What Preservice and Inservice Teachers
Believe and Know About Early Reading Instruction

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The following chapter was coauthored by Dr. Blanche Podhajski, and published in the Annals of Dyslexiain February of 2002.

Candace Bos - University of Texas at Austin
Nancy Mather - University of Arizona
Shirley Dickson - Texas Education Agency
Blanche Podhajski - Stern Center for Language and Learning
David Chard - University of Oregon

Abstract

A major conclusion from research on children with poor reading performance is that early, systematic instruction in phonological awareness and letter-sound correspondences improves early reading and spelling skills and results in a reduction of the number of students who are reading below grade level. To teach reading to at-risk students and students with reading disabilities, teachers need to have both positive perceptions regarding the role of systematic, explicit instruction, as well as knowledge of English language structure. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions and knowledge of general and special preservice educators at several large universities and inservice educators from several geographic areas toward early literacy instruction. The results indicated that these educators expressed positive attitudes toward explicit and implicit code instruction. However, neither preservice nor inservice general or special educators demonstrated adequate knowledge of phonological awareness or terminology related to language structure. Additionally they perceived themselves as only somewhat prepared to teach early reading to struggling readers. These findings indicate that a continuing mismatch exists between what teachers know and what convergent research supports as effective early reading instruction for children at risk and imply that continuing efforts to inform and reform teacher education are critical.

Perceptions and Knowledge of Preservice and Inservice Teachers About Early Reading Instruction

“...lower level language mastery is as essential for the literacy teacher as anatomy is for the physician”
(Moats, 1994, p. 99).

In the early elementary school years, general education teachers face the challenging task of teaching young children how to read. Although many children accomplish this task successfully, an increasing number fail to acquire basic reading skills in the early elementary years (Lyon, 1999). Unfortunately, children who read poorly in first and second grade tend to remain poor readers throughout school (Blachman, 2000; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Approximately 75% of the children who struggle with reading in third grade will still be poor readers at the end of high school (Francis, Shaywitz, Stuebing, Shaywitz, & Fletcher, 1996; Lyon, 1998). Each year these children face increasing obstacles to reading development (Adams & Bruck, 1995; Torgesen & Burgess, 1998). Their difficulties with word recognition and fluency affect their abilities to comprehend and gain conceptual knowledge (Juel, 1988; Shaywitz, et al., 1995; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1994).

State and local administrators, politicians, and publishers are increasingly attending to the critical importance of teaching phonemic awareness and phonics and integrating these skills into reading instruction for at-risk students. Research findings of the last decade has demonstrated that early, systematic instruction in phonological awareness and phonics provided in the general education classroom improves children’s early reading skills (O’Connor, Jenkins, & Slocum, 1995; Blachman, Ball, Black, & Tangel, 1994; Wanzek, Dickson, Bursuck, & White, 2000). This type of instruction results in a reduction of the number of students who are reading below grade level and are identified as having learning disabilities (Dickson & Bursuk, 2000; O’Connor, 1999).

The National Reading Panel (2000) noted that an analysis of reading and reading instruction involves four interacting factors: students, tasks, materials, and teachers. Although teachers and teacher preparation are critical factors, studies consistently find that teachers are inadequately prepared to teach early reading (Mather, Bos, & Babur, in press; Moats, 1994; Troyer & Yopp, 1990).

Both general and special educators must be equipped with the knowledge, perceptions, and materials needed to help children acquire reading. Many students with dyslexia are taught in general education classrooms and begin to receive special education services, for the most part, after second grade when they have failed at reading. Consequently, general and special educators need to know how to use effective teaching methodologies and valid instructional programs that have as core elements explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonic skills, and their application to reading text (O'Connor, 2000; Torgesen, 2000; Vellutino et al., 1996). They need a thorough understanding of how poor phonological awareness and/or poor orthographic awareness (ability to recall letter strings) can contribute to reading and spelling failure. They also need to have knowledge of: (a) the skills associated with phonological awareness, (b) how the English language is constructed, and (c) how speech sounds relate to print (Brady & Moats, 1997). Furthermore, they need to have positive perceptions about the role of systematic explicit instruction (Mather, et al., in press). Effective teaching, therefore, requires expert teachers who base decisions upon research-based practices and student outcomes.

