This study sets forth a procedural model for general music education which is intuitive, principle-driven, learner-centered, co-constructed and literature-based in contrast to any pre-designed method, yet encompasses the teaching traditions of Dalcroze, Kodaly, Orff, and Willems, among others. The model is constructed according to fundamental principles of the acquisition of musicality discovered or elaborated by selected scholars from musical and related disciplines. These principles focus on how the teacher and the learner may interact with music as a body of literature for optimum musical learning in purposeful yet flexible ways. This search for undergirding principles is driven by several questions arising from observations of musical teaching and learning experiences. These questions may be grouped into the following categories: (1) Potential relationships of music to other subjects in the curriculum; (2) Notions of talent, aptitude and intuition in the development of general musicianship; (3) Underlying cognitive processes by which musicality is developed in learners; (4) The nature of musical meaning, how it is constructed by the learner, and how teaching should facilitate this construction; and, (5) Issues of conceptualizing and organizing music as a body of literature in order to enable efficient construction of meaning. Data undergirding this study were gathered primarily through comparative analyses of key writings and musical compositions or collections, qualitative interviews of music pedagogues, and exploratory studies. These data were triangulated, then cross-compared to parallel issues in other disciplines, especially cognitive psychology and language literacy acquisition. The resulting interpretation of this information suggests that music is co-equal with other subjects, a position which implies redefining the place of music in the general school curriculum. Further, all learners are capable of some degree of musical acquisition, regardless of native talent. Additionally, learners become musical through three interdependent operations: Expressive/Experiential, Aural and Literate. The deployment of these musical operations is overarched by an artistic supra-mental intuition which can be greatly cultivated by the use of carefully organized musical literature of high quality. Musical operations are especially facilitated through observance of principles of aural and visual predictability applied to musical literature.

Research in the area of early literacy has strongly supported instruction at the phonemic awareness level. In addition, a number of research articles have discussed the importance of involving parents in their children's education through home-based activities. This study examined the effects of a parent-training on early literacy skills in the areas of phonemic awareness and letter-identification. This study utilized a pre-experimental AB design. Thirty-nine kindergarten children from the northeast were administered early literacy measures (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills - DIBELS) ten times during both the base-line phase and treatment phases. Twenty children comprised the treatment group, and their parents participated in five training sessions and 10 weeks of interactive book reading and practice and instruction of specific skills with their children. Results were positive and significant for the three early literacy measures, (Onset Fluency, Letter-Naming Fluency, and Phoneme Segmentation). In addition, treatment integrity and acceptability were measured. Limitations to the study, implications for education and future research are also discussed.

This study was conducted to investigate the reliability of the Phonics Diagnostic Inventory (PDI), a curriculum-based, specific skill mastery measurement tool for diagnosing and informing the treatment of decoding weaknesses. First, a modified one-parameter item response theory model was employed to identify the properties of potential items for inclusion in each subtest to then inform the construction of subtests using the most reliable items. Second, the properties of each subtest were estimated and examined. The test information and test characteristic curves (TCC) for the newly developed forms are reported. Finally, the accuracy and sensitivity of PDI cut scores for each subtest were examined. Specifically, based upon established cut scores, the accuracy with which students would be identified as in need of support and those who are not in need of support were investigated. The PDI generated from this research was found to more reliably diagnose specific decoding deficits in mid-year second grade students than initially constructed forms. Research also indicates further examination of cut scores is warranted to maximize decision consistency. Implications for future studies are also discussed.

