This dissertation seeks to add to our understanding of the faith development of college students by focusing on the transitional phases. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive and detailed description of the effects of liminality on the perceived faith development of twelve students attending a southern United Methodist Church-related college. Qualitative data analysis through the Faith Development Interview Guide (FDIG) was used to gather and compose the data in a desirable format. The primary data were generated through interviews with each of twelve respondents (six males and six females). Secondary data from document analysis provided information about the context of the study (e.g., institutional setting, personal reflections from respondents, etc.). Findings from the research study identified how the respondents described their faith development and how liminality helped them to experience and better understand the transformation of their faith. The source of this study included primary information from oral interviews, secondary literature, including theories of development, and scholarly work from the fields of cultural anthropology, psychology, and theology. The author's analysis of the various sources resulted in a thesis that conveys as fully as possible the dynamic nature that liminality has on the faith development of college students. The research question that provided direction for the study was: 'How can liminality help students to explain and understand the transformation of their worldviews (faith expressions) at a small liberal arts United Methodist Church-related college?' James Fowler's theory of faith development and his FDIG were used as practical instruments to collect and analyze the data.

Psychologists have proposed that schools should teach for wisdom, but this proposal has rarely been investigated. The present study examines secondary school English language arts as a site of wisdom learning. This qualitative study investigates the instructional goals and beliefs of 16 secondary English teachers (8 beginner, 8 experienced). Interviews were analysed using techniques based in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results are discussed in light of psychological research, studies of English teaching, and the Ontario curriculum. Some elements of wisdom teaching appear to be supported in English education. Teachers connected literature teaching and classroom practices to students' life learning, emphasizing life themes, connections to self and experience, self-reflective learning, and individual needs. Experienced teachers frequently made direct connections between life/wisdom learning and student engagement, while beginners voiced concerns about negotiating supportive student- teacher relationships. Implications for proposals to teach for wisdom in schools are discussed, including a possible role for critical literacy.

Psychologists have proposed that schools should teach for wisdom, but this proposal has rarely been investigated. The present study examines secondary school English language arts as a site of wisdom learning. This qualitative study investigates the instructional goals and beliefs of 16 secondary English teachers (8 beginner, 8 experienced). Interviews were analysed using techniques based in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results are discussed in light of psychological research, studies of English teaching, and the Ontario curriculum. Some elements of wisdom teaching appear to be supported in English education. Teachers connected literature teaching and classroom practices to students' life learning, emphasizing life themes, connections to self and experience, self-reflective learning, and individual needs. Experienced teachers frequently made direct connections between life/wisdom learning and student engagement, while beginners voiced concerns about negotiating supportive student- teacher relationships. Implications for proposals to teach for wisdom in schools are discussed, including a possible role for critical literacy.

This thesis investigated the testing effect, which is the tendency of testing to enhance learning and memory retention. Specifically, the thesis examines the extent to which test-induced retention benefits extend to the questions as well as the answers; are these benefits symmetrical? The results in the laboratory experiment (Experiment 1) demonstrated that the symmetry in retention benefits is highly dependent on the accuracy in the initial test. For the items students answered correctly in the initial test, the retention benefit was found to be symmetrical across the questions and answers supporting the retrieval hypothesis of the testing effect. However, for initially incorrect items, the retention performance was substantially better for the questions than the answers suggesting an asymmetrical effect from testing, a result that is also consistent with the retrieval hypothesis. These results were replicated using educationally-relevant materials with a delay up to five and a half months in two hybrid studies combining actual classroom experiences with controlled assessments in the laboratory (Experiment 2A & 2B). A series of follow-up studies were conducted to examine the difference in retention performance of the questions and the answers for the initial incorrect items. Particularly, the experiments focused on investigating various factors that might contribute to or eliminate the difference in retention performance, including prior study (Experiment 3), verification feedback (Experiment 4A & 4B) and answer feedback (Experiment 5). The thesis also touched upon various issues related to the temporal dimension of the testing effect. The previous notion that testing slows down forgetting rate is not supported by the data. Instead, testing seems to provide a short-term insulation against immediate forgetting, but then memory for the tested materials decays in the same way as the non-tested materials.

We examined the relationship between orthographic processing and spelling in French immersion children. Study 1 included 148 first graders and they were assessed on orthographic processing and spelling in English and French. In Study 2, we followed 69 second graders for two years. Orthographic processing and spelling in English and French were administered in second and third grade. In Study 3, we analyzed the spelling errors made by the third graders in Study 2. In Study 1, we found a within-language relationship in English and French between orthographic processing and spelling. Cross-language transfer from French orthographic processing to English spelling was also observed. In Study 2, Grade 2 English spelling predicted gains in Grade 3 English and French orthographic processing. Study 3 showed that children made transfer errors when spelling in English and French. Overall, the current research highlights the importance of orthographic processing and spelling in French immersion children.

