Research into practice

MULTILIT was coined as an acronym for ‘Making Up Lost Time In Literacy’ in 1995 to refer to the ongoing program of research and development into more effective instruction for low-progress readers conducted by Professor Kevin Wheldall and his colleagues at Macquarie University Special Education Centre. The MULTILIT Research Unit has been established to provide a focus for systematic scientific inquiry into how best to meet the instructional needs of students who are struggling to acquire basic reading and related skills, for whatever reason.

One of the products of this enterprise has been the development of the MULTILIT Reading Tutor Program. More recently, the focus has turned to the development of small group versions of the program for both younger and older low-progress readers.

But MULTILIT is more than just the name of a literacy program for low-progress readers. It is an educational approach that has as its core belief the conviction that effective instruction is the key to growth in any area of the curriculum. In this sense, MULTILIT is more accurately conceptualised as an approach, or a determination, to bring about rapid learning for low-progress students by whatever means scientific research has shown to be most effective. Consequently, it is a continually evolving approach to literacy instruction, changing as more scientific evidence becomes available from either within the MULTILIT research team per se or, more generally, from the international scientific reading research community.

MULTILIT is then a data driven approach to education, employing programs of proven efficacy and continually collecting data on the effectiveness of the programs deployed. By engaging with parents, teachers, schools, and government, our aim is to bring about major educational change so that far fewer children are left to struggle in school with inadequate reading and related skills, the skills essential for academic success in all areas.

As well as training parents and teachers to work with low-progress readers, we are also working on community projects in partnership with community organisations and government to bring about fundamental change in the educational prospects of low-progress readers, particularly those from socially disadvantaged and indigenous backgrounds.