Date of Award

12-15-2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Education

First Advisor

Kent Layton

Abstract

Using an exploratory sequential research design, this research was conducted to explore whether the emergence of initiation predicted whether students reach grade-level literacy expectations by the conclusion of their Reading Recovery intervention. Reading Recovery is a research-based short-term intervention developed by Marie Clay with the goal to help the lowest-performing students accelerate their reading progress so that they can reach the average of their class. The following questions were the focus of research: 1) What is the behavioral structure of initiation as part of the problem-solving process in reading? 2) Does the emergence of initiation, as recorded on running records, predict whether students accelerate in literacy development? 3) Does the timing of when initiation is first observed impact the rate of acceleration? For this study, initiation was defined by the researcher as an action by the reader that indicates an attempt to problem-solve by voicing the first letter (/c/ /at/) or the first part (/ca/ /t/) of a word. Using a priori coding, the data revealed that initiation is part of the behavioral structure of problem-solving in reading. Data analysis did not reveal that initiation predicted acceleration or that timing impacted acceleration. There is still more to learn about the role of initiation in regard to literacy development and its’ impact on acceleration.

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