The Development of a Train-the-Trainer Approach in Reciprocal Reading Instruction in England’s Primary Schools

There is good evidence that targeted reciprocal reading instruction for struggling readers can lead to attainment gains in reading for children aged 9–12 years in England using the FFT Reciprocal Reading instruction programme when training is delivered by the programme developer. However, for programme scale-up, a train-the-trainer delivery approach is required. This study reports the development of a train-the-trainer delivery approach during a Phase-1 pilot to enable the programme’s delivery at greater scale. During the pilot, five trainers were trained to cascade training to 16 English primary schools, which implemented the programme with 217 children. The train-the-trainer approach developed used a workshop and cascade model recommended by both health and education sectors. Trainer and school staff perception feedback was collected during the development process, and independently designed standardised reading tests were used to explore children’s progress during the pilot. Feedback suggests that the train-the-trainer approach developed is implementable in schools, including observable pupil progress in reading. This train-the-trainer delivery approach should now be tested using RCT methodology.