Supplemental reading interventions implemented by paraprofessionals: A meta‐analysis

Abstract

AbstractPreventative and intensive reading intervention can be administered to at‐risk students in a systematic way to help facilitate gains on literacy outcomes. Despite this fact, there are clear barriers to implementation. One solution may be to use paraprofessionals to provide supplemental reading instruction. This study employed meta‐analytic procedures to address two questions: (a) what is the overall effectiveness of paraprofessionals as implementers of reading interventions? and (b) in which areas are paraprofessionals most effective? A literature search of research from 2001 to 2017 yielded 76 studies. Nine studies meeting a priori inclusion criteria were coded for demographic information and six common reading outcomes. The mean ES across outcomes was 0.55, and spelling and decoding emerged as areas to inform future research. Although these meta‐analytic findings must be interpreted with caution due to issues of sample size and heterogeneity of variance, involving paraprofessionals as reading interventionists appears to be a highly promising strategy.