Reading Apprenticeship

Product or Programme · All products and programmes
Evidence · 9 claims (4 for, 4 mixed, 1 against) · 2 studies (1 causal, 1 quant-synthesis), q3 · 2 of 2 report an effect size · 9 claims rest on one study

Description

Reading Apprenticeship® is a secondary-school academic literacy curriculum and professional-learning programme developed and provided by WestEd to support students' reading comprehension, engagement, and metacognitive awareness.

Components

• Reading Apprenticeship® Academic Literacy curriculum for 9th-grade students: A year-long curriculum for 9th-grade students designed to support reading achievement, engagement, and fluency. The course is organized around three thematic units: (1) Reading Self and Society, (2) Reading History, and (3) Reading Science. It focuses students' attention on how they read (a metacognitive process) to help them better understand what they read; students read high-interest, challenging texts, analyze the way words and sentences are constructed, and use writing as a tool for learning. In the evaluated study it replaced a 9th-grade elective class, with students attending about 11 hours per month on average. (What Works Clearinghouse (2010))
• Reading Apprenticeship® teacher professional development program: Reading Apprenticeship® is a professional development program that trains teachers to model reading comprehension strategies and help students practice these strategies in their classrooms, with the goal of improving literacy and social-emotional outcomes. The teacher acts as the "master reader" who "models comprehension strategies and helps students (the 'reading apprentices') practice these strategies." Professional development is delivered through courses such as Reading Apprenticeship® Essentials I and II plus on-site or online coaching, in several packages (RAAL, RAISE, iRAISE, RAAD) implemented over one school year per cohort. (What Works Clearinghouse et al. (2023))
• Reading Apprenticeship (RA) family of secondary literacy programs: Reading Apprenticeship is "a family of high school programs designed to improve students' literacy by integrating metacognitive strategy instruction into content areas, especially science and social studies." All variations incorporate extensive reading, collaborative sense-making, and teaching of metacognitive skills such as prediction, summarization, graphic organizers, and clarification. The review rates the family Strong based on four studies. (Reading Apprenticeship (2024))
• Reading Apprenticeship® four-dimensions framework for integrating literacy into subject-area teaching: Reading Apprenticeship® calls for teachers to integrate four dimensions of classroom life into subject-area teaching through conversations about the thinking processes students and teachers use as they read. The dimensions are Social (a safe, collaborative environment drawing on students' interest in social interaction), Personal (students' reading identities, purposes, and metacognitive awareness), Cognitive (comprehension and problem-solving strategies for academic texts), and Knowledge-building (knowledge of word construction, vocabulary, text structure, genre, language, and content). The framework underpins both the teacher professional development and the student Academic Literacy curri (What Works Clearinghouse (2010))

Claims

• Reading Apprenticeship® showed a statistically significant positive effect on the GRADE reading comprehension subtest for Cohort 2 ninth-grade students [+W]
• Reading Apprenticeship® showed no statistically significant effects on most GRADE outcomes: Cohort 1 comprehension and vocabulary, and Cohort 2 vocabulary [-W] — (also cited [~W])
• The WWC rates Reading Apprenticeship® as having potentially positive effects on comprehension for adolescent learners, based on one study [+M]
• Reading Apprenticeship® has potentially positive effects on grade point average in core subjects, based on one qualifying study [+W]
• Reading Apprenticeship® shows no effect on vocabulary (effect size 0.00) [~W]
• Reading Apprenticeship® has potentially positive effects on student science achievement in grades 7–9, based on one qualifying study [+W]
• Reading Apprenticeship® shows uncertain effects on life sciences achievement in one study [~W]
• Reading Apprenticeship® shows uncertain effects on literacy achievement across five studies [~W]
• Reading Apprenticeship® shows uncertain effects on mathematics achievement, with one significant negative finding [~W]

Related Products and Programmes

• Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL)

Key Sources

• What Works Clearinghouse. (2010). WWC Intervention Report: Reading Apprenticeship®. U.S. Department of Education, What Works Clearinghouse. http://www.wested.org/ReadingApprenticeship
• What Works Clearinghouse, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. (2023). Reading Apprenticeship®. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/InterventionReport/727
• Reading Apprenticeship. (2024). Evidence for ESSA program review. https://evidenceforessa.org/program/reading-apprenticeship/

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	product
id	reading-apprenticeship
title	Reading Apprenticeship
description	Reading Apprenticeship® is a secondary-school academic literacy curriculum and professional-learning programme developed and provided by WestEd to support students' reading comprehension, engagement, and metacognitive awareness.
status	review
moved_from	element/reading-apprenticeship-academic-literacy-curriculum, element/reading-apprenticeship-professional-development-program, element/reading-apprenticeship-program-family, theory/reading-apprenticeship-four-dimensions-framework
product_kind	curriculum
generated	by process:sweep-kinds on 2026-10-10
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	3 — what-works-clearinghouse-2010, what-works-clearinghouse-2023, reading-apprenticeship-2024

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