INCORPORATING LITERATURE CIRCLES IN A THIRD-GRADE CLASSROOM Margaret Marlene Morrow, Ed.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2005 This study describes how one third-grade classroom became literature discussants utilizing role-playing in a literature circle format. Over a span of nine months, I documented students initiation, training, and practice utilizing role-playing to conduct peer-led discussions about books. Types of responses, role-playing, and interactions resulting from role-playing activities while engaged in literature circle were examined. Audio and video taping, student self-evaluations and reactions, student role-playing schedules, and student artifacts based on culminating activities, provided a data set to analyze interactions and responses. Findings of the study indicated roles used to promote individual participation in discussions about books were easily adapted, particularly for the low and average-ability students who require more support in their learning. Over time and texts, students appeared to shift naturally in and out of roles while making contributions to discussions. Interactions known as Informative ranked highest in frequency for all students followed by Facilitative and Solicitation. Acknowledging interactions ranked third in frequency for the low-ability student. Responses known as Personal were most frequent and progressive across time and texts for all students. Interpretive responses showed the greatest percentage increase compared to other categories, but the lowest in cumulative frequency. Evaluative responses were most frequent and consistent across time and texts for the high-ability student compared to low and average ability students. Descriptive responses were lowest cumulative tally for high and low students only. The role of the teacher was viewed as shifting from voice of authority to facilitator assisting youngsters in finding their own voices.

It was the purpose of this study to explore if there is a more effective way to practice aural skills, one that could be individualized as well as computer based: a method of practice that would enhance what the instructor does in the classroom and help the student reinforce their recognition of the basic elements of aural skills and dictation. Concept mapping, which has been beneficial in other educational settings, especially math and science, might be such a way. The goal of this study was to examine if this procedure could be applied to aural stimuli in the same way it has been applied to verbal information. Sixty-four students in a first year college aural skills class were randomly assigned to two groups. Following a pretest of twenty-five chords randomly chosen from a pool of fifty, one group was presented with a lesson on concept mapping while listening to the chords and the other group received a distractor task. The results of these tests showed a higher gain score for the treatment group, M = 5.33, than for the control group, M = 1.25. An Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), showed a moderately significant gain of p = .030 (one-tailed) for the treatment group. Overall, the test results indicated a positive effect of the treatment on the ability of the participants to recognize chords in the posttest. Due to the limitations in the present study, more research is suggested to determine the effectiveness of the process.

This study investigated the effects of repeated reading of decodable and less decodable text on oral reading fluency, specifically accuracy and correct words read per minute. In addition the study sought to determine if a particular text type facilitated oral reading fluency for good, average, or poor readers. Participants read either decodable or less decodable texts or received regular classroom instruction. The two treatment groups reread two narrative and one informational text using four different techniques, (e.g. echo, choral and two variations of partner reading). The comparison group read a different leveled text each week as part of their regular classroom instruction. The leveled text was not reread. Treatment and comparison groups did not differ on post measures on nonsense word fluency or passage reading. Both treatment groups regardless of ability level increased significantly in words read correctly for each story. Thus, the repeated reading of text did have an effect on correct words read per minute. There was no significant difference between the groups reading decodable and less decodable text for two of the three stories read, regardless of reading ability. There was a significant difference between the two groups of low ability readers on one story, with the students reading decodable text making a significant gain in oral reading fluency.

This study examined the extent to which middle and high school classroom history assessments align with the educational objectives outlined in the 7th National Curriculum in Korea. In particular, the alignment between the classroom assessments and the educational objectives focused on the level of cognitive reasoning skills and the breadth of historical knowledge. The technical quality of the classroom assessment items, and the extent to which teachers had professional development activities related to the design, use, and interpretation of assessments were also examined. Korean history assessments for the 2004 school year from 22 middle schools and 10 high schools were collected and analyzed. The classroom assessments and the educational objectives were analyzed to examine their alignment with respect to the depth of understanding, breadth of knowledge, and balance of representation. An item writing guideline developed by Haladyna, et al. (1989, 2002) was used to examine the technical quality of the items. A brief survey of history teachers was conducted to obtain information about their assessment related professional development activities. The results of the study indicated that a relatively large percent of the assessment items from both middle and high schools tended to measure lower levels of historical reasoning than those required by the objectives, resulting in a small percent of items being consistent with the cognitive level of objectives. The distribution of the test items was not balanced across the objectives, rather they tended to emphasize factual knowledge, and the assessments did not thoroughly cover the span of knowledge represented in the curriculum. There were little differences across different levels and types of schools. However, multiple-choice test items from high schools were more likely to assess higher levels of historical understanding than middle school test items. In contrast, the performance assessment tasks for middle school students provided more opportunities to use higher level thinking skills. Most of the items were well developed in terms of formatting and writing test item stems and alternatives. The teacher survey suggested that teachers had little professional development related to the design, use, and interpretation of assessments in both their training courses and activities before and during their professional careers.