The purpose of this study was to examine beliefs and knowledge of elementary-level educators toward early reading instruction and to update and broaden the study conducted by Moats in 1994. More specifically, we wondered whether preservice and inservice educators, including both general and special educators, were familiar with and/or agree converging research findings from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (Lyon, 1999) and the National Reading Panel (2000) that underscore the importance of systematic and explicit reading instruction for at-risk learners? Would the teachers understand that phonemic awareness instruction linked to systematic decoding instruction is a key to preventing and reducing reading failure? For example, would they believe that: (a) phonemic awareness plays a foundational role in reading development? (b) beginning readers need to be able to segment words into phonemes (speech sounds) and blend phonemes into words?; and (c) the ability to recognize words accurately and easily is essential for rapid decoding? Furthermore, we wondered whether the majority of preservice and inservice teachers would be knowledgeable about language structure and able to apply this knowledge to tasks, such as counting the number of syllables and phonemes within words.

We also wondered whether or not inexperienced and experienced teachers and general and special education teachers would differ in their perceptions about the role of explicit code instruction in early reading, as well as their knowledge of language elements. In other words, would experienced teachers be more knowledgeable about structured language and view explicit instruction more positively than student teachers at the preservice level? Would classroom teaching experience or working with primarily struggling readers as special educators do influence perceptions about the importance of explicit instruction with children struggling with skill acquisition?

The present study was part of a larger federally funded project, Project RIME, Reading Instructional Methods of Efficacy (Bos, Mather, Friedman Narr, & Babur, 1999) that employed an interactive, collaborative professional development model (Anders & Bos, 1992; Bos, Nahmias, & Urban, 1997) to increase teachers’ knowledge and skills for using explicit instruction to improve reading outcomes for primary age students. Project RIME was adapted, in part, from T•I•M•E for Teachers™ (Podhajski, 2000), a professional development program developed in 1994 to address concerns regarding the inadequacy of teacher education and professional development for early reading intervention. The professional development, funded by a private foundation, included both didactic instruction and practicum experiences and emphasized knowledge about language structure (“how the language words”), focused on teaching research-based practices in phonological awareness, systematic phonics instruction, and the generalization of these concepts to literature.

As part of Project RIME, we developed, piloted, validated, and revised measures of teacher perception and knowledge. The purpose of the perception survey and knowledge assessment was to determine whether teachers’ beliefs, perceptions, and knowledge changed after having participated in the professional development project (Bos et al., 1999). For the present study, we used a shorten version to describe the beliefs and knowledge of preservice and inservice general and special education teachers using multiple sites across the U.S.

Method

Participants

The study consisted of two groups of teachers: preservice (n=252) and inservice (n=286). The preservice teachers had completed the methods course for teaching reading and were either in their last semester before student teaching or engaged in student teaching. They were from three major universities located in the Midwest and Southwest. Of the 252 preservice teachers, most was female, the majority was under 30 years of age, and were either Anglo or Hispanic . (See Table 1) A number of the preservice teachers noted some type of experience working with children: teaching (32%), working as an instructional aide (36%), and teaching reading in an instructional setting (47%).

The inservice teachers were employed as elementary-level teachers in the Midwest, Southwest, and Northeast. They were primarily kindergarten through third-grade general and special education teachers who were participating in the professional development associated with Project RIME or T•I•M•E for Teachers™ . Similar to the preservice teachers, the majority was female. Most were between 31 and 50 years of age and about two/thirds were elementary education teachers (63%). Their teaching experience was distributed relatively evenly ranging from 1 to more than 20 years (see Table 1).

As part of the descriptive information the preservice and inservice teachers were asked to rate the level of preparedness for teaching reading, teaching struggling readers, and using specific approaches to reading (phonological awareness/phonics, guided reading/reading recovery, and whole language). In general, the preservice and inservice teachers felt somewhat prepared. The mean ratings by preservice and inservice teachers are reported in Table 2.

Description of Measures

Data were collected on two measures: a perception survey and a knowledge assessment. The Teacher Perceptions About Early Reading and Spelling was adapted from an instrument developed by DeFord (1985). DeFord developed a survey to differentiate among three theoretical orientations toward reading: phonics, skills, and whole language. In her validation study, only two theoretical orientations clearly emerged: phonics and whole language. For this study, we adapted and developed statements focused on two theoretical orientations: six items on explicit code instruction (EC) and six items on implicit code instruction (IC). In addition to items representing each orientation, several statements were added that were considered best practices in early literacy and not representative of any particular theoretical orientation (e.g., literacy experiences in the home contribute to early reading success).

