Throughout the years more than a dozen studies have been performed to explore the impacts of ABRA on various facets of children's reading skills. Some of these are modest studies while others are ambitious large-scale and longitudinal investigations complete with random assignment of classes to experimental and control conditions.

The following table summarizes the findings of these studies, either quasi-experiments or true experiments.



The positive effects of ABRA hold for all types of reading skills and measures even under stringent conditions of experimentation compared to other forms of reading instruction. Furthermore, the effects of ABRA are not trivial in size; ABRA produced noticeable gains in learning compared to traditional means of reading instruction.

The results of the two large experiments, one in Canada and one in Australia are being reviewed for publication. Among other things, they explore length and quality of student exposure to ABRA where high quality implementations may well reveal even larger effects of using ABRA than those reported here.

The CSLP has received funding for the period 2009-2012 to undertake a multi-year, quasi-experimental study with the purpose to investigate whether the combined use of ABRA and ePEARL (level 1) would have a positive impact on the comprehension and self-regulation learning behaviours of cycle one students. Over seven hundred students from forty grade one and grade two experimental and control classrooms from seven English school boards in Quebec participated in 2010-2011. The data collected is currently being analyzed. The summary of the results will be available on this site sometime in the fall of 2011.

In 2011-2012, the evaluation of the combined use of ABRA and ePEARL on the reading performance of cycle one students will continue with high implementing teachers. To approximate the classroom reality, English Language Arts and RECIT school boards consultants will continue playing the primary role in supporting teachers in their use of both tools. The CSLP will continue helping consultants to meet the needs of their teachers, by preparing and distributing printable and multi-media support materials that align the use of the tools with the normative documents including Quebec Education Program.