Reading for Meaning: The Efficacy of Reciprocal Teaching in Fostering Reading Comprehension in High School Students in Remedial Reading Classes

This study by Miriam Alfassi of the Bar-Ilan University in Israel investigated whether students who were instructed with reciprocal teaching methods (strategic instruction) would outperform students who were instructed with more-traditional methods of remedial reading (skill acquisition). Participants included 75 freshman high school students who were enrolled in Chapter 1 remedial reading classes from two high schools. Groups were similar on reading measures, SES, and gender. Although the students in the strategic instruction group (treatment group) outperformed their control counterparts on the experimenter-designed reading comprehension tests, there were no significant differences between the groups on two standardized measures of reading.