The Future of Education

Secondary vocational training (VT) teachers expect students to have the necessary reading skills to meet curriculum demands. These expectations are contradicted by the growing number of students who lack self-sufficiency in reading and who experience considerable difficulties. Our action research project aimed to improve the reading comprehension of printed and digital texts by VT students (secretarial and accounting). It also aimed to document the adoption of an innovative and proven reading comprehension approach, Reading Apprenticeship (RA) (Schoenbach, Greenleaf, & Murphy, 1999, 2012), which we adapted for VT teachers, whose speciality is not teaching reading comprehension. Nineteen teachers were trained and supported in implementing the approach, which they applied in their classrooms with their students. The results obtained from the qualitative analysis of the teachers' journals revealed various modalities of adopting this approach, from improvements and adaptations, to frequent modeling of high-level reading strategies, to greater variety in the grouping of students for collaborative reading, and to extensive use of the gradual release of responsibility model as the students progressed. Results from the MARSI questionnaire indicated that students (n = 91) reported using reading strategies more frequently (p < 0.001, medium effect). Analysis of five semi-structured group interviews with 36 students revealed, for example, improvements in content comprehension and the adoption of effective reading strategies. The success rate for these VT programs increased significantly over the two years of action research. We may conclude that VT teachers, whose specialty is not teaching reading, can realistically incorporate into their regular teaching an approach to improve the reading comprehension of their students.

Keywords: Reading, comprehension, vocational training, teaching;