Differential effects of the conceptual level matching model in a structured versus unstructured reading comprehension task with a population of learning students

• Main Author: Surber, James M.
• Other Authors: Wenck, L. Stanley
• Format: Others
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: Special education.; Reading comprehension.
• Online Access: http://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/handle/handle/181303; http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/265126

The focus of this study was the testing of the Conceptual Level Matching Model with a population of learning disabled (LD) children. The students selected for use in this study consisted of an equal number of students in the high and low CL groups ranging between 13 and 15 years of age.The final sample included 35 males and five females whose IQ's ranged between 80 and 117. These students were attending public school special education LD resource rooms in Anderson, Indiana. The students, selected on the basis of their chronological age, were divided into two groups according to their score on the Paragraph Completion Test. Thus, comparisons were observed among and between the two experimental groups. A statistical analysis of those attributes on which the students were grouped revealed no significant differences between groups on measures of chronological age, full scale IQ and reading comprehension scores.The results were generated from the administration of the Paragraph Completion Test (PCT) and the Analytical Reading Inventory (ARI). The PCT was used to assign students to either the high or low group who were in turn randomly assigned to either the structured or unstructured group to form the final four experimental groups. All students were then administered three graded paragraphs from the ARI; intended to measure their level of reading comprehension. T-tests were initially used to test for significant differences between the two groups in terms of chronological age, IQ, and reading comprehension scores. A two-way factorial analysis of variance was used to test differences between means for the four experimental groups. The hypothesis predicting a significant difference between the two main groups on the ARI was supported by the data. It was concluded that LD students high in conceptual level (CL) can be expected to perform significantly better than low CL students on a reading comprehension task.A significant difference was also shown between the low CL group taught in a highly structured fashion and the low CL group taught in an unstructured fashion; with the structured group performing significantly better. However, the third hypothesis which predicted that the high CL group taught in an unstructured fashion would perform better than the high CL group taught in a structured fashion was not supported by the data. In fact the results showed a trend in the opposite direction, with the high CL group-structured performing better than the high CL group-unstructured.The data also supported the hypothesis that the high CL group would perform significantly better on the cause and effect, inferential, and conclusion reading comprehension questions on the ARI than the low CL group. However, these results should be interpreted with caution because of the high level of overall significance between the high and low CL groups. Therefore, these results may not be a reflection of the type of question asked but of the overall superiority of the high CL group.Recommended avenues of investigation for future research is cited as follows: (a) replication of the study with equal numbers of females to permit greater generalization of the results; (b) evaluation of the CL of LD teachers to see if they prefer to teach in a highly structured fashion which is consistent with the way low CL students prefer to learn; (c) structuring an LD student's learning environment on a long term basis; (d) study of the environment that would allow LD students low in CL to move to the next higher stage of development; and (e) development of an instrument that can be used to measure the CL of younger children.