Identification of children at risk of dyslexia: the validity of teacher judgements using ‘Phonic Phases’

Abstract

We report an investigation of the validity of teachers' ratings of children's progress in 'phonics' as a screener for dyslexia. Seventy-three 6-year-olds from a whole school population were identified as 'at risk' of dyslexia according to teacher judgements of slow progression through phonic phases. Six months later, children's attainments in literacy and phonological skills were compared with those of their typically developing peers matched on age and gender. Teacher assessments of risk were related to individual differences in performance on a standardised test of reading ability. Teacher assessments overestimated 'risk of dyslexia', defined as below-average reading performance. However, teacher judgements, supplemented by tests of phoneme awareness and rapid naming, allowed a sensitive and specific identification of children who subsequently experienced reading difficulties. These findings show teachers can identify risk of dyslexia; the accuracy of this process can be improved by administering two tests of phonological skills.

Teacher candidates’ mastery of phoneme-grapheme correspondence: massed versus distributed practice in teacher education

“…Moats (2009) identified lack of explicit preparation of teachers in the speech-sound system and phoneme-grapheme correspondences as two barriers to the effective delivery of phonics instruction. In addition, as the majority of early literacy screening tools require teachers to identify student errors in the production of phonemes-either through phoneme segmentation tasks or grapheme-phoneme correspondence (i.e., letter-sound identification) tasks-teachers who lack proficiency in their ability to produce clear phonemes in isolation and/or are unfamiliar with phoneme-grapheme mapping are at a disadvantage for administering such screenings (Snowling, Duff, Petrou, Schiffeldrin, & Bailey, 2011). Finally, teachers serve as a critical model for students when teaching the phonemes associated with letters and letter combinations.…”

EACOL - Escala de avaliação da competência em leitura pelo professor: construção por meio de critérios e de concordância entre juízes

“…Essa imparcialidade do professor está em desacordo com a visão de autores tais como Bennett et al (1993) e Soares et al (2010), que consideram que a percepção do professor sobre o comportamento de seus alunos pode induzir a julgamentos tendenciosos sobre o desempenho escolar dos mesmos. Por outro lado, o referido achado está em sintonia com Snowling et al (2011), que mostraram que os professores, uma vez munidas de critérios de referência para conduzirem suas avaliações, conseguem muito cedo identifi car sinais de atraso na leitura e risco de dislexia.…”

“…As pesquisas a respeito desse tipo indireto de avaliação -em contraste com formas diretas que empregam tarefas que medem acurácia e velocidade de reconhecimento de palavras e compreensão textual -têm gerado resultados por vezes controversos, porém em sua maior parte, consideram válida a utilização de relato de professores para fornecer uma visão preliminar sobre desempenho dos estudantes (p. ex., Snowling, Duff, Petrou, Schiffeldrin, & Bailey, 2011).…”

“…Snowling et al (2011) ofereceram a um grupo de professores critérios de referência para a avaliação de crianças com atraso na leitura e risco de dislexia, nos estágios iniciais de alfabetização. Concluíram que os professores são tão bons juízes do progresso de seus alunos quanto os testes formais, se lhes são oferecidos critérios objetivos.…”

EACOL (Scale of Evaluation of Reading Competence by the Teacher): final validation and standardization

“…Early screening for reading difficulties can be appropriately done by elementary school teachers, who are undeniably one of the most important sources of information about their students. Snowling, Duff, Petrou, Schiffeldrin, and Bailey (2011) asserted that teachers evaluations of their students reading skills, when criterion-referenced assessments are made available, can be as good as those of most formal tests. It is possible that with clear criterion, the teachers' judgments are less influenced by factors beyond the school performance itself, such as gender, social behavior and socioeconomic characteristics (Bennett, Gottesman, Rock, & Cerullo, 1993;Soares, Fernandes, Ferraz, & Riani, 2010).…”