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Marketing and University Communication UW-Green Bay, CL 815 2420 Nicolet Drive Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 (920) 465-2626 E-mail: hildebrs@uwgb.edu Last update: 9/26/07 |
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In
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July 2, 2007 UWGB literacy study earns international recognition UWGB research picked up by Oxford University journal By Kelly McBride
They're more jazzed about what their research showed, how they might continue it in the future and what it might mean for area kids.
Three University of Wisconsin-Green Bay faculty members, along with a former Green Bay principal who now works at UWGB's Institute for Learning Partnership, had their early learning study published in the latest edition of "Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table" from Oxford University.
The study looked at the effect of a three-week, literacy-based transition program designed to help students about to enter kindergarten at Green Bay's Fort Howard Elementary School. Researchers received a grant of almost $10,000 from the Institute for Learning Partnership.
Working with then-interim Fort Howard principal Richard Schaal, associate professors of education Patricia Ragan and Linda Tabers-Kwak joined forces to create the program. Robert Nagy, UWGB associate professor of business administration, helped crunch numbers to assess the program's efficacy.
Fort Howard has had poverty levels as high as 100 percent, as assessed by numbers of students who receive subsidized lunch. When the study was conducted — during the summer of 2004 — the school was at about an 82 percent poverty level.
That can have profound effects, experts say. Data showed difficulty in early learning among some Fort Howard students.
"Many of the children who were failing," Ragan said, "or were really struggling with the school success — from kindergarten through fourth grade — were the children who did not have a quality preschool experience."
Researchers sought to mitigate that sort of trend through three-week, literacy-focused sessions at Fort Howard. They compared 22 students who attended the sessions with a control group of students who did not attend.
The study showed that even a short, literacy-focused intervention — such as the ones that took place at Fort Howard — can make a difference when it comes to early learning.
One-on-one interactions — the soon-to-be kindergarteners were paired with Ragan's education students — were crucial in working on vocabulary and other literacy skills, Tabers-Kwak said.
The study's authors were happy to see the intervention make a difference, they said, and they're eager to see what might happen with a longer intervention timetable. They're hoping to acquire more grants toward studying the issue.
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