6/19 Featured Chapter: “How Can Neuroscience Bridge Gaps in Reading Research?”
Plus: Reading Programs That Work for Secondary Students; The Effect of PD on children's PA; ELs and High-Stakes Testing; Narrative & Expository Texts; Theory of Mind & Comprehension
Notes
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Last Week I said I would list RCTs and Meta-analyses at the top of the newsletter to indicate they should carry more weight. The first 3 studies in this week’s newsletter are systematic reviews (but not meta-analyses). To see the difference and why someone would conduct a systematic review instead of a meta-analysis, check out this post: http://meta-evidence.co.uk/difference-systematic-review-meta-analysis/
Research
The Effectiveness of Professional Development on the Phonological Awareness Outcomes of Preschool Children: A Systematic Review
*Systematic Review* This synthesis found that professional development that is spread out (not condensed) and covers multiple literacy elements (not just phonological awareness) was better. Citation: Emily J. M. Ciesielski & Nancy A. Creaghead (2020) The Effectiveness of Professional Development on the Phonological Awareness Outcomes of Preschool Children: A Systematic Review, Literacy Research and Instruction, 59:2, 121-147, DOI: 10.1080/19388071.2019.1710785
The Accountability Culture: a Systematic Review of High-Stakes Testing and English Learners in the United States During No Child Left Behind.
*Systematic Review* This review had several findings, including: summative assessments (such as statewide standardized tests) and formative assessments (such as CBMs) underestimated English Learners’ (ELs) ability when they were administered in English (they over-identified children who are ELs as at-risk when they were not actually at-risk). Citation: Acosta, S., Garza, T., Hsu, H. et al. The Accountability Culture: a Systematic Review of High-Stakes Testing and English Learners in the United States During No Child Left Behind. Educational Psychology Review 32, 327–352 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09511-2
A Synthesis of Quantitative Research on Reading Programs for Secondary Students
*Systematic Review* This synthesis of middle and high school reading programs found:
“Categories of programs using one‐to‐one and small‐group tutoring, cooperative learning, whole‐school approaches including organizational reforms such as teacher teams, and writing‐focused approaches showed positive outcomes…Programs that provide a daily extra period of reading and those utilizing technology were no more effective, on average, than programs that did not provide these resources.”
Citation: Baye, A., Inns, A., Lake, C., & Slavin, R. E. ( first published online in 2018, but just released in an issue recently). A Synthesis of Quantitative Research on Reading Programs for Secondary Students. Reading Research Quarterly, 54( 2), 133– 166. doi:10.1002/rrq.229
The Relationship Between Cognitive Skills and Reading Comprehension of Narrative and Expository Texts: A Longitudinal Study from Grade 1 to Grade 4
This longitudinal study used growth curve modeling to track reading comprehension growth in 1st-4th graders and found that narrative texts were generally easier to comprehend than expository (informational) texts. Vocabulary and planning/organization (an executive function) contributed to comprehension growth for both types of texts, but only expository required additional demands of word reading efficiency, shifting and inhibition. Citation: Wu, Y., Barquero, L. A., Pickren, S. E., Barber, A. T., & Cutting, L. E. (2020). The relationship between cognitive skills and reading comprehension of narrative and expository texts: A longitudinal study from Grade 1 to Grade 4. Learning and Individual Differences, 80, 101848. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2020.101848
Theory of Mind Mediates the Relations of Language and Domain-General Cognitions to Discourse Comprehension.
Theory of Mind refers to awareness of your own and other people’s mental states. Discourse comprehension refers to making sense of longer (extended) written or spoken information. This study analyzed children in k-2 and found that “there is a large overlap of language skills (e.g., vocabulary) and domain-general cognitive skills (e.g., working memory) that contribute to theory of mind and discourse skills-and theory of mind contributes to discourse skills.” Citation: Young-Suk Grace Kim. Theory of mind mediates the relations of language and domain-general cognitions to discourse comprehension. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Volume 194, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104813.
The DRIVE Model of Reading: Making the Complexity of Reading Accessible
The authors propose a new metaphor for reading: the DRIVE model. DRIVE stands for Deploying Reading in Varied Environments. In this elaborate new metaphor, the tire treads represent phonological awareness, the tires represent decoding and word recognition strategies, and the wheels represent knowledge for decoding and word recognition. Other components of the metaphor include everything from texts (which are roads) to reading conditions (weather conditions on the metaphorical road). Citation: Cartwright, K.B., & Duke, N.K. ( 2019). The DRIVE Model of Reading: Making the Complexity of Reading Accessible. The Reading Teacher, 73( 1), 7 15. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1818
New Book: Handbook of Reading Research Volume V
Routledge released the newest version of The Handbook of Reading Research (pictured above, table of contents here). Overall, I thought the book was okay, but I didn’t get any major insights from reading it. One chapter that was interesting was “How Can Neuroscience Bridge Gaps in Reading Research?” by Kim Noble and Katrina Simon.
The “Too Long; Didn’t Read Version”: Neuroscience is exciting, but practitioners should be cautious because it is still in the early days.
Before I get to the chapter I wanted to give a brief background about my experiences with neuroscience. I see over and over that teachers/parents/practitioners are quite fascinated with neuroscience and I'‘ll admit that I was, too, before I learned more about it. A little background: I taught special education before going back to grad school. My masters degree was in Educational Neuroscience from Columbia University and I spent some of my doctorate research time scanning children in an MRI as they performed reading and language tasks as part of the Education and Brain Research Lab at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College. That said, I haven’t analyzed any neuroscience data (only helped design tasks and run participants), as my research is more behavioral. The following are my opinions, not facts.
