This study was an investigative, whole class descriptive research, on the development of twenty sixth graders' understanding of fractions as they interacted with physical referents, hands-on task-based activities and activities that model real life situations during eight weeks of a teaching sequence. The study was conducted in a metropolitan school situated in southeast Florida. The teaching sequence consisted of 12 task-based activities that spanned 20 sessions with each session lasting for approximately 60 minutes. Data was collected through audio- and video-recording, in addition to the numerous written tasks. The task-based activities that the students were involved with during this study were analyzed to gain an insight into their understanding of fractions in the context of subdividing, comparing and partitioning of continuous and discrete models and the connections they made with the fraction ideas generated through these activities. The study also examined how these students make sense of fractions and investigated how their performance differed when fractions were presented using different models. Herscovics and Bergeron's (1988) extended model of understanding, and the partitioning strategies identified by Charles and Nason (2000) and Lamon (1996) provided the theoretical framework through which the investigation was explored. Results from the study revealed that the participants exhibited an understanding of unit and non-unit fraction based on the components of the above-mentioned model of understanding. The students also displayed a number of different partitioning strategies. The knowledge growth that was evident in the whole class confirms earlier studies as to the significant role that partitioning plays in the basic development of the fraction concept. Although discrete models were used by the students, a majority of the students exhibited a preference for using continuous models as forms of reference for given fractions. The students appreciated working with fractions that model real world situations. Preliminary findings from this study seem to indicate that students should be introduced to fraction concepts via partitioning activities. The partitioning activities should be introduced in grades earlier than sixth grade. Further research can be undertaken to investigate the role partitioning activities play in the development of students' ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Middle and Secondary Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2005. / Date of Defense: October 12, 2005. / Repartitioning, Manipulatives, Middle School Mathematics, Rational Numbers, Partitioning, Unitizing / Includes bibliographical references. / Elizabeth Jakubowski, Professor Directing Dissertation; Florentina Bunea, Outside Committee Member; Leslie Aspinwall, Committee Member; Maria L. Fernandez, Committee Member.

This study created a model to assess the general retirement literacy and level of intention to save for retirement of recent Millennial college students about to graduate from four-year public universities in the United States. The study sought to answer the questions: How prepared are students to make informed and effective financial decisions related to their retirement at the point where they begin their careers? Which factors influence levels of preparation? What are the levels of intention for these students regarding retirement investment? Identifying the segments of the new college graduate population that are particularly unprepared to act on retirement financial decisions is the first step toward intervening in a persistent and growing problem. Higher education administrators equipped with this information, as with existing efforts in student retention, have the ability to develop targeted strategies to improve educational outcomes. The theory of Optimal Retirement Investment is advanced as a result of the study. Conducted at two large four-year public universities, this study confirmed previous academic and popular observations that students are unprepared and will likely under-save for retirement. The study employed a quantitative causal comparative methodology and included the development of an online survey and two stochastic simulation models. The data generated from the survey and models were analyzed through reliability analysis to develop sub scales, and correlation and multiple regression analysis to identify factors influencing retirement literacy, retirement intention, and ultimately projected retirement savings balances. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2010. / Date of Defense: May 13, 2010. / Retirement, Retirement Planning, Millennials, College, Retirement Adequacy, Social Security, Optimal / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert A. Schwartz, Professor Directing Dissertation; David J. Cooper, University Representative; Jon C. Dalton, Committee Member; Shouping Hu, Committee Member.

