Syntes: Lee et al. (2026) — a large 2026 trial where a home-language-plus-English reading programme lifted English reading, most when teacher and pupil shared a language

Källa: Lee, J., Moussa, W. & Zuilkowski, S. S. (2026). Language Discordance and its Moderating Effects on Early-Grade Bilingual Reading Intervention Outcomes in Ghana. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, online 18 June 2026, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2026.2686686

Verified content

• [abstract] Randomised trial, 3,559 pupils in grades 2–3, 198 schools; materials, teacher guides, training and coaching.
• [abstract] Effects 0.09–0.43 SD in Ghanaian languages and 0.12–0.37 SD in English, across letter sounds, decoding, fluency and comprehension.
• [abstract] Effects were 0.17–0.42 SD larger when pupil and teacher shared a first language.

Limits

• [assessment] Abstract only. The comparison is a whole programme vs business as usual, not home-language teaching vs majority-language-only teaching, so it does not test C34 directly. English is the official school language, not the home majority language, so the setting differs from Europe or the US.

Why it is in the library

Large, recent, randomised and outside the US/Europe base of C34; adds that whether the teacher actually shares the pupil's language changes the result.

Added 2026-11-01 by the project (weekly source sweep, kind: new; read: abstract). [abstract] = from the published abstract; [full text] = read in the full text; [assessment] = the project's own assessment.