Synthesis of Preservice Teacher Education Research Studies in the Field of Reading
Diagnostic Training
Preparing Preservice Teachers for Remedial Instruction: Teaching Problem Solving and Use of Content and Pedagogical Knowledge (Risko, Yount, & McAllister, 1991). This study analyzed how methods courses, microteaching, and other preteaching experiences often do not equip preservice teachers with problem-solving strategies to reflect on the many complexities of teaching and assessing students. Its primary focus was to help preservice teachers learn how to increase their diagnostic-analysis abilities as they tried to meet the needs of individual students and improve whole-class instruction.
The study was conducted in an undergraduate course, Remedial Reading and Practicum, which was required for both elementary and special education majors. Across all class sessions, the instructor and students examined video-based cases. Three cases were used to explore authentic classrooms and Title I situations. Each case contained a variety of naturally occurring classroom events, such as teacher-student interactions, teacher questioning, and students' participation in reading and writing activities. The preservice teachers carefully analyzed and diagnosed factors that contributed to the complexity of reading difficulties.
Related text materials supplemented the video cases. Other important information (e.g., children's assessment protocols, teachers' lesson plans, and samples of students' writings) also was reviewed for each case to provide a detailed diagnostic study of each student's reading abilities and difficulties. The viewing of diagnostic video cases provided the professor and preservice teachers with opportunities to reexamine scenes and cases for a variety of purposes to access information that was difficult to describe in written or verbal accounts (e.g., teachers' and students' nonverbal cues).
The study demonstrates that video-based cases can enhance preservice teachers' ability to actively participate in a variety of in-depth analyses of various topics, such as text structure, comprehension, the relationship between decoding and comprehension, schema theory, and diagnostic and corrective instruction procedures. The study clearly reveals that learning to teach through an enriched, problem-solving process enhances preservice teachers' ability to transfer theory into practice. The video-based case experiences also helped preservice teachers acquire mental models of authentic classes, enabling them to think flexibly and to understand the details of classroom events.
Preservice Teachers' Schemata for a Diagnostic Framework in Reading (Shefelbine & Shiel, 1990). The purpose of this study was to examine a schema-based diagnostic framework model, which used four key factors involved in the reading process:
- Levels of word identification (letter names, phonics, and structural analysis)
- Fluency
- Background knowledge
- Comprehension development and skills
The framework was studied to ascertain its impact on increasing preservice teachers' diagnostic skills. The study carefully examined preservice teachers' understanding of reading knowledge and instruction. It also examined their understanding of the diagnostic framework concerning how effectively they made classroom-level decisions about students' instructional needs in reading.
The classroom instruction across the study consisted of lectures, discussion, demonstrations, and peer practice sections. The diagnostic framework was presented in the form of case studies. The principal components of the diagnostic framework were systematically and repeatedly examined throughout the study. In addition to the case analyzes, the preservice teachers evaluated audiotapes of students' reading and answering questions. They also observed and taught reading and other subjects within an elementary school four days a week. In addition, the preservice teachers attended their university diagnostic course once a week for 2 1/2 hours during a 15-week semester.
This study revealed that the amount of quality reflective and engaged time offered to preservice teachers could enhance their understanding of the reading process—as well as their ability to properly diagnose and provide corrective instruction for students. Finally, the study revealed that preservice teachers were more successful on some components of the framework than on others (for example, the fluency mean was 4.75, the comprehension development and skills mean was 3.28, the background knowledge mean was 2.77, and the word identification mean was 2.51). This finding indicates the need for further detailed support for preservice teachers within this area of study.