Worries about 'Literacy Lift-Off' Reading Recovery study...

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debbie
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Worries about 'Literacy Lift-Off' Reading Recovery study...

Post by debbie »

James Chapman and Jennifer Chew describe some of their worries about the 'Literacy Lift-Off' study:

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... p=554#p554
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Location: UK

Post by debbie »

Follow the link above to read the full details of concern, but James Chapman wrote this about the study:
Yes, I read that section of the article and was amazed. A number of the claims are simply false, or studies have been seriously mis-represented. The Center, Wheldall et al study did not conclude with a blanket support for RR. My recollection is that they found RR worked better for children who came from a code-oriented classroom, but overall RR kids did not do particularly well.

The Iversen & Tunmer (their mis-spelling) study, was conducted in Rhode Island where Sandra was contracted to train RR teachers (she was a RR teacher trainer in NZ at the time; long since parted ways). This study was based on her Masters thesis and compared a phonologically enhanced variation of RR with regular RR. She found that the enhanced approach worked just as well in shorter periods of time. The article did not conclude that RR was necessarily efficacious, but rather that the programme should be changed to include word-level decoding skills and strategies. The authors of the article also drew on the Iversen, Tunmer & Chapman article (based on Sandra's PhD done in a "diverse" and deprived part of Florida). Here, Sandra found that small group instruction worked as efficiently as 1:1, and was better with more attention to decoding skills. The article was hardly an endorsement of RR.

Reference to our 2001 study is reasonably accurate, though we didn't report effect sizes and although our study was based within a 3 year project, the RR kids showed no improvement as a result of being in the programme when compared to normally achieving or another group of poor readers. We tracked data points over 3 years to determine whether RR resulted in an "acceleration" effect, which is one of the stated goals of the programme. It didn't. We've been criticised for the nature of the research design, which is part of the research business, but the fact remains that there was no acceleration effect during or following RR for these children.

I'm not aware of studies that have found longer term effects (lasting effects) for RR. On the contrary, the paper I presented at the IARLD conference in Vancouver last month [July 2015] and shared with you and others, showed any positive effects from RR tend to wash out. The only lasting effect for many/most RR children is ongoing reading failure.

The study really is seriously flawed!!

Many thanks Debbie for passing this on!
Debbie Hepplewhite
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