The Effects of "Reading Apprenticeship" On Teacher Instruction and Student Learning

Abstract

Many high-school students lack the specific subject matter knowledge, vocabulary, and reading strategies they need to learn from complex texts. Secondary teachers need professional development to improve content literacy instruction. This qualitative case study explored the impact of the Reading Apprenticeship Improving Secondary Education (RAISE) on three teachers and their students over an eight-month period. The teachers in this study attended RAISE workshops and received in-school coaching designed to help them recognize their own subject matter expertise and to apprentice students into the discourse and practices of historians through metacognitive inquiry. The teachers also learned how to support students in building identities as readers who could solve reading problems and persevere in learning from complex texts. The study was conducted at two Midwestern high schools, one rural and one urban. AP World History and U. S. History classes were the focus of the study. Analysis consisted of multiple cycles of coding that surfaced themes; these themes provided scaffolding for the analysis of the narrative responses of the participants and guided the selection of representative examples from transcripts. In the final analysis, the teachers demonstrated instructional efficacy and supported students in developing agency for reading complex history texts. The Reading Apprenticeship model was effective as an instructional innovation and transformational professional development option for school districts.