Science content area literacy, particularly literacy development in college level biology, is the focus of this study. The study investigates the actions and activities of an instructor and six students over the course of 16 weeks. The study is in response to interest in the literate practices in science classes (NSES, 1996) and to the call for contextual studies that facilitate the learning of science (Borasi & Siegel, 1999; Moje, 1996; Nist & Holschuh, 1996; Prentiss, 1998). A collaborative study between the biology teacher and the researcher, this study investigates the practices believed to be effective for the development of biology literacy. Data sources, in the qualitative bounded case study (Bogdin & Biklin, 1982; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Miles & Huberman, 1994), include: field notes of classroom observations, in-depth interviews (Seidman, 1992), class surveys, and literate artifacts. The data were coded and analyzed using a constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The six students reveal similarities and differences regarding the actions, patterns, practices and use of materials and their beliefs about effective practice in the development of biology literacy. The results indicate that a variety of actions and activities are needed to facilitate the development of biology literacy. The common themes to develop from the students' data about effective teacher actions are the following: (a) involves and engages students in inquiry learning through group projects, hands-on, and group discussions; (b) relates examples, experiences, and stories; (c) exhibits expertise; (d) encourages a relaxed classroom atmosphere; (e) facilitates and coaches students; and (f) credits creativity. Further, students report their teacher to be an expert, in terms of science knowledge and literate practices, and that her expertise contributes to their understanding of biology literacy. The teachers' data reveals three themes embedded in her classroom actions: science as a language, science as a social activity, and science as an experiential activity. The researcher's role in the study suggests that other researchers may benefit from a similar collaborative effort where the teacher and researcher learn from each other and from their students while supporting content literacy development. Content literacy practice from a constructivist paradigm (Anders & Guzzetti, 1996; Staver, 1998) has merit beyond high school and powerful implications for practice at the college level.

The present study investigated the reading process in Arabic by drawing on the Goodman Model of English Reading, and testing its applicability to Semitic languages. Due to the multi-tier nature of Arabic orthography (i.e. letters and diacritics), two questions were addressed: (1) how the absence/presence of diacritics affects the readers' performance on the reading tasks, and (2) how readers assign phonology and inflectional features in reading unmarked texts (i.e. texts that are written in Modern Standard Arabic with no diacritics). The study was conducted in Tucson, Arizona, and involved fifteen Saudi male undergraduate students enrolled at The University of Arizona. Due to the multi-tier nature of Arabic orthography, a new multi-tier methodology had to emerge. The methodology involved the designing of three tasks: (1) the Diacritic Placement Task (DPT), (2) the Arabic Text Reading Task (ATRT), and (3) playback interviews. The DPT showed that, in assigning phonology and inflectional features to context-free sentences with no diacritics, readers of Arabic rely on their linguistic knowledge. Readers' choices are not random, and they seem to follow a regular pattern depending on their degree of markedness. Readings that are unmarked or more frequent (i.e. immediate readings) precede the marked or less frequent ones (i.e. delayed readings). Immediate readings include the active voice and the passive voice sentences, whereas delayed readings include causative sentences. The ATRT showed how reading was relatively faster for most readers when they were inferring the diacritics that were absent. The presence of diacritics made reading relatively slower, because readers saw them as a "controlling system" which they had to follow. Most of them, however, preferred reading texts with diacritics if they were to read in front of an audience. The study provides evidence that reading is not a process of word identification. Reading is a universal sociopsycholinguistic process that operates within a specific sociocultural context and involves an interaction between language and thought. The study also shows that, by adding a multi-tier extension to it, the Goodman Model of Reading provides a powerful account of the reading process in Arabic.

This multiple-case study examines the Literacy Assistance Project, an early intervention reading program for "at-risk" students in the Tucson Unified School District. First, this study seeks to thoroughly describe the programmatic, administrative, theoretical and pedagogical framework of LAP and document how these concerns are reflected in the context of LAP lessons. The LAP program claims to be a holistic, or constructivist, reading program. Cambourne's (1988) eight conditions of learning are descriptors of literacy events and activities that are consistent with a constructivist perspective of learning. As a second goal, the study determines the extent to which LAP meets Cambourne's eight conditions of learning, and thirdly, the ways that two LAP teachers' beliefs and practices are consistent with those eight conditions. Whole language proponents are often concerned with aspects of Reading Recovery and other reading intervention programs. In Chapter 1 whole language concerns with reading intervention programs such as Reading Recovery and LAP are addressed and responses to those concerns by Reading Recovery and LAP follow. Data for the study was collected in two elementary schools over a five-month period. They include researcher field notes of lesson observations, interviews with two LAP teachers, eight LAP students, one principal, the LAP designer, and current director. They also include audiotaped transcriptions of lessons and children's writing samples. Analysis of the data was conducted by observing Glaser and Strauss's (1967) grounded theory technique. The data indicate that, notwithstanding the constructivist nature of the reading intervention program, teachers themselves determine how holistic, or constructivist, LAP lessons are. Both teachers reported constructivist teaching and learning beliefs about literacy, but only one teacher practiced those beliefs consonant with Cambourne's (1988) eight constructivist conditions. This finding evidences the critical importance of understanding how teacher beliefs shape teachers' classroom practice. Because teacher beliefs about language, learning, and literacy in great part determine the nature of teachers' practices, and because teachers' reported claims about teaching, reading, and writing strategies may not actually be what they practice due to the influence of those beliefs, it is recommended that pre-service and continuing teacher education programs and in-services carefully examine the foundation and efficacy of teacher beliefs. It is further recommended that educators who instruct pre-service and continuing teacher education coursework make the examination and understanding of teacher beliefs a major curricular emphasis.

