Tape-assisted reciprocal teaching: cognitive bootstrapping for poor decoders.

Full Abstract

BACKGROUND: Students who have limited skills in decoding and comprehension and who lack motivation to read present difficulties for practitioners. Difficulties may be compounded when these students lack access to age-appropriate and interesting text and have lost the notion of reading as a process of obtaining meaning from print. AIMS: This research examined the effects of a modified reciprocal teaching intervention for readers with poor decoding skills and poor comprehension. Tape-assisted reciprocal teaching was used to help students with poor decoding skills develop cognitive and metacognitive strategies and improve their comprehension of high interest expository texts. METHODS: Two single-subject research design studies involving four groups of students were conducted. Study I involved one experimental group and Study II was a multiple baseline design involving three experimental groups. SAMPLE: Each experimental group comprised a heterogeneous mix of six students, three with poor decoding skills and three with adequate decoding skills, all of whom showed poor comprehension. RESULTS: As a result of the tape-assisted reciprocal teaching, the poor decoders demonstrated improved application of cognitive and metacognitive strategies and improved comprehension. These improvements were shown on both researcher-developed and standardised tests as well as on maintenance and transfer measures. The students with adequate decoding skills also showed improvements in comprehension. CONCLUSIONS: The success of the intervention for poor decoders suggests that tape assisted reciprocal teaching may be seen as a form of 'cognitive bootstrapping' to enable poor readers to escape the cycle of reading failure and engage more meaningfully in the process of reading.

Author information

Author/s: Le Fevre, Deidre M (DM); Moore, Dennis W (DW); Wilkinson, Ian A G (IA);

Affiliation: School of Education, Washington State University Vancouver, 98686, USA. lefevre(-atsign-)vancouver.wsu.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: The British journal of educational psychology (Br J Educ Psychol), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Mar; vol 73 (issue Pt 1) : pp 37-58

Dates: Created 2003/03/17; Completed 2003/05/23; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12639276, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00)

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