This applied research project attempted to ascertain whether a carefully structured, highly motivating set of environmental conditions in an instructional reading program would bring about significantly greater improvement on several measures of reading achievement and on the classroom behaviors of a group of poor readers than either the regular high school curriculum or participation in a more traditional remedial reading program. The experimental design for this study consisted of pretest and posttest measures and control group comparisons. / Results suggested that participation in the experimental reading program led to significantly greater improvement in performance on two individually-administered oral measures of reading achievement than the regular high school curriculum or the traditional remedial program. In terms of absolute grade level improvement in performance, participants in the experimental program progressed at the expected rate, whereas participants in the traditional program and those who received no remediation made considerably less than normally-expected progress. These findings suggest that this population of learners is capable of progressing at the expected rate in reading achievement performance. However, without effective intervention, they will fall further behind their peers. / These findings were the results of analyses of student performance on two individually-administered, oral measures of reading achievement. Analyses that compared performance on these measures with performance on a third measure--a group-administered, written test of reading achievement--revealed that this measure did not indicate any significant changes in reading performance in either of the groups. This finding suggested that either the measure was insensitive to actual changes in performance or that students were failing to learn important reading skills in both the experimental and traditional reading programs, as well as in the regular high school curriculum. / Finally, in-class observations of student and teacher behavior revealed that students in the experimental and traditional programs exhibited similar amounts of attending behavior, with more variability in the experimental program. Teachers in the experimental program exhibited slightly greater amounts of instructional behavior and feedback, and slightly less non-instructional behavior. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-07, Section: A, page: 3072. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74579 |
| Contributors | GOLDEN, JEAN ANN., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 103 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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