This research examines the role of phonological information in recognizing Chinese characters. A converging methods approach was taken, employing diverse experimental paradigms to address both theoretical and empirical questions. The experiments provided strong and positive evidence for the role played by orthographic codes as well as the absence of prelexical phonological effects in reading Chinese. In two masked priming experiments, orthographic masked priming was observed consistently across the lexical decision and the naming tasks despite of the fact the primes were phonologically unrelated to the target characters. In contrast, phonological priming was found only in a task that explicitly required a vocal response. No additional priming effects were obtained for masked primes that were simultaneously visually similar and phonologically identical to the targets. A clear case was presented in the semantic categorization experiments that it is the postlexical phonology that was the primary source of the observed homophone interference effects. Although rule-based phonological conversion is implausible in Chinese characters, robust homophone interference was revealed when the subjects tried to categorize homophone characters and, more importantly, there was virtually no difference in the pattern of homophone effects between transparent and opaque characters. The data also suggest that word phonology is perhaps automatically activated during visual word recognition, and probably very early in the process. However, the recovery of lexical information does not depend on the activation of phonological information. Phonological effects revealed in naming studies were perhaps a consequence of explicit requirement for articulation, or because transparent characters were associated with more familiar pronunciations, or because of independent and automatic activation of phonetic radicals in compound characters. It is concluded that phonological information does not seem to play an important role in access to word meaning in reading Chinese.

This study is about the effect of direct vocabulary instruction using CAI on vocabulary knowledge, reading comprehension, and speed of word recognition. The purposes of the study were to find out if students in an intensive English program who use CAI to learn highly frequent vocabulary will learn a significantly larger number of words than those in a control group; if they will decrease their reaction time for frequent word recognition as compared to the control group; and if they will exhibit significantly better reading comprehension than a control group. In this experimental study the students in the treatment group studied the highly frequent words of English on the computer for three hours per week for eight weeks whereas the students in the control group completed three hours of reading and reading comprehension exercises. The research findings are that both groups showed increases in vocabulary gain, reading comprehension, and decrease in reaction time for frequent word recognition. However, the treatment students showed significantly greater gains than the control students.

The focus of this study is the impact of a children's literature course on the reading practices of undergraduate preservice teachers. During 1996, I taught Children's Literature in the Classroom, LRC 480, at the University of Arizona. During this class, I undertook a study of the preservice teachers in my course using the research methods of a qualitative study. My purpose was to elicit the preservice teachers' perceptions of themselves as readers in the beginning and at the end of the course and to determine which elements of the course were most influential. The major themes that emerged from the data were concerned with the reading practices of the preservice teachers and the significant aspects of the course. All the students experienced some changes in regard to their reading practices. The major change the students noted was an increase in their enthusiasm for reading and a renewed enjoyment of reading. A majority of the students were choosing to read daily in the beginning of the semester in contrast with other research (Timbs, 1993; DeKoff, 1992) that found less frequent reading. The four most influential elements in the course were: (1) the influence of the instructor; (2) small group work; (3) class projects that provided active learning experiences emphasizing the affective elements of reading literature and (4) self evaluation that promoted students' choice and control over their own learning. The study found that the major change the students noted (their enthusiasm and renewed enjoyment of reading) was influenced by these elements of the course. The implications of these findings are that instructors who wish to encourage preservice students to have positive experiences with reading should include these elements in preservice courses: an instructor with a passion for literature; class projects that feature experiential learning tasks promoting the affective elements of reading literature; an emphasis on self-evaluation and opportunities for small group collaborations. Preservice teachers in such courses will have opportunities to build or renew their enjoyment of reading.

