Child Skills and Teacher Qualifications: Associations with Elementary Classroom Teachers’ Reading Instruction for Struggling Readers

This study explored the extent to which kindergarten and first grade teachers provided individualized reading instruction to struggling readers during a unique one‐on‐one reading instruction task. Three outcomes of teachers’ instructional strategies were captured: code‐focused strategies, meaning‐focused strategies, and level of challenge. Child skills in decoding and vocabulary/oral language as well as teacher qualifications of education, experience, and knowledge of reading were examined in relation to the three instructional strategies. Multilevel analyses showed relationships between child skills and reading instructional strategies, with teachers generally using code‐focused and meaning‐focused strategies, as well as an appropriate level of challenge, with children who struggled less with early reading. Although teacher education was not associated with any of the reading instructional strategies, teacher experience and knowledge of reading was associated with meaning‐based instruction and the level of challenge provided to struggling readers.