Although researchers have identified the positive relationship between students academic literacy learning and dialogic discussiontalk about texts in which students build on and transform each others ideasthis pattern of discourse occurs rarely in most secondary English classrooms. Promising research on the varied multimodal literacies in which adolescents are engaged in their out-of-school lives suggests that these literacies may inform academic literacy practices such as dialogic discussions of literature, but little is known about how such literacies might be leveraged to make academic literacy instruction more effective. This dissertation study identified ways in which students out-of-school and multimodal literacies could be leveraged to shape their participation in dialogic discussions of literature in one secondary English classroom. To that end, this study comprised an empirical investigation of students participation in dialogic discussion after completing either collaborative multimodal or collaborative unimodal projects, and traced focal students participation across small group and whole class discourse contexts to investigate whether and how student learning was facilitated through multimodality. Drawing on classroom discourse analysis and ethnographic data collection techniques, this comparative study of two sections of one 12th-grade English course explored the centrality of semiotic mediation and transmediation as these processes supported students participation in dialogic discussions. Findings support the use of collaborative multimodal instructional activities to facilitate students internalization of dialogic discourse norms and scaffold students participation in discussions across discourse contexts.

This study examines the life histories of three African American social studies teachers, focusing on the evolution and changes in their identities, perspectives, and attitudes related to their profession and instructional practice. In addition, the study addresses the significance of the teachers racialized experiences as African Americans and how these experiences influence their use of culturally relevant pedagogy and other culturally responsive instructional strategies to teach their African American students. In the context of this study of three African American social studies teachers, critical race theory is used to acknowledge the teachers life experiences with racism and the ways in which the teachers combat and address racism and oppressive mainstream educational ideologies, by sharing their counter-stories of experience in educational scholarship and their daily classroom teaching. A life history methodological approach was used to collect and interpret meaning from the narrative life stories of the three African American social studies teachers. The themes that emerge from the teachers life stories focus on the teachers beliefs and practices of culturally relevant pedagogy; the teachers beliefs and practices of African-centered pedagogy; and the teachers emancipatory teaching regarding racism in society and education. The results of this study have implications for the practice and research of African American teachers philosophies and pedagogies; practice and research of culturally relevant teaching in social studies; and social studies teacher education.

This dissertation reports on a study of the four most widely-used10th grade literature textbooks in terms of the opportunities they provide for students to engage in coherent English language arts curricular units in which the texts, questions, and tasks provide opportunities for students to develop their own text-based interpretations and arguments, engage in focused inquiry about individual texts, and build conceptual understanding of overarching unit or text-specific concepts/questions. Data included the texts, questions, and tasks in two units per textbook, a short story unit and persuasion unit. Data analysis focused on (a) how the texts, questions, and tasks in each unit were structured to provide coherent learning opportunities that allow for students to build conceptual understanding of unit and text-specific concepts/questions, and (b) the extent to which texts and post-reading questions and tasks provide opportunities for students to develop their own text-based interpretations and arguments. The findings from this study show that despite all units including texts, questions, and tasks that cohere around overarching unit or text-specific concepts/questions, units are not structured to provide students with coherent learning opportunities that will allow them to build their conceptual understanding of unit or text-specific concepts/questions. This is due to the plethora of questions and tasks that are unrelated to the unit or text-specific concept/question or to each other. Additionally, findings show that many of the texts, especially in the persuasion units, do not provide opportunities for readers to develop multiple text-based interpretations and arguments about the ideas, arguments, characters, and events. Finally, findings show that the majority of post-reading questions in all four textbooks are recitation questions that have or assume one correct response. The findings from this study suggest that preservice and inservice educators must prepare teachers to use and modify literature textbooks in ways that are shown to improve student learning. Moreover, time must be provided in schools for teachers to work with colleagues to design instructional units that modify rather than rely on textbook units. Finally, findings from this study suggest that research is needed on how teachers use and what teachers learn from textbooks.

