The Effects of Teacher Professional Development on Rural Students' Lexical Inferencing Skills

Reading comprehension is fundamental to the development of students' overall reading development and academic success (Alderson, 2000; Anderson l Rupley & Nichols, 2005). Addressing this relationship, numerous researchers have demonstrated that rigorous vocabulary instruction can result in improvements in reading comprehension (Boulware-Gooden, Carreker, Thornhill, St Joshi, 2007; Nelson &. Stage, 2007). Given the importance of vocabulary knowledge in students' reading comprehension, the purpose of this study was to examine how a technologybased professional development (PD) program affected the lexical inferencing skills of students. In particular, this study examined the effects of a program in which a Speech/ Language Pathologist (SLP) consulted with classroom teachers on scientifically-based vocabulary instruction on outcomes of students from rural, low socioeconomic backgrounds.Vocabulary Knowledge, Socioeconomic Status, and Rural ChildrenThe breadth of students' vocabulary knowledge is largely influenced by the number of words they encounter prior to starting school and differs based on socioeconomic status (SES). In their landmark study, Hart and Risley (1995) found that children from low SES families encounter approximately 10,000 words per year compared to children from high SES families, who encounter approximately 30,000 words per year. More recent studies measuring early vocabulary development also found SES-related differences, in which the difference in vocabulary size was dependent upon the difference in SES in the samples (Morrison, Bachman, & Connor, 2005; Pan, Rowe, Singer, & Snow, 2005; Rowe St Goldin-Meadow, 2009). Similarly, many children from low SES backgrounds demonstrate adequate progress with their reading skills through Grade Three but begin to show difficulties with their reading skills thereafter compared to children from high SES backgrounds (Chali, Jacobs, St Baldwin, 1990). Prior to Grade Three, the primary focus of reading instruction is on teaching children to decode; it is often not until the focus of reading instruction shifts to comprehension that students from low SES backgrounds demonstrate difficulties. Vocabulary knowledge expansion also has occurred more quickly for students in Grades 1-5 attending suburban schools than for those students in schools serving low-income children (White, Graves, & Slater, 1990). Students from low SES backgrounds, therefore, are more likely to disproportionately demonstrate late-emerging reading difficulties than same-aged peers from higher SES backgrounds (Kieffer, 2010).In addition to the clear link between low SES and vocabulary development, research also has linked rurality and reading outcomes. Although rural school districts comprise nearly 57% of operating school districts in the United States (U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences [IES], 2013), not many studies specifically have examined the academic performance of rural children compared to urban or suburban children. Nationwide, rural fourth graders performed as well as urban fourth graders but not as well as suburban fourth graders (U. …