Abstract

This study investigated the effects of instruction on the retention and application of dialogic reading (DR) strategies by undergraduate students in a Child Studies program. Thirty-eight participants, enrolled in the same field placement course, were assigned to one of three groups. The first group received only in-class instruction on DR strategies. The other two groups received the same in-class instruction and additionally engaged in observation and reflection; one group observed and reflected on a teacher’s use of DR in a video, while the second group observed and reflected on their own use of DR practices, after having recorded themselves reading to a child. The pretest and posttest measures were participants' responses to a hypothetical bookreading scenario. These responses were transcribed and scored for the number of different DR strategies mentioned (diversity of DR strategies), the number of examples given (frequency of DR strategies), and a ratio of the two variables (i.e., examples/diversity). Mixed ANOVA analyses showed a significant effect of group and time for each of these variables. Post hoc tests indicated that the group receiving only in-class instruction scored significantly lower than the two observation groups on all three dependent variables. However, there was no significant difference between the self-observation group and the teacher-observation group on all three variables. The implications of the findings for teaching DR are discussed.