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<p> This study is an <i>ex post facto</i> correlational study that analyzed the mediated relationship between <i>everyday adult literacy practices (directions or instructions; letters, memos, or mail; newspapers or magazines; professional journals or publications; books, manuals or reference materials; financial statements; diagrams, maps, or schematics)</i> and <i> literacy scores,</i> using <i>vocabulary scores</i> as the mediator while controlling for <i>educational attainment, current educational practices, age,</i> and <i>number of books at home.</i> This study used the Program of International Assessment of Adult Competency (PIAAC) 2012/2014 public use household dataset which includes data from over 8,000 participants. This dataset contains information about participants&rsquo; background, daily lives, and reading practices as well as literacy, numeracy, and informational technology skills. Analyses were completed using the IDB analyzer to complete regression analyses on the final sample which included 1,599 participants who had taken both the literacy and print vocabulary assessment. The Sobel process was used to determine mediation. According to the Sobel test, the <i>vocabulary score</i> mediated the relationship between <i> reading letters, memos, or mail</i> (b = 4.18, SE = 0.23, <i>p</i> &lt; .001) and <i>newspapers or magazines</i> (b = 2.55, SE = 0.29, <i> p</i> &lt; .05) and the <i>combined plausible literacy score.</i> This showed that a portion of the ability to predict adult literacy scores from the frequency of reading letters, memos, or mail and newspapers or magazines could be due to vocabulary proficiency.</p><p>

<p> According to the Great Commission, the clear call of Christian leaders is to make disciples (Matt. 28:16-20). Many key Christian leaders and thinkers cite personal Bible reading as one of the key components to the life of a growing disciple. Unfortunately, research shows that many American Christians are not actively reading the Bible outside of Sunday morning services (Stetzer, 2012). Thus, a mixed-methods study was done of a group of infrequent Bible readers from Crossway Church to assess the impact of the SOAP method of Bible reading on their spiritual lives. The group committed to reading one chapter of the Bible using the SOAP method five days a week for nine weeks. Qualitative interviews were conducted after the nine weeks, and the results of the participants' pre- and post-group Transformational Discipleship Assessment scores were analyzed to determine the kind of impact consistent Bible reading had on their lives. The researcher found significant spiritual growth in the lives of those who participated. Implications for the researcher's church as well as the local church at large are articulated in this dissertation.</p><p>

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The purpose of this study was to examine the degree to which cooperative learning affects the active participation or engagement of students in the classroom. Previous research has found that students were more engaged during lecture and classroom discourse methods of instruction (anderson & Scott, 1978). This study attempted to determine whether the instructional strategy of cooperative learning affected this result.;The sample for this study was selected from the students of two English and two social studies teachers for each instructional method (cooperative learning, lecture, and classroom discourse). Videotapes were made of each teacher's class for analysis. Each class had five students whose engagement levels were studied. The participants were students at a suburban high school in southeast Virginia.;Percent of time engaged in the learning process was estimated by dividing the number of behaviors coded as task-relevant by the total number of behaviors coded. After the rate of engagement of each instructional strategy was determined, a one-factor between-subjects design with three levels of the dependent variable, engagement of students, was used. Planned comparisons using the multiple F test were used to analyze the engagement rates for each of the three instructional strategies (lecture, classroom discourse, and cooperative learning) for each instructional area (English and social studies) and for combined subject areas to determine whether the prediction that cooperative learning had the highest engagement level was verified. Alpha was set at 0.05.;The results showed that cooperative learning techniques resulted in statistically significantly (p {dollar}<{dollar}.05) higher levels of engagement of students in the secondary classrooms studied (English and social studies) than instructional strategies using lecture or classroom discourse. In addition, there was statistically significant higher levels of engagement when cooperative learning was used in each of the subject areas English and social studies than instructional strategies using lecture or classroom discourse.;Comparisons of engagement rates in each of the subject areas studied (English and social studies) showed no statistical difference between the instructional strategies of classroom discourse and lecture.;Further research is needed to determine the effect of cooperative learning techniques in secondary subject classes other than English and social studies, to determine the amount of time needed for cooperative learning techniques to be effective, to determine whether cooperative learning techniques ultimately result in higher achievement for secondary students, to determine if a teacher's preferred teaching method influences these results and to compare the rates of engagement for English and for social studies classes when teachers are using classroom discourse and lecture methods of instruction.

Historically, mathematics education has consisted of rote learning through workbooks and textbooks, leaving students with the thought that mathematics is dull, unimaginative, and inaccessible. Educators have looked for ways to change these views of students, one current suggestion being through the integration of children's literature in the mathematics curriculum. To further investigate this suggestion, the study "Integrating Children's Literature in an Elementary School Mathematics Classroom" was conducted in a 3rd grade Johnson City Classroom to determine how students reacted to the integration of literature in a mathematics classroom.

This study explored how the integration of science and literacy in an elementary school classroom impacted the conceptual learning and understanding of first grade students. This study was explored around two research questions 1) How do students respond to the weather activities after being exposed to scientific read-alouds? 2) How will the impact of center based science inquiry on students reading comprehension and conceptual understanding of science knowledge change when the teacher engages students in scientific inquiry through the use of centers? Data was collected over a three-day period when the teacher was conducting a weather unit. It was found that through the literacy integration process and use of centers, the students were able to gain a deeper conceptual understanding and procedural fluency of the science topic.

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The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between academic intrinsic motivation and positive teacher verbal feedback, negative teacher verbal feedback, and student aptitude for academic work. The research questions evolved from the Cognitive Evaluation Theory of Edward Deci (Deci & Ryan, 1985) in which intrinsic motivation develops out of a sense of competence and self-determination. In that teacher verbal feedback to students provide messages about academic competence, it was hypothesized that positive verbal feedback would enhance intrinsic motivation and negative verbal feedback would be detrimental to intrinsic motivation.;The subjects for the study were 368 fourth and fifth grade students. Student academic intrinsic motivation was measured by a questionnaire developed by Harter (1981). Aptitude was assessed with the Cognitive Abilities Test (Thorndike & Hagen, 1985). Negative and positive teacher verbal feedback reactions were determined by classroom observers who coded all teacher verbal feedback reactions to the students in accordance with the observation system developed by Brophy and Good (1969). Through factor analysis the positive feedback factor and the negative feedback factor were formed from the verbal feedback categories loading with those factors.;Results revealed that both aptitude and positive verbal feedback correlate positively with academic intrinsic motivation. Aptitude for school work, positive verbal feedback, and grade level contributed about 8% of the total variance of intrinsic motivation. Negative verbal feedback did not contribute to the prediction of the level of intrinsic motivation. Due to the low level of variance attributed to these factors, conclusions which could be drawn are limited. However, it was suggested that in addition to studying factors influencing the sense of competency, classroom factors which would contribute to a sense of autonomy need to be included in future studies.

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