The effects of parent-delivered instruction on children's phonemic awareness were investigated. Participants were thirty-eight parents and their pre-school children. The purpose of this study was to: (1) investigate whether parents could successfully teach phoneme identification skills to preschool children; (2) assess whether the effects of parent-delivered instruction on phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle could be independent of pretest letter knowledge, child vocabulary and cognitive ability, and SES; (3) determine whether training would generalize to recognition of untrained phonemes; and (4) assess parent satisfaction with the training and instructional program. Children were matched based on vocabulary scores. This measure was also a proxy for SES (Hart & Risley, 1995). Children were then randomly assigned to either treatment or control groups. In addition, pretest letter knowledge was assessed using experimental measures designed by Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley (1991). Parents taught their child to identify initial and ending phonemes and letter-sounds based on the early literacy program Sound Foundations (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1991), with lesson scripts based on explicit, direct instruction techniques (Kameenui & Carnine,1998; Swanson, Hoskyn & Lee, 1999). The duration of the program was 7 weeks. Children were required to find poster pictures that began or ended with the target sound and to color pictures with the target sound. Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) (Good & Kaminski, 2002) were used to measure Initial Sound Fluency and Letter Naming Fluency. Experimental measures of ending sound fluency, initial phoneme transfer and ending phoneme transfer were also used to measure outcomes. A survey was used to obtain social validity data regarding parent satisfaction with the program. Results indicated that: (a) there was a large, albeit insignificant effect for parent training on children's initial sound fluency (d = 1.1, p < .006); (b) parent training was not predictive of letter naming fluency (p =.07); (c) there were no significant differences on measures of phoneme transfer; and (d) pretest letter knowledge was predictive of outcomes on letter naming fluency (p < .01). Parents reported a high degree of satisfaction with training. The discussion focuses on future research on early literacy instruction and parent-delivered instruction.

This study is part of an action research project designed to model a district-wide early identification and intervention program for Kindergartners at risk for reading failure. The project was designed to model quality professional development in the area of early literacy for Kindergarten teachers, the use of a multi-gating procedure for identifying those children most likely to benefit from extra support, training for paraprofessionals to provide support to identified low performing students, and the use of a “response to intervention” approach for determining level of intensity of intervention. This study evaluates the relative effectiveness of the two research-validated curricula chosen as strategic interventions for improving outcomes on early literacy indicators of at-risk Kindergarten students. Both curricula were delivered in small groups by classroom aides who received brief training. A second part of the study evaluates the effectiveness of individually designed, intensified interventions for those children whose achievement did not improve sufficiently under conditions of small group instruction. A third section examined factors affecting teacher motivation to participate in the project and to embrace new teaching and assessment methods.

Research that has examined the achievement of children with behavior disorders has demonstrated a relationship between externalizing behavior disorders and academic underachievement, particularly in the area of reading. This study compared the early literacy skill development of 10 kindergartners and 10 first graders who were teacher-identified as presenting with difficult classroom behavior to that of 17 typical classroom peers. A systematic diagnostic assessment, using broad and narrow-band rating scales and structured interviews, was completed by parents and teachers to confirm the at-risk status of the identified children. Data were collected on early literacy skill development using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), which provided information on skill development over time. Parents taped home parent-child reading sessions, and tapes were coded to look at specific reading strategies. Parents were interviewed about home literacy factors including amount of time spent in parent-child reading, reading materials in the home, reading strategies used, and parental reading habits. Teachers were interviewed about classroom variables including type of curriculum and time spent on early literacy instruction. Findings included significant differences on oral reading fluency slopes for the first grade at-risk and comparison groups. Limitations of the study, implications for professional practice and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM) has become an increasingly popular instrument/methodology for reading assessment. In part, its popularity derives from promises of formative assessment (i.e., progress monitoring). However, a review of the literature suggests CBM formative assessment applications may lack the requisite reliability evidence. Furthermore, available research provides support and direction to improve the accuracy and stability of formative assessment outcomes. The primary purpose of this research was to evaluate and compare the effects of a controlled set of reading passages on student performance. Researchers developed a controlled set of Curriculum Like Measurement (CLM) reading passages from a sample of unfamiliar grade-specific reading curriculums. Each grade-specific passage-set was controlled for passage-difficulty using the Spache and Dale-Chall readability formulas. Analysis compared CBM and CLM formative assessment outcomes. A second purpose of this study was to compare short-term (10-week) assessment outcomes with the negatively accelerating developmental trends that have been documented with long-term assessment (i.e., 36-week). Analysis tested for differences in stability of growth-estimates [SE(b)], accuracy of predictions (SEE), and observed growth-rates/slope (b). 99 students in grades second to fifth participated over 10 weeks. Results suggest CLM progress monitoring outcomes are more stable and accurate than CBM. Results did not demonstrate the negatively accelerating curvilinear relationship between grades. Results and implications are discussed.

