Reading for meaning: the effects of Developmental Education on reading achievements of primary school students from low SES and ethnic minority families

The appropriateness of innovative educational concepts for students from a low socioeconomic status (SES) or ethnic minority background is sometimes called into question. Disadvantaged students are supposed to benefit more from traditional approaches with Programmatic Instruction (PI). We examined Developmental Education (DE), an innovative approach, inspired by Vygotskian theory, in which reading skills are developed through meaningful reading of texts corresponding to students’ self-generated problems. The effectiveness of DE is compared to PI in terms of reading comprehension, strategy knowledge, and reading motivation of 4th-grade students; 170 students from ethnic minority or low SES background participated in a pretest-posttest natural 2-group design. Outcomes were similar in both approaches, with one exception: Students with an ethnic minority background in DE performed better on strategy knowledge than similar students in PI. These results are discussed in relation to previous studies on the appropriateness of innovative curricula for disadvantaged students.