Little, if any, research exists that provides guidance for educators on the use of a dynamic assessment as a tool for better identifying Latinx students for gifted programs. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the perceptions of campus principals and elementary teachers as dynamic assessment was being considered as part of the gifted and talented identification protocol. Data were collected through teacher and principal interviews and focus groups, along with an analysis of current practices and protocols within the studied district. The findings revealed several key themes that emerged from educator perspectives on the ability of emergent bilingual students to be placed in gifted programs and how dynamic assessment could or could not play a part in the assessment process. The study provides support and context for future research about dynamic assessment as applied to gifted and talented identification of Latinx students, including (a) the development of a dynamic assessment, (b) the implementation of a dynamic assessment with presentation of data that supports or do not support its use, (c) training to support the implementation of a dynamic assessment, (d) the human capital and time associated with implementing a dynamic assessment, and (e) educator mindset associated with the implementation of a dynamic assessment for students who do not speak English in the home.

This study examined changes in kindergarteners' writing complexity after implementing writing instruction based on story elements (character, setting, problem, and solution). Writing samples from six students of three ability levels (i.e., beginning, intermediate, and advanced) were collected over a six-week period within a guided writing context. These samples included three types of texts (oral language, pictures, and written text)and were analyzed using two analytic rubrics specifically created for this study, one for writing development and the other for the inclusion of story elements. Findings from this study suggest that all students, regardless of ability level wrote in more complex ways when they used story elements as cues to incorporate detail into their writing. Additionally, all of the students included the four story elements in varying degrees, and the acknowledgment and use of different types of text in each writing sample provided a more accurate representation of the student authors' thinking.

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This thesis examines the contributions that emerging churches make to their parent communities’ understanding of church. As a work in practical theology, it is focuses on the theology that is deeply embedded within the everyday language, symbols, and practices of ordinary individuals and communities. Thus, the research in this thesis centres on two concrete emerging communities and employs qualitative methods to examine and analyse the actual practices, values, and beliefs of community participants—treating the data generated through the investigation of these emerging churches as theological material. The thesis is structured in six chapters, beginning in chapter one with a preliminary sketch of the wider emerging church phenomenon, a brief account of the researcher’s own earlier experiences with emerging communities, and an initial overview of the research already conducted on emerging church. Following this introduction, the thesis outlines the research methodology in chapter two, taking an approach to practical theology that moves beyond the prevalent models of correlation and recognizes the embodied nature of theology. Identified in this thesis as ‘theology in the vernacular’ or ‘local theologies’, this approach provides a mechanism for bringing two emerging churches into an impactful encounter with their parent communities’ understanding of church. This encounter unfolds through the remaining four chapters of the thesis. Chapter three provides the ecclesial context for this research by outlining the history and development of emerging church, and locating the two emerging communities within that narrative. Chapters four and five offer an in-depth portrayal and analysis of these two communities by depicting their ecclesial contexts and historical development, their weekly patterns, their physical and online spaces, their worship gatherings, the profiles and personal narratives of their participants, and the core practices of these communities. The findings from these separate sites of research are brought together in chapter six, where five key ecclesiological features are drawn from the common patterns present in these emerging churches. These are: (1) the prevalence of an ecclesial eclecticism, (2) the carving out of a space for theological discussion and intellectual enquiry, (3) a resolute fondness for their local cities, (4) the vital nature of the weekly gathering, and (5) a robustly verbal orientation in the worship gatherings. By bringing these five ecclesiological features into an encounter with the parent tradition of these emerging churches in chapter six, the contribution that these emerging churches are making to their parent communities understanding of church is explored. This thesis argues that these emerging communities are offering their parent communities two alternative ways of understanding church. The first is an understanding of church as a space for ecclesial borrowing and blending—which impacts on the formulation of a community’s ecclesial identity. The second is an understanding of church as a space for discussion, enquiry, and doubt—which impacts on the nature of belonging in ecclesial communities.

