Teachers’ Ability to Identify Children at Early Risk for Reading Difficulties in Grade 1

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate what kinds of assessment practices class teachers and special educational needs (SEN) teachers use in assessing first grade students' pre-reading skills (letter knowledge and phonological skills). Further, we investigated to what extent teachers were able to identify difficulties in pre-reading skills of the lowest achievers. The accuracy of teacher ratings of students' pre-reading skills was studied by comparing teacher ratings to actual test scores. The data from two Finnish longitudinal studies were used: JLD sample (class teachers, n = 91; SEN teachers, n = 51; 200 students) and First Steps sample (class teachers, n = 136; SEN teachers, n = 34; 598 students). Results showed first, that most class teachers used qualitative assessment and SEN teachers also relied on tests. Secondly, although teacher ratings correlated with the test scores, closer investigation of sensitivity and specificity of the teacher ratings revealed that a number of children in need of extra support for their early reading development according to test scores remained unidentified. Moreover, there were some students identified by the teacher to have difficulties despite test scores not confirming that. The findings underline the importance for developing more specific and reliable assessment tools for teachers to use for pedagogical purposes, and respectively, the need to pay more attention to early identification of reading difficulties in teacher training program curricula.

Early prediction of reading trajectories of children with and without reading instruction in kindergarten: a comparison study of Estonia and Finland

“…Similar findings on the difficulties to reliably identify at‐risk children in Finland have been recently reported in other studies using both tests and teacher reports (Virinkoski, Lerkkanen, Eklund, Holopainen, & Aro, ). However, identification accuracy may be improved with additional measures.…”

Understanding Assessment Processes for Communicative Competence through an Analysis of Teachers’ Reported Practice

“…Regarding the reading assessment criteria and indicators, teachers claim to have little knowledge of them [77], naming explicitly only the reading speed assessment ("In reading, sometimes we even get a chronometer and a paragraph, to see how long it takes them to read it, to assess mechanical reading" [School 4]). In general, teachers assess other aspects of reading, without clearly and precisely describing applied criteria ("one day you ask them to read, and today I'm going to mark, or at times reading in public ( .…”

Screening for Slow Reading Acquisition in Norway and Finland – a Quest for Context Specific Predictors

“…The most effective support for students with RD seems to be part-time special education in small groups (i.e., Tier 2) during Grades 1 and 2 (Holopainen et al, 2018). However, recent studies (e.g., Virinkoski et al, 2017) have shown that teachers had failed to identify a number of children who, judging from their Grade 1 test scores, needed support for their reading development. This observation suggests a need for further studies.…”

“…Otherwise, the principal results are likely to be expectations of failure. Further, it is important to determine whether identification at such an early stage as school entry is worthwhile, given that numbers of both false positives and false negatives are likely to be substantial (see Virinkoski et al, 2017). However, considering the promising effects reported from early interventions for students at risk of RD (see e.g., Saine et al, 2011;Solheim et al, 2018), we still believe that early identification followed by intensive support is the most effective solution.…”