Teachers were asked to rate each of the 15 items on a six-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (6). The statistical properties of this survey were determined using a longer survey (25 items) that was administered to 41 practicing teachers in an initial field test (Mather et al., in press). The factor analysis using principal components extraction and varimax rotation indicated that two factors emerged: explicit code instruction with an explained variance of 24%, and implicit code instruction with an explained variance of 16%. The instrument was reliable (Cronbach’s coefficient alpha = .74). On the 15 items version used for this study, the same two factors emerged using the same factor analysis procedures on the sample of 286 inservice teachers: explicit code instruction (r2 = 14%) and implicit code instruction (r2 = 9%). The reliability (Cronbach’s coefficient alpha) for each factor was EC= .70 and IC= .50. Table 3 presents the items for each factor with the mean ratings for preservice and inservice teachers.

The Teacher Knowledge Assessment: Structure of Language is a 20-item multiple-choice assessment that examined knowledge of the structure of the English language at both the word and sound levels. Items were developed or adapted from several sources (Lerner, 1997; Moats, 1994; Rath, 1994). The original statistical properties were determined on a longer assessment (25 items) with 55 inservice teachers. Overall reliability was .83 (Cronbach’s coefficient alpha). The knowledge assessment used for this study was reduced to 20 items with an overall reliability of .60 (Cronbach’s alpha) based on the 286 inservice teachers. The items for the assessment with the percent passing for preservice and inservice teachers are presented in Table 4.

Data Collection and Analysis

For the preservice teachers, the perceptions and knowledge measures were collected after completing their reading methods courses and during student teaching or internship prior to student teaching. The inservice educators completed the measures prior to participating in their professional development.

We analyzed the data to address four questions. First, how can perceptions regarding explicit and implicit code instruction and knowledge of the structure of language be characterized for preservice and inservice educators? Second, within the group of inservice educators, how do perceptions and knowledge vary based on years of experiences? Third, how do preservice and inservice general and special educators’ perceptions and knowledge compare? Fourth, how do preservice and inservice educators’ perceived level of preparedness to teach relate to their perceptions toward explicit and implicit code instruction and their knowledge of the structure of language?

To address the first question, perceptions and knowledge of preservice and inservice educators, we computed the means for each group and visually examined the means of the individual item responses. To address the second question regarding perceptions and knowledge of inservice educators with varying years of teaching experience, we grouped the inservice educators according to number of year of experience: 1 to 5 years (n = 94), 6 to 10 years (n = 54), and 11 or more years (n = 117), excluding teachers with less than one year of experience. We conducted an omnibus F-test in an analysis of variance (ANOVA) for each measure and, if significant, a Tukey honestly significant difference (HSD) was used to determine the groups demonstrating significant differences.

For the third question, differences among preservice and inservice general and special educators, we conducted separate 2 (type of educator: preservice or inservice) x 2 (teaching role: elementary or special education) ANOVAs for each measure. For these analyses we compared the (a) preservice teachers pursuing elementary certification only (n = 130), (b) inservice educators with elementary education as a primary role (n = 164), (d) preservice educators seeking special education certification (n = 79), and (d) inservice educators with special education, reading specialist/Title I reading, or speech /language pathologist as primary roles (n = 78). To address the fourth question, the relationships between the level of preparedness and the perceptions and knowledge of pre-and inservice educators, we computed Pearson Product-Moment Correlation coefficients and examined significance.

Results

Perceptions and Knowledge of Educators
The first question focused on preservice and inservice educators’ perceptions toward explicit and implicit code instruction and their knowledge of English language structure.

Preservice educators. Overall, the preservice educators agreed with the importance of explicit code instruction (M = 5.2) (see Table 5) with the means for items ranging from 4.72 (phonemic awareness) to 5.74 (assess and teach phonological awareness) (see Table 3). Their agreement with implicit code fell between mildly agree and agree (M = 4.5) with the means for items ranging from between 3 and 4 (3.25 for not correcting semantically related words; 3.40 for importance of context clues; 3.75 for literature-based text) to more than 5 (5.52 for importance of picture clues; 5.56 for time spent reading; 5.77 for adult-child shared reading).

For Knowledge of Language Structure, the preservice educators scored an average of 10.6 items correct out of 20 items (see Table 5). Fifty percent or more preservice educators answered incorrectly five of nine items related to phonics and six of 11 items related to phonological awareness (see Table 4). The five items related to phonics included (a) voiced and unvoiced consonants (b) silent letters, (c) consonant blends, (d) digraphs, and (e) the definition of phonics. For the items related to phonological awareness, 50 percent or less failed to (a) identify deletion, segmentation, or blending tasks; (b) identify the second sound in the word “queen”; and (c) distinguish between teaching phonological awareness and teaching letter/sound correspondences. While 50 percent or more could segment a word with two sounds, they missed the 2 items that required segmenting words with four sounds.

