2. Evidence-aligned reading instruction to lower learning poverty: Overview of the GEEAP-endorsed paper based on evidence from LMICs

• In Event: Achieving reading skills in a contextualized, inclusive way to mitigate the risk for conflicts – what does evidence-aligned reading instruction tell us?

Proposal

The presenter will provide an overview of the forthcoming GEEAP-endorsed literacy paper which includes an overview of the global evidence on effective reading instruction.
Scientific evidence now shows how children learn to read with understanding and how best to teach them. This forthcoming paper synthesizes the growing research from low- and middle-income countries, reviewing more than 75 studies on effective reading instruction across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East in more than 100 different languages. This expanded evidence (beyond high-income countries) confirms that certain core principles of effective reading instruction apply across diverse contexts, while allowing for necessary adaptations to specific languages and cultural settings.

This forthcoming paper shows that skilled reading is a complex process that relies on multiple subskills. These subskills can generally be grouped into two broad domains: decoding and language comprehension. Decoding is the ability to recognize written symbols (e.g., letters) and convert them into the sounds they represent to recognize words. Language comprehension involves understanding the meaning of words, sentences and texts. Decoding and language comprehension skills constantly interact while reading, and both are essential: without decoding, readers cannot recognize words; without language comprehension, they cannot grasp their meaning (Gough & Tumner 1986; Scarborough, 2001).


Key references (a full list of references will be available in the completed paper):
Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. Neuman & D. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook for research in early literacy (pp. 97–110). Guilford Press.
Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7(1), 6-10. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/074193258600700104

Author

• Maria Brindlmayer, GEEAP, BE2 / KM Excell