Abstract:
The effective literacy intervention for at risk Koorie students continues challenge educational provision in Australia. The goal of the Expanded Central Gippsland Koorie Literacy Project was to identify the literacy intervention teaching procedures most closely linked with gains in literacy outcomes for Koorie students at risk of literacy underachievement in primary schools. A cohort of 120 students from grades 3 to 7 in 19 primary schools was exposed to an intervention that comprised teaching in phonological and phonemic skills, phonic skills, vocabulary, sentence, discourse and topic comprehending and metacognitive skills and the development of a positive identity as a reader. The pre and post the intervention design indicated significant improvement in text comprehension, word reading accuracy, phonological and orthographic processing and listening comprehension. These gains were correlated with the frequency with which teachers used particular literacy teaching procedures. As well, the pre-intervention assessment of students’ literacy skills indicated a characteristic literacy learning profile; exceptional words were read more accurately than infrequent regular words and comparatively restricted analytic-sequential phonological processing that impacted word reading accuracy.This design permitted the identification of teaching procedures most likely to be associated with reading improvement at various phases during the intervention. The study identifies implications for future research and application for the design and evaluation of literacy education provision for indigenous students.