Inservice educators. The inservice educators also expressed positive perceptions toward explicit code instruction (M = 5.4) (see Table 5) with a range from 4.9 (controlled text) to 5.86 (assess and teach phonological awareness) (see Table 3). The inservice educators mildly agreed to agreed with implicit code instruction (M = 4.5) with the means for items ranging from between 3 and 4 (3.13 for importance of context clues, 3.14 for literature-based text, and 3.49 for not correcting semantically related words) to more than 5 (5.63 for time spent reading; 5.68 for picture clues; 5.84 for adult-child shared reading).

The inservice educators scored an average of 12 out of 20 correct responses in Knowledge of Language Structure. Fifty percent of the inservice educators missed four of the nine items related to phonics and four of the 11 items related to phonological awareness (see Table 4). The missed phonics items included (a) voiced and unvoiced consonants, (b) silent letters, (c) digraphs, and (d) the definition of phonics. Unlike the preservice educators, 50 percent or more of the inservice educators identified consonant blends. More than 50 percent of the inservice educators (a) correctly segmented a word that had two sounds but missed the two questions that required segmenting words that had four sounds, (b) could not identify the second sound in the word “queen”; and (c) confused teaching phonological awareness with teaching letter/sound correspondences. Unlike the preservice educators, more than 50 percent of the inservice educators identified deletion, segmentation, and blending tasks.

Years of Teaching Experience

Based on years of teaching experience, there were no significant differences among groups for their perception toward explicit and implicit code instruction (see Table 6). There was a significant difference among groups for their knowledge of the structure of language (F [2, 262] = 5.51, p<. 01). The inservice educators with more than 11 years of experience demonstrated significantly higher knowledge scores than the inservice educators with 1-5 years experience (p<. 01). No significant differences existed between inservice educators with 6-10 years experience and their peers with 1-5 years or more than 11 years experience.
Comparisons Among Preservice and Inservice General and Special Educators
Explicit code instruction. The 2x2 ANOVA for explicit code instruction indicated two main effects with no interaction effect. Inservice educators expressed a more positive attitude toward explicit code instruction than did preservice educators (F [3, 447] = 13.0, p<. 01). Special educators (preservice and inservice) expressed a more positive attitude toward explicit code instruction than elementary educators (F [3, 447] = 16.3, p<. 01).

Implicit code instruction. While there was no difference between preservice and inservice educators for the perceptions about implicit code instruction, the 2x2 ANOVA indicated that elementary educators, regardless of whether preservice or inservice, expressed a more positive attitude toward implicit code instruction than did special educators (F [3, 447] = 19.0, p<. 01). There was no significant interaction effect.

Knowledge of Language Structure. Results from the 2x2 ANOVA indicated two main effects with no interaction effect for educators’ scores on the knowledge assessment. Inservice educators demonstrated significantly more knowledge of the English language structure than did preservice educators (F [3, 447] = 29.6, p<. 01) and special educators demonstrated significantly more knowledge than did elementary educators (F [3, 447] = 13.4, p <. 01).

Perceptions of Preparation to Teach
In general, the preservice and inservice educators perceived themselves as somewhat prepared to teach early reading to children and struggling readers in particular (see Table 2.) Preservice and inservice educators also generally perceived themselves as somewhat prepared to use phonological awareness/phonics, guided reading/Reading Recovery, and whole language for teaching early reading.

Correlations between perceptions of preparedness and explicit code instruction. For inservice teachers, a positive attitude toward explicit code instruction was significantly and positively correlated with perception of preparedness to teach children (r = .13) and struggling readers (r = .24) and to teach using phonological awareness/phonics (r = .28) (see Table 8). For inservice educators, a positive attitude toward explicit code instruction was significantly and positively correlated with teaching using phonological awareness (r = .17). In the analyses, the correlations are significant but low. Low correlations, however, occur when the variance between groups is small (Glass, & Hopkins, 1984).

Correlations between perceptions of preparedness and implicit code instruction. For preservice educators, a positive attitude toward implicit code instruction was significantly and negatively correlated with perceptions of preparedness to teach children (r = -. 14), struggling readers (r = -. 27), and using phonological awareness/phonics (r = - .23). A positive attitude toward implicit code instruction was significantly and positively correlated with preparedness to teach using whole language for preservice (r = .28) and inservice (r= .20) educators.

