Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction / Jeong-Hee Kim / This phenomenological case study focuses on three secondary special education students’ perceptions of themselves and their lived experiences. The purpose of this study is twofold: First, to understand how secondary special education students perceive themselves as literate beings; and second, to illuminate how secondary special education students understand what it means to be literate and how their lived experiences have shaped their perceptions of being literate. Based on qualitative data, such as, interviews, observations, questionnaire, and a qualitive analysis method, called Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, I have identified three themes of the lived experiences of the participants: 1) Students’ stability and/or instability of their lived experiences influenced their literacy practices; 2) Being identified as special education students did not prevent them from being literate; and 3) Different lived experiences led to different literacy practices. Based on these themes, I provide implications for educators and policy makers including: understanding secondary special education (SSE) students as literate beings; valuing the varied experiences that SSE students bring to classrooms; capitalizing on SSE students’ self-efficacy and resilience to promote students’ literacy; respecting SSE students’ literacy skills on out-of-school literacy; paying attention to the personal dimensions of literacy practices to meet the needs of the diverse learners; allowing SSE students to demonstrate their literacies in multiple ways; and collaborating between general education and special education teachers to benefit all students. The significance of this study resides in that it focuses on the literacy practices of secondary special education students, whose voices have been largely missing in the literature. This understanding of the voice and the lived experiences that secondary special education students bring to the classroom will help educators, policy makers, and curriculum writers find ways to better serve special education students. In so doing, this study reconceptualizes the power of literacy that needs to be fostered in SSE students, so that they can succeed not only in college and career but also in their personal lives.

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction Programs / Lotta C. Larson / The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore and identify the word consciousness and individual application of academic vocabulary through the use of vocabulary reader response journals, authentic discussions, and multigenre response projects from a thematic social studies unit using historical fiction and nonfiction literature that was integrated in the fifth-grade curriculum. This qualitative research study took place in a third-fifth grade school in a Midwest setting with 23 fifth-grade students over the course of 14 weeks. Data were analyzed from eight of the 23 students. Multiple data sources for each literature selection were analyzed to reveal how fifth-grade students’ written, oral, and visual response to historical fiction and nonfiction literature demonstrate word consciousness and individual application of academic vocabulary. Conclusions indicate that student participants prefer the opportunity to create a visual image or write a statement to confirm the meaning of an academic vocabulary word in their vocabulary reader response journals. While orally discussing the academic words, the participants chose the evaluation approach. This authentic discussion response option allowed the students the opportunity to share their personal understanding, opinion, or inference for each word. Written and visual response was also afforded through the multigenre response projects. These projects revealed the individual application through conventional and nonconventional usage of the academic terms from each literature selection.

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction / F. Todd Goodson / In the past, literacy was viewed solely as the basic, functional skills of reading and writing. However, with the New London Group’s (1996) proposal of multiliteracies and the more recent push for a plurality of literacies (NCTE, 2011), teachers have been urged to expand their definitions of literacy. This qualitative study explores how secondary-level social studies and science teachers perceive literacies and identifies their instructional literacies practices. Data were collected through a pre- and post-questionnaire, three focus group sessions, classroom observations, field notes, and artifacts. This study solicited nearly one hundred secondary social studies and science teachers from three Midwestern school districts. Eight educators (four social studies and four science) participated in the study that took place in the spring of 2015. Furthermore, a generous grant from a local chapter of Phi Delta Kappa partially funded this research. After applying initial and holistic codes to the data, nine themes emerged: conventional, progressive, hesitant/emerging, collaborate, calibrate, perform, practice, interdisciplinary, and intradisciplinary. The nine themes were further classified by how they appeared in the data: dispositional themes, behavioral themes, and bridge themes. Throughout the data analysis, contemporary genre theory guided the study (Devitt, 2004). Descriptive codes, derived from contemporary genre theory, further revealed that the situational, social, historical, and individual aspects of genre influence teachers’ pedagogical practices related to multiple literacies across disciplines. Therefore, the ways in which teachers perceived multiple literacies and implemented them into classroom instruction are multifaceted and vary depending on grade level, content area, and teaching location. However, teachers’ dispositions regarding literacy move beyond a traditional mindset of functional reading and writing as they engage in professional learning opportunities and collaborate within and across disciplines and grade levels. This study provides secondary educators insight into the prominence of multiple literacies present across content areas while also revealing the teaching methods and instructional strategies that foster multiple literacies.