Effectiveness of a self-regulated strategy development intervention on reading comprehension and written expression in students with specific learning disabilities affecting reading and writing: an experimental study

Abstract

Teaching reading and writing strategies presents significant challenges for students with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD). This research project outlines a 28-hour integrated intervention program that focuses on cognitive and metacognitive strategies for improving Reading Comprehension (RC) and Written Expression (WE) in Greek 5th and 6th graders with SLD. The program was implemented by 19 resource room teachers (experimental and comparison groups) utilizing the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) instructional approach, with an additional 14 resource-room teachers teaching the control group. The participants were divided into three groups: an Experimental Group comprising 38 students (taught RC + WE), a Comparison Group with 36 students (taught only WE), and a Control Group with 44 students (business as usual). The study followed a pre-midpoint-post-maintenance experimental design. All students were assessed with reading comprehension, written expression, and cognitive and metacognitive strategy knowledge measures. The results of Multilevel Random Effects Analysis (MREA) indicated that the Experimental Group outperformed the Control Group in reading comprehension and self-regulated strategies knowledge. Additionally, both the Experimental and Comparison groups exhibited statistically significant improvements in writing and metacognitive skills compared to the Control Group. These findings offer strong evidence highlighting the effectiveness of the integrated reading comprehension and written expression program for students with SLD. Additionally, the educational implications of these findings are discussed in detail.