The Effects of a Multimodal Intervention on the Reading Skills of Struggling Students: An Exploration Across Countries

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of a multimodal program, designed for practicing reading, on reading development in struggling readers in two different countries. The research question was whether one specific training method will have a positive effect on pupils’ reading development in two different countries with different educational systems and as diverse orthographies as the shallow Croatian and the relatively deep Swedish orthography. It became clear that the Swedish teachers have a tradition of implementing interventions as opposed to in Croatia where there is no tradition of teachers conducting intervention studies in school. Comparing different school systems is difficult which is evident in the results that differ between the two countries. However, the results indicate that the multimodal reading training program used in the intervention had positive effects on pupils’ literacy development, including decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension in both countries.