Teaching reading comprehension strategies: Differential effects of an intervention program as a function of gender and socioeconomic status

Comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading, but many children struggle to develop this skill. Moreover, difficulties in reading comprehension are more prevalent among boys and children from low socioeconomic levels. Mastering basic reading skills, such as decoding, is necessary, but most of the time, this is not sufficient to attain high levels of reading comprehension. In recent years, research results have suggested that teaching metacomprehension and reading strategies for students can contribute to improving their comprehension. The program Learning to Comprehend was developed to promote comprehension by teaching this set of strategies to primary education students in Portugal. The main goal of this study was to test its effects on third-grade students’ reading comprehension and to explore differential effects as a function of gender and socioeconomic status (SES). The program was offered in the primary schools of three municipalities in the Minho region located in northern Portugal. A random sample of students was selected to investigate intervention effects, which was composed of 205 third-grade students from 32 schools. The intervention was delivered by regular education teachers during a full school year after receiving 25 hours of training. The students were assessed with measures of reading comprehension before and after the intervention. The results indicate a significant increase in reading comprehension after the intervention. However, no interaction effect was found between time and the students’ gender or between time and SES. Overall, girls obtained higher scores than boys in reading comprehension at both assessment times. The same effect was found for SES: children receiving school social support maintained their disadvantage in reading comprehension after the intervention. Therefore, despite an improvement in comprehension, the SES and the gender gaps were not overcome. The implications of these findings for practice are discussed.
This work was financially supported by Portuguese national funds through the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) within the framework of the CiPsi–Psychology Research Centre (project reference
UIDB/PSI/01662/2020) and CIEC–Research Center for Child Studies (project reference UIDB/CED/00317/2020) of the University of Minho, and by the Northern Regional Operational Program (NORTH 2020), through Portugal 2020 and the European Social Fund (ESF), within the framework of the Integrated and Innovative Plan to Combat School Failure of the Ave Intermunicipal Community.