This thesis looked at the effects of California's adopted scripted learning programs on students' motivation for reading. There is much research about the efficacy of these types of one-size-fits all programs, which claim to be on scientific research.

Submitted In Fulfillment Of The Requirements For The Degree Of Master Of Technology (Quality), Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2012. / Reading is fundamental to functioning effectively in today's society. Learners with poor reading abilities have low opinions of themselves and their abilities (Patil, Saraswathi and Padakannaya, 2009:93). Behavioural problems may arise as these learners feel isolated and frustrated. The development of learners’ literacy in South Africa as a developing country is accentuated by several challenges. Many learners in South Africa have difficulty understanding the language in which they are taught as they are not taught in their mother tongue. However, the language of instruction is not solely responsible for the poor performance in international reading tests and schooling in general. Learners are faced with socio-economic issues, very little or hardly any parental supervision and educators are faced with the challenge of finding reading methods and strategies suitable to improving reading. Learners in the foundation phase are explicitly taught reading skills. In the intermediate phase, learners are expected to apply the skills acquired in the foundation phase to access the curriculum. In reality, this is difficult to achieve. The focus of this study is on preparing current intermediate phase educators in the development of learner literacy by contributing possible strategies that will enable the improvement of the quality of intermediate phase reading. The study was conducted at primary schools to the north of Durban. A questionnaire was distributed to intermediate phase educators, including members of school management. Of the selected sample of 450, 366 of the respondents returned the questionnaire with no inaccuracies, declaring an 85% response rate. The Predictive Analytic Software (PASW) Version 18.0 was used to analyse the data collected from the responses. The results are presented in the form of graphs, cross tabulations and other figures. An analysis of the data revealed significant statistics from the different aspects explored (biographical data; factors impacting on reading literacy; language and reading instruction; strategies for teaching reading; library and computer resources; systems for improving reading quality; and homework). The study contributes to several academic disciplines and the development of society in general, as it proposes strategies and recommendations that may be implemented to improve the quality of intermediate phase reading, and thereby contribute to schooling experience in general. The study recommends that all stakeholders (home; school management; educators; and the department of education) be held accountable for the improvement of literacy in our country. Educators need to be trained in the teaching of reading and parents need to play a more active role in the learners’ lives. It is imperative that remedial educators and special personnel be employed by the department of education to assist learners with reading difficulties. The study further recommends that the time allocated for intermediate phase literacy education be reviewed. The reinstating of collapsed libraries is vital to improving the quality of reading. In addition, the administrative workload of educators requires re-examination in light of the poor results achieved in the national (ANA) and international (PIRLS) literacy programmes. / M

This study sought to determine if there were differences in the types of reading interests of seventh- and eighth-grade pupils associated with their racial origins, their socioeconomic status, or their school environments. It also sought to consider the strength of reading interest scores as related to other variables and to consider the relationship between these scores and the number of hours spent in reading and the change in amount of reading since the previous school year.

Twenty-four teachers completed questionnaires and demographic data forms to describe the types of books they chose most often, where they got them, how they selected them, and how important they felt it was to expose children to good literature. A criteria sheet was used to describe the types and currency of books in each center. The teachers used a variety of sources to select and obtain books. Most teachers knew how literature aids some aspect of development. Every type of book was represented in all collections, but poetry and wordless picture books were least represented.

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries. The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory. The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups. The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity. The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful. The study also shows that an integration of new media in the school and in the library is necessary if children's reading skills are to be improved.

