Three Teachers' Adaptations of Reciprocal Teaching in Comparison to Traditional Reciprocal Teaching

Abstract

3 teachers (grade 1, middle school special education, high school English) who had used reciprocal teaching in their classrooms for at least a school year were observed and interviewed as part of an effort to develop a model of reciprocal teaching that would work well in classrooms. All 3 teachers used reciprocal teaching as a framework for class discussion of text read in preparation for students' participation in reciprocally taught reading groups. Although the 4 strategies included in the original reciprocal teaching research (i. e., prediction, questioning, clarification, and summarization) were observed in all 3 classrooms, and there were a number of other similarities to conventional reciprocal teaching (e. g., peer-led reading groups), there also were substantial teacher adaptations of the method. For example, in all 3 classrooms, reciprocal teaching occurred as a postreading activity rather than during first reading, with the student leader role modified to stimulate greater participation in group dialogue. In addition, reciprocal teaching occurred over a much longer period (i. e., 7 months to several years) than that studied in the validating research. In short, these teachers used conventional reciprocal teaching as a starting point for creating instruction they believed to be more powerful than conventional reciprocal teaching and more effective in meeting their goals. This adapted teaching can now be specified in enough detail with respect to its structural characteristics that convincing scientific evaluations of it can be conducted.

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