Kindergarten pre-reading skills predict Grade 9 reading comprehension (PISA Reading) but fail to explain gender difference

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Kindergarten pre-reading skills predict Grade 9 reading comprehension (PISA Reading) but fail to explain gender difference © The Author(s) 2020 Published version Manu, Mari; Torppa, Minna; Eklund, Kenneth; Poikkeus, Anna-Maija; Lerkkanen, Marja-Kristiina; Niemi, Pekka Manu, M., Torppa, M., Eklund, K., Poikkeus, A.-M., Lerkkanen, M.-K., & Niemi, P. (2021). Kindergarten pre-reading skills predict Grade 9 reading comprehension (PISA Reading) but fail to explain gender difference. Reading and Writing, 34(3), 753-771. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-020-10090-w 2021 Vol.:(0123456789) Reading and Writing https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-020-10090-w 1 3 Kindergarten pre‑reading skills predict Grade 9 reading comprehension (PISA Reading) butfail toexplain gender difference MariManu1 · MinnaTorppa1 · KennethEklund2 · Anna‑MaijaPoikkeus1 · Marja‑KristiinaLerkkanen1 · PekkaNiemi3 Accepted: 30 August 2020 © The Author(s) 2020 Abstract One of the aims for compulsory education is to diminish or alleviate differences in children’s skills existing prior to school entry. However, a growing gender gap in reading development has increasingly been documented. Regrettably, there is scant evidence on whether differences between genders (favouring girls) have their roots in pre-reading skills or whether determining mechanisms are related to factors to do with schooling. We examined the extent to which pre-reading skills assessed in Kindergarten (age 6) predict reading comprehension in Grade 9 (age 15) and, whether the gender difference in reading comprehension can be explained by gender differences in the Kindergarten pre-reading skills. A sample of 1010 Finnish children were assessed on letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid naming, vocabulary, and listening comprehension in Kindergarten and on reading comprehension using PISA Reading tasks in Grade 9. Path models showed that gender as well as Kindergarten pre-reading skills except for phonological awareness were significant predictors of reading comprehension in Grade 9 accounting for 28% of the variance. There were gender differences in most of the measures, but the prediction model estimates were similar for boys and girls except that for boys, letter knowledge was a somewhat stronger predictor of reading comprehension than for girls. The gender effect on reading comprehension was only partially mediated via pre-reading skills. The findings suggest that Kindergarten pre-reading skills are powerful predictors of reading comprehension in Grade 9, but the gender difference found in PISA Reading in Finland does not appear to be pronounced in Kindergarten but rather emerges during the school years. Keywords Gender differences· PISA Reading· Pre-reading skills· Reading comprehension * Minna Torppa minna.p.tor[email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article M.Manu et al. 1 3 Introduction In order to become a competent citizen of the society and to acquirethe necessary skills for full civic participation, one needs to be able to read and comprehend different types of texts. The PISA (The Programme for International Student Assessment) studies with 15-year-old Finnish students have shown ahigh level of reading performance compared to their peers in other countries (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2014). Despite the high ranking of Finnish youth’s PISA performance, a worrying proportion of up to 11% of Finnish 15-year- olds is estimated to fail to achieve the level of reading skills commended for being able to be proficient in education and society (Vettenranta etal., 2016). To target these students for early support, it is important to identify the factors and developmental mechanisms contributing to their less than optimal reading development. In the present study, we use Kindergarten (age 6) data to predict adolescent reading comprehension in Grade 9 (age 15). We draw on the comprehensive, widely used reading comprehension test from the PISA Reading test battery developed in association with the comparative assessments managed by OECD (2016). Although the status of this assessment tool of 15-year-old students’ reading comprehension and its impact on educational policymaking are widely acknowledged, the research concerning pre-reading skills, predictors and correlates of the PISA Reading, however, is still surprisingly scarce internationally. In addition to early identification, this paper has a focus on gender differences. The Finnish 15-year-olds manifest a gender difference in reading comprehension which is the largest among OECD countries and the ninth largest among all participating countries in PISA Reading (Brozo etal., 2014; OECD, 2016). In general, the proposed explanations for relatively large gender differences in reading skills favouring girls include school-age individual factors such as an interest in and the extent of leisure reading, or factors related to the school such as “girl-friendly school practices” (see Stoet & Geary, 2013). There is evidence, however, pointing at potential