No description available.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-168).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-168).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Jun. 30, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

<p> Effective school to home communication encourages positive relationships that support student achievement. This study examines perceptions and preferences of teachers and parents to understand what constitutes effective communication between teachers and parents. Research questions examine the frequency of communication between teachers and parents, modes of communication, and the field and tenor of effective school to home communication. Data was gathered from teachers and parents of students in first through third grades, in a Southeastern Pennsylvania suburban school district. Two surveys were created aligning with current school to home communication literature focusing mainly on the field, tenor, and mode of language interactions. Each survey consisted of Likert-Type questions and included two open-ended responses. One survey gathered teachers&rsquo; perceptions and another, parents&rsquo; perceptions. The significance of this study stems from the importance of effective communication between the school and parents. Federal mandates require schools provide communication to parents. Previous studies indicated effective communication leads to parents being involved and engaged in a child&rsquo;s education that in turn increases student academic and social progress (Epstein, 2001; Murphy, 2008; Stuck, 2004). The findings of this study indicated that parents and teachers place high value on the necessary components of effective school to home communication. This study found that teachers and parents were largely in agreement in their perceptions about the value of school to home communications. Teachers and parents believe that effective home to school communication helps them work together as a team to improve student learning.</p>

<p>This study explored the impact of numbers used in instructional tasks on the construction and generalization of multiplicative reasoning by fourth grade students designated as having learning difficulties or disabilities in mathematics (SLDs). In particular, this study addressed the following research questions: (1) In what ways do SLDs&rsquo; conception of number as a composite unit afford or constrain transition to multiplicative reasoning? (2) Which specific numbers, used in instructional and/or assessment tasks, may support or interfere with SLDs&rsquo; progression from additive reasoning to multiplicative Double Counting (mDC)? Results suggested that in early participatory stages, using numbers with multiples familiar to the students, such as 2 and 5, promoted multiplicative solution paths (e.g., counting by fives while simultaneously keeping track of how many fives they have counted). This use of familiar numbers allowed for students&rsquo; reflection on their multiplicative thinking. Introduction of more difficult numbers&mdash;any number for which the child was yet to master multiples&mdash;tended to limit the multiplicative thinking and move students back to more known (additive) solution paths. In later participatory stages, the introduction of more difficult numbers promoted the progression within mDC. </p>

This study takes an in-depth look at five children who participated in a developmental first grade program after a year in kindergarten. The characteristics of the students that led to their placement in the developmental program, the program itself, and the school progress of the students in the three years following participation in the developmental program are described. Students included in the sample were selected on the basis of their consecutive attendance in the same school for a period of five years to permit a longitudinal perspective on the schooling experiences of children perceived to be at-risk of school failure in the early years of schooling. Availability of classroom teachers for interviewing was also a consideration in sample selection. Qualitative research methods were used to develop detailed case studies on each of the five children. Interviews were conducted with the students themselves, their parent(s), classroom teachers, special area teachers, and other school personnel having contact with each student. School records, including special education records when applicable, were reviewed. In addition to document analysis and interviews, the children were observed in their third grade classrooms. The study examined the characteristics demonstrated by young children perceived to be at-risk in the traditional school setting, their teachers' perceptions of them in subsequent years, and their school progress through third grade. Several issues emerged from the data. These were discussed along with suggestions for consideration by policy makers to more effectively meet the needs of young children perceived to be at-risk of school failure. Recommendations were made for further research.

