In the field of deaf education, a long-standing and still unanswered question is why are the reading levels and academic achievement levels of deaf and hard of hearing children inferior to their hearing peers. Teachers and parents continue to look for reasons to explain the gap and strategies they can use to narrow this gap between the reading achievement of children who are deaf and children who hear. For all children, literacy learning begins at birth. During the early years, children listen to and learn from the language their parents speak to them. The children are affected by the family interactions and experiences of daily life both inside and outside the family. Examination of literacy interactions of deaf children and their parents may provide answers to help us understand the literacy achievement gap deaf children experience. For this research dissertation, my focus was on: (a) How does the communication method of the deaf child affect language learning?; (b) How can the parent-child literacy interactions of deaf children be described?, and (c) How can preschool-age deaf children’s emergent literacy behaviors be described? This naturalistic study looked at the early literacy interactions of preschool deaf children of hearing parents. From an initial group of ten families, three families from an early intervention program were selected. The researcher identified the literacy histories of the deaf children, described the parent-child literacy interactions, and explored emergent literacy behaviors occurring in the home. Data sources included parent questionnaires, parent interviews, literacy logs, and observations of parent-child literacy interactions, including storybook reading. Findings reveal that overall family support, the definitive personality of the parents, and the early diagnosis and amplification of the deaf child defined the difference between the deaf child that excelled as an emergent reader and those who did not. Family support assisted in making each child a successful emergent reader. Parents who made an early decision and commitment to a communication mode, whether manual or oral, allowed their child to progress in areas beyond simple vocabulary. Lastly, the early diagnosis of deafness and early amplification aided the deaf child in emergent literacy achievements.

Research into the phenomenon of change has attracted interest from a range of management disciplines; organizational, management, behavioural and operations. Each discipline brings with it a perspective which informs the theoretical debates and empirical research, resulting in different ideas, meaning and approaches taken in studying the phenomenon of change. Ideas about the meaning of the content of change, why contextual factors might influence the process of change and, how does the process of change unfold over time, are three important aspects to understanding the phenomenon of change. This literature review draws on the three concepts of the content, context and process of change to explore the extant change literature. Evidence based literature reviews have a strong tradition within the medical field and have been shown to be a rigorous method for determining efficacy of clinical trials. This review applies the principles of this method but within a management research context and reviews 52 papers. Variations in the aspects of organizational context and process of change empirically studied confirm that context plays a significant and influential role in processes of change and change outcomes. There is little evidence to support the idea that the content of change influences the process of change activities and this is an area that needs further research. Further research is also needed to develop the idea of the importance of emergent change activities within planned change frameworks.

Microbial mats are important components of perennially ice-covered Antarctic lakes in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, where they often comprise the dominant biomass in this cold, shaded environment. These lakes represent some of the most extreme lacustrine environments on Earth, including a persistent ice-cover, stable, stratified water columns, with strong salinity related density gradients. In these low-disturbance environments, the microbial consortia develop macroscopic emergent structures such as pinnacles and ridges. Such structures are speculated to confer advantageous survival traits and have also been found in the Precambrian fossil record as “conophyton” stromatolites – arguably some of the earliest evidence of life – and it has been suggested that a better understanding of the growth dynamics of modern “conophyton” will inform our understanding of what was required for these early fossils to be produced. Despite decades of research, there are few studies of the structural basis of conophyton producing microbial mats in Antarctic lakes. To help address this gap, complex microbial mats along a transect established in Lake Fryxell, one of the McMurdo Dry Valley lakes, were examined; with the aim of documenting the distribution of different types of photosynthetic organisms and mat morphologies along environmental gradients such as light, conductivity, oxygen concentration and depth. Microbial mat samples were taken along the transect and analysed in New Zealand using confocal laser scanning microscopy, along with conventional pigment extraction techniques. Correlations between mat morphology, pigment content and lake properties were found. The appearance of bacteriochlorophylls, characteristic of green sulfur bacteria within and below the oxycline confirm a shift from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism that was consistent with mats taking on a prostrate appearance. The cyanobacterial pigment phycoerythrin was only found in the hyperoxic, relatively well lit region of the transect, and was associated with the mats forming a distinctive macroscale morphology with dense fields of cm-scale cuspate pinnacles. Between these, a hypoxic region was characterised by a relatively flat mat within which were many cm-scale pits. Structural investigations were focussed on two distinct morphologies, pinnacle and honeycomb mat. Nearly all photosynthetic organisms were located in the upper 2 mm of both pinnacle and honeycomb mats, mainly comprising diatoms and cyanobacteria. Pinnacle mats were dominated by a narrow cyanobacterium, probably a species of Leptolyngbya, which were mostly oriented vertically, which placed trichomes parallel to the direction of pinnacle extension. The honeycomb mat contained fewer narrow trichomes, rather the bulk of photosynthetic organisms were diatoms from the genera Muellaria, Navicula and Diadesmis, together with broad-trichome cyanobacteria that formed a thin skin on the surface of the mat, though absent from the pits. The type of emergent structure that is formed appears to be related to species composition, and this in turn appears to be related to the growth conditions. A model was developed to explain how species-specific growth mechanisms are involved in emergent structure formation for honeycomb and pinnacle mats.

