Issue 29: Unlocking Reading Potential: Dual Factor Reading | Dr Olwyn Johnston

Dual Factor Reading

Dual Factor Reading is Dr Johnston’s original contribution to knowledge and is grounded in the Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tunmer, 1986), which identifies reading comprehension as the product of two essential components: decoding and language comprehension. It emerged from years of classroom teaching. When Olwyn began reading a new novel to her classes, she noticed that the next day, a child, usually a competent reader, would arrive with the book, either purchased or borrowed from the local library. As she read to the class, the student would be following along in their copy. This aligns with Stanovich’s (1986) Matthew Effects, in which the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

Dual Factor Reading emerged from Study Two of Dr Johnston’s doctoral thesis, Older Struggling Readers in NZ Primary Schools: Using Science and Technology to Close the Gaps. The research investigated how older struggling readers could be supported to accelerate their literacy progress through the combined use of structured word-level instruction and technology-supported teacher read-alouds. In effect, every student had a copy of the text available to them and was explicitly taught the skills necessary to unlock the words on the page or screen.

Research Design and Findings

The study involved three groups of students:

Control Group:

Students continued with business-as-usual literacy instruction, typically aligned with whole language or balanced literacy approaches. On a standardised measure of reading comprehension, these students made only one-third of the progress of their typically achieving peers. The findings highlighted that continuing with existing practices was unlikely to reduce literacy gaps.

Word-Level Group:

Students received explicit, structured decoding instruction aligned with the Science of Reading. While this group made stronger progress than the control group, their gains were still only around half those of their typically achieving peers. The results confirmed that word-level instruction is essential, but not sufficient on its own, to rapidly close reading achievement gaps.

Word-Plus-Screen Group (Dual Factor Reading):

Students received both structured word-level instruction and a teacher read-aloud projected onto a large screen. Students were required to actively track the text as the teacher read. This group made one and a half times the progress of their typically achieving peers on the same comprehension measure, demonstrating accelerated rather than remedial growth. Accelerated gains were also observed across other components of reading.

Concerned about sample size, the study was replicated the following year with a larger cohort. The results were consistent and generalisable, strengthening the evidence base for Dual Factor Reading.