Matthew’s Effect & Schema Theory

Teaching reading to students is a complex and often paradoxical venture.

As an adult it is difficult to remember one’s own personal struggle with learning to read and even more difficult to relate to the struggling beginning reader. Teaching in a special education classroom adds additional challenges, when the typical structure cannot be clearly defined and the rolls of both the teacher and student have an ever changing nature. These factors make teaching reading a challenging activity for even the best paring of teacher and student.Now consider applying both how the Matthew’s Effect influences one reading success and the role that one’s own schema can either work for or against a struggling readers chances of success. The "Matthew Effect" refers to a pattern of increasing advantage or disadvantage following an initial advantage or disadvantage.

Stanovich, who coined the term, and developed the theory as it relates to developing reading comprehension, explains the theory as the notion that over time, better readers get even better, and poorer readers become relatively poorer.For example, children who come from poor economic neighborhood are often not given the opportunity to become exposed to the necessary amount of material at the primary school education level then would their same academic peers in a more affluent neighborhood where their parents were able to afford both the time and the finical means to have allow for adequate and even extra reading enrichment opportunities. This is especially critical for children with special needs.Many of the children whose families are located in low economic area often struggle in school for many years without a proper diagnosis and access to the educational assistance that would allow them to excel academically. This allows for the children to develop a negative attitude regarding reading and adapt avoidance skill toward the task of reading. For students with negative attitudes towards and a lack of practice over time, allows the "poor to get poorer" because of this increasing avoidance of reading practice.

As of 1997 with the mandate of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) each student now must have access and opportunity to be included with in the mainstream curriculum (OSER)This means that often time’s students are present with material that is beyond their understanding and teachers are teaching material which they understand to not fit with where their students may be academically.Often times this sets the students up for academic failure and the teacher at a loss for providing adequate assistance to them. Having learning or developmental disabilities and their accompanied cognitive disadvantages often cause children to fall behind at the beginning of their learning process his can be as early as the primary school level. Leading to the frustration and avoidance explained as part of the Matthew’s effect.

From primary school many of these children have developed a negative perspective on learning and often on reading in particular widening an already huge gap in academic progression. Educators also play large role in the success rate of children with Learning Disabilities. (Morgan187) Educators often set lower standards for the learning disabled learner supplying reduced quantity of educational material or quality of teaching time and effort. This helps to aid in the beginning of the divide between those who achieve academically and those who fail to thrive.In the classroom the disadvantage that these children have both from the process of education and from the disabilities themselves lead to a widening gap; where the children’s initial frustration leads them to a future where the desire to want to learn to read and their desire to read directly impacts their ability to learn the necessary skills to become proficient readers. Applying schema theory to classrooms and in particular to special education class rooms can be as challenging a process understanding the role of the Matthew’s effect in ones classroom.

Many students with learning disabilities use the schema theory of learning without even realizing the process occurring. For many people it is easier to build new knowledge and understanding of material when there is an existing base of understanding from which to draw. “Schema theory is a theory about knowledge, about how knowledge is represented, and about how that representation facilitates the use of knowledge in various ways. ” (McVee550) In order for a reader to develop a connection between themselves and what they are reading on must activate schemata to be able to fully understand the relevance of the material.When schema is not able to be to be recalled and related to the material at hand the end result is poor comprehension and limited connection between the writers meaning and the readers understand of the material. For full understanding of the reading material a mutual schema must exist between the writer and reader for ones schema to be effectively accessed.

This is an occurrence that can often be seen in many special education classrooms. Many of these students lack the understanding of the world around them to develop a wide enough schemata of their own world and knowledge to them apply it to new material.For example consider the way one goes about understanding humor with in a given passage. As a proficient reader it may be difficult to understand the exact meaning a writer has as to what make material humorous to them and in essence what they hope for you the reader concludes as funny. If you are from a different culture, race, religion or age group from the writer it may be difficult for you to draw on similar schema as the write to draw the eventual conclusion that the writer is searching for.

Now consider if you were teaching a child with Autism this child my struggle with the understanding of emotions and their uses in general human interaction. So to ask those children to apply their schema for humor to the material they are reading can be a daunting task. When learners are reading at their limits, when the material is either linguistically above or when their schema is below what is required for comprehension of the material the learner will often overcompensate for this deficiency by reading more slowly, or by guessing the definition and meaning of a passage.As the educator your job should be to work with the students to fill the gaps between their understanding levels of basic phonology but also to assist the learner in filling in the gaps of their schema that inhibits them from full comprehension of the material. For the special education student it is even more important to assist them in closing the gap between themselves and their peers as much as possible.

One way this can be done is to figure out how a particular child learns and given them tools that would make them aware that a schema already exists for a parallel concept.If a student is struggling to comprehend a book about how and why weather occurs you begin to help them develop a schema of weather in general. This can be done with the use of a daily weather chart having them decide from set choices what the weather is like that day sunny, rainy, cloudy etc. After a while the schema that weather exists that it is ever changing, and that simple correlations can be made cloudy days bring rain for example can be applied to the book on weather for a better developed comprehension of the material.