<p> Research suggests that instructional interventions can impact student learning most effectively when teachers receive support for implementation (Danielson, Doolittle, &amp; Bradley, 2007; Songer, et al., 2002). This is particularly true for interventions targeting struggling students within Response to Intervention structures (Akerson, Cullen, &amp; Hanson, 2009; Harris, Graham, &amp; Adkins, 2015; Martin-Kniep, 2008;). Professional learning communities (PLCs) provide one structure to provide teachers with the needed instructional support to implement instructional interventions (Akerson et al., 2009; Danielson et al., 2007; Martin-Kneip, 2008; Pease-Alvarez &amp; Samway, 2008). Implementation literature largely examines two aspects of these PLCs in relation to teacher&rsquo;s practice: 1) teachers&rsquo; fidelity in implementing the curricular intervention, and 2) how intervention training within the PLC impacts on students&rsquo; academic performance. Absent from the current research is an examination of the ways in which teachers develop their capacity within PLCs, particularly when that PLC directly supports teachers&rsquo; implementation of a curricular intervention. Drawing on data from a large-scale evaluation study of an early literacy intervention, this dissertation explores how teachers describe the ways in which their capacity is built within a PLC. Using a critical feminist framework, this study examines interview transcripts, program artifacts, and analytic memos to surface the themes and discourses used by teachers to forward a theory of how PLCs can influence teachers&rsquo; practice.</p><p> This study found five key features of this intervention&rsquo;s PLCs that teachers described as developing their capacity: 1) theoretical texts directly connected to teachers&rsquo; practice; 2) a resource-orientation to students; 2) a developed sense of personal responsibility for students&rsquo; progress; 4) informal collaboration with colleagues outside the PLC space; and 5) peer observation with direct, non-evaluative feedback conversations. These features, when situated within existing literature, provide the groundwork for greater research around PLCs and how they can serve as a support of teachers&rsquo; capacity-building and implementation of instructional interventions.</p>

<p>The purpose of this study was to examine English teachers who were considered successful at encouraging the social exploration of literature. The rationale for this study was to gain a greater understanding of the beliefs and ideologies of English teachers who were able to create a classroom climate that support students open exploration and discussion of literature in order to better understand the teachers? beliefs and ideologies as well as the ways in which they constructed their classroom climate and selected pedagogical tools to facilitate students? participation in open-forum discussion. The following research questions informed my dissertation study: What are the underlying beliefs of teachers of who have been identified as successful at engaging students in the social exploration of literature for the purpose of making meaning? What features of classroom climate do teachers actively facilitate in order to encourage the social exploration of literature through inquiry and reflection? What are the pedagogical acts that the teachers engage in to create conditions for inquiry and reflection? This multi-case study examined two English teachers identified as successful at creating a classroom climates that supported the social construction of knowledge around literature for students of historically marginalized backgrounds. Classroom observations were conducted of each teacher in the study as well as two in-depth interviews of both teachers. Documents and artifacts that were available from the lessons were collected. The findings revealed that while both teachers held a reputation for successfully implementing the social exploration of literature with their students, one teacher was more successfully able to engage students in open forum discussions. The data also showed the significance of holding an asset mindset, authentic care, relations of reciprocity, assisted performance, and scaffolding in being able to successfully create a the conditions that supported the social exploration of literature.

No description available.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--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. / 2031-01-01

This dissertation explores relations between self and language in the light of Derrida's critique of the traditionally and historically constructed idea of writing and speaking as communication. Further, this dissertation inquires into relations between self and language among reader-response theories through the exploration of Derrida's concept of a relation between self and language. These explorations emerge from the idea of a "purity" of English that extends from the researcher's felt relations to English and to her "maternal" or "native" language, Japanese. Therefore, the researcher autobiographically probes into how she constructed the idea of the "purity" of English by investigating her "experiences" of English, and investigates the idea of the "purity" of English through Derrida's idea of the "pure" French. This dissertation is not a typical autobiographical inquiry in the way that the researcher recounts her "experiences" and interprets the recounting of the "experiences." This dissertation is partly comprised of explorations in which the researcher does not present herself as the subject of the inquiry. While keenly aware that this dissertation could be considered to fall outside the category of autobiographical inquiry in its Enlightenment assumptions of the wholly intact, rational "self," the researcher presupposes that this dissertation can challenge such assumptions of traditional Western autobiographical inquiry for two reasons: 1) the explorations of relations between self and language are generated from her interpretations of "experiences"; 2) even when the autobiographical I is not presented in the text, the researcher's subjectivity drives the explorations. For these two reasons, this dissertation investigates the researcher's subjectivities through its trajectory, thereby questioning the researcher's possibilities of ever being fully situated within a certain theoretical framework. The exploration of relations between self and language in reader-response theories and the researcher's felt relations to English in light of Derrida's concept of a relation between self and language will contribute to English teachers and their educators, especially in the area of teaching of the reading. Further, the researcher, through inquiries into her subjectivities, arrives at a questioning stance on any possibility of autobiographical inquiry by puncturing the traditional research category of autobiography.

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which compressed speech recordings and regular rate speech recordings could be used to improve the reading speed, accuracy, and comprehension of junior high school students. (Abstract shortened.)

Statement of the Problem. It was the problem of this study to determine if educationally-deprived students participating in the TARMAC Diagnostic-Prescriptive Reading Program would show significant differences in reading abilities compared with educationally-deprived students who were not participants in that program. Limitations of the Study. The following limitations were imposed upon the study: 1. Initial grade levels in reading in control and experimental groups were measured by California Achievement Test scores as criteria for defining educationally deprived. 2. The 1975-76 school year was used as the experimental period. 3. The results were limited to one school and forty student participants. 4. The results of the experiment were measured by Stanford Achievement Test scores and social studies grades as a related course. (Abstract shortened.)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 375-398).

Thesis (M.A.)--California State University, Chico. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-65).

<p> Using a convenience sampling of 10 eighth-grade language arts students, this exploratory case study examined in depth the literacy processes used by ten 8^th grade students to generate various multimodal artifacts that comprise their final projects and the nature of the literacy transactions that fostered these processes over the course of one year in this language arts classroom. Following closely (via the case studies in Chapter Five) how four of the ten students used the literacy events of the classroom to claim spaces to perceive and perform their voices and visions, the study revealed how these students were able to turn away from a specific form of silencing, both on and off the page, and reclaim a lost voice that helped them better navigate their lives and their literacies. This navigation transcended classroom walls to encompass larger social arenas in which students continued to perform and practice their literary and living choices.</p><p> I conducted three focus group interviews with all ten students. The purpose of these interviews was to define, from these students&rsquo; perspectives, the literacy practices they engaged in over the course of the 2012-2013 academic year as part of their eighth-grade language arts class. In studying how these transactions helped shape these students&rsquo; literate thinking, my intent was to investigate ways in which both local and global contexts interact to help students promote or resist social and political trends. The study brought into question and deconstructed the grand narratives surrounding our American identity and the traditional literacies that serve to define and legitimize them.</p><p> My findings revealed that the literacy events in the classroom, facilitated and negotiated by an interested and knowledgeable adult, offered these ten students a wide range of personal ways to practice, in new and innovative ways, both academic and personal choices.</p>