Center researcher wins 2006 Albert J. Harris Award
Carolyn Denton,
Harris Award Winner
A team of researchers including Carolyn Denton of the Vaughn Gross Center has won the International Reading Association’s 2006 Albert J. Harris Award for a paper chronicling the study that served as the genesis of the Center’s own Scale-Up Project.
The winning article, “The Effects of Theoretically Different Instruction and Student Characteristics on the Skills of Struggling Readers”, appeared in Reading Research Quarterly in 2005. Denton co-authored the work with Patricia Mathes of Southern Methodist University, Jack Fletcher of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Jason Anthony and David Francis of the University of Houston, and Christopher Schatschneider of Florida State University. The authors will be presented the award at the International Reading Association’s annual conference, which will be held April 30 to May 4 in Chicago.
The Harris Award recognizes “a recently published journal article or monograph that makes an outstanding contribution to the understanding of prevention or assessment of reading or learning disabilities,” according to the International Reading Association. Denton joins a distinguished list of scholars who have earned the Harris Award since its inception in 1975.
“This award is a great honor for our research team, and I feel privileged to have worked with this team on this important project,” Denton said. “The most important thing to me is that our work has had an impact on the field. That’s why I’m a researcher.”
The study examined in the paper evaluated the effectiveness of two interventions, Proactive Reading and Responsive Reading, as implemented using six schools, six reading intervention teachers, and 300 at-risk first-grade students in the Houston Independent School District (ISD) over a two-year period. These students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: enhanced classroom reading instruction with no small-group reading intervention, enhanced classroom reading instruction with the Proactive Reading intervention, or enhanced classroom reading instruction with the Responsive Reading intervention. A battery of standardized tests revealed that students who had received either intervention performed significantly higher than those who did not, that the two interventions were equally effective, and that certain child characteristics did not influence response to a particular intervention.
“The study demonstrated in realistic school settings that the great majority of first-grade students at risk for serious reading difficulties can perform in the average range at the end of first grade when provided with quality classroom instruction and supplemental intervention,” Denton said. “It also demonstrated that, although there are key components of successful early reading intervention programs, effective interventions can differ in many ways . . . [The study] illustrates the need to move behind entrenched positions that are left over from the ‘reading wars’ and to focus on the essential ‘bottom line’ components of effective instruction for struggling readers.”
The Scale-Up Project expands this research by examining the process of scaling up the two interventions over five years in 48 schools in the Austin and Dallas areas, including a total of 1,728 first-grade students. The study also examines the effect of ongoing coaching provided to reading intervention teachers.
“We are addressing the next step in the process of reading research — scaling up educational innovations that have been successful in smaller, more controlled studies,” Denton said. “The interventions in the [earlier] study were successful in six Houston schools when implemented by teachers who we selected, trained, mentored, and supervised, and who provided the interventions with generally high fidelity. In the Scale-Up Project, we are working with 48 schools . . . the schools provide the intervention teachers and are responsible for the level of implementation of the interventions. We train the teachers and provide them with coaching support.
“Basically, we are studying the effectiveness of this approach to intervention in the ‘real world’ in several very different school contexts, and we are studying the factors involved in the process of scaling up and sustaining research-based practices. If researchers don’t go to this last step, the work they are doing is not likely to impact many students.”
For more information on the Scale-Up Project, contact Project Coordinator Elizabeth Swanson.