Our Research
The Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA) emerged from controlled research trials funded through the Better Start National Science Challenge. The success of these trials led to larger scale implementation of the BSLA in junior school classroom throughout New Zealand, supported by the Ministry of Education. We have published a number of studies highlighting the effectiveness of the BSLA to developing foundational literacy skills in 5- 7-year-old children.
Much of our research is Open Access, which means complete articles are freely available to read online. The links below lead directly to our Open Access articles, which are updated as we publish further.
Data Update - November 2023
To read an update on the data from the national implementation of our successful structured literacy approach, see here.
The Better Start Literacy Approach is an example of a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) to facilitate children’s early literacy success. It is set within a strengths-based and culturally responsive framework for literacy teaching and is being implemented in over 800 English medium schools across New Zealand. This report focuses on how children identified at school entry as English Language Learners (ELL) responded to the Better Start Literacy Approach during their first year at school. Using a matched control design, the growth in phoneme awareness, phoneme-grapheme knowledge, and oral narrative skills for 1,853 ELL was compared to a cohort of 1,853 non-ELL. The cohorts were matched for ethnicity (mostly Asian, 46% and Pacific, 26%), age (M = 65 months), gender (53% male), and socioeconomic deprivation index (82% in areas of mid to high deprivation). Data analyses indicated similar positive growth rates for ELL and non-ELL from baseline to the first monitoring assessment following 10 weeks of Tier 1 (universal/class level) teaching. Despite demonstrating lower phoneme awareness skills at baseline, following 10 weeks of teaching, the ELL cohort performed similarly to non-ELL in non-word reading and spelling tasks. Predictors of growth analyses indicated that ELL from areas of low socioeconomic deprivation, who used a greater number of different words in their English story retells at the baseline assessment, and females made the most growth in their phonic and phoneme awareness development. Following the 10-week monitoring assessment, 11% of the ELL and 13% of the non-ELL cohorts received supplementary Tier 2 (targeted small group) teaching. At the next monitoring assessment (20 weeks post baseline assessment) the ELL cohort showed accelerated growth in listening comprehension, phoneme-grapheme matching and phoneme blending skills, catching up to their non-ELL peers. Despite limitations of the dataset available, it provides one of the few insights into the response of ELL to Tier 1 and Tier 2 teaching in their first year at school. The data suggest that the Better Start Literacy Approach, which includes high-quality professional learning and development for teachers, literacy specialists, and speech-language therapists, is an effective approach toward developing foundational literacy skills for ELL. The important role speech-language therapists have in collaborating with class teachers to support children’s early literacy success within a MTSS framework is discussed.
This paper contextualises a keynote address delivered at the 2022 Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Melbourne, Australia. The paper aligns with the conference theme of Beyond Borders from the perspective of moving beyond borders of regular practice to develop strong partnerships and networks within our communities to advocate and support necessary change. Change or enhancement to current practice is necessary if we are to reduce current inequities in education experienced by many children in our communities, including those with communication challenges. Strengths-based and culturally responsive literacy approaches to supporting children within the context of their family and community are increasingly gaining support as we address this challenge. The Better Start Literacy Approach (Te Ara Reo Matatini), currently being implemented in junior school classrooms across New Zealand is described. It is one example of large-scale implementation of a strengths-based and culturally responsive early literacy approach, based on the science of reading. Data support the effectiveness of the Better Start Literacy Approach in significantly enhancing the foundational literacy skills of 5- and 6-year-old children, including those who commence school with lower levels of oral language ability. Through establishing strong partnerships within communities, speech pathologists have much to offer in motivating systems level change to enhance early literacy success for all learners.
This study aimed to elucidate the nature of the relationship between the development of decoding and encoding skills in the first year at school. The foundational literacy skills of one hundred eighty 5-year-old children were examined on three occasions over their first year of literacy instruction. Participants received the same literacy curriculum. The predictive utility of early spelling on later reading accuracy, reading comprehension, and spelling outcomes was explored. Performance on matched nonword spelling and nonword reading tasks was also used to compare the use of particular graphemes across these contexts. Regression and path analyses showed that nonword spelling was a unique predictor of later (end of year) reading and played a facilitative role in the emergence of decoding. Children were generally more accurate on spelling than decoding for the majority of graphemes evaluated in the matched tasks. Factors such as position of the grapheme in the word, complexity of the grapheme (e.g., digraph vs. graph), and the scope and sequence of the literacy curriculum influenced children's accuracy for specific graphemes. The development of phonological spelling plays appears to play a facilitatory role in early literacy acquisition. Implications for the assessment and teaching of spelling in the first year of schooling are explored.
