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Overview
Program Description1
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.
Research2
Two studies of dialogic reading that fall within the scope of the Early Childhood Education Interventions for Children with Disabilities review protocol meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. The two studies included 52 students with language delays, from ages three to six, participating in early childhood programs in the Pacific Northwest.3 Both studies examined intervention effects on children’s communication and language competencies.
Based on these two studies, the WWC considers the extent of evidence for dialogic reading to be small for communication and language competencies for children with disabilities. No studies that meet WWC evidence standards with or without reservations examined the effectiveness of dialogic reading for children with disabilities in the domains of cognitive development, literacy, math competencies, social-emotional development and behavior, functional abilities, or physical well-being.Effectiveness
Dialogic reading was found to have potentially positive effects on communication and language competencies for children with disabilities.
| Cognitive
develop- ment |
Commu- nication/ language compe-tencies |
Literacy | Math compe- tencies |
Social-emotional
develop- ment/ behavior |
Functional abilities |
Physical well-being | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating of effectiveness | na | Potentially positive effects | na | na | na | na | na |
| Improvement index4 | na na |
Average: +11 percentile points Range: –2 to +45 percentile points |
na na |
na na |
na na |
na na |
na na |
| na = not applicable | |||||||
1 Dialogic reading does not have a single developer or official description. The descriptive information for this program was adapted from publicly
available sources: descriptions of this practice (see the websites listed under Additional Program Information) and research articles. This practice also
is reviewed in the WWC intervention report for the general population as part of the Early Childhood Education topic area. Two related practices are
reviewed in the Early Childhood Education WWC intervention reports on Interactive Shared Book Reading and Shared Book Reading.
2 The studies in this report were reviewed using WWC Evidence Standards, Version 2.0 (see the WWC Procedures and Standards Handbook, Chapter III).
3 The evidence presented in this report is based on available research. Findings and conclusions may change as new research becomes available.
4 These numbers show the average and range of student-level improvement indices for all findings across the studies.