Well-developed phonological awareness skills are a core prerequisite for early literacy development. Although effective phonological awareness training programs exist, children at risk often do not reach similar levels of phonological awareness after the intervention as children with normally developed skills. Based on theoretical considerations and first promising results the present study explores effects of an early musical training in combination with a conventional phonological training in children with weak phonological awareness skills. Using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design and measurements across a period of 2 years, we tested the effects of two interventions: a consecutive combination of a musical and a phonological training and a phonological training alone. The design made it possible to disentangle effects of the musical training alone as well the effects of its combination with the phonological training. The outcome measures of these groups were compared with the control group with multivariate analyses, controlling for a number of background variables. The sample included N = 424 German-speaking children aged 4–5 years at the beginning of the study. We found a positive relationship between musical abilities and phonological awareness. Yet, whereas the well-established phonological training produced the expected effects, adding a musical training did not contribute significantly to phonological awareness development. Training effects were partly dependent on the initial level of phonological awareness. Possible reasons for the lack of training effects in the musical part of the combination condition as well as practical implications for early literacy education are discussed.
Strategisches Lernen
(2000)
To plan cluster-randomized trials with sufficient statistical power to detect intervention effects on student achievement, researchers need multilevel design parameters, including measures of between-classroom and between-school differences and the amounts of variance explained by covariates at the student, classroom, and school level. Previous research has mostly been conducted in the United States, focused on two-level designs, and limited to core achievement domains (i.e., mathematics, science, reading). Using representative data of students attending grades 1-12 from three German longitudinal large-scale assessments (3,963 <= N <= 14,640), we used three- and two-level latent (covariate) models to provide design parameters and corresponding standard errors for a broad array of domain-specific (e.g., mathematics, science, verbal skills) and domain-general (e.g., basic cognitive functions) achievement outcomes. Three covariate sets were applied comprising (a) pretest scores, (b) sociodemographic characteristics, and (c) their combination. Design parameters varied considerably as a function of the hierarchical level, achievement outcome, and grade level. Our findings demonstrate the need to strive for an optimal fit between design parameters and target research context. We illustrate the application of design parameters in power analyses.