Thesis (M.Ed.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1979. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2794.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1981. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2795.

<p>This study examined the engagements with and the impacts from the intersection of students and texts. Stemming from ethnographic methodology, I implemented a 10-month case study based in a sixth-grade classroom in an urban school with 24 participants. I approached this work with a sociocultural perspective on literacy, which stands in contrast to the deficit ideology often employed in discussion of the literacy of adolescent from low-income, urban areas. Data sources included fieldnotes, recordings, transcripts, and documents. The need for this work came from a lack of research on adolescent literacies broadly, and more specifically on young adolescent experiences with texts that they select. This research offers insight into students&rsquo; experiences with texts and how they see themselves as literate individuals. All of the students had complex reading identities that warranted examination in terms of their experiences with texts, their history with school-based literacy practices, and their own perceptions about reading. There were important concepts that this research found. First, the role of familiarity with texts is important for students as readers. Second, it is important for educators to ask students directly about their experiences with texts and literacy broadly. Third, not only are certain literacy practices such as selecting books and comprehending texts conceptualized differently by teachers and students, but these different perspectives have consequences for students in school. This research examines and reimagines the ways in which adolescent literacy is conceptualized in schools as a way to end practices that marginalize certain readers. </p>

<p>The mathematical achievement for United States? students is a continuing concern; a concern that has existed for more than 20 years (Kornell, 2012; Smith, 2002). A reality exists that students are often baffled by mathematics. The National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008) stated in its Final Report: Foundations for Success that ?The delivery system in mathematics education?the system that translates mathematical knowledge into value and ability for the next generation?is broken and must be fixed? (p. xiii). Leone, Wilson, and Mulcahy (2010) suggested students? willingness to engage in learning is influenced by the classroom environment and the engagement between the teacher and students. While reading aloud has long been thought of as a means for increasing students? engagement, reading abilities and proficiency, the last two decades have seen two events unfold which have increased the scope and context of reading aloud to children-the development of Interactive read-alouds and integration of children?s literature, including reading aloud, within content areas. The researcher collected data from a total of 121 students in grade three at three urban, Title I elementary schools in South Texas during a six week period. All the teachers from each treatment group attended a required staff development. The teacher from school A attended a workshop on Interactive read-alouds and the teachers from School B attended a workshop on how to implement read-alouds in the math curriculum. The data were collected using two instruments of measure, the Pearson Math Topic Test and the Elementary Mathematics Attitude Survey (Guerra-Casta?eda, 2013). Descriptive statistics were used to describe the sample of participants. The results indicated that students who were in the Interactive read-aloud group had higher achievement in mathematics than students who were read-aloud to or students who received no intervention at the p =.01, with a medium effect size. Additionally, results from the mathematics survey indicated 47 percent of students in the Interactive read-aloud group enjoyed their mathematics class more than the students in the comparison group. The results of this study support the notion that Interactive read-alouds, when used in elementary third grade mathematics classes, can result in improved student achievement in mathematics, especially when compared to what is commonly known as ?traditional? mathematics instruction. This study intends to expand the current field of research regarding the use of Interactive read-alouds in mathematics classrooms and an awareness of the use of Interactive read-alouds and traditional read-alouds to teach mathematics skills and concepts.