early roots of these differences as some studies have shown that girls outperform boys in language and cognitive skills already before school entry (Lange, Euler, & Zaretsky, 2016; Palejwala & Fine, 2015). These findings lead us to examine whether the gender difference in 15-year-olds’ PISA Reading performance can be explained by differences in pre-reading skills between girls and boys that emerge already prior to school entry. Early predictors ofreading comprehension According to the Simple View of Reading (Florit & Cain, 2011; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Kirby & Savage, 2008), comprehension of written text presupposes, first, learning to decode—that is, acquiring the ability to decipher letter strings to words that appear in spoken language and, second, proficiency in linguistic comprehension. The relative importance of these two components, decoding and comprehension, changes across reading development. When 1 3 Kindergarten pre‑reading skills predict Grade 9 reading… decoding is not yet fully automatized, it has a stronger impact on reading comprehension than later when a sufficient decoding ability has been achieved (e.g., Florit & Cain, 2011). Once decoding becomes fluent enough, linguistic comprehension displays a more prominent role than decoding in determining the level of reading comprehension skills (e.g., Perfetti, 1985). Despite this diminishing trend for the predictive role of decoding across age, reading fluency continues to have a significant role in adolescent PISA Reading in Grade 9, explaining 8–15% of the variance in the PISA score (Artelt, Schiefele, & Schneider, 2001; Eklund, Torppa, Sulkunen, Niemi, & Ahonen, 2018; Torppa, Eklund, Sulkunen, Niemi, & Ahonen, 2018). In the analysis of Kindergarten predictors of PISA Reading, we thus need to include measures of both linguistic comprehension and the known predictors of decoding and reading fluency. The key early predictors of decoding and reading fluency among Finnish children and adolescents have repeatedly been reported to include letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and rapid naming (e.g., Kairaluoma, Torppa, Westerholm, Ahonen, & Aro, 2013; Puolakanaho etal., 2007; Torppa, Eklund, van Bergen, & Lyytinen, 2015). Similar findings have been found in other languages (e.g., Elbro, Borstrøm, & Petersen, 1998; Gallagher, Frith, & Snowling, 2000; Ziegler etal., 2010). However, studies in transparent orthographies such as Finnish, suggest that the association between phonological awareness and reading fluency gets weaker after Grades 1 or 2 whereas in less transparent orthographies the association remains stronger (de Jong & van der Leij, 2002; Landerl & Wimmer, 2000; Torppa etal., 2015). After the acquisition of basic decoding skills, individual differences in reading performance are primarily seen in speed as opposed to accuracy of decoding (e.g., Bekebrede, van der Leij, & Share, 2009). Kindergarten rapid naming is a strong predictor of reading fluency (e.g., Georgiou, Parrila, & Papadopoulos, 2008; Savage & Frederickson, 2005) and in transparent orthographies it is one of the most powerful predictors of reading skill already in the early grades (e.g., Puolakanaho etal., 2007). This applies to Finnish because of its almost perfect grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence which contributes to fast reading acquisition (Aro, 2017). More than 95% of Finnish children are accurate decoders after a few months of reading instruction in Grade 1 (Holopainen, Ahonen, & Lyytinen, 2001; Lerkkanen, Rasku-Puttonen, Aunola, & Nurmi, 2004). As Finnish children on average become relatively fluent readers early in their schooling, the listening comprehension skills rather than decoding accuracy explain a growing portion of individual differences in reading comprehension in elementary grades (Dufva, Niemi, & Voeten, 2001; Eklund et al., 2018; Lerkkanen etal., 2004). In their SVR model, Gough and Tunmer (1986) suggested that measures of listening comprehension can preferably be used to assess linguistic comprehension, but later research has shown that vocabulary measures are reliable predictors of reading comprehension as well (e.g., Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004; Manolitsis, Georgiou, & Parrila, 2011; Ouellette, 2006; Torppa etal., 2006). Weak vocabulary knowledge can form a bottleneck particularly when reading comprehension requires comprehending complex words in order to make inferences (Cain, 2016). M.Manu et al. 1 3 Pre‑reading skills aspredictors ofPISA Reading comprehension The PISA Reading test, the outcome measure of the present study, assesses comprehension of various genres such as texts, tables, and graphs. It thus includes a broader array of tasks than many commonly used reading comprehension assessments that typically involve only continuous texts. PISA Reading tasks aim to test skills essential for full participation in modern societies (OECD, 2017a). The test protocol (OECD, 2017b, 51) uses the term Reading Literacy to indicate the broad coverage of the test assessing “understanding, using, reflecting on and engaging with written texts, in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential, and to participate in society.” The test (containing