UCLA

Increasing the ability of underprepared and underserved students to acquire the skills necessary for college success is a critical component of the mission of California community colleges, yet faculty, staff, and administrators have historically received little training in how to effectively do so. For one statewide professional development effort underway, the Reading Apprenticeship Project (RAP), a study was conducted to examine the impact of a teaching innovation, Reading Apprenticeship, on classroom practice and on faculty understanding of student engagement and progress as a result of incorporating the innovation. RAP, a community of practice initiative funded by the state system through its California Community Colleges' Success Network (3CSN), seeks to address a significant gap in faculty pedagogical training: how to support adult students' academic literacy acquisition in discipline-specific contexts.

Because 3CSN's RAP has structured its professional development delivery around social learning modalities, a conceptual framework designed to analyze the value of interventions enacted through communities and networks was employed to examine the largely self-reported perceptions provided by the study's key informants, seven experienced Reading Apprenticeship practitioners. Qualitative data collected through individual and group interviews and practitioner observations were systematically described and analyzed using the five categories or "cycles" of the conceptual framework. Additionally, the data, where applicable, were examined within the context of the Reading Apprenticeship Framework itself.

Evidence pointing to perceived value was discovered across all cycles, patterns connecting the cycles of community and network learning to the RA dimensions were described, and seven findings corresponding to the research questions were outlined. Through its findings, the study ultimately sought to clarify the core features necessary for the implementation of professional learning that makes a transformative difference in classrooms and across institutions and can be reproduced at scale.