• Download the PDF version

Interview with Dr. Philip C. Abrami

Professor at Concordia University’s Department of Education and Director of the CSLP

According to the most recent studies by Statistics Canada and the Organisation for Economic wordle.net Co-operation and Development (OECD), 25% of 15- and 16-year-old Canadians lack the reading skills to fully understand the meaning of a written message. The ability to read and write is the best indicator of academic success, and the drop-out rate of secondary school students is strongly correlated with deficient literacy.

This is why Philip C. Abrami, researcher and director of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP) at Concordia University, and his team created ABRACADABRA, an online reading and writing tool for English kindergarten and Grade 1 students and Grade 2 students who have difficulty learning to read and write.

We interviewed Dr. Abrami about ABRACADABRA.

• What lies ahead for a child who hasn’t learned to read and write properly?
• Does this affect the economic health of societies?
• How did your team become interested in literacy in elementary school students?
• So that’s how you started an exhaustive search of the literature on how reading and writing are learned. What did you find in the hundreds of studies you looked at?
• Is this where ABRACADABRA comes in?
• Do teachers get any help with learning how to use the software?  
• Can parents help their children with ABRACADABRA?
• If you count the latest version of the software, the 2009 version, it’s been eight years that the tool has been available. Are the results what you’d hoped for?
• How can we make the most of ABRACADABRA in the classroom?
• How often should it be used in class?
• ABRACADABRA evolves every year, so what’s up next?
• What happens after the French version is available?
• Could your product be changed so that other types of students could use it?

What lies ahead for a child who hasn’t learned to read and write properly?

The consequences of poor literacy skills are wide-ranging and deep. When you consider that problems with reading and writing are a major cause of dropping out and, as a result, a low level of education, then you’re also looking at economic and social repercussions. The annual salary of under-educated workers is several thousands of dollars below the average, which means hundreds of thousands over a lifetime. There’s a strong link between illiteracy rates and delinquency, failure in the workplace, and reliance on social assistance.

Does this affect the economic health of societies?

Absolutely. A Statistics Canada report that came out a few years ago showed that if we could increase Canada’s literacy rate by a mere 1%, the gains for the economy in terms of human capital would be $18.4 billion a year. A society’s literacy rate is the strongest indicator of its economic vigour.

How did your team become interested in literacy in elementary school students?

One of our mandates is to find ways of getting the most out of new technologies in an academic environment. We always felt that if we were going to work to introduce new information technologies in the classroom, we may as well do it for something important that would really benefit students. So given what we know about illiteracy, we were quick to decide that, because it was a fundamental issue, not only for students, but for society as a whole, it should be our focus.

So that’s how you started an exhaustive search of the literature on how reading and writing are learned. What did you find in the hundreds of studies you looked at?

First, we found that you have to act very early in the learning process. As soon as students start to struggle, we have to rush in and help. Their chances of success are much better then than if we wait a few years. Students who don’t have a firm grasp of reading and writing after Grade 3 are really at risk for academic failure.

Next was the research that shows that sound reading and writing hinges on four basic skills: alphabetics and phonics, in other words, learning graphemes and phonemes; fluency and automaticity, which make it possible to read with rhythm and expression; reading comprehension; and, lastly, writing (word spelling and sentence building).

Is this where ABRACADABRA comes in?

Yes. In 2000, we launched a software prototype that we’ve tweaked every year since. The centrepiece—the instructional module—gives students structured help in all four skills through online activities that feature friendly characters, animations and 32 stories that the student and the teacher choose from based on story type and the level of difficulty that applies.

ABRACADABRA makes learning easier for students and because the software is fun to use and there’s a variety of activities to choose from, they’re more motivated to learn. When they use the software in conjunction with ePEARL, an electronic portfolio tool of ours, they can track the progress they’re making in all four areas, and this can be a great motivator too. We haven’t assessed motivation per se, but we know that students love learning with ABRACADABRA and have to be peeled away from it.

Do teachers get any help with learning how to use the software?

Of course. ABRACADABRA is a learning tool and a teaching tool. Elementary school teachers have a lot of ground to cover and they can’t be experts in everything. But the three modules designed for them help them to use the tool, improve the way they teach reading and writing, and monitor student progress. They can also exchange ideas and knowledge with other teachers in a secure environment. With ABRACADABRA, they increase their expertise.

For teachers who want to develop even more proficiency in ABRACADABRA so that they feel that they’ve really mastered it, we can provide a full day of training.

Can parents help their children with ABRACADABRA?

One of the software’s five modules is specifically for parents. It gives them tips and activities to make them better at guiding their child throughout the learning process.

If you count the latest version of the software, the 2009 version, it’s been eight years that the tool has been available. Are the results what you’d hoped for?

More and more studies from across Canada are saying that students who use ABRACADABRA perform better than those who don’t. The best results so far concern the first two skills—alphabetics and fluency—and comprehension is starting to catch up.

 

How can we make the most of ABRACADABRA in the classroom?

Because the instructional activities can be chosen for each student individually, the first step is to determine what reading and writing level the child is at. Normally, children have spent many hours engaged in activities that involve written material even before they start school. But there are exceptions to the rule. In some cases, pre-literacy activities may be necessary, and ABRACADABRA can do that. The software can now enable the level of individual children and of an entire class to be evaluated.

The tool’s great versatility means an array of possibilities. ABRACADABRA can be coupled with a number of other learning strategies and teachers can use it effectively in all kinds of ways as a matter of course in their regular teaching.

 

How often should it be used in class?

The Teacher’s Manual recommends at least 2 hours a week. It can be more if possible, but we’re aware of how difficult it can be to get a hold of a computer in school.

 

ABRACADABRA evolves every year, so what’s up next?

Our most pressing project is to adapt ABRACADABRA for use in French. We’ve working with a UQAM researcher and, depending on funding, a partial version should be ready by 2010 and a full version sometime around 2012. ABRACADABRA is available free of charge to schools, so we have to find people and organizations willing to make a contribution either financially or in kind, which speeds up the development and testing process.

 

What happens after the French version is available?

We’d like to concentrate on links between ABRACADABRA and the other Web tools we’ve created at CSLP, with a view to having a full package to the education communities that are interested. We also want to improve the training we provide and the support material we offer, including to parents who would like to help their child with ABRACADABRA.

 

Could your product be changed so that other types of students could use it?

Some day we could extend the scope of the tool beyond Grade Two by concentrating on more complex reading skills, for example, for adult learners. And we want the tool to be equally effective for mother tongue and second language use. We want to work with specialists to see whether ABRACADABRA benefits students with special needs, for example, dyslexic or autistic students.

And, most important of all, now that we know that ABRACADABRA works, we want to distribute it as widely as possible with the CTREQ’s help. So far, all English school boards and a few French ones have installed the software on their servers. In all, 200 organizations, from schools to governments and all the way to Australia, have ABRACADABRA. The sky’s the limit!