The purpose of this study was to examine preservice secondary mathematics teachers understandings about proportional reasoning prior to and upon completion of a practice-based methods course focused on proportional reasoning, their opportunities to learn the intended content, and their ability to apply what was learned in a new setting. Ten teachers completed a pre/posttest and pre/post interview that was designed to explore their ability to reason proportionally. All classes were videotaped so as to examine teachers opportunities to learn to reason proportionally and to utilize their understandings in a new setting. In addition, six teachers who were not enrolled in the course served as a contrast group and completed the pre/post instruments. The analysis of the data suggests that teachers learned important aspects of proportional reasoning from the course. Prior to the course, there were no differences between the understandings of the teachers enrolled in the course and those who were not. However, by the end of the course, teachers enrolled in the course utilized a broader range of solution strategies, significantly improved their capacity to distinguish between proportional and nonproportional relationships, and significantly enhanced their understanding of the nature of proportional relationships, while those in the contrast group did not. In addition, the analysis of the class sessions made salient that all of the mathematics that teachers learned during the course was made public during multiple classes and by multiple teachers. The analysis also revealed that even teachers who remained mostly silent during class discussions still learned the same mathematics that more the vocal teachers learned. The results of the analysis of class sessions from a subsequent course on algebra revealed that the teachers who participated in the proportional reasoning course drew upon their enhanced understandings of proportional relationships when appropriate. This result suggests that teachers had not merely memorized discrete facts about proportional relationships, but had developed flexible understandings that allowed them to access their knowledge as they explored different mathematical ideas. Finally, the results of the study suggest that practice-based teacher education courses can be fruitful sites for helping teachers develop mathematical knowledge needed for teaching.

Developmental studies by pediatricians and surveys of adoptive parents of children that have been adopted to the United States from foreign countries indicate that many of these children are experiencing substantial difficulties with the acquisition of their new language. Language difficulties may compromise the adopted childs abilities to understand, negotiate, and adjust to a new family and environment (Jenista, 1993). Reports range from 100% of the children having difficulties (Willig, 1995) to 34% (Groza,1995), with the majority of researchers reporting incidences in the 30-50% range (Johnson et al. 1996; Hough, 1996). These figures are in-line with research from countries such as Norway (Dalen, 2001a; Saetersdal & Dalen, 1987), Denmark (Rorbech, 1997) and Holland (Hoksbergen, 1997). To date, no studies directly assessing the language skills, long-term outcomes, or the types of language difficulties experienced by these children after experiencing an abrupt language switch have been completed. This study evaluated the language skills of a group of 44 school-aged, post-institutionalized Eastern European adoptees (EEA-PI) to determine the extent, and the types, of problems present in the areas of semantics, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, and reading, and explored the factors of institutionalization that might predict language development. Results showed that as a group, EEA-PI children, in comparison to the normative data on the standardized and spontaneous speech measures, performed lower than age expectations on all of the measures, with the exception of measures of listening (receptive language). The disparity within the groups performance was notable. Though institutional factors of time in institution, age of adoption, and time in U.S. did not correlate with measures of receptive and expressive language, they were significant for reading and nonword repetition scores. This research furthers our professional knowledge regarding long-term language outcomes and the selection of appropriate diagnostic measures for these children and other children experiencing early neglect in our country.

While most researchers acknowledge that error correction (EC) is most effective in meaningful contexts, few studies have addressed collaborative EC or longitudinal language development during oral conversations especially conversations where new knowledge is continually integrated. By observing how the tutor helped two college-age beginning students of Chinese learn three inter-related and chronologically-offset target grammatical structures (TG) during nine weeks of hourly one-on-one tutorial sessions, the study investigated: (a) the types of assistance the tutor provided in spoken conversation; (b) changes in this assistance within and across sessions; and (c) how errors towards TG were eliminated. Analysis of protocols (transcripts marked up with visual cues), learners' questionnaires, and graphs revealed that: (a) the tutor provided two types of contingent assistance: regulation in participation (RinP), and EC on emergent errors; (b) EC was effective and its explicitness depended only on the learner's Zone of Proximal Development same finding for RinP; (c) during the goals-oriented activity, language, serving both social (active and accurate meaning-exchange) and cognitive (tutor's EC and RinP, and learners' meta-comments) functions, was responsible for learners' transformation from other-regulation to self-regulation language serving a cognitive function on an inter-personal level gradually became intra-personal; (d) RinP was instrumental in transferring not only the responsibility for participation (elaboration, initiation, and elicitation of TG) but also, through EC consequent to elicitation of TG, the responsibility for grammar-accuracy; and, (e) TG lacking an English counterpart required not only learners' cognitive understanding of the TG form but also where (which contexts) to use it here, RinP efficiently co-constructed contexts for elicitation of TG and its differentiation, through EC. In line with Vygostkian principles, the tutor's collaborative RinP improved learners' participation while the collaborative EC improved the learners' grammar accuracy within that improving participation. Implications include: (a) grammar accuracy is not an end-product but depended on not only task-difficulty and subject-matter but also degree to which similar TG were differentiated; and, (b) all errors, salient and not, must be corrected from the beginning ignoring errors deemed unimportant was myopic.

