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The Effects of Professional Development in Scientifically Based Reading Instruction on Teacher Knowledge and Reading Outcomes This study examined the effects of professional development in scientifically based reading instruction on teacher knowledge and student r eading outcomes. Teachers of first- and second- grade children participated in a 35 hour, three credit summer course on assessment and instruction of phonemic awareness, phonics, a nd fluency with subsequent coaching. Teacher knowledge pre- and post-test comparisons showed that while teachers in the experimental group initially scored lower than control teachers, th students of participating nning and end of the following school year and compared to a control group. Results in dicated that the first-grade students exceeded the “Lower level language mastery is teacher as anatomy is for the Reading serves as the major conduit fo assuring that all children become skilled reader s. Interest in the improvement of reading performance has stemmed partially from concerns are having difficulty learning to read. Estimates experience some difficulty in mastering the ski lls necessary for readi (Lyon, 1995), or about 10 million children (Natio nal Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 1998). In addition, results from a national assessment of reading achie vement indicate that little progress has been made in improving the reading performance of fourth grader s since 1996, with just a small nts performing reading tasks at or above the “Proficient” level, with no gains in readi ng achievement for grade 8 students over the last of high school seniors (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2003). The most recent significant improvement in reading performance ove average scores for students in 2005 were only 2 po 1992, the first assessment entage of students performing at or above addition, 58% of African-American and Hispanic below the Basic level (U.S. Department of Recent legislation has also emphasized the n eed for effective teacher preparation, as well example, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), the most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was programs as well as students with disabilities who attend special educatio n programs for part or & Moats, 1997). The problem becomes, however, al., 2005), including how the languag text levels. For example, a teacher who unders tands the importance of Moats (1995) explains that . The teacher may attribute the spelling error to a lack of attenti primary focus of phonics instruction is to he below the upper limit on the measures of know struggling readers also have reported that limited knowledge about how to teach word recognition and phonics are major obsta teachers spend minimal instructi onal time in classrooms teaching students various word analysis Teachers may also believe that they are mo re knowledgeable and prepared for teaching rpheme level (e.g., the spelling of the base remains the same even though its pronunciation changes in the words Another aspect of teacher knowledge incl udes the teacher’s own ability to understand nd phoneme-grapheme relationships. Lindamood (1994) suggested that some teachers themselves do not have adequate phonemic processing skills and that their own limited abilities may interfere with their effec tiveness in explicitly teaching teachers have difficulty with speech sounds, such as not being able to pronounce phonemes correctly, they will not be able to teach these sounds to children Findings from one study indicated that teacher to student spelling outcomes (Kroese, Mather, & Sammons, 2006). At the end of the school year, eleven primary grade teachers from the same sc hool were administered a nonsense word spelling test, where the words conformed to common Eng performed well below average. When the students of these low scoring teachers were compared below average in spelling. Although this study had two limitations: (a) the teacher sample size teacher certification program demonstrated in creased skill on phonological awareness tasks at preservice preparation related to reading, as well as ongoing professional development (Foorman & Moats, 2004; International Readi 2000; National Research Council, 1998). Institute s of higher education train as many as 125,000 tion Statistics, 2001), ific curricular areas be t perspective drives the content To ensure teachers receive adequate trai ning, Brady and Moats (1997) proposed three key components for teacher training programs in reading: (a) provide teachers with a solid ts for understanding literacy development; (b) ensure that teachers understand the structur e of language, both speech and print; and (c) provide teachers with many teaching opportuniti es with a mentor. The National Commission on programs for beginning teachers. Courses and work shops followed by classroom coaching must commitment of the teachers (Moats, 2004). Several studies have demonstrated that syst ematic and extended inservice trainings can of a first- and second-grade combination classr same school within a All teachers were female. As compensation for participating in this study, the experimental teachers were: (a) offered the 35-hour course and 10 mentorship visits at no charge, (b) provided c worth of related instructional materials. Contro l teachers received a $25 gift certificate to Barnes students in the experimental group. In the first students were on Individualized Education Plans and one student was on an IEP. Most recent economic and educational information available obtained from the 2000 U.S. Census report demonstr ated that the mean income and educational (Podhajski, 2000). In addition to the didactic tr aining, TIME includes a year-long mentorship in teacher participants’ schools. A masters’ leve l experienced reading