Supporting Multilingual Children At-Risk of Reading Failure: Impacts of A Multilingual Structured Pedagogy Literacy Intervention in Kenya

Abstract

Many children living in linguistically diverse low- and middle-income countries learn to read and write in multiple languages. Recent research provides implications for effective reading instruction with multilingual learners (e.g., Hall et. al. in New Dir Child Adolescent 166:145-189, 2019). However, there is limited empirical evidence on effective instructional practices for multilingual early grade learners who are at-risk of reading failure. The goal of our research was to examine the effect of a structured literacy intervention on literacy skills for a cohort of first grade children at-risk of reading failure as they learned to read in Kiswahili and English.Data were drawn from a larger longitudinal randomized control trial of the Primary Math and Reading Initiative in four counties in Kenya (Kiambu, Nakuru, Nairobi, and Kisumu, with 165 at-risk children identified (71 control; 94 treatment).