Understanding Effective Instruction: The Role of Content in First Grade Reading Instruction.

Literacy Instruction;Elementary Education;Child Development;Classroom Instruction Quality;Education;Psychology;Social Sciences;Education & Psychology

Guthrie, Stephanie J.Shah, Priti R. ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Literacy Instruction;    Elementary Education;    Child Development;    Classroom Instruction Quality;    Education;    Psychology;    Social Sciences;    Education & Psychology;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/102460/stephjg_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

The present study focused on a currently central issue in educational science, namely how to conceptualize and measure effective classroom instruction. Although several observational methods, which capture aspects of the classroom related to students’ cognitive development, are available for researchers and school personnel to implement in studies of instructional quality, this study explored relations between two established classroom observation measures (CLASS and Pathways/ISI), that have a strong evidence base on growth of reading skills in first-grade students. Further, the study expanded the focus to include an additional component (content difficulty) of instruction that has been separately linked to students’ development.The 233 students enrolled in this study came from 17 different first grade classrooms across six schools. Results of models using the amount of time spent in each of two Pathways/ISI domains (teacher-managed code-focused instruction and child-managed meaning-focused instruction) showed that the more time children spent in each of those two domains was significantly related to decoding and comprehension skills. However, comparing the distance from recommendation of naturally occurring instruction in these same domains found no significant links. Comparing across classroom observation measures, correlational evidence indicated that the Pathways/ISI observation codes and the CLASS scores for each classroom were unrelated, which provides support for the hypothesis that these two measures are independent. The addition of CLASS scores into these models showed that CLASS scores were significantly predictive of students’ outcome scores in decoding and comprehension. In general, the difficulty or readability of texts students interacted with was not linked with their reading outcomes when added to a model of classroom instruction; however, interacting with books was a significant predictor of higher reading achievement. The alignment between book difficulty level and students’ reading achievement showed a significant linear relation in the spring, but not in the fall. At both time points students were, on average, interacting with books within half a grade level of their current reading skills. A greater degree of challenge (e.g., students who read books leveled above their current reading ability) was significantly related to greater gains in student achievement over the school year.