Abstract:
Reading is a language skill that cuts across every other school subject. However, it has been observed that senior secondary school students have low comprehension skills, which might be due to the instructional strategies adopted. Previous studies had focused on many other teaching methods and students’ factors with little attention paid to dialogic discourse and scaffolding instructional strategies in improving learning outcomes. Therefore, the effects of Dialogic Discourse (DDIS) and Scaffolding (SIS) instructional strategies on students’ attitude to, and achievement in English language reading comprehension were examined. The moderating effects of parental involvement and school location were also determined.
Schema Theory provided the framework, while the pretest-posttest control group quasi experimental design with 3x2x2 factorial matrix was used. Schools in Oyo State were clustered along the eight educational zones, from which Ibadan Municipal and Ibarapa educational zones were chosen. From each zone, one local Government Area (LGA) (Ibadan North and Ibarapa East) was randomly selected. Simple random sampling technique was adopted in selecting three public senior secondary schools in each LGA, totaling six schools. Twenty senior secondary students in each of the schools were randomly selected, making a total of 120 students. The selected schools were randomly assigned to (DDIS - 40), (SIS - 40) and control (40) groups. Instruments used were Reading Comprehension Achievement Test (r=0.87), Parental Involvement Scale (r=0.81), Students’ Attitudinal Scale (r=0.91) and instructional guides, while treatment lasted nine weeks. Data collected were analysed using Analysis of covariance and Sidak post-hoc test at0.05 level of significance.
There were significant main effects of treatment on students’ attitude to reading comprehension(F(2.107)=5.66;partialῃ2=0.10) and achievement (F(2,107)=22.204; partial ῃ2=0.29). Students in DDIS had highest mean score in attitude to reading comprehension (68.38), followed by SIS (62.50) and control (61.62). Students in DDIS had the most enhanced achievement mean score in reading comprehension (17.56), followed by SIS (16.42) and control (13.55), while parental involvement had no significant main effect on students’ learning outcomes in reading comprehension. School location had significant main effect on students’ attitude to reading comprehension (F(1.107)=4.09; partial ῃ2=0.04), but none on achievement. The two-way interaction effect of treatment and school location was significant on students’ attitude to reading comprehension(F(2.107)=4.37; partial ῃ2 =0.076) in favour of participants in DDIS from rural schools, but none on achievement. The two-way interaction effects of treatment and parental involvement, and parental involvement and school locations were not significant. The three-way interaction effects were also not significant.
Dialogic discourse and scaffolding instructional strategies enhanced senior secondary school students’ learning outcomes in reading comprehension in Oyo State, Nigeria. These strategies should be adopted by teachers of English language to facilitate effective learning regardless of students’ parental involvement.
