Previous research has found that when a word like “clam” is presented at the foveal level, its transposed-letter neighbor “calm” is also activated. This activation of multiple lexical candidates causes interference in naming and lexical decision tasks. Here, four eye-tracking experiments were conducted to explore the nature of transposed-letter (TL) neighborhood effects within the context of normal silent reading. Experiments 1 and 2 addressed the processing of target words that have a transposed-letter neighbor (e.g., angel, angle) in comparison to target words that do not have a transposed-letter neighbor (e.g., alien, slope ). Furthermore, Experiment 2 manipulated the sentence context leading up to the target word to explore whether semantic constraints can attenuate neighborhood interference effects. The results indicated that readers do take longer to process words that have a TL neighbor than words that do not have a TL neighbor. This interference effect, however, disappeared when the beginning of the sentence was constraining such that only one of the two members of the TL pair was likely. While both Experiments 1 and 2 explored effects at the foveal level, Experiments 3 and 4 explored the parafoveal processing of transposed-letter neighbors by employing an eye-movement-contingent boundary change paradigm. In Experiment 3, readers received a parafoveal preview of a TL target word that was either (1) identical to the target word (e.g., calm as the preview of calm), (2) a TL-neighbor (e.g., clam) or (3) a substituted-letter (SL) control (e.g., chem). In Experiment 4, a further set of parafoveal preview conditions was explored. Across both experiments, readers' fixation durations on the target words were significantly longer when the parafoveal previews were substituted-letter nonwords than when they were TL neighbors, suggesting that TL neighbors (when presented in the parafovea) facilitate word recognition, rather than inhibit processing. Collectively, these experiments indicate that TL neighborhood interference effects do occur in normal silent reading, but these effects occur late and are influenced by sentence constraints.

Orientador: Luci Pastor Manzoli / Banca: Denise Margonari Favaro / Banca: Relma Urel Carbone Carneiro / Banca: Fátima Elisabeth Denari / Banca: Adriana do Carmo Bellotti / Resumo: A partir do século XXI as políticas públicas de inclusão da pessoa com deficiência se intensificaram para garantir o direito de um ensino de qualidade, acesso e permanência nas escolas. Após a promulgação da Política Nacional de Educação Especial na Perspectiva da Educação Inclusiva de 2008, as práticas pedagógicas de alfabetização e letramento, passaram a exercer um papel primordial no processo de ensino e aprendizagem dos alunos com deficiência intelectual. Neste sentido, a presente pesquisa tem como objetivo, identificar e analisar como se caracterizam as práticas pedagógicas para alunos com deficiência intelectual matriculados nos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental sob o olhar de teses e dissertações a partir da referida política. A coleta de dados foi realizada na Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações (BDTD), onde num primeiro momento, foi feita a seleção e leitura dos resumos que foram ao encontro do objetivo da pesquisa, e num segundo momento, a leitura por completo. Foram selecionadas para analise 8 produções acadêmicas, sendo 6 mestrados e 2 doutorados Os dados obtidos foram organizados, categorizados e distribuídos em quadros. Os resultados mostraram que as atividades de alfabetização e letramento trabalhadas pelos professores, são, na maioria das vezes, para preencher o tempo, sem finalidade, retiradas dos livros didáticos. Atividades baseadas no modelo de ensino tradicional, sem espaço para envolver o aluno com deficiência intelectual em situações... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Public policies on disabled people inclusion have been intensified to ensure their right to access, attend and continue a high-quality education from twenty-first century on. After the 2008 Special Education National Policy on the Inclusive Education was enacted, the alphabetization and literacy teaching practices have had an essential role in the learning and teaching process of intellectual disabled students. This study aimed to identify and analyze how the teaching practices for intellectual disabled students enrolled in the early years of elementary school are characterized upon dissertations and theses according to the aforesaid policy. The data was collected at the Brazilian Digital Library of Dissertations and Theses (Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações - BDTD). At first, abstracts, which met the study goal, were selected and read, Then, secondly, these abstracts were fully read. Out of these abstracts, eight academic productions were selected, six came from master programs and 2 from doctoral programs. The data collected were organized, categorized and distributed in tables. The results have shown the alphabetization and literacy activities used by teachers, are, mostly, meaningless, to spend time, and they have been taken from textbooks. Activities based on the traditional teaching model, which do not engage the intellectual disabled student in meaningful learning situations to foster his/her development. The results have also revealed teachers' ins... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

