Forty Years of Reading Intervention Research for Elementary Students with or at Risk for Dyslexia: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis

Abstract

This meta-analysis included experimental or quasi-experimental intervention studies conducted between 1980 and 2020 that aimed to improve reading outcomes for Grade K-5 students with or at risk for dyslexia (i.e., students with or at risk for word reading difficulties, defined as scoring at or below normreferenced screening or mean baseline performance thresholds articulated in our inclusion criteria). In all, 53 studies reported in 52 publications met inclusion criteria (m = 351; total student N = 6,053). We employed robust variance estimation to address dependent effect sizes arising from multiple outcomes and comparisons within studies. Results indicated a statistically significant main effect of instruction on norm-referenced reading outcomes (g = 0.33; p < .001). Because there was significant heterogeneity in effect sizes across studies (p < .01), we used meta-regression to identify the degree to which student characteristics (i.e., grade level), intervention characteristics (i.e., dosage, instructional components, multisensory nature, instructional group size), reading outcome domain (i.e., phonological awareness, word reading/ spelling, passage reading, or reading comprehension), or research methods (i.e., sample size, study design) influenced intervention effects. Dosage and reading outcome domain were the only variables that significantly moderated intervention effects (p = .040 and p = .024, respectively), with higher dosage studies associated with larger effects (b = 0.002) and reading comprehension outcomes associated with smaller effects than word reading/spelling outcomes (b = −0.080).

Effects of a phonics intervention in a randomized controlled study in Swedish second‐grade students at risk of reading difficulties

“…Recent review articles in this field embracing high standards for inclusion, design, and fidelity reduce this research to about 50 original reports (Gersten et al, 2020; Hall et al, 2023; Neitzel et al, 2022). In a world with different school systems, resources, and orthographies, along with more settled but important moderating factors such as intervention dosage and group size (among others) influencing intervention effects, these reviews indicate that average reading intervention effects addressing phonics vary between 0.23 and 0.39.…”

“…Timely and well‐planned teaching of word reading skills can have a substantial impact on the early acquisition of reading in general, not least for children struggling with the phonemic code of reading and at risk for developing reading difficulties (Gersten et al, 2020; Lovett et al, 2017). The most recent meta‐analyses indicate intervention effects between 0.16 (grade 3–5) and 0.36 (grade K‐2) for children who are identified with or at risk of word reading difficulties (Hall et al, 2023) with a mean effect size of 0.31 in decoding for K‐6 readers (Dietrichson et al, 2021). In trying to refine intervention effects across studies accounting for design, intervention content, intensity, teacher‐child setting, sample size, and orthographic structures of different alphabetic writing systems, this field of research needs more research to pinpoint the best educational practice for children at risk for early reading difficulties.…”

Motivational Practices in Reading Interventions for Students With or at Risk for Dyslexia

“…For each outcome model, we first fit a meta-regression model with the type of motivational practices to obtain mean effects of intervention that fall into one of the three categories (no motivational practices vs. intervention with motivational support only vs. intervention with motivational strategy instruction). Then, we fit a multiple meta-regression model to examine the effects of type of motivational practices on reading outcomes controlling for covariates included in Hall et al (2022). These covariates included the following: grade (K-Grade 2 vs. Grades 3-5), group size (small-group vs. one-on-one), inclusion of particular instructional components (i.e., multisensory activities, morphology/vocabulary instruction, spelling instruction, phonological awareness instruction), intervention dosage, total sample size, research design (randomized controlled trial vs. cluster randomized trial vs. quasi-experimental design), and outcome measure domain (word reading/spelling, phonological awareness, text reading, reading comprehension).…”

“…In particular, we examined whether interventions yielded stronger reading outcomes when (a) motivational supports are incorporated or (b) students are taught to use generalizable motivational strategies, controlling for the effects of other factors (i.e., student and intervention characteristics, outcome domain, and research methods). Given the Hall et al (2022) findings that outcome type moderated intervention effects (i.e., the mean effect was smaller for reading comprehension outcomes than for word reading/spelling outcomes), we examined the effects of motivational practices on word reading and spelling outcomes separately.…”

“…We took advantage of a corpus of studies identified in the recent meta-analysis investigating the effects of reading interventions for K-5 students with or at risk for dyslexia (Hall et al, 2022) to better understand how motivational practices were incorporated in these interventions. Details of the search procedure are described in Hall et al (2022).…”