Evaluation Plan: Dyslexia Research
Dyslexia is an inability to resolve symbols and signs into words, which results in the incapacity of retrieving the meaning of the written speech (Livingstone, 2004). Meanwhile, a vast amount of vital activities in the modern society are connected with reading. Therefore, dyslexia may be concluded to be an insuperable challenge in socialization and day-to-day activity for any person. The significance of the problem is proved by British Dyslexic Association reports, which claims that one of ten children is exposed to the shortcoming of dyslexia ("At last… help for dyslexia", 2009), giving this problem the national urgency.
The previous applied research paper tried to address this challenge by implementing Davis Learning Strategy method (DLS) into the educational process (Daffin, 2012). The one-month experiment with 1st-grade students proved the efficacy of this method dyslexia (Daffin, 2012), so DLS have been concluded to be a forcible tool against dyslexia. This paper designs an evaluation plan for the applied research outcomes and discusses possible implementation issues.
Evaluation Concerns and Stakeholders
Undoubtedly, children with dyslexia are the main stakeholders of the problem, but teachers are also crucial for the solution outcome. Even though they are supposed to be main implementations of DLS, the previous research mentions teachers often fail to approach dyslexia correctly (Pollock & Waller, 1994). Moreover, the solution implies a modification of the curriculum, which may provoke the backlash of parents despite their common indifference to curriculum policies (Vincent, 2014, p. 97). That makes to emerge the additional stakeholder in the researched problem. Also, the age range of children with dyslexia extends beyond the 1st grade of school surveyed in the previous research (Kraft et al., 2015; Landerl et al., 2012). All these concerns should be taken into account in the evaluation as any of stakeholders mentioned above have a formidable impact on the researched issue.
Evaluation Data
As far it was made in the applied research, the data samples should be represented by the average reading comprehension score of two groups (Daffin, 2012). The data sample should be taken before the implementation of the method, and at the end of the academic period. Such comparison method is known to be effective in the research activities which concern disabilities (Koenig, Buckley-Reen, & Garg, 2012). The project executives should implement the DLS only in the one group of students, while the second control group should continue studying without any curriculum changes. According to Klaus Hinkelmann and Oscar Kempthorne, the additional group which is not objected to the experiment will prevent the chance variation of the data crucial for evaluation (2014). The project outcome will be defined successful if the solution-implemented group score will be higher than at the beginning of the implementation, and higher that the scores of the second neutral group throughout the project.
Additional Research
The parents are known to resist the initiatives of teachers and the rest of school administration (Vincent, 2014), so their influence on the solution outcomes is doubtless. The study of Gary Bowen, Laura Hopson, Roderick Rose …
