Accumulating evidence from research indicates that input from teachers, measured at the utterance level, may positively impact childrens language and vocabulary growth. To date, few studies have investigated teachers commenting practices during shared book reading. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the effects of the level of instructional strategies and content of teachers comments on the vocabulary growth of children with differing funds of knowledge. A sample of 52 Head Start preschool teachers who were randomly assigned to one of three different curriculum conditions was video taped during shared book reading sessions. Videos were transcribed and coded for the instructional level of teachers comments, as well as the content. Descriptive analyses reveal the effect of curriculum on teachers commenting practices, as those assigned to the experimental condition produced more comments associated with language growth. Multi-level modeling was used to determine the effects of teachers commenting practices on childrens end of preschool receptive and expressive vocabularies, and general language ability, in relation to childrens initial levels of vocabulary knowledge. Children with differing levels of vocabulary profited differently from teachers instructional comments and content, with typical language children receiving more benefits. Evidence indicates that direct instruction through medium-level strategies linked with content within the childs zone of proximal development was the most influential for producing receptive vocabulary growth. The differences in learning between the two groups of children indicate a need for differentiation of strategies during shared book reading so that all children may receive appropriate instruction. Implications for the practice and future research, and limitations are also addressed.

The level of challenge, or cognitive demand, of the tasks students solve is the foundation for their learning opportunities in mathematics classrooms. Unfortunately, it is difficult for teachers to effectively use cognitively demanding tasks (CDTs). I seek to understand how to support and improve mathematics teachers enactment of CDTs at scale. The purpose of this three-paper dissertation is to address some of the key unresolved questions and to set a direction for future research. <p> In paper 1, based on a comprehensive literature review, I identify 13 potentially relevant factors and elaborate a method for building on results from small-scale studies to better understand the enactment of CDTs across large samples of teachers. <p> Paper 2 investigates how teachers mathematical knowledge for teaching and their beliefs about teaching and learning mathematics are related to their enactment of CDTs. I found that aspects of teachers knowledge and beliefs are interconnected and are significantly related to their enactment of CDTs. <p> Paper 3 investigates changes in teachers enactment of CDTs over time and whether their interactions with colleagues (e.g., work with a math coach, advice-seeking interactions) are related to these changes. I found that the mere occurrence of interactions was generally not sufficient to support teachers development, and expertise available within interactions did not influence the productivity of those interactions. However, advice-seeking interactions were significantly related to teachers development. Further, the lack of expertise within interactions might have contributed to these findings. <p> These three studies suggest that there is much more to be understood about supporting teachers enactment of CDTs. There is, however, evidence that teachers mathematical knowledge for teaching and their beliefs about teaching and learning mathematics are integral to their enactment of CDTs, and that they are interrelated. In addition, it is clear that in designing supports for teachers enactment of CDTs, schools and districts should go beyond policies that provide only opportunities for interaction, and should specifically plan productive activities and enhance the available expertise within those interactions.

This study synthesizes what is known about strategic reading pedagogy through a meta-analysis of research on multiple comprehension strategies instruction (MCSI) for young adolescents in grades 4-8. The average effect of MCSI on reading comprehension was found to be 0.36 (p<0.01) for standardized measures and 0.55 (p<0.01) for non-standardized measures. For measures of students knowledge of strategies and their ability to use strategies while reading, the average effect sizes were 0.73 (p<0.01) and 0.77 (p<0.01), respectively. MCSI had positive effects on achievement for a variety of student populations. Effects for all four outcomes varied significantly across studies, which justified the need for moderator analyses to identify factors that strengthen and weaken the impact of MCSI on student achievement. Several characteristics of the content and pedagogical methods used in MCSI had marginally significant relationships to treatment effectiveness after accounting for methodological and sample characteristics. The findings of this study update and expand previous reviews of research on comprehension instruction and provide recommendations for classroom practice and future research in this area.

The following multi-paper dissertation addresses issues of effectiveness and implementation inherent in preschool curriculum interventions. This document consists of an overview of challenges faced by educational researchers and issues addressed by the three separate papers that follow. These papers include: (1) a meta-analysis examining the effectiveness of preschool curriculum interventions; (2) an analysis of fidelity instruments used in preschool studies; and (3) a report illustrating the development and use of fidelity and quality measures.

Many educators, organizations, committees, and curricula promote the importance of preschool childrens math talk, particularly among children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, to better prepare children for elementary school mathematics. However, there are no clear examples of preschool math talk, no specific guidance on strategies for developing this skill, and little evidence it leads to greater math achievement. Talking About Mathematics in preSchool (TAMS) was a project designed to explore these issues. Activities and strategies theorized to develop and encourage preschool math talk were piloted with 58 preschool children in three Head Start classrooms over six weeks. To test the final model of a math talk intervention, 95 preschool children enrolled in nine diverse Head Start classrooms were pre- and post-tested using five measures of achievement. Children were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions. The first condition involved a pull-out intervention where children played small group math games that developed number sense. The second condition was identical to the first condition, but children were also encouraged to engage in math talk during the games. The third condition carried on business as usual, serving as the counterfactual condition. Using linear mixed modeling, results showed that children who participated in either treatment condition made significantly greater gains on all math measures than children in the control condition. Further, children who played games with a focus on math talk showed greater gains than children who only played math games, although the differences between the gains in the two groups were not statistically significant. The same pattern of results emerged from analyses testing childrens gains on nine early numeracy skills targeted by the intervention. Children who played games with a focus on math talk gained significantly more than those in the control condition on all nine early numeracy skills. Children who only played math games gained significantly more than those in the control condition on five of those skills. Results from this study are directly relevant to the types of interactions teachers could adopt to foster childrens early math development.

