Eric.ed.gov – Enhancing Basic Academic Skills with Audio-Recordings: A Review of the Literature

Because teacher-to-student ratios often make it difficult for teachers to work individually with students on skill-building activities, educators and researchers have developed and evaluated procedures in which audio-recordings are used to improve basic academic skills. In the current paper, we describe and analyze reading, math, and spelling interventions that use audio-recordings to prompt and pace rapid rates of accurate responding. In this review, we provide evidence of internal and external validity of easy-to-use, low-tech, recorded interventions across students (general education students and students with disabilities) and contexts (e.g., individually administered and class-wide). Discussion focuses on future theoretical research related to causal mechanisms and applied research on modifying recorded interventions to enhance learning rates.