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<p> This dissertation examines the identities of "marginalized" adolescents as they engage in literacy-based activities. Using ethnographic and qualitative research methods (including surveys/questionnaires, audio recorded interviews, video recorded observations, classroom artifacts, and observational notes), a multi-case study occurred over six months. The study took place at South Bay High, a small public charter school, located in a poor and working class neighborhood of major city in Northern California, serving non-dominant youth. Twenty two juniors, and of these, six focal participants, elected to participate in the study, which took place in their English 11 class. The study utilizes socio-cultural theories of learning and identity, transactional theories of pedagogy, and applies figured worlds and positional identity theory in its analysis. This work is in conversation with a growing genre of scholarship referred to as literacy and identity studies (Moje, 2009). </p><p> The relative fragility and durability of a student's academic identity is considered. In addition to examining individual identities, this work also takes up the collective classroom identity as a site for examination. By taking into account local histories of cultural and social contextual matters, and by examining classroom culture (i.e., norms, discourses, routines), the classroom studied offers the first case studied. Specifically, I consider the effect of ideologically divergent approaches to literacy instruction on the academic identities of the collective. </p><p> Adolescence is a time when young people are in search of narratives and discourses to offer understandings of the past, security in the present, and imagined trajectories towards the future. How one comes to see oneself (and one's future) is often determined by the narratives made available &ndash; from peers, media, families, schools, and other institutions. Non-dominant youth have less access to identity resources imbued with social and academic capital from which to construct identities or imagined futures. The second findings chapter follows the focal participants as they take up literacy-based resources as they engage in processes of authoring the self. </p><p> The figured world of the high school classroom has a limited amount of roles for students to occupy. Often students are labeled and treated in ways that position them on a relative scale of academic potential and social behavior. Once students become positioned in particular ways (i.e., as the class clown, teacher's pet, slacker) they often accept these positionings and come to define themselves in relatively fixed terms. However, in an ELA class, literacy can serve as a medium for students to "try on" identities not always available to them in other spaces. The third findings chapter looks at how focal participants were positioned and at the <i>positioning events</i> that serves to either solidify or disrupt seemingly fixed identities. </p><p> Implications of the study include: Instructional practices that treat ELA classrooms as spaces for interpretations not only of texts but also in ways that provide insights into students own lives. An examination of the multiple competing forces present in classrooms, from federal and state-mandated testing to the teacher's pedagogical stance, illustrates the complexity of classroom spaces, particularly in classrooms for students who have traditionally been underserved by schooling as an institution. The need to examine the spectrum of diversity among non-dominant youth so that young people are not further reduced or essentialized by progressive instructional methods is also considered.</p>

The constructionist theory has emerged as a leading perspective in the field of reading inferences and makes the assumption that readers cannot generate inferences when text is inconsiderate or lacking coherence. The generalization inference has been documented as allowing the reader to condense multiple, consecutive propositions into a singular macroproposition. Research has shown that the genre of a text can affect the perception and the set of processes used by the reader to comprehend text. In the present study, participants read ten short narratives, eight of which contained generalization inference lexical decision tasks with genre and coherence of text manipulated. Participants were shown to be no more likely to draw the generalization inference from incoherent text when primed by genre, but were shown to be capable of drawing the generalization inference from incoherent text. These results do not support the constructionist hypothesis and suggest that further research is needed. / Department of Psychological Science

Access to abstract permanently restricted to Ball State community only. / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only. / Department of Psychological Science

The purpose of this study was to investigate factors related to the reading ability of beginning kindergarten children. The study purported to investigate the following major components: One, the relationship between two specified sets of variables. Set I included: (1) letter naming; (2) visual discrimination; (3) auditory discrimination; (4) oral language; (5) chronological age; and (6) mental age. Two, the relationship between reading as measured by word call and comprehension, and sex and socioeconomic status was investigated. Three, the relationships between reading and the environmental and developmental characteristics of beginning kindergarten children were examined through child and parent interviews.A word call and comprehension test was developed and given to 1,858 beginning kindergarten children of thirty-one public schools of Delaware County, Indiana. A stratified random sampling procedure was employed. The strata were determined by a combination of raw scores on word call and comprehension according to the various ranges in scores and the number of children available representing each range. An attempt was made to provide proportional sampling for each sex.The instruments used in the sample were: (1) a self-constructed letter naming test; (2) Gates-MacGinitie Readiness Skills Test (visual discrimination subtest) ; (3) Wepman Auditory Discrimination Zest ; (4) Slosson Intelligence Test for Children and Adults (SIT); (5) The Minnesota Scale for Paternal Occupation; (6) eight puppets to elicit oral language samples measured by the T-unit; (7) Child Interview Questionnaire; and (8) Parent Interview Questionnaire. All tests and instruments were administered individually.The data obtained from the Child Interview Questionnaire included: (1) experiences; (2) interests; (3) responsibilities and behaviors; (4) language-speaking experiences; (5) reading-writing experiences; and (6) parent attitudes. The data obtained from the Parent Questionnaire included: (1) family background; (2) home environment; (3) physical--motor skills; (4) behavioral characteristics; (5) preschool language-speaking experiences; (6) preschool reading experiences; and (7) parental attitudes and opinions. The analysis was made on the total sample; comparisons between the upper and lower quartile of the sample were made where appropriate.The statistical procedure used to analyze the data of this study was the canonical correlation which measures the relationship between two sets of variables and permits assessment of the interrelationships among them. One canonical correlation was significant which yielded a chi squared of 97.997 with twelve degrees of freedom value of (p <.0001).The correlation between Set I and Set II variables in this study was .8730 with 38.11 percentage of explained variance in Set I accounted for by variables in Set IT.Variables letter naming, visual discrimination, and mental age tended to have the highest correlation or greatest weight with variables word call and comprehension with letter naming as the major contributor. This would tend to confirm the use of letter naming as a predictor of reading achievement. The five most influential factors that encouragedchildren to take an interest in reading in this study were: being read to; seeing others read; having reading. materials available; viewing television; and curiosity.Children in the upper quartile of the sample who manifested greater degrees of reading ability than children in the lower quartile of the sample tended to come from higher socioeconomic classes; more reading materials were available; family members were seen reading; spoke in sentences earlier; and had less difficulty with verbal fluency or expression.Parents of children in the upper quartile of the sample encouraged interest in reading most often through incidental. learning situations rather than deliberate attempts to teach reading skills. Most parents indicated that they did not foresee any special school related problems because of their child's reading ability prior to kindergarten; children would continue reading on their own; would gain self-confidence; would become better students; and would experience success.Most parents in this study generally felt capable of helping their children with reading. Parents generally believed that children should learn to read prior to kindergarten provided they are: interested; reading occurs naturally; there is ability and potential; and no force is used.

Thesis (Dip.App.Psych.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 1973.

Thesis (M.Ed. 1978) from the Department of Education, University of Adelaide.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1930. / Vita. Published also as Teachers college, Columbia university, Contributions to education, no. 351. "Reading material": p. 101; Bibliography: p. 116-122.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1930. / Vita. Published also as Teachers college, Columbia university, Contributions to education, no. 351. "Reading material": p. 101; Bibliography: p. 116-122.

Part of Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1933. / Photolithographed. "Private edition, distributed by the University of Chicago libraries." Bibliography: p. 34-35.