Neuroscience is still a long way off from informing education practice, and practitioners should be cautious. I find it silly to see terms like “brain-based learning” to sell products because all learning takes place in the brain, rather than some other organ, like your stomach. It would be like me promoting a new cereal I invented by saying it is a brain-based cereal (because eating is also controlled by the brain- everything is!)
A lot of practitioners are specifically fascinated with the fact that reading changes the brain. Yes, that’s true, but so does waking up in the morning. Many things change the brain. Before neuroscience can inform education it needs to develop reliable signals (see this post and this post about reliability issues) that tell us something about a child that we cannot already discern from observing their behavior. For example, why put a child in an MRI when I can tell from observing them reading out loud that they are struggling?
Researchers are beginning to understand the areas of the brain that are involved in reading, and even brain mechanisms, but scientists are still a long ways off from using brain research to inform classroom practices. Neuroscience is important research, so I don’t want anyone to think I am against the valuable and exciting field of neuroscience (!), I just am cautious about how it can be applied to reading instruction.
And, so getting back to the book, I think the chapter by Noble and Simon does a good job in elucidating some areas where neuroscience can be informative in a way that pure behavioral measures cannot.
Noble & Simon state:
Neuroscience may shed light on mechanistic differences that would be undetectable through behavioral investigations alone.
Neuroscience may allow for early prediction of impairments in skills, such as reading, that cannot be measured until children are older.
Neuroscience may provide compelling evidence for policymakers, educators, and other stakeholders, providing an impetus for effecting change.
With regards to their first point, Noble cites one of her earlier papers as an example. In that study, they found that struggling readers who were not socio-economically disadvantaged showed ‘atypical brain-behavior relationships’ while struggling readers who did not have access to a socio-economically advantageous environment had more typical brain-behavior responses. This example shows that neuroscience methods were able to show differences when purely behavioral methods (observing or measuring children’s reading) did not. It is an interesting example, but I would need to do a deep dive into the paper to see what they mean by “brain-behavior relationships.” Also, just because they found a difference doesn’t really have any implications for practice just yet. What I mean is: would we use a different type of reading instruction depending on a child’s socio-economic background? Probably not in the near future (unless they do future research and find that certain types of instruction worked better for the certain groups).
It is easier for me to get on board with their second point about neuroscience being able to pick up on reading difficulty “biomarkers” long before a child is actually asked to read. For one example, they cite a 20 year old paper that showed brain activity (auditory event-related potentials) in newborn infants predicted which children would be categorized as dyslexic, poor readers or typically-developing, eight years later. Their model was 80% accurate. So, why isn’t everyone rushing out to get electrodes on their babies? There’s probably a lot of reasons but perhaps the most important question is: what would you do differently? We already struggle with identifying and providing intensive intervention to children even when we know they have difficulties. We don’t have any research-based reading interventions for infants or toddlers that I know of...
There were a few other interesting example studies they cited to support their second point. In one study the researchers used MRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and found that variations in the white matter volume (the “highways” connecting different brain regions) predicted reading outcomes in k-3 children after taking into account several variables: family history, SES, and baseline cognitive and pre-literacy scores.
In another study a team of researchers found that brain activation during a phonological task in the MRI in children with dyslexia predicted which children would show improvement two and half years later (their model was 90% accurate). Importantly, the behavioral scores (scores on standardized reading tests) did not predict improvement. However, there are some limitations of the study to keep in mind: the sample size was somewhat small and it is unknown of their model is over-fitted to their data, or will it work on all children. Also, the children in their sample were older (14 years old).
Finally, regarding their last (3rd) point: I’m not sure I agree with it. Basically they acknowledge “the seductive allure of neuroscience” and even state, “…neuroscience studies may be more likely to capture the attention and interest of teachers, parents, and school administrators, making evidence-based interventions more likely to be accessible to a greater number of students.” I agree with all of that, but I disagree with their notion that we should capitalize on people’s fascination with neuroscience to promote an agenda - even if it is a “good” agenda - like getting more people on board with evidence-based practices. Instead, I think we should work on creating a more scientifically literate society and be clear in conveying the promise as well as the limitations of neuroscience. That way, when neuroscience is being used to promote a different agenda, maybe one that is not “good” (like perhaps to sell a product that doesn’t work), parents and teachers will know to be wary, and examine the research first.
So, in summary: Neuroscience is exciting, but practitioners should be cautious because it is still in the early days.
If you think I made an error, or just want to provide a rebuttal, feel free to respond to this email. If it is a good point (even if it disagrees with my opinion) and you give me permission I will include it in next week’s issue.
Hope you have a good weekend!
News
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Webinars, Courses, Talks, PD
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DIBELS 8 Administration And Training Course (Email to sign up: support@dibels.uoregon.edu)
CORE webinars (looks free but might need to enter an email, click here)
Empowered Readers Webinars (free but need to sign in, click here)
EBLI free webinars (click here)
Embrace Dyslexia at Home (free, but need to sign up, click here)
AIM Institute: Pathways to Literacy Leadership Course (starts July 7th) More info click here.
Empowered Readers Orton Gillingham training (click here).
In The Media
New York Times Student Editorial Contest: “Switching Letters, Skipping Lines: Troubled and Dyslexic Minds” by Hayden Miskinis
Our Dyslexic Children is a documentary about a group of parents and how they advocated for change on behalf of their children.
PaTTAN Symposium Keynote Speech by Dr. Louisa Moats. Click here.)
PaTTAN Symposium Keynote Speech by Emily Hanford. Click here.)
Other
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