The engaged classroom is a space where teacher and students come together to share in the acts of teaching and learning. They embark on a collaborative journey of empowerment and through the process reciprocally influence each other's growth and emancipation. / Through an autobiographical exploration of my experiences as a student and as a teacher, I present an exploration of the concept of empowerment. I explore its significance not only on the level of literacy development in my kindergarten classroom, where I teach French in an Armenian heritage language setting, but also on a more personal and professional level. Working in the theoretical framework of teacher self-study, I present an epistemological exploration of postmodern feminist research paradigms and discuss the various aspects of autobiographical research. I build my thesis on the context of the heritage language school and the critical analysis of my past experiences. I present an account of the reflexive process I have engaged in during the past five years, which, coupled with the theories of critical and feminist pedagogy, has brought forth the main thesis of my dissertation: the interconnectivity of teacher and student empowerment. In the hope of providing some practical material, I include an appendix where I describe a collection of literacy activities from my kindergarten classroom. / My work provides insight into a teacher's journey of meaning-making and empowerment, which will, I hope, be useful as part of a larger exploration of teachers' work and students' experiences in classrooms.

This study examined the role of family literacy practices in children’s development of literacy skills in Botswana. The study addressed one main research question and seven sub-questions. The main research question was “how do parents promote early literacy development of children?” Purposive sampling was used to obtain the sample for the study and fourteen parents of the University of Botswana Child Development Laboratory participated in the study. This qualitative study used in-depth interviews with the participants, and questionnaire for data collection. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed in line with the phenomenological approach. The findings indicated that parents of the University of Botswana Child Development Laboratory owned and used various literacy materials and resources to enhance their children’s literacy skills development. It also became apparent that the parents engaged various unstructured activities to enhance children’s literacy development in their homes. Furthermore, the study identified time constraint as a major challenge that parents faced. / Department of Family and Consumer Sciences

An equivalence class exists if the stimuli that comprise the class are related by the properties of reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity. Through these properties, new behavior that has not been taught emerges. For example, when taught to match Set A stimuli to Set B stimuli and to match Set A stimuli to Set C stimuli, if equivalence classes have formed, subjects will (with no explicit instruction) match Set B stimuli to Set C and Set C stimuli to Set B stimuli. Although equivalence classes have been studied extensively, few studies have considered the application of this technology to educational concerns. The purpose of this study was (a) to determine if phonics skills could effectively and efficiently be taught to young children through the formation of equivalence classes and (b) to investigate the generality of those acquired skills. Using a conditional discrimination procedure, children were taught to match printed letters to dictated phonetic sounds and to match the initial sound of pictured items to dictated phonetic sounds. Test results indicated that equivalence classes had emerged and that generalization did occur. The children could match the initial sound of pictured items to printed letters and vice versa and could name letter sounds and initial sounds of pictured items. During generality testing, each child could identify the initial sound of several novel pictured items and could sound out the letters within the words. However, reading did not occur. Only 1 of 5 children could blend the sounds of letters into recognizable words. A significant difficulty encountered throughout the study was maintaining the children's motivation, possibly due to the children's inexperience in attending to academic tasks. This study did, however, demonstrate that the formation of equivalence classes is an effective and efficient method for teaching phonics and that the formation of generalized equivalence classes is effective in extending those taught relations to novel stimuli. / Department of Special Education

Mémoire (M. Ed.)--Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, 1989. / Document électronique également accessible en format PDF. CaQCU

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of West Florida, 2006. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 129 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

The rationale for this study was to evaluate the home literacy environments of educators and non-educators to investigate whether educators provide "richer" home environments than non-educator mothers. This research explores the mothers' perceptions of their children, views of reading, methods of promoting a positive reading environment, dealing with personal demands and emotions, and their expectations related to promoting reading. The participants in the study are 2 elementary school teachers with preschool children and 2 non-educator mothers with preschool children. Results indicated that being an educator is not an isolated characteristic of providing a rich home environment. The educational attainment of the mother was discovered to have greater influence on home literacy environment than the mother's profession. Higher educated mothers provided richer home environments than their less educated counterparts.

Literacy is a fundamental to all areas of learning. Early reading experiences prior to elementary school and kindergarten years are critical factors for later reading success. This study evaluated the effect Direct Instruction® reading procedures vs. Scholastic Early Childhood Program® reading procedures on the production of letter names, letter sounds, CV and CVC blends by preschool-aged students in a Head Start program. Results showed the intervention group improved in all areas, while the control group improved only in letter naming and letter sounds. This study discusses reading as a behavioral cusp as well as limitations, and recommendations for future research.

No description available.

A focus on early literacy that became heightened in the early 21st century has had the unintended consequence of restricting our ideas about what children should be doing in classrooms, creating a preoccupation not only with literacy in general but also with a specific subset of early literacy skills that often reflect Eurocentric cultural norms and values. This can result in a proliferation of assessments, prescriptive curricula, and skills-based activities that allow little flexibility for teachers. A narrowing of curriculum and expectations, of behaviors that “count” as literacy, limits the potential for teachers to create literacy experiences that build upon the rich funds of knowledge that all children possess. Our understanding of how teachers have been impacted by this and the ways in which contextual variables mitigate expectations and requirements has not been sufficiently developed. In the face of such concerns, this study sought to include preschool teachers’ own descriptions of their literacy practices and their beliefs about early literacy development. Using a mixed-methods approach that included in-depth interviews as well as a questionnaire, narrative portraits were developed for eight pre-k teachers in Texas who worked in various program settings: Head Start, public prekindergarten, “braided” programs, as well as privately funded. A comparative analysis was also conducted, including the application of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory to disentangle the influence of different contextual factors. Teachers navigated a host of different influences on their early literacy practice from local stakeholders and colleagues to policies, cultural values and expectations, as well as shifting expectations for the early literacy skills pre-k children should have in order to be ready for kindergarten. Regardless of their settings or beliefs about teaching, teachers experienced barriers that at times impeded their ability to teach the ways they wanted to. They described a variety of activities and approaches to supporting emerging literacy skills, and they balanced requirements and expectations with a desire to tailor their instruction and learning opportunities in individually appropriate ways. Survey responses mirrored those of previous studies that utilized the same questionnaires in order to develop an understanding of preschool teachers’ literacy beliefs and practices. What emerged was a picture of eight different teachers who believe in the potential of all children and are committed to providing a strong education foundation for the children in their classes. The field of early childhood is notoriously fragmented due to an incoherent system of governance, funding streams, and settings, resulting in a host of complications including expectations that might contradict one another and a redundancy within requirements that means teachers’ time is frequently consumed with paperwork, competing curricula, and duplicate assessments. Future studies should continue to explore how teachers are impacted by the social and political contexts that surround education and literacy, and including teachers’ perspectives is a critical aspect toward the continual improvement of early childhood education.

This study examined differences in literacy development between five students attending whole language pre-first-grade classes and five students eligible for pre-first-grade classes but attending modified traditional first-grade classes. Differences between whole language pre-first-grade classes and modified traditional first-grade classes in use of literacy materials, teaching procedures, and amount of time spent on literacy were also examined. The procedures involved testing the subjects on reading and writing skills, observations of the pre-first-grade and first-grade classes, and analysis of subjects' writing samples.