Daphne Greenberg

Modeling Child-Based Theoretical Reading Constructs With Struggling Adult Readers

This study examined whether measurement constructs behind reading-related tests for struggling adult readers are similar to what is known about measurement constructs for children. The sample included 371 adults reading between the third-and fifth-grade levels, including 127 men and 153 English speakers of other languages. Using measures of skills and subskills, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to test child-based theoretical measurement models of reading: an achievement model of reading skills, a core deficit model of reading subskills, and an integrated model containing achievement and deficit variables. Although the findings present the best measurement models, the contribution of this article is the description of the difficulties encountered when applying child-based assumptions to developing measurement models for struggling adult readers.

A Randomized Control Study of Instructional Approaches for Struggling Adult Readers

Abstract This study measured the effectiveness of various instructional approaches on the reading outcomes of 198 adults who read single words at the 3.0 through 5.9 grade equivalency levels. The students were randomly assigned to one of the following interventions: Decoding and Fluency; Decoding, Comprehension, and Fluency; Decoding, Comprehension, Fluency, and Extensive Reading; Extensive Reading; and a Control/Comparison approach. The Control/Comparison approach employed a curriculum common to community-based adult literacy programs, and the Extensive Reading approach focused on wide exposure to literature. The Fluency component was a guided repeated oral reading approach, and the Decoding/Comprehension components were SRA/McGraw-Hill Direct Instruction Corrective Reading Programs. Results indicated continued weaknesses in and poor integration of participants’ skills. Although students made significant gains independent of reading instruction group, all improvements were associated with small effect sizes. When reading instruction group was considered, only one significant finding was detected, with the Comparison/Control group, the Decoding and Fluency group, and the Decoding, Comprehension, Extensive Reading, and Fluency group showing stronger word attack outcomes than the Extensive Reading group.

Helping struggling writers succeed: A self-regulated strategy instruction program

While writers workshop provides a nurturing environment for many students, others struggle with the independence it gives. This may be due to the difficulty of coordinating the cognitive and self-regulatory demands of the writing process. Self-regulation refers to thoughts, feelings, and actions that individuals use to attain personal goals. Because of the independent nature of writing, an adequate level of self-regulation is required to move through the process. Teaching self-regulatory strategies within the context of writing may enable students to develop and execute a plan of action independently, resulting in more independent writing. The Self-Regulated Strategy Development model of instruction is one such strategy. In order to examine its impact, the model was used to teach a summary writing strategy to a struggling sixth grader. Following instruction, the student exhibited more confidence in her writing abilities, a greater belief in the benefits of strategy use, and the ability to tackle the writing task more independently.

Measuring adult literacy students’ reading skills using the Gray Oral Reading Test

There are not enough reading tests standardized on adults who have very low literacy skills, and therefore tests standardized on children are frequently administered. This study addressed the complexities and problems of using a test normed on children to measure the reading comprehension skills of 193 adults who read at approximately third through fifth grade reading grade equivalency levels. Findings are reported from an analysis of the administration of Form A of the Gray Oral Reading Tests—Fourth Edition (Wiederholt & Bryant, 2001a, b). Results indicated that educators and researchers should be very cautious when interpreting test results of adults who have difficulty reading when children’s norm-referenced tests are administered.

Examining Associations between Health Information Seeking Behavior and Adult Education Status in the U.S.: An Analysis of the 2012 PIAAC Data.

This paper presents data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies with a focus on the interrelationships among health information seeking behavior (HISB), and health status or use of preventive health measures for U.S. adults both with and without a high school diploma. Key results of ordinal and binary logistic regression analyses indicated that, after controlling for demographic factors, (1) adults with a high school diploma use more text-based health information sources while adults without a high school diploma use more oral sources, (2) using the Internet as a source of health information is more strongly related to reporting excellent/very good health status than having a high school diploma, (3) those without a high school diploma who use the Internet report the largest increase in health status over any other health information source, and (4) for those with learning disability or vision problem, a high facility in reading English is an important predictor of whether the Internet is used as a health information source. The Internet appears to play a key role in both enhancing health status and enabling use of preventive measures for those with and without a high school diploma; although, individuals without a high school diploma who use the Internet for health information derive substantial benefit in health status.

A Comparison of Standardized Spelling Assessments: Do They Measure Similar Orthographic Qualities?:

Many students, with and without learning disabilities, have been found to increase their reading skills through the use of data-informed individualized reading intervention; however, less is known about how to use assessments to individualize spelling intervention. Standardized spelling tests commonly assess spelling by asking students to spell the “whole word correctly” from a list of words. While these tests are reliable and valid, the orthographic qualities of each word item have never been examined. This study investigated which orthographic qualities standardized spelling tests measure and whether they measure the same knowledge equally. Five standardized tests and their alternate forms (when available) were compared according to the frequency of the number of syllables, the syllable types, the consonant graphemes types, and the vowel types represented. Results indicated that tests vary in their measurement of orthographic knowledge. These findings provide an initial understanding of the types of information these assessments provide that could inform instruction as well as diagnose learning disabilities. Implications and future directions are discussed with regard to students with learning disabilities.

