Improving Preservice Teacher Vocabulary Instruction: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

General and special education teachers need to have an understanding of effective practices for providing vocabulary instruction to students with and without disabilities across grade levels and content areas. Preservice teachers in this study ( N = 121) received training in evidence-based practices for vocabulary instruction via a series of three training modules. They then completed one of two practice conditions—creating a multimedia product to teach a vocabulary word or completing a non-multimedia learning task during class. The two practice conditions resulted in similar gains on the knowledge measure, but the group that created the multimedia product significantly outperformed the group that completed the non-multimedia task in a demonstration of instruction. Implications for teacher education are discussed.