A collaborative project led by a College of Education professor that focuses on improving young children's reading achievement has been awarded a $5.5 million federal grant.

Linda Labbo believes she knows how to translate what is already known about teaching young children to read into demonstrated gains in the classroom. The associate professor of reading education was awarded the U.S. Department of Education grant this fall to do just that - raise young children's reading achievement by preparing future teachers to use the most proven literacy methods and latest computer technology.

The five-year project will use interactive, digital and multimedia "case-based" research to raise pre-service teachers' understanding of how to teach reading and writing most effectively, says Labbo, project director of Best Practices - Teacher Preparation - Technology: Connections That Enhance Children's Literacy Acquisition and Reading Achievement.

"This project identifies instructional practices which are supported by scientific research and which have stood the test of time in exemplary teachers' classrooms. It will establish -- for the first time -- guidelines for use of technology for K-3 classroom reading instruction and tests this pre-service delivery system and subsequent classroom instruction through a program that assesses effects on teacher candidates as well as on children's literacy achievement," says Labbo. "These results and other recommendations will be disseminated through a 'Best Practices in Literacy Web Site.'"

The researcher expects many pre-service teacher education programs, teachers and in-service programs to take advantage of the research-based resources developed on this web site resulting in a rapid and far-reaching dissemination of the results.

"Such a dissemination approach must be developed if we hope to rapidly translate what we already know about early literacy instruction into demonstrated gains in the classroom," she says.

While computer innovations have swept the nation in work and business, they have made only partial inroads into classrooms. While 63 percent of K-12 classrooms in the U.S. have Internet access, only 20 percent of public school teachers feel prepared to use computers in class. As a result, neither teachers nor students are benefiting from the use of computers for reading education, says Labbo.

"We want to improve teachers' abilities to make best uses of computers in classrooms in ways that will lead to higher reading achievement of children," she says.

During the first year of the project, the researchers will develop digital cases that demonstrate best practices in literacy instruction by collaborating with about a dozen K-3 classroom teachers in urban and other settings.

"We will provide these multimedia, case-based materials on CD/DVD-ROM and over the Internet, making visible the richness and complexity of best practice instruction to teacher educators, pre-service teachers and classroom teachers," says Labbo.

During the second year of the project, formative experiments will allow researchers to revise the cases, prepare guidelines and supplemental materials, and build a web site.

The next three years will involve widespread experimental intervention studies with about 70 collaborating Southeast Literacy Consortium members at 25-30 sites who will use cases in pre-service programs to evaluate gains in pre-service teachers' understanding of best practices in reading instruction. The evaluation will involve an estimated 750 teachers and 16,500 students. These pre-service teachers will be tracked into the classroom to study the effects of the intervention on subsequent classroom teaching and their students' reading achievement over several years.

Co-principal investigators on the project are: Charles Kinzer of Vanderbilt University, Donald Leu of the University of Connecticut and William H. Teale of the University of Illinois-Chicago. The project is being funded by the Interagency Educational Research Initiative which includes the U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research, the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Labbo says the creation, testing and implementation of this case-based, anchored instructional approach in pre-service literacy education classes through web-based delivery systems has the potential to significantly alter pre-service teacher education on a large scale, and ultimately, children's ability to effectively read.

Monday, Oct. 2, 2000

Writer: Michael Childs, 706/542-5889, mchilds@coe.uga.edu

Contact: Linda Labbo, 706/542-0193, llabbo@coe.uga.edu