<p> This dissertation is a qualitative practitioner research study in which I explore how my students and I engage in critical literacy using sociopolitical Articles of the Week (AoWs). Critical literacy is the ability to read, write, and speak about texts in a reflective manner to better understand power, inequality, and injustice that prevails in the world. The two major questions that drove this study were: (1) How are eleventh-grade students&rsquo; perspectives evident in their discussions and reflective papers? (2) How do my students and I take up the opportunity to pursue a social action project in response to Articles of the Week? The twenty-two research participants for this study were students in one of my three eleventh-grade English classes. While I used AoWs in all three eleventh-grade sections, I conducted my research in only one of these sections. This class differed from the other two sections only in that these students planned and implemented their social action projects in groups in lieu of individual presentations of their research paper in the other two classes. </p><p> I collected six kinds of data: (1) scanned copies of students&rsquo; eight reflective papers based on AoWs; (2) transcriptions of eight video-recorded AoW discussions; (3) teacher journal; (4) students&rsquo; post AoW surveys; (5) scanned copies and/or photographs of students&rsquo; social action projects; and (6) transcription of a post social-action whole class video recorded discussion. I collected these data in four phases from October 2015 to June 2016. Every week, over eight weeks (October-December), students read an AoW. After, and as homework, they wrote a reflective paper and brought it to class at the end of the week (Friday), when we had a whole-class discussion. After reading eight AoWs, students chose and researched a social action, researching daily for six weeks. This six-week research project resulted in a research paper that satisfied the research requirement of the eleventh-grade English class. Finally, two days per week for five weeks, students implemented their group social action projects on these topics: (a) Gun control laws, (b) Syrian Refugees, and (3) School Start Later. </p><p> Using the constructivist grounded theory technique (Charmaz, 2000, 2006) and the two methodological frameworks&mdash;practitioner research and inquiry as stance (Cochran-Smith &amp; Lytle, 2009)&mdash;as well as the four dimensions of critical literacy (Lewison, Flint &amp; Sluys, 2002) to analyze and interpret my data, the following findings emerged: Findings to research question 1&mdash;most students appreciated considering multiple perspectives, both in writing and discussion. Students&rsquo; discussions demonstrated strong knowledge building in the following areas: incidental knowledge building; knowledge building with immediate effects; knowledge building by geography; and knowledge building as deliberation and debate. Findings to research question 2&mdash;social action projects involved two major activities: procedural activities and negotiating power. The procedural activities involved choosing a social action project, researching, and working in groups to implement the social action projects. The power analysis in this study revealed that examining multiple perspectives and including them in social action projects can work positively for students&mdash;social networks opened for students who provided a balanced perspective on topics. For students taking a one-sided perspective, social networks shut down. The results of this study have the potential to inform future practitioner researchers and critical pedagogues to develop new ways of building a critically reflective classroom that allows for robust social transformations that could influence educational policies because <i>teachers&rsquo; voices do matter</i>. </p><p>

<p> This mixed methods study investigates the effect of cultural and sociolinguistic textures of talk on authentic discussion patterns and whether reading comprehension and inferencing are affected in an online booktalk environment with adolescents. The research will also investigate the contextual features of the classroom community to be studied to help determine the specific sociocultural norms established in that classroom. The unique conditions of the setting in which today&rsquo;s adolescents function, such as amplified access to digital technologies, the evolving status of socialization, the express shift of physical and emotional factors, and the collective influence of prior experiences with reading, call for a more nuanced examination of their literacy practices. Data was collected from a Pre-AP 10^th grade students in an urban high school setting. Using a sample of 75 students for the blog postings and recorded classroom discussions, the transcripts were sent through LIWC and the variables of tone, analytical, social, affect, cognitive process, and affiliation were examined. An F-test two sample for variances found that there is a connection between the students&rsquo; funds of knowledge and their comprehension of the text. The results also suggest that inferencing is influenced through the other variables. There was no statistical significance between cognitive process and social, affect and affiliation, cognitive process and affiliation. </p><p>

<p> This qualitative case study relates to the area of word study. The research examines how specific strategies support academic progress when students are stunted at one orthographic stage on the language continuum. Teachers and reading specialists who support language development for students in first through third grades were interviewed as sources of information for this study. The results of this study yielded nine key findings to guide teachers in their instruction of word study. The teachers observed utilized a student-centered hands-on approach for teaching spelling as opposed to a memorization-based traditional approach. They strengthened word knowledge through an approach that focuses on active engagement and small group instruction word study. In addition, these findings reinforce life skills in teachers and their students. Aligned with transformative learning theory, these results emphasize a focus on self-reflection and a transformation of ideas for teachers. These results also develop the mindset of students as active participants in the learning process. The findings of the research are significant because they are transferable to other content areas as well. </p><p>

