<p> Delays in the development of early literacy skills are associated with a wrath of negative educational outcomes and so addressing such delays is one of the most pressing challenges in education. This study examines the effectiveness of the Orton-Gillingham (OG) Method, a multisensory reading program where instruction utilizes two or more senses simultaneously. Originally developed in the 1930s as a program for dyslexic students, OG has seen continual use since its creation and is endorsed by the American Dyslexic Foundation and the International Dyslexic Foundation. Over the past two decades OG has increasingly been incorporated into general education settings in the primary grades as a reading intervention for struggling readers regardless of whether they have dyslexia. However, there is a dearth of research demonstrating its causal effect as a reading intervention for children with dyslexia or who are experiencing reading delays for other reasons. Two quasi-experimental methods, Regression Discontinuity Design and Nonequivalent Comparison Group Design with propensity scores, are used to test the efficacy of an OG-based, general education reading intervention on a sample of over 700 kindergarten and first grade students who are experiencing reading delays from a large district in California. The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessments were used to assign students to the intervention and measure their end-of-year reading outcomes. The results of both analyses revealed no effect for students enrolled in the intervention in either kindergarten or first grade. Within the year that students received the intervention, a small but non-significant gain on end-of-year DIBELS composite scores was found. Long-term outcomes showed that over half of the students in the intervention were still not meeting reading targets by the end of second grade. Moreover, while the treatment effect was found to vary significantly across classrooms and across schools, no available measures classroom or school characteristics where associated with that variation. These findings suggest that certain applications of the OG methodologies may not be effective in general education settings.</p>

<p> No Child Left Behind (NCLB) along with the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA) have provided students with the opportunity to receive remedial services without having to be referred for diagnostic testing through a process referred to as Response to Intervention (RtI). While this process can prove to be beneficial for the student, the extra work that is being placed on teachers can cause teachers to form a negative perception of this process. In addition to the extra work, there is little research to support RtI in the secondary schools. Secondary school administrators are trying to implement RtI programs that were designed for self-contained elementary schools into a secondary setting and the results have not been favorable. This study aims to measure middle school teachers&rsquo; self-perceptions of RTI and how these perceptions affect their implementation of RtI with fidelity. </p>

<p> This dissertation reports design-based research that determined the characteristics of an effective intervention to improve adolescent historical argumentative writing. This study involved 89 diverse 11th grade students, including approximately 50% Hispanic students and 12% students with disabilities. It compared a treatment that taught students to write warrants using historical thinking to explain how evidence supports a claim, and a comparison treatment that taught students to find and evaluate evidence for particular claims and sides. Both groups read a text set about the controversy surrounding the explosion of the battleship U.S.S. Maine at the start of the Spanish-American War. The intervention was designed to improve student ability to 1) select effective warrants reflecting different types of historical thinking, 2) generate their own warrants when given a claim and evidence, and 3) write more effective warrants in their own argumentative essays. When the most reliable study measures were combined and analyzed using MANOVA, there was a significant overall treatment effect. Follow up ANOVAs indicated a statistically significant effect for selecting warrants, but not writing warrants. The mean difference was greatest in items reflecting corroboration, a heuristic that requires reading several documents and giving more weight to evidence found in common across accounts. Both conditions struggled to differentiate between more and less effective warrants. These findings matter because historical argumentative writing involves advanced literacy skills similar to those needed for online reading and engaged citizenship. Based on these findings, the intervention was refined to include additional scaffolding for collecting evidence across texts and explicit instruction in differentiating between more and less effective warrants. The findings were used to develop a theory of teaching argumentative writing to inform work in similar contexts. This theory emphasizes backwards planning of units centered around a historical controversy from the writing students will do at unit&rsquo;s end. It emphasizes the importance of teachers reading historical texts closely themselves and identifying where students can use historical thinking heuristics to warrant claims about the historical controversy. Through this approach, students build understanding of content and disciplinary literacy skills simultaneously through reading, reasoning, and writing across texts. </p>

<p> This study is an <i>ex post facto</i> correlational study that analyzed the mediated relationship between <i>everyday adult literacy practices (directions or instructions; letters, memos, or mail; newspapers or magazines; professional journals or publications; books, manuals or reference materials; financial statements; diagrams, maps, or schematics)</i> and <i> literacy scores,</i> using <i>vocabulary scores</i> as the mediator while controlling for <i>educational attainment, current educational practices, age,</i> and <i>number of books at home.</i> This study used the Program of International Assessment of Adult Competency (PIAAC) 2012/2014 public use household dataset which includes data from over 8,000 participants. This dataset contains information about participants&rsquo; background, daily lives, and reading practices as well as literacy, numeracy, and informational technology skills. Analyses were completed using the IDB analyzer to complete regression analyses on the final sample which included 1,599 participants who had taken both the literacy and print vocabulary assessment. The Sobel process was used to determine mediation. According to the Sobel test, the <i>vocabulary score</i> mediated the relationship between <i> reading letters, memos, or mail</i> (b = 4.18, SE = 0.23, <i>p</i> &lt; .001) and <i>newspapers or magazines</i> (b = 2.55, SE = 0.29, <i> p</i> &lt; .05) and the <i>combined plausible literacy score.</i> This showed that a portion of the ability to predict adult literacy scores from the frequency of reading letters, memos, or mail and newspapers or magazines could be due to vocabulary proficiency.</p><p>

