Group

Group: Melissa B., Christine, Amy, Melissa P., Meghan, Clarice, Sarah, Pam, Nicole

**Amendum et al. (2011) Discussion**
The rationale of this study centers upon the need for classroom teachers to provide intervention for struggling readers rather than for those students to be pulled out of class for one-on-one tutoring. The authors cite previous studies that have found student growth with implementation of special programs and intend to situate their own research within that body of knowledge with the focus shifting from resource services to in-class services.
 * I. RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY**

The primary theoretical framework is the "transactional framework or development and change" as described by Sameroff. A gap in the literature was cited on page 15 that this study wanted to fill. Gentry and colleagues in their literature review were unable to find studies that investigated the relationship between coaching of teachers and student outcome data.

pg. 5: there were three research questions: 1) Did struggling kindergarten and first-grade students who received the Targeted Reading Intervention from their classroom teachers, supported by a TRI literacy coach via webcam technology, perform at a higher level on spring reading outcome scores than struggling students in control schools, when controlling for fall entry scores? 2) Did students (both struggling and non-struggling) from classrooms with TRI-trained teachers perform at a higher level on spring reading outcome scores than students from classrooms with control teachers, when controlling for fall entry scores? 3) Did student fall vocabulary scores impact the effectiveness of the TRI on students spring reading outcomes?

In the abstract the authors state that seven schools from the southwestern US were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions in a cluster randomized design. However, in the methods section, they state that eight schools from five school districts participated. One experimental school withdrew b/c of technology issues. The eight schools were Title I schools. Randomly assigned & experimental and control conditions says this was an experimental design, but because these are school settings, it probably is better identified as quasi-experimental since participants were students within the chosen schools and not randomly chosen students from larger geographical districts.( I think because it had random assignment of clusters aka schools it was experimental - YES ) Participants were kindergarten and first grade struggling readers in a rural, low-wealth setting. They were selected because they may have had limited access to professional development or intervention services. The researchers adequately identified the participants in the study and did a thorough job explaining how the students were selected. As stated, "each experimental and control classroom contained five focal students and five non-focal students, a total of 10 students per classroom" (p. 19). This ensured randomization. The materials, "distance technology" and cost of the equipment was adequately described. This study could be easily replicated, based on the clear parameters. The TRI screening instrument was also clearly explained and thus, can be replicated for future studies. The great detail of this section as a whole helps to paint a vivid picture of the study for the reader. In addition, the method of instruction for the teachers and the delivery mode was clearly outlined. Professional development sessions allowed the teachers to become familiar with the distance learning before they implemented in their classrooms (p. 22). The specific kinds of tests that were administered in the spring and fall, in addition to quantitative data that described the students' "total implementation scale" (p. 26), were fully described.
 * II. CRITIQUE OF RESEARCH METHODS**

Independent variable - Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI) Dependent variables - a battery of standardized tests administered in fall and spring (Woodcock-Johnson Diagnostic Reading Battery, Letter-Word Identification, Passage Comprehension, Spelling of Sounds, The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third edition)

The authors performed an intent-to-treat analysis and defined four groups of children for analysis purposes and to test hypotheses about the effectiveness of the TRI: Experimental Focal and Experimental Non-Focal (i.e., struggling and non-struggling students in TRI classrooms) and Control Focal and Control Non-Focal (i.e., struggling and non-struggling students in non-TRI classrooms). To account for missing data, they used imputation, which, using SAS, is the practice of filling in missing data with plausible values (considered an acceptable approach to analyzing incomplete data). It apparently solves the missing-data problem at the beginning of the analysis. Five imputed datasets were created using a set of relevant variables to generate imputed values and models were run on each and parameters were aggregated across the datasets to give more precise estimates.
 * III. CRITIQUE OF DATA ANALYSIS**
 * Experimental focal students made the most gains with word attack, letter-word identification, passage comprehension, and spelling of sounds.**

Their findings supported the hypothesis that TRI would help struggling students. This study is important because it used classroom teachers rather than resource teachers for the intervention. Amendum et al. identify reasons why TRI is effective--balanced literacy, instructional time with text, and applied professional development. TRI is effective when delivered online. Also, fall vocabulary competencies did not impact the effectiveness of the intervention. This study seems to be extremely important. Not only does it demonstrate that this type of intervention significantly raises the test scores of struggling readers, but "there was evidence that the TRI actually enhanced the reading of the children who were not struggling in reading in the experimental schools" (p. 34). This indicates that the TRI goes beyond helping struggling students and can be used by classroom teachers to enhance all students' performance.
 * IV. CRITIQUE OF DISCUSSION**

On pg. 8, paragraph 1, the authors say, "Such a relationship suggests that poorer vocabulary might prevent children from profiting from classroom reading instruction". They're referring to the correlations between early vocabulary knowledge and middle school reading comprehension and decoding in the preceding sentence. I'm missing the connection. How'd they get from one sentence to the other? (Pam) The first study they cite states how language supports comprehension long after kids already know how to decode. Then they cite an 11-year longitudinal study that show the correlation between vocabulary, comprehension, and decoding in an effort to make the point that vocabulary is seen as a factor in all the other processes (including decoding and comprehension.) Did that answer the question? Sort of a 3-fold cord? The way I see it is that even if kids can decode, if they don't know that they decoded a real word and know it's meaning, this process is complicated as well as the self-teaching path towards automaticity. Vocabulary knowledge effects all levels of reading. Is it just me or is the hidden agenda for this study all about how to save the mighty dollar? Rather than paying someone to specialize in reading instruction and help students outside of the classroom, they intend on adding more responsibilities to the teachers' by having them individually tutor students while also managing a classroom. I understand where you are coming from, but this could actually be seen as a plus. I agree that it is not fair to put more responsibilities on the classroom teacher, but at least some classroom teachers with little or no help could be empowered to assist their students whereas before, they had to rely upon specialist educators to help their struggling students. These days, specialists drive to many schools in a county each week and therefore must spread their time very thin. I love the concept of digital coaching. I think this saves valuable time for everyone involved and definitely empowers teachers; however, I'm interested to see this in action and to hear more about how teachers respond to this approach. Another aspect of this study is that students were not stuck in an intervention group all year. Once they caught up they were discontinued and another student was helped. With some pull-out programs, students cannot be discontinued, but must stay for the entire year. I, too, wondered about one teacher teaching these struggling readers in the same classroom as with everyone else. It seemed quite overwhelming to me. :/ I agree but when struggling readers are pulled out, many teachers never take ownership of these kids or learn how to teach them. The professional development for teachers in this area is key to prevention of struggling readers in the first place. It might be challenging, but when students are pulled out time is wasted and students are oftentimes not served. Furthermore, I felt that when students were pulled out of the classroom, it not only sent the message to the student that someone could do my job better, it also infuriated me because I wasn't given the respect/trust to do it on my own! When I read the title I thought the focus would be on webcams. Perhaps the effectiveness of this piece could have been part of the research design where some schools had the webcam coach, some had on the ground coaches, and others had no coach at all. Amendum et al. states "This study is among the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of this real-time literacy coaching via webcam technology" (p. 35). How can we be sure that it was the webcam and not just the intervention? In addition, on page 22 it says that on-site consultants were present to participate in and observe the coaching process as often as possible. This means that the coaching was not just via webcam.
 * V. ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS (QUESTIONS/CONFUSIONS??)**
 * This ongoing method of professional development clearly succeeded in classrooms! This article provides an excellent model for requiring a sense of "immediacy" with professional development in order to benefit students. **