ment their schools 10 times throughout the school year. Schools also received teaching materials (e.g., pport implementation of research-based practices. The TIME for Teachers course offered teachers an opportunity to increase their speech maps to print. The course was highly in teractive and gave partic ipants opportunities to it and implicit teaching strategies Teachers was to extend teacher knowledge about langua for reading assessment and intervention based from the National Most importantly, the course and accompanyi ng collaborative mentorship not only offered teachers information about the key elements of phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension, but also helped teachers learn how to translate these findings into practice. Throughout the course a nd mentorship, teacher participants learned research-based assessment tools and intervention strategies. For example, teachers were shown lls, (b) link speech to print through phoneme- grapheme mapping (Grace, 2007), (c) follow a sc (d) use text mapping, and (e) use contro re assigned a mentor, who visited them for 30 minutes to one hour once a month over the next 10 months. The visits began approximately six two-day workshop. The mentor wa s a masters’ level experienced ained to model assessment and intervention practices, observe a teacher working with their students, and offe r feedback. During each visit, time was always ncerns about classroom applications. Experimental and control teachers were give n the same pre and posttest assessment of administered measure of early lite racy development designed to assess area. When necessary, DIBELS benchmark scores were adjusted to align with the developmental leve The TPRI was developed to inform reading to match reading inst student needs. The Oral Readi Comprehension subtests were Reading are measured in the number of words read correctly per minute (wcpm). Those on R eading/Listening Comprehension termining the number administered. Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE) . This test is a measur abilities to sound out phonically regular nonsense words quickly and accurately and the ability to recognize real words accurately and quickl y. The TOWRE is used to monitor growth in efficiency of phonemic decoding subtest assesses the number of printed words that can accurately be identified in 45 seconds. The Phonemic Decoding Efficiency subtest measures the number of pronounceable printed nonwords s administered to second-grade mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. Teachers in the experimental and co ntrol groups were trained by project staff to significant, with control teachers initially demonstrating greater knowledge of literacy concepts than the experimental group ( Seven months later both groups took the pos mentoring, the experimental group =. 001). The control group posttest mean also -test analyses indicated that in = .002). They did not, however, make significan t gains on the DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency measure ( (41) = 2.55, p = .014) and minimally, on the TPRI Oral Reading ( above the experimental students. so analyzed across experime teacher participants. The majority of experime ntal teachers found that th eir instruction changed as a result of participation in th actic course and the mentorship helpful towards effecting that change. They also very much liked the materials they were given amount. There were still group di fferences on the posttest, with to outscore the experimental group. Children in the control group may have profited from ing skills in general prior to initiation of the project. It was interesting that TPRI reading/listeni were different for first and second graders. While both the first gr ade experimental and co and grew at the same level, the second grade est administered to second graders did not experimentals at both the pre and condition. Furthermore, youngsters west norming levels for test administration. Results on the TOWRE phonemic decoding su experimental group initially scor In terms of teacher data, results showed that the teacher participants enjoyed being able to immediately implement new knowledge learned in this professional development program within their classrooms. Mentoring seemed to add increa Scarborough (2001) artfully depicts the strand s of word recognition becomingly increasing automatic to braid with increas ingly strategic language compre skilled reading. Effective teachers understand that reading is complex and requires fluid marginalized, the advantaged and disadvantaged in Samples of Teacher Knowle Which word contains a consonant digraph? 2. How many morphemes are in the word morpheme How many speech sounds are in the word Research suggests that difficulties with rapid automatic naming are predictive of problems with: answering wh- questions phonemic awareness a vowel sound comprised of tw References American Federation of Teachers. (1999, June). Foorman, B.R. & Schatschneider, C. (2003). Measurement of teaching practices during reading/language arts instru (pp. 1-30). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. McCutchen, D. & Berninger, V. W. (1999). Those who know, teach well: Helping teachers master literacy-related subject-matter knowledge. McCutchen, D., Harry, D. R., Cunningham, A. E ., Cox, S. Sidman, S., & Covill, A. E. (2002). Moats, L. C. (1994). The missing foundation in teach Moats, L. C. (1995). The missing American Educator, 19(2), Perspectives, Podhajski, B. (2000). TIME for Teachers: A mo del professional development program to Their World Podhajski, B. & Nathan, J. (2005). Promoting early literacy through professional development Rath L. K. (1994). The Phonemic Awareness of Reading Teachers: Examining Aspects of . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. Neuman & D. Dickinson (Eds.), research in early literacy