Reading Apprenticeship Evaluation
Reading Apprenticeship is a professional learning program for middle and high school teachers to help students be successful readers in content areas. It is an inquiry-based and subject area-focused instructional framework that intends to transform teachers’ understanding of their role in developing adolescent literacy and seeks to build enduring capacity for literacy instruction.
Reading Apprenticeship engages students through four interacting dimensions of learning – social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge-building. Students activate these dimensions through metacognitive conversation, with their teachers and each other, that explores students’ own thinking processes.
Evaluation Highlights
AIR, as a sub-contractor to WestEd, and funded by U.S. Department of Education Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) grant, conducted an impact evaluation and implementation evaluation during 2018–2022. The impact evaluation assessed the effectiveness of Reading Apprenticeship on teacher and student outcomes in science classrooms. The study included about 100 teachers from 50 middle and high schools in California and Texas. AIR also assessed implementation fidelity and examined facilitators and barriers. As part of the study, AIR provided formative feedback to WestEd on teacher training and implementation of Reading Apprenticeship strategies to support continuous program improvement.
The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique challenge for schools and interfered with the experimental design of this evaluation. However, this study is still important because programs always face implementation challenges of some kind. The COVID crisis introduced the question of whether a validated program like Reading Apprenticeship can benefit students and teachers under extremely challenging circumstances. Of particular interest to the field is how the program might be adapted to virtual learning environments.
Key findings:
- Teachers gave positive feedback on the professional development training they received, even during virtual teaching and learning;
- Teacher Leaders are a crucial element of the program;
- Teachers faced challenges implementing Reading Apprenticeship during COVID, but some reported important facilitators to implementation as well;
- Overall, fidelity of implementation during COVID was low; and
- Despite the pandemic, the study showed some large positive significant effects of Reading Apprenticeship on teacher practices early on during the study with some impacts persisting over time.
AIR also conducted a mixed-methods formative evaluation of a new cohort of schools in Texas, Michigan, and Arizona during 2022–2023 with funding from a SEED Renewal grant. This study examined in-depth three partnership models: 1) a district partnership; 2) a regional partnership; and 3) a state partnership. The purpose of this evaluation was to describe how each partnership model supported Reading Apprenticeship implementation and explore how it built capacity for sustainability beyond the grant. The evaluation examined context-specific conditions that are associated with improved scale-up outcomes such as teacher Reading Apprenticeship uptake rates and related teaching practices.
Throughout the project, AIR produced research memos, reports, and conference presentations to highlight progress and disseminate findings with program implementers and the larger community.
