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Dialogic Reading is an interactive shared picture book reading practice designed to enhance young children's language and literacy skills. During the shared reading practice, the adult and the child switch roles so that the child learns to become the storyteller with the assistance of the adult who functions as an active listener and questioner. Two related practices are reviewed in the WWC intervention reports on Interactive Shared Book Reading and Shared Book Reading.
Four studies of Dialogic Reading met the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards and one study met the WWC evidence standards with reservations.1 Together these five studies included over 300 preschool children and examined intervention effects on children's oral language and phonological processing. The majority of the children studied were from economically disadvantaged families. This report focuses on immediate posttest findings to determine the effectiveness of the intervention; however, follow-up findings provided by the study authors are included in the technical appendices.2
Dialogic Reading was found to have positive effects on oral language and no discernible effects on phonological processing.
| Oral language | Print knowledge | Phonological processing | Early reading/ writing | Cognition | Math | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating of effectiveness | Positive effects | na | No discernible effects | na | na | na |
| Improvement index3 | Average: +19 percentile points Range: -6 to +48 percentile points |
na | Average: +9 percentile points Range: -7 to +40 percentile points |
na | na | na |
| na = not applicable | ||||||
The WWC ECE topic team works with two Principal Investigators (PIs): Dr. Ellen Eliason Kisker and Dr. Christopher Lonigan. The studies on Dialogic Reading reviewed by the ECE team included a number of studies on which Dr. Lonigan was either the primary or a secondary author and a number of studies on which Dr. Grover Whitehurst (Director, Institute for Education Sciences) was either a primary or a secondary author. Drs. Lonigan and Whitehurst's financial interests are not affected by the success or failure of Dialogic Reading, and they do not receive any royalties or other monetary return from the use of Dialogic Reading. In all instances where Drs. Lonigan and Whitehurst were study authors, they were not involved in the decision to include the study in the review, and they were not involved in the coding, reconciliation, or discussion of the included study. Dr. Kisker led all review activities related to those studies. The decision to review Dialogic Reading was made by Dr. Kisker, as co-PI, in collaboration with the rest of the ECE team following prioritization of interventions based on the results from the literature review. This report on Dialogic Reading was reviewed by a group of independent reviewers, including members of the WWC Technical Review Team and external peer reviewers.
|Institute of Education Sciences