The purpose of the study was to determine whether or not elementary classroom teachers’ exploration of an integrated theoretical model of formative assessment would change participants’ understandings of formative assessment and whether or not participants would apply this newly-acquired knowledge to their classroom assessment practices. After exploring elements of formative assessment in a collaborative study group, participants applied new understandings to their classroom assessment practices. The model of formative assessment explored by the study group included these elements: the articulation of clear learning outcomes, the alignment of instruction and assessment to learning outcomes; the providing of feedback to students and using feedback to plan future instruction; and the involvement of students in classroom assessment practices. Previous research on formative assessment has demonstrated the importance of individual elements of formative assessment. This case study provided teachers with an integrated theoretical model that included all of the elements of formative assessment identified in the research literature and used this model as the basis for professional development to change teachers’ classroom practice. Data were gathered through surveys, study group transcripts, participant reflections, classroom observations, interviews with students and documents from individual classrooms. Data were analyzed using a constant comparative method in an effort to identify categories and themes that emerged for changes in teachers’ understandings and classroom practices for each of the elements of formative assessment. Results of the study indicate that the collaborative study group changed teachers’ understandings of the elements of formative assessment, the important relationships among the elements and the teachers’ classroom formative assessment practices. The collaborative study group also provided participants with a supportive environment in which to share their experiences as they attempted to implement new assessment practices in their classrooms.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / This study focused on 12th grade Chilean students' ability to produce locally coherent academic texts and on the cognitive basis that underlies this ability. Participants were Chilean students from the city of Santiago, who attended urban public schools, belonged to a low socioeconomic group, and had obtained average scores on the national literacy assessment (SIMCE). All the students in the study wrote argumentative texts in response to a writing prompt and answered a test of recognition of incoherent sequences. A sub sample wrote a second argumentative text while thinking aloud and, immediately after, they had a semi structured interview with the researcher in which the relationship between the ideas included in their texts was discussed. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used in order to analyze local coherence in students' written products, and the relation between these products and students' ability to recognize, explain and self-regulate local coherence during writing. Students who recognized most incoherent sequences were more able to explain local coherence relations, tended to self-regulate writing, and produced texts that were mostly coherent and that exhibited an incipient command of the resources associated to coherent academic writing. Students who recognized none or few incoherent sequences had trouble explaining local coherence relations, did not self-regulate writing, and produced texts that were mostly coherent but that exhibited poor command of the resources associated to coherence in academic writing. In addition, the majority of students in the high recognition group recalled some kind of instruction on local coherence, while the majority of students in the low recognition group could not remember receiving such instruction. Findings suggest that having command of the resources typical of oral language coherence suffices for composing mostly coherent texts, although such writing does not resemble the academic structures. Specifically, contents are not transformed by virtue of logical operators that could reflect a more analytical or critical thinking. It is suggested that being able to use local coherence resources typical of academic writing is associated to having specific knowledge and a self regulated behavior during the writing process.

