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The goal of this case study of a mindful literacy teacher in a middle school social studies class was to describe the nature of one teacher's differentiated text choices in one seven week unit. The participant was nominated by an administrator, a district supervisor, a university professor, and the researcher based on characteristics of mindful literacy instruction. Classroom observations and teacher interviews described four differentiated text events: an historical fiction novel unit; primary source oral histories; expository non-fiction articles; and picture books, magazines, and an anthology set. Interview transcripts were coded using constant comparative analysis and revealed the teacher's belief in stories, student choice, her resistance to standardized testing, and her own teaching confidence and activist spirit. The discussion addresses the teacher's effectiveness in the areas of collaboration with students, the assignment of varied and plentiful texts, the expectation of high achievement for herself and students; and her effective management of the differentiated texts in the classroom. The researcher also concluded that this teacher did not have the expertise to diagnose or remediate basic reading deficits but her disposition in seeing herself as a reading teacher, challenging mandated curricula, and working to offer appropriate choices for all of her students supported her decision to offer differentiated text choices. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this project is to provide a useful model, the Concept Attainment Model in Mathematics, which implicates the concept attainment teaching method based on adjunct content-based instruction by using visuals and manipulatives in order to help ESL students be successful for both substantive content areas.

L’étude des propriétés et processus microphysiques caractérisant la phase glace permet de mieux définir le rôle des nuages dans le cycle de l’eau et sur bilan radiatif de l’atmosphère. Les modèles atmosphériques et les codes d’inversion des données de télédétection utilisent des paramétrisations établies à partir de mesures in situ. Ces mesures servent également des besoins industriels en lien avec la problématique du givrage en aéronautique. L’étude présentée se base sur les données de deux campagnes aéroportées réalisées dans le cadre de la collaboration internationale HAIC-HIWC, ciblant les zones à fort contenu en glace que l’on peut observe rau sein des systèmes convectifs à méso-échelle (MCS) tropicaux. Sur la question des relations « masse-diamètre » (m - D) d’abord, une nouvelle approche est présentée. Basée sur la résolution d’un problème inverse, elle permet de restituer la masse des cristaux à partir de mesures colocalisées classiques en s’affranchissant de la traditionnelle hypothèse de loi puissance, et montre que cette dernière ne permet pas de représenter correctement les propriétés massiques de populations de cristaux hétérogènes (morphologie et tailles différentes) typiques des MCS. La variabilité horizontale des distributions de tailles permet d’étudier le vieillissement de l’enclume d’un point de vue microphysique et de souligner le rôle essentiel du processus d’agrégation dans l’élimination des petits cristaux apportés dans la haute troposphère par la convection profonde et dans la formation d’agrégats supra-millimétriques, précurseurs glacés des précipitations stratiformes. Les relations m - D restituées permettent d’identifier des régimes microphysiques distincts et ouvre la voie aux développement d’une paramétrisation de la masse volumique des hydrométéores en fonction de critères environnementaux. / The detailed characterization of ice cloud microphysics is key to understand their role in theEarth’s hydrological cycle and radiation budget. The developement of atmospheric models and remote sensingalgorithms relies on parametrisations derived from in situ measurements. These measurements are also usedby the aviation industry to handle the problem of ice crystal icing. This PhD work presents an analysis of themass and size properties of ice crystals observed in high ice water content areas embedded in tropical mesoscaleconvective systems (MCS) during two airborne field campaigns of the HAIC-HIWC international project.A new approach is developped to derive mass-size relationships (m - D) from size distributions and icewater contents. The retrieval is formulated as an inverse problem which waives the power law constraint, aclassical assumption that proves to be an oversimplification when applied to heterogeneous populations of iceparticules typical of MCS anvils.The horizontal variability of size distributions and the aging of MCS anvils is described in terms of microphysicalprocesses. The importance of the aggregation growth process is emphasized as it efficiently removessmall ice particles brought into the upper troposphere by deep convection and significantly contributes to theformation of large agregates, precusor of the stratiform precipitations. The analysis of mass properties revealsthat distinctive microphysical regimes may be identified from the m-D relationship retrieved in various conditions.It paves the way toward a statistical model of the effective density of ice particles as a function of environmentalparameters.

