Rates of Specific Antecedent Instructional Practices and Differences Between Title I and non-Title I Schools

The use of effective instructional strategies is clearly emphasized in current educational reform, especially in the area of reading. The purposes of this study were to investigate the rates at which specific instructional practices (i.e., attention signals, prior knowledge supports, previews, instructor modeling, student modeling, organizational prompts) were utilized during literacy time in elementary schools, determine if there were relationships among the instructional variables, and explore if teachers in Title I schools and teachers in non-Title I schools differed in their use of specific practices. Participants included teachers and students from 35 classrooms who were each observed for 5 hours, resulting in a total of 175 observation hours. The Setting Factors Assessment Tool (SFAT) was used to measure the antecedent instructional variables. Main results included that teachers in non-Title I classrooms used significantly more prior knowledge references than teachers in Title I schools; the effect size for this finding was large. Several correlations among the instructional variables were significant. The article concludes with a discussion of the main findings, implications for future research and the limitations of this study.