This dissertation is a multidisciplinary study combining both archaeological andpaleoecological data to examine the rise of early Formative societies in Uruguay, La Plata Basin.It is contextualized within broader anthropological concerns related to the emergence of culturalcomplexity, the significance of ritual and public architecture in intermediate-level societies, andthe role of human-environment interactions during the mid-Holocene. This investigationgenerated the first Late Quaternary paleoclimatic record, based on pollen and phytolith analyses,documenting that the mid-Holocene (ca. 6,620 to ca. 4,040 bp) was a period of environmentalflux and increased aridity. It describes the occupational history of the Los Ajos site from thecreation of a household-based community integrating a centralized communal space during thePreceramic Mound Component (ca. 4,120 – 3,000- 2,500 bp) to the Ceramic Mound Component(ca. 3,000 2,500 bp to the Contact Period), where Los Ajos acquired a strong public ritualcharacter through the formatilization and spatial segregation of its mounded architecture. Duringthe Ceramic Mound Period, the site exhibited both internal stratification (inner versus outerprecincts) and dual asymmetrical architecture in its central sector, which suggest the emergenceof incipient social differentiation. This study also marks the earliest occurrence of at least twodomesticated crops in the region: corn (Zea mays) and squash (Cucurbita spp.), showing that theearly Formative societies adopted a mixed economy shortly after 4,120 bp. Collectively, theseresults challenge the long-standing view that the La Plata Basin was a marginal area byevidencing an early and idiosyncratic emergence of social complexity never before registered inthis region of South America.

The research is clear; given the opportunity to do so, children begin transacting with print at very young ages (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982). Deaf children with full access to language from birth frequently experience higher success rates in literacy acquisition (Kuntze, 1998). However, there remains a paucity of studies on how young Deaf children whose success with literacy development can be reasonably predicted, begin their journeys toward literacy. With the understanding that early literacy experiences significantly impact all children's literacy development (Bus, Van Ijzendoorn, & Pelligrini, 1995), it is important to have a clearer understanding of how Deaf children develop emergent literacy skills.This dissertation presents a year-long case study on four young Deaf children from native-ASL families who were immersed in literacy-rich environments and how they developed literacy skills in school and at home. In order to provide the fullest possible picture, parents, teachers and children were interviewed and observed. As literacy development does not happen in isolation; this dissertation provides information about the children's sociocultural context that included the literacy experiences and beliefs of the adult participants and the children's own experiences at home and in school. Artifacts including writing samples and data from an early literacy checklist were also collected to provide information about each child's individual written language development.The data were organized and analyzed based on salient themes and framed by socio-psycholinguistic studies on hearing children by researchers such as Dyson (1993), Ferreiro & Teberosky (1982), and Goodman (1996). Results show that with full access to language and opportunities to develop reading and writing abilities, Deaf children's emergent literacy development is highly similar to that of monolingual and bilingual hearing children with some characteristics unique to Deaf ASL-English bilinguals. The results of this dissertation study adds to the general body of knowledge of how children develop literacy abilities even when they do not have face-to-face communication in their literate language. The results also inform current practices in Deaf education and provide researchers, educators, and parents with a framework for understanding the critical role that language and communication play on Deaf children's literacy development.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between parent-child interaction during shared book reading and emergent reading behaviors of 4 and 5 year old bilingual children at an international preschool in Japan. More specifically, this study examines: 1) Parental beliefs held about education and literacy learning. 2) The parental structuring of time, material, and experiences in the child's home environment. 3) Emergent reading behaviors of bilingual children during storybook reading. 4) The different types of support parents provide for their children during reading that contribute to the level of reading achievement attained by preschoolers. Qualitative case study methods were used to investigate common features of the parent-child interaction during the storybook reading and the literacy environments the child experiences. The data analysis revealed the following: The Japanese mothers in the current study supported the principle of direct teaching of literacy skills and did not support the interdependency of reading and writing even though they are highly-educated and from middle and upper class families. The mediating styles and strategies they employed during the storybook reading are reflective of their beliefs. The findings reveal that the method of literacy learning is valued differently by sociocultural context, where diverse contexts adhere different values to the educational process, its immediate and long-range goals, and the kind of adults a community hopes these children will become. The results of this study indicated that storybook reading could be fostered through a most routine of family activities. Parental involvement relates the text and its background knowledge to a child's personal experience of the world since reading skills, here, are developed in the course of the reading itself, assistance from the mother by means of 'scaffolding' and through connecting the story's elements to a child's own life events. The bilingual preschoolers also developed emergent literacy strategies as a result of being immersed in a print-rich environment where they can interact with print in meaningful and purposeful ways. The results may offer suggestions for presenting a developmentally and culturally appropriate literacy-learning environment for preschoolers who are learning English outside of English-speaking countries. / 2031-01-01

