Benavente Middle School Teachers' Perceptions on Corrective Reading

Richard Rafan, University of Guam

Introduction

This paper presents a study conducted on a reading program of direct instruction called "corrective reading." Originally, the direct instruction concept's primary principle, first developed by Siegfried Engelmann, is to assist in helping students become competent readers, more particularly students with low reading abilities. Since its integration into the curriculum in some schools, nothing but acclaim and disapprov3.1 had been the opinions of many concerned parents and educators. That is, in this study,J attempted to determine at least at Benavente Middle School the perceptions of teachers on ·the program.

General Statement of the Problem

As mentioned earlier, there had been (and still are) many reservations made about the validity of direct instruction since its inception in the elementary schools. The public's general attitude is mixed; there are those who advocate the program and there are those who disapprove of it. Until now, direct instruction has remained a · controversial issue that has both educators and the community fired up.

Many teachers have complained that they no longer are teaching their content, especially those teaching reading or language arts. Especially for the teachers who teach more advanced reading levels, their dismay towards teaching something quite remedial to their students and their reluctance to be exempt from teaching . corrective reading- a part of direct instruction-are being threatened to leave the profession. Although there are some teachers who approve direct instruction, such teachers are mainly those who teach at elementary schools, where the program was originally conceived.

At least for parents who have children attending middle schools, some say they have their faith in corrective reading and some express belligerence towards it. Some parents have claimed that it has benefited their children in many ways. They say that direct instniction has allowed their children to develop critical reading skills. And then there are, however, those who claiin that the program only works fot a specific group of students, and they are those who s~ggle in comprehension and word identification and enunciation. As of now. though, the opinion by many is that corrective reading works only for students who are reading below their

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grade level; they benefit, perhaps more so, from corrective reading than their more advanced counterparts.

Review of the Literature

According to the article by Wesley Becker (2001), the major goal of the direct instruction model is to improve the basic education of children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and thus increase their life options. The aforementioned statement supports Professor Siegfried Engelmann's underlying premise of the entire teaching strategy that is direct instruction. The island of Guam has many children who come from such backgrounds. Therefore, it is only fair to say that the implementation of direct instruction was a fair attempt to counteract the reading problems of the students who fell into the category. Again, Becker (2001) stated in his article that one other major goal of direct instruction was to ensure that students would be placed above or competitive with the national norms.

In their study on direct instruction, Kozloff and Bessellieu (2001) stated that it works for all children, whether they are gifted, average, at-risk, developmentally­delayed, or disadvantaged. I wanted to test this declaration made by both researchers especially because prior to the collection of data, it had been perceived by most educators that corrective reading works only for students oflower academic levels of (reading) performance. Usually, students who fall into this category are those who are at-risk, developmentally-delayed, or disadvantaged.

The reality of developmentally appropriate practice is that if programs are to be individually appropriate, teachers must assess children's needs, develop specific goals for individuals, and plan programs that address the unique goals and objectives of the children within the class (Carta, as cited in Kozloff & Bessellieu, 2001).

With respect to the statement above, the reason why both researchers support the idea that direct instruction works for all ability levels is because of the uniqueness of the planning and instruction. This includes having students take placement tests to determine their appropriate level. The authors also credit teaching with various methods to improve learning. The problem, though, is that with the corrective reading program at Benavente Middle School or most middle schools on the island, once students have gone through the process of testing and placement teachers would have to follow a scripted method of teaching the lessons. Furthermore, direct instruction officials highly suggest that teachers do not deviate from the script as they advocate the "consistency of instruction" across all schools teaching the same program. Such a strict recommendation impends non-holistic learning of all students because not all of them react to one type of instruction.

While Kozloff and Bessellieu (2001) advocate the idea that teachers should use

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Rafan- Benavente Middle School Teachers' Perceptions

a variety of teaching methods, Becker (2001) disagrees with such an idea when he maintained in his article that teachers should follow lesson scripts because <?f numerous advantages. Such advantages include:

(1) following scripts eliminates time for teachers to find appropriate wolds, and it eliminates unnecessary verbiage;

(2) following the script will not confuse students when a different teaching modality is used, especially if they have gotten used to the usual instruction of the teacher (for example, teachers may choose terms that are unknown to lower-performing students);

(3) scripts serve as an efficient delivery system that provides quality control; and

(4) scripts have the potential to teach teachers effective classroom instruction, especially in presentation.

