Assessing teachers' knowledge and confidence of spelling instruction
department or school: Education, Faculty of
department or school: Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Hill, Penny
issued: 2019-05-03T17:59:00Z
issued: 2019
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Nearly one out of five children in the classroom may need special help to attain satisfactory levels of literacy. Research findings indicate that teachers are not sufficiently trained to support students who struggle with reading and reading-related disorders such as dyslexia. From a sample of British Columbia teachers (n = 63) this study sought to measure teachers’ knowledge of basic language concepts, teachers’ knowledge and understanding of the nature of reading difficulties and teachers’ confidence in their ability to remediate reading-related difficulties. The results indicate that teachers’ understanding of reading-related difficulties such as dyslexia, and their knowledge and skill of basic language concepts such as phonology, orthography and morphology is limited and highly variable. Teachers’ knowledge of basic language concepts were similar to previous research whereby teachers performed better on items in which implicit knowledge could be applied to correctly identify a multiple choice answer. Over half (52%) of the teachers believe that the English spelling system is unpredictable. The mean score for spelling tasks which required demonstration of explicit knowledge of the spelling rule when adding a suffix to a word with a silent e; recognizing a word’s origin; when ck is used; what letters signal a soft c; all of the ways to spell “long o”; and the ways to spell the consonant “f” was 1 with a range of 0 - 4 out of 6. Only 14% of educators stated that they felt prepared to teach children with learning disabilities. Correlation analyses (Pearson) were computed to assess the relationship between perceived ability and skill. 71% of teachers’ self-report of confidence to analyze students’ spelling errors to inform instruction was minimal to moderate. 86% of teachers’ self-report of confidence to use assessment to inform instruction was minimal to moderate. Overall, findings suggest that teachers lack the confidence and skills for teacher directed instruction…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/70052
note: ASSESSING TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE AND CONFIDENCE OF SPELLING INSTRUCTION by Penny Hill B.A. (Leadership), Trinity Western University, 2013 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Special Education) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2019 © Penny Hill, 2019 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, a thesis entitled: Assessing Teachers’ Knowledge and Confidence of Spelling Instruction submitted by Penny Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Special Education Examining Committee: Dr. Linda Siegel Supervisor Dr. Barbara Weber Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Sterett Mercer Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract Nearly one out of five children in the classroom may need special help to attain satisfactory levels of literacy. Research findings indicate that teachers are not sufficiently trained to support students who struggle with reading and reading-related disorders such as dyslexia. From a sample of British Columbia teachers (n = 63) this study sought to measure teachers’ knowledge of basic language concepts, teachers’ knowledge and understanding of the nature of reading difficulties and teachers’ confidence in their ability to remediate reading-related difficulties. The results indicate that teachers’ understanding of reading-related difficulties such as dyslexia, and their knowledge and skill of basic language concepts such as phonology, orthography and morphology is limited and highly variable. Teachers’ knowledge of basic language concepts were similar to previous research whereby teachers performed better on items in which implicit knowledge could be applied to correctly identify a multiple choice answer. Over half (52%) of the teachers believe that the English spelling system is unpredictable. The …
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2019-05
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0378582
language: eng
degree discipline: Special Education
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/70052