Supporting young children with reading difficulties: What about teacher collaboration?

Learning to read is one of the most important accomplishments of a child's early experiences in school. Without the ability to read, opportunities to access the school curriculum and to full membership of today's literate society are at best limited, at worst, denied. The inclusion of all children is therefore dependent on the provision of appropriate early instruction to those who experience difficulties in learning to read. Although there has always been concern about reading standards, the drop in Irish students' performance in the most recent international studies of literacy (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2010) has led to renewed concern regarding the success with which children learn to read in the Irish educational system (Eivers et al., 2010; Department of Education and Skills (DES), 2011). While many research efforts in recent years have been designed to describe the characteristics of exemplary teaching, the day-to-day work of the teachers supporting children who struggle with reading, is rarely documented. An in-depth look at what teachers actually do to help struggling readers in their classrooms has been called for (Strickland, 2002).