<p> According to the Great Commission, the clear call of Christian leaders is to make disciples (Matt. 28:16-20). Many key Christian leaders and thinkers cite personal Bible reading as one of the key components to the life of a growing disciple. Unfortunately, research shows that many American Christians are not actively reading the Bible outside of Sunday morning services (Stetzer, 2012). Thus, a mixed-methods study was done of a group of infrequent Bible readers from Crossway Church to assess the impact of the SOAP method of Bible reading on their spiritual lives. The group committed to reading one chapter of the Bible using the SOAP method five days a week for nine weeks. Qualitative interviews were conducted after the nine weeks, and the results of the participants' pre- and post-group Transformational Discipleship Assessment scores were analyzed to determine the kind of impact consistent Bible reading had on their lives. The researcher found significant spiritual growth in the lives of those who participated. Implications for the researcher's church as well as the local church at large are articulated in this dissertation.</p><p>

<p> Within the genre of young adult literature, a growing trend is the use of epistolary messages through electronic methods between characters. These messages are set apart from the formal text of the narrative of the novel creating a break in the text features and layout of the page. Epistolary texts require a more sophisticated reading method and level of interpretation because the epistolary style blends multiple voices and points of view into the plot, creating complicated narration. The reader must navigate the narrator&rsquo;s path in order to extract meaning from the text. In this hermeneutic study, I examined the text structures of three young adult novels that contained epistolary excerpts. I used ethnographic content analysis (Altheide 1987) to isolate, analyze, and then contextualize the different epistolary moments within the narrative of the novel. The study was guided by two research questions: 1. What types of text structures and features did authors of selected young adult literature with epistolary interruptions published since 2008 use across the body of the published work? 2. How did the authors of selected young adult literature situate the different text structures of interruption into the flow of the narrative? What happened after the interruption? I used a coding system that I developed from a case study of the novel <i>Falling for Hamlet</i> by Michelle Ray (2011). Through my analysis I found that the authors used specific verbs to announce an interruption. The interruptions, though few in number, require readers to consider context of the message for event, setting, speaker, purpose and tone as it relates within the message itself and the arc of the plot. In addition, following the interruptions, the reader must decide how to incorporate the epistolary interruption into the narrative as adding to the conflict, adding detail, ending a scene, or simply returning to the narrative. . Therefore, the interruptions in epistolary young adult novels incorporated the text or literacy practices of young adults. Such incorporation reflects the changes in literacy practices in the early 21^st century that may render novels of this style a challenge to readers in creating meaning. The study further incorporates Bakhtin&rsquo;s theory of heteroglossia (1980) that a novel does not contain a single language but a plurality of languages within a single langue and Dresang&rsquo;s Theory of Radical Change (1999) of connectivity, interactivity, and access. Texts of this nature offer teachers of reading opportunities to guide students through text features to synthesize information in fiction and non-fiction texts. </p>

<p> This qualitative study explored how incorporating picture books into a fourth grade reading program can enhance literacy instruction. Ten fourth grade students read, listened to, and shared twenty selected picture books over a twelve-week period in the classroom setting. The data sources included: observations, conferences, group discussions, student work samples, open ended comprehension assessments, a researcher-generated questionnaire, and a reflective journal. Data analysis using the constant comparative method yielded 38 codes and generated four themes. The themes reflected that picture books: promoted the use of comprehension strategies (visualization, activating background knowledge, determining importance, questioning, inferring, making connections and synthesizing); facilitated the instruction of literary elements; fostered student literary essay writing; and enhanced visual literacy, aesthetic awareness, and reading enjoyment. The study supports Rosenblatt&rsquo;s reader-response theory, whereby multiple interpretations of literature are valued. Implications for the classroom as well as for further research are presented.</p>

<p> The dimensions of literacy development are deep and complex, marked by developmental stages, adult perceptions, and the varying needs of learners. Today&rsquo;s young adolescents benefit from literacy instruction that provides engaging and relevant instructional methods for authentic purposes and audiences beyond the academic assignment. This case study investigated authentic adolescent literacy within a suburban middle school learning environment. It explains how teacher mindset beliefs, literacy program models, professional learning, and the structures within a middle school influence the implementation of an authentic literacy program. This case study employed the concept of intellectual authenticity using the standards of authentic work as described by Newmann (1991) to consider the existence of authentic work within English language arts classrooms that were implementing a student-centered, process model approach for reading and writing instruction. It considered the existence of pillars of practice that support adult learning (Drago-Severson, 2004, 2009) to understand what adult learning structures supported literacy program implementation. Using data obtained from semi-structured interviews, observations, and an analysis of artifacts, this qualitative case study explored the connection between educator beliefs, literacy program models, adult learning supports, and structural variables of a middle school environment to inform a better understanding of the development of authentic literacy in young adolescents.</p>

<p> This qualitative study explored the strategies that teachers use to implement virtual literature circles in middle and high school classes and university Reading programs. Through questionnaires, interviews, and document analysis, several strategies that support student learning were identified, including guided questions, rubrics with clear expectations, and targeted feedback. Making the process student-centered rather than teacher-centered, using appropriate platforms with small groups, and including a face-to-face component also supported student learning. </p><p> Additionally, an examination of teacher perceptions of benefits and challenges of virtual literature circles revealed more advantages than disadvantages. Benefits included improved writing, specificity, and critical thinking; connections to other subject matter; peer interactions; ease of differentiation; technology integration; flexibility; teacher collaboration; engagement; and student-centered practice. Challenges included technology access issues and glitches, student apathy, superficial student responses, and time issues.</p>

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