Reading Apprenticeship

Adopting Reading Apprenticeship at Pasadena City College

College Story

Adopting Reading Apprenticeship at Pasadena City College

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A 2018 report on the adoption of Reading Apprenticeship at Pasadena City College (PCC) was published by Equal Measure, the research and evaluation partner of the Helmsley Charitable Trust‘s post-secondary grantmaking. As an early adopter of Reading Apprenticeship and participating college in our STEM Network, PCC was selected by Equal Measure for campus visits to learn more about site-level implementation of Reading Apprenticeship.

One of four reports on active learning projects by Helmsley grantees, Equal Measure identifies the conditions that made PCC so receptive to Reading Apprenticeship, as well as detailing their multi-pronged approach and ideas for continuing to scale. For other institutions hoping to replicate a similar approach, the report also spotlights the four major contributions to catalyzing campus change at PCC.

Reading Apprenticeship’s impact on PCC’s teachers and students can’t be denied. During their time at PCC, Equal Measure found that teachers reported Reading Apprenticeship “helped them better connect with their students” and “brought structure, guidance, and improvement” to their practice. Students “became more resourceful and empowered to lead their own learning” once given the tools to access the materials on their own. Change was seen at a group level as well. When Reading Apprenticeship was embedded into a general biology course redesign (taken by over 1000 students a year), the achievement gap between underrepresented minority students and white and Asian students was reduced by 10%.

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Faculty driven, grass roots initiative brings campus-wide transformation at Northern Essex Community College

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Overview

Northern Essex Community College (NECC) in Massachusetts has been an Achieving the Dream Leader College since 2011. NECC serves a diverse student population of 5,975 students. A critical component to NECC’s success has been the creation of a “college success” seminar to support first year students. The success of this course has resulted in increased retention rates from 72.9 to 97.2 percent. NECC scaled the course up from 13 sections in Fall 2011 to 30 in Fall 2012, with the goal of eventually including all first-time students. In addition, NECC subsequentially broadened its Reading Apprenticeship implementation to include gateway courses which resulted an average full letter-grade improvement for students.

Challenges

  • Build support for Reading Apprenticeship professional learning from a small, grassroots movement to campus-wide implementation
  • Broaden support for academic literacy from first year seminar ad English courses to gateway courses across the disciplines
  • Collect classroom data to support student progress
  • Support all students to succeed in academically rigorous college level courses

Implementation of Reading Apprenticeship

Faculty and staff inquiry group builds support for literacy campus-wide

A trusted approach to building student success: Reading Apprenticeship is a professional learning model that helps instructors shift their practice in ways that result in deeper student learning. It integrates four dimensions of learning—social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge-building—and ties them all together with metacognitive conversation. Since 2008, faculty at 230+ colleges in 25 states have experienced the impact of Reading Apprenticeship. Faculty report that integrating attention to disciplinary literacies increases student engagement, persistence, and success.

Faculty member Trish Schade was the key driver for the grass-roots movement for implementing Reading Apprenticeship at NECC. In 2007 Schade moved from to NECC with from California’s Merced Community College where she had recently participated in Reading Apprenticeship professional learning. From her experience using the Reading Apprenticeship framework in her classroom, she knew it was an approach that would work to support her NECC students in achieving deeper learning and academic success.

Schade decided to begin a project to introduce a campus-wide focus on literacy, with Reading Apprenticeship at the core—a SFIG. “Instead of just a FIG (Faculty Inquiry Group), limited to faculty,” Schade says, “we included staff as well—professional tutors, lab coordinators, a librarian.” She feels this was strategically important because it immediately increased the number of people who brought energy and commitment to the project, and literacy support to the students. The literacy inquiry group met monthly, tried out Reading Apprenticeship routines, presented what they were learning to other staff, and began to grow. The Dean of Professional Development supported the SFIG by funding four instructors to attend a Reading Apprenticeship seminar at WestEd that summer. They came back inspired.

Results

Seizing opportunities for institutional integration

In 2009, an institutional opportunity to increase the impact of the SFIG’s work arose. NECC administrators, with the help of an Achieving the Dream grant, decided to create a “college success” First Year Seminar course for academically underprepared first year students. Schade was on the committee designing the course and Reading Apprenticeship became part of the curriculum.