This work contributes to an ongoing conversation about how practice-based teacher education might be designed to support preservice teachers professional judgment, particularly in the area of writing instruction. By synthesizing research on practice-based teacher education with sociocultural understandings of concept development and work on how writing teachers learn to teach writing, I offer three design conjectures about how preservice teachers might be supported to teach writing in intellectually rigorous and equitable ways. I then used discourse analysis to investigate preservice teachers concept development in a methods course which used these design conjectures. Finally, I followed preservice teachers into their student teaching placements, using discourse analysis to understand how they developed concepts about writing instruction through their practice. I found that preservice teachers developed concepts about a core teaching practice, making student thinking visible, in combination with other ideas about writing instruction that arose in the contexts in which preservice teachers taught writing. Thus, teaching concepts develop ecologicallyin relation to one another, to the cultural and historical discourses and practices that characterize particular contexts for teaching, andmost importantlyto students. Findings contribute to research on how teachers learn to teach writing, to research on concept development in teaching, and to broader conversations about the potential and limits of practice-based approaches to teacher education.

This study focuses on the learning of preteen children who must repeatedly spend periods of several days or weeks in a hospital setting because they require treatment for Cystic Fibrosis, a chronic disease. Hospitalized preteenagers struggle with a number of issues that may impact their learning, including interruption of everyday routines and activities, including school; a diminished sense of agency over ones immediate and long-term goals; isolation from peers; and anxieties about the future. To address these challenges I presented eight pre-teen patients with a mobile Makerspace and supported their personal efforts in devising and implementing design and invention projects with a range of digital devices. Patients recruited and negotiated a wide range of resources (including conceptual, material, and social) for purposes of pursuing their personal goals with the Makerspace. This view of learning emphasizes the role of childrens personal agency in orchestrating their own learning and identity formation as a critical long-term consequence. Across eight case studies, patients working with the Makerspace adopted a varied set of positions with respect to design and making. I call these Maker Mentalities, because they seem to be predominant orientations toward design. These mentalities were characterized by different motives and processes, such as whether patients valued the inclusion of other people in the design process and whether their engineering approaches were predominantly systematic or tended to capitalize on fortuitous, trial-and-error discoveries. I also describe the categories and duration of patient projects, their formats they devised for documenting their work for others, and the Makerspaces influences on patient mobility and health.

The study was designed using a multiple case study approach in which four middle school teachers engaged in a form of coaching based on Habermas' and Mezirows learning theories. Each participant examined their vision of teaching, and then compared their vision to video data of their classroom instruction. Teachers then created individual projects to address the gap between their visions and their instruction. Data comes from interviews, field notes and video data, as well as interview data from administrators and team member of the participants. Results from this study suggest that a teachers vision is reflexive with the context of their instruction and develops with experience. The study also provides evidence that when placed in a situation where teachers make their own professional development choices, those choices focus on pedagogical content knowledge as well as practical and technical interests. However, in less formal spaces, the professional development interests of teachers begin to reflect the more emancipatory interests.

Although making digital media involves movements of bodies, materials, and, often, mobile technologies, most literacy research on adolescents experiences with digital media relies on screened and sedentary perspectives rooted in representation and multimodalityperspectives that elide or distort the role of embodiment. This dissertation critiques the overemphasis on screens, texts, and representation in literacy studies across three empirical papers. Each paper addresses unique questions around literacy as an affective experience of human bodies through ethnographic and micro-ethnographic investigations in (1) a public school, (2) a southeastern community, and (3) a childrens hospital school. Paper 1 illustrates how adolescents physical mobilities and affective histories connect to their agency and development as producers of digital texts in urban schools. Paper 2 describes how the feeling of meaning-making with digital devices involves historically, culturally, and affectively developed sensibilities that emerge as bodies make sense of people, places and things as semiotic material. Paper 3 builds a theory of literacy moments, or the feeling of being in something while engaged in social, textual production. In its attempts at coming to know affective dimensions of social life, this dissertation also develops tension around what it means to know and warrant claims about moving, feeling bodies other than our own.

This dissertation examines the ways in which six second grade African American males engaged in critical conversations. This qualitative study addresses three primary research questions: 1) What is the nature of small group literature discussions focused on issues of power and privilege?; 2) How are students working to collectively build critical knowledge in a small group literature discussion focused on issues of power and privilege?; and 3) In what ways do issues of racial identity emerge among a small group of African American males participating in a discussion about race, power, and privilege? In order to address these three research questions, data was collected using the following methods: interviews, audio and video recordings, and field notes. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze the data, and results suggested that students who participated in the small group discussion sessions: 1) primarily discussed major themes the text inspired; 2) used an argumentation framework as a way of discussing critical topics and building knowledge; and 3) leveraged their own cultural histories and racial identities as tools for interpreting a major historical event.