Professional Development to Support Teachers’ Implementation of Intensive Reading Intervention: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Many educators are unprepared to meet the needs of students with the most intensive reading intervention needs. The purpose of this review was to identify how researchers have provided professional development (PD) to support educators’ implementation of intensive reading interventions, the extent to which these approaches included essential PD elements, and how researchers have measured implementer outcomes. In the 26 studies reviewed, implementers received initial training, and most received some form of ongoing support. Most studies appeared to incorporate one or more essential PD elements, though many lacked sufficient detail regarding the presence of these elements. Researchers used a variety of fidelity measures and other methods to assess implementer outcomes, which were typically positive. Results of this review indicate the need for researchers to report more detailed descriptions of PD activities, as well as the need for continued research on how best to support teachers’ implementation of intensive reading interventions.

A Synthesis of Professional Development Targeting Literacy Instruction and Intervention for English Learners

“…Thus, there is a need for future PD studies to use direct measures of changes in teachers' knowledge and skill. Nonetheless, the overall positive findings add further support to the argument of others that effective PD programs extend over time, provide active learning opportunities, are content-focused and coherent, and include collective participation (e.g., McMaster et al, 2021).…”

“…Finally, we conducted ancestral searches of related syntheses (i.e., Kraft et al, 2018;Kretlow & Bartholomew, 2010;Ludwig et al, 2019;McMaster et al, 2021;Richards-Tutor et al, 2016) to identify any eligible articles that were not yet included in our corpus. These searches did not yield additional articles eligible for our synthesis.…”

Collaborative professional development on data‐based decision making for primary teachers of struggling readers: Responding and refining

“…To our knowledge, a fewer number of studies have focused on using DBDM specifically for reading and even fewer on teachers' use of DBDM for reading in the context of professional development initiatives (McMaster et al, 2020). As noted earlier, the majority of DBDM studies in reading have a specific focus on the use of CBM to drive instructional decision making.…”

“…Although informative, these models are either general (e.g., Gummer & Mandinach, 2015) and do not address the DBDM process within a specific domain (e.g., reading) or have a specific focus on the use of curriculum‐based measurement (CBM) to intensify reading interventions for students with disabilities (e.g., Fuchs et al, 2018). Moreover, research on the ways in which to best provide effective learning experiences for teachers in DBDM is still emerging with a need for continued exploratory work (McMaster et al, 2020). As educators and researchers who work with a myriad of primary school teachers, we acknowledge the need for professional learning experiences that help all teachers build their knowledge and skills related to DBDM in reading.…”

Can the quality of a school be greater than the quality of its teachers? A case of early grade reading skills in Ugandan refugee context

“…In an international level, examples of how teachers struggle with language components include: 'insufficient development concepts about language and pervasive conceptual weakness in the very skills that are needed for direct, systematic, language focused reading instructions, such as the ability to count phonemes and to identify phonic relationships' (Graham et al, 2020;McMaster et al, 2020;Moat and Lyon, 1996, p. 79). Other language components that are challenging to teachers include: manipulating speech sounds; knowledge of differencing letter-sound combination; conceptualization of functional spelling; common syllable types and division patterns; recognition of children' s difficulties with phonological, orthographic and syntactic learning (Moats and Foorman, 2003).…”