Includes bibliographical references / The thesis researches literacy practices in South Africa's criminal justice system by focusing specifically on the production and flow of police dockets across institutional boundaries in a police station and regional courts renamed Blue Hills police station and Blue Hills regional courts in the Western Cape Province respectively. Through the use of ethnography, the production and flow of police dockets are tracked across three moments - Moment One, Moment Two and Moment Three - in the criminal justice system. The three moments also show how the production of the police docket allows humans and nonhumans to be displaced across these institutional boundaries. Apart from drawing on the New Literacy Studies (also referred to as Literacy Studies in this thesis), the research draws extensively on Actor Network Theory - a theory which argues that the social world and therefore reality are constructed through the creation of networks of associations or networks of relations consisting of human and nonhuman entities. In this study, these associations or relations are referred to as material - semiotic relations. When the relations between human and nonhuman entities achieve some form of stability, that is when they hold, they can have intended and unintended ordering effects on the social world. Therefore, the primary focus of the research is to understand how trans-contextual order is created by building the network of the criminal justice system - referred to as "the network" in this study - through the production of the police docket by police officers (Uniform Branch police officers and detectives) and state prosecutors. The three moments that are identified in the study highlight the complexity of the literacy practices which lead to the production and flow of the police docket across institutional contexts. These moments are snapshots of the possible ways in which the network can be built through assemblies of con figurations of material - semiotic relations. Moment One focuses on the opening of a police docket. During this moment the literacy practices between Uniform Branch police officers and detectives are highlighted when they attempt to classify the crime which should be recorded in the police docket after a member of the public visited the police station to report a possible crime. Moment Two deals with the investigation of crimes. This moment documents the literacy practices of detectives as they attempt to produce written witness statements for inclusion in the police docket from potential state witnesses. The literacy practices that are highlighted here focus on the strategies detectives employ to encode potential state witnesses with meaning and their strategies to ensure that witnesses do make it to court to act as spokespersons on behalf of the network and circulate in the network. Moment Three, the final moment, deals with how state prosecutors animate witnesses and their written witness statements in court so that the network can secure a successful prosecution. By highlighting the literacy practices and text production that characterize the three moments, the research concludes that network stability is contingent on three factors which are inter-related. The first, 'material durability', refers to the level at which material - semiotic relations are successful at staying intact. The second, 'strategic durability', refers to the successes of various strategies (which include specific literacy practices) employed by officials to ensure that entities in the network perform their specific functions in order to ensure trans-contextual stability. Finally, 'discursive stability' refers to institutional ways of measuring productivity in the criminal justice system and which must have trans - contextual reach and ordering effects on literacy and literacy practices across the three moments so that the network can achieve some form of stability.

Podium presentation on health literacy and interprofessional telehealth considerations.

This study was designed (1) to identify the phonemic fitness of selected graphemes, or, when necessary, the phonemic interrelationship between graphemes and phonograms, and (2) to develop phonic generalizations based upon this examination. For the study a computerized corpus of 17,211 words was used that was, with minimal modifications, originally developed for the Stanford Spelling Project. The respellings used in the Stanford study were, however, recoded to conform to the initial respellings found in the American Heritage Dictionary. After this recoding was completed, the words in the corpus were reorganized according to their frequency of occurrence. This reorganization enabled the researcher to analyze the high frequency words apart from those of lower frequencies. In addition, the minimal criterion accepted for letters or letter combinations to be considered phonemically fit was that at least 75 percent of the grapheme-phoneme correspondence was to be represented by at most two or, in the case of single vowels, three phonemes or phoneme combinations. A computer was used to get a listing of all of the words found in the corpus that contained specified letters or letter combinations. If phonemic regularity was noted in the listing for any particular grapheme, no further analysis was made. However, if an identified grapheme showed a lack of phonemic fitness, it was examined to determine if certain phonograms or letter combinations accounted for a portion of the irregularity. If such phonograms or letter combinations were found, they were treated apart from the grapheme which was in turn reexamined to determine its phonemic fitness. In all, 116 different graphemes and phonograms were identified that included single and adjacent vowels, vowel phonograms, single and compound consonant graphemes, and consonant related phonograms. Moreover, all but 18 of these were phonemically regular as governed by the objectives and limitations established for the study. Further examination revealed that the greatest number of high frequency words which were found for these 18 irregularities was, with two exceptions, 31. If these infrequent irregularities were excluded, the two primary irregularities that remained for the high frequency words included (1) the nonterminal single vowel o, and (2) the adjacent vowel combination ou (except the phonograms identified for this pair).