There is a limited understanding of the effects of practice on reading efficiency and comfort when students with low vision read standard print with optical devices. This descriptive study used a multiple baseline single-subject design to examine effects of practice on the reading rate, accuracy, duration and visual fatigue of three high school students with visual impairments when they read standard print with newly prescribed optical devices (reading spectacles). The study also examined differences between measures of reading efficiency and comfort when students read large print without optical devices and when they read standard print with optical devices. Baseline data were collected prior to intervention. Intervention consisted of daily practice sessions reading novels in standard print with individually prescribed optical devices for a maximum of thirty-eight minutes. Measures of reading efficiency and comfort were graphed daily during baseline and intervention. Oral reading rate, accuracy, and comprehension were probed during intervention and maintenance. A positive relationship between practice and oral reading rate was demonstrated for three students and a positive relationship for silent reading rate for two students. No relationship was demonstrated between practice and duration nor between practice and fatigue. One student maintained oral reading rate three weeks after cessation of practice sessions. There were no advantages for reading large print over reading standard print with optical devices for two of the students on measures of reading rate, accuracy, or duration; one student demonstrated no differences between reading media while the other demonstrated faster reading rates with standard print. One student demonstrated no differences in accuracy, but faster rates and longer duration with large print. Although students reported the same symptoms of visual fatigue with both media, they demonstrated more frequent occurrences of fatigue when reading standard print with optical devices. All expressed preference for reading standard print with reading spectacles. Reasons included portability, availability of materials, and social implications. There were two additional findings not related to the purposes of this study. Although all students were proficient readers, their oral and silent reading rates were almost equivalent. Individual patterns of miscues appeared to reflect students' visual field losses.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the benefits of collaboration while cross-age students and teachers conducted research. The cross-age collaboration investigated ways that students assist each other with writing and concept development as they researched a topic. The collaborative teacher research explored ways that classroom teachers assist each other with their professional development while they are examining ways to assist their students. This was a participant-observational study which took place over a semester. The cross-age students conducted research on teacher selected topics. The teachers held meetings to share their questions, observations, reflections and plans regarding the cross-age collaboration. Data sources included student surveys, student interviews, teachers' reflective journals, and transcriptions of teachers' meetings. The methods of analysis were domain analysis and constant comparison. The findings suggested that students assisted each other with writing and concept development when provided the opportunity to collaborate. They used language for constructing and reconstructing knowledge as they researched their topics. As they used language for learning, they also assisted each other with language development by using scaffolding strategies. A major finding in this study is that the students and teachers place high value on the interpersonal relationship that develops through the collaborative process. They found that encouragement, listening to one another, and respecting each other's ideas were foundational for igniting the collaborative process. Findings also suggested that the collaborative process gave the classroom teachers opportunities to assist each other with professional development. The teachers were able to assist each other by sharing their beliefs and knowledge about teaching and learning. Sharing beliefs about teaching and learning caused harmony in planning, as well as tensions. Variances in belief systems caused tensions which led to rich discussions about professional knowledge. The teachers reconstructed their knowledge through collaborative research.

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the processes fourth grade bilinguals use as they read in Spanish and English. Through miscue analysis, eye movement analysis and the integration of the two, EMMA, this study contributes to the field of biliteracy by expanding on what is already known about the reading processes of young bilinguals who are developing literacy in two languages. There are no known eye movement miscue analysis studies of bilingual elementary students. Four fourth grade bilingual participants read and retold the first two chapters of a short novel. The participants read the first chapter from the English version of the story and the second chapter from the Spanish version. The participants' oral readings and eye movements were recorded and analyzed for each reading. The analysis tools used were miscue analysis, eye movement analysis, and the integration of the two, Eye Movement Miscue Analysis (EMMA). Differences and similarities between the two languages and among the four readers were explored in order to answer the research question: What do miscue analysis, eye movement analysis, and Eye Movement Miscue Analysis (EMMA) reveal about differences and similarities of the reading in Spanish and English of fourth grade biliterate readers? The findings of this dissertation show that the four bilingual readers use similar strategies in each language to make sense of text. They make miscues in both languages which show that the readers integrate their knowledge of syntax, semantics and graphophonics in both their English and Spanish reading. The data from the reader's eye movements reveal that the readers sample text selectively as they read each language. The miscues, eye movements, and the patterns of eye movements around miscued words for each reader reveal that they are somewhat more efficient and effective reading their primary language, Spanish. The research also shows that the strategies these biliterate readers use to make sense of text in their primary language influences the reading of their second language, English. Thus, this dissertation provides further support for a universal, transactional socio-psycholinguistic model of the reading process.

The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of the relationships of several cognitive constructs with decoding, spelling and reading fluency in young students of different skill levels. Students in first and second grade were assessed in the areas of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), visual processing speed, memory and semantic knowledge as well as decoding, spelling, and reading fluency. Students were assigned to three ability groups (low, average, or high) based on a cluster score composed of the three achievement variables. Correlations among all the variables were performed for the total and each subgroup. It was hypothesized that there would be significant differences in the correlational patterns between at least one of the ability groups and the total group. It was also hypothesized that there would be a different pattern of correlations between the ability subgroups. The third hypothesis was that a comparative review of the correlational patterns by group would provide insight into the nature of the developing literacy skills. In each case, the null was rejected. Significant findings indicated there were many more correlations in the low group than in the high group, indicating these constructs are necessary, but not sufficient, for acquiring literacy. The only correlation that was significant for the high group, but not the low group, was a measure of semantic knowledge, indicating vocabulary skills are related to students becoming early good readers. Other findings of interest include an inverse relation in the average group between spelling and two, but not three, of the timed constructs. Implications for research and practice are discussed.