The current study examined the reading strategies of 19 bilingual undergraduate students who varied in reading proficiency (good or average) and language background (Chinese or Spanish). Using the think-aloud method, students’ reading strategies were measured and compared to determine whether strategy use differed as a function of reading proficiency, language background, and/or text level. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted to corroborate the findings obtained from the think-aloud protocols. Results from this study suggest that reading proficiency affects strategy use at the syntactic level, whereas language background affects strategy use at the vocabulary level. These findings have significant implications in education, particularly in the area of English language teaching. Students should be encouraged to use their first language reading skills when reading English text, as it facilitates their comprehension and improves their English literacy development.

The phrase "opportunities to learn" (OTL) is most commonly interpreted in institutional, or inter-individual, terms but it can also be viewed as a cognitive, or intra-individual, phenomenon. How student learning heterogeneity (LH) - learning differences manifested when children's understanding is later assessed - is understood varies by OTL interpretation. In this study, I argue that the cognitive underpinning of learning disability, learning difficulty, typical achievement, and gifted achievement in mathematics is not well understood in part because of the ambiguity of LH assumptions in previous studies. Data from 104,315 Ontario students who had responded to provincially-mandated mathematics tests in grades 3, 6, and 9 dataset were analyzed using latent trait analysis (LTM) and latent class analysis (LCA). The tests were constructed to distinguish four achievement levels per grade and, either five curriculum strands (grades 3 and 6), three strands (grade 9 applied) or four strands (grade 9 academic). Best-fitting LTM models reflected 3- or 4-factors (grade 9 applied and grades 3, 6, 9 academic, respectively). Best-fitting LCA solutions reflected 4- or 5-classes (grade 3, 6 and grade 9 applied, academic, respectively). There were differences in relative proportions of students who were distributed across levels and classes. Moreover, grade 9 models were more complex than the reported four achievement levels. To explore intrinsic modeled results further, latent factors were plotted against latent classes. Implications of institutional versus cognitive interpretations are discussed.

Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP) 2007 reading ability item data and contextual data on reading strategies were analyzed to investigate the relationship between self-reported reading strategies and item difficulty. Students who reported using higher- or lower-order strategies were identified through a factor analysis. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether students with the same underlying reading ability but who reported using different reading strategies found the items differentially difficult. Differential item functioning (DIF) analyses identified the items on which students who tended to use higher-order reading strategies excelled, which were selected response items, but students who preferred using lower-order strategies found these items more difficult. The opposite pattern was found for constructed response items. The results of the study suggest that DIF analyses can be used to investigate which reading strategies are related to item difficulty when controlling for students’ level of ability.

This study uses latent class analysis and latent transition analysis to model and compare patterns of offending over time for males and females by: (1) identifying qualitative dimensions of offending; (2) modeling how patterns of offending change over time; and (3) exploring factors related to patterns of offending. This is a secondary analysis of data from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transition and Crime, a longitudinal study consisting of a cohort of about 4,000 young people from secondary schools in the City of Edinburgh who responded to questionnaires administered between 1988 and 2001, when they were about 12, 13, 14, and 15 years old. Previous studies of offending have used trajectory modeling to explore the course of offending from onset to termination, but the models are generally based on a count of types of offences aggregated across individuals over time, making it difficult to determine whether individuals exhibit more versatility or specialization in offending or switch offences from one point in time to another. In addition, most of the studies on patterns of offending have focused primarily on males. An understanding of patterns of offending over time for both males and females is important for the design and selection of developmentally appropriate prevention/treatment strategies. The present study adds to the literature by (1) further exploring the small and understudied literature on offence transitions; (2) examining more closely the development of female offending separately from and in relation to male offending; and (3) exploring a range of factors (criminogenic and non-criminogenic) related to the development of offending for both males and females. While the same number of qualitative dimensions (latent classes) characterised male and female offending in this study, there were some structural differences. There was also evidence of shifts in the qualitative dimensions for males and females over time. Finally, those factors classified as criminogenic were more likely to differentiate among the latent classes than those classified as non-criminogenic.

The phrase "opportunities to learn" (OTL) is most commonly interpreted in institutional, or inter-individual, terms but it can also be viewed as a cognitive, or intra-individual, phenomenon. How student learning heterogeneity (LH) - learning differences manifested when children's understanding is later assessed - is understood varies by OTL interpretation. In this study, I argue that the cognitive underpinning of learning disability, learning difficulty, typical achievement, and gifted achievement in mathematics is not well understood in part because of the ambiguity of LH assumptions in previous studies. Data from 104,315 Ontario students who had responded to provincially-mandated mathematics tests in grades 3, 6, and 9 dataset were analyzed using latent trait analysis (LTM) and latent class analysis (LCA). The tests were constructed to distinguish four achievement levels per grade and, either five curriculum strands (grades 3 and 6), three strands (grade 9 applied) or four strands (grade 9 academic). Best-fitting LTM models reflected 3- or 4-factors (grade 9 applied and grades 3, 6, 9 academic, respectively). Best-fitting LCA solutions reflected 4- or 5-classes (grade 3, 6 and grade 9 applied, academic, respectively). There were differences in relative proportions of students who were distributed across levels and classes. Moreover, grade 9 models were more complex than the reported four achievement levels. To explore intrinsic modeled results further, latent factors were plotted against latent classes. Implications of institutional versus cognitive interpretations are discussed.