The present study examined tongue strength and speech characteristics in six individuals with Parkinson disease across two sessions of approximately 20 months. The Iowa Oral Performance Instrument was used to measure tongue strength. In addition, speech samples were recorded and rated for respiration, articulation, resonance, and phonation by five speech-language pathologists experienced in the assessment and treatment of dysarthria. A Wilcoxon signed ranks test was used to compare tongue strength measures across the sessions. Wilcoxon signed ranks tests were also conducted to compare the judges' perceptual ratings over time. Results revealed a significant reduction in tongue strength at the second session. Perceptions of speech characteristics specifically, consonant imprecision, vowel imprecision, rate, and overall speech also demonstrated a consistent pattern of degradation over time, though those changes were not statistically significant. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Communication Disorders in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2006. / Date of Defense: June 29, 2006. / Perceptual Speech, Reduced Tongue Strength, Iopi, Degenerative Disease / Includes bibliographical references. / Julie Stierwalt, Professor Directing Thesis; Leonard LaPointe, Committee Member; Gary Heald, Committee Member.

Data suggests that a significant loss of African American students from STEM majors occur between their freshmen and sophomore year. This attrition corresponds to the time period when students encounter the calculus sequence. For this reason, calculus persists as a serious barrier preventing African American students from entering STEM fields. There has been a dearth of research studies on how African American students learn or engage in the learning of calculus. In this study, I developed cases describing two African American participants – Matt and Danny- and their methods used to complete tasks and create meaning for the graphs of functions and their derivatives. Three research questions were investigated: 1. What is the role of graphic representations in African American male community college students' construction of the derivative in calculus? 2. How do African American male community college students synthesize graphic and analytic meaning of the derivative in calculus? 3. What pedagogical approaches are the most effective in assisting African American students with visual understanding of derivative graphs? During the task-based clinical interviews, the participants were presented with both analytic tasks and graphic tasks and asked to calculate derivatives when presented with analytic tasks (symbols) and to draw derivative when presented with the graphs as I sought to gain understanding of the mathematical processes. The participants' understanding of the derivative was different because of their preference for mathematical processing. Matt relied on analytic processing and symbolic representation. His understanding of the derivative merely involved the manipulation of formulas, which is dominated by most college mathematics examination. Danny relied on a combination of analytic processing and geometric processing and preferred to primarily operate on graphic representations. His understanding of the derivative was associated with both analytic representations (formulas) and graphic representation. This study found that the participants' knowledge was strongly associated with their mathematical processing capabilities. Matt's overreliance on his memory and analytic thinking impeded his understanding of derivative graphs. This one-sided thinking caused Matt's knowledge (procedural and conceptual) to be disconnected and only understood how to complete tasks when asked questions in the right context. Danny's harmonic thinking enabled him to complete tasks with much less difficulty than Danny. Danny's flexibility with his thinking allowed him to understand the changes in the slope of the tangents of graph when he was not presented with a formula to associate with the graphs. Both participants would frequently use verbal –description to aid their understanding of the behavior of derivative graphs when their analytic and visual thinking would fail. The study demonstrates that using graphical representation for functions and their derivative have the potential for producing richer understanding of the concept of the derivative. It also demonstrates that some African American students need further understanding of graphs with a cusp, a sharp corner, a vertical line, vertical asymptotes, or any other discontinuity. It also shows that students are able to connect their procedural knowledge with their conceptual knowledge when students are able to work between both graphic representation and analytic representations. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Teacher Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2011. / Date of Defense: June 8, 2011. / African American Male, Calculus, Mathematics Learning, Community College Students / Includes bibliographical references. / Leslie N. Aspinwall, Professor Directing Dissertation; Kenneth Shaw, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Peter Easton, University Representative; Elizabeth Jakubowski, Committee Member.

