Instructional Design for Teaching Reading Skill to the Secondary Students in Saudi Arabia - Research Proposal Example

Instructional Design for Teaching Reading Skill to the Secondary Students in Saudi Arabia Introduction Reading is a multifarious task, and – given its importance in the over-all academic performance of learners – numerous studies have been done on many reading constructs. Currently, there are a good number of studies on the impact of instructional design on the development of reading skills of students. Many of these include the use of computers (see, for instance, MacGregor 1988; Johnson, Perry & Shamir 2010; Knaack 2003). Reima (2007) did a more focused study on the development of reading and literacy in Saudi Arabia, in which he studied the Saudi national curriculum on for Grades 1 to 6 and reported the strengths and weaknesses of the national curriculum. Specifically, this paper intends to do a formative or internal evaluation of the instructional designs for teaching reading skill to the secondary students in Saudi Arabia. Reima (2007) notes that Saudi Arabian public schools use standardized basal readers to teach their nationals to read. The Saudi students are first made to learn to read, then, to comprehend. And, this is approach is common to all Saudi Arabian public schools as teachers across the nation use the same basal readers with students, cover the same texts and exercises, and follow the same teaching approaches (pp. 3). Essentially, this evaluation focuses on the reading competency by the Saudi Arabian secondary students and the learning materials that are afforded them. And, it is anticipated that this research is going to have a tremendous impact on the designs of the instructional materials being used by educational institutions in Saudi Arabia and make a significant contribution to improving or developing the reading competency of Saudi students. Aims and objectives The general purpose of this paper is to determine the students’ deficiencies in reading and determine proper pedagogical interventions to address these reading deficiencies. Necessarily, this end will be realized by examination of the effectiveness of the instructional designs for teaching reading skills to the secondary students in Saudi Arabia, and by establishing the students’ achievement insofar as reading is concerned. This study is going to be guided by the following research questions: 1. What level of reading (skills) are learners expected to reach? Why? 2. What are the Saudi Arabian learners’ needs to reach the desired achievement in reading? 3. How effective are the methods? 4. How to adopt the chosen instructional method(s) to reach the desired achievement in reading and to meet the learners’ needs? Relevance of the study Findings from this study would definitely make the school authorities – particularly the teachers and the instructional designers – to monitor how well the reading skills of the students are served by the instructional designs that educational institutions in Saudi Arabia use and implement. Particularly, the teachers will be made to assess their personal or individual strategies in teaching reading skills – which, given the importance of reading ability on the over-all academic performance of students, is a priority in classroom instruction. Likewise, the findings from this study may be tapped to serve the purpose of designing curriculum for teacher training courses. And, this is very essential in providing support to trainee teachers to become skilled teachers. Teachers will never be effective in teaching their students how to read unless they know where to begin and how to proceed in terms of using and/or improving the instructional materials they are provided with. Scope and limitations This study has, as its subject, the teachers and students of secondary public schools in Saudi Arabia. It dwells, too, on just the reading ability of the students as it is served by the instructional designs of the materials that the teachers are actually using in the classrooms. The reading skills that this study intends to gauge are of the English language. Understandably, it will not touch on the reading skills of the elementary and tertiary students. Too, it won’t specifically involve the private institutions of education although the possibility that the eventual findings of this study would likewise benefit them and their students. There are numerous approaches to consider reading ability or competence. This paper is going to adopt just one, without prejudice to the other approaches. Literature review Reading, which is often simplistically understood as a simple, passive process involving reading words in a linear fashion and internalizing their meaning one at a time, is actually a multifarious performance requiring concomitant coordination across many tasks (Fuchs et al. 2001, pp. 239). Among the most fundamental construct in reading research is reading competence, which in other literature on the subject is interchangeably termed reading ability. In formal sense, reading competency is differently conceptualized and diversely defined. There is a cognitive school, which holds that reader-text interaction happens in three processing clusters of decoding, text-information building and situation-model construction (see Carpenter, Miyake & Just 1994, 1995). There is also a developmental school of thought that highlights sequential mastery of the operations of decoding and comprehension and their functional interdependence (see Gough & Tunmer 1986; Hoover & Gough 1990). Finally, there is functional school of thought that believes that the purpose for which texts are read – that is, locating lexical information, detecting main ideas and acquiring new concepts – determine the manner in which their information is processed. And, for this, there are five reading gears that serve disparate purposes on a continuum of cognitive complexity (Carver 1990, 1992). But, all of these conceptualizations and definitions stem from the elementary assumption that success reading competency is an offshoot of the integrative interaction of derived text