An Overview of 25 Years of Research and Development: The Reading Apprenticeship Framework and Professional Learning Model

• In Event: Reading Apprenticeship: Lessons From Impact Studies Over Time and Across Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
This first presentation deviates from the prescribed format in order to provide a foundation for the subsequent presentations and discussion in the symposium.

The purpose of Presentation 1 is to provide:
a) an overview of the intervention’s framework and design principles;
b) a description of what the intervention looks like for teachers and students, in its varied modalities and dosages (from 10 days in discipline specific groups, to online and hybrid cross-disciplinary groups)
c) highlights from rigorous studies which provided the foundation for the research presented in the other symposium papers.

Theoretical Base: A long history of research in reading has demonstrated that reading comprehension strategies are not often taught in content area classes, even when teachers are trained to use these strategies during content area teaching (Alvermann & Moore, 1991; Duffy et al., 1986; Duke, 2000; Durkin, 1984; Fielding & Pearson, 1994; Richardson, 1994; Snow, 2002). Therefore, to assure that literacy instruction becomes tightly integrated into content-area teaching, professional development must demonstrate features of high quality learning for teachers that are known to be effective in producing changes in classroom instruction (Strickland & Kamil, 2004). These include a focus on instruction, opportunities for continued reflection on practice, analysis of student work on valued tasks, sustained learning opportunities for teachers, and frequent opportunities to approach pedagogical and conceptual tasks from the point of view of learners (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Little, 2001; Guskey & Huberman, 1996).

The Framework: In Reading Apprenticeship classrooms and professional learning, the social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge-building dimensions of classroom life are woven into subject area teaching over time through increased reading opportunities and collaborative, metacognitive routines (Appendix B; Alvermann, 2002; Greenleaf et al., 2001; Meltzer, et al.,2001; Schoenbach, et al., 1999). Reading Apprenticeship draws both on what teachers know and do as readers in particular academic domains, and on adolescents’ strategic abilities as learners. Teachers improve students’ general reading comprehension and understanding of curriculum materials by: engaging students in more reading; making the teacher’s discipline-specific reading processes and knowledge visible to students; making students’ reading processes, knowledge, understandings and (mis)conceptions visible to the teacher and to one another; helping students gain insight into their own reading processes as a means of gaining strategic control over these processes; and helping students acquire a repertoire of discipline-specific problem-solving strategies for deepening comprehension of curriculum materials.

The Reading Apprenticeship framework will be described and can be found HERE https://readingapprenticeship.org/resource/rfu-ra-framework-graphics/


Results and/or substantiated conclusions:
The studies on the intervention which had significant impacts on teacher practice and student learning outcomes included more than 8 days of in-person professional learning and an emphasis on discipline specific learning experiences.

Collectively, the body of research on Reading Apprenticeship indicates that -- if the field is to offer support to secondary teachers to substantially improve teacher practice and student outcomes – policymakers and schools must somehow find time for teachers to engage in intensive, evidence-based, discipline-specific PD.

Authors

• Mary Stump, WestEd
  Presenting Author

• Cynthia L. Greenleaf, WestEd
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jenell Krishnan, WestEd
  Non-Presenting Author