always a certain number of repeated link items to retain comparability between reading scores from different years) is used every three years in the comparative assessments of educational quality. Research on skills predicting PISA Reading is scarce. Arnbak (2012) showed that concurrently measured word recognition and vocabulary explained 41% of the PISA Reading scores among Danish students, whereas Artelt et al. (2001) reported that concurrently measured decoding speed explained 13% of the variance in PISA Reading among German students. Using another Finnish sample than in the current study, Torppa etal. (2018) reported that concurrently assessed reading fluency predicted up to 15% of the variance in PISA Reading among Finnish students. To our knowledge, there is only one longitudinal study that has examined early predictors of PISA Reading, that by Eklund etal. (2018) involving a sample of adolescents with family risk for dyslexia (n = 88) and another sample without family risk for dyslexia (n = 70). The results showed that oral language skills (e.g., vocabulary) assessed prior to school entry predicted 53% of the PISA Reading variance among the high-risk group and 31% among the low-risk group. The pre-reading predictors of decoding (phonological awareness, rapid naming, letter knowledge) predicted 15% of the PISA Reading variance among the high-risk group and 13% among the low-risk group via reading fluency. The samples in the study by Eklund etal. were, however, relatively small. Gender differences inpre‑reading skills andPISA Reading Gender differences in reading favouring girls is a robust finding across languages (e.g., OECD, 2014) as well as the overrepresentation of boys among struggling readers (e.g., Quinn & Wagner, 2015), often found already for young readers (for a recent meta-analysis, see Quinn, 2018). In PISA 2015, for instance, girls outperformed boys in reading comprehension in every participating country (OECD, 2016) although the size of the gender gap in reading varies considerably between countries (OECD, 2010a). Among Finnish students, it has been reported to be relatively large with a medium effect size (Cohen’s d = .50, OECD, 2016) making Finland belong to the group of the participating countries with a pronounced gender difference (Brozo et al., 2014; OECD, 2016). In 2015, Finnish girls outperformed girls from other countries and scored best inPISA Reading (551 points) while Finnish boys ranked seventh (504 points) among boys from other countries (Vettenranta et al., 2016). 1 3 Kindergarten pre‑reading skills predict Grade 9 reading… Although also Finnish boys performed relatively well, the difference of 47 points is estimated to correspond to a one-year gap in the mastery of the basic education syllabus (Vettenranta etal., 2016). In PISA Reading, there are seven levels of reading proficiency (OECD, 2017b). In 2015, 16% of Finnish boys and 7% of Finnish girls did not achieve Level 2, which one should reach to be able for active participation in an information society (Vettenranta etal., 2016). However, the literature is equivocal with respect to gender differences in reading skills and difficulties, because there are also studies showing no clear gender differences in reading skills and reading motivation (e.g., McGeown, Goodwin, Henderson, & Wright, 2012), or in the occurrence of reading difficulties (e.g., Jimenez etal., 2011; Moll, Kunze, Neuhoff, Bruder, & Schulte-Körne, 2014). Moreover, in a longitudinal study using another Finnish sample, no differences in terms of reading difficulties were found between boys and girls in Grade 2, whereas in Grade 8, 65% of struggling readers were boys (Torppa etal., 2015). Better reading skills of girls have been suggested to be due to a more positive attitude toward and interest in reading among girls than boys (e.g., OECD, 2010a). For example, Finnish girls participating in PISA Reading in 2009 reported enjoying reading more than boys did, girls spent notably more time on reading, and reported reading more diverse texts than boys (Brozo etal., 2014). Many studies have shown that reading comprehension correlates with leisure reading (Mol & Bus, 2011; Torppa, Niemi, Vasalampi, Poikkeus, & Lerkkanen, 2020), and, girls’ more extensive voluntary reading could, thus, result in better reading comprehension. Despite evidence of early differences in reading interest and other motivational factors favouring girls, the possibility remains that the gender gap in reading performance can be traced back to early language skills preceding learning to read. Gender differences favouring girls have been reported already in early language development (e.g., Berglund, Eriksson, & Westerlund, 2005; Fenson etal., 1994). For instance, in a German study, girls aged 3–6years were shown to have better language competence than boys (Lange etal., 2016). In addition, better early processing speed of English-speaking girls aged 4–7yearsis suggested to contribute also to their better reading and writing skills (Palejwala & Fine, 2015). In search for explanations for the gender difference in PISA Reading, it is important to examine whether gender differences in skills emerge already in Kindergarten when schooling-related factors do not yet have an influence. Summary