Correlations between perceptions of preparedness and knowledge assessment. For preservice and inservice educators respectively, knowledge of the structure of English language was significantly and positively correlated with perceptions of preparedness to teach children (r = .13; r = .12) and struggling readers (r = .19, r = .20) and to teach using phonological awareness/phonics (r = .25; r = .25) (see Table 8).

Discussion

The goal of this study was to examine teachers’ perceptions and knowledge about early literacy instruction at the preservice and inservice levels for both general and special educators. Specifically, we were interested in whether teachers were knowledgeable of recent research findings that identify critical components of instruction for teaching reading to a broad range of learners (National Reading Panel, 2000; Snow, et al., 1998) and were favorably disposed to using an explicit, systematic approach to early reading instruction.

Both preservice (53%) and inservice (60%) teachers’ inability to answer nearly half of the Knowledge of Language Structure questions highlights a concern that recent research findings have not yet been effectively communicated to teachers. While teachers with more years of teaching experience (>11) demonstrated greater knowledge of language structure than their colleagues who are relatively new to the profession (1-5 years) and while special educators demonstrated more knowledge that general educators, all groups had scores falling below two-thirds correct. These results suggested that educators who are directly responsible for teaching children how to read had insufficient knowledge of concepts about English language. Similar to Moats’ (1994) findings, the educators had limited knowledge of terminology despite the fact that much media attention has been given to the importance of this knowledge during the last several years and this current assessment used substantially less technical terminology that the assessment used in the Moats’ study. Less than two-thirds of both the preservice and experienced teachers had mastered the meanings of structured language terminology, such as “syllable,” “consonant blend,” and “digraph”.

Whereas more than 50% of the preservice and inservice teachers were able to segment the phonemes in a two-phoneme word, they were unable to do this for a four-phoneme word. This is similar to earlier findings that many teachers were unable to identify the number of phonemes in the word “ox” (Moats, 1994). As noted by McCutchen and her colleagues (McCutchen, et al., in press), a teacher’s knowledge of phonemic segmentation is integral to teaching children to segment the sounds in words and develop the phonemic awareness that is fundamental to learning to read. The consistency with which respondents missed particular items suggests that the areas in which teachers may be lacking in knowledge of language are predictable. Furthermore, research in professional development would suggest that this knowledge can be learned (Bos et al., 1999; McCutchen & Berninger, 1999). It will be important to evaluate if the large-scale efforts in professional development and changes in certification requirements such as those being initiated in California (California State Department of Education, 1999) and Texas (Texas Education Agency, 1996) affect the knowledge of educators.

Although in general, preservice teachers were less knowledgeable about concepts related to English language structure than their inservice peers, a few items were answered correctly by nearly all of the preservice and inservice teachers. Most teachers were able to define a phoneme, identify a short vowel sound, and identify a pair of words that begins with the same sound.

In contrast to their limited knowledge, preservice and inservice educators had positive perceptions about the role and importance of explicit code instruction in reading development, with average ratings ranging between “agree” and “strongly agree”. The mean ratings for both groups for implicit code instruction were lower, between “mildly agree” and “agree.” It is possible that these perceptions result from the media attention to recent research syntheses supporting explicit code instruction and to the changes in early reading materials that integrate the explicit teaching of phonological awareness and phonics and the use of decodable text. Alternatively, it may reflect teachers’ perceptions that more children benefit from explicit rather than implicit instructional approaches.

Not surprisingly, inservice educators expressed slightly more positive attitudes toward explicit instruction and greater knowledge of language structure than did their preservice colleagues. We suspect this represents the benefit of experience working with a range of learners, many whom need more explicit instruction to learn to read, in contrast to preservice preparation programs that oftentimes reflects more implicit instruction (Brady & Moats, 1997; Chard, 1999). Moreover, special educators expressed more positive attitudes toward explicit instruction and greater knowledge of language structure than their general educator colleagues. This is likely an artifact of special education preservice programs focusing on explicit instruction to meet the needs of struggling readers as well as special educators’ experiences with students who demonstrate greater progress when taught beginning literacy skills explicitly.

When comparing knowledge and perceptions, some paradoxes are evident. While inservice teachers agreed (M = 5.27) that poor phonemic awareness contributes to early reading failure, only one-third identified that phonological awareness was not “a method of reading instruction that begins with individual letters and sounds.” While both preservice (M 5.59) and inservice (M = 5.79) educators strongly agree that K-2 teachers should know how to teach phonics, their scores on the phonics items on the knowledge assessment indicate they do not have the requisite knowledge.