This study examined the validity of data collected from a novel online story retell task. The task was specifically designed for use by junior school teachers with the support of speech–language therapists or literacy specialists. The assessment task was developed to monitor children's oral language progress in their first year at school as part of the Better Start Literacy Approach for early literacy teaching. Teachers administered the task to 303 5-year-olds in New Zealand at school entry and after 20 weeks and 12 months of schooling. The children listened to a story with pictures via iPad presentation and were then prompted to retell the story. The children's spontaneous language used in their story retell was captured and uploaded digitally via iPad audio recording and analyzed using semi-automated speech recognition and computer software. Their responses to factual and inferential story comprehension questions were also analyzed. The data suggested that the task has good criterion validity. Significant correlations between story retell measures and a standardized measure of children's oral language were found. The Better Start Literacy Approach story retell task, which took approximately 6 min for teachers to administer, accurately identified children with low oral language ability 81% of the time. Growth curve analysis revealed that the task was useful for monitoring oral language development, including for English as second language learners. Boys showed a slower story comprehension growth trajectory than girls. The Better Start Literacy Approach story retell task shows promise in providing valid data to support teacher judgement of children's oral language development.
The Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA) is a strengths-based approach to supporting children’s literacy learning in their first year of school. Previous research has shown the approach is effective at accelerating foundational literacy knowledge in children with lower levels of oral language. This study examined the impact of the BSLA for children with varied language profiles and across schools from diverse socioeconomic communities. Additionally, a controlled analysis of the impact of Tier 2 teaching within a response to teaching framework was undertaken. Participants included 402 five-year-old children from 14 schools in New Zealand. A randomised delayed treatment design was utilised to establish the effect of Tier 1 teaching. Analyses showed a significant Tier 1 intervention effect for phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, non-word reading and non-word spelling. There was no difference in intervention effects across socioeconomic groupings. Children were identified for Tier 2 teaching after 10 weeks of Tier 1 implementation. The progress of 98 children in response to Tier 2 teaching was compared to 26 children who met Tier 2 criteria but received only Tier 1 teaching within this study. Children in the Tier 2 group scored significantly higher on phonological awareness, non-word reading, and spelling than the control group at the post-Tier 2 assessment point, after controlling for pre-Tier 2 scores. The results suggest that a proactive strengths-based approach to supporting foundational literacy learning in children’s first year of school benefits all learners. The findings have important implications for early provision of literacy learning support in order to reduce current inequities in literacy outcomes.
This study investigated the response to class-wide phonological awareness and oral language teaching for 40 children who entered school with speech and language difficulties. A stepped wedge research design was adopted to compare the immediate impact of the 10-week teacher-led instruction. The progress of the children with speech and language difficulties was monitored over the first school year and compared with 110 children with language difficulties alone and 95 children with typical development. Children with speech and language needs showed a strong intervention response in phoneme awareness and vocabulary learning but needed more support to transfer skills to word decoding and spelling. Implementing the approach earlier in the school year resulted in stronger literacy performance at the year-end for all three groups. The importance of positive speech–language pathologist and teacher collaborations to support a systematic approach to evidence-based foundational literacy teaching is discussed.
This study investigated the feasibility of a teacher implemented intervention to accelerate phonological awareness, letter, and vocabulary knowledge in 141 children (mean age 5 years, 4 months) who entered school with lower levels of oral language ability. The children attended schools in low socioeconomic communities where additional stress was still evident 6 years after the devastating earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2011. The teachers implemented the intervention at the class or large group level for 20 h (four 30-min sessions per week for 10 weeks). A stepped wedge research design was used to evaluate intervention effects. Children with lower oral language ability made significantly more progress in both their phonological awareness and targeted vocabulary knowledge when the teachers implemented the intervention compared to progress made when teachers implemented their usual literacy curriculum. Importantly, the intervention accelerated children’s ability to use improved phonological awareness skills when decoding novel words (treatment effect size d = 0.88). Boys responded to the intervention as well as girls and the skills of children who identified as Māori or Pacific Islands (45.5% of the cohort) improved in similar ways to children who identified as New Zealand European. The findings have important implications for designing successful teacher implemented interventions, within a multi-tier approach, to support children who enter school with known challenges for their literacy learning.