ofaims The aims of the study were as follows: (1) to analyse the extent to which Kindergarten pre-reading skills—phonological awareness, rapid naming, letter knowledge, vocabulary, and listening comprehension—predict PISA Reading comprehension in Grade 9; (2) to determine whether the predictive models are similar among boys and girls; (3) to examine whether there are gender differences in the Kindergarten pre-reading skills. Provided that there are gender differences in the skills, the final aim is M.Manu et al. 1 3 (4) to explore whether the gender difference in PISA Reading can be traced back to them that is, whether the gender-related difference in PISA Reading is fully mediated via the Kindergarten pre-reading skills. Methods Participants The data of this study were drawn from a longitudinal study, the First Steps Study, (see Lerkkanen etal., 2006–2016) in which a community sample of about 2000 children were followed from Kindergarten to the end of Grade 9. Children were born in the year 2000 and came from four municipalities, two in Central Finland, one in Western Finland and one in Eastern Finland. Altogether 1839 children (873 girls; 966 boys) in the First Steps Study participated in Kindergarten assessments of prereading skills. Of the longitudinal sample, 1010 adolescents (480 girls; 530 boys) participated in the PISA Reading assessment in Grade 9. At the time of the Kindergarten assessments (spring 2006) the mean age of children was 6.1years (SD = .29) and in the Grade 9 assessment (fall 2017) the average age was 15.3years (SD = .33). The First Steps Study has been reviewed by the University of Jyväskylä Ethical Committee. An informed written consent was given by the participants’ parents (Kindergarten) and the participants themselves (Grade 9). Because of attrition across time, we examined whether missingness was random. Little’s MCAR test, χ2(28) = 86.85, p < .001, suggested that the participants attending assessments in Grade 9 and in Kindergarten differed in some study measures from those not participating. The independent t test comparisons of the two groups (participating vs. not participating in the Grade 9 assessment) in the Kindergarten skills are presented in Table1. The participants had slightly better Kindergarten performance in all assessed skills than the group of students not participating in Grade 9. However, the effect sizes were small (Table 1), reflecting the fact that attrition was mainly caused by children and their families moving away Table 1 Comparison of children participating and not participating in the Grade 9 assessment with independent samples t test **p < .01; *** p < .001 a Effect sizes were estimated with Cohen’s d computed using pooled standard deviation Kindergarten skills Participating in the Grade 9 assessment Not participating in the Grade 9 assessment tEffect sizea N Mean SD N Mean SD Phonological awareness 1010 9.12 1.49 826 8.70 1.79 − 5.06*** .26 Rapid naming 1010 69.10 15.81 825 71.74 19.84 3.10** .15 Letter knowledge 1010 23.93 6.02 826 22.33 7.17 − 5.13*** .24 Vocabulary 1010 20.30 3.22 829 19.24 3.46 − 6.76*** .32 Listening comprehension 1010 7.86 2.34 822 7.54 2.34 − 2.92** .14 1 3 Kindergarten pre‑reading skills predict Grade 9 reading… from the study municipalities. Furthermore, the Grade 9 assessment did not include small classrooms with students having special needs. The participants of this study, N = 1010 (480 girls; 530 boys), had no missing data in any of the measures used in the analyses. Measures Kindergarteners’ phonological awareness, rapid naming, letter knowledge, vocabulary and listening comprehension were assessed in April 2006 by trained testers in individual test sessions. Note that formal reading instruction starts in Finland in Grade 1, and the Kindergarten curriculum does not contain formal reading instruction (i.e., teaching of decoding or spelling), but kindergarteners are engaged in playful activities involving letters, words and numbers. Assessments were carried out by trained testers who were either university researchers or education or psychology graduate-stage students. Assessments in Grade 9 took place in November 2015 in the classrooms using group-administered tests. Phonological awareness The initial phoneme identification test (Lerkkanen, Poikkeus, & Ketonen, 2006) included 10 items. In each of them the experimenter first named a row of four pictures of objects, gave the instruction “At the beginning of which word do you hear the sound/?