An intervention, which targeted three- and four-year-old children's oral language, was developed for this study. The intervention was run over twice-weekly sessions, for ten weeks. Incorporating good Early Years practice, the first session in the week was a group shared storybook reading session with a puppet, where dialogic discussion took place and the children practised sequencing the story using visual prompts. The second weekly session consisted of planning, acting out and reviewing a planned pretend play episode based on the storybook which was read in that week's first session. Ninety-four children were randomly assigned to a control or treatment group and were tested at pre- and post-test on a battery of vocabulary and narrative assessments. The results of a Randomised Control Trial were positive in favour of the intervention. The most important of these results was a statistically significant effect on the receptive vocabulary of the children in the treatment group, with a large effect size, as measured by the standardised British Picture Vocabulary Scales (Dunn et al., 1997). There was also a significant effect on productive vocabulary, as measured by a Researcher-Designed Vocabulary Test (RDVT). This test was devised for the purpose of this study, testing one-word vocabulary, taken directly from the storybooks in the intervention. As this is not a norm-referenced, standardised test, caution is advisable in the interpretation of this result. A further positive effect concerned the narrative skills of the children in the treatment group, when compared to the children in a control group - the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) score was higher in the treatment group, with a medium effect size. By examining the intervention by Randomised Control Trial, this study responds to the call from Lillard et al (2013) for more experimental research on pretend play and narrative. The acknowledgement of the role of the adult in the intervention coupled with the positive effect on the children's MLU and receptive vocabulary mean that the intervention, with further development, has the potential to be used as a Professional Development tool for supporting language development in the Early Years in the UK, in the future.

Orientador: Germana Fernandes Barata / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-26T04:08:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Scalfi_GrazieleAparecidadeMoraes_M.pdf: 13101411 bytes, checksum: 00a2843d3941d4f144e71c98a9a9507d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: O objetivo principal deste estudo é analisar os livros infantis como instrumento para divulgação científica, em especial os livros com potencial para divulgar a fauna brasileira, e contrapor-se ao livro Mami o quê? - um título infantil e interativo sobre os mamíferos brasileiros, por meio de um estudo de recepção com crianças de 3 a 6 anos do Centro de Convivência Infantil (CECI) da Unicamp. Acredita-se que, quando bem estruturados, os livros infantis podem ser excelentes aliados na divulgação da ciência e que eles podem sensibilizar, desde cedo, o público em relação ao tema, favorecendo a popularização científica e a consolidação de uma cultura científica na sociedade. A leitura é um convite para a criança pensar e fazer novas perguntas, logo, um livro de divulgação científica para crianças não deve ser um tratado sobre um tema científico nem um livro de estudo. A criança não deve se sentir obrigada a ler, mas sim cativada. Adicionalmente, o Brasil é um dos países com maior diversidade biológica do planeta e, ainda assim, a fauna e a flora nativas são pouco conhecidas pela população brasileira. Um dos fatores que contribuem para este cenário é a influência que a mídia exerce pela veiculação de desenhos animados, filmes, jogos e livros infantis que, frequentemente, destacam os grandes mamíferos africanos. Neste cenário, os livros infantis mostram-se um instrumento eficaz para auxiliar na comunicação, introdução e apresentação, desde a infância, da importância do que é genuinamente brasileiro para, quem sabe, despertar para a importância de se preservar essas espécies. De abordagem qualitativa, a pesquisa utilizou-se da análise de conteúdo (BARDIN, 2011) na seleção de livros realizada, para verificar as estratégias adotadas pelos autores para divulgar os conhecimentos da ciência animal e avaliar a linguagem, o conteúdo e a imagem empregados, à luz da divulgação científica. Com um referencial teórico e sólido sobre a literatura infantil como ferramenta para a divulgação da ciência, foi possível avaliar o livro Mami o quê? por meio de atividades relacionadas ao tema e da inserção do exemplar no cotidiano das crianças, bem como, através da opinião dos pais e professores, tendo como instrumento os questionários. Esta pesquisa conclui que a literatura infantil pode ser aliada da divulgação da ciência, porém é preciso que os livros com este propósito se multipliquem. Quando o tema são os animais brasileiros, ainda são poucos os livros que se utilizam da divulgação científica para abordar o tema para crianças. Nesse contexto, o livro Mami o quê? apresentou potencial para divulgar a fauna brasileira, despertando o interesse das crianças, por meio de diferentes práticas. O livro não será capaz de suprir a carência de material sobre o tema ou ainda resolver a questão da divulgação da fauna nacional. Mas, pode contribuir para fortalecer iniciativas na área. Acredita-se que ainda são necessários esforços para produzir atividades que difundam a fauna brasileira, através de diferentes estratégias, tais como livros, filmes, desenhos e jogos. A fauna brasileira precisa ser "descoberta" para ser respeitada, valorizada e conservada / Abstract: The main objective of this study is to analyze children's books as a tool for scientific communication, especially the books with the potential to promote Brazilian fauna, and make a contraposition to the book Mami o quê? - an interactive children's title on Brazilian mammals, through a reception study with children from 3 to 6 years old, of Unicamp Center for Child Living (CECI). It is believed that, when properly structured, children's books can be great allies in the dissemination of science and they can earlier sensitize the public on the topic, favoring science popularization and the consolidation of a scientific culture in society. Reading is an invitation for the child think and ask new questions, so a book of science communication for children should not be a treatise on a scientific theme or a book study. The child should not feel obligated to read, but captivated to. Additionally, Brazil is among the countries with the greatest biodiversity on planet, and yet the native fauna and flora are little known by the Brazilian population. One of the contributing factors to this scenario is the influence that media exerts in placement of cartoons, movies, games and children's books, which often highlight the large African mammals. In this scenario, the children¿s books show to be an effective tool to assist in communication, presentation and introduction, since childhood, to the importance of what is genuinely Brazilian to, perhaps, awaken to the importance of preserving these species. With qualitative approach, the research used content analysis (BARDIN, 2011) in the selection of books carried out to verify the strategies adopted by authors to disseminate the knowledge of animal science and evaluate the used language, content and image, in the light of science. With a solid theoretical framework about children's literature as a tool for the dissemination of science, it was possible to evaluate the book Mami o quê? through activities related to the theme and with the copy inserted in the daily of children, as well as through the opinion of parents and teachers, with the questionnaires as instrument. This research concludes that children's literature can be combined with the dissemination of science, but is needed the multiplication of books with this purpose. When the topic is Brazilian animals, yet there are few books that use scientific publication to approach the issue for children. In this context, the book Mami o quê? has the potential to promote Brazilian fauna, attracting the interest of children, through different practices. The book will not be able to supply the lack of material on the subject or resolve the issue of disclosure of the national fauna. But, can contribute to strengthen initiatives in the area.. It is believed that efforts are still needed to produce activities that disseminate the Brazilian fauna, through different strategies, such as books, movies, cartoons and games. The Brazilian fauna needs to be "discovered" to be respected, valued and conserved / Mestrado / Divulgação Científica e Cultural / Mestra em Divulgação Científica e Cultural

