This study investigated the effects of peer-mediated Direct Instruction (DI) on the oral reading fluency and comprehension of older struggling readers who reside at a facility for juvenile delinquents. Eight students, whose ages ranged from 15 to 17 years old, participated in this study. All participants were identified as having a disability. Students were designated as a tutor or tutee based on pre-intervention measures. Tutors used the Corrective Reading (Englemann, Hanner, and Johnson, 1999) program and the repeated oral reading strategy for their tutees Therrien and Kubina, 2006).
The effectiveness of the peer-mediated Corrective Reading DI and repeated reading was primarily determined by comparing the fluency data obtained, from 1-minute timings, prior to the intervention with fluency data obtained during the intervention (i.e., comparing baseline with the experimental conditions). Students receiving peer-mediated instruction all made gains in their levels of oral reading fluency.
Comparing pre-intervention reading comprehension probes data with reading comprehension probes data obtained during the intervention was a secondary measure to determine the effectiveness of this intervention. Across all tutees gains in reading comprehension were made.
Finally, pretest and posttest data from standardized tests were used to determine the effectiveness of this intervention. Pretest and posttest results indicated that
both students who taught and students who received instruction made gains in their reading achievement.
Overall, results obtained from this study evidence the effectiveness of peer-mediated DI and the repeated reading strategy. Additionally, peer-mediated instruction is an efficient instructional method for incarcerated youth with disabilities. Finally for this highly mobile at-risk population, DI is an appropriate teaching method because it can have an expedient effect on incarcerated older struggling readers’ reading skills.