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What counts as progress in developing adults’ reading

skills?

Sue PartridgeSPEC Ltd.and founder of

The background to my research

30 years involvement in adult literacy 20 years experience in adult dyslexia

diagnosis and support A mission to help teachers increase the

range of strategies they use to support adults’ reading in a more effective way

The final stages of a doctorate in education with the Open University

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My research questions Q1. What counts as an improvement in reading skills for adults?

Q2. What are the practical and ethical issues in measuring improvements in reading skills ?

Q3. How far do Kruidenier’s (2002) 4 components of reading (alphabetic, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension), elucidate the characteristics of adults’ reading skills and the improvements they can make ?

Q4. How far do individual differences impact on an adult reader’s capability to improve?

Q5. What are the features of good support for adults’ reading skills that most influence their improvement and how?

  Kruidenier, J. (2002) Research-based principles for adult basic education reading instruction, Portsmouth,

NH, National Institute for Literacy.

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Methodology

Mixed methodology case study with qualitative and quantitative analysis

Assess-intervene-reassess format with 10 adult learners in the main study

Co-researchers included skilled practitioners in the FE and AE sector

Learners ranged in skill levels from E1 to undergraduate level

Individual differences encompassed age, gender, ethnicity, dyslexic/non-dyslexic, educational history

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Interesting features

Assessment methodology Length of intervention Range of intervention tools Practical and ethical considerations Levels of detail – small sample size, but

richness of information

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Progress measures

Dependent variables: changes in speed, accuracy, comprehension, performance on WRAT 4 word recognition

Tutor and learner evaluations Detailed observations of what was

happening Reflections on policy and practice in the

sector

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Reading speed

Is faster better?

5/10 learners in my

study slowed down Three learners who slowed down

increased their reading accuracy score

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Reading accuracy

It depends on the level of the text and the text type...

Getting the right level of

readability in the text used for

assessment can have as much

of an influence as any gain in

skills Not quite a significant group

improvement (p= 0.18)

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WRAT 4 word recognition

What counts as a significant change? The group improvement came close to being

statistically significant (p= 0.07) Yet none of the 10 learners in my study

made an improvement in score that could be considered significant above and beyond test error.

A typical confidence interval spans 12 or 13 standard points (for 90% confidence).

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Reading comprehension

How do we measure this in a useful, reliable and valid way?

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Reading vocabulary

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The benefits of making vocabulary development a separate process prior to reading text

But no easy way to

measure progress

Vocabulary development

D

ictio

na

ry

Lexi

con

Profile analysis

Individual differences The power of observation and problem

solving to elucidate progress

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Dissemination and next steps

www.unravellingreading.org.uk Finalise the Ed D thesis A book to publicise some different

strategies for supporting adults’ reading skills

See also:

www.dyslexiapositive.org.uk

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