Quality Of Literacy Instruction Research Articles

Teacher Knowledge and Questioning in Classroom Talk about Text

ABSTRACT Open discussion of text promotes students’ reading achievement, yet classroom discussion is rare. The present study investigates whether teachers’ knowledge for literacy teaching relates to their enactment of class discussion in the context of a high-quality literacy curriculum. Two sixth grade teachers (one who demonstrated high levels of knowledge for teaching literacy, and one who demonstrated low knowledge) were audio recorded teaching the same reading lesson. Lesson transcripts were analyzed with a focus on the questions teachers asked. Questions were coded as high – or low-level, and as authentic or display questions. Function of questions and quality of instruction were also explored. The teacher whose knowledge was higher asked more high-level questions, while the teacher with lower knowledge asked more low-level questions. Although both teachers asked more display than authentic questions, a higher proportion of questions asked by the teacher with high knowledge were authentic. The higher-knowledge teacher’s enactment of the lesson also included more student voice, more topical coherence, and a richer understanding of the material. These findings emphasize the importance of teacher knowledge. This work also underscores the importance of developing more robust constructs for knowledge for literacy teaching, and quality of literacy instruction.

Assessing reading fluency in Kenya: Oral or silent assessment?

In recent years, the Education for All movement has focused more intensely on the quality of education, rather than simply provision. Many recent and current education quality interventions focus on literacy, which is the core skill required for further academic success. Despite this focus on the quality of literacy instruction in developing countries, little rigorous research has been conducted on critical issues of assessment. This analysis, which uses data from the Primary Math and Reading Initiative (PRIMR) in Kenya, aims to begin filling this gap by addressing a key assessment issue – should literacy assessments in Kenya be administered orally or silently? The authors compared second-grade students’ scores on oral and silent reading tasks of the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) in Kiswahili and English, and found no statistically significant differences in either language. They did, however, find oral reading rates to be more strongly related to reading comprehension scores. Oral assessment has another benefit for programme evaluators – it allows for the collection of data on student errors, and therefore the calculation of words read correctly per minute, as opposed to simply words read per minute. The authors therefore recommend that, in Kenya and in similar contexts, student reading fluency be assessed via oral rather than silent assessment.