This study was designed to capture and portray a teacher's classroom knowledge as curriculum script. The task framework suggested by Doyle (1980, 1983, 1986) was combined with the descriptions of the activity organization and materials used to convey the content, to examine activities embedded within classroom events in order to determine the patterns which might suggest the content and character of the teacher's knowledge for one content area, mathematics. The teacher taught two math groups each week: a second grade, homogeneous group three days per week, and her combination second and third grade homeroom group two days each week. Data were collected over a period of six months. Daily observations were made in two phases: all day every day for the first week of school and every day during the one-hour math period for the first half of the school year. Five interviews were conducted with the teacher: one before the school year began, three during the first half of the school year, and one six weeks after the last observations were made. The data for this study were analyzed in four stages. First, task descriptions were constructed daily from the field notes that were taken during classroom observations and expanded shortly thereafter. Second, task descriptions for each unit of instruction were analyzed to generate summary statements which were used to compose letters to the teacher. Third, all task descriptions were analyzed to reveal patterns within and across the two math groups. Finally, the letters were sent to the teacher in advance of each interview, the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed, then the protocols were analyzed to reveal themes in the teacher's dialogue about her classroom knowledge. This analysis resulted in the construction of a number of propositions which were then used in conjunction with the findings from the task description analysis to present the content, functions of, and influences on the teacher's curriculum script. The curriculum script model constructed from the findings of this study seems to account for both the complexity of teachers' knowledge and the complexity of the classroom context.

Two experiments were conducted to determine which of three proposals (memory limitations, inferential reasoning deficits, or task-related interference) best accounts for gist-extraction deficits observed in children with impaired language skills (LI group) relative to age-matched children developing language normally (NL group). Sixteen children between the ages of 8;0 and 10; 11 (years;months) from each group participated in each experiment. Experiment 1 utilized a comprehension paradigm (instructions focused on meaning) to investigate children's recognition of true and false premises, paraphrases, and inferences in short passages. Experiment 2 utilized a sentence-verification paradigm (instructions focused on verbatim form) to investigate children's ability to recognize presented premises in these same passages, and differentiate them from nonpresented items. In both experiments, passages were read aloud to each child, half of the passages were accompanied by pictures, and immediate and delayed recognition testing was conducted. In Experiment 1, previously documented inference-recognition deficits were associated with the auditory-only presentation of passage information. Gistextraction deficits involving inaccurate recognition of true paraphrases and acceptance of false foils were also observed. However, when pictures accompanied passages, the LI group's overall recognition of gist improved significantly relative to the auditory-only condition, and between-group differences were eliminated. Forgetting rates did not differ significantly as a function of language group in either the picture or no-picture condition. In Experiment 2, there were no significant between-group differences in the recognition of presented premises, with both groups erroneously recognizing nonpresented true sentences more frequently than false sentences (gist intrusions). Nevertheless, the LI group was significantly less likely than the NL group to differentiate presented premises from nonpresented items. Findings from both experiments indicated that gistextraction deficits observed in LI groups were not associated with either memory limitations or deficits in inferential reasoning. Instead, in line with fuzzy-trace theory (e.g., Brainerd & Reyna, 1990), difficulties these children had in extracting meaning from linguistic input presented auditorily appeared to interfere with (i.e., degrade) the simultaneous processing of verbatim input associated with presented premises. Comparable interference effects were not observed for children developing language normally.

The use of literature discussion groups is enjoying increasing popularity in many language arts classrooms. Most research investigating this instructional practice has focused on the intellectual abilities necessary for students to conduct their own literature discussions (i.e., supporting opinions, asking questions). What has been missing in such research is how social and cultural factors might also influence how students engage in discussions. The purpose of the present study was to investigate what occurs when students conduct peer-led literature discussions and how the particular factor of social status influences the discourse and participation patterns in such discussion groups. Two literature discussion groups in a fifth-grade classroom were videotaped as they participated in their discussions. One group contained all female members and one was a mixed-gender group. Each group discussed their book for six days. All members of the class completed a sociometric measure to obtain student-perceived status of classmates. Constant-comparison and content analyses were used to analyze the descriptive data. The two groups differed in the purposes and the frames of reference they used to guide their discussions. The all-girl group focused on text-related purposes and utilized personal connections to discuss the book. The mixed-gender group's discussion was dominated by social talk and predominately used text-bound references to discuss their book. Social status influenced the participation patterns differently for the two groups and appeared to be related to the distribution of status within the group. The findings suggest that social factors such as gender and status influence how students negotiate participation and discourse patterns when leading themselves in literature discussions. The all-girl group's use of personal connections when discussing the book presents a possible alternative conception of what has traditionally been viewed as "girl-talk." The results also suggest that motivational (i.e., how much the group likes their book) and text (i.e., genre) factors are potentially influential factors in determining how students conduct discussions of literature.