Treatment of Developmental Reading Disorders: A Visual Attention Span Deficit Approach

<p>A current theory of the cognitive underpinnings of developmental reading disorders supposes that two impairments contribute to the overall profile of disordered reading: one of phonological awareness and one of visual attention span. The severity of each impairment is different for each child. By identifying children that display a severe degree of one impairment, but a limited degree of the other, each impairment can be investigated. The current study identified one participant with a stronger phonological impairment, and one with a stronger impairment of visual attention span. They completed two training programs: one program tailored to improve phonology, and one tailored to improve visual span. Both treatments improved reading performance in both participants. It was expected that the treatment targeting each participant‟s particular cognitive impairment would prove more effective for that participant. However, both treatments were found to show similar levels of improvement with both participants.</p>

Treatment of Developmental Reading Disorders: A Visual Attention Span Deficit Approach

<p>A current theory of the cognitive underpinnings of developmental reading disorders supposes that two impairments contribute to the overall profile of disordered reading: one of phonological awareness and one of visual attention span. The severity of each impairment is different for each child. By identifying children that display a severe degree of one impairment, but a limited degree of the other, each impairment can be investigated. The current study identified one participant with a stronger phonological impairment, and one with a stronger impairment of visual attention span. They completed two training programs: one program tailored to improve phonology, and one tailored to improve visual span. Both treatments improved reading performance in both participants. It was expected that the treatment targeting each participant‟s particular cognitive impairment would prove more effective for that participant. However, both treatments were found to show similar levels of improvement with both participants.</p>

Right-hemisphere coherence to speech at pre-reading stages predicts reading performance one year later

The hypothesis that neural entrainment to the low-frequency modulations of speech contributes significantly to reading acquisition receives increasing support in the literature. Still, no previous study has actually attempted to establish a longitudinal link between them. The present study tested Basque-speaking children twice: once before reading was formally instructed (t1; 5-6 years old) and once after they had received a full school year of reading instruction (t2; 6-7 years old). At t1, speech-brain coherence was recorded via EEG. At t2, in addition to the coherence measure, reading performance was assessed. Our results show that children with larger pre-reading delta-band (&lt; 1 Hz) speech-brain coherence at right sites of the scalp performed better in the reading tasks one year later. Moreover, the increase in coherence from pre-reading into reading stages tended to correlate negatively with reading outcome. The latter result, though statistically weak, suggests that reading instruction might lead to the recruitment of less delta tracking resources. Overall, our results provide preliminary support for a relevant contribution of right-hemisphere speech-brain coherence to successful reading development and point towards pre-reading neural coherence indexes as useful tools for the early detection of developmental reading disorders.

Leaning Into Difficulty: A Way of Building Knowledge in a Developmental Reading and Writing Course

Recognition of the interconnectedness of the reading and writing processes is not a new concept. Indeed, the developmental nature of reading and writing is shown to have evolved over time (Nelson & Calfee, 1998) and has been the focus of empirical research grounded on three basic theoretical models: shared cognition (two buckets drawing water from a common well), sociocognitive (envisioned as a conversation), and combined-use model (tools that can be used together to build something) (Shanahan, 2016). I am particularly intrigued by the sociocognitive model of reading and writing as a conversation as both mirror closely the spirit of Rosenblatt’s (2013) transactional view of the relationship among the text, the reader, and the author. The theory Rosenblatt promoted requires a paradigm shift that problematizes the dualistic notion of subjectobject, individual-social, and stimulus-response that are insufficient to represent the recursive, “one process” that the knower, the knowing, and the known enact, each conditioning the other in linguistic activities (pp. 926–927). For example, when a student transacts with a text, they draw from linguistic and experiential knowledge bases (reservoirs) to derive an interpretation. Difficulties can arise when knowledge bases are inadequate to form a clear understanding of a text, yet working through the difficulties results in structuring new meaning. The work involved in the struggle is generative (Bartholemae & Petrosky, 1986). Rather than an interaction that may close off the opportunity for students to build new knowledge, ‘“meaning’ happens during the transaction” (p. 929). Rosenblatt and others (i.e., Bakhtin, 1981; Gadamer, 1975; Iser, 1978) provided sound theories to justify designing fully integrated reading and writing (IRW) courses. To clarify, fully integrated as I use it here is distinct in that it references Rosenblatt’s notion of the similar processes that reading and writing share as well as the ideal instruction in which neither reading nor writing are privileged in service to the other but are considered interconnected literacy practices in a dialogically centered classroom. Such instruction, however, is another matter.

What Does It Mean to Be College-Ready for Career Technical Education?

Objective/Research Question: Surprisingly, little research explores the literacy practices specific to career technical education (CTE) courses at the postsecondary level, yet the number of students coming to college needing literacy support continues to increase. There is a need for focused research on what constitutes college-readiness. The study described in this article addresses this overarching issue by exploring the text expectations, including text types, tasks, and goals in both CTE courses and developmental reading (DR) courses to determine whether, how, and to what extent text expectations align across the DR and CTE courses. Methods: This multisite research project involved three community colleges in one Midwestern state. Data sources included surveys, focus groups, and textbooks for all courses. Data collection procedures were comparable for each type of data, across all study sites, focal tracks, and constituency groups. Results: This study’s findings suggest a lack of alignment between the DR courses and the introductory-level CTE courses, on a number of levels. Conclusions/Contributions: This study’s findings suggest a need to continue investigating what constitutes college-ready for reading, across multiple disciplinary and career technical areas.

Integrating Service-Learning Pedagogy Into Community College Coursework

Developmental students face significant academic and life challenges as they pursue a college degree. As students in developmental studies often struggle to complete their courses, research focused on innovative pedagogy that engages students while developing skills is needed. This project sought to investigate implementing an on-campus, service-learning (SL) component into developmental reading courses. Students participated in SL by reading to children at the on-campus Early Childhood Center (ECC) one time per week, during scheduled class, with time provided for structured metacognition through reflective journals. A phenomenological approach was used for this study, and Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to examine responses and note trends in data. It was found that students who participated in SL as part of their developmental reading course reported multiple positive effects such as developing a positive academic mindset, improving self-efficacy, and increasing motivation to read.

USING MULTIPLE TEXTS TO TEACH CRITICAL READING SKILLS TO LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE STUDENTS

Mastery of developmental reading courses offers both an opportunity for academic enrichment and a barrier to college completion. We examine what it means to use multiple texts in college developmental reading courses, the benefits of using them, and considerations that instructors may employ in their instructions. A review of the literature indicates Linguistically Diverse students (LDs) often lack the required critical thinking skills needed to tackle the rigor and demand of their college level courses. We conducted a study to tests whether using multiple texts improved LDs critical reading skills.� Participants of 30 undergraduate students taking RDL 500 course were analyzed using pre and posttest results. Findings indicated that integrated use of multiple texts is a practical teaching approach for LDs improved their critical reading skills and their navigation of unfamiliar texts. This implies the use of the one size-fits-all approach may not be an effective pedagogical practice by instructors who teach the LD student.Keywords:�community college; critical literacy; cultural capital; developmental reading; language minority students; linguistically diverse students; multiple texts; sociocultural literacy.