Date of Award:

5-2012

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

School of Teacher Education and Leadership

Advisor/Chair:

D. Ray Reutzel

Abstract

Classroom teachers are provided instructional recommendations for teaching reading from their adopted core reading programs (CRPs). Explicit instruction elements or what is also called instructional moves, including direct explanation, modeling, guided practice, independent practice, discussion, feedback, and monitoring, were examined within CRP reading lessons. This study sought to answer the question: What elements of explicit instruction or instructional moves are included in the five most widely published CRP teachers’ edition lessons across five essential components of reading instruction? A content analysis of reading lessons in first, third, and fifth grades within current (copyright 2005-2010), widely used CRPs was conducted to determine the number and types of explicit instruction elements or instructional moves recommended within reading lessons for the following essential components of reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Findings offer several implications for publishers of CRPs and educators. First, guided practice was recommended most often in CRP lessons. Second, all five publishers were more similar than different in the number and types of explicit instruction elements or instructional move recommendations. All publishers rarely recommended the use of the explicit instruction elements of feedback and monitoring. Conversely, the explicit instruction elements or instructional moves of discussion and questioning were used almost to the exclusion of other elements of explicit instruction for comprehension lessons. It was also found that the recommendations to use elements of explicit instruction diminished from the lower to the upper grades—offering intermediate-grade teachers fewer explicit instruction recommendations.

Comments

This work made publicly available electronically on April 12, 2012.

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