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Comparative effectiveness of three literacy teaching approaches for young children with reading difficulties

UTAS Home › Faculty of Education › Faculty of Education › Research › Staff research › Faculty research projects  › Comparative effectiveness of three literacy teaching approaches for young children with reading difficulties

ARC discovery project: DP0666577 

Up to 15% of Australian children fail national benchmark tests in reading. Difficulty in early reading is highly correlated with later school failure. This research shifts the literacy debate away from the simplistic argument about whole language versus decoding, to a more sophisticated and as yet unresolved question as to the optimum approach and combination of approaches to facilitate children's literacy learning, particularly for children with early reading difficulties. The three approaches under investigation are language (form, syntax and semantic knowledge), decoding (phonological and alphabetic knowledge), and metacognition (planning and reflection), and the issues of sequence, intensity, and duration

The evidence is that both the language and the phonological programs produced similar results on the reading/literacy outcome measures at the end of year 1 on the word recognition and spelling tests.  These children also out performed the children who only received the control intervention. Family background was a significant factor in terms of children's language and literacy development and social behaviour.

The finding of this study have practical educational implications as well as policy and research implications.

Selected research outcomes to date:

Hay, I., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (2009). Competencies that underpin children’s transition into early literacy. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 32, 148-162.

Hay, I., Elias, G., Fielding-Barnsley, R., Homel, R., & Frieberg, K. (2007). Language delays, reading delays and learning difficulties: Interactive elements requiring multidimensional programming, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 40, 400-409.

Hay, I., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (2007). Facilitating children’s emergent literacy using home shared reading: A comparison of two literacy models. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 3, 191-202.

Contacts:

Professor Ian Hay

Telephone: +61 3 6324 3166

Email: Ian.Hay@utas.edu.au

Associate Professor Ruth Fielding-Barnsley

Telephone +61 3 6324 3712

Email: Ruth.Barnsley@utas.edu.au

Professor Adrian Ashman (UQ)