In her study on corrective reading in a Tennessee school system, Werner (2005) stated in her conclusion that special education students had more success in the corrective reading program in comparison to higher level students. She further stated that there were no differences in the scores of students participating in the program and those who were not participating (Werner, 2005).

In an early study conducted by Carnine and Kinder (1991), siffiilar to Werner's (2005) study, she stated in her conclusion that on her follow through study she found out that there were significant educational gains from low-income students. Moreover, Carnine and Kinder concluded that direct instruction materials and approaches have been shown effective for individuals with mild to severe handicaps in language, reading, math, and community-living skills.

Specific Research Questions and Hypotheses '

The research questions I have decided to investigat<? are two questions. The first is "Does corrective reading enhance or improve students' reading capacity?'' and the second question is "What are teachers' perceptions on corrective reading}"

I hypothesized that for the first question there will be no enhancement or improvement in students' reading capacity. The generalization for such a prediction was loosely based on my observation that there were even honor students who .were placed in the mid-levels of corrective reading. In light of the preceding statement, it was quite awkward to see students of Benavente Middle School who were in the National Junior Honor Society, for instance, placed in the decoding and reading mastery levels when they shoulq actually be out of the entire program. The second question was rriore imperceptive; it was perhaps a no-brainer to predict that a large number of teachers would express negative attitudes towards corrective reading.

Of course, each teacher's individual background could have had some bearing

Rafan - Benavente Middle School Teachers' Perceptions

the program has improved your students' reading capacity? Do your students enjoy coming to your corrective reading class? Do your students' corrective reading grades reflect the grades they receive in their regular reading class? Do you think you are doing an effective job of teaching corrective reading? Do you enjoy reading books? Do you think that corrective reading only works for struggling readers? (Those placed in the comprehension and/or decoding level?) Do you think that corrective reading has taken away a significant amount of time teaching the necessary subjects? What corrective reading level do you teach? What subject do you teach? What type of teaching license do you currently have? How many years have you been teaching? Each of the participants' gender was determined by his or her name on the consent form.

Data Collection and Analysis

The survey forms were distributed to each teacher by way of their personal teacher­box at the school. Each teacher submitted his or her completed form by placing it in my box as well or by delivering it to me personally in my classroom.

Upon receipt and gathering of the forms, I first constructed a comprehensive frequency table for each survey question using SPSS, and thereafter I generated a summary of the samples and their responses- the descriptive statistics. In graphics 1-14 below, I listed for each question the mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values, and sample size. I also generated a table listing the frequencies and percentages for all fourteen questions. Data was entered to generate such tables to serve as a comprehensive summary for each survey question. They also served as a preliminary tool to utilize prior to developing graphic illustrations­thus bar graphs and a gender chart. All the graphic illustrations were also done using SPSS. Worth mentioning here is that the findings were first presented using PowerPoint; therefore, the graphics - tables and figures - were cut and pasted on to this paper.

Results

For the sake of keeping results as comprehensible as possible here, I will only mention the highest "responded-to" choice for each question. The specific percentages and numbers along with the visual graphs for each survey question are shown in the graphics 1-14.

Each of the questions in the survey form used a Likert scale format for the answer choices. From questions 1 to 8 the range was from 1 to 5: 1 being "not at all," 2 being "hardly," 3 being "sometimes," 4 being "most of the time," and 5 being "not at all." For question 1 of the survey, it was either the teachers sometimes liked or disliked teaching corrective reading. For question 2, most of the teachers

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Rafan - Benavente Middle School Teachers' Perceptions

07.pdf

Bessellieu, F. & Kozloff, M. (2000). Direct instruction is developmentally appropriate. Retrieved February 21, 2006 fromhttp://www.curry.edschool. virginia.edulsped/projects/ose/papers/MK_DI_DAP.pdf

Carnine, D., & Kinder, D. (1991). Direct instruction: What it is and what it is becoming. Retrieved April 3, 2006, from http://www .springerlink.com/medial 23tyjyyglhdvrgmlpt6y /contributing/ g/0/7 /0/ g0708h26 7 6565610 .pdf

Kozloff, M., & Rice, J. (2001). Teachers' perceptions of direct instruction. Direct Instruction News. Retrieved April 3, 2006, from http://www.adihome.org/ phpshop/pdf/articles/JDI 01 01 06.pdf

Werner, D. (2005). A study to determine the relationship of the direct instruction program corrective reading on Terra Nova tests scores in one school system in East Tennessee. Retrieved April 25, 2006, from http://www.etd-submit.etsu. edu./etd/theses/available/etd-05131 05-202733/unrestricted/ wemerD061305f. pdf