information and pre-existing reader knowledge. As such, it requires as its elements linguistic knowledge, processing skills and cognitive abilities (see Koda 2005). Reading competence may be a complex task, but its significance especially in the over-all academic performance of learners cannot be overly emphasized. Thus, it is considered a priority among educational goals or a principal concern pursued by educational entities. Not surprisingly, there has been a rather wide array of studies that dwelt on different approaches to reading development such as the alphabetic, linguistic, phonics, analytic, synthetic, language experience, whole language and balanced approaches (Reima 2007, pp. 2, 6-7). And, as this paper advances, instructional designs are similarly influential in teaching the students the skills to read. About guiding people to learn and develop better (Reigeluth 1999, pp. 5), instructional design – or instructional systems design – is the process by which instruction is improved through the analysis of learning needs and systematic development of learning materials (see Instructional Design [n.d.]). The goal of instructional design is to make learning more efficient, effective and less difficult (Morison et al. 2007, pp. 2). As such, instructional design follows systematic, step-by-step, approaches – that is, ADDIE model (see Piskurich 2006), rapid prototyping (Saettler 1990; Stolovitch & Keeps 1999), the Dick and Carey Systems Approach model (Dick and Carey 1978), Instructional Development Learning System (IDLS) (see Esseff & Esseff 1970, pp. 1-12), and the Objectives-Resources-Activities (ORA) model (see, for instance, Holim 2009). There may be different approaches to instructional design, but all these approaches have provision for analysis of the pedagogical materials that are in place. Assessment or evaluation of instructional design is tantamount to determination of merit, worth and significance of learning process. It ensures that the primary purpose of the learning process is actually met. Evaluation of instructional design may serve five (5) main purposes – that is, feedback, control, research, intervention and power games (see Bramley & Newby 1984, pp. 10-16). Indeed the building block of any educational or training program, analysis of instruction materials is done and re-done so that their educational ends are met. Besides, instructional designs are developed, administered and conducted widely differently. Hence, usually, analysis of instructional design focuses on some general elements, such as the objectives, purpose, audience, and subjects. Analysis of the audience is sometimes termed as learners’ assessment (see Rothwell & Kazanas 1998). Mager (1997) enumerates the pertinent characteristics of the learners – i.e., their age, gender, interests, attitudes and biases, need gratifiers, reading ability, physical characteristics and previous experience in the subject matter (pp. 94-95). Analysis of the objectives is required to facilitate better and effective reading competence as it lends to designing appropriate instruction. It, too, provides a framework for evaluation of the students’ reading skills. And, addressing the cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains of the instructional design, it expectedly prepares and guides the learners. Analysis of the pedagogical methodology prescribed by the instructional design, in fact, intends to see whether the defined content to address the instructional need is important to instructional design principles. It would also check the sequencing of the contents to help the learners achieve the objectives. Methodology and data collection The subjects This research involves thirty (30) secondary students in a public school in Saudi Arabia and two (2) secondary teachers. The students belong to the more or less the same age bracket and education level; the teachers may be of different biological age and expertise level. Data collection This involves qualitative and quantitative research. It is going to evaluate the reading methods in the new textbooks and examine the students and teachers’ attitude, views and/or characteristics. The qualitative dimension of the research is going to be through the modes of direct observation and interview schedule. To be directly observed are the students especially on their respective reading classes, or during their other classes where they would be asked to read. Too, the teachers will be observed especially on how they are making use of the instructional materials in their classes. The data culled from observing the students and the teachers will be augmented by the conduct of interview schedules. This mode of qualitative research would expectedly focus on the issue of effectiveness of instructional designs relative to reading competence by the students. And, as such, it renders the textbook designers as equally important source of information on the subject of this research. A questionnaire will also be prepared for this study. Among others, this questionnaire would attempt to gather some baseline information on the teachers and students who are involved in this research. The questionnaire in this research may similarly contain elements of checklists pertinent to instructional design’s effectiveness (see, for instance, Evaluation of Course Materials, 2010). In anticipation that the information that this study would generate is going to be significantly myriad, descriptive and inferential statistical data analysis will be performed especially in finding the relevance and significance of the distribution of answers for every item of this research. Ethical considerations This research would keep the vital information on its subjects confidential. Their names will not be mentioned, especially in relation to their respective reading skills level. This research, too, will not commence unless the subjects are properly notified and have acceded to their role in the study. The circumstances of this study will be fully disclosed and discussed about with school authorities, and not solely with teachers involved. It is always important that a common