BIO

Jillian Kessler is pursuing her bachelor degree in communication science and disorders at Florida State University. She is from Boca Raton, Florida and is hoping to get into a master's program to continue her education as a speech-language pathologist. Her research interests include reading strategies for children, cognitive communication disorders, and speech sound disorders.

Developing an Adaptive Professional Development Model for School Professionals' Implementation of Shared Reading Activities

Abstract

This study was motivated primarily by past obstacles faced when training educators and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to implement dialogic reading strategies with school children. Dialogic reading is a systematic form of interactive shared book reading with positive effects on the development of children’s oral language skills and could have similar benefits with students with disabilities. This study, driven by the need to reevaluate the approach to training educators in this technique, also may yield crucial information on the effectiveness of different professional development (PD) training components for future use in schools.​
 This study seeks to create PD training modules to aid educators and SLPs with the implementation of dialogic reading skills for the purpose of improving children’s literacy. Participants will submit three self-recordings of shared reading sessions with young children ages 3-8 years, in order to establish a baseline. After they are coded and analyzed, the participants will receive a video training module instructing them on the implementation of the Prompt, Evaluate, Expand, Repeat (PEER) technique. Finally, they will re-record the sessions using tools learned in the PD module, which will be coded using a web-based video-coding program, Vosaic, and analyzed by Microsoft Excel to determine if further coaching is needed, in which case this will take place in the form of individualized Zoom sessions and they will begiven written and verbal feedback. This is an ongoing two-year trial and data collection is still underway. The expected date of completion is the end of summer 2025.​

Keywords: children reading education SLP