The report is organized into five chapters, as follows: • In Chapter I, I propose to research problems that women face in Pakistan resulting from gender inequalities. A review of the literature provides a framework for development that calls for a constant balancing of social, economic and environmental conditions in a local, regional and national context. Sustainable development requires conducive conditions for women in development, which relies on their education. Sustainable development policies and programs must concentrate on educating women to increase equity for sustainable development. Research objectives and methods of analysis are provided in which to evaluate the SAP's success in meeting goals to increase attainment of education for girls in Pakistan. • Chapter II provides a profile of Pakistan and its struggle with gender inequality, illustrated with tables of statistics and literacy rates prior to 1992, representing Pakistan's need and desire for sustainable development. Obstacles for women in development, such as living in rural locations or having a poor family, and limitations that some women face as a result of living within cultural and historical barriers, are also discussed. • Chapter III provides a discussion on the government's approach to increasingly high growth rates through the Social Action Program, implemented in 1993. International donors included the World Bank, United Nations, and Asian Development Bank, as well and others. • Chapter IV is a simple comparison of education in Pakistan before and after the SAP. Literacy and enrollment rates for boys and girls are compared to analyze changes. The Social Action Program is an umbrella program in Pakistan that targets women and children in development through health, education, and sanitation. The Government of Pakistan is responsible for implementation, evaluation and monitoring of all projects that lie within the parameters of the four program goals. One of these goals is education. It is considered by the government and donors to be of primary importance to the mission of the program. This section provides an evaluation of activity resulting from the SAP using indicators of women's literacy and girls' primary and secondary school enrollment since the program's implementation in 1993. Comparisons between indicators for girls and boys also illustrates the accomplishment of the program's mission to alleviate gender inequality in Pakistan. Indicators are presented in a manner that cuts across the dimensions of urban and regional differences, as well as differences between socio-economic categories. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

SammandragVi lever i en värld där texter och annan information finns runt oss hela tiden. Många är överens om att det därför krävs en annan skola än tidigare. Dock visar forskning att undervisning ofta ser likadan ut som den gjort tidigare. Mina erfarenheter säger att ett literacyperspektiv behöver komma in i skolans värld och detta är något som saknats på min VFU. För att komma ut på arbetsmarknaden och våga ha kvar literacyperspektiv som grund för min undervisning behöver jag övertyga mig om att styrdokument stödjer ett literacyperspektiv. Syftet med denna studie är att öka kunskapen om vad styrdokumenten säger om att arbeta utifrån ett literacyperspektiv. Studiens teoretiska utgångspunkter grundar sig i ett literacyperspektiv som utgår från ett sociokulturellt lärandeperspektiv. Studien tar upp tidigare forskning som lyfter värdet av att inkludera elevers vardag och att barn och unga kommer i kontakt med mängder av texter även utanför skolan. Studiens empiri har samlats in genom dokumentstudier på läroplanen, tillhörande kommentarmaterial till kursplanen i svenska, bedömningsstöd för åk 1 samt kartläggningsmaterial för förskoleklass.Undersökningens resultat visar att styrdokumenten stödjer en lärare att arbeta utifrån ett literacyperspektiv. Läroplanen lyfter vikten av att inkludera olika texter i undervisningen och att språket är med och bygger vår identitet vilket även ett literacyperspektiv innefattar. Det studerade kartläggningsmaterialet och bedömningsstödet har dock mer fokus på svenskämnet som ett färdighetsträningsämne och krockar med ett literacyperspektiv och de övriga styrdokumenten kan därför uppfattas peka åt olika håll.

Research findings indicate that many adolescents are struggling with reading. Although there is a great deal of research related to helping elementary age children to enhance their reading skills, there is less research regarding assistance for adolescent readers. Research findings also indicate the importance of the school principal in implementing, supporting, and supervising instruction. There is significantly less research available regarding processes that a principal can utilize to implement and support adolescent literacy practices. Five secondary school principals were interviewed in depth regarding how they implemented such practices. Seven Common Strands of implementation and support were found in a cross-case analysis. These Strands were also viewed through a sociocultural lens to determine the influence of socioculturalism on adolescent literacy.