of the OSTS had previously participated in or participating
in a weekly tutoring program working with elementary age readers who display
difficulty with decoding skills. Looking at preservice teachers’ knowledge of
basic language constructs, perceived teaching ability of typically developing
readers, struggling readers, phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle/phonics,
and vocabulary as well as knowledge about dyslexia.
● How were they selected
5. CONTEXT:
● Where did the study take place? University in the Southwest
● Describe important characteristics:
6. STEPS IN SEQUENCE:
● In order performed, what were the main procedural steps? Use flowchart
to diagram order/relationship:
A survey was designed to assess knowledge and skill of basic language
constructs was used. Survey was based on surveys and questionnaires used by
other researchers in the field. It had 39 items and was constructed to measure
teacher knowledge and skill about phonological awareness, phonics/alphabetic
principle, morphology, dyslexia and comprehension.
7. DATA:
● What constituted data (test scores, questionnaire responses, frequency
counts):
Survey: Item 1 used to attain demographic info. Such as number of reading
classes taken prior to the survey and tutoring experience. Item 29 were used to
ask PSTs to rate their perceived teaching ability of typically developing readers,
struggling readers, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary,
comprehension, and children’s literature, however teacher ratings of fluency,
comprehension, and children’s literature were not used in this study. Items of
knowledge were multiple choice and items of skill were both multiple choice and
short answer. To measure the PST’s knowledge of perceptions of the nature of
dyslexia, one item divided into five subitems was chosen from a form 25item
survey used in previous dyslexia knowledge studies. Used the likert scale.
● How was it collected?
Only 28 items were used for analysis in the present study and maximum of 62
points possible.
● What was the role of the investigator in the process?
Researcher asked two instructors in the teacher preparation program
responsible for teaching the last reading course if their students could be asked
to volunteer and participate in the study. Both agreed and proper authorization
for the study was acquired. Precaution was taken to make sure answering
sharing did not occur. There was no time limit, participants completed surveys
in approximately 30 minutes. Items were scored either right or wrong and
divided into four sub groupings: phonological awareness items, phonemic
awareness items, phonics items and morphological items. Responses to
dyslexia items were coded one through four starting with definitely false through
definitely true.
8. ANALYSIS:
● What form of data analysis was used?
Both descriptive and inferential statistical tests using SPSS were computer to fully
answer all research questions.
● What specific question(s) was it designed to answer?
First, PST’s perceived teaching ability associated with teaching all kinds of readers (with
typically developing and struggling readers) as well as various constructs related to research
based reading instruction for struggling readers (phonemic awareness, phonics, and
vocabulary) were examined.
● What statistical operations and computer programs were employed?
Descriptive and inferential statistical test using SPSS
Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) using structural equation model (SEM) by way of
AMOS statistical software.
9. RESULTS:
● What did the author’s identify as the primary results (products/findings
produced by the analysis of data)?
Perceived teaching ability – the majority of the PST’s indicated “moderate” as
their perceived teaching ability for the four out five areas, however vocabulary
was a perceived area of strength and was the only area in which one PST
designated “expert” as perceived teaching ability. Before
Knowledge and skills cores revealed strengths in the area of phonological
awareness, specifically syllable counting (91%), however on 58% were able to
identify correct definition of phonological awareness and only 59% were able to
identify the correct definition of phonemic awareness. The overall phonics score
was low. Few had explicit knowledge of terminology associated with phonics
instruction as well knowledge of phonics principles that can help guide
systematic decoding instruction.
The findings from the dyslexia subitems indicate that while PSTs do have some
accurate knowledge about dyslexia; popular myths about dyslexia prevail and
consequently could persist during their years of classroom teaching.
PSTs on average and in most areas perceived their teaching ability to be greater
than their actual ability.
Neither tutoring experience nor number of reading course significantly affected
PST scores in any of the five areas.
10. CONCLUSIONS:
● What did the author(s) assert about how the results in #9 responded to the
purpose established in #2?
Results indicate that PSTs on average lack knowledge about several important
constructs needed to teach struggling readers. Their perceived ability to teach
was scored as moderate and did not match their knowledge. PST knowledge of
the subgroupings of basic language constructs was varied and were most
successful with items that required basic and implicit knowledge and skill. Items
related to morphology were the most challenging. Terminology and concepts
related to reading instruction were varied.
● How did the events and experiences of the entire study contribute to that
conclusion?
11. CAUTIONS:
● What cautions does the author raise about the study itself and/or
interpreting the results?
Sample technique was limited and out of convenience and not done
systematically as to represent a range of all PSTs in universitybased preparation
programs. Future research could be done to obtain a more representative
sample. Data was collected in a face to face manner which could result in
desirability bias.
● Personal reservations?
Small sample size, some students had not completed reading courses,
some had more than others, some had tutored or were tutoring.
12. DISCUSSION:
● What interesting facts or ideas did you learn from the report?
Clear that PSTs likely lack knowledge o basic language constructs needed to teach
struggling readers. It is clear that they did not receive accurate information on
dyslexia.
● Things of value:
○ Results: Results of survey the findings from this study have strong
implications for prepare future teachers for teaching children who have
reading difficulties.
○ Research designs: Survey and statistical analysis
○ References:
Moat
○ Instruments:
Survey
○ History
PST lack knowledge and understanding of dyslexia
○ Useful arguments:
It is important for educators involved in preparation of PSTs to understand that content
knowledge learned in preservice preparation programs can play a support role in
implementation of curriculum and assessments.
○ Personal inspiration:
Originally I was interested in only special education prep programs, but lack of
knowledge of explicit reading practices is a problem for both sets of professionals.