In this article an example of a culturally responsive approach to working with children with speech–language impairment is discussed. The approach is centered on the premise that early literacy success is critical to these children’s academic achievement and that multiple variables will contribute to children’s literacy development. The example is novel in that it integrates a science-based model, the Component Model of Reading, with indigenous writings related to indicators for academic success, namely the importance of cultural identity, resilience, a sense of place, bicultural education, and the importance of family. This framework is termed ‘A Braided Rivers Approach’ and is used in this article to discuss how speech–language therapists and teachers can advance children’s phonological awareness development in ways that maximize the benefits for their early reading and spelling development and that values and respects children’s cultural identity and background, particularly for children with speech–language impairment who are at risk of experiencing written language difficulties.
A controlled intervention study supported the efectiveness of teachers implementing an integrated intervention (Better Start Literacy Approach; BSLA) to accelerate foundational literacy skills for children in Year 1 with low levels of oral language ability in a community with signifcant challenges to efective teaching and learning (Gillon et al., 2019). As part of an implementation approach, the current study aimed to investigate whether teachers from less challenging contexts can successfully implement the Better Start Literacy Approach with reduced support from researchers. Two schools with a total of 93 Year 0/1 children participated in the teacher-led classroom literacy intervention, with 20% of sample classifed as linguistically diverse. A series of research questions explored the impact of the intervention on children’s foundational literacy skills. Repeated measures general linear models demonstrated a positive impact of the intervention for the research group compared to the control group. Further analysis demonstrated the intervention was equally effective for linguistically diverse learners. The fndings have important implications for better understanding the effectiveness of the BSLA in difering contexts and for linguistically diverse learners, further adding to the research for this literacy intervention.
Oral narrative abilities are an important measure of children's language competency and have predictive value for children's later academic performance. Research and development underway in New Zealand is advancing an innovative online oral narrative task. This task uses audio recordings of children's story retells, speech-to-text software and language analysis to record, transcribe, analyse and present oral narrative and listening comprehension data back to class teachers. The task has been designed for class teachers' use with the support of SLP or literacy specialists in data interpretation. Teachers are upskilled and supported in order to interpret these data and implement teaching practices for students through online professional learning and development modules, within the context of a broader evidence-based approach to early literacy instruction. This article describes the development of this innovative, culturally relevant, online tool for monitoring children's oral narrative ability and listening comprehension in their first year of school. Three phases of development are outlined, showing the progression of the tool from a researcher-administered task during controlled research trials, to wide-scale implementation with thousands of students throughout New Zealand. The current iteration of the tool uses an automatic speech-recognition system with specifically trained transcription models and support from research assistants to check transcription, then code and analyse the oral narrative. This reduces transcription and analysis time to ~7 min, with a word error rate of around 20%. Future development plans to increase the accuracy of automatic transcription and embed basic language analysis into the tool, with the aim of removing the need for support from research assistants.
Some recent reports from our research team
Early Literacy Initiative: Ready to Read Phonics Plus Project
arrow, gillon, mcneill & scott (2021)
In 2020 and 2021, the BSLA team developed a series of early readers for the Ministry of Education. This report describes the development of a reading series that is based on contemporary research on how children learn to read. The reading series referred to as Ready to Read Phonics Plus provides 64 texts designed to support the implementation of a phonic scope and sequence as the basis for teaching children to learn to read. However, the texts aim to do more than develop children’s ability to use phonic knowledge to decode words. As the name Phonics Plus suggests, the series enables children to also build the vocabulary and oral language skills necessary for ongoing success in oral language and reading comprehension. View the full report here.
Better Start Literacy Approach: National Implementation ImpactLab Good Measure Report
This report presents an independent evaluation of the measurable good of the Better Start Literacy Approach to New Zealand society. Its analysis found that every year, Better Start Literacy Approach delivers $31,986,869 of measurable good to society in New Zealand. View the full report here.
Journal of the royal society of New Zealand - A better start national science challenge: supporting the future wellbeing of our tamariki
The majority of children and young people in Aotearoa NewZealand (NZ) experience good health and wellbeing, but there are key areas where they compare unfavourably to those in other rich countries. However, current measures of wellbeing are critically limited in their suitability to reflect the dynamic, culture-bound, and subjective nature of the concept of ‘wellbeing’. In particular, there is a lack of measurement in primary school-aged children and in ways that incorporate Māori perspectives on wellbeing. A Better Start National Science Challenge work in the areas of Big Data, Healthy Weight, Resilient Teens, and Successful learning demonstrates how research is increasing our understanding of, and our ability to enhance, wellbeing for NZ children. As we look ahead to the future, opportunities to support the wellbeing of NZ young people will be shaped by how we embrace and mitigate against potential harms of new technologies, and our ability to respond to new challenges that arise due to climate change. In order to avoid increasing inequity in who experiences wellbeing in NZ, wellbeing must be monitored in ways that are culturally acceptable, universal, and recognise what makes children flourish. View the full article here.
