Date of Award

January 2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Foundations & Research

First Advisor

Virginia Clinton-Lisell

Abstract

With increasing national and legislative mandates prioritizing SoR practices, many schools are shifting their literacy practices to align classroom instruction, interventions, and screening to follow reading research, which can require a shift in pedagogy for individual educators and schools. This exploratory sequential mixed-methods study explored a year one implementation of the Science of Reading (SoR) in a mid-size midwestern school district during their first year of across-district literacy reform. Qualitative case study interviews were conducted of K-3 Classroom teachers (4) and literacy coaches (4). Emergent themes from the findings included value in high fidelity professional development, challenges related to resource “flooding,” tensions between fidelity and adaptation, and the impact of literacy leadership on educator feelings of support and buy-in. Teachers expressed both optimism and fatigue regarding implementation, often viewing the process as a positive shift they would recommend for other districts that had aspects of an uneven rollout. The quantitative analysis was a mixed ANOVA analysis of secondary student data to serve as a follow-up of the qualitative interviews. Results indicated marginally significant benefits for students with double deficits in the SoR intervention group. Findings suggest that high-quality professional learning and literacy alignment framed within the Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, literacy leadership, and established communication systems could play critical roles in implementation outcomes of SoR initiatives. This study contributes to the growing literature on how public schools can effectively navigate complex change to support reading achievement through science-aligned practices, focusing on teacher voice as a part of continuous improvement.

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