Reading Recovery and Beyond James W. Chapman and Keith T. Greaney Massey University Institute of Education
When Reading Recovery (RR) was introduced throughout New Zealand in the mid-1980s it was seen as an innovative programme. It forms a significant part of the literacy fabric in around two-thirds of New Zealand primary schools. Criticism of the programme is frowned upon and often seen as somewhat unpatriotic. It’s useful to consider that RR was conceptualised in the 1960s, trialled in the 1970s, and implemented in the 1980s. Scientific research on how children read and why some struggle has advanced considerably since the development and implementation of RR. It’s timely for the teaching profession and for policymakers to consider whether RR is meeting its goals, and whether contemporary scientific research provides the basis for new and more effective ways of providing literacy instruction and early intervention. The RR website (http://www.readingrecovery.ac.nz/reading_ recovery/) states that the goal of RR “is to prevent literacy difficulties at an early stage before they begin to affect a child’s educational progress. Providing extra assistance to the lowest achievers after one year at school, it operates as an effective prevention strategy against later literacy difficulties. Nationally, it may be characterised as an insurance against low literacy levels” (emphases added). It was Marie Clay’s belief that the RR programme “should clear out of the remedial education system all children who do not learn to read for many event-produced reasons [i.e., environmental, cultural, or economic causes] and all the children who have organically based problems but who can be taught to achieve independent learning status in reading and writing despite this” (Clay, 1987, p.169). Ministry of Education RR National Monitoring data over the last 10 years provide no support for these claims. If the RR programme had been successful in attaining its goal of substantially reducing the number of children who develop ongoing reading difficulties (i.e., providing the “insurance” against low literacy levels), then the relatively large gap in reading performance consistently observed between good and poor readers since the 1991 International Educational Achievement study should have steadily decreased after RR was introduced throughout the country in the late 1980s. This has not been the case, as results from the 2001, 2006, and 2011 PIRLS surveys show. The Deputy Secretary for Education (Student Achievement) recently cited the 80 per cent successful completion rate for RR as an indication of the success of RR. But simply completing the programme does not guarantee that the child will actually benefit from having participated. After more than 25 years of RR in New Zealand, there is virtually no rigorous empirical evidence to indicate that successful completions in RR result in sustained
literacy achievement gains. Another factor usually omitted when considering the success of RR that are based on discontinuation rates is the withdrawal of children from the programme who make slow progress, or the decision not to place children in the programme because of the belief that they would make insufficient progress. Clay was opposed to such practices but she knew they occurred: “Schools have wanted to select children for the intervention, who in their judgement, would be ‘able to profit from the intervention’ and they have been willing to exclude some lowest-achievers from selection” (Clay, 2005, p.22). Similarly, McDowall et al. (2005) in their NZCER study of RR, made reference to information from teacher interviews that supported the practice that many children with the most challenging literacy support needs are either not placed in RR (in schools that offer the programme) or are withdrawn if progress is too slow. What does the evidence from Ministry of Education RR National Monitoring Reports show? Summary data from the 2011 Monitoring Report indicate the following: 64% of state schools with 6-year-old children offered RR, serving 75% of the 6-year-old population. Of the total 6-yearold population, 14% entered RR in 2011. ■■ 18% of 6-year-olds in the schools that offered RR entered in 2011. 25% of 6-year-olds in RR schools were involved in RR at some point in the year, and included children carried over from 2010. ■■ RR was more likely to be implemented in high decile (8–10) schools (71%) than in low decile (1–3) schools (56%). ■■ In low decile schools, 17% of the total 6-year-old population entered RR compared to 11% in high decile schools. ■■ The average RR hours allocated per children in decile 1 schools were 52; the average in decile 10 schools was 43 hours. ■■ Māori & Pasifika children constituted 35% of the total 6-yearold population in 2011; they made up 44% of children in RR. ■■ Of the total 6-year-old population of children involved in RR, 33% were Māori, 35% were Pasifika, and 23% were Pakeha. The higher participation rate for Māori and Pasifika children shows they were already more likely to fall behind after one year of schooling than Pakeha children. ■■ Māori & Pasifika children were less likely to be successfully discontinued from RR than Pakeha children. Successful discontinuation rates for 2011 were 76% Māori, 81% Pasifika, and 85% Pakeha. The pattern has been stable for 10 years. ■■ Of the total number of children “referred on” (not successfully discontinued), 49% were Māori or Pasifika. ■■ 77% of RR children in low decile schools (1–3) were successfully discontinued, compared to 86% in high decile (8–10) schools. ■■
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15% of children in decile 1 schools were “referred on”; this is double the 7% in decile 10 schools who were referred on.
