Development and Validation of the Systemic Assessment of Book Reading

The purpose of this project is to expand and validate the first standardized, observational assessment of the quality of shared book reading in early childhood classrooms, called the Systematic Assessment of Book Reading (SABR) 2.0. Earlier versions of the SABR were developed within previous studies funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. This earlier work demonstrated the predictive validity of the pre-kindergarten measure when used to predict language and literacy outcomes in kindergarten and first grade. This and decades of research on the importance of reading to young children make measure of the quality of interactive shared book reading a dimension of teacher-child interactions that is of great interest to researchers and practitioners. However, there are very few standardized tools available to describe young children’s reading experiences.

The SABR 2.0 will measure the quality of teacher and child behaviors during shared book-reading sessions. In this study, the tool will be revised for greater ease of use and accuracy by improving training materials and scoring protocols that will be disseminated at no cost via the Internet. In addition, a short version will be iteratively designed for use by practitioners (e.g., coaches and other education professionals), and for use to support professional development. Participating teachers and school leaders in the validation study will be invited to attend a training on improving the quality of shared book reading.

CLI Faculty:

Tricia Zucker, Ph.D.

Principal Investigator:

Jill Pentimonti, PhD, American Institutes for Research

Co-Investigator:

Tricia Zucker, Ph.D., Ryan Bowles, PhD, Michigan State University, Mileidis Gort, PhD, Ohio State University, Laura Justice, PhD, Ohio State University, Sherine Tambyraja, PhD, Ohio State University

Participating Sites:

Ohio State University and University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston