Date of Conferral

2018

Degree

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

School

Education

Advisor

Peter Ross

Abstract

Historically, students with intellectual disabilities (ID) have low reading comprehension skills that can impede their overall academic success. There is a gap in practice regarding the identification and effective use of evidence-based reading comprehension instructional strategies for students with ID. Guided by Piaget's and Vygotsky's constructivist theories, the purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of a metacognitive reading strategy on the emerging reading comprehension (ERC) skills of kindergarten students with ID. A single-participant, multiple baseline design with graphical visual analysis was used across 4 kindergarten students with ID to illustrate the influence of the reading intervention. All 4 kindergarten students showed increases in their ERC skills after the completion of the intervention. An effect-size statistic was calculated to measure the improvement in percentage rate of correct responses between each participant's baseline and intervention phase. The effect-size results indicated a 60% to 80% improvement rate difference. Therefore, for these kindergartners, the metacognitive reading strategy significantly increased the ERC skills of the participants. The implications for social change include providing teachers with effective metacognitive instructional strategies for ERC skills and for improving ERC skills among students with ID, thus, allowing ID students greater opportunity to benefit from curriculum and instruction over time.

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