Gina Biancarosa

ASSESSING THE VALUE-ADDED EFFECTS OF LITERACY COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ON STUDENT LEARNING

This article reports on a 4-year longitudinal study of the effects of Literacy Collaborative (LC), a school-wide reform model that relies primarily on the one-on-one coaching of teachers as a lever for improving student literacy learning. Kindergarten through second-grade students in 17 schools were assessed twice annually with DIBELS and Terra Nova. Scores from the studys first year, before coaching began, offered a baseline for assessing the value added to student learning over the following 3 years. A hierarchical, crossed-level, value-added-effects model compared student literacy learning over 3 years of LC program implementation against observed growth under baseline conditions. Results demonstrated increasing improvements in student literacy learning during LC implementation (standard effect sizes of .22, .37, and .43 in years 1, 2, and 3, respectively), and the benefits persisted through subsequent summers. Findings warrant a claim of substantial effects on student learning for the LC coaching model.

Evidence for the Importance of Academic Word Knowledge for the Academic Achievement of Diverse Middle School Students

Despite the current theoretical momentum for the importance of academic English and the acknowledgment that academic materials increase in complexity through the grades, little empirical attention has been devoted to the role of academic English in academic achievement. This study examined the amount of variance in academic achievement explained by academic word knowledge for diverse middle school students. A linguistically and socioeconomically diverse sample of grade 7 and 8 students (N = 339) was administered measures of overall breadth of vocabulary knowledge and general (i.e., cross-discipline) academic word knowledge, and the explanation of variance in standardized academic achievement tests across 4 disciplines was explored. For the entire sample, knowledge of general academic words explained a considerable and significant amount of variance in academic achievement across 4 disciplines. Findings lend empirical support to current calls for providing academic language support for early adolescents from non-native English speaking and low-socioeconomic backgrounds.

Technology Tools to Support Reading in the Digital Age

Summary : Advances in digital technologies are dramatically altering the texts and tools available to teachers and students. These technological advances have created excitement among many for their potential to be used as instructional tools for literacy education. Yet with the promise of these advances come issues that can exacerbate the literacy challenges identified in the other articles in this issue. In this article Gina Biancarosa and Gina Griffiths characterize how literacy demands have changed in the digital age and how challenges identified in other articles in the issue intersect with these new demands. Rather than seeing technology as something to be fit into an already crowded education agenda, Biancarosa and Griffiths argue that technology can be conceptualized as affording tools that teachers can deploy in their quest to create young readers who possess the higher levels of literacy skills and background knowledge demanded by today’s information-based society. Biancarosa and Griffiths draw on research to highlight some of the ways technology has been used to build the skills and knowledge needed both by children who are learning to read and by those who have progressed to reading to learn. In their review of the research, Biancarosa and Griffiths focus on the hardware and software used to display and interface with digital text, or what they term e-reading technology. Drawing on studies of e-reading technology and computer technology more broadly, they also reflect on the very real, practical challenges to optimal use of e-reading technology. The authors conclude by presenting four recommendations to help schools and school systems meet some of the challenges that come with investing in e-reading technology: use only technologies that support Universal Design for Learning; choose evidence-based tools; provide technology users with systemic supports; and capitalize on the data capacities and volume of information that technology provides.

Roles of Morphological Awareness in the Reading Comprehension of Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Learners: Exploring Partial Mediation by Vocabulary and Reading Fluency.

This study investigated the direct and indirect roles of morphological awareness reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking language minority learners reading in English. Multivariate path analysis was used to investigate the unique contribution of derivational morphological awareness to reading comprehension as well as its indirect contributions via three hypothesized mediators for students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade (N = 101). Results indicated a significant unique contribution of morphological awareness, controlling for phonemic decoding, listening comprehension, reading vocabulary, word reading fluency, and passage reading fluency. Results further indicated significant indirect contributions of morphological awareness via reading vocabulary and passage fluency, but not via word reading fluency. Findings suggest that morphological awareness may play multiple important roles in second-language reading comprehension.

In search of average growth: Describing within-year oral reading fluency growth across Grades 1–8☆☆☆

Measures of oral reading fluency (ORF) are perhaps the most often used assessment to monitor student progress as part of a response to intervention (RTI) model. Rates of growth in research and aim lines in practice are used to characterize student growth; in either case, growth is generally defined as linear, increasing at a constant rate. Recent research suggests ORF growth follows a nonlinear trajectory, but limitations related to the datasets used in such studies, composed of only three testing occasions, curtails their ability to examine the true functional form of ORF growth. The purpose of this study was to model within-year ORF growth using up to eight testing occasions for 1448 students in Grades 1 to 8 to assess (a) the average growth trajectory for within-year ORF growth, (b) whether students vary significantly in within-year ORF growth, and (c) the extent to which findings are consistent across grades. Results demonstrated that for Grades 1 to 7, a quadratic growth model fit better than either linear or cubic growth models, and for Grade 8, there was no substantial, stable growth. Findings suggest that the expectation for linear growth currently used in practice may be unrealistic.