The aim of this study was to explore the foreign language reading anxiety among learners of Chinese in colleges in the United States. Early studies on foreign language anxiety had an obvious focus on the language skill of speaking (e.g., Aida, 1994; Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope, 1986; Phillips, 1992; Young, 1986) and the foreign language anxiety study related to other language skills such as reading, listening and writing have not drawn researchers' attention until very recently (Cheng, Horwitz & Schallert, 1999; Saito et al., 1999; Vogely, 1998). Foreign language reading anxiety is a construct that is related to but distinct from general foreign language anxiety (Saito, Horwitz, & Garza, 1999; Sellers, 2000; Shi & Liu, 2006). Alphabetic and syllabic target languages such as English, Spanish, and Japanese have been studied in the foreign language reading anxiety research but logographic language has rarely been included. By including Chinese, a logographic language, as a target language in research on the foreign language reading anxiety, this study intended to expand the understanding of the nature of foreign language reading anxiety and also the reading process of Chinese as a foreign language. According to the sociocognitive perspective of reading (Bernhardt, 1991), reading is a meaning-reconstruction process where readers interact with not only the text-based components but also the extra-text components of a reading passage. Text-based components are such as word recognition, phonemic/graphemic decoding, and syntactic features. In reading a Chinese passage, learners of Chinese usually spend excessive time on word recognition due to the non direct relation between the form and the pronunciation of a Chinese character. Humans are limited in cognitive capacity (Eysenck, 1992). Therefore, after most of the cognitive capacity is used in dealing with word recognition, very little cognitive capacity is available for the activation of discourse knowledge, prior knowledge, and metacognition that deal with the extra-text components. The inefficient reading process might lead to reading anxiety among readers. Bernhardt (2005) pointed out that the role of affect such as anxiety had been neglected from the previous reading models, which might explain some more of the variance in reading performance. A review of the previous studies demonstrated that many fundamental questions concerning foreign language reading anxiety such as the sources of foreign language reading anxiety and the relation between foreign language reading anxiety and foreign language reading performance had not been thoroughly investigated. Two basic assumptions raised by Saito et al. (1999) informed the proposed study. First, foreign language reading anxiety was a construct that was related to but distinct from foreign language anxiety. Second, foreign language reading anxiety varied depending on different target languages. In this study, the researcher explored the following specific research questions. 1. What is the foreign language reading anxiety level among English speaking university students learning Chinese as a foreign language in the United States? 2. What background variables are related to foreign language reading anxiety? a. Is gender related to foreign language reading anxiety? b. Is course level related to foreign language reading anxiety? c. Is time spent in China related to foreign language reading anxiety? 3. Is there a relationship between foreign language reading anxiety and foreign language reading performance? A survey research design was employed in this study. Survey research has been widely used in foreign language anxiety studies (e.g., Horwitz et al., 1986; Saito et al., 1999). A total of 125 learners of Chinese in a large public research university in the U.S. took part in this survey study. The primary data source came from the two anxiety instruments, namely, Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz et al., 1986) and Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (Saito et al., 1999) and also a background information questionnaire. Data from an email interview were the secondary data source triangulating the results obtained from the primary data source. Statistical analysis such as 2*2*2 factorial ANOVA and Pearson Product - Moment correlation analysis were adopted in this study. The study found: 1.The level of foreign language reading anxiety was similar to the level of general foreign language anxiety among learners of Chinese. Reading Chinese as a foreign language was anxiety-provoking to some students. Unfamiliar scripts, unfamiliar topics and worry about the reading effect were identified as the main sources of foreign language reading anxiety. 2. There was a significant course level effect on the level of foreign language reading anxiety with intermediate students having a significantly higher level of foreign language reading anxiety than elementary students. 3. There was a significant negative correlation between foreign language reading anxiety and foreign language reading performance. The findings suggest that reading was as anxiety-provoking to learners of a non-cognate non-western language as speaking did. The unfamiliar scripts were found to be the major source of foreign language reading anxiety, which confirmed one of the hypothesized sources of Saito et al. (1999). The finding about the significant course level effect on the level of foreign language reading anxiety also conformed to the studies done among learners of Japanese (Kitano, 2001; Saito & Samimy, 1996; Samimy & Tabuse, 1992). This finding reminded instructors of Chinese that as students advanced into higher level classes their foreign language reading anxiety increased due to the new characters needed to be learned and the increasing level of difficulty of the reading passages. Measures such as raising students' radical awareness, choosing reading passages that fit students' proficiency level, providing background information about the topic of reading passage and giving evaluation feedback after the reading activity were suggested to decrease students' level of reading anxiety. The limitations in both the research design and the statistical analysis were acknowledged. The limitations in research design mainly came from the exclusion of advanced class students, the cancellation of the face to face small group discussion, the inclusion of the researcher's students, and the use of non standardized reading scores. The mean replacement of the missing data, the small cell size in the ANOVA analysis and the ceiling effect of the reading score were the limitations existing in the statistical analysis procedures. Future research was suggested to include advanced level students in examining the role that unfamiliar culture elements played in foreign language reading anxiety as advanced level students had more opportunity to encounter cultural elements in the more authentic reading materials. The relation between foreign language reading anxiety and the use of different word recognition strategies, different topics and styles of reading passages are also worth exploring. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Teacher Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2009. / Date of Defense: March 7, 2008. / University, Chinese, English-Speaking, Anxiety, Reading / Includes bibliographical references. / Deborah J. Hasson, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Susan Wood, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Feng Lan, Outside Committee Member; Patrick Kennell, Committee Member.