Researchers have been studying virtual world culture for decades. However, little attention has been devoted to the intersection of virtual world culture and real world culture. Even less attention has been given to the study of comparing players' different virtual world game behaviors that have been influenced by their own real world cultural background. In this paper, I specifically focus on identifying the differences among American, Chinese, and Taiwanese cultures and the unique aspects of players with distinct cultural backgrounds that alter the atmosphere of the game. This is a mixed-method ﾓtrans ludicﾔ? study across three game servers that included participant observation, interviews, and surveys. The result of this study show that real world culture influences virtual world culture. Players in different countries bring real life experiences to the game and form their own emergent sub-cultures and sub-rules under the larger structure of the designated game rules and social conventions. When players immigrate from their original server to other countries' servers, initially they tend to find people from the same country to play with and follow their old social conventions, which are the sub-rules they create in their old servers, rather than play with the local players and adapt to new customs. However, over time, players develop hybrid cultures that adopt features from both the old cultures. This study also demonstrates that emergent behaviors are likely to occur when players face problems or difficult challenges.

Individual differences in early literacy skills can be attributed to children’s previous history of emergent literacy experiences during their preschool years. The purpose of this qualitative study was to learn about the emergent literacy experiences of one Libyan American preschooler and one Syrian American preschooler and how their families support these experiences in their bilingual homes. Through the lens of social theory of learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) and sociocultural theory (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978), this multi-case study was designed to explore family literacy practices with a preschooler in a naturalistic setting. The questions guiding this study were: (1) How did the texts, tools, and technologies available in two bilingual home settings impact the emergent literacy practices of a Libyan American child and a Syrian American child? (2) What support did family members provide for these two children as they developed emergent literacy practices in their bilingual home settings? Data sources included a demographic questionnaire, digital-recordings of family literacy practices with a preschooler, audio-recorded in-depth interviews with the parents, home visits, the preschoolers’ writing samples, and photographs of literacy activities, materials, and the home environment. The recorded family literacy practices and interviews were transcribed and analyzed to identify emerging themes. Both within-case analysis and cross-case analysis were conducted. Findings revealed that the preschoolers in both families use a multimodal process such as talking, drawing, singing, chanting, recitation, technologies, and sociodramatic play in their daily literacy experiences. The parents are not concerned with teaching their children specific literacy skills; but they naturally use techniques for keeping them on task and questioning skills to enhance oral language and comprehension development. These families’ home literacy practices are Americanized by living in the mainstream social group, and English is frequently used among the family members. However, their bilingualism and religious literacy practices enrich and vary their children’s emergent literacy experiences and their family literacy practices. The significance of this study resides in the importance of getting to know individual families’ backgrounds to better understand and respect the cultural practices of family literacy.

