This study examined how mentor teachers' perceptions of reciprocity and ideas around equitable teaching practice were cultivated within the context and practice of the Reciprocal Learning Partnership framework. For this study, I analyzed twenty paired interviews with ten mentor teachers and mentees participating in an urban teacher residency…

This dissertation investigates the potential of sustained use of academic vocabulary in reciprocal dialogue to improve educational equity for fifth-grade students with specific reading disabilities. Students with reading disabilities often struggle with acquiring academic vocabulary, which can hinder their overall academic performance and limit…

The "Massachusetts Science, Technology, and Engineering Framework" integrates literacy skills into the standards and requires science teachers to use instructional strategies to support literacy in the classroom (Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education [MADESE], 2016a). However, secondary science teachers may not…

Students who have problems comprehending textual material tend to experience failing grades, peer rejection, and even social isolation. Furthermore, students with poor reading comprehension demonstrate poor academic performance in all subjects, not due to difficulty in learning specific subject content (i.e., math, history, etc.), but rather their…

This three-article dissertation gathers teachers' reflections about Reciprocal Teaching (Vygotsky, 1978) and gauges the role of teacher expectations on the reading comprehension success of African American students. Article One provides a detailed literature review outlining the history and significant research applicable to the subject of…

This multiple case study examined the experiences of elementary L2 learners who received instruction in either reciprocal teaching or the think aloud strategy (TAS), and identified patterns of use that emerged from participants' employment of the strategies. The three L2 participants took a pre- test and a posttest, were recorded using the…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of an intervention of five researched reading strategies on fifth-grade students' "word callers" reading achievement. Twenty-one fifth-grade students attending elementary schools in midwestern United States participated in this study. Students were randomly assigned to either the…

Metacognitive strategies are needed for readers to be successful in comprehending nonnarrative social studies texts. The purpose of this study was to investigate the metacognitive strategies used by proficient readers (students reading above-grade-level) and struggling (students reading below-grade-level) readers comprehending social studies…

Reciprocal teaching, a social constructivist instruction method, was explored in this study on the mathematical word problem solving skills of fifth grade students in two elementary schools within a suburban school district in upstate New York. Eighty-five students in four intact classes participated in this mixed methods study. Using a…

Because research exploring how students with disabilities read and comprehend on the Internet is scarce, a mixed methods study was implemented to determine if Internet Reciprocal Teaching (IRT) is an effective intervention for improving online reading comprehension among seventh grade students with high-incidence disabilities in inclusive…

English Language Learners are an ever-growing population in public school systems today. Consequently, the policies and procedures that schools are required to adhere to are not limited to language minority students. In order for teachers to meet the needs of English Language Learning students, they need to address their student's whole…