Theory and Research Into Practice

This is not to say that I have no interest in theory or that I have not attempted to contribute to the development of psychological models. Kurt Lewin used to say that there is nothing so practical as a good theory. I agree with this, but also believe that practice undoubtedly influences theory. In considering the influence that my research may have had on practice, I shall focus on two areas: classroom behaviour management and reading instruction, since it is a source of continual amazement to me that we teach neither of them well in education faculties.

My work has clearly identified (and this has been replicated many times) that classroom behaviour of most concern to teachers is not violence and aggression (as the media would have us believe) but rather the relatively trivial but persistent and time-wasting behaviours such as ‘talking out of turn’ (TOOT) and ‘hindering other children’ (HOC). TOOT and HOC account for the vast majority of teacher complaints about student behaviour and lead to low levels of student on-task behaviour. Being on-task (paying attention to the teacher and getting on with your work) is a necessary (but not, of course, sufficient) condition for learning to take place in the classroom. Our observational studies have repeatedly shown that while teachers typically praise students for good academic product, they almost never praise them for behaving well in class. But by using methods based on positive teaching (rather than continual reprimanding), teachers can be readily trained in how to use positive reinforcement to increase levels of on-task behaviour in their classroom. We have repeatedly demonstrated this to be the case.

The other necessary condition for learning to take place is effective instruction, but we hardly ever seem to employ it in schools! This is particularly evident in the teaching of reading. In spite of the failure of so-called whole language in teaching reading, this is the approach that most teachers identify with and which dominates practice in our schools. Even when young children fail to learn to read, we tend to give them more of the same in the form of Reading Recovery. Our experimental research clearly showed that Reading Recovery is, at best, effective for only one child in three exposed to it (Center, Wheldall, Freeman, Outhredd & McNaught, 1995). But it is only now, many years after we showed this, that Reading Recovery is beginning to be questioned.

This frustration with ineffective instruction in reading and related skills led to the development of MultiLit. By employing a rigorous, intensive, systematic, skills-based program of instruction, my partner and colleague, Dr Robyn Beaman, and I have demonstrated repeatedly that low-progress readers can make extraordinary progress. By incorporating what we have learned about how reading works from international research over the past 30 years and coupling it with what we know to be the most effective methods of instruction, we now have a program that makes it possible for most non-readers or low-progress older readers to reach, at least, functional literacy. Moreover, by using curriculum-based measures of reading such as the WARP, we can track the progress students are making over successive weeks and modify their instruction accordingly. More recently, we have demonstrated that MultiLit also proves to be very effective with indigenous students in remote Aboriginal communities, helping them to catch up with their non-indigenous peers in reading and related skills.