Building Reading Proficiency at the Secondary Level: A Guide to Resources

Procedures for Compiling this Guide

Review of the Scholarly Literature

We began the project by reviewing current theory and practice for building reading proficiency at the secondary level. This review included recognized such scholarly secondary sources as:

National reports
ERIC Digests
Handbooks (including the Handbooks of Reading Research)
publications of professional organizations, including the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), the International Reading Association (IRA), and Phi Delta Kappa (PDK)
Current content-area reading textbooks
Primary research studies, both quantitative and qualitative, and meta-analyses in scholarly, peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations were reviewed. These studies were found by searching:
- ERIC and Psychological Abstracts databases
- Recent national conference presentations at National Reading Conference (NRC), IRA, and AERA
To monitor current developments bearing on secondary reading, newly released reports and publications were searched, including:
- publication announcements from publishers and professional organizations
- Web sites that serve secondary teachers of reading
- comments made by secondary teachers in online discussion groups

Development of Criteria for Selection of Programs and Strategies

The subcontract team reached a consensus on the criteria for the inclusion of programs and strategies. The criteria for selecting resources were based on the findings of the research overview.

Criteria for Selection

These are the criteria for selection:

Developmentally, contextually, and socially appropriate for improving the reading of struggling secondary readers, grades 6-12.
Grounded in reading theory and consistent with principles of effective reading instruction. Programs also had to be consistent with principles of effective professional development of teachers.
Documented to be effective based on quantitative or qualitative data reported in scholarly refereed publications. Programs could instead be documented by a formal program evaluation.

Validity of the Selection Criteria

The validity of the selection criteria was established through external review. Two researchers with expertise in culturally and linguistically diverse readers and one experienced high school ESL teacher reviewed the research overview and the Guide for accuracy of representation of current research. Different aspects of the overview were submitted to peer review as proposals to national research conferences. The draft of the Guide was reviewed by SEDL. The Guide was revised according to the feedback provided and placed into final format.

Resource Identification and Description

An extensive search yielded a list of resources that potentially aligned with the criteria. The search was conducted by members of the subcontract team. The initial search included programs and strategies that have been used at secondary level, grades six through twelve.

From the extensive list of programs and strategies, those that potentially aligned with the criteria were investigated in greater depth. Pertinent reports, published and unpublished, scholarly as well as nonscholarly, were identified from the ERIC and Psychology Abstracts databases. Articles were selected and acquired. Copies of programs and supporting materials were solicited from the developers or publishers of resources under consideration. For most programs, the developers were interviewed by telephone. For some programs, a site visitation or product demonstration was conducted.

After examining the research overview and inspecting other resource guides, the team decided to include a searchable database to allow users to compare resources across categories. The team generated a list of potential fields for classifying and describing the resources and voted on the fields to reach a consensus. The fields were classified under five broad categories: description, professional development, research base, instruction, and effectiveness. Each field was defined.

The subcontract team established inter-rater reliability for describing resources along the revised categories. Each member described a second resource according to the selection criteria and the revised fields. The number of agreements was divided by the number of total observations. Initial inter-rater reliability was 92%. Differences in ratings were resolved through discussion.

Using the selection criteria, two members of the team evaluated each resource. The programs and strategies were divided among team members. First, a resource was documented as a database record. Next, the second team member reevaluated the resource and transformed the database record into a narrative entry for the printed Guide. A third team member reconciled the two formats for consistency and accuracy. All team members then read each of the database entries and printed guide entries.

Validity of Descriptive Categories and Format

Several groups of practitioners evaluated the resource descriptions and provided feedback on the clarity of the categories and the utility of the draft of the Guide.

A focus group of seven middle and high school teachers of struggling secondary readers was convened to provide feedback on the usefulness of the selection criteria, descriptive categories, and proposed formats of the Guide. The teachers were asked to share the problems they encounter in working with struggling secondary readers. Their discussion, conducted prior to study of the selection criteria and Guide formats, was videotaped. The videotape was analyzed to determine whether their reports confirm the findings of the Research Overview. Ongoing review and feedback was solicited from the focus group participants through discussion over an online web board.
A focus group of four secondary-level school administrators was convened at Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA). They provided feedback on the content, format, and distribution of the Guide.
The Guide and research overview were presented to a second focus group of nearly 100 secondary reading and general content-area teachers enrolled in graduate courses at Southwest Texas State University and the faculty of the SWTSU College of Education. Feedback was obtained on the content format and distribution of the Guide.

Guide Availability

This Guide is available in from:

Print version: http://www.sedl.org/pubs/catalog/items/read16.html

Online versions: http://www.sedl.org/pubs/reading16/

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