Social Support for Learning

Our apprenticeship approach to teaching reading in subject area classes is grounded in our view of learning as a social-cognitive interactive process. In this view, which is based in the work of Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky, cognitive development is seen as "socially mediated"-that is to say, people learn by participating in activities with "more competent others" who provide support for the parts of the task that they cannot yet do by themselves. These more com­ petent others-parents, siblings, peers, and teachers, for example-gauge their support of the learner's participation, encouraging the learner to take on more of the task over time. In doing this-often unconsciously or spontaneously ­ these guides help learners carry out valued activities (talking, cooking, playing ball, reading) with increasing independence over time. ("Scaffolding" is a term often applied to this careful gauging of "enough" support, but not too much, at the "right" time, but for not too long.)

The learning environment created by these more knowledgeable others in collaboration with learners during activities like reading or puzzle solving both supports learners and challenges them to grow. Learners begin to internalize and appropriate (make their own) the varied dimensions of the activity: for instance, its goals and functions, the actions necessary to carry it out, and the kinds of cultural tools necessary or fitting to the task. Through this social learning process, learners' cognitive and affective structures-the ways in which learners think and value tasks - are shaped.

Cognitive Apprenticeships

This view of socially mediated learning applies not only to activities with observable components, such as changing bicycle tires, knitting, or skating. It applies equally, and significantly, to activities that are largely cognitive, taking place inside the mind and hidden from view. Researchers working in a social­ cognitive tradition have described a variety of cognitive apprenticeships, in which the mental activities characteristic of certain kinds of cognitive tasks­ such as computation, written composition, interpreting texts, and the like-are internalized and appropriated by learners through social supports of various kinds. Learning to read academically complex material is yet another task that requires a cognitive apprenticeship.

Reading Apprenticeships

One literacy educator describes the idea of the cognitive apprenticeship in read­ ing by comparing the process of learning to read with that of learning to ride a bike. In both cases a more proficient other is present to support the beginner, engaging the beginner in the activity and calling attention to often overlooked or hidden strategies. From the beginning, reading apprentices must be engaged in the whole process of problem solving to make sense of written texts, even if they are initially unable to carry out on their own all the individual strategies and subtasks that go into successful reading. The hidden, cognitive dimensions in particular must be drawn out and made visible to the learner. For students encountering challenging academic materials and tasks, being shown what goes on behind the curtain of expert reading is especially powerful in helping them gain mastery.

Demystifying Reading: Making the Invisible Visible

If students are to employ increasingly sophisticated ways of thinking and of solving a variety of cognitive problems, they need to interact with more knowl­ edgeable others from whom they can learn how to carry out these complex activities. Much of what happens with texts in classrooms gives students the mistaken impression that reading comprehension happens by magic. To begin to build a repertoire of activities for reading comprehension, students need to have the reading process demystified. They need to see what happens inside the mind of a more proficient reader, someone who is willing to make the invis­ ible visible by externalizing his or her mental activity.

Text-based Discussion: Collaborative Meaning Making

Making the invisible processes of strategic sense-making visible to the learner must take place during reading itself. For students to approach reading expecting to comprehend what they read, and so to work to comprehend texts as necessary, they must experience reading as an inquiry into meaning and a purposeful engagement with ideas. Very little authentic discussion takes place in typical classrooms, yet for all students and particularly for English learners, talking with others is a powerful way to work out one's ideas and articulate them. Text-based discussion helps readers clarify what seems clouded as well as critically question the ideas in a text. In discussions among readers, different viewpoints arise, and the diverse resources that exist among different students can help them in tackling a problem or engaging a set of ideas. To build a repertoire of text-based problem-solving strategies and stamina for thinking deeply about the meaning of what they read, students need abundant experiences of working to comprehend text in the company of others. They need ongoing opportunities to consider and reconsider­ through text-based discussion-what texts may mean and how they know what they mean.

Developing Engaged, Strategic, and Independent Readers

In short, our approach to teaching literacy skills is based on the idea that the complex habits and activities of skillful academic readers can be taught. But we do not believe they can be taught by a transmission approach-in which students are shown strategies, asked to practice them, and then expected to be able to use them on their own. Rather, we see the kind of teaching and learning environment that can develop students' confidence and competence as readers of various kinds of challenging texts as one that requires the inter­ action of students and teachers in multiple dimensions of classroom life. It is the orchestration of this interactive teaching and learning environment in classrooms that we call the Reading Apprenticeship approach to developing strategic readers.

Reading for Understanding, pp.21-23