[NIFL-4EFF:2665] Amy's post on aaace list

From: Brenda Bell (bsbell@utk.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 02 2004 - 13:12:11 EST
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Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 13:12:11 -0500 (EST)
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Meta - did you see Amy T's post on the aaace list?  on evidence-based 
reading ....... Would be good to post it to 4EFF...
B.

At 12:37 PM 2/2/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>Colleagues,
>
>This message was posted to another list in response to the questions about
>scientifically-based reading research.  This is a most interesting 
>perspective,
>and the bibliography is quite valuable.  Thanks to Ann Murr.
>
>
>Janet Isserlis asked:
>“What are these ‘studies’?  What passes for research that informs 
>our work,
>what research ‘counts’ to legislative people?”  I’d like to briefly
>summarize the research that has informed our work at the Drake University 
>Adult
>Literacy Center, where volunteers offer one-to-one tutoring for adults who 
>enroll in
>order to improve their reading and writing proficiencies.
>
>I am a practitioner-researcher and have been in the adult literacy field for
>six years.  After just a year of tutoring adults who struggle to learn to 
>read
>and training volunteers to tutor, I discovered that learning progress was not
>happening when using authentic text which required word recognition through
>memorization, guessing, and guided phonics instruction.  Instruction in word
>structure while writing letters to pen pals was very “hit and 
>miss.”  This
>instruction did not have the systematic intensity which learners needed to 
>address
>their learning struggles.
>
>I began reading the research on why children fail to learn to read – 
>because
>the adults we serve failed to learn to read as children.  This is what I have
>found in my reading of quantitative, i.e., scientifically-based, reading
>research:
>
>Groundbreaking work in neuroscience informs educators about cognitive
>processes involved in translating speech to print and print to speech and 
>how these
>mental processes do not become automatic for one in five learners (Shaywitz,
>2003).  Research has identified the differing cognitive processes of children
>and adults who fail to reach levels of functional literacy.  Beginning with
>Isabella Liberman in the late ‘70s and continuing with Shaywitz, Paulesu,
>Richards, (see accompanying bibliography) and others, brain scan 
>technology reveals
>that persons who struggle to learn to read have brain activity patterns that
>differ from the brain activity patterns of competent readers.  This 
>brain-based
>difference manifests itself in the lack of perception of the speech sounds of
>which words made, i.e., a lack of phonemic awareness, and great difficulty in
>combining and segmenting these sounds (phonological processing 
>skills).  Their
>brains are truly “not wired” to learn to read.
>
>Quantitative researchers are able to separate distinct factors which
>influence learning, i.e., verbal and nonverbal I.Q., family educational 
>background and
>income, ethnicity, age and sex.  Through this process, scientifically-based
>research has determined that children and adults who lack adequate phonemic
>awareness and phonological processing skills do fail to reach competence in
>literacy.  Pratt and Brady (1988) looked at the reading skills and 
>performance of
>good and poor readers in 3rd grade and in ABE classes.  They found that both
>child and adult poor readers “display deficiencies in phonological 
>processing.”
>  In fact, the adults scored more poorly on the “sounding-out” tasks 
> than did
>the children.  Read and Ruyter (1985) found similar results when
>investigating good and poor readers in 5th grade and adults in a Wisconsin 
>prison.  While
>the adults had more extensive banks of memorized non-decodable sight words,
>they performed more poorly than the children on tasks measuring phonological
>processing skills.  Read and Ruyter concluded that “ the only hope seems 
>to be in
>teaching these skills.”  (p. 51)
>
>Four years ago at the Drake University Adult Literacy Center we began an
>informal screening process to determine each adult learner’s level of 
>phonemic
>awareness and phonological processing skills.  Every adult, regardless of
>education or incoming reading level, has demonstrated the lack or 
>phonological
>processing skills identified in the scientific research.  (This is our 
>qualitative,
>observational research.)  Several had already earned a GED but stated
>emphatically, “Take me back to the very beginning. I’m tired of 
>feeling dumb with
>words!”
