Using increased reading mileage to facilitate skills transfer across contexts

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The school

The REP programme is a one-to-one community mentoring programme run in an urban, multi- cultural secondary school. The co-educational, decile three school has a growing role of 808 students, having undergone significant changes in recent years. In its 2009 report, the Education Review Office Te Tari Arotake Matauranga (ERO) describes these changes as being a transformation effective in achieving a settled, supportive and positive school climate (ERO, 2009).1 In addition, the 2012 ERO report describes students as highly engaged and making good progress with their learning (ERO, 2012).2 The development of the REP programme has been one of a number of programmes targeted at achieving this change, which has included the implementation of restorative pastoral care, a whanau organisation of classes and a Pathways guidance programme. There was an increase in the school s achievement of NCEA Level 1 literacy requirements in 2008, however achievement remained below decile and national levels. In the same year, Year 9 reading achievement improved but was still below the national mean at the end of the year, and Year 10 reading achievement improved considerably and matched the national mean at the end of the year.

Conceptions of adolescent literacy

Research into the challenges of adolescent literacy distinguishes between the processes of decoding and comprehension, and as with the REP programme, is generally focused on the issues presented by more complex comprehension challenges. Whilst most low-progress adolescents understand the basic rules of decoding, they lack the fluency necessary to focus on the act of making meaning of text (Deshler, Palincsar, Biancarosa & Nair, 2007). This is borne out in Deshler et al s (2007) discussion of high school students comprehension, in which they state that most high school students read with literal comprehension, a minority of 46% being able to make simple inferences and only 8% able to make more complex inferences. Difficulties with decoding and accuracy can slow students reading to the point where comprehension is affected and in this way disfluency can be both a cause and effect of reading difficulties. Snow and Sweet (2003) concur, stating fluency is both an antecedent to and a consequence of comprehension (p.5). As such, automatising reading and freeing up the students attention is essential to achieving comprehension.

Aligning programmes of instruction and student need

Students involved in tutoring as tutees, may be divided into three groups (Wasik, 1998): those who make very good progress and read at grade level, those who make some progress but remain below grade expectations and those who make virtually no progress. Wasik argues that those students making most progress in tutoring were those at moderate risk of failure and therefore tutoring is most effective when students at moderate risk of literacy failure are selected to participate. The converse of this position is to focus on the multifaceted nature of adolescent literacy failure, and in doing so acknowledge that the efficacy of any one programme of instruction is limited. Therefore any programme should be selected and developed based on specific student profiles and not general assumptions (Buly & Valencia, 2002). Allington (2006) argues against one size fits all intervention designs, stating that to be effective intervention designs must vary based on reader needs . In order to achieve this necessary alignment of instructional programmes and student need, teachers must undertake diagnostic studies of older poor readers prior to beginning an intervention (p.93). In this way, the needs of the student, whatever their risk of failure, take precedence and selection is applied to the instructional approach adopted rather than the student.

Length and frequency of tutoring

The length of tutoring has been shown to be a factor in the effect of an intervention. The benefit of extended periods of tutoring is identified in a range of literature. Fitzgerald (2004) argues that low-progress students are working on the same developmental trajectory as other students, but at a slower rate and that extended engagement takes this into account, allowing them to achieve expected levels. Furthermore, continued tutoring is critical as this allows skills to become automatised and form the foundation for further development. In her research with college 27 scholarship athletes Juel (1996) found that tutoring dyads with reduced frequency of engagement (29 sessions per annum) were much less successful than dyads that met more often. In studies that involve adult tutors of at least college age, Juel (1996), Invernizzi, Rosemary, Juel and Richards (1997) and Fitzgerald (2004), all suggest that tutoring beyond a year may increase success.

Table of Contents :

• Abstract
• Acknowledgements
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Programme Description
  • The school
  • History of the Reading Enrichment Programme
  • Programme format
• 3. Literature Review
  • Purpose
  • Adolescent literacy
  • The challenges of literacy in adolescence
  • Adolescent literacy and transition
  • Conceptions of adolescent literacy
  • Instructional approaches that address the challenges of adolescent literacy
  • The need for acceleration
  • Tutoring
  • Theory
    • Ecological model
    • Reading apprenticeship
    • Legitimate peripheral participation
  • Implications for practice
    • Training
    • Aligning programmes of instruction and student need
    • Length and frequency of tutoring
    • Social affective factors
  • Key aspectsof programme structure
• 4. Methodology
  • Foundational theory: Extending a mixed methods approach
  • Participants
  • Instruments
  • Documentation
  • asTTle data
  • Questionnaire
  • Observations
  • Focus group interviews
  • Attendance data
  • Analytical tools
  • Reliability and validity
  • Ethics
  • Limitations
• 5. Findings
• 6. DISCUSSION
  • Atheoretical framework for evaluating success
  • Key aspects of the REP programme
  • Achievement gains
  • Modelling affective outcomes
  • Elementsof effective tutoring
    • Modelling and scaffolding of effective reading strategies
    • Using increased reading mileage to facilitate skills transfer across contexts
  • Effective vocabulary learning
  • Implementing effective tutor training
  • Selection of students
    • Selecting resources that facilitate effective literacy learning
  • In conclusion
• 7. Conclusion
  • Essential elements of REP tutoring
  • Implications of the research and recommendations
  • Pre- and post-intervention testing
  • Student selection and transition
  • Transfer of skills
  • Developing the reading log challenge
  • Limitations and further research
• References
  • Appendix A: Questionnaire
  • Appendix B: Observation template
  • Appendix C: Focus group interview schedule
  • Appendix D: Participant information sheets and consent forms

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Reading achievement at Year 9: Supporting progress through community tutoring