In Grades 3 to 5 at a suburban southeastern elementary school, the percentage of students with disabilities (SWDs) who do not meet state standards in science and social studies is greater than that of their nondisabled peers. To address this disparity, district administrators required that proficiency ratings increase for SWDs without providing general education (GE) teachers with training. A qualitative bounded case study was used to understand how GE teachers constructed their knowledge of and met SWDs instructional needs and to understand GE teachers' needs as they worked toward meeting the district goals. Piaget's constructivist learning theory served as the conceptual framework for this study. A purposeful sample of 6 GE teachers, 2 each from Grades 3-5 whose classrooms included SWDs, volunteered to participate in open-ended interviews. Qualitative data were analyzed using provisional coding and pattern coding. A primary finding was that the participants identified teacher collaboration and professional development necessary to accommodate SWDs in the GE setting. This finding led to a recommendation that school leaders provide ongoing professional development for GE teachers as well as ongoing opportunities for collaboration between GE and special education teachers. These endeavors may contribute to positive social change by providing GE teachers instructional strategies and accommodations for meeting the learning needs of SWDs to increase the number and percentage of SWDs who meet the state standards and district goals in science and social studies.

Due to students not meeting minimum proficiency levels in reading, a central Florida middle school that was rated an A school for 4 years consecutively dropped to a B rating during the 2012-2013 school year and was 10 points away from dropping to a C rating in the 2013-2014 school year. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe classroom implementation of Internet technology in a middle school classroom in an attempt to address the steady decline in reading scores. Guided by Piaget, Dewey, and Vygotsky's social constructivist view of education, this study explored if and how teachers used Internet technology to complement their curricular content. Research questions addressed how teachers described their experiences with Internet technology versus traditional methods to teach those reading skills necessary for students to derive meaning from the material taught. A criterion sample of 30 middle school teachers who were certified in their content areas and who had incorporated literacy into instruction participated in semistructured interviews. Data were coded and organized by themes, which included comfort with the Internet, level of usage, and the need for professional development. Findings revealed that teachers often used Internet technology to address reading skills; however, they were not aware they needed to teach students how to evaluate sources of online information. Participants requested ongoing professional development in reading and on methods to critically evaluate information in a digital world. The findings from this study can be utilized by educators to provide professional development and to design lessons that will focus on these learning gaps, thereby deepening students' literacy and critical thinking skills and thus enacting positive social change for students.

The use of technology in assisting educators to use student data in well-devised ways to enhance the instruction received by students is gaining headway and the support of federal dollars across the nation. Since research has not provided insight as to whether or not reading coaches are using data technology tools with teachers, this mixed methods study sought to examine what behavioral intentions reading coaches have in using data technology tools with teachers, what variables may influence their behavioral intentions, and what trends may emerge in their views about using technology data tools with teachers. A mixed methods approach was deployed via a survey embedded in an email, and data from 61 Florida reading coaches from elementary, middle, and high schools in a large urban school district were examined using an adaptation of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The results showed that collectively all reading coaches have a high level of behavioral intentions towards using a data technology tool with teachers. The study also showed that elementary, middle, and high school reading coaches vary in their degree of behavioral intentions in using a data technology tool based on different variables. Trends in data showed that reading coaches think data technology tools are helpful, but that trainings are needed and that technology tools should be user-friendly. Discussion is provided regarding the implications of the study results for all stakeholders.

This investigation was designed to determine if teaching vocabulary through integrating English and Social Studies curricula would provide tenth grade students who are poor readers with strategies to improve their reading comprehension. The strategies used were designed to support struggling readers and English language development students to connect denotative and connotative meanings of words found in the novel Animal Farm to their social studies class' content.