>
>We began using direct, systematic instruction which activates learning with
>multisensory, hands-on learning of the sounds of our alphabetic language and
>then in the structure of how sounds and syllables combine as text.
>Minimally-trained volunteers have the materials and structure to address 
>the learning
>challenges that face persons who have failed to learn to read through more
>traditional methods.
>
>My background and previous teaching experience was as an early childhood
>educator.  When I began studies in an adult learning masters degree 
>program, I
>addressed the issue of whether or not adults and children learn in different
>ways.  My conclusion was that we all learn best in the context of 
>“doing”,
>through hands-on experiences in a meaningful 
>context.  Developmentally-appropriate
>instruction is necessary at ALL ages, not just for young children.  If an 
>adult
>does not know how sounds correspond to letters, it IS appropriate to teach
>that adult the sounds (phonemes) and how they combine into words.
>
>I have observed that adults in our Center immediately transfer that
>information into decoding (reading) text at work, on street signs, and in 
>books that
>they read to their children.  They have the background knowledge and 
>experience
>to apply what they are learning within the structured tutoring setting to the
>broader context of their lives.  One of the women I tutor has a cleaning
>business.  She is now able to read the notes left for her by her employers 
>so that
>she can clean exactly what they want her to.  Her tearful comment when we
>began working on multisyllabic words was:  “You mean I don’t have to 
>be afraid of
>the big words anymore?”!
>
>Experimental research also has investigated the effects of structured, direct
>instruction for children who are failing to learn to read.  Children in the
>successful Reading Recovery program made greater reading gains when receiving
>direct instruction in phonological processing skills (Iverson and Tunmer,
>1993).  An intensive investigation into literacy learning in Title One 
>reading
>classes found that the only children whose reading scores improved were 
>those who
>received direct, systematic instruction. (Foorman, et al., 1998)
>
>There is a dearth of research on the effect of instruction with adults.  We
>are collecting data in our Center and hope to have it compiled in the near
>future.
>
>For those whose brains are not “wired” to process words efficiently, 
>we have
>observed that it takes much time for structured, multisensory practice in
>order for adults to internalize word structure information.  Memorization 
>alone
>just doesn’t compute.
>
>We who teach most often learned to read effortlessly; we have strengths in
>verbal intelligence.  Until we witness the struggles of those who have 
>invested
>great effort in learning to read but have failed (to this point in time), we
>think that given appropriate text and context, these adults WILL learn to 
>read.
>  However, persons who have very low verbal intelligence but who are skilled
>in visual-spatial, mechanical, inter or intrapersonal, or kinesthetic
>intelligence will continue to fail to reach functional literacy competence 
>without
>instruction that is informed by science.
>
>Reading problems are not caused by low intelligence, by a literacy-deprived
>environment, by lack of motivation to learn or by emotional turmoil, although
>learning is certainly affected by all these factors.  Science has identified
>the root cause of reading problems as neurological.  Educators are 
>challenged to
>act on this evidence.
>
>Certainly literacy learning must occur within the context of meaningful text
>and life application tasks.  Literacy is more than the learning of discrete
>skills.  But adults who failed to learn to read as children will continue to
>struggle to become fully literate until they learn the basic structure of our
>alphabetic language.  They must internalize the knowledge that words are
>constructed from sounds and that those sounds correlate with 
>letters.  When we do not
>act on the evidence from science, we undermine the effectiveness of our
>instruction.
>
>I will close with this anecdote:  During his third tutoring session with me,
>a college student (who was tested as reading at the 6th grade level) tapped
>out 3 sounds /f/ /a/ /d/.  After several attempts with saying the discrete
>sounds but not perceiving how the sounds combined into a word, he finally
>exclaimed, “Fad!  That’s how you spell ‘fad’?  I wouldn’t spell 
>fad that way!  It’s
>a damn-ass shame I never learned the little words before!”  Later he 
>declared,
>“This is productive!  Learning is fun!”
