Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Language Education, 2006. / "Title from dissertation home page (viewed June 27, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-06, Section: A, page: 2083. Adviser: Sharon Pugh.

As a teacher of creative writing, the researcher is interested in the most effective and appropriate approach to the teaching of writing to women. This study considers two approaches to the teaching of writing - writing as self expression, and writing as social practice. It outlines the theoretical framework of these two approaches, in terms of three key concepts - self, language and change. It looks at the implications of these approaches in terms of their approach to autobiography and in terms of 'the writing scene' - the context for women writers - and in particular, it looks at how women are affected by the approaches. The study then explores the implications of a feminist poststructuralist approach to the teaching of writing. The theoretical framework of this approach is discussed, again in terms of the three key concepts of self, language and change; and the approach is then 'translated' into the practical research of the study. Positioning itself as feminist advocacy research, it takes the form of an action research study where a series of writing workshops is designed and then facilitated in a selected group of women participants. The study analyses the process, the writing produced in the workshops, and the interviews with the participants after the workshops, in terms of how they reflect the central concepts, self, language and change of the feminist poststructuralist approach. The study concludes with a summary of the essential ingredients of a poststructuralist approach, it comments on the generalisability of the research to other groups, and comments on the research process in terms of the researcher's intentions as a piece of feminist advocacy research. In line with feminist research, the researcher is concerned that this dissertation is written in such a way as to be of practical use to a teacher of writing who might like to adopt a feminist poststructuralist approach. With this in mind, a complete set of workshop outlines is given in Appendix A, a complete set of handouts in Appendix B, and some resource material for teachers in Appendix C. Bibliography: pages 121-129.

Bibliography: pages 140-157. / This study provides evidence that most teachers choose their class textbooks haphazardly and without evaluating them. As a result, bad textbooks are as likely to be chosen and to succeed commercially as good ones are. One consequence of this is that many publishers and authors continue to get away with producing bad textbooks. The study begins by describing the context in which school textbooks are chosen. It gives an overview of the textbook's role, and concludes that it is an indispensable part of an effective education system, especially where other resources are lacking. The study then considers the degree to which South African textbooks fulfil their roles; it concludes that most textbooks in schools are poor, many being incomprehensible to their audiences, but attention is also drawn to some positive textbook development that has taken place. The study next considers how and why so many poor textbooks have been selected by educators: it summarises the part played by education departments and publishers, and reviews the state of textbook evaluation as a discipline. It concludes that South African educators are poorly equipped to evaluate and select textbooks. Against this background, the study describes an investigation of how teachers select textbooks for their classes. The findings are that choice is haphazard and that evaluation, in the rare instances when it takes place, is usually unsystematic and superficial. In conclusion, the study recommends that research into textbook development is done to provide a theoretical framework for effective evaluation, and that training and other support in textbook evaluation for teachers is established to improve selection practices. The study hypothesises that the resulting demand from a broad base of well-informed textbook-selectors in schools will give authors and publishers a more powerful incentive than any other pressures can to produce materials that withstand systematic, critical and wise evaluation.

<p> As student learners become exposed to more technology, they drive change in their learning environments. The United States Department of Education and Georgia Department of Education responded with national and state technology plans to better support the Digital Natives of this century. Local school districts and schools equipped educators in this study through portable and mobile tablet/laptop carts, student response devices, data/video projectors, and/or interactive TVs/white boards. In this multisited, multiple case study, three middle grades English/Language Arts educators honored connections between content, pedagogy, and technology. Through narrative vignettes, within-case and cross-case analysis of data, and interpretation and implications of findings, the researcher described how technology-based learning impacts the learning environment of student learners and their educators in middle grades English/Language Arts instruction and how those experiences impact learner autonomy. The researcher desired the findings to be of value to educators and others whose decisions regarding professional development, instructional practices, and instructional resources influence the learning experiences for educators and their student learners.</p>

<p> Argumentation should be approached as a practice that is woven into the larger instructional practices across the core educational disciplines. With the advent of The Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the ability to analyze and write an argument is now a predominant skill students are required to repeatedly demonstrate. As student achievement is now being used to reflect the larger portion of teacher accountability, it is essential that educators better understand how to make argumentation a disciplinary practice. I suggest that students should first be able to examine, identify, and understand the necessary function of evidence as a primary element of argumentation in order to more effectively construct a meaningful, sustainable argument. Through the categorization and analysis of explicit and implicit evidence, students are able to establish more meaningful claims. While this procedure elicits more student engagement and requires educators to reorient their instructional considerations, it also provides a practical starting point for all stakeholders when dealing with emerging argumentation in the classroom.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of linguistic knowledge in spelling by analyzing spelling errors made by 220 students in the fourth, fifth, and seventh grades. A 25-word researcher-designed spelling test with considerations of word frequency, word familiarity, and word type (based on morphological complexity) was administered. An error coding system was established based on the Triple Word Form theory. Each misspelling was coded based on its linguistic features and scored cumulatively in 3 categories: Phonological Representation, Orthographic Legality, and Morphological Legality. The error coding system revealed the linguistic profiles of misspellings and allowed the comparisons among subgroups matched on grades, reading, and spelling ability levels. </p><p> The results of profile analyses supported the Overlapping Waves Model, which advocates that spellers use their phonological, orthographic, and morphological knowledge in spelling simultaneously regardless of age, reading, or spelling levels. On the other hand, the study did not find evidence supporting the stage-specific theory, which defines each stage by observations of the consistent use of one strategy in spelling. The linguistic profiles revealed the competition between Phonological Representation and Orthographic Legality, which provided little evidence supporting the specific phonological deficit hypothesis. On the contrary, the researcher found that the key to becoming an average speller is to be able to effectively apply sufficient phonological knowledge in spelling. For students with poor reading ability, they do not just suffer from limited phonological knowledge but also from the lack of other linguistic knowledge. For any two students with average reading ability, it is the one who can apply sufficient phonological knowledge that benefit in spelling and perform at the level that matches his or her reading ability. Educational implications are discussed.</p>

