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With over 60 faculty members, the School of Education provides innovative and nationally-recognized teacher preparation and graduate programs that position its alumni to be leaders in the field of education. Through groundbreaking research, collaborative partnerships, and extensive field experiences in real-world settings, our programs prepare graduates to address critical educational issues and serve children, families, and their communities.
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Browsing School of Education by Author "Amendum, Steven J."
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Item Investigating the Efficacy of a Web-Based Early Reading and Professional Development Intervention for Young English Learners(International Literary Association, 2017-04-27) Amendum, Steven J.; Bratsch-Hines, Mary; Vernon-Feagans, Lynne; Steven J. Amendum Mary Bratsch‐Hines Lynne Vernon‐Feagans; Amendum, Steven J.The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI), a professional development program and early reading intervention delivered via webcam technology could support English learners’ early reading progress. Participants for the current study were drawn from a larger three-year randomized controlled trial and included 108 English learners (ELs) from 47 classrooms randomly assigned to treatment and control conditions. Teachers in treatment classrooms used the TRI in one-on-one sessions in the regular classroom for approximately 15 minutes per day. Weekly, and later, biweekly webcam coaching sessions between the TRI coach and each classroom teacher allowed the coach to interact with both the teacher and student in real time, and allowed classroom teachers to receive real-time feedback from the coach. Two-level hierarchical linear models suggested that ELs struggling with learning to read in intervention classrooms significantly outperformed their peers in control classrooms on word-level measures of early reading with effect sizes of .43 and .45, but not on text-level measures. Results also suggested that ELs struggling with learning to read were gaining at the same rate as their non-struggling peers, but they were not able to catch up within the study yearItem Matching Interventions to Reading Needs: A Case for Differentiation(International Literacy Association, 2016-01-01) Jones, Jill S.; Conradi, Kristin; Amendum, Steven J.; Jill S. Jones, Kristin Conradi, Steven J. Amendum; Amendum, Steven J.The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of providing reading interventions that are differentiated and aligned with an individual student’s most foundational reading need. The authors present profiles of different readers and suggest three principal areas for support: decoding words, reading at an appropriate rate, and comprehending text. In addition to describing differentiated interventions, related classroom instructional techniques are also recommended.Item Maximizing Small-Group Reading Instruction(Reading Teacher, 2022-09-26) Conradi Smith, Kristin; Amendum, Steven J.; Williams, Tamara W.In this article, the authors revisit the common practice of small-group reading instruction. They challenge the idea of grouping readers based on text levels and instead review supplemental intervention group research that suggests targeted skill practice as a more optimal use of time in small groups. They then present the ABCs—a focus on assessment, basics & books, and clarity in communication—as the central principles that should guide how we instruct reading in small groups.Item The Push for More Challenging Texts: An Analysis of Early Readers’ Rate, Accuracy, and Comprehension(Taylor & Francis, 2015-08-11) Amendum, Steven J.; Conradi, Kristin; Liebfreund, Meghan D.; Steven J. Amendum, Kristin Conradi & Meghan D. Liebfreund; Amendum, Steven J.The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between the challenge level of text and early readers’ reading comprehension. This relationship was also examined with consideration to students’ word recognition accuracy and read- ing rate. Participants included 636 students, in Grades 1–3, in a southeastern state. Results suggest that students reading texts well above their actual grade levels, even with sufficient accuracy scores, scored significantly lower on com- prehension than students reading texts at their actual grade level. This result also held regardless of students’ reading rates. Findings signal the importance of considering text level during instruction and suggest some caution is warranted when pushing students into texts well above their grade levels.