The important role of beliefs in the learning and teaching of mathematics has been largely acknowledged in the literature. Pre-service teachers, in particular, have been shown to possess mathematical beliefs that are often traditional in nature (i.e. viewing teachers as the transmitters of knowledge and students as the passive recipients of that knowledge). These beliefs, which are formed long before the pre-service teachers enter their teacher education programs, often provide the foundation for their future teaching practices. An important role of teacher education programs, then, is to encourage the development (or modification) of beliefs that will support the kind of (reform) mathematics instruction promoted in these programs. In this dissertation I explored the impact of different experiences within teacher education programs, particularly those related to mathematics courses, on the mathematical beliefs of pre-service elementary teachers. This exploration was structured around 3 interrelated strands of work. The first strand drew from the existing literature to illuminate the concept of beliefs and identify ways in which teacher education programs may influence and promote change in the beliefs of pre-service teachers. This review also highlighted the need to further investigate the role and impact of mathematics courses for pre-service teachers. The second strand introduced an analytic framework to examine the different views about mathematics promoted in textbooks used in mathematics courses. The findings demonstrated that the linguistic choices made by textbook authors may promote different views about mathematics and, as a result, create different learning opportunities for pre-service teachers. These findings may have several implications for textbook authors and those in teacher education programs who make decisions about textbook adoption. Finally, the third strand investigated the impact of the curriculum materials and instruction in a research-based mathematics course on the beliefs of 25 pre-service elementary teachers. The findings showed that while beliefs are often highly resistant to change, it is possible to motivate change during a single mathematics course. Specifically, the nature of the curriculum materials and the role of the teacher educator in the course were found to have an important impact on the mathematical beliefs of the pre-service teachers.

An increased emphasis on the use of technology and the focus on multiliteracies in the classroom has great implications for both teachers and students regarding the expectation that all students will become skilled and critical users of computers and other technology for literacy-related tasks. Students who are braille readers use assistive technology not only to engage in literacy tasks (such as creating print documents) but also to access the general curriculum. For all of its acknowledged importance, there is little research on the ways that technology has changed the reading and writing practices of students who use braille, nor is there much research on how assistive technology is learned by students with visual impairments. A mixed methods study was conducted to investigate current use of paper braille and assistive technology among students aged 16-22 who read braille, and the students' attitudes toward braille and technology as tools for classroom learning in high school and college. The first phase of the study consisted of 12 semi-structured interviews of students around the United States. These interviews were coded for themes, and quotes from the interviews were used to create a Likert-scale survey. In the second phase of the study, 77 students participated in the survey, indicating their agreement or disagreement with the statements on the survey. Survey data were analyzed for frequencies and percentages of responses, and relationships between variables such as grade level, age, primary medium, and other factors were explored. Results of the study indicated the changing nature of how students use various tools and select approaches to completing their class work, and the importance for students of being able to make choices regarding tools and strategies. Implications for teacher preparation and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of text genre on student learning from science text, using science-related traditional informational and poetic informational texts, with fifth-graders. Four texts were used: a traditional informational text about caves, a poetic informational text about caves, a traditional informational text about mountains, and a poetic informational text about mountains. One group of students worked with the traditional informational cave text and the poetic information mountain text, while a second group worked with the traditional informational mountains text and the poetic informational caves text. After reading each text, students completed comprehension questions and a sorting task involving the main concepts of each text. Results indicated that genre was not a factor in student comprehension of science text. Rather, it appears that student reading ability and student knowledge of the text topic may have influenced student comprehension. Study results might be interpreted as an indication that in a classroom, some students might learn better from poetic texts, and that a variety of text types may be useful.

This case study examined the overarching approaches to second language (L2) reading instruction reflected in the Malaysian EFL secondary curriculum and how well this curriculum prepares students for tertiary reading in EFL. The Malaysian context was chosen because it highly values EFL instruction and has many similarities with other English as Foreign Language (EFL) countries, in terms of EFL reading issues at the tertiary level. The research questions for this study included: What types of reading tasks are reflected in the Malaysian EFL secondary reading curriculum? What types and length of reading passages are used in the Malaysian Form Five English language textbook? What levels of cognitive demand of the reading tasks are reflected in the Malaysian EFL secondary reading curriculum? What types of learner roles are reflected in the Malaysian EFL secondary reading curriculum? This explorative study used document reviews as the primary data collection and analysis method. The Malaysian EFL Secondary Curriculum and the EFL secondary textbook were analyzed using a revision of Richards and Rodgerss (2001) framework for analyzing EFL teaching. The findings indicate that the Malaysian EFL secondary reading curriculum frequently uses reading as an explicit skill to achieve the listed learning outcomes in the EFL Secondary Curriculum. Nonetheless, the curriculum is developed based on the cognitive information processing theory of SLA, Top-Down theory of L2 reading reflecting Non-Interactive Whole Language instruction as well as learner roles that are primarily in the form of individual tasks. The findings on passage analysis show that the EFL textbook primarily uses narrative passages with the majority of passages below grade-level length. The curriculum, however, emphasizes reading tasks that require high cognitive demand as well as important types of reading tasks.