framework of understanding this research study is shared by the researcher and the school officials. Should there be an opportunity, a meeting with parents of the students will be met and from them permission will be directly sought for the participation of their children. This researcher will definitely not pay the teachers who are going to directly collaborate in the research. This is in consideration of the “giving value for the money” – that is, the teachers may give information that is just what the researcher would want. And, in fact, this research recognizes that teachers have the responsibility to participate in these kinds of projects that aim to improve the quality of education. In reporting the analysis and the results of this research, it is important that the researcher maintains consciousness of the biases that influence his/her interpretation and informs the readers on them. Schedule / risk analysis Realistically put, the risk that runs against this research is that which is related to access to people or to the subjects of this research. This is because the researcher lives in the UK, and the subjects are in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This would indeed pose some challenge particularly in the task of doing the observations, administering the interviews, and ensuring that questionnaires are appropriately filled up. Unless the researcher flies to Saudi Arabia, meets the school authorities (and parents of the students), personally does the observation, conducts the interview, and checks the individual questionnaire, the whole research stands on the brink of being compromised. Other than the foregoing, risks related to materials, method, technical – and the like – are least probable and severe to pose a negative impact on this research. References: Bramley, P. & Newby, A.C. (1984). The evaluation of training part I: clarifying the concept. Journal of European & Industrial Training, 8 (6), pp. 10-16. Carpenter, P., Miyake, A. & Just, M. (1994). Working memory constraints in comprehension: evidence from individual differences, aphasia and aging. In M. Gernsbacher, ed. Handbook of Psycholinguistics. San Diego (CA): Academic Press, pp. 1075-1122. Carpente, P., Miyake, A. & Just, M. (1995). Language comprehension: sentence and discourse processing. Annual Review of Psychology, 46, pp. 91-120. Carver, R.P. (1990). Reading rate: a review of research and theory. San Diego (CA): Academic Press. Carver, R.P. (1992). Reading rate: theory, research and practical implications. Journal of Reading, 36, pp. 84-95. Cleman, K.A. (2006). Applying audience invoked models to instructional design methods. Orange Journal. Available at: http://orange.eserver.org/issues/2-1/kcleman.htm [Accessed 15 April 2010]. Dick, W. & Carey, L. (1978). The systematic design of instruction. Glenview (Il): Scott, Foresman. Esseff, P.J. & Esseff, M.S. (1970). IDLS – pro trainer 1: how to design, develop, and validate instructional materials, 8th ed. ___________________: ESF Press, pp. 1-12. “Evaluation of Course Materials,” (2010). Available at: http://ieeec.com/publications_standards/publications/subscriptions/prod/mdl/evaluation_checklist.html [Accessed 16 April 2010]. Fuchs, L.S., Fuchs, D., Hosp, M. & Jenkins, J. (2001). Oral reading fluency as an indicator of reading competence: a theoretical, empirical and historical analysis. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5 (3), pp. 239-256. Gough, P.B. & Tunmer, W.E. (1986). Decoding, reading and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7 (1), pp. 6-10. Holim, S. (2009). Distance learning technology, current instruction and the future of education: applications of today, practices of tomorrow. New York: Idea Group Publishing. Hoover, W.A. & Gough, P.B. (1990). The simple view of reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2, pp. 127-160. Instructional Design, [n.d.]. Retrieved 3 April 2010, from http://www.instructionaldesign.org/ Johnson, E.P., Perry, J. & Shamir, H. (2010). Variability in reading ability gains as a function of computer-assisted instruction method of presentation. Computers & Education, 55 (1), pp. 209-217. Knaack, L. (2003). Elements of Effective Instructional Design for Elementary Mathematical Problem Solving Computer Software. In C. Crawford et al. (eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2003 (pp. 2921-2924). Chesapeake (VA): AACE. Koda, K. (2005). Insights into second language reading: a cross-cultural approach [Excerpt]. Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. MacGregor, S.K. (1988). Instructional design for computer-mediated text systems: effects of motivation, learner control and collaboration on reading performance. Journal of Experimental Education, 56 (3), pp. 142-147. Mager, R.F. (1997). Making instruction work, 2nd ed. Atlanta: The Center for Effective Performance, Inc. Morison, G., Ross, S. Kemp, J. & and Kelman, H. (2007). Designing effective instruction, 6th ed. Chennai: John Wiley and Sons. Piskurich, G. (2006). Rapid instructional design: learning ID fast and right, 2nd ed. San Francisco (CA): John Wiley and Sons, Ltd. Reigeluth, C. (1999). What is instructional design theory and how is it changing? In C. Reigeluth, ed. Instructional design theories and models: a new paradigm for instructional theory, vol. II. Mahwah (NJ): Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., pp. 5-30. Reima Al-Jarf (2007). Developing reading and literacy in Saudi Arabia. Retrieved 4 April 2010, from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/30/b1/95.pdf Rothwell, W..J. & Kazanas, H.C. 1998. Mastering the instructional design process, 2nd ed. San Francisco (CA): Jossey-Bass Publishers. Saettler, P. (1990). Early forerunners: before 1900. In P. Saettler, The Evolution of American Educational Technology. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, pp. 23-52. Stolovitch, H.D., & Keeps, E. (1999). Handbook of human performance technology: a comprehensive guide for analyzing and solving performance problems in organizations. San Francisco (CA): Jossey-Bass. 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