Strategy Fading and Progress Feedback
This experiment investigated the effects of strategy verbalization with fading and strategy value feedback on children's achievement outcomes. Children with reading-skill deficiencies received instruction on locating main ideas. Children were taught and verbalized a strategy; some faded the verbalizations to inner speech. Half of the children in the fading and no-fading conditions periodically received feedback that linked strategy use with improved performance. The no-fading/nofeedback condition scored significantly lower than the other three conditions on posttest self-efficacy, comprehension skill, and self-reported strategy use. Fading plus feedback led to higher reported strategy use compared with the fading-only and feedback-only conditions and to higher comprehension skill compared with the feedback-only condition. These results support the idea that students receiving remedial reading services benefit from procedures that require extensive cognitive activity and that inform them about strategy usefulness. Research suggestions and implications of the results for educational practice are discussed.