Introduction to Research in Education

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Introduction to Research in Education

• EDUC 3050

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Research Projects

• Each student will be involved in a research
  project
• Literature reviews relevant to the project will
  be done individually
• Each student will collect data
• Analysis will be done in groups of 5-6
• Results and conclusions will be written
  individually

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Research Projects

• 3 Projects will be available
• 1. Reading Processes
• 2. Neighbourhood and exercise
• 3. IT project only for on-campus students who
  are not doing prac this semester, or whose
  particular school placement prohibits it.

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Reading processes study

• Phonemic awareness, Rapid naming and Orthographic
  ability.

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Reading Processes

• Reading is clearly one of the most important
  achievements of the school years
• Failure to learn to read adequately or in a
  timely fashion has implications well beyond the
  particular skill

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Reading Processes

• Understanding the processes which underlie
  skilled reading and the way these may alter
  during the process of acquisition would obviously
  be of benefit to teachers and students in the
  primary years
• This is particularly true of those students who
  might have difficulties in the beginning stages
  of reading.

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Reading processes

• Difficulties in early reading can have lasting
  effects.
• Bradley and Bryant (1983)
• Matthew effect (Stanovich,1993)
• Juel (1988) reported a probability that a poor
  reader in Year 1 would still be so classified in
  Year 4 of 0.88.

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Reading Processes

• Jorm, Share, Maclean, and Matthews (1984) found
  that a performance difference in reading of four
  months inYear 1 had increased to nine months in
  Year 2.
• These findings are summarised in Hempenstall
  (2004, p732)

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Reading Processes

• Phonemic awareness, measured by the ability to
  segment, blend, and delete phonemes, is now
  acknowledged as a basic and important
  prerequisite for learning to read in English.

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Reading ProcessesPhoneme blending
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Reading ProcessesPhoneme deletion
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Reading Processes

• More recently, a second factor has been put
  forward as a possible cause of difficulties in
  learning to read Rapid Automatic Naming - RAN

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Reading Processes

• Wolf, Bowers and Biddle (2000) suggest that RAN,
  the ability to name a series of images, symbols
  (numbers and letters), colours etc. as rapidly as
  possible, may make a unique contribution to
  reading ability.
• Other researchers see RAN as a subskill but
  within the phonological domain, ie it does not
  make a significant contribution to reading
  achievement beyond that made by phonemic
  awareness, and it measures something like access
  to phonological information. (Torgesen et al,
  1997)

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Reading Processes
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Research Processes
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Research Processes
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Reading Processes

• Some researchers in the field of reading
  disability assume 3 possible causes for early
  reading difficulties
• 1. Difficulty in phonemic awarenesss
• 2. Difficulty with rapid naming
• 3. A double deficit combining both areas

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Reading Processes

• The relationship between RAN and reading
  achievement is complex.
• Summaries of research findings (Swanson, Trainin,
  Necoechea Hammill, 2003) indicate low to
  moderate correlations (0.4) between RAN and
  reading achievement.
• But RAN is meant to be a predictor of reading
  achievement, not an ongoing correlate, so many
  studies which look at it in a cross sectional
  sample are inappropriate

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Reading Processes

• Some authors (eg Paris, 2005) argue that
  correlation is an inappropriate way to look at
  reading development.
• Some skills such as learning the alphabet, are
  vital to reading achievement, but there are
  obvious constraints on their achievement there
  are only 26 letters in the alphabet.

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Reading Processes

• What is most important is that there are some
  skills that are more constrained than others
  they are learned quickly, mastered entirely, and
  should not be conceptualized as enduring
  individual difference variables.
• (Paris, 2005, p184)
• So we shouldnt expect that there will be an
  enduring correlation between scores on RAN or
  phonemic awareness, and other reading
  achievements.

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Reading Processes

• A low to medium correlation between RAN or PA and
  reading scores might mask different contributions
  to the reading process over time.
• How might this apply to RAN?
• One explanation for the contribution of RAN
  scores in explaining reading achievement is that
  there are two separate ways in which RAN may
  contribute.

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Reading Processes

• RAN may explain some differences in early reading
  achievement because the underlying ability
  measured via RAN is the ability to make arbitrary
  associations between words and symbols.
• This is important in early reading because at
  that point, the learner is beginning to associate
  the letters of the alphabet with the sounds of
  the language.

