Considering Instructional Time and Comprehension Rate when Evaluating the Effectiveness of Reading Interventions in Classrooms

The purpose of this investigation was to replicate and extend research done by Daly et al. (1998), which focused on the functional analysis of academic problems. This research examined comprehension and amount of instructional time as dependent variables to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of reading interventions (repeated reading, contingent reinforcement for rapid reading, and listening passage preview). Results suggest that when evaluating increases in oral reading fluency (words read correct per minute), each participant obtained greatest gains using different combinations of interventions. However, when examining instructional time specifically, it becomes clear that the contingent reinforcement and listening passage preview interventions showed greatest gains when evaluating the amount of time that educators spend with students. This indicates that methods may be available that show substantial improvements in reading fluency and require less teacher time. When examining comprehension, contingent reinforcement showed improvements when evaluating factual, inferential, and total comprehension.