A six week parent-child shared reading intervention targeting children's emergent literacy and emotion knowledge was implemented for 33 Head Start home-based families. This pilot study tested the hypothesis that the nominal addition of social emotional components to an evidenced-based shared reading intervention (dialogic reading) would result in additive effects in regards to parent and child outcomes. The study utilized a pre-post test design involving random assignment of families to one of two treatment groups. Both groups received the standard dialogic reading intervention, while parents in the DR ES (dialogic reading plus emotion skills) received an additional nominal dose of training in how to be nurturing towards their child during reading and how to use the story as a catalyst to talking about emotions. Differential effects between the two interventions were not found. Specifically, no clinically significant group effects were found for children's print concepts knowledge and emotion knowledge (emotion labeling and perspective taking) at post-test. Similarly, no effects emerged for parents' reading related behaviors, namely, application of verbal prompts, and displayed warmth. Effect sizes, as measured by eta squared, were also consistently low for all dependent measures, ranging from .00 for children's perspective taking and parents' displayed warmth to .03 for parent verbal prompts. Significant time effects emerged for all outcome variables with the exception of parent warmth, with effect sizes ranging from d = 0.31 (parent warmth) to d = 1.31 (parents' dialogic reading prompts), with an average effect size of d = 0.61. This study is the first to explore the potential impact of combining emotional content into the dialogic reading intervention. It refocuses attention on the contexts that promote children's school readiness skills. Results suggest that the potential benefits of dialogic reading extend beyond parent and children reading related skills, and may include children's emotional development. Findings warrant further investigation of interventions that support parents in maximizing the benefits of shared reading.

Syftet med det här examensarbetet är att ur ett förskollärarperspektiv undersöka vad högläsningen har för betydelse för barns utveckling av literacy. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna hämtas från forskningsfältet literacy som handlar om att kunna läsa och skriva samt förståelsen av symboler, språkliga verktyg och hur man kan använda dem i samspel med andra. I den här undersökningen har fem förskollärare medverkat i semistrukturerade intervjuer. Resultaten visar på utifrån förskollärarnas utsagor att de använder sig av högläsning i undervisningssyfte för att främja barns språkutveckling. Resultaten visar även på flera faktorer som är betydelsefulla för barns utveckling av literacy ur förskollärarnas perspektiv. En faktor är att barn ska få ett berikat ordförråd under högläsningen. Ytterligare en faktor är vikten av att barn får möjlighet att vara delaktiga i högläsningen och att förskollärare är lyhörda och tar del av de frågor som barnen väljer att lyfta fram. Delad högläsning bidrar till att barn utvecklar sitt verbala språk, utvecklar fantasin, det gynnar samspelet mellan barn/barn och vuxna/barn, förbereder barn att bli läsare och bidrar till innehåll i barns lek. Dessa faktorer är viktiga kunskaper för att barn ska kunna utveckla sin literacy.

abstract: Emergent processes can roughly be defined as processes that self-arise from interactions without a centralized control. People have many robust misconceptions in explaining emergent process concepts such as natural selection and diffusion. This is because they lack a proper categorical representation of emergent processes and often misclassify these processes into the sequential processes category that they are more familiar with. The two kinds of processes can be distinguished by their second-order features that describe how one interaction relates to another interaction. This study investigated if teaching emergent second-order features can help people more correctly categorize new processes, it also compared different instructional methods in teaching emergent second-order features. The prediction was that learning emergent features should help more than learning sequential features because what most people lack is the representation of emergent processes. Results confirmed this by showing participants who generated emergent features and got correct features as feedback were better at distinguishing two kinds of processes compared to participants who rewrote second-order sequential features. Another finding was that participants who generated emergent features followed by reading correct features as feedback did better in distinguishing the processes than participants who only attempted to generate the emergent features without feedback. Finally, switching the order of instruction by teaching emergent features and then asking participants to explain the difference between emergent and sequential features resulted in equivalent learning gain as the experimental group that received feedback. These results proved teaching emergent second-order features helps people categorize processes and demonstrated the most efficient way to teach them. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2015