The Field Study was designed to investigate some aspects of
content validity of a specially designed Draft Manual for Diagnostic Procedures in Reading. A copy of the Manual is available separately,
but relevant sections of it are appended to this Report.
The Draft Manual for Diagnostic Procedures in Reading
(D.M.D.P.R.) was issued to seventeen students enrolled in the
Graduate Diploma in Special Education. These students were completing
the unit, Curriculum Design in Language and Reading. The
D.M.D.P.R. was compiled as a trial testing instrument which could
be used by the students in their course-work on diagnosis of reading
difficulties. The manual contains three sections, listed below,
which are germane to this study. This Report will focus upon the
procedures of testing which were taught and practised in, and the
results obtained from, trial testing by the writer and the students
within the framework of the Curriculum Design in Language and
Reading (C.D.L.R.) unit.
The three sections of the D.M.D.P.R. which are the subject of
this study are:
1. Diagnostic Procedures in the Assessment of
Reading Readiness.
2. A Rationale for the Measurement of Reading
Performance.
3. The Principles, Procedures and Application
of Miscue Analysis in the Diagnosis of
Reading Difficulties.
The Report will describe and analyse the findings obtained
from Sections 1 and 3. in which information has been obtained from
the course participants in their use of the D.M.D.P.R. Section 2,
an article on theoretical issues in diagnosis of reading processes,
was included in the D.M.D.P.R. to explain to the participants the
rationale of miscue analysis techniques. The explanatory and
descriptive nature of that section will be referred to in this
Report for reference purposes only.
Report on Section 1
Section 1 of the D.M.D.P.R. is a series of five tests which
were designed to trial a method of assessment of the developmental
language and reading status of children aged between 5.6 and 7.5
years of age. The children were rated by their teachers in language
and reading development on a five-point scale, which ranged from
extremely poor, to below average, average, above average, and
excellent.
The tests were administered to nearly 200 children and data
was obtained from 137 of these.
The children comprise a sample who have been exposed to one,
two or three years of reading readiness training and reading
teaching in a wide variety of programs and systems.
The primary purpose of designing the tests was to use
criteria of performance which do not commonly appear in standardized,
normative tests of reading readiness and reading development.
The rationale of the tests was stated in the D.M.D.P.R.
The Report reviews this rationale in Chapters I and II and
the results obtained from the application of the trial tests in
Chapter III.
Report on Section 3
Section 3 of the D.M.D.P.R. proposes a system of diagnostic
testing in reading, known as Miscue Analysis.
The Report attempts to review, in descriptive terms, the
patterns of error behaviour in reading which can be illustrated by
the miscue analysis technique, and to describe the systems of analysis
developed by the writer and unit participants in their investigations
of 130 children who were described as low proficiency readers. This
review is contained in Chapter IV.
Because the miscue analysis technique is diagnostic in purpose,
it would be inappropriate to describe the Section 3 program as
experimental or empirical. Several insights into the uses of the
miscue analysis technique were developed progressively in the C.D.L.R.
unit and these procedures and uses will be the subject of the report.
In summary, the overall purposes of the study were therefore
two-fold:
1. to provide a group of specialist teachers in training
with a manual of diagnostic procedures appropriate to
the assessment of children's reading progress in early
and later stages of reading development; and
2. to assess experimentally the validity of original test
materials to be used in early reading stages, and to
appraise descriptively the efficacy of a diagnostic
procedure in reading in later reading stages.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219084 |
| Date | January 1975 |
| Creators | Kemp, D. M., n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Teacher Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright D. M. Kemp |
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