This dissertation is written in the context of the radically changing Chinese society, in which the individual easily gets separated from the meaning of life and follows the dualistic social conventions for success. This problem is consistent with the situation of the present educational practice in schools. Education does not respond students' disconnection from the radically changing society and thus cannot provide a meaningful resource for cultivating individuals' self-identity. Thus, this dissertation suggests a philosophy of education which highlights the cultivation of students' unique but inclusive individuality so that the individual learns how to nurture one's own mind in this radically changing context rather than getting lost and feeling empty. This conception of individuality is inspired by the American pragmatist John Dewey and the Chinese Confucian scholar Liang Shuming, a contemporary of Dewey. I use a methodology of comparative philosophy of education to discuss my proposal on individuality and education. I am not trying to write Dewey and Liang's thought in a "right" way; neither am I trying to compare Dewey and Liang's thought for judgment. It is more about dialogue and communication, to learn from different but related thoughts for solving the problem in the present. I am using a pragmatic approach to launch a philosophical discussion. Because my concern is shared by Dewey and Liang in their respective projects, this dialogue can be meaningful for my question. After discussing Dewey's and Liang's thoughts, I propose a new idea of education: to cultivate a unique but inclusive individuality by going through inner struggles and gaining self-enlightenment. Finally, the dissertation proposes story-telling as a teaching approach to create new space for students and teachers in school. Story-telling is a method that the individual can interpret life experience in multiple ways to explore different alternatives and possibilities she may have and to find the consistent meaning to connect the past to the present. It is also a method of self-expression when the individual goes through inner struggle and finds connection with the world outside. In this effort, the individual is developing a mind of her own. Narrative is thus a method worth trying in the current educational practice to formulate a new philosophy of education which emphasizes the development of unique and inclusive individuality as one goal of education. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2009. / Date of Defense: February 24, 2009. / John Dewey, Self, Individuality, Education, China, Liang Shuming / Includes bibliographical references. / Jeffrey Ayala Milligan, Professor Directing Dissertation; Tom Anderson, Outside Committee Member; Peter Easton, Committee Member; Shouping Hu, Committee Member.