Taumutu Pūrākau (Gillon, Brown & Scott, 2018)
The books are the result of a collaboration between the University of Canterbury Child Well-being Research Institute and Te Taumutu Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu. The books depict three different pūrākau (myths) that are significant to Taumutu, including; ‘Ruru and the Giant Pouākai’, ‘The Creation of Tuna’, and ‘Taniwha and the Rakaia Gorge’.
See here for more information.
Input that has guided the Better Start Literacy Approach
Research evidence:
In addition to the extensive body of relevant international research, evidence from six significant programmes of research undertaken in New Zealand has informed the basis for the Better Start Literacy Approach. These research programmes include:
The Better Start National Science Challenge, E Tipu E Rea 10 year programme of research (2015-2024 funded through Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment). Findings emerging from the Successful Early Learning Theme within this challenge include those related to a pilot study for the Better Start Literacy Approach. This pilot involved 22 New Entrant and Year 1 classes in schools in low socio-economic areas in Christchurch. This controlled study involved 243 children aged 5 years who were born in the post 2011 Christchurch earthquake period. The published work (Gillon et al., 2019) focusing on 141 children from the pilot cohort who entered school with low oral language) highlights the benefits of the approach in accelerating literacy learning over and above current classroom practice. Importantly, the research showed the approach was equally effective for boys and girls and equally effective for Māori and Pasifika tamariki, who made up 45.5% of the cohort followed. This work is being extended through the current Ministry of Education Foundational Learning Contract and research in the second phase of the Better Start National Science Challenge.
The Early Literacy Research Project led by Associate Professor Alison Arrow, and Professor James Chapman, with colleagues. The research specifically examined how teachers could best integrate phonics instruction into small group reading instruction. This project highlighted the importance of quality and evidence based professional learning and development (that included coaching and mentoring) for Year 1 class teachers and the importance of explicit instructional pedagogies in advancing children’s early literacy skills. Importantly, findings highlighted that students from low-decile schools where teachers had participated in the research had significantly better reading and spelling outcomes than those in the comparison low-decile schools. Most importantly, the low-decile intervention group had the same reading and spelling outcomes that the middle and high-decile school participants achieved. Prof Arrow’s work included the development of a systematic scope and sequence to guide phonics teaching within group reading.
Professors Angus and Sonja Macfarlane and their colleagues’ important body of research highlighting the value of culturally responsive, inclusive and strengths based models of practice to raising achievement for Māori tamariki and their whānau. Their explorations serve to offer an alternative to the deficit discourse often associated with Māori learning and education, and instead, highlight narratives of success. Many of their findings show that literacy success for tamariki, which is fostered by whānau, is to be expected, and needs to be supported by culturally-responsive class literacy interventions.
Better Start National Science Challenge data analyses relating to successful outcomes for Pasifika children’s learning through the Pacific Islands Families Study. For example, Kim et al. (2019) demonstrated the importance of connecting home and school culture for Pasifika learners which has informed the development of our whānau workshops within the Better Start Literacy Approach.
A series of phonological awareness intervention trials conducted in New Zealand preschools and junior school classrooms over the last 20 years (see Gillon, 2017). This work, led by Professor Gail Gillon, Associate Professor Brigid McNeill, their colleagues and doctoral students has highlighted the critical importance of enhancing phonological awareness in children with speech and language difficulties, children with childhood apraxia of speech, children with dyslexia, children who use alternative communication systems and children with cognitive impairments such as children with Down syndrome.
Investigations to determine effective methods for assessing and enhancing children’s vocabulary learning and oral narrative ability as well as research investigating phonological processing skill development in children with dyslexia. Influenced by work of international advisors to the UC Research Team, Professor Laura Justice, Professor Ilsa Schwarz as well as work from Associate Professor Marleen Westerveld, Professor John Everatt, Professor Gail Gillon and Dr Karyn Carson, pilot work has investigated novel online assessment measures to reliably monitor children’s vocabulary, oral narrative, word reading and phonological awareness ability and to help identify children at higher risk for persistent reading problems such as dyslexia.