The College Success Seminar was a success. In 2011, 13 sections were offered. In 2012, NECC scaled-up to 30 sections. Retention rates also grew for this cohort of students who passed the course with grades A–C; new students in the Fall 2011 returned in the Spring of 2012 at a rate of 97.2 percent, as compared to the 72.9 percent retention rate for all students.

When NECC was named an Achieving the Dream “leader college” during this period, another institutional opportunity appeared. The AtD coaches urged the college to expand implementation of its “success” approaches. As Schade reports, “The coaches pointed out that we were doing a lot of great strategies for incoming underprepared students, but we did not have much in place for the regular first year gatekeeper type classes.” The NECC team followed this advice and came together to improve student success in “gatekeeper” courses, which are the first level of college courses in any given subject. The goal of the NECC team was to increase student retention and completion rates in these courses by improving students’ academic literacy through Reading Apprenticeship.

Reading Apprenticeship is a natural fit if a college is creating or beefing up an existing FYE (First Year Experience) program. It’s also a natural fit for the Integrated Reading and Writing and the Accelerated Learning initiatives bubbling up all over.
— Trish Schade, NECC faulty member

At this point, Schade says, “It was important to recruit respected and influential gateway faculty to participate in the team’s reading ‘think tank’ meetings.” And, she adds, by way of advice, “Invite them repeatedly and keep inviting. Once you get that energy and momentum going, others will join.”

More faculty were supported to participate in literacy professional development, this time in the online Reading Apprenticeship 101 course and for the next six years, the team headed a cross-campus implementation of Reading Apprenticeship. The team held monthly meetings, incorporated explicit literacy learning practices and collaboration into their classrooms, and led workshops for faculty, including organizing two statewide Reading Apprenticeship conferences.

Data collected by faculty in gateway courses reveals impressive gains

Faculty, staff, and students at Northern Essex Community College (NECC) in Massachusetts began to see meaningful changes in the student reader identity culture on their campus following several years of campus-wide Reading Apprenticeship.

As the team grew, faculty members began to collect data in gateway courses they were teaching, comparing results in sections where they incorporated Reading Apprenticeship with those where they did not. The results were an average full letter-grade improvement.

A Sample of Literacy Data Collected by NECC Faculty

ALL Courses Reading Apprenticeship strategies grades jumped an average of 10 points (or one letter grade)

Faculty-Collected Data Treatment Student Outcomes
Business 101 Reading Response Journal
(4 classes)		 Treatment students’ grade average 82% vs. 68%
Dental Assisting 101 Reading Journals
(all classes for 3 years)		 Pass rate on state boards 100% last 2 years
Anthropology 101 Talking to the Text
(4 classes)		 Treatment students twice as likely to draw inferences from reading assignment
Biology 115 Double-Entry Journal
(2 classes)		 Treatment students’ grade average 86% vs. 74%
Chemistry 111 Reading Journals
(all classes)		 Higher-level student questions and increased engagement in discussion

In a 2015 report, the NECC Transitions to Academic Success Achieving the Dream team shared student reading survey results that provide a look at NECC before and after their decision to implement Reading Apprenticeship.

To inform their plan for instructional change and measure the impact of their work, the cross-disciplinary team created and distributed a student reading survey in 2009. The survey questions were designed to reflect multiple facets of the reading process, including: reader identity, reading behaviors, and the different types of text with which students engaged.

Baseline data showed that only 35% of male students considered themselves readers, compared to 54% of female students. Students’ use of metacognitive reading strategies was varied, from only 45% of male readers marking texts as they read, to 84% of female students using visualization (see figure 1 below for more details).

The survey was issued again in 2015 and showed positive changes. More students reported that they considered themselves readers, with the highest increase among male students, which rose 9%. Students’ use and awareness of metacognitive reading strategies also increased, with reported improvements in marking up texts, visualizing, summarizing, and connecting their reading to prior knowledge, which rose as much as 12% in some categories (see figure 2 below for more details).

The team members were gratified to see such demonstrable results. As authors Emily Gonzales and Patricia Schade said in their report, “They say culture beats strategy, but here [at NECC] we can say the reader identity culture at Northern Essex Community College has been enhanced by Reading Apprenticeship strategies.”

