Reading Recovery 20 Years Down the Track: Looking forward,looking back

Reading Recovery is an intensive literacy programme designed for young students who have been identified as being at‐risk of reading failure after 1 year of schooling. The intervention was developed and trialled in New Zealand over 20 years ago and is now implemented in a number of education systems. The focus of this article is on recent research into the operationalisation of the programme with an overview of what it has done well and what it has not done so well. Reading Recovery has been very successful in bringing about change on the political and teacher training levels. In terms of efficacy in remediating literacy difficulties, however, the findings are more equivocal. What we have learned from Reading Recovery may assist in the implementation of new interventions based on more contemporary research.     

What Recent Reviews Tell Us About the Efficacy of Reading Interventions for Struggling Readers in the Early Years of Schooling

An analysis of large and influential published reviews of research pertaining to the reading acquisition of young struggling readers in the early years of schooling was undertaken. The reviews were selected on the basis that they either had been commissioned by federal governments or had been conducted by reputable research institutions and had been released in the past 10 years. A search of published literature pertaining to the topic found three federal reviews (from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia), a What Works Clearinghouse Report into beginning reading programmes, a review of reading interventions by Slavin et al. and a synthesis of meta-analyses by Hattie. Analysis of these reviews indicated that there are key commonalities in findings about how to teach reading to young students. Reviews of interventions revealed some flaws and therefore provide limited information useful to programme implementation and development for young struggling readers.     

The Devil is in the Detail Regarding the Efficacy of Reading Recovery: A rejoinder to Schwartz,Hobsbaum, Briggs,and Scull

This rejoinder provides comment on issues raised by Schwartz, Hobsbaum, Briggs and Scull (2009 Schwartz, R. M., Hobsbaum, A., Briggs, C. and Scull, J. 2009. Reading Recovery and evidence‐based practice: A response to Reynolds and Wheldall (2007). International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 56(1): 5–15. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]) in their article about evidence‐based practice and Reading Recovery (RR), written in response to Reynolds and Wheldall (2007 Reynolds, M. and Wheldall, K. 2007. Reading Recovery twenty years down the track: Looking forward, looking back. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 54: 199–223. [Taylor & Francis Online] [Google Scholar]). Particular attention is paid to the processes and findings of the What Works Clearinghouse evaluation of RR. The suggestion that this evaluation is flawed casts doubt about some of its findings. The authors maintain their earlier stance that RR is effective for many students but do not accept that there is evidence that initial gains are sustained through the primary grades, that RR is an efficient tier two intervention in a response to intervention approach and that significant cost benefits have been demonstrated in education systems. It is concluded that research into alternative interventions that could be implemented at lower cost is warranted.     

Further evidence for the efficacy of an evidence-based,small group,literacy intervention program for young struggling readers

Abstract

An earlier series of pilot studies and small-scale experimental studies had previously provided some evidence for the efficacy of a small group early literacy intervention program for young struggling readers. The present paper provides further evidence for efficacy based on a much larger sample of young, socially disadvantaged, at-risk readers. The participants comprised 14 successive intakes of Year 1 and Year 2 students into small group remedial literacy intervention programs hosted by two charitably run tutorial centres. In each semester, over the years 2005–2011, eight students (on average) attended each centre for one hour, for four days per week, for 15 weeks. Pre- and post-test assessment data on eight measures of early literacy performance were available on up to 194 students who completed the program. Substantial and statistically significant gains were evident on all literacy measures with large effect sizes. These results provide further evidence for the efficacy of the small group literacy intervention program.