Higher education stake holders and policy makers attach great importance to the accountability issue. Among the accountability measures, student academic performance and persistence are the two most commonly used college outcomes. Numerous studies have been focused on the factors affecting academic performance and persistence to provide implications for institution administrators in improving the accountability issue. Among the various factors, student engagement is a very popular variable that is demonstrated to be related to college outcomes. Engagement is defined as (Hu & Kuh, 2002, p.555) "the quality of effort students themselves devote to educationally purposeful activities that contribute directly to desired outcomes". However, the engagement studies mainly looked at the outcomes throughout the college years. Few studies explored the relationship between engagement and student outcomes for freshmen. This study aims at expanding the research in this area. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between first year college student engagement and their outcomes—academic performance represented by GPA and persistence. There are two guiding research questions to this study: 1) Is there a significant relationship between student engagement and student persistence among first year college students? 2) Is there a significant relationship between student engagement and student academic performance among first year college students? For the first question, since persistence was treated as a dichotomous variable in the study, binary logistic regression was used. For the second question, since GPA was treated as a continuous variable, multiple regression was used. The study also explored the impact of certain student characteristics on student outcomes. The set of characteristics includes gender, race/ethnicity, high school GPA, SAT/ACT scores, father's education level, mother's education level, financial aid, and enrollment status. The study utilized NSSE data from a southeastern four year public institution, combining it with student records obtained from the registrar's office from the same institution. There are 466 freshmen included in this study. These freshmen entered the university in the Fall semester of 2004. They took part in the NSSE survey in the Spring of 2005. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2010. / Date of Defense: June 10, 2010. / Student Engagement, Persistence, Academic Performance / Includes bibliographical references. / Shouping Hu, Professor Directing Dissertation; Diana Rice, University Representative; Jon Dalton, Committee Member; Robert A. Schwartz, Committee Member.

The purpose of the study was to understand how a program based on educative supervision supported the supervisory knowledge and practices of mathematics cooperating teachers. Educative supervision referred to a supervision style where the supervisors challenge student teachers' teaching methods by asking open-ended questions, discussing critical incidents from their teaching, moving away from being evaluative, and being sensitive to their zone of proximal development (Blanton, Berenson, & Norwood, 2001). The case study method was followed in this study, where the case was the designed program. The program consisted of online discussions on reading materials or video clips, face to face communications, conducting weekly post-lesson conferences with the student teachers, and reflections on those post-lesson conferences. Three mathematics cooperating teachers and their student teachers were the participants of this study. Qualitative data analysis techniques were applied to all data sets to understand how the program supported the supervisory knowledge and practices of the cooperating teachers. Data was mainly analyzed from three perspectives. First, the amount of conversational time used by each participant was calculated. Secondly, content of the post-lesson conferences was classified into the following categories: Mathematics, Pedagogy, Mathematics Pedagogy, Teacher-Student Relationship, Classroom Management, and General Teacher Growth. Thirdly, the types of communications used by each participant were collapsed into the following categories: Questioning, Assessing, Suggesting, Describing, Explaining, and Emotional talking. Data analysis indicated some changes in the supervision style of the participating cooperating teachers towards the educative supervision. First, the percent of talking done by the student teachers in the post lesson conferences increased after the discussion of educative supervision in the program. Secondly, mathematics pedagogy became the most discussed content category in the post-lesson conferences. Furthermore, the depth of talks on mathematics pedagogy grew. Thirdly, the cooperating teachers moved away from conveying their feedback directly to the student teachers; they started asking open-ended questions to have the student teachers reflect on their teaching. Finally, having student teachers reflect on their teaching became a central goal for all of the cooperating teachers. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Middle and Secondary Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2008. / Date of Defense: October 22, 2007. / Teacher Education, Supervision, Student Teachers, Cooperating Teachers / Includes bibliographical references. / Maria L. Fernández, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Leslie N. Aspinwall, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Eric Chicken, Outside Committee Member; Elizabeth Jakubowski, Committee Member; Sharilyn C. Steadman, Committee Member.