“Why are the students at the College of Micronesia having problems understanding their academic texts and materials?” That is the question that this study explores through extensive interviews with professors and students, and more than 400 reading proficiency tests. This study finds that Micronesian students have difficulties with several aspects of reading, and that there are a multitude of factors that contribute to the problem. Those factors fall into the following areas: language, educational background, culture, motivation, learning and reading strategies of the students; and the teaching methodologies, institutional policies and sociopolitical conditions of the school. The study concludes by recommending to the faculty to directly teach metacognitive reading strategies in all areas of instruction, to adapt the content, language and level of the materials to the educational and cultural characteristics of the students, and to adapt methodologies to the Micronesian learning style. The new role of college instructors should not be to impart a list of foreign facts, but to serve as a bridge between the culture and academic background of the students and the culture and content of their textbooks. Seen from this perspective reading for Micronesians will become an active interaction between their world and the world of the writer, and no longer an oppressive memorization of meaningless facts.

This study problematizes the literacy practices in a fourth grade suburban classroom. Drawing on sociocultural and poststructural theories of language and literacy, this study examines the teacher-student interactions and student-student interactions within classroom literacy events. This study argues for the need for progressive pedagogy as it examines how the very practices that are implemented to support student difference also serve to marginalize opportunities for student participation within the dominant discourses that shape the classroom culture. Using Fairclough's three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992, 1995), this study examines the interactions through moment-by-moment analysis of critical moments and contrastive cases to gain perspective on how students' literacy identities were constructed in this classroom. The use of critical discourse analysis helped to make visible both the dominant discourses that were operating in the classroom and how they contributed to the shaping of student literacy identities. The use of critical moments as a unit of analysis in this study arose from the tensions that occurred within the analysis of many literacy events, between the teachers and 3 focal students that were considered to be struggling literacy learners within the classroom. The critical moments also highlighted the tensions that occurred between the students and the dominant discourses of educational reform and differentiated instruction as they were enacted through literacy practices and teacher-student interactions. This tension, enacted as resistance, positioned the students as agentic in the construction of their own literacy identities rather than subject to the teacher's construction of them as struggling literacy learners and also made visible how the students contributed to the knowledge of what counted as literacy in this culture. Major themes stood out as the critical moments were cross-viewed, which revealed the issues of authority, agency, choice, competition, and differentiated instruction as major constructs within and across the interactions. This study demonstrates how students' resistance to the discourses disrupted the ideologies, particularly within the discourse of differentiated instruction as students agentically constructed their literacy identities in opposition to what counted as literacy.

In recent years there has been increasing attention to the field of family literacy. A number of qualitative and ethnographic studies (Taylor, 1982; Taylor & Dorsey-Gaines, 1988, Paratore, 1999, 2001 Auerbach E. R., 1989, 1995; Rogers, 2002) have documented the importance of the family in the acquisition of literacy within the context of the home. These two case studies of Denise and Shrieffe address the question of whether and how parents who are introduced to reading strategies in a family literacy program use these strategies in their own home when they read with their children. The use of a qualitative paradigm (Teale, 1986) enabled me, as a family literacy teacher-researcher, to document the home teaching by these two parents and to generate broad questions that would help describe these reading interactions. This study suggests several conclusions. First, a reading intervention designed by a family literacy teacher for parents who are enrolled in a family literacy program needs to take into consideration a parent's personal literacy needs as well as any fabricated literacy support strategies a parent displays when interacting with his/her children while reading. Second, parents not only adopted the reading strategies to use as they read with children at home, but also adapted the strategies, changing them to better meet their own child's literacy needs and stage of literacy development. Third, parents transformed themselves from silent observers of their children's literacy learning to active participants in it, reading with their children and offering them reading support. Fourth, school-based literacy instruction transferred from the school to the homes of the families by the family literacy teacher-researcher, added new understandings to the home literacy environments of both families. Lastly, the role of teacher-researcher required me to attempt to understand complex questions about the intersections of reading and families' lives by using rich qualitative methods of analysis. This study contributes to a further understanding of family literacy reading as a way to help shape parent/child literacy interactions and ultimately, the parent and child's literacy learning. This study also has implications for curriculum design in family literacy programs in the United States. That is, to advocate for a family literacy teacher expanding her role to include responsibilities of modeling literacy strategies and skills in the homes of the parents and children as well as introducing children's literature and other learning materials.