College receives $1.78 million vocabulary grant

 To hear professor Jim Baumann offer an overview of the grant, click here.

  To hear associate professor Patrick Manyak discuss the project's goals and its place in the larger research agenda, click here.

   To hear Manyak discuss the essential instructional questions of this research, click here.

  Two University of Wyoming faculty have been awarded a three-year, $1.78 million research grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to develop and evaluate a comprehensive approach to vocabulary instruction for upper-elementary school students.
   The funded project is titled "Development of a Multifaceted, Comprehensive Vocabulary Instructional Program for the Upper Elementary Grades." Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chair in Literacy Education Jim Baumann and associate professor of elementary and early childhood education Patrick Manyak are co-principal investigators. A third member of the research team, Camille Blachowicz, a faculty member at National-Louis University in Skokie, Illinois, will supervise work conducted in the Chicago area.
  UW's research team, which is expected to include at least two graduate assistants, will work with teachers and students in fourth and fifth grade classrooms in Fort Collins, Colo. Blachowicz will conduct parallel research in classrooms based in Evanston, Ill. Conducting the study at dual sites will allow comparisons between classrooms in a large, urban area in the central U.S. and classrooms in a growing, increasingly diversifying area in the Western U.S.
   The goal of the project is to identify effective vocabulary instructional strategies both for children who speak English as their first language and for an ever-increasing school-age population of children who come to school speaking a language other than English.
   "Research indicates that gaps in vocabulary knowledge between the bottom quartile of kids on entrance to school and the upper quartile of kids is huge," Manyak says. While various studies have tested the efficacy of specific components of vocabulary instruction, very little research has explored a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach. This study will address that gap.
   "We both were at a point of looking at things in a multi-faceted, complex, rich way. The potential benefits of such an approach is one of the biggest questions that needs to be answered in the vocabulary research domain."Manyak says
   A four-component vocabulary program developed by University of Minnesota professor Michael Graves, who serves as a consultant on the project, will provide the framework. Graves' approach to vocabulary instruction includes providing students rich and varied language experiences, teaching individual words, teaching word-learning strategies, and promoting word-consciousness.
   The three-year time frame (fall 2009-summer 2012) will enable the researchers to engage in a cycle of program development, feasibility testing, and program revision for each of the years of the grant. The time frame also will provide opportunities for some longitudinal data collection, as students move from one grade to the next. "When programs are implemented over time, they are more likely to demonstrate instructional power," Baumann says. "That is one reason for having multiple grade levels involved."
   A desire to explore the needs of linguistically diverse students led to the selection of school districts in Chicago and northern Fort Collins, both of which enroll significant proportions of English language learners. "Promoting the vocabulary development of English learners is a huge conundrum in education and in research" Manyak says. "We've known for 25 years that vocabulary is the critical variable when it comes to long-term achievement of English learner in our schools."
   At the end of the grant, the researchers will have a vocabulary instructional program ready for evaluation. At that time, they will apply for another federal research grant to test the effectiveness of their program against alternate approaches to teaching reading vocabulary.
 

Posted on Monday, April 06, 2009