A closer look at reading comprehension: Experimental evidence from Guatemala

In spite of the relatively high literacy rates around the world, reading comprehension outcomes remain weak. Reading comprehension is a key foundational skill to progress into higher educational levels, and to later on reap the economic and educational benefits of literacy. However, the current literature in developing countries has focused more on emergent literacy skills than on reading comprehension and the developmental processes through which it improves. This paper provides two key contributions to the literature on reading comprehension in developing countries. First, I provide suggestive experimental evidence that an intervention in public primary schools in Tecpán, Guatemala, which provides teacher training, coaching on the delivery of a new and evidence-based instructional approach, and high-quality reading materials, was effective at improving reading comprehension levels, although the effects were mostly concentrated among first graders. Secondly, I leverage the early literacy theory of the “Simple View of Reading”, to empirically test hypotheses about the developmental processes through which reading comprehension improved in this context. In all, these results have important implications for reading interventions in developing countries, as they highlight that reading comprehension is a multi-layered developmental process that requires special attention to each student’s gaps in the building blocks of literacy.