<p> A Multi-Tier System of Support (MTSS) for academic skills is widely recognized as the best practice framework for supporting all students. Additionally, the recent shift from constructivist pedagogy toward more intentional teaching of mathematics at the preschool level has encouraged more explicit mathematics instruction with younger children. In spite of these advances, there are no published best practice guidelines for implementing MTSS for mathematics at the prekindergarten level. The current study sought to investigate one possible way to implement effective instructional practices for preschool mathematics within a multi-tier system, including the use of validated screening and progress monitoring instruments. A centers-based mathematics curriculum was implemented at the universal level within an inclusive preschool classroom. Universal screening was conducted using curriculum-based measurement (CBM) in order to identify at-risk students in need of additional instruction. A supplemental prekindergarten program was implemented with small instructional groups at the secondary tier of support. Students receiving supplemental instruction were progress-monitored using growth-sensitive CBMs in a multiple baseline across dyads research design. Results and limitations of the study are discussed. Finally, topics for future exploration in preschool mathematics are suggested. </p>

The passage of PL 94-142 in 1975 required educational agencies to develop a continuum of placement options allowing children with disabilities to be educated with children who are not handicapped. The acceptance handicapped children receive from normally developing peers appears to be a factor in determining the success of mainstreamed settings. School systems have an ongoing responsibility to educate students about differences since knowledge deficits contribute to negative peer perceptions and greater social distance. / This study has examined changes that occurred when third grade children received one of three instructional programs about children with disabilities and their associated etiologies. A pretest-post test multigroup design was used to measure program effects. Experience, knowledge, and social distance scales were administered. / Puppets presented informational content about blindness, deafness, retardation, cerebral palsy and learning disabilities. A second group was shown a video featuring the same five handicapping conditions. Group three received both the puppets and video. A control group received no planned intervention. / The first hypothesis concerned the effects prior experience with a handicapped person would have on knowledge and social acceptance. With more than 520 Colquitt County, Georgia third grade students participating in the study, experience was not found to have a significant effect on either students' pretreatment knowledge or social distance. Repeated Measures Analyses of Covariance did, however, indicate that third grade girls were more positive than boys about the possibility of having peers with disabilities as potential classmates or friends. / A second and third series of hypotheses postulated expectations about the students' knowledge and social distance following three treatment interventions. Repeated measures ANOVA analyses were used in the comparisons. Gains in both knowledge and social distance were clinically significant for all three treatment methods. Mean knowledge gains were greatest in the group receiving the combined video/puppet treatment, followed by the puppets, then the video. Mean social distance differences were highest for the puppet group, followed by the combination treatment, with the video ranking third. / With all treatment conditions showing significant gains in both knowledge and social acceptance, the implications are that both puppetry and film have potential for reducing children's disability related concerns while instilling more positive perceptions of people with disabilities. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-11, Section: A, page: 3793. / Major Professor: Virginia P. Green. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

The present investigation is divided into two main studies. The purpose of the first study was to assess individual differences in children's challenge preference using Dweck's categorization procedure, to assess the short-term stability of this classification process, and to examine its relationship to demographic and other motivational variables of interest. The purpose of the second study was to explore the relationship of challenge preference classification to maternal behaviors. Participants in the first study included 236 four to six year old children attending private day-care centers and public kindergarten in the Tallahassee area. A subsample of 72 children was selected for the second study. The children attempted challenging tasks individually and while interacting with their mothers. The presence of helplessness in younger children was confirmed along with a cognitive and affective profile similar to that shown by older children. A significant relationship between initial skill and challenge preference was also revealed. The short term stability of challenge preference was found to be low although it improved when a composite measure that included a behavioral choice and the reasoning behind that decision was used. Girls exhibited profiles more consistent with predictions, showing significant relations between their challenge preference status and two other motivational indexes. Finally, maternal requests for their child to persist at a challenging task differed by group, with those from the CS group encouraging their children not to give up significantly more often than CA mothers. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-04, Section: B, page: 2903. / Major Professor: Janet A. Kistner. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1996.