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Reading Processes

• In the middle stages of reading acquisition, RAN
  does not play such a central role because mostly
  what is being mastered are two skills
• 1. rapid phonological decoding of regular words
  (eg dog, treetop, quick)
• 2. recognition of short frequently occurring
  irregular words (eg though, have, once)

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Reading Processes

• The rapidity with which regular words are decoded
  continues to be a factor in reading achievement.
• RAN does appear to be a factor in later reading
  achievement

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Reading Processes

• A possible explanation for this is that in later
  primary years learning of new vocabulary, both
  regular and irregular is occurring, and this is a
  major contributor to reading comprehension.
• Since the irregular words are low frequency
  words, they will only be learned quickly by
  readers who have a good ability to relate
  arbitrary symbols with words (ie readers who are
  good at RAN).

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Reading Processes

• RAN, which is a pre-reading ability, continues to
  contribute to measures of spelling and
  orthography.
• Possibly the rapid learning of correct spelling
  is a contributor to later vocabulary acquisition,
  and hence to reading comprehension.
• This will be revealed in choice of correct
  spellings for alternate homophones, or for low
  frequency irregularly spelled words.

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Reading ProcessesOutcome measures regular
non-words

• Regular non-words
• BAX FRIM
• LUM TORK
• ROP SECK
• VAD HENT
• SID MARB
• KOG JELT

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Reading ProcessesOutcome measures common and
less common irregular words

• Set 1 Set 2
• who yacht
• were foreign
• have cough
• their idea
• eight thought
• some source

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Reading ProcessesOutcome measures spelling of
homophones

• 1. We were going out to play but the rain came
  down.
• RAIN RANE REIN
• 2. Harry Potter has an invisibility cloak.
• CLOKE CLOAK CLOWK
• 3. The boys had steak for dinner.
• STAKE STEAK STAYK
• 4. The plant sent up new shoots.
• CHUTES SHOOTS SHUTES
• 5. My mother sews beautiful clothes.
• SOWS SOSE SEWS
• 6. She took the icecream out with a scoop.
• SCOUP SCOOP SKOOP

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Reading ProcessesOutcome measures new
irregular words

• 1. Eagles make their nests high on cliffs or tall
  trees. These nests are called eyries. In an
  eyrie the young eagles are safe from danger
  because they are out of reach of most animals.
• 2. A hundred years or so ago people who had
  trouble reading often used a device called a
  monocle. The monocle was a single piece of glass
  like those we see in peoples glasses today, but
  it was held on a cord and only raised to the eye
  when needed.
• 3. When you go to find a job, you often need to
  go first to the personnel department. Personnel
  are the people who look after all the records to
  do with staff in a big company.

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Reading processes

• EYRIE
• MONOCLE
• PERSONNEL

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Possible links
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Time course of changes
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Reading ProcessesAnalysis

• Can be done by year level, so the relative
  correlations between the variables can be
  compared
• Can involve a variety of ways of comparing eg
  low scorers with high scorers
• The distribution of scores may be as interesting
  as any more complex statistics

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Reading ProcessesReferences

• Bradley, L., Bryant, P. (1983). Categorizing
  sounds and learning to read A causal
  connection.Nature, 301, 419-421.
• Hempenstall, K.. (2004). How might a stage model
  of reading be helpful in the classroom?
  Educational Psychology, 24, 727-751.
• Jorm, A. F., Share, D. L. (1983). Phonological
  recoding and reading acquisition. Applied
  Psycholinguistics, 4, 103-147.
• Juel, C. (1988). Learning to read and write A
  longitudinal study of 54 children from first
  through fourth grades. Journal of Educational
  Psychology, 80, 437-447.
• Manis, F. R., Seidenberg, M. S. Doi, L.M.
  (1999). See Dick RAN Rapid naming and the
  longitudinal prediction of reading subskills in
  first and second graders. Scientific studies of
  reading 3 (2) 129-157.
• Paris, G.S. (2005). Reinterpreting the
  development of reading skills. Reading Research
  Quarterly, 40, 184202.
• Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew effects in
  reading Some consequences of individual
  differences in the acquisition of literacy.
  Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 360-406.
• Torgesen, J.K., Wagner, R.K. , Rashotte, C.A.,
  Burgess, S. Hecht, S. (1997). Contributions of
  phonological awareness and rapid automatic naming
  ability to the growth of word-reading skills in
  second-to fifth-grade children. Scientific
  studies of reading. 1(2), 161-185.
• Wolf, M. Bowers, P. (2000). The question of
  naming-speed deficits in developmental reading
  disability An introduction to the Double-Deficit
  Hypothesis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 33,
  322-324. (Special Issue on the Double-Deficit
  Hypothesis Special Issue Editors M. Wolf P.
  Bowers).

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Web sites

• http//www.brainconnection.com/teasers/?mainbc/rn
  
• http//www.balancedreading.com/assessment/abecedar
  ian.pdf
• http//www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/reading/torgeso
  n_catchthem.html
• http//www.brainconnection.com/teasers/?mainbc/rn
  This site contains the RAN task