Talking With the Book, Not Just at Children: A Cluster-Randomized Trial of Dialogic Reading in Luganda Primary 1 Classrooms
Abstract
Abstract Dialogic reading is an interactive technique where an adult and a child have a conversation about a book, rather than the adult simply reading the text to a passive listener. The fundamental shift is that the child becomes the storyteller, and the adult acts as an active listener and questioner who scaffolds the child's language development. This study examined whether dialogic reading, delivered through familiar Luganda Primary 1 materials used in Ugandan classrooms, could improve vocabulary and listening comprehension more than standard “chalk and talk” literacy teaching. The trial was designed as a cluster-randomized study because the intervention changed whole-class teacher practice rather than individual children’s tasks. Twenty Luganda-medium Primary 1 classrooms in central Uganda were randomly assigned to either a 10-week dialogic reading condition or a comparison condition that continued usual instruction. In the intervention arm, teachers used short, structured prompts embedded in the “I do, We do, You do” sequence drawn from the national teacher guide and adapted for shared reading, picture talk, oral literature, and brief retell routines. Outcomes were Luganda vocabulary and listening comprehension, with fidelity tracked through classroom observations. Results showed that children in the dialogic reading group outperformed peers in the comparison group on vocabulary with a moderate effect and on listening comprehension with a smaller but still meaningful…
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a randomized trial, done in people. Its evidence level is 2 of 5 (High · randomized trial). Randomized trials of a reasonable size are the strongest single-study design.
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