Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Studies in Educational Evaluation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/stueduc Teacher inquiry of using assessments and recommendations in teaching early reading Thomas Nordström a, ⁎ , Ulrika B. Andersson b , Linda Fälth a , Stefan Gustafson b a Linnaéus University, Department of Psychology, P G Vejdes väg, 351 95, Växjö, Sweden b Linköping University, Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, 581 83, Linköping, Sweden ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Early reading instruction Assessment use Adapted teaching ABSTRACT Previous research point to difficulties for teachers to interpret reading assessment data with regard to instruc- tional decisions. This study explored Swedish primary teachers' use of assessments and recommendations, in order to be able to target individual needs. Eight teachers participated in a reading program and were inter- viewed in focus-group meetings. The analysis of teacher narratives stemming from assessment use resulted in three themes: Awareness of student learning, Changes in the organization of teaching, but not regarding individualized content and Strengthened teacher role, but modest professional growth. The themes indicated that the teachers had become aware of their students’ learning, had employed teaching based on informed decisions, and showed initial professional growth. However, the assessment details and the recommendations allowed for more adjustments than was evident in the teachers’ narratives. The results point to the relative difficulty of targeting individual needs in the general classroom education, and to the challenges of changing teaching practices. 1. Introduction There is a global as well as a national Swedish desire from educa- tors, researchers and policy makers to increase students’ reading per- formance, including preventing reading difficulties, as well as to sti- mulate reading development for those who advance quickly. The aim of this study is to explore primary school teacher’s use of assessment data, including teaching recommendations, in order to target individual needs in students. There is now evidence that non-fluent readers need to practice on the components underlying word recognition, for example, phonolo- gical awareness, letter knowledge and letter-sound correspondence (Foorman & Torgesen, 2001; Hatcher, Hulme, & Ellis, 1994; Wolff, 2016) whereas fluent readers need focus on reading strategies that promote reading comprehension, including how to understand prag- matic facets of written language (Antoniou & Souvignier, 2007; Guthrie et al., 2004). To teach based on assessments of these components is not a new phenomenon; it has characterized the ‘literacy movements’ throughout the modern school era. By providing teachers with knowl- edge of their student’s level of reading achievement and growth in reading, a convincing body of evidence shows that it affects student reading outcomes (Förster & Souvignier, 2015; Stecker, Fuchs, & Fuchs, 2005). In this tradition, the challenge of the teacher is to become knowledgeable about student progress and to act in accordance with student needs relative to learning goals (Hoogland et al., 2016). Response to intervention (RTI) is perhaps the most notable frame- work regarding the use of assessments and teaching adjustments. In this tradition, the goal is to prevent early reading difficulties, by providing increasingly more adjusted and more intense reading instruction in- terventions (Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003). Starting with Tier 1, which usually covers the ordinary classroom teaching, students who are be- hind in the reading developmental process are detected through as- sessments, which can vary in scope, ranging from standardized assess- ments of basic skills, to include more comprehensive efforts of mapping reading components. Students who respond poorly to this “generally effective” Tier 1 classroom instruction are transferred to additional interventions, usually containing a three-tiered intervention framework in total. While research on Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions is compre- hensive (Grosche & Volpe, 2013; Tran, Sanchez, Arellano, & Lee Swanson, 2011), and includes close monitoring of student progress in relation to more intense instruction conducted in small groups and in- dividual teaching, Tier 1 procedures conducted as part of the ordinary classroom education are often not explicitly evaluated in RTI-research (Lam & McMaster, 2014). However, there are strong reasons to also improve the ordinary classroom education, in order to better detect those who need https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2019.06.006 Received 12 April 2018; Received in revised form 25 June 2019; Accepted 28 June 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: thomas.nordstrom@lnu.se (T. Nordström). Studies in Educational Evaluation 63 (2019) 9–16 0191-491X/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T