Newswise — Terrence Tivnan of Harvard University and Lowry Hemphill of Wheelock College are recipients of the International Reading Association's 2007 Dina Feitelson Research Award for "Comparing Four Literacy Reform Models in High-Poverty Schools: Patterns of First-Grade Achievement," published in The Elementary School Journal in May 2005. Tivnan, who was a first grade teacher, currently directs the masters program in human development and psychology for Harvard's Graduate School of Education and teaches research methods and data analysis. Lowry Hemphill, who was on Harvard's faculty from 1990-2002, chairs Wheelock's department of language and literacy and teaches courses in literacy pedagogy and literacy research.

In "Comparing Four Literacy Reform Models in High-Poverty Schools: Patterns of First-Grade Achievement," Tivnan and Hemphill compare the impact of the four off-the-shelf reading programs approved for Boston. By comparing student achievement for first grade students in 16 participating public schools, Tivnan and Hemphill concluded that Building Essential Literacy (BEL), Developing Literacy First (DLF), Literacy Collaborative (LC), and Success for All (SFA) were equally successful in raising student achievement, despite difference in pedagogical focus and core beliefs about literacy development. All succeeded in expanding word reading and phonics skills for first grade students. Vocabulary increased as well, but neither it nor comprehension abilities improved enough for children to reach grade-level expectations in these areas. The programs also generated about the same level of writing achievement.

Tivnan and Hemphill found that the pedagogical skills and orientations of individual teachers is the largest source of variability in first-grade outcomes, apart from differences in child ability. Some study teachers were successful in bringing 80 percent of their class to grade-level reading comprehension expectations, while others brought less than 20 percent to the same benchmark. Interestingly, DLF, which placed the greatest emphasis on training teachers to conduct effective guided reading groups and was least prescriptive about reading material, showed the greatest success in getting children close to grade-level reading comprehension by the end of first grade. Similarly, the modestly better performance of LC children in creating longer and more sophisticated writing may be linked to the professional development teachers received on how to provide writing instruction, as well as its emphasis on learning to read and write a group of high-frequency words. As Tivnan and Hemphill note, "An irony of literacy reform is that, although the adoption of structured models may provide some leveling of teacher knowledge and resources, there remain significant differences in capacity across teachers, even in a district with substantial supports for improved instruction."

Terrence Tivnan and Lowry Hemphill will receive the Dina Feitelson Research Award on May 12, 2007, at the International Reading Association's annual research conference, held this year in Toronto, Ontario.

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