Effects of decoding intervention in persistently struggling readers: transfer on spelling and self-efficacy beliefs

Literacy is a real challenge for students with literacy difficulties, but is an essential skill for social and professional development. Previous studies mainly focused on poor reading comprehension of persistent struggling readers. However, providing support on decoding skills may also be determinant for them. Moreover, they suffer from a lack of motivation in reading because they have been failing for several years. The present study aims to demonstrate (i) the effectiveness of decoding strategies intervention; (ii) the transfer effect from reading to spelling; (iii) the specific impact of an open self-assessment support on self-efficacy beliefs and on performance in literacy. Over a period of seven weeks, two groups of eight French-speaking students from a secondary special school (aged 14 with a reading level of third grade primary school) received respectively an open self-assessment treatment and a self-assessment treatment both focusing on word-level decoding strategies. For the open structured self-assessment tool, the students chose the procedure and support, whereas the teacher suggested them in the other group. The intervention groups were compared to a control group of eight students receiving standard reading instruction. Students were compared on several measures (word reading, reading comprehension, word spelling and self-efficacy beliefs) before and after the treatment