The purpose of the study was to investigate how social context influences kindergartners' topic selection strategies and subsequent written text for journal writing. Operating from a cognitive-psychological and a sociolinguistic perspective, the researcher became a participant observer in a kindergarten classroom over a period of 19 weeks. Within the social context of the kindergarten classroom, the researcher employed a number of qualitative methods designed to gather information pertinent to the research questions proposed: participant observation, interviewing techniques, audio recordings, fieldnotes, photographic recordings, the case study method, and triangulation procedures. Data collection consisted of the children's writing samples, social interaction recordings, ongoing interviews, and collected artifacts. Presentation and analysis of the data collected relating to the whole kindergarten classroom is included along with the data relating to three case study participants. The following contextual factors were identified and considered pertinent to the proposed research questions and the data collected: setting, genre, materials, routine, audience, evaluation, the role of the teacher, social group influences, and social/school competence. Based on the results of the study, the following tentative conclusions/hypotheses were generated with regard to the kindergartners' topic selection strategies and subsequent written text for journal writing: (1) the kindergartners' perspectives of the purpose for journal writing within the context of the classroom influenced selected topics, (2) the sharing of materials for journal writing served as a catalyst for social interaction which exerted an influence on their topic selection strategies and subsequent written text, (3) the teacher, along with the students, seemed to impose an acceptable structure for journal / writing which was indicative of social/school competence, and (4) the role of the teacher had a strong influence on the kindergartners' selected topics and subsequent written text for journal writing. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-02, Section: A, page: 0405. / Major Professor: Virginia P. Green. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.

The primary focus of research and treatment of abusive parents and their children has been on the alteration of abusive parents' behavior. While this is essential to the elimination of further abuse of the child, it does not address the potential negative effects of abuse that has already occurred. Literature supporting a hypothesis of disturbed social behavior of abused children is presented in this paper. The purpose of the present study was to test this hypothesis by conducting a multimodal assessment of peer interactions and sociometric status of 14 physically abused preschool children and a matched group of 14 nonabused children. This was accomplished through the use of behavior observations, a peer assessment instrument, sociometric measures, and the Preschool Behavior Questionnaire, completed by child care center staff. Results of observations and teacher reports indicated that abused children do indeed demonstrate disturbed social behavior. Further, abused children were less well-liked by their peers than were comparison children. The social significance of these results is presented and recommendations are made for future research endeavors. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-02, Section: B, page: 0749. / Major Professor: Janet A. Kistner. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.

The purpose of this investigation was to describe the intentional communicative behaviors of profoundly mentally retarded children. Ten 6 to 12 year old subjects, equally grouped according to age, participated in communication sampling with familiar and unfamiliar adults. Intentional communicative acts were collected using structured communication tasks and subject-initiated free-play. Acts were identified and coded according to communicative function, communicative means, discourse structure, and, when applicable, syllable shape. / Findings revealed communicative profiles characterized by a predominance of functions to regulate others' behavior and by gestural means. The majority of older subjects demonstrated more communicative acts per minute and a broader range of communicative functions than their younger counterparts. Initiated acts predominated as did vocalizations without consonants. Self-injurious and aversive behaviors were evident only in older subjects' samples. No substantial differences in subjects' communicative abilities were observed during sampling with familiar and unfamiliar adults. / The use of the communicative sampling and analysis procedures implemented in this investigation with profoundly mentally retarded persons is discussed. Some suggestions for how these procedures can be used to generate communicative profiles instrumental to intervention planning are offered. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-12, Section: A, page: 3550. / Major Professor: Amy Miller Wetherby. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.

The problem addressed in this study is whether children from lower SES homes would benefit in their reading and verbal skills through interaction with computer software that reads to them. If the verbal abilities and reading skills of a child increase as a result of an adult reading to him or her, would interactive storybook software provide similar results? / The rationale is twofold: (1) It has been demonstrated that one-to-one storybook read-aloud increases the literary skills of the child, but the teacher:student ratio in the kindergarten classroom and the time allotted weekly to the teacher to reach individual students limits this interaction; (2) Computer technology and highly interactive storybook software that reads to children are being introduced into the classrooms that allow children to actively participate in the reading process. / The major hypotheses are: (1) Interactive storybook software will facilitate the emergent storybook reading behaviors of kindergarten children from lower SES homes; (2) Interactive storybook software will increase the verbal abilities of these same children. / Subjects were randomly selected after a determination of SES was made. The design was a pretest-posttest control group design, using pretest scores from the Verbal Scale of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (1972) and Sulzby's Observation of Emergent Storybook Reading (1985) as covariates with posttest scores from the same instruments. The treatment took place in public school kindergarten classrooms equipped with CD ROM and MS-DOS hardware. The schools are located in a district in northern Florida. Each subject in the treatment group worked with the software three times a week for seven weeks. Storybook software was provided by Discis Knowledge Research, Inc. / The results of the study indicate that the software is significant in increasing the verbal abilities of children when they use it for 42 minutes a week for at least seven weeks. There were no significant results for emergent reading behaviors. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-11, Section: A, page: 4270. / Major Professor: Charles Hall Wolfgang. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

