at high-school level. Therefore, it is beneficial to investigate the effects of metacognitive
strategy instruction on Thai students in a high-school classroom.
Reciprocal Teaching and its Theoretical Framework
The reciprocal teaching method is one of the effective approaches that teach
learners to become responsible for their reading and employ metacognitive reading
strategies over cognitive reading strategies (Cohen, 1998). Palincsar and Brown initiated
it in the early 1980s in English classrooms of native speakers. Since then, it has gained
more attention and has also been recognized as a valuable teaching method by many
researchers, reading teachers, and educators because it is a form of systematic training in
strategies that help less efficient readers improve their reading comprehension and
become independent readers (Adunyarittigun & Grant, 2005; Paris, Cross & Lipson,
1984; Duffy, 2002; Kelly, Moore & Tuck, 1994; Palincsar & Brown, 1984;
Soonthornmanee, 2002; and Speece & Hart, 1998).
Theoretically, reciprocal teaching is based on Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal
Development (1978) and the proleptic model of teaching (Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976, as
cited in Manning & Payne, 1996). According to Vygotsky’s concept, children can
develop their learning to reach a level of actual development by independently solving
problems, and another level of potential development under adult guidance or expert
scaffolding and in collaboration with more capable peers. For language teachers, it is then
necessary to provide the learners the scaffolding or tools that include effective
intervention and language learning strategies, and then gradually remove these as the
learners use them on their own.
The goal of reciprocal teaching is to instruct students with specific strategies that
they can apply to new texts. According to Palincsar and Brown (1984), reciprocal