1 / 25

Gender effects in a randomized trial of individual tutoring with children in care

Robyn Marquis & Robert J. Flynn School of Psychology & Centre for Research on Educational and Community Services (CRECS) University of Ottawa (Canada) EUSARF 2014, Copenhagen September 3, 2014. Gender effects in a randomized trial of individual tutoring with children in care.

ashlyn
Download Presentation

Gender effects in a randomized trial of individual tutoring with children in care

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Robyn Marquis & Robert J. Flynn School of Psychology & Centre for Research on Educational and Community Services (CRECS) University of Ottawa (Canada) EUSARF 2014, Copenhagen September 3, 2014 Gendereffects in a randomized trial of individualtutoringwithchildren in care

  2. Canada & Ontario

  3. Low educational achievement of young people in care:Research in Canada • In Canada, resultssimilar to those in USA & UK • Flynn & Biro (1998): higher rates of suspension and grade retentionthan for peers in general population • Flynn et al. (2004): In samples of young people in care: • 10-15 years of age: 80% scored in same range as lowestthird of general Canadian population on parental ratings of reading, spelling, and math • 5-9 years of age: 78% scored in same range of lowestthird of Canadian population (samecriteria)

  4. A note on effect sizes in education • Effect size = size of effect of intervention • Cohen’sd or Hedgesg (nearlyidentical) • Criteria for effect sizes in education: • What Works Clearinghouse (2011): 0.25 • Lipsey et al. (2012) (medians): • Individual interventions: 0.29 • Small-group interventions: 0.22 • Classroom: 0.08 • Wholeschool: 0.14 • Overall: 0.18

  5. Tutoring: A useful intervention • Systematicreview & meta-analysis by Ritter et al. (2006, 2009): • Studies of children in general population • 21 randomizedstudies, 28 cohorts • Tutoringproduced positive effects: • Reading overall (d = 0.30)* • Reading global (d = 0.26)* • Reading oral fluency (d = 0.30)* • Reading letters & words (d = 0.41)* • Reading comprehension (d = 0.18) • Writing (d = 0.45)* • Mathematics (d = 0.27)

  6. Direct-Instruction Tutoring & Maloney’s Teach Your Children Well • Direction-instruction teaching method: • Well-organized, structured, effective method of teaching reading & math skills • For special & general education students • See National Institute for Direct Instruction web site (http://www.nifdi.org/) • M. Maloney’s Teach Your Children Well: • DI-based (http://www.maloneymethod.com/) • Combined with behavior management • Uses tutor manuals, learn-to-read series of books, workbooks, math CD-ROM, training

  7. Our randomized trial(Flynn et al., 2012) • Collaboration between: • 9 Children’sAidSocieties in Ontario & • University of Ottawa (CRECS) • Two main questions: 1. Does individual direct-instruction tutoring help children living in foster care to catch up in reading & math? 2. Do girls and boys benefit equally from direct-instruction tutoring?

  8. Method • Participants: 77 fosterchildren • Children in foster care (grades 2-7, ages 6-13) and theirfoster parents (tutors) • Randomlyassigned to control or intervention groups • 2008-2009 schoolyear • Wait-list control group (n = 35) • Intervention group (n = 42): Tutoring by foster parents, usingMaloney’s TYCW method, for 30 weeks, 3 hrs/week

  9. Method • Outcomemeasure: • Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT4): • Word Reading • Sentence Comprehension • Reading Composite • Spelling • Math Computation • Mental healthmeasures

  10. Method - AnalysisSample • Foster childrenreassessedatpost-test: • Total N = 64 • 30 childrenwhohadactuallyreceived the tutoring intervention • 34 children in wait-list control condition • Intervention and control conditions stillequivalent, despite attrition

  11. Results • Question no. 1: Does individual direct-instruction tutoring help children living in foster care to catch up in reading & math?

  12. WRAT4 Word Reading: Results at post-test (N = 64) (g = .19, p = .19, 1-tailed, ns;post-test scores adjusted for pre-test scores)

  13. WRAT4 Reading Comprehension:Results at post-test (N=64) (g = .38, p = .035, 1-tailed;post-test scores adjusted for pre-test scores

  14. WRAT4 Reading Composite:Results at post-test (N = 64) (g = .29, p = .096, 1-tailed;post-test scores adjusted for pre-test scores

  15. WRAT4 Spelling: Results at post-test (N = 64) (g = -.08, p = .37, 2-tailed, ns;post-test scores adjusted for pre-test scores)

  16. WRAT4 Math Computation:Results at post-test (N = 64) (g = .46, p = .009, 1-tailed;post-test scores adjusted for pre-test scores)

  17. Results • Question no. 2: Do girls and boys benefit equally from direct-instruction tutoring?

  18. WRAT4 Word Reading: Pre/post change, by gender & condition BOYS (d = .01) GIRLS (d=.39) (*p < .05, 2-tailed)

  19. WRAT4 Sentence Comprehension: Pre/post change, by gender & condition BOYS (d = .44) GIRLS (d =.12) (*p < .05, 2-tailed)

  20. WRAT4 Reading Composite:Pre/post change, by gender & condition GIRLS (d = .25) BOYS (d = .19) (*p < .05, 2-tailed)

  21. WRAT4 Spelling:Pre/post change, by gender & condition GIRLS (d = .15) BOYS (d = .19) (*p < .10, 2-tailed)

  22. WRAT4 Math Computation:Pre/post change, by gender & condition GIRLS (d = .41) BOYS (d = .21) (*p < .05, 2-tailed)

  23. Results – Conclusionsregardinggendereffects • Girls: • Made statisticallysignificant gains on 4 out of 5 WRAT4 outcomemeasures • d > median of .29 on Word Reading and Math Computation • Boys: • Made statisticallysignificant gains on 3 out of 5 WRAT4 outcomemeasures • d > median of .29 on Sentence Comprehension

  24. Overall conclusions • Tutoringby foster parents helps foster children to catch up in reading and math • Girls and boys both benefit in reading and math • More well-controlled evaluations of interventions are needed

  25. Thank you for your attention • References: For papers by Forsman & Vinnerljung (2012), Flynn et al. (2012), and Harper & Schmidt (2012), seespecial issue of Children and Youth Services Review, 34 (6), June, 2012, on improvingeducationaloutcomes of young people in care. • Contact: Robert Flynn (rflynn@uottawa.ca). Feel free to write to me by e-mail

More Related