This dissertation shows the ideas of Victorian England, 1850-1914, as reflected in Victorian children's literature. To establish the validity of studying children's literature as a guide to the Victorian age, it was necessary first to show that children's literature in those years reflected and promoted adult ideals. Sources used include not only works by established authors but also children's periodicals and transient writings like "penny dreadfuls." There are four background chapters: an introduction, a brief social history, a history of publishing for children, and an examination of Victorian children's authors. Six chapters examine Victorian children's literature in relation to specific historical themes: class structure; the social problems of poverty; temperance; morality, manners, religion, and science; patriotism; and natives, slavery, and missionaries in relation to imperialism. Many findings support accepted historical theories. Attitudes on social class revealed definite class separations, mobility, and obligations. Stories on poverty and child labor show Victorian concern, but suggest few solutions other than charity. Literary items on religion and morality reflect a dominance of evangelical values. There was a morality separate from religion, and it was not threatened by the new developing science; indeed, the materials examined reveal how Victorians tried to reconcile the new science with theology. Religious obligations helped to promote and justify English nationalism and imperialism. Victorian children's literature also shows clearly that English imperialism existed before the late Victorian era, a finding which supports the Robinson and Gallagher thesis. In a survey of selected periodicals from 1861 to 1886, the number of items concerning imperialism followed a continuous growth pattern. Social Darwinism became an element of imperialism later in the Victorian age. Items on religion as distinct from morality declined in number. This survey also showed that the number of literary items about social problems remained almost constant, a demonstration of the strength of the Victorian reform ethic.

This study provides quantitative and qualitative data about the effects of using children's literature with adolescents in a language classroom and the role of children's literature in students' second/foreign language development, including listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. The study presents qualitative data about the role of children's literature in developing more positive attitudes toward reading in the second/foreign language and toward reading in general. With literature being a model of a culture, presenting linguistic benefits for language learners, teaching communication, and being a motivator in language learning, this study presents empirical data that show that inclusion of children's literature in adolescents' second/foreign language classroom promotes appreciation and enjoyment of literature, enhances the development of language skills, stimulates more advanced learning, and promotes students' personal growth.

Creative dynamics and literature.