Using Multimedia-Based Instruction to Improve Teacher Knowledge about Evidence-Based Practices for Reading Comprehension

Students with disabilities display difficulties with their ability to comprehend narrative and expository text. Yet they are often expected and to access make progress within the same curriculum as their general education peers. Therefore, it is essential that teachers possess a strong bank of practices for supporting the learning needs of all students. That said, there is evidence to suggest many teachers lack fundamental knowledge to understand and implement evidence-based reading practices. Professional development and teacher education are two important avenues to improve teacher knowledge about reading. This study investigated different approaches to providing instruction to preservice teachers (n = 146) on how to teach specific reading comprehension strategies from Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR). Because the methods used to provide pre- and inservice teachers with instruction are often taken for granted in terms of presentation mode(s), this study seeks to answer important questions about the extent to which different learning modes results in desired outcomes. Two multimedia conditions (Content Acquisition Podcasts for Teachers, CAP-T, and Content Acquisition Podcasts with embedded modeling videos, CAP-TV) were compared to a traditional lecture format. Results indicate that preservice teachers (PSTs) who watched a CAP-TV significantly outperformed PSTs who watched a CAP or heard a lecture on a measure of knowledge regarding reading comprehension. The PSTs who watched a CAP-TV also created recorded video lessons that included more components of CSR than peers that only received a lecture. PSTs from the lecture, CAP, and CAP-TV groups all reported positive feelings about the trainings and felt that they learned from them and could use the strategies in their future classroom.