The effects of daily reading opportunities and teacher experience on adolescents with moderate to severe intellectual disability

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  • March 22, 2019
Creator
  • Hatch, Penelope
    • Affiliation: School of Medicine, Department of Allied Health Sciences, Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences
Abstract
  • The purpose of this study was examine the effect of providing daily access to a wide variety of age and ability appropriate texts to adolescents with moderate to severe intellectual disability. Forty-three adolescents were assigned to 2 groups based on their teachers' exposure to 40 comprehensive literacy lessons used in a previous study. Literacy gains were measured on an assessment of emergent literacy skills. A standardized reading measure was also used for 5 of the students who read at an early conventional reading level. Additionally, the number of different books that students read throughout the intervention was tracked using a student book log and compared to performance on a proxy measure of wide reading, a title recognition test. Paired samples t-tests yielded statistically significant gains on the posttest performance of emergent literacy skills for all students and on a standardized reading assessment for the 5 students who read at an early conventional level. To further examine student performance between the 2 groups, effect sizes were calculated. Results indicated that while both groups achieved a small effect, students whose teachers had exposure to the comprehensive literacy lessons received nearly twice the effect (d = .36) as students whose teachers had not been exposed to the literacy lessons (d = .19). Furthermore, when students read at an early conventional level and were taught by teachers who had been exposed to the comprehensive literacy lessons, the effect of the intervention was even greater (d = .47). With regard to the number of different books that students read, results from a simple regression indicated that this variable was not predictive of student performance on the emergent literacy measure nor was it significantly correlated with performance on the title recognition test. Results of this study suggested that adolescents with moderate to severe intellectual disability benefit from daily access to age and ability appropriate books. When combined with instruction provided by teachers who had experience with comprehensive literacy instruction, the effect was even stronger. Furthermore, students who entered the intervention with early conventional reading skills made the greatest gains.
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  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Erickson, Karen A.
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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  • Open access
Date uploaded
  • October 11, 2010

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