‘I liked the text about the little bird.’ Five intellectually disabled persons talk about texts

Abstract

The aim of this pilot study was to investigate if Reciprocal Teaching (RT) could scaffold the active reading of adults with intellectual disabilities. A study was performed with a group of five intellectually disabled participants, aged 28–42 years. The participants were able to decode words but they read very slowly and in an uncritical way. The participants were exposed to a programme for reading strategies instruction, Reciprocal Teaching. This programme is influenced by the concept of scaffolding, which is an application of Vygotsky's theory of the importance of interplay between support and challenge for development. In RT the text is read paragraph by paragraph. During the reading four reading comprehension strategies are practised: generating questions, summarizing, clarifying word meanings or confusing text, and predicting what might occur in the next paragraph. To start with, the participants (a) did not like the idea of text talks (b) did not like stopping to discuss after each paragraph (c) had a tendency to drift away from the text. However, after a few text talks they became familiar with the idea of text talks and the four strategies. The participants appreciated the text talks and said that they wanted to continue with them.

Keywords:

• participation
• intellectual disability
• reading comprehension
• structured text talks
• scaffolding

Notes

1. DA is intended to offer meaningful activities, social community and increased participation in public life.

2. However, there are mildly intellectually disabled people who decode accurately, but they usually struggle with reading comprehension (Swanson and Trahan 1996; Snowling, Nash and Henderson 2008; Katims 2001; Kay-Raining Bird, Cleave and McConnell 2000).

3. The latest PISA study demonstrated that even non- intellectually disabled people often read texts in a passive way (Skolverket [National Agency for Education] 2010).

4. The authentic version is called ‘Julrosen’ (The Christmas Rose). The easy-to-read text Julrosen och andra berättelser (The Christmas Rose and Other Short Stories) is revised by Werkmäster. In this version there are also other short stories by Selma Lagerlöf.

5. The names of the participants are fictitious.