The faculty-driven process Schade began at NECC was strengthened by finding ways to connect with larger institutional programs, such as the success course and AtD. Today, Reading Apprenticeship is incorporated into all of NECC’s Integrated Reading and Writing and Co-requisite ENG accelerated classes, and the framework is undergirding new projects supporting Early College students and incarcerated students.

Schade encourages faculty at other colleges to persevere with literacy goals armed with the knowledge that success is attainable over time. “This kind of change takes time to nurture, she says, “but most faculty want to help students read in their discipline, and some will be willing and hungry to incorporate Reading Apprenticeship strategies into their classes. The message should be that if enough folks who are interested start implementing Reading Apprenticeship strategies, if they share their results, and if they have support and professional development, it will grow.”

Achieving Dreams at Renton Technical College

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Overview

Renton Technical College (RTC) in Seattle, WA serves 4,105 students, with over 60% of its student body identifying as minority. When Renton was recognized as a “Leader College” in 2011 by the Achieving the Dream Foundation, the college credited its notable student success rates to Reading Apprenticeship. After implementing Reading Apprenticeship campus-wide, Renton saw measures of student retention and completion increase from 61 to 72 percent over a three-year period. Faculty members were reaching 53 percent of the workforce students with Reading Apprenticeship approaches.

Challenges

  • Develop faculty insight across career and technical fields for how apprenticing students as disciplinary readers supports learning and achievement
  • Support faculty across career and technical fields to update curriculum and instructional methods
  • Support all students to persist and succeed in academically rigorous courses and sequences

Implementation of Reading Apprenticeship

Building support for literacy campus-wide

A trusted approach to building student success: Reading Apprenticeship is a professional learning model that helps instructors shift their practice in ways that result in deeper student learning. It integrates four dimensions of learning—social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge-building—and ties them all together with metacognitive conversation. Since 2008, faculty at 230+ colleges in 25 states have experienced the impact of Reading Apprenticeship. Faculty report that integrating attention to disciplinary literacies increases student engagement, persistence, and success.

Renton first supported faculty access to Reading Apprenticeship by sending a faculty team to an intensive seminar in leading Reading Apprenticeship professional development. The team then began implementing Reading Apprenticeship with their students and offered in-class modeling and coaching for faculty. In addition, Renton established a Reading Apprenticeship support group on campus.

When demand for Reading Apprenticeship professional development exceeded what the team could manage, Renton began offering the 6-week, 30-hour online introduction to Reading Apprenticeship course (Reading Apprenticeship 101), a course designed specifically for college faculty.

At the conclusion of the first, “sold-out” online course, Michele Lesmeister, the course instructor and leader of the campus Reading Apprenticeship effort, reported that faculty enthusiasm for Reading Apprenticeship at Renton was remarkable.

People right now are changing curriculum like you can’t believe it on this campus. I have been here 20 years and I have never seen this campus pulled together on one topic like this [online Reading Apprenticeship] course has done.
— Michele Lesmeister, Renton Technical College instructor & Reading Apprenticeship campus leader

Results

Impressive gains in retention, completion, and achievement

Lesmeister became a faculty literacy leader and advocate for campus-wide Reading Apprenticeship professional learning based on her success in using the Reading Apprenticeship framework in her classroom and the positive results she observed in her students’ performance.

When Lesmeister first began using the Reading Apprenticeship approach in her Adult Basic Education (ABE) classes, she decided to gather hard data to document and verify the transformation she was observing in the classroom and in her students’ work. Over five terms Lesmeister used Reading Apprenticeship approaches and collected student data. This student data bore out her initial observations and confirmed that she was on the correct path towards increasing her students’ academic success, retention, and completion rates.

After 33 hours of instruction, students in her ABE courses, Lesmeister’s students made average gains of approximately 3 to 5 points on the Life and Work Skills Reading and Math Assessment, compared to the national average gain of 5 points after 100 hours. Thus, students in these classes were able to meet their learning goals in approximately one-third of the time expected.

Lesmeister’s students also had impressive gains in GED (General Equivalency Diploma) completion rates. In fall quarter 2009, 39 percent of students in her ABE classes were pursuing their GED. During that time, 66 percent successfully completed three of the required five GED examinations. In previous quarters, approximately 50 percent of the GED students had completed the same number of GED tests.

This kind of student success, in individual classrooms and in campus-wide retention and completion rates increasing from 61 to 72 percent, fuels Renton Technical College’s ongoing support for Reading Apprenticeship today.