/”, and asked the child to point out the correct picture. All sounds were single phonemes. The score was the number of correct responses (max. = 10). The Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient was .76. Rapid naming Rapid naming of objects was assessed using the standard procedure (Denckla & Rudel, 1976). The children were asked to name as fast as possible a series of five pictures of objects arranged in semi random order in five rows of 10. There was a practice trial before the test to ensure the child’s familiarity with names of the objects. The score was the total time in seconds that it took for the child to name all stimuli. Only a few errors occurred and for this reason, only total naming time was used in the analyses. Letter knowledge The children were asked to name all 29 Finnish letters which were shown on a sheet and arranged in three rows (Lerkkanen etal., 2006). The letters were named one row at the time, while the other rows were covered. The score was the number of correctly named letters (max. = 29). The Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient was .94. M.Manu et al. 1 3 Vocabulary Receptive language was assessed using a 30-item shortened version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R, Form L; Dunn & Dunn, 1981). The children were asked to point out the picture from four alternatives which correctly represents the word spoken by the experimenter. The items for the shortened version were selected based on data from the full-scale administration of the PPVT-R in the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (Lyytinen et al., 2004). The score was the number of correct responses (max. = 30). The Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient was .61. Listening comprehension Listening comprehension was assessed using a group-administered test developed at the Centre for Learning Research, University of Turku. The children heard a story with 130 words twice in the classroom setting after which they answered six multiple-choice questions (in four of the questions there were three choices, and in two questions there were four choices) which were based on the story and accompanied by pictures. The children were asked to select a picture that would best fit the story. Two points were given for each correct answer (max. = 12). The Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient was .30. Torppa etal. (2016) reported that the standardized beta for the prediction of another listening comprehension measure a year later was .45. Programme forinternational student assessment reading The students had 60min to complete the battery of reading tasks in the classroom group administered setting. These tasks formed the PISA Reading link items which are used repeatedly in each cycle of the PISA survey to ensure that the measurement remains comparable across time (OECD, 2010b). The booklet included eight different texts which students were asked to read and then answer questions. The reading materials consisted of texts, tables, graphs and figures. There were 15 multiple-choice questions and 16 questions, which required written responses. Of the questions, 12 required the students to access and retrieve information, 12 to integrate and interpret information and 7 to reflect and evaluate information. The total score was calculated by adding up the item scores (1 point given for each correct response). The maximum score was 31. The Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient was .75. Statistical Analysis First, the distributions of the measures were examined (see Table2). Kindergarten vocabulary and listening comprehension approached the normal distribution. Phonological awareness and letter knowledge were left-skewed. Rapid naming was 1 3 Kindergarten pre‑reading skills predict Grade 9 reading… In conclusion, considering the time-gap between the ages of 6 and 15years, the amount of variance (27%/18%) of PISA Reading predicted by the Kindergarten prereading skills is remarkable. In Finland, schools as a rule provide uniformly highquality instruction by qualified teachers following the national core curriculum in collaboration with special needs teachers. Yet, close to a quarter of variance in reading comprehension scores at the age of 15 can be predicted by Kindergarten measures assessed prior to any reading instruction. This suggests some degree of stability in individual factors affecting reading development and, consequently, also the need for more careful early targeting of support. However, the gender-related gap in adolescent years appears to emerge along other pathways than differences in pre-reading skills related to gender. Therefore, the present results underscore the possibility that pathways of reading development through the school years appear to differ between girls and boys, much to the disadvantage of boys. If replicated across school systems, the findings would point up a profound challenge for the national curriculum. Funding Open access funding provided by University of Jyväskylä (JYU). The study has been supported by grants from the Academy of Finland (Nos. 268586 2013–2017, 264264 2014–2017, 276239 2014– 2019, 292466 2015–2019, 263 891 2013–2015, and 299 506 2017–2019). Compliance with ethical standards Conflict of interest The author declares that they have no conflict of interest. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/. References Arnbak, E. (2012). 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Psychological Science, 21(4), 551–559. https ://doi.org/10.1177/09567 97610 36340 6. 1 3 Kindergarten pre‑reading skills predict Grade 9 reading… Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Affiliations MariManu1 · MinnaTorppa1 · KennethEklund2 · Anna‑MaijaPoikkeus1 · Marja‑KristiinaLerkkanen1 · PekkaNiemi3 1 Department ofTeacher Education, University ofJyvaskyla, P.O. Box35, 40014Jyvaskyla, Finland 2 Faculty ofEducation andPsychology, University ofJyvaskyla, P.O. Box35, 40014Jyvaskyla, Finland 3 Department ofPsychology, University ofTurku, 20014Turku, Finland