Journal of Educational Psychology Copyright 2002 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

2002, Vol. 94, No. 4, 699 –718 0022-0663/02/$5.00 DOI: 10.1037//0022-0663.94.4.699

Implementing Reciprocal Teaching in the Classroom: Overcoming

Obstacles and Making Modifications

Douglas J. Hacker Arnette Tenent

University of Utah Memphis City Schools

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate teachers’ implementation and practice of
reciprocal teaching (RT) in 2 elementary schools. Over a 3-year period, 17 elementary school teachers
participated in the implementation of RT. The obstacles they encountered and modifications made to RT
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were examined in vivo. Teachers modified their practice of RT, and the authors examined their
modifications using 3 elements of RT: strategy use, dialogue, and scaffolded instruction. The focus was
on whether these 3 essential elements remained in the teachers’ constructions of RT. The authors also
focused on whether teachers added anything new to RT. Theory and guidelines that can be used to help
teachers with the implementation and practice of RT are developed.

Reciprocal teaching (RT) is an instructional procedure in which
small groups of students learn to improve their reading compre-
hension through “scaffolded instruction” of comprehension-
fostering and comprehension-monitoring strategies (Brown &
Palincsar, 1989; Palincsar & Brown, 1984). These strategies are
predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing. There are
many good sources that can be consulted for details concerning the
classroom procedures of RT (see Brown & Palincsar, 1989; Marks
et al., 1993; Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Palincsar, David, & Brown,
1989; Rosenshine & Meister, 1994). Suffice it to say that RT
involves the use of the four comprehension strategies in ongoing
dialogues between a dialogue leader and students in small groups.
The dialogue leader, who can be a teacher or student, models the
strategies by asking questions about a text, summarizing the text,
clarifying misunderstandings, and asking students to predict up-
coming text. Dialogue leaders fade their involvement, and other
students in the groups take turns as leaders. The overall goal is to
create, through collaboration, the self-regulated and flexible strat-
egy use that is necessary for students to gain greater meaning from
their reading (Palincsar, David, Winn, & Stevens, 1991).
Many studies since Palincsar and Brown’s (1984) seminal work
have been conducted to test RT’s effectiveness. These studies have
included at-risk readers, remedial readers, and good, average, and
poor comprehenders, and their ages have ranged from 7 years of
age to older adults (e.g., Brown, 1997; Hart & Speece, 1998;
Lysynchuk, Pressley, & Vye, 1990; Rosenshine & Meister, 1994).
Although results differ according to the kinds of measures used to
evaluate instructional effectiveness, reading comprehension has
consistently increased using RT. Across 16 studies examined by
Douglas J. Hacker, Department of Educational Psychology, University
of Utah; Arnette Tenent, Memphis City Schools, Memphis, Tennessee.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Douglas
J. Hacker, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Utah,
1705 East Campus Drive, Room 327, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-9255.
E-mail: hacker_d@ed.utah.edu
Rosenshine and Meister (1994), there was an overall effect size of
.14 on standardized tests favoring RT over control programs, but
median effect sizes were as high as .34 to .60, depending on
whether students were taught the strategies in conjunction with
reading texts or as an explicit component prior to reading texts,
respectively (Shuell, 1996).
However, even the best instructional programs result in limited
gains if teachers find them difficult to implement or antithetical to
their established practices (Duffy, 1993; El-Dinary & Schuder,
1993). All teachers, novice and experienced, rely strongly on their
beliefs and knowledge about instruction when considering new
practices (Borko & Putnam, 1996). An oversight of researchers
who have been advocating constructivist practices for students has
been to ask teachers to implement new curricula and use new
instructional methods without considering that teachers, too, need
to take ownership of their learning by constructing understanding
of new curricula and methods using their prior knowledge. Instruc-
tional methods change with each teacher, and perhaps they need to
change at least to some extent to become part of a teacher’s
constructed practice.
An important question that must be addressed by researchers
who advocate new programs is as follows: Will the essence of
what makes an effective program work survive a teacher’s con-
struction of it? Researchers have given attention to reading pro-
cesses and programs, but there continues to be little attention given
to the implementation and practice of programs (Hiebert & Ra-
phael, 1996). As far as RT is concerned, although data indicating
the number of teachers who use RT are scarce, reported difficulties
with implementation and practice are not uncommon (e.g., Marks
et al., 1993). In contrast to most studies of RT, which have
involved mainly quantitative analyses of the effectiveness of RT
versus other reading instruction, the present qualitative study in-
vestigates teachers’ implementation and practice of RT.
Over a 3-year period, 17 teachers from two elementary schools
participated in the implementation of RT. The obstacles they
encountered and the modifications they made to RT were exam-

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