<p> Curriculum Based Measurements (CBM) are a widely-used tool for Response to Intervention (RTI) progress monitoring. In addition, they can be used in the determination of learning disabilities and special education qualification. The most widely used type of CBM is a measure of oral reading fluency (ORF). This type involves having a student read out loud for 1 minute while the examiner records any errors. Also known as reading curriculum-based measures (RCBM), various published forms of RCBM have been documented to be reliable and valid measures of all aspects of reading skills. Nonetheless, not all RCBM forms are the same, and the differences in features across published versions could affect student scores. This study examined the textual composition of three different published versions of RCBM probes to determine passage similarity and difficulty. The study also examined the consistency in student reading levels across the RCBM passage sets. A total of 202 students completed three passages from each of the selected probe sets for a total of nine passages each. Results indicated that all RCBM passages were correlated with each other and with a statewide assessment of reading. Mixed results were obtained when analyzing correlations between RCBM and a computer administered universal screening measure in reading. Significant differences were found in the overall number of words read correctly, dependent on the passage set. Significant differences were also noted in the number of students identified as at-risk of reading difficulties or in need of reading intervention based on each of the RCBM passage sets as compared to other standardized tests of reading. Regarding the textual composition of the three versions, passage sets appeared similar when similar length passages were compared, however, descriptive statistics suggested that passage level difficulty may vary depending on the passage within the set.</p><p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to delve into the literacy instructional strategies of selected high-performing K-2 teachers in a Clark County, Nevada school district. The study assessed the efficacy of teachers using five core literacy components: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension for student achievement. High performing teachers were defined as consistently demonstrating student performance gains of 25% in at least one of the five core literacy components over a 3-year period. The research question for this study was: What instructional strategies are used by selected high-performing K-2 teachers who work with diverse populations that have demonstrated a minimum gain of 25% in reading as measured by AIMSweb to develop (a) phonemic awareness, (b) phonics, (c) fluency, (d) vocabulary, and (e) comprehension? </p><p> The study used a qualitative method of data collection and analysis through in-depth teacher interviews, classroom observations, and district-wide data analysis. Interviews were open-ended and observations involved six teachers during their classroom literacy instructional time. Checklists were used to facilitate data collection during observations. Classroom pictures, teachers&rsquo; lesson plans, and AIMSweb data were used to support results. </p><p> The findings revealed that the most successful literacy strategies for teaching the five components of literacy were: phonemic awareness (word manipulation, word play, and word sort), phonics (word study, sound/spelling, and decoding/encoding), fluency (choral reading, repeated timed reading, partner/student-adult reading, and reading connected text with corrective feedback), vocabulary (explicit instruction on word meaning/independent word learning, direct instruction on new vocabulary, and context clues), and comprehension (predicting, inferring, making connections, using graphic organizers, and activating/building on prior knowledge). In addition, study conclusions revealed that the most successful strategies for teaching K-2 literacy included teacher collaboration and planning; strategic use of individual, small, and whole grouping; and integrating technology. </p><p> Several recommendations emerged from the study. Teachers need to be given ongoing professional development and resources for teaching the five component specific literacy strategies. Time needs to consistently be allotted for teachers to collaborate and plan for literacy instruction. Exploring diverse student populations, and their literacy acquisition needs, is vital to the education of youth. Placing emphasis on differentiated instruction, study replication, and analyzing literacy strategies and acquisition practices using varied methodologies will improve educational outcomes.</p><p>

The purpose of the study was to describe the process through which young adult students selected their own books and responded to the reading material in a literature classroom. I studied the factors that contribute to understanding adolescents' self-selection methods. I investigated what they chose to read and why. This study serves to inform further instructional research in the young adult selection of literary texts as a way of personalizing reading by tailoring it to their own tastes and interests as young adults. The adolescents in the yearlong study were students in a middle school set in a rural New England town. The sample included 19 seventh grade students and 25 eighth grade students who participated in one 50 minute class each week in which students chose books, read and responded to books, gave talks about books and authors, read aloud from books, discussed book preferences and dislikes and presented literary projects. In order to understand these students' book selection processes, the following aspects were investigated in the study: (1) What these young adults told us about their book selection. That is, how they felt about choosing their books in contrast to being assigned literary material to read. (2) How these adolescents selected books. How they discovered what books appealed to them as well as what made them continue to read a book. (3) What effect these students' interests in reading books had on the selections they made and the responses they made to their reading. (4) How family, peers and teachers influenced these adolescents in the types of books they chose to read. Qualitative research methods were used to collect and analyze data. My role was participant observer each week during the class period and daily in the school halls and library. I kept field notes describing the young people's interaction with books. Data collection consisted of recording what students said and did as they chose and discussed books with their peers and teachers. Dialogue journals were kept to indicate students' responses to the books they were reading. I examined beginning and end-of-the-year questionnaires as well as analyzed the mid-year interview. I looked at a survey given to parents of students in order to investigate the parents' observations and knowledge of their children's involvement with books. Data were also collected from the seventh and the eighth grade teachers and media specialist who kept their own journals, took part in interviews and met regularly with me to discuss students' book selections. Results indicated that more than half the students preferred selecting their own books rather than have teachers choose for them. The adolescents became cognizant of the ways that they selected books from a diverse collection that the teachers had available for them. We heard the testimony of the adolescents voicing their tastes in books as well as the reasons why these texts interested them. The teenagers revealed that they shared books and interests with a variety of people including parents, siblings, extended family, peers, and friends. An integral part of the self-selection program was the student/teacher interaction around books in response journals and conversation about literature that was personally appealing and satisfying.