Geometry and measurement represent topics of great significance in mathematics; however, efforts to teach this content in the middle grades have been formulaic, with students memorizing formulas and definitions without conceptual understanding. Moreover, students and teachers demonstrate gaps and misconceptions in their knowledge of geometry and measurement, particularly with respect to relationships between measurable quantities of geometric figures and proof. This study investigated changes in knowledge needed for teaching geometry and measurement through engagement in a practice-based course for preservice and practicing teachers. Pre- and post-course measures showed significant teacher growth along all three aspects of knowledge needed for teaching. Teachers grew in their ability to attack non-routine problems relating dimension, perimeter, and area and dimension, surface area, and volume; and in their use of multiple solution methods, multiple representations, and production of mathematically sophisticated solutions. Teachers also grew in content knowledge for teaching, becoming more representationally fluent and increasingly able to modify tasks to target key geometry ideas and about the affordances of different formulas for area and volume, and in knowledge of proof, including identification of the key aspects of the definition of proof, the role of proof in the classroom, and creation of proofs and proof-like arguments. Teachers grew in knowledge of mathematics for student learning as conceptualized by the five practices for productive use of student thinking: anticipating student solutions to a mathematical task, the use of high-level questions to assess and advance student thinking, selecting and sequencing student work to share, and connecting that work in ways that targeted the big mathematical ideas. Teachers also grew in their identification of routines, an example of practices that support teaching. Qualitative analysis of the course tied these results to opportunities to learn in the course. The results suggest that teachers can grow in their knowledge of content and pedagogy through practice-based teacher education experiences. The results suggest a value for focusing methods courses on particular slices of mathematical content. The design principles articulated in the analysis predicted teacher learning, and generalize to the design of teacher education experiences that enhance knowledge needed for teaching mathematics.

DEVELOPING SECONDARY MATHEMATICS TEACHERS KNOWLEDGE OF AND CAPACITY TO IMPLEMENT INSTRUCTIONAL TASKS WITH HIGH LEVEL COGNITIVE DEMANDS Melissa D. Boston, EdD University of Pittsburgh, 2006 This study analyzed mathematics teachers selection and implementation of instructional tasks in their own classrooms before, during, and after their participation in a professional development workshop focused on the cognitive demands of mathematical tasks. Eighteen secondary mathematics teachers participated in a six-session professional development workshop under the auspices of the Enhancing Secondary Mathematics Teacher Preparation (ESP) Project throughout the 2004-2005 school year. Data collected from the ESP workshop included written artifacts created during the professional development sessions and videotapes of each session. Data collected from teachers included a pre/post measure of teachers knowledge of the cognitive demands of mathematical tasks, collections of tasks and student work from teachers classrooms, lesson observations, and interviews. Ten secondary mathematics teachers who did not participate in the ESP workshop served as the contrast group, completed the pre/post measure, and participated in one lesson observation. Analysis of the data indicated that the ESP workshop provided learning experiences for teachers that transformed their previous knowledge and instructional practices. ESP teachers enhanced their knowledge of the cognitive demands of mathematical tasks; specifically, they improved their ability to identify and describe the characteristics of tasks that influence students opportunities for learning. Following their participation in ESP, teachers were more frequently selecting high-level tasks as the main instructional tasks in their own classrooms. ESP teachers also improved their ability to maintain high-level cognitive demands during implementation. Student work implementation significantly improved from Fall to Spring, and comparisons of the implementation of high-level student work tasks indicated that high-level demands were less likely to decline in Spring than in Fall. Lesson observations did not yield statistically significant results from Fall to Spring; however, significant differences existed between ESP teachers and the contrast group in task selection and implementation during lesson observations. ESP teachers also outperformed the contrast group on the post-measure of the knowledge of cognitive demands of mathematical tasks. None of the significant differences were influenced by the use of a reform vs. traditional curricula in teachers classrooms. Teachers who exhibited greater improvements more frequent contributions and more comments on issues of implementation than teachers who exhibited less improvement.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project (2002), The Internet Goes to College, all college students began using a computer between the ages of 16-18 and 85% of those college students owned their own computer and had gone online. The Internet had become a staple of college students educational experiencea functional tool (p. 2). In the Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Cyber Orientation was implemented to provide transfer students the option of participating in an academic orientation using a web-based program rather than attending an on-campus program. Transfer students were chosen for the pilot because they already had experienced college and possessed a cognitive structure to assimilate the information. Most transfer students admitted to Arts and Sciences have already completed 48 credits or two years of college experience. The assumption was made that transfer students either own computers or have access to computers at their current institutions. The participants of Cyber Orientation were self-selected. The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate Cyber Orientation, the website and process, to determine whether the students and academic advisors have been satisfied with this option and to make recommendations for improvement. The study used responses from a mandatory survey completed by student participants and information gathered from advisors in an informal discussion. The significance of this study was to determine whether a web-based academic orientation program could be implemented successfully to better serve the students and the institution. As the Arts and Sciences Advising Center prides itself in the service it provides to all students, and especially in the human contact, which is at the core of its mission, successful implementation of this web-based program is an innovative approach to a traditional process. Information regarding web-based academic orientation also contributes to the body of literature in the field of academic advising and exemplifies the integration of technology while upholding traditional processes and maintaining the student at the center of the focus.