ABSTRACT

In this lecture a concept of a scientific research will be presented aiming to apply the reciprocal teaching approach to classroom-teaching at vocational schools. The reciprocal teaching approach was developed and tested in the 1980's by the American educational scientists Annemarie S. Palincsar and Ann L. Brown.The intervention program intends to foster and monitor reading strategies and therefore the ability to gather information from texts and derive the underlying meaning.

In the US, the first publication of Palincsar/Brown (1984) resulted in some succeeding studies (for an overview Rosenshine/Meister 1994) and an extensive research project called Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR). In this first publication the intervention approach proved significant effects on teenagers with poor reading comprehension at 7th grade (at the age of about 13).

For Germany, the reciprocal teaching approach got some attention especially due to the recommendation by the PISA consortium (Artelt et al. 2001, page 132). Until now there haven't been any comprehensive studies on the implementation of the approach in the German educational system yet. For the vocational education this approach is relevant as we can expect positive effects on other areas of competence. Already in the early studies of Palincsar/Brown (1984)first generalization effects were found. Additionally, PISA data verifies a correlation between reading competence and the ability to selfregulated learning as well as mathematical competence (Artelt et al. 2001; Klieme et al. 2001). Therefore it seems to be justified to view reading competence as a basic competence for future occupational requirements.

The key questions of the study are, to what extent reciprocal teaching can be implemented into regular lessons in vocational schools with similar results like the ones that were proved and reported about in research literature. For this, we gathered data from several courses from the BVJ . We got first positive indications on general application from a pre-study but no proveable effects (Gschwendtner 2004). This can mainly be explained by the quality of the instruction and deficits of the measuring technique. Taking this into consideration, it seems to be especially important that the pupils are instructed directly and that they experience an immediate benfit in using the reading strategies they have been trained in. The deficits of the measuring technique were caused by a lack of the availability of standardized tools measuring reading competence, which are also reliable when working with small groups. The primary focus of the main study was therefore on the quality of instruction and on the suitability of the measuring tools.

Before carrying out the intervention program in their regular German classes, the teachers were trained for their task in a seminar. The structure of this training seminar followed the reasoning of Guskey (1986). The Gates-MacGinitie test, widely applied in anglo-american countries, was used to record the reading competence after taking cultural differences into consideration. In addition, the decoding-ability test HST 10/11 was used. The motivation was captured through a standardized tool of Prenzel (1996).The data was collected in a pretest-posttest-design whith three measurement points - pre-test, post-test and follow-up. The intervention period lasted twenty lessons.

Literature

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• Gschwendtner, T.: Lesestrategieinstruktion durch "Reciprocal Teaching". Evaluation der Implementation des pädagogischen Handlungsprogramms im Deutschunterricht. Stuttgart: Master Thesis 2004.
• Guskey, T. R.: Staff Development and the Process of Teacher Change. In: Educational Researcher, 1986, 15 (3), pp. 5-12.
• Klieme, E. et al.: Mathematische Grundbildung : Testkonzeption und Ergebnisse. In: Deutsches PISA-Konsortium (Hrsg.): PISA 2000. Opladen: Leske+Budrich 2001, pp. 141-191.
• MacGinitie, W. H. et al.: Gates-MacGinitie reading test Level 7/9. Itasca IL: Riverside Publishing 2000.
• Palincsar, A. S. / Brown, A. L.: Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-Fostering and Comprehension-Monitoring Activities. In: Cognition and Instruction, 1984, 1 (2), pp. 117-175.
• Prenzel, M. et al.: Selbstbestimmt motiviertes und interessiertes Lernen in der kaufmännischen Erstausbildung. In: Zeitschrift für Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik (ZBW) Beiheft 13 1996, pp. 108-127.
• Rosenshine, A. S. / Brown, A. L.: Reciprocal Teaching: A Review of Research. In: Review of Educational Research, 1994, 64 (4), pp. 479-530.
• Vaughn, S / Klingner, J. K. / Bryant, D. P.: Collaborative Strategic Reading as a means to enhance peer-mediated instruction für reading comprehension and content-area learning. In: remedial and special education, 2001, 22 (2), pp. 66-74.