The purpose of the study was to examine the pilot year of the TOTES (Take Out Teaching Experiences for Students) Program to determine if student performance had improved as evidenced by a decrease of retention rate from the previous year, to ascertain whether parent involvement had occurred, and to identify areas for program improvement. The program was critiqued through current research and theory, interviews and observations, and through monitoring factors related to student achievement and parent involvement activities. / The research design was the embedded single case study. Decision Oriented Educational Research was the quantitative procedure used. Techniques were employed to help insure researcher impartiality and credibility of findings. / It was found that children whose parents were involved in TOTES were more successful academically and attendance was higher than students from the previous year. Both findings corresponded with current literature. Data concerning conduct and identification of special needs of children were slightly different from anticipated. Parents were active participants in the educational process and modeled the importance of education for children. Parents perceived educators as caring, knowledgeable teachers. Some components of the program facilitated parental involvement and were slated to be continued. Others were modified slightly or eliminated. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-11, Section: A, page: 4226. / Major Professor: Hollie Thomas. / Thesis (Ed.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

Traumatic events at birth may interfere with the organization and interpretation of multiple stimuli. The residual effects of these events influence infants for the rest of their lives. Subtle cues that infants use to communicate their inability to organize information are often misinterpreted. / This study was conducted at a regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) follow-up clinic to investigate the impact of a stressful birth on infants' performance. Infants between the adjusted ages of 91 and 240 days were observed during three tasks that required integrating multiple stimuli, (a) a task of spatial perception, (b) a task intermodal representation of speech, and (c) a contingency learning task. / Seven birth status variables (gestational age, birthweight, adjusted age, length of ventilation, 5-minute Apgar scores, parent education and income levels) compiled from hospital records were compared to seven performance variables (reach, vision, smile, fuss, attention, speech, and contingency). Multiple regression analyses were applied to the data. / Findings from the study indicate that (a) mechanically ventilated infants were more irritable than non-ventilated infants, (b) infants from lower income families were fussier than infants from higher income families, (c) lower birthweight infants were more successful on the visual task than higher birthweight infants, (d) 5-minute Apgar scores were more predictive of infants success than 1-minute scores on the visual task, (e) older infants were more accurate during the reaching task than younger infants. There were marginal relationships between higher parental educational level and attention and adjusted age and smiling. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-03, Section: A, page: 0882. / Major Professor: Pearl E. Tait. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

The purpose of this study was to identify and validate the work-related problems of public school prekindergarten teachers in Florida. The study was designed to answer three questions: (1) What problems are perceived to be most bothersome and occur most frequently? (2) What global areas of concern can be inferred from these teachers' perceptions of their problems? (3) Are there significant relationships between the problems reported by the teachers and (A) the age of the teacher? (B) S = sex of the teacher/ (C) years of teaching experience? (D) type of teacher certification? (E) highest degree earned? (F) number of students in the classroom? (G) length of the student day? and (H) geographic location of the school? / For problem generation, a state-side random sample of 55 teachers described their biggest problems. A jury of early childhood experts reduced the 432 descriptions to 111 individual problem statements. For problem validation, a second state-wide sample of 249 teachers rated the frequency of occurrence and the bothersomeness of the 111 problems. They also supplied specific demographic information. / The results identified 37 problems that occurred significantly more frequently than others and 36 problems that were significantly more bothersome. The 111 problems fell into eight global areas of concern, or factors. Those perceived to be of most concern were (1) Control and Discipline, (2) Parent Relationships and Home Conditions, and (3) Program. Other factors were identified as (4) Student Success, (5) Time, (6) Classroom Personnel, (7) Affiliation, and (8) Facilities. No significant relationships were found between the problems and the specific demographic variables, indicating that the teachers were perceiving the problems in similar manners. / Recommendations were made for the use of the results in planning preservice and inservice education for these teachers. Recommendations were also made for modifications in the prekindergarten program at the state and local levels. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-03, Section: A, page: 0801. / Major Professor: Charles H. Wolfgang. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.