Reading Between the Minds: The Use of Stereotypes in Empathic Accuracy

An ideal empathizer may attend to another person’s behavior in order to understand that person, but it is also possible that accurately understanding other people involves top-down strategies. We hypothesized that perceivers draw on stereotypes to infer other people’s thoughts and that stereotype use increases perceivers’ accuracy. In this study, perceivers (N = 161) inferred the thoughts of multiple targets. Inferences consistent with stereotypes for the targets’ group (new mothers) more accurately captured targets’ thoughts, particularly when actual thought content was also stereotypic. We also decomposed variance in empathic accuracy into thought, target, and perceiver variance. Although past research has frequently focused on variance between perceivers or targets (which assumes individual differences in the ability to understand other people or be understood, respectively), the current study showed that the most substantial variance was found within targets because of differences among thoughts.

Advanced (Measurement) Applications of Curriculum-Based Measurement in Reading

The purpose of this article is to provide a commentary on the current state of several measurement issues pertaining to curriculum-based measures of reading (R-CBM1). We begin by providing an overview of the utility of R-CBM, followed by a presentation of five specific measurements considerations: (a) the reliability of R-CBM oral reading fluency (ORF), (b) issues pertaining to form effects, (c) the generalizability of scores from R-CBM, (d) measurement error, and (e) linearity of growth in R-CBM. We then conclude with a presentation of the purpose for this issue and broadly introduce the articles in the special issue. Because ORF is one of the most common measures of R-CBM, much of the review is focused on this particular type of assessment; however, the issues presented extend to other assessments of R-CBM.

Coordinating Instructional Supports to Accelerate At-Risk First-Grade Readers' Performance

The most common approach to implementing Response to Intervention (RTI) is the use of the 3-tier model. Many districts claim to be implementing this approach, but others question the quality and actuality of this in practice. This study examined implementation of multitiered models in 2 school districts that had multiple years of experience. Specifically, we examined the nature of general education instruction, use of screening and progress-monitoring methods, and implementation of supplemental instructional supports. Many differences were identified in instructional delivery (e.g., programs, content, specificity) within and across schools as well as across tiers of support, which may negatively affect learning. In the second year of the project, we examined the effect of coordinating instructional supports across tiers of support for at-risk first graders. Results provide support for coordinating instruction (i.e., programs, delivery, scheduling) across tiers of support to accelerate reading development, which has implications for effective RTI implementation.

Measurement properties of dibels oral reading fluency in grade 2: Implications for equating studies

Lack of psychometric equivalence of oral reading fluency (ORF) passages used within a grade for screening and progress monitoring has recently become an issue with calls for the use of equating methods to ensure equivalence. To investigate the nature of the nonequivalence and to guide the choice of equating method to correct for nonequivalence, the authors fit linear and nonlinear confirmatory factor analytic measurement models to Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) second-grade ORF passages routinely used for spring testing. They found evidence of nonlinear relations among passage scores that indicated equipercentile equating would be the best choice of equating method compared with mean or linear equating. The standard error of equating (SEE) with a sample of 600 participants was acceptable and less then two correct words per minute for equated scores from 0 to 150, which covers 95% and the useful range of scores. Consistent with the small SEE, the equating table also successfully removed all form differences in an independent sample of second graders. Given the widespread adoption of DIBELS in thousands of schools serving millions of students, equating all passages within a grade would substantially improve the quality of the tool and dramatically lower the assessment burden on school personnel.

Evaluation of use of reading comprehension strategies to improve reading comprehension of adult college students with acquired brain injury

Adults with mild to moderate acquired brain injury (ABI) often pursue post-secondary or professional education after their injuries in order to enter or re-enter the job market. An increasing number of these adults report problems with reading-to-learn. The problem is particularly concerning given the growing population of adult survivors of ABI. Despite the rising need, empirical evaluation of reading comprehension interventions for adults with ABI is scarce. This study used a within-subject design to evaluate whether adult college students with ABI with no more than moderate cognitive impairments benefited from using reading comprehension strategies to improve comprehension of expository text. Integrating empirical support from the cognitive rehabilitation and special education literature, the researchers designed a multi-component reading comprehension strategy package. Participants read chapters from an introductory-level college anthropology textbook in two different conditions: strategy and no-strategy. The results indicated that reading comprehension strategy use was associated with recall of more correct information units in immediate and delayed free recall tasks; more efficient recall in the delayed free recall task; and increased accuracy recognising statements from a sentence verification task designed to reflect the local and global coherence of the text. The findings support further research into using reading comprehension strategies as an intervention approach for the adult ABI population. Future research needs include identifying how to match particular reading comprehension strategies to individuals, examining whether reading comprehension performance improves further through the incorporation of systematic training, and evaluating texts from a range of disciplines and genres.