This study examined the longitudinal effects of age of entry into kindergarten on children's reading and mathematics achievement in kindergarten, first- and third-grade. Early entrants, younger-ontime, medial-ontime, older-ontime and delayed entrants were compared. The effect of absolute age of children at the time of kindergarten entry and relative age of children to their classmates was explored. Children's gender, race, socioeconomic status (SES), and preschool attendance were controlled. Children's beginning cognitive ability levels in reading and mathematics were controlled in the kindergarten year. Data for the study came from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K). Cross sectional analyses were conducted by utilizing 2-level hierarchical linear model (HLM) analyses, and longitudinal analyses were conducted utilizing cross classified random effects model (CREM). HLM results suggested that delayed students scored higher than medial ontime students in the kindergarten, first and third grade in reading and in the kindergarten, and first grade in mathematics. Older-ontime students scored higher and younger-ontime students scored lower than medial-ontime students in the kindergarten and first grade in reading and mathematics. Early entrant students' performance was lower than medial-ontime students in all grades in mathematics and in the kindergarten and first grade in reading. The effect of the absolute age was evident in all grades except for the first grade mathematics. Relative age was associated with kindergarten and first grade reading achievement and kindergarten mathematics achievement. CCRM results suggested that delayed entrant students scored significantly higher than medial-ontime students by the third grade in mathematics. The effect of the absolute age of children's entrance age was significant in the third grade mathematics achievement. No performance differences were evident among older-ontime, medial-ontime, younger-ontime and early entrant students in the third grade mathematics performances. Furthermore, there were no age effects by the third grade on the reading achievement or on the growth rate for reading and mathematics achievement. It was concluded the gap that appears to exist in the kindergarten year due to age effects disappear or diminish, while the gap due to gender, SES and ethnicity widens as children progress in their school year by the end of the third grade. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Childhood Education, Reading and Disability Services in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2006. / Date of Defense: October 14, 2005. / Age of Entry, Cross-classifieds Random Effects Model, ECLS-K, Hlm, Achievement / Includes bibliographical references. / Ithel Jones, Professor Directing Dissertation; Akihito Kamata, Outside Committee Member; Charles H. Wolfgang, Committee Member; Vickie E. Lake, Committee Member; Carol McDonald Connor, Committee Member.

Art in elementary and secondary schools is often tagged as a superfluous class, to be removed or restricted at the first sign of a budget crunch, and offered only after "real learning" has taken place. The values of art are often overlooked. Art is a language that utilizes the creative parts of the brain and has served as the core for some integrated curricula. Teachers have been increasingly encouraged to integrate their curricula with other subject matter because integration is viewed as a way to deal with our era's increased information load, state mandates for school administrators concerning student performance, standardized curricula and assessment, and concern over relevancy of school to the workplace. This study focused on how art could be integrated more effectively with other subjects, in general, and specifically with American history. This study examined how an evolution of integrated curriculum, called Co-Study Curriculum, used art in the delivery of American history. The research questions addressed were: (1) Will the Co-Study Curriculum process enhance students' perceptions of their understanding of American history?, and (2) Does the Co-Study Curriculum process of integrating art and American history have an effect on students' attitudes toward art? This is a qualitative study with quantitative components; the research type is consistent with classroom action research. The methods used for assessment included: a post assessment survey of students' perceptions on the impact of the Co-Study Curriculum process and its usefulness in the classroom, a pre and post assessment of students' attitudes toward art, interviews of selected students, and teacher researcher observations. Included, also, is a Co-Study Curriculum Guide that provides step-by-step instructions for implementing the art activities used in this study. Each art activity in the guide is aligned with the Florida Curriculum Framework, Sunshine State Standards for Social Studies. A five-year longitudinal pilot study of the Co-Study Curriculum process preceded this study and gave the impetus for it. Findings from this study support the research questions, specifically, that the Co-Study Curriculum positively affected students' perceptions of their understanding of American history and their attitudes toward art. Implications of this study support that art education should consider broadening its concept and educational role by offering not only courses within its discipline but also by expanding its role through encouraging teachers of other subject matter to collaborate and integrate art into the presentation of their curriculum. Further, this broadened role should be taught within art education courses at the university level. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2004. / Date of Defense: July 2, 2004. / American History, History, Art, Co-Study, Integrated Curriculum, School Improvement, Interdisciplinary / Includes bibliographical references. / Tom Anderson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Emanuel Shargel, Outside Committee Member; Fanchon Funk, Committee Member; Marcia Rosal, Committee Member.