<p> This qualitative study analyzed the meaning-making practices of urban adolescents participating in a college preparatory program featuring philosophical inquiry into cosmopolitanism and the creation of multimodal texts. In contrast to studies of composing that focus on individual outcomes, this dissertation traced group meaning making. The study was grounded in sociocultural perspectives that theorize literacy as diverse, socially constructed, meaning-making practices that emerge in particular cultural and social contexts, and include multiple modes of communication. Data included interviews, observations, and artifacts. To analyze the data, a music-inspired analytic system was devised to examine the collaborative nature of composing. </p><p> The study demonstrated, first, that composing in this setting was a collaborative process exceeding customary understandings of collaborative composing. Uncovered after examining complex patterns of interactions over varied timescales, collaboration at the group level occurred while community members created individual products. Second, the study revealed that improvisation was an important strategy for shaping the content of this collaborative process. During informal jam sessions, participants creatively explored options for representing content. They actively built upon ideas offered by other participants in the moment, in order to read, interpret, select, and design the content of their multimodal texts. Last, facilitated by the complex patterns of interaction and shaped by the improvised frames for representing content, this study revealed the ways in which participants constructed a shared meaning of the concept of cosmopolitanism at the group level. Utilizing an image-afforded exploration of juxtaposition, this shared understanding evolved from early conceptions of cosmopolitanism as represented in juxtaposed images to an understanding of cosmopolitanism as the act of creating and interpreting juxtaposition between varying perspectives. </p><p> This study contributes to growing empirical research on meaning making through multimodal text design. It extends socio-cultural explanations of what counts as `social' in educational contexts, illustrating that composing is not just influenced by social interaction but rather <i>is</i> social. Finally, in an age of standards, testing, and accountability that can narrow what constitutes valued literacy practices, this study provides an example of the varied interactional paths and diverse compositional strategies and products that can engage learners and expand opportunities for meaning making.</p>

<p> As digital media makes its way into elementary school classrooms, urban school culture moves slowly to join in. The move to integrate new technologies into schools is both enabled and constrained by factors such as the need for students and teachers to be seen as people who are "successful" in both public and social terms. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the complexities for elementary children learning to write in the digital age. I used a case study approach, examining the language choices of eight third and fourth grade students (4 girls and 4 boys) who attended an urban elementary school in a large southeastern city in the United States. I analyzed how the students' language choices contributed to the construction/negotiation of their writer identities and the degree to which these constructs/negotiations were enabled/constrained by what the participants imagined was/not possible from their positions as students while composing with varying technologies. I conclude that it is not only the young writers who imagine what is/not possible from their position as students, it is also those who guide, or "authorize" student writing, including teachers, administrators, and parents. This constructing/negotiating, authorizing/guiding all take place as students seek to maintain membership (textually) within their school world while endeavoring to cultivate new memberships within expanses or publics that coexist alongside their schools. The young writers highlighted in this study, working against from within the school district's accountability and efficiency agenda show that being a "successful" student writer can mean more than their merely reproducing what is expected of them.</p>

<p> Most developmental community college students are not completing the composition sequence successfully. This mixed-methods study examined acceleration as a way to help developmental community college students complete the composition sequence more quickly and more successfully. Acceleration is a curricular redesign that includes challenging readings and assignments and reduces the number of required classes in the developmental composition sequence. Developmental students taking an accelerated composition class at the California community college studied were as successful as developmental students taking the traditional segmented basic skills course. Students who pass the accelerated course skip a developmental class and are eligible to take the college-level course, which saves them time and money. The students who were interviewed cited the main factors leading to their success: the academic support from faculty, academic support from fellow students, the personality/caring of the teacher, and an interest in the class theme. Data were from the first semester the college offered this class. Findings from the study indicate that the college studied should continue offering accelerated composition classes and should encourage attendance at professional development meetings so that all parts of the accelerated curriculum will be implemented in the future. Implementing all parts of the accelerated curriculum may increase the success rates. The college studied should also re-examine its traditional basic skills curriculum and the timed writing departmental final exam, which causes unnecessary stress and lowers expectations. More effort could be made to include readings from minority authors and to provide support, such as through learning communities.</p>

<p> This yearlong study in an 8^th grade classroom explores a blogging literacy event that illustrates how reading, digital writing and oracy work together to better support student learning, reasoning and dialogue. While many studies separately confirm the role of talk and writing in promoting learning, few studies address how writing informs talk practices, and no known studies examine how purposeful, individual blogging about literature promotes productive classroom dialogue. </p><p> Students within this eighth grade classroom are expected to write and participate in a blog with their classmates about literature they select and read independently. Students then discuss the literature and their blogs in small group conversations with their classroom teacher, leading to rich, meaningful discussions. Focal data consists of student blogs, video recorded small group conversations, audio recorded student and teacher interviews, written student reflections, observation field notes and photographs of student artifacts. </p><p> This study explicates the potential of writing acting as a springboard to further student reasoning through conversation. It documents the flexibility of teacher talk to take student contributions and align them in meaningful ways with educational language and purposes. Even within the confines of regimented curriculum agendas, the study illustrates how teachers can play a variety of roles in which they employ a repertoire of skills and strategies, making decisions in the moment to build on what students bring to the classroom and engender a classroom environment of risk-taking, meaning-making and learning. </p>