FPG News

FPG Announces Findings from First Recognition and Response/RTI Study for Younger Children

Chapel Hill, N.C. — Researchers at the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced key findings from a study on Recognition & Response (R&R), a new approach to teaching pre-kindergartners. The study is the first of its kind to focus on pre-k children and demonstrated that R&R is a successful intervention that teachers can successfully implement.

The R&R approach is designed specifically for use with pre-k children and is based on Response to Intervention (RTI), a method that is gaining widespread acceptance in schools throughout the country. R&R helps teachers use information they gather on children’s skills to improve the quality of instruction for all children, and to provide targeted interventions to those who need additional supports to learn. The FPG researchers found that the target group who received the language and literacy interventions made greater gains than their classmates in letter naming, vocabulary, sound awareness, and print knowledge. The target group made gains at the same rate as their classmates on other language and literacy skills. The study also showed that pre-k teachers could implement this approach successfully with a high (97 percent) level of accuracy, and 92 percent of the teachers reported that they would recommend R&R to other teachers.

The study included 353 four-year-olds in 24 child care, Head Start, and public pre-k classrooms in Maryland and Florida. As part of the R&R approach, pre-k teachers conducted universal screenings on every child throughout the year and used these results to select a target group of four children in each classroom. These children received a language and literacy intervention in a small group for 15 minutes a day for two months.

“We are encouraged by this significant finding about the efficacy of progress monitoring and tiered intervention in pre-kindergarten. We expect this to be the first of many findings in a growing body of research that will help the field of pre-k education more precisely meet the needs of young children,” said principal investigator Ellen Peisner-Feinberg.

“These findings provide a compelling research validation for FPG’s vision of making pre-k classrooms more sensitive and responsive to the individual learning needs of young children,” said Larry Berger, CEO of Wireless Generation, one of FPG’s research partners, and the provider of the mobile device-based assessment tools used by teachers in the study. “FPG is pioneering the research and development of a model that deserves to have major influence in current policy conversations about pre-k education.”

The research was funded by grants from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. The findings and recommendations are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the funding agency. For more information about the R&R study and its findings, please contact Virginia Buysse or Ellen Peisner-Feinberg at randr@mail.fpg.unc.edu, or visit the Recognition & Response Web site at http://www.fpg.unc.edu/~randr/

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For MEDIA:
Media Contact: Anne Hainsworth, (919) 966-0867, or anne.hainsworth@unc.edu

[Posted 10/01/09]