The near-term and long-term impact of dialogically organized reading instruction

A randomized control trial of Shared Evaluation Pedagogy: The near-term and long-term impact of dialogically organized reading instruction

Abstract

This randomized control trial evaluated the impact of dialogically organized reading instruction provided twice per week over six months in small-group settings to fifth grade students, primarily English learners, assessed as needing additional support in comprehension development. Our dialogically organized instruction treatment, which we call Shared Evaluation Pedagogy (SHEP), was premised on: a) instigating dialogue about text, b) probing student thinking, and c) eschewing teacher evaluation. The 22 students in the SHEP treatment group demonstrated statistically significantly greater gains on near-term, researcher-administered measures of comprehension and decoding than did the 41 students in the control group. Treatment students also outperformed control students on two measures on the California Achievement Test 6 administered one year later—spelling (statistically significant) and reading (large enough to be practically significant, but not statistically significant). We close by arguing there are strong pedagogical reasons for shifting the prevailing reading comprehension intervention paradigm toward dialogically organized forms of instruction that invite students to think and reason with one another about texts.