The relationships between teachers’ perceptions of their preparedness to teach and their attitude ratings and knowledge scores indicate that in general, preservice educators’ attitudes to a particular instructional approach may have a greater effect on their feelings of preparedness to teach than their inservice colleagues. Those that seemed to favor an explicit approach felt more prepared to teach all children, struggling readers, and phonological awareness/phonics than those favoring a more implicit approach. This finding was not repeated with the inservice respondents, with the exception of those whose attitudes favored explicit instruction perceived themselves as more prepared to teach phonological awareness/phonics. For both preservice and inservice teachers, the connection between knowledge of language structure and preparedness to teach suggests that those who feel more comfortable with the declarative knowledge of language structure also feel more prepared to teach children to read. Teachers in both groups who favored implicit instruction seemed to feel more prepared to teach using whole language. These findings are particularly important because research on teachers’ sense of efficacy suggests that teachers who express a greater sense of efficacy are more willing to innovate in their approach to teaching (Smylie, 1988) and are more likely to perceive their instruction as integral to improving outcomes for struggling learners (Simmons, Kame’enui, & Chard, 1996).

This study had some limitations that are important to consider in interpreting the findings. First, the results of this study relied exclusively on self-report data. While there is evidence that teachers’ self-reports reflect their classroom instructional practices (Barr & Sadow, 1989; Sosniak & Stodolsky, 1993), the lack of field-based observations is a limitation. A second limitation is that the data were collected in a face-to-face context. These data then may be prone to social desirability bias (Dillman, 1978). Third, the limited amount of variance that is accounted for by the educators’ perceptions calls into importance the need to consider alternative factors that account for teachers’ beliefs. Finally, the factor loadings did not match completely our coding of items as being representative of primarily implicit instruction.

Several specific implications can be drawn from the research findings. Unfortunately, advances in knowledge about reading instruction have not yet had a significant impact upon teacher preparation. Despite increased emphasis in the literature as well as national and state policies on the importance of teaching early skills, our results reiterate the conclusions drawn by Moats over seven years ago (1994): many teachers are still confused about the differences between phonological awareness and phonics and would be unable to teach reading explicitly to children who struggle. Teachers need to understand the salient differences and similarities between spoken and written language. They need to possess sufficient knowledge about the structure of English words so that they can systematically address the instructional needs of children struggling to learn to read.

The fact that some teachers do not feel comfortable teaching skills in isolation may reflect their limited depth of knowledge about explicit relationships between speech sounds and print. This inadequacy in teacher preparation can seriously impact implementation of recommendations such as those offered by the National Reading Panel (2000) for the use of systematic phonics instruction. Furthermore, it can lead to misapplication of phonics instruction within politically correct but conceptually confused “balanced” reading instruction (Moats, 2000). We concur with Lyon (1999) that teacher preparation and professional development programs within colleges of education must change to “develop preparation programs to foster the necessary content and pedagogical expertise at both preservice and inservice levels” ( p. 8).

Second, an encouraging finding from this study was that both preservice and inservice teachers express positive attitudes toward both explicit and implicit instruction, indicating that they do not fully embrace one theoretical orientation or approach to reading instruction. As observed by Pressley et al. (2001), well-informed teachers combine practices that work well for them and do not worry about theoretical purity when teaching. The most effective teachers are able to integrate substantial instruction in basic skills within the context of reading and writing activities. These teachers are also able to provide instruction to the children who need explicit teaching of word recognition sills.

Finally, important implications exist for the knowledge level of general and special education. Given that public school personnel continue to identify youngsters as eligible for special education for their learning/reading disabilities based on discrepancy formulae, general education teachers are often directly responsible for these students reading instruction until late second or third grade. Our findings would suggest that these teachers are not adequately prepared to instruct students with dyslexia and other reading difficulties. Furthermore, even when these children receive special education, special educators may lack sufficient knowledge about language structure and how to implement systematic, explicit reading instruction. Research suggests that with proper preparation, both general and special educators can provide systematic instruction that will assist these children with reading development (Bos et al., 1999; McCutchen & Berninger, 1999; O’Connor, 1999; Podhajski, 2000). Given the accumulated knowledge in regard to the importance of teaching phonological awareness and providing phonics instruction to children with dyslexia, we must continue our efforts to reform and inform teacher education.

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