A social network approach was used to investigate the structural features of various emergent leadership systems in a large financial organization (n = 137), including transactional and transformational-style leadership relations. Results indicate that macro-level patterns of leadership nominations may be explained by a small number of underlying structural features, some of which vary across types of leadership networks. Leadership nominations were shown to be less hierarchical, more reciprocal, and more triadic than traditionally thought. On top of effects associated with individual differences in sex, supervisor status, tenure, and physical location, leadership networks displayed tendencies towards reciprocity and loose core-periphery structures based on transitive hierarchies. There was also some evidence that transformational leadership networks tended to be slightly less centralized and more transitive than transactional leadership networks. Implications for bridging leadership theory across levels of analysis are discussed.

While many research studies have examined the early literacy development and experiences of monolingual children (e.g. Clay 1982, 1991, 2001; Dyson, 1984, 1993, 2003), there are few studies that investigate the early literacy development of young emergent bilingual students (Dworin & Moll, 2006; McCarthey et al., 2004; Moll, Saez, Dworin, 2001). Drawing on sociocultural theory (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978), 1995), critical race theory (Ladson-Billings, 1998; Solorzano & Yosso, 2009; Taylor, 2009; Yosso, Villalpando, Delgado Bernal, & Solórzano, 2001) and ethic of care perspectives (Noddings, 1984), this case study examined emergent bilingual students’ writing development during writing workshop in the context of an “English only” official curriculum. Questions guiding the study were: (1) How do emergent bilingual writers participate in writing events? (2) What social, cultural, and linguistic resources do emergent bilingual writers draw upon when engaged in the composing process? and (3) What impact do these resources have on emergent bilingual writers’ understandings of the writing process? Data sources included teacher, student, and parent interviews; field notes and transcripts of focal students' talk and interactions during the whole class mini-lessons and share sessions, individual writing time, and teacher/student writing conferences, and student writing samples. Constant Comparative approach (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser & Strauss, 1965) was used to analyze the data. Findings from this study indicate that emergent bilingual students draw from rich social, cultural, and linguistic repertoires as they write. Findings also indicate that issues of power and agency play out as student position themselves within the group based on language proficiency. On the basis of this study, teachers can support students as they draw upon their rich resources by supporting talk in multiple languages in the classroom. This study also demonstrates how the politics of language education impact young students as they position themselves in the classroom based on access to linguistic resources. Implications for classroom practice include challenging deficit perspectives that fail to view students’ home language and culture as a resource in learning. Teachers can support students as they draw upon their rich resources by encouraging talk and writing in multiple languages in the classroom. Further questions are reasied about English only policies that deny students opportunities to engage in multilingual practices as they learn to read and write in classroom settings.

The intention of this project is to research the potential of emergent technologies for developing sustainable composites for the building industry. It is divided into three parts: Part 1 Identifies emergent practices which are being applied to the development of new sustainable building prototypes such as developments using nanotechnologies, the influence of biomimetics, the development of intelligent interactive systems and the use of digital technologies to generate complex cellular structural systems. Part 2 Outlines existing processes involved in selecting and manufacturing prototypes, as many existing processes have been opportunistically applied to emergent practices to generate innovative sustainable prototypes. Part 3 By synthesising the research gathered in the previous parts of this thesis, this section documents the design process for developing a sustainable building system. The design is based on a minimal surface structure to reduce materiality and to optimise strength and its manufacturing process exploits emergent and existing technologies for its generation.