Mission

The TRI is designed to improve the teaching strategies of rural kindergarten and first grade teachers in literacy, with a specific focus on diagnostic strategies that are effective with struggling readers who do not make reading gains using traditional reading instruction.

Our Research

The TRI is a clinical trial to examine the effectiveness of a classroom teacher intervention to help struggling readers in kindergarten and first grade. The foundation of the TRI is the promotion of teacher expertise in literacy instruction through a collaborative consultation paradigm that translates to improved student outcomes for struggling readers in the early elementary school years. As such, the TRI incorporates an experimental design in which schools are randomly assigned to either receive the intervention or to serve as 'control' sites. This allows for an accurate determination of the efficacy of the intervention.
 
The initial wave of the TRI is composed of three distinct studies that vary with regard to the delivery of consultation:

• Study One included on-site collaboration between TRI consultants and teachers, such that TRI experts traveled to rural schools in North Carolina to 'coach' teachers in individualized diagnostic instruction utilizing the TRI techniques. Findings from this study indicate that there were intent-to-treat effects of the intervention on children's gains in literacy skills.
• Study Two included the addition of web-based technology to aid in the delivery of the consultation between TRI experts and teachers. Thus, web-cameras and specialized software were used to allow University consultants to interact with distant rural communities, including schools throughout Texas and New Mexico, in addition to sites in North Carolina. Findings from this study once again reveal significant effects of the intervention on children's growth in litearcy outcomes throughout the school year.
• Study Three of the TRI incorporates a technologically-mediated consultation model to facilitate consultant-teacher interaction and dialogue. Early results show strong outcomes for students.

A second wave of research is beginning now, and it focuses more particularly on the effects of the TRI professional development on classroom teachers' changing knowledge, practice, and beliefs.