These data show that Māori and Pasifika children, and children from low decile schools (largely the same groups), were less likely to have been successfully discontinued from RR and more likely to have been referred on for specialist help. Many of the referred on children had failed to respond adequately to RR despite having received extra lessons and more time in the programme. Further evidence of the differential effectiveness are data on entry and exit scores, as assessed by the Burt Word Reading Test and the Writing Vocabulary Task. Entry scores for successfully discontinued children were much higher than for the referred on children. ■■ Entry and exit scores of successfully discontinued children for the Burt and Writing vocabulary tests overlapped so much that some children had entry scores that exceeded the mean of exit scores. ■■ RR children in high decile schools are more likely to enter and exit from the programme with higher scores than children from low decile schools. ■■
Why hasn’t RR been more successful, and what can be done to improve the literacy learning outcomes of all children, especially those who most need literacy supports? The RR programme is limited in its ability to be more successful because it was designed to complement New Zealand’s predominantly constructivist approach to literacy education. Underpinning the constructivist approach to literacy teaching (and RR), is the “multiple cues” theory of reading. According to this view, skilled reading is viewed as a process in which minimal word-level information is used to confirm predictions about the upcoming words of text based on multiple sources of information (Clay, 1991). Learning to read is seen largely as a process in which children use multiple cues in identifying words in text. Text-based cues (i.e., picture cues, sentence context cues, preceding passage context, prior knowledge activated by the text) are used by students to predict the text yet to be encountered. Letter-sound information is generally used only to confirm word predictions or guesses and for self-correction. The scientific community has firmly rejected the constructivist/ multiple cues model of reading. The major shortcoming of this approach is that it stresses the importance of using information from many sources in identifying unfamiliar words in text without recognising that skills and strategies involving phonological information are of primary importance in beginning literacy development.
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The RR program is beneficial for some struggling readers but not others, especially those struggling readers who need help the most. Research indicates that for these children, more intensive and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemically-based decoding skills is needed than what is normally provided in RR lessons. It is both unfortunate and unacceptable that such a large number of New Zealand children do not benefit from the current, somewhat one-size-fits-all approach to beginning literacy instruction. This is not the fault of teachers or schools, but rather the product of inappropriate and outdated theories and policies. We recommend two important changes so that the specific literacy learning needs of all children can be more appropriately addressed. The first change relates to Year 1 reading instruction. Why wait an entire year before helping children with little or no phonological awareness at school entry, when it’s well known that children with limited phonological awareness at school entry will struggle? For some beginning readers, the processes of acquiring literacy skills are highly learner dependent. These children seem to grasp the idea of what is required to discover orthographic patterns after having had only a small amount of phonologically-based skills and strategies explicitly taught to them. In contrast, for other children the learning processes are more environment dependent. These children require a fairly structured and teacher-supported introduction to reading that includes explicit, systematic teaching of phonological awareness and alphabetic coding skills outside the context of reading text but in combination with plenty of opportunities to practice and receive feedback on using these skills during text reading. New entrants should receive an initial evaluation consisting of measures of emergent literacy skills that are known to be important in early literacy development (e.g., phonological awareness, print awareness). Supplementary instruction in these skills would then be provided to those children who needed it. This approach is referred to as differentiated instruction. It is more inclusive, takes into account children’s diverse pre-school and background experiences, and is more suited to addressing specific literacy learning needs. New Zealand primary school classrooms are ideally suited for differential instruction because we have long had a tradition of grouping children for literacy instruction. The second change relates to RR. This is an expensive programme with evidence showing that many children derive little or no benefit from the programme, and virtually no evidence to show that the gains for those who do benefit are
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sustained. The most serious shortcoming of RR concerns the differential effectiveness of the programme. The programme is beneficial for some struggling readers but not others, especially those struggling readers who need help the most. For these children, more intensive and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemically-based decoding skills is required than what is normally provided in RR lessons. Knowing the research reason for this, the Literacy Experts Group that advised the Literacy Taskforce in 1999 (and that lead to the NZ Literacy Strategy) included in its report the following unanimously agreed upon recommendation: “We recommend that Reading Recovery places greater emphasis on explicit instruction in phonological awareness and the use of spelling-to-sound patterns in identifying unfamiliar words in text” (p. 6). This recommendation hasn’t been implemented and although RR was developed, implemented, and supported by public money through the Ministry (formerly Department) of Education, no changes can be made to the programme without the approval of the Marie Clay Literacy Trust. There has been no indication of any willingness to make significant changes to the instructional approach of RR, in line with contemporary research. To conclude, positive and relatively inexpensive changes can and need to be made to Year 1 literacy instruction and to the RR programme. Such changes can help all children receive the literacy instruction that is most suited to their specific literacy learning needs. The changes we recommend are not “phonics”, or skill and drill. Rather, they are designed to provide more explicit instruction on word-level skills for those children whose specific literacy development requires enhanced phonemic awareness and phonological processing skills.
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