Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science / Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement, Vol 58(4), Oct 2026, 287-296; doi:10.1037/cbs0000471
The purpose of this study was to examine whether school closures due to COVID-19 influenced First Nations, Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) students’ word reading growth more than their non-FNMI peers. Four groups of English-speaking Grades 2–4 children from Alberta, Canada, participated in this study and were assessed four times on the Test of Word Reading Efficiency-2 (Torgesen et al., 2012), real and pseudoword reading, and the Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency-2 (Mather et al., 2014). Results showed that compared to the pre-COVID-19 FNMI comparison group, FNMI students’ word reading performance was lower after COVID-19, but this influence was not different from non-FNMI students who showed a similar decline in their scores after the pandemic. Second, similar to non-FNMI students, FNMI students showed accelerated growth in their word reading when the schools reopened in September 2020. Taken together, these findings show that FNMI students persistently perform poorer than non-FNMI students on word reading, but the impact of COVID-19 on students’ reading performance was similar across the groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)