Thesis (M.Ed.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2007. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 25, 2007). Includes bibliographical references.

Research paper (M.A.) -- Cardinal Stritch College -- Milwaukee, 1980. / A research paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Education (Reading Specialist). Includes bibliographical references (37-38 p.).

Research paper (M.A.) -- Cardinal Stritch College -- Milwaukee, 1980. / A research paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Education (Reading Specialist). Includes bibliographical references (84-87 p.).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University.

This mixed-methods study examined the ways secondary teachers’ participation in a year-long disciplinary literacy professional development impacted the ways teachers described and implemented disciplinary literacy instruction. Over the course of eight months, 31 teachers met for seven, three-hour sessions where they discussed literacy research, analyzed others’ instructional plans, and created disciplinary literacy activities and lessons. To examine changes in teachers’ descriptions of disciplinary literacy instruction, teachers’ self-reports of their disciplinary literacy were collected before and after the professional development and frequency counts of disciplinary literacy practices were taken and compared. To inspect potential changes in their disciplinary literacy instruction, a subgroup of participants were filmed three times (before the onset of professional development, at the midpoint of professional development, and following the conclusion of the professional development) and interviewed before and after the professional development. Two of these participants were also assigned control teachers (teaching the same discipline in the same school without participating in the professional development). These control teachers were also interviewed and filmed in the same windows. Through analysis of teachers’ written self-reports, video-recorded lessons, and interview transcripts, three key findings emerged. First, professional development had a substantial impact on the ways teachers described their disciplinary literacy instruction. Second, however, it had a smaller impact on their teaching. It is hypothesized that this may have been the relatively brief period for enactment of new knowledge. Third, participants reported that they identified and utilized available school-based supports to reflect on ideas presented in the professional development.

Reading in a second language is an interesting area of research because the factors affecting reading have brought about much controversy in related theory and research. Particularly, schema theory has raised long-term debate about whether background knowledge facilitates or impedes reading comprehension. In recognition of such issue, the current research was conducted to examine the impact of background knowledge on second language reading comprehension. Additionally, the impact of time constraint on reading comprehension was also investigated. Thirty-one students of intermediate level of English in Le Quy Don high school, Vietnam took part in the study. Four cloze texts, two of familiar topics and two of unfamiliar topics, were administered under the conditions of limited time and unlimited time. The results revealed significantly positive effects of background knowledge and no time constraint on second language reading comprehension. Further, a significant interaction between background knowledge and time constraint was found. These findings have important implications for second language pedagogy in view of standardized and classroom assessment of reading performance. However, the most important finding of this research relates to the significant interaction between background knowledge and time constraint which has not been given due attention in previous research.

No description available.

It has been proposed that literacy development follows a sequence from simple to complex rules: children acquire simple phonological rules before they learn more complex orthographic rules such as conditional rules or morphological rules. I hypothesise that Greek children start reading and spelling by using a simple phonological strategy and later develop more complex phonological and morphological strategies. The hypothesis that young children fail to use complex phonological and morphological rules, the processes involved in reading words with complex phonological rules, the predictors of children's use of morphological strategies in spelling and the relations between different instances of morphological spellings were investigated in six studies. In the first three studies the hypothesis that young children fail to use complex phonological strategies in reading and the processes involved in reading words which involve complex rules were examined. Children (6-8 years) were asked to read words and non-words (analogous and not-analogous to real words) either in isolation or in the context of a sentence, assigned to three categories in tenns of the rules involved in reading them. The children - especially the younger ones - performed better in words and non-words that involve constant relations between graphemes and phonemes than in words and non-words that involve variant relations between graphemes and phonemes. All the age groups performed better in the analogous nonwords that involve complex phonological rules than in the not-analogous non-words. Children and adults read words that involve variant but predictable spelling patterns either by establishing connections to whole words or segments of known words. Younger children benefited more from context than the older ones and the effect was bigger for more difficult words. In the fourth study the hypothesis that younger children fail to use morphological strategies in spelling was tested. Children (7-10 years) were given a task involving three instances of spelling of the final morpheme. Young children spelled the final morpheme using phonological strategies while older children used morphological ones. In the last two studies, children (7-10 years) were given oral measures of grammatical awareness, a standardised verbal ability test, measures of grammatical spelling knowledge and a measure of their ability to interpret novel words. Significant correlations between grammatical awareness, different instances of morphological spelling and children's ability to interpret novel words were found even after age and verbal ability were partialled out. I conclude that even in a language that is transparent (at least from spelling to phonology) a stage model of simple rules first, complex rules later still holds. In reading, complex phonological strategies must be acquired for the reading of words that involve conditional rules. Morphological spelling strategies are important for correct spelling in Greek (which is not transparent from phonology to spelling).