Demographic Trends and Advocacy Experiences of Gay–Straight Alliance Advisors

Using an ecological model, the individual-, school-, and sociocultural-level characteristics that affect gay–straight alliance (GSA) advisors were examined in the current study. The formation of GSAs has been one way that schools have sought to improve the school climate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth. Limited information is available about the demographics and experiences of GSA advisors who lead these clubs. GSA advisors are on the front line of LGBT advocacy in schools. The purpose of this study is to add to the minimal literature on GSA advisors by describing the demographics and the experiences of the largest known sample of GSA advisors in the research literature. In the current study, 262 GSA advisors provided information through a 67-item survey about their demographic characteristics and their experiences advocating for LGBT youth in schools. The results suggested this sample of advisors was a demographically homogenous group. Exploratory factor analysis identified two dimensions (i.e., barriers, facilitators) by which the advisors appeared to define their experiences when advocating for LGBT youth. These two factors accounted for 47.98% of the variance in the advisors’ experiences. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.

Characteristics of Executive Functioning in a Small Sample of Children With Tourette Syndrome.

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a disorder that involves at least one vocal tic and two or more motor tics; however, associated symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and attention-deficit disorder or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are common. Many children with TS exhibit educational difficulties and one possible explanation may be deficits in executive functioning. The focus of this study was to look at the severity of symptoms often associated with TS (tics and OCD and ADHD symptoms) and its potential relationship with the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) Parent Form in 11 children diagnosed with TS aged 8 to 14 years old. The parent of the child completed the BRIEF along with symptom measures evaluating tics, OCD behaviors, and ADHD symptoms. Despite relatively low mean scores on the symptom measures and just a few children exhibiting clinically significant scores on the BRIEF indexes, at least half the children exhibited abnormal scores on the Working Memory, Inhibit, and Shift subscales of the BRIEF. Varying patterns of relationships were found on the BRIEF subscales for each symptom severity scale. Results suggest that the BRIEF may be useful in determining the specific areas of difficulty in a population with variable symptomatology.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Models of Reading Component Skills in Low-Literate Adults

Models of reading component skills and related cognitive abilities have been studied extensively with school-age students, but relatively few studies have investigated the reading skills of adults with low literacy participating in adult literacy and adult basic and secondary education programs. Substantial proportions of such adults may have learning disabilities, and many self-report histories of learning disabilities. In addition, prior investigations (Bruck, 1992; Greenberg, Ehri, & Perin, 1997, 2002; Sabatini, 2002), as well as the studies included in this special issue of the Journal of Lea rning Disabilities, have found problems with phonological awareness and decoding that are typical of individuals with reading disabilities. The situation is complicated by the fact that the adult education population also includes substantial numbers of students whose native language is not English, varying across regions of the country in number and country of origin. Patterns of reading and related skills of native and nonnative speakers differ even when considering only individuals who are relatively fluent in conversational English (e.g., Davidson & Strucker, 2002). One cannot assume that models of reading skills developed for children will apply to adults with similar overall reading levels. Relationships among component skills and abilities may vary depending on age, reading skills, and specific disabilities. In addition, measures intended to assess a particular construct may function differently for adults with different experience and language backgrounds. This special issue draws on research conducted by four projects on adult literacy funded jointly by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute for Literacy, and the U.S. Department of Education Office of Vocational and Adult Education. In addition to conducting experimental studies of instruction in reading, these projects have conducted analyses to model the reading performance of the adult learners. The samples and approaches to modeling differed somewhat across projects. Three of the projects focused on adults reading at the intermediate level (roughly grade levels 2–7), and one project included adults from all six levels of adult basic and secondary education (grade levels 1–high school). All participants spoke sufficient English to be placed in English-language reading classes, but many were not native speakers. The studies generally included measures of reading components as well as varying measures of phonological skills, spelling, oral language, and naming speed. The results are relevant to important questions about reliability and validity of measurement, relationships among skills, and differences between native and nonnative speakers. The findings have both theoretical importance and practical implications. This issue begins with an introductory article by Miller, McCardle, and Hernandez that sets the context by summarizing data on the extent of adult literacy needs—describing federal research efforts aimed at a better understanding of the problem and instructional solutions—and discussing the needs for continued research. In the first of the studies reported, MacArthur, Konold, Glutting, and Alamprese investigated the reliability and construct validity of measures of reading component skills with adult basic education (ABE) learners, including both native and nonnative English speakers. They found a model that fit both native and nonnative populations equally well without modification, showing that the tests measure the same constructs with the same accuracy for both groups. In the next article, Sabatini, Sawaki, Shore, and Scarborough examine the interrelationships among latent factors of the simple view model of reading comprehension (word recognition and language comprehension) and hypothesized additional factors (vocabulary and reading fluency) in a sample of ABE learners. Their analysis found that the simple view adequately accounted for variation in reading comprehension. The next study, by Nanda, Greenberg, and Morris, examined whether measurement constructs behind reading-related tests for struggling adult readers are similar to what is known about measurement constructs for children. Their main conclusions pertain to difficulties encountered in applying child-based assumptions to developing measurement models for struggling adult

You Are (Not) Welcome Here The Climate for LGBT Students in an Adult Literacy Program

Although prior research has indicated a relationship between educational climate and educational outcomes, there is a lack of research in this area in adult literacy programs. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to assess the actual and perceived educational climate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual (LGBT) students at an adult literacy program. Interview data from four heterosexual students, five LGBT students, and three heterosexual teachers were thematically analyzed. Students perceived the educational climate to be one of both comfort and discomfort, and teachers perceived it to be one of only discomfort for LGBT students. Sources of discomfort were twofold: implicit through lack of acceptance and silencing in the curricula, and explicit through actual and perceived harassment. Multiple implications for adult literacy educators and researchers are discussed.