This study was designed to investigate the effectiveness of a rich instructional program on the vocabulary acquisition of three-, four-, and five-year-old Dual Language Learners (DLLs). The lead teacher of a private preschool in western Pennsylvania, five children who were native speakers of English, and 16 DLLs who speak Kirundi, Burmese, Nepali, a combination of Ahiska Turkish and Russian, Karen, and a combination of Karen and Burmese, as well as each childs primary caregiver participated in the study. The children received rich instruction in small groups in three four-day blocks. Five sophisticated vocabulary words from authentic childrens literature were targeted during each four-day instructional block. Two control instructional sessions were included in the study to compare the childrens word learning based on typical instruction of text-based words in the classroom, to word learning after engaging in rich instructional activities. The childrens understanding of each set of five target words was evaluated using two researcher-designed vocabulary measures after the fourth day of instruction. The childrens baseline receptive vocabulary skills in English, baseline vocabulary in their home language, the number of months that they lived in the U.S., their home language, and the frequency of book reading in the home were also examined to identify other factors that might explain differences in word learning. Results suggested that the strategies and activities included in the rich instructional program were effective in increasing the childrens knowledge of sophisticated English words. Among the 21 participants, the children who demonstrated the most notable gains in word learning included those in the older age group. Results also suggested that children who had lived in the U.S. longer demonstrated higher scores on the verbal portion of the rich instruction posttests. In addition, children who demonstrated understanding of more English words at the start of the study earned higher scores on the picture portion of each posttest.

In this study, a dynamic assessment was used to measure the morphological analysis skills of participating sixth graders. The primary aim of this research was to examine the utility of this dynamic assessment and specifically to identify whether this measure can differentiate among students based on reading proficiency. Twenty-seven participants, including three identified as needing special education services, underwent two testing sessions. Four assessments were administered: a standardized measure of receptive vocabulary, an oral reading fluency task, and two measures of morphological knowledge, one static in nature and the other a dynamic task which utilizes a standardized graduated prompting approach. Scores on a standardized reading outcome measure were also obtained for each participant. Several significant results can be drawn from this study. Evidence was generated that the dynamic task had high estimates of internal consistency and seemed to perform similarly to other measures of morphological problem-solving found in the literature. Correlations between the dynamic task and measures of vocabulary knowledge and reading fluency were moderate to large in size and positive, also making it consistent with other studies and suggesting that the dynamic measure captures skills related to these critical literacy constructs. Other interesting findings occurred in this study which extend our understanding of the role of morphological problem-solving in reading performance. First, the dynamic task emerged from the analyses as a potentially useful screening measure, capable of differentiating sixth graders at risk for reading difficulty and including procedures and content more sensitive than a static measure of morphological knowledge. The predictive validity of the DATMA was also compared to the oral reading fluency task, a commonly used reading screening measure. Results showed that the dynamic measure added significantly to the prediction of reading outcomes. Exploratory analyses examined the use of the dynamic assessment as a supplemental screening measure to the oral reading fluency task. The dynamic assessment reduced the number of false positives, and in some cases, predicted reading outcomes as well as a combination of the two measures.

There is a need for classroom research that examines the impact of task-based instruction on second/foreign language learning in a real classroom practice (Skehan, 2007). Using the quantitative data obtained from a pre-test, an immediate post-test, and a one-month-later delayed post-test with Thai FL learners of English for business purposes, this study investigated how and to what extent a task-based course using sociocultural approach in a Thai university classroom helped students improve and retain their business English ability. Considering each learner as an active agent with unique historical bearings and learning motives and goals, this study also used the qualitative data obtained from five focal participants to address the question of what activities looked like in task-based instruction. Using a case study and activity theory as analytical framework, the qualitative data were collected from a questionnaire, stimulated recall interviews, researchers observation notes, the post-task interviews, and the final interview. The quantitative results revealed a significant difference between the scores of the pre-test and the post-test implying that there was an improvement in the business English ability of the subjects in those six tasks. A significant difference was also found between the scores of the post-test and the delayed post-test implying that there were both the retention and an increase of their business English ability. The significant improvement of the students test scores resulted from task familiarity, task internalization, and the influential roles of motives and affect. The qualitative findings showed that (1) the participants activities differed across tasks and time. (2) Four patterns of assistance were found, but they were not stable within pairs and across tasks. The pairs that demonstrated patterns of Collaborative and Expert/Novice were more successful than Dominant/Dominant and Dominant/Passive. (3) Participants successful performance were mostly reported as being influenced by themselves as subjects, objects that motivated them to complete the course, the teacher and their partners in division of labor, and the tools they used to complete the tasks. They were less influenced by the rules and the community. (4) Students joined the course with similar and different motives, goals, and motivation. They shifted and were transformed.