The Relationship between Explicit Verbal Explanations during Reading Skill Instruction and Student Awareness and Achievement: A Study of Reading Teacher Effects

Abstract

PREVIOUS RESEARCH has established that good readers, in contrast to poor readers, are aware of how to use reading comprehension strategies, and that an adjunct curriculum in how to use such strategies can result in achievement gains. However, it is not known whether teachers can, as a part of the regular instructional program for students in low reading groups, develop awareness of how to be strategic and, as a result, improve learning outcomes. The experimental intervention study reported here trained classroom teachers to be explicit when teaching low reading groups to use reading skills strategically. Twenty-two teachers participated in the study. It was hypothesized that explicit teacher explanation of how reading skills can be used as strategies would result in increased student awareness of what was taught, which in turn would lead to increased reading achievement on standardized measures. Results suggested that the treatment teachers learned to be more explicit in teaching reading skills, and that this explicitness resulted in significantly greater student awareness of what was taught. However, no significant achievement gains were found. Due to its methodological complexity, the study has implications for future research in naturalistic settings.