>
>Instruction which is informed by science IS productive - and empowering for
>all of us as learners.
>
>Anne Murr
>Coordinator
>Drake University Adult Literacy Center
>Des Moines, IA 50311
>
>Bibliography
>Bell, L. & Perfetti, C. (1994).  Reading skill:  Some adult comparisons.
>Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 244-255.
>
>Bradley, l. & Bryant, P.E. (1983).  Categorizing sounds and learning to 
>read—
>a causal connection.  Nature, 301, 419-421
>
>Bus, A.G. & van IJzendoorn. (1999)  Phonological awareness and early reading:
>  A meta-analysis of experimental training studies.  Journal of Educationa.l
>Psychology, 91, 403-414.
>
>Byrne, B. & Ledez, J.  (1983).  Phonological awareness in reading-disabled
>adults.  Australian Journal of Psychology,  35.  185-197.
>
>Felton, R.H., Naylor, C.E., Wood, F.B. (1990).  Neuropsychological profile of
>adult dyslexics.  Brain and Language, 39, 485-497.
>
>Foorman, B., Fletcher, J., Francis, D., Shatschneider, C., Mehta, P.  (1998).
>  The role of instruction in learning to read:  Preventing reading failure in
>at-risk children.  Journal of Education Psychology. 90.  37-55.
>
>Iverson, S. & Tunmer, W. E. (1993)  Phonological processing skills and the
>reading recovery program.  Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 112-126.
>
>Liberman, L. & Shankweiler, D. (1985).  Phonology and the problems of
>learning to read and write.  Remedial and Special Education, 6, 8-17.
>
>Paulesu, E., Démonet, j.-F., Fazio, F., McCrory, E., Chanoine, V., 
>Brunswick,
>N., Cappa, S.F., Cossu, G., Habib, M., Frith, C.D., Frith, U.  (2001).
>Dyslexia:  Cultural diversity and biological unity, Science, 291, 2165-2167.
>
>Perfetti, C. A. & Marron, M.A.  (1995).  Learning to read:  Literacy
>acquisition by children and adults.  National Center on Adult Literacy, 
>Technical
>Report TR95-07.
>
>Pratt, A.C., Brady, S. (1988).  Relation of phonological awareness to reading
>disability in children and adults.  Journal of Educational Psychology, 80,
>319-323.Read, C. & Ruyter, L. (1985).  Reading and spelling skills in 
>adults of
>low literacy.  Remedial and Special Education, 6, 43-52.
>
>Read, C., Zhang, Y., Nie H., Ding, B.  (1986).  The ability to manipulate
>speech sounds depends on knowing alphabetic writing.  Cognition, 24, 31-44.
>
>Richards, T., Corina, D., Serafini, S., Steury, K., Echelard, D., Dager, S.,
>Marro, K., Abbott, R., Maravilla, K., Berninger, V. (2000)  The effects of a
>phonologically-driven treatment for dyslexia on lactate levels as measured by
>proton MRSI. American Journal of Neuroradiology, 21, 916-922
>
>Shankweiler,D., Liberman, I., Mark, L., Fowler, C., and Fischer W. (1979).
>The speech code and learning to read.  Journal of Experimental Psychology:
>Human Learning and Memory,  5, 531-545.
>
>Shaywitz, S. (2003)  Overcoming dyslexia:  A new and complete science-based
>program for reading problems at any level.  New York:  Alfred A. Knopf.
>
>Shaywitz, S., Shaywitz, B., Pugh, K., Fulbright, R., Constable, R.T., Mencl,
>W.E., Shankweiler, D., Liberman, A., Skudlarski, p., Fletcher, J., Katz, L.,
>Marchione, K., Lacadie, C., Gatenby, C., & Gore, J. (1998).  Functional
>disruption in the organization of the brain for reading in 
>dyslexia.  Neurobiology,
>95, 2636-2641.
>
>
>
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