Teaching Spanish Spelling in Grades 2–3: A Cross-National Approach

Abstract

This study aimed to explore instructional practices used to teach words with irregular spelling patterns by Spanish-speaking teachers in 2nd and 3rd grade of elementary school. A sample of 320 teachers from Guatemala, Ecuador, and Spain answered an online survey, which included the Spelling Instructional Practices Scale. Item Response Theory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis were used to analyze the construct validity and reliability of the Spelling Instructional Practices Scale. Results pointed out adequate fit indexes of the proposed models. Spelling instructional practices used by teachers were finally grouped into three factors. Results indicated that Spanish-speaking teachers teach irregular spelling words using a combination of instructional practices. Differences in the informed use of spelling instructional practices according to the teachers’ home countries were explored. Significant differences were found between Spanish and Latin-American teachers in the reported use of those instructional practices based on memorization and some materials to teach spelling. However, most teachers reported following a similar pattern when teaching irregular spelling to their students. Limitations and directions for future research are described.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the members of the Learning Disabilities, Psycholinguistic and Information and Communication Technologies (DEAP&NT) research team from Universidad de La Laguna, for their help with tool design and data collection. We must also thanks the Universidad Casa Grande de Guayaquil (Ecuador), through Marcela Frugone and Claudia Patricia Uribe, and the Universidad del Valle (Guatemala), through Pablo Barrientos, for their collaboration in conducting this study.

Disclosure statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Ethical approval

This study was conducted according to the CEIBA (Research Ethics Committee) guidelines from La Universidad de la Laguna (https://viinv.ull.es/ceiba/).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Plan Nacional I + D + I (R + D + i National Research Plan of the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness), project ref.: PSI2015-65009-R, with the fourth author as PI.