<p> This dissertation reports design-based research that determined the characteristics of an effective intervention to improve adolescent historical argumentative writing. This study involved 89 diverse 11th grade students, including approximately 50% Hispanic students and 12% students with disabilities. It compared a treatment that taught students to write warrants using historical thinking to explain how evidence supports a claim, and a comparison treatment that taught students to find and evaluate evidence for particular claims and sides. Both groups read a text set about the controversy surrounding the explosion of the battleship U.S.S. Maine at the start of the Spanish-American War. The intervention was designed to improve student ability to 1) select effective warrants reflecting different types of historical thinking, 2) generate their own warrants when given a claim and evidence, and 3) write more effective warrants in their own argumentative essays. When the most reliable study measures were combined and analyzed using MANOVA, there was a significant overall treatment effect. Follow up ANOVAs indicated a statistically significant effect for selecting warrants, but not writing warrants. The mean difference was greatest in items reflecting corroboration, a heuristic that requires reading several documents and giving more weight to evidence found in common across accounts. Both conditions struggled to differentiate between more and less effective warrants. These findings matter because historical argumentative writing involves advanced literacy skills similar to those needed for online reading and engaged citizenship. Based on these findings, the intervention was refined to include additional scaffolding for collecting evidence across texts and explicit instruction in differentiating between more and less effective warrants. The findings were used to develop a theory of teaching argumentative writing to inform work in similar contexts. This theory emphasizes backwards planning of units centered around a historical controversy from the writing students will do at unit&rsquo;s end. It emphasizes the importance of teachers reading historical texts closely themselves and identifying where students can use historical thinking heuristics to warrant claims about the historical controversy. Through this approach, students build understanding of content and disciplinary literacy skills simultaneously through reading, reasoning, and writing across texts. </p>

<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> The purpose of this study was to determine if the use of the reading platform Actively Learn affected the reading engagement, reading comprehension, and vocabulary achievement of secondary students. The area of secondary reading achievement has seen no significant improvement over the past four decades (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2017). The research questions were designed to use quantitative pre-test and post-test data from the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) and the Standardized Test for the Assessment of Reading (STAR) to determine if the use of Actively Learn, combined with the use of embedded questions to encourage metacognitive strategies and timely feedback from the instructor, affected secondary reading engagement and achievement. The data demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in student perceptions of reading engagement strategies on the MARSI from pre-test to post-test after application of Actively Learn. However, data from the STAR reflected no significant difference in student achievement in the areas of reading comprehension or vocabulary after using Actively Learn. </p><p>

<p> This dissertation presents findings from a qualitative case study of three English teachers representing varying levels of comfort with technology and years of teaching experience at St. Patrick Catholic High School. This research was motivated by two questions: (1) What are three literacy educators&rsquo; perceptions of a multimodal tablet initiative at a Catholic High School? (2) How is information regarding the use of iPad technology for literacy disseminated to three High School English teachers within a Catholic School system? Data was collected over a twelve-week period during the first academic year of implementation of a school-based multimodal tablet (iPad) initiative. Implementation during this time period was limited to students in their first and second year of high school. Under the direction of the initiative, teachers were tasked with utilizing the iPad as part of their daily instruction. Moreover, three Apps were highlighted for explicit use for uploading assignments and sharing content with students. Additionally, all textbooks utilized were in digital format. Data collected includes: artifacts, observations, interviews, and reflective field notes. Findings from this research indicate that all participants had positive perceptions of the tablet initiative and its promise for the future of the school and effect on student achievement. They felt, however, many areas that would support the effective implementation of the initiative were overlooked in lieu of the school remaining overly focused on maintaining its competitive edge against neighboring private schools. In essence, the school&rsquo;s leadership utilized the iPads like &ldquo;pixie dust&rdquo;- sprinkling them around campus and hoping for an increase in achievement and digital citizenship among students without providing appropriate support and guidance for the teaching staff. Furthermore, the teachers believed the device presented new difficulties within the classroom dynamic including struggles with classroom management, academic honesty, and networking. The path of dissemination for information was convoluted with leadership members often verbally presenting conflicting expectations and information. While promising, the initiative lacked clearly articulated expectations for how teachers should integrate the device in their classrooms. Information related to the initiative was most often disseminated verbally via faculty meetings, but also uploaded within the school&rsquo;s digital communication system. This digital drive was overly crowded with documents and lacked organization making locating information tedious and challenging. Given the pilot status of this implementation, the administrators did not present fully developed evaluative procedures or expectations for iPad integration creating uncertainty for teachers. These findings offer insight into the need for meaningful and individualized professional development opportunities for teachers that focus on deep interactions with multimodal capabilities prior to the onset of any initiative aiming to integrate iPad technology. Additionally, a clear path of dissemination in which expectations are written, explicit, and correlated with evaluative procedures would likely reduce confusion among teachers. Aligning the goals from all leadership members in an effort to create consistency among the information shared with staff is critical to implementing a technology initiative effectively. </p>

<p> Stagnant growth on national standardized tests in mathematics and reading and a focus on disciplinary literacy in the Common Core State Standards in ELA, history/social studies, science, and technical subjects has prompted a resurgence in utilizing literacy strategies in the content areas in high school. While literacy standards in mathematics are not explicitly identified in the Common Core State Standards, there may be a place for the use of literacy strategies in high school mathematics. This study explored the relationships between students&rsquo; mathematics and reading achievement scores at a small, suburban high school and the implementation of a school wide literacy program to inform curriculum development and instructional strategies. </p><p> The reading and mathematics achievement of students in ninth through eleventh grade was retroactively analyzed to identify changes in student achievement over a two-year period. In the first year, the ninth grade cohort showed statistically significant improvement on both measures of mathematics achievement. Within this ninth grade cohort, students who qualified for free lunches also saw statistically significant improvement in mathematics. None of the other groups showed improvement on both measures of mathematics achievement or reading achievement. In the second year, both the ninth and tenth grade cohorts showed statistically significant increases on both mathematics and reading achievement. Within each of these grade level cohorts, females and white students also saw statistically significant increases in both mathematics and reading. The eleventh grade cohort did not have any significant increases on either measure. On the state top-to-bottom ranking, this high school has moved from the 4^th percentile to the 25^th percentile during the implementation of the school wide literacy program. </p><p> While national standardized tests have shown little to no improvement over the last several administrations, this small, suburban high school has seen continued growth over the last several years. Though the results of this study cannot be used to determine a causal relationship between the implementation of literacy strategies and the academic achievement of students in either mathematics or reading, it does provide a case for further investigation into such a relationship.</p><p>

<p> In today&rsquo;s K-12 educational environment with the newly adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS), improving student literacy as a foundational skill to obtain success in all other subject areas is one of the most important goals. Unfortunately, many literature curricula suffer from a lack of innovative pedagogy despite the introduction of various educational technologies meant to aid student learning. This study focused on developing a new game-based constructionist pedagogical model for literature education using tabletop role-playing game creation. Using Shulman&rsquo;s (1987) Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) that eventually evolved into Mishra and Kohler&rsquo;s (2006) Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) as the main theoretical framework, this design-based research showed how tabletop role-playing game creation as a constructionist pedagogical strategy successfully helped high school students to receive the benefits of high quality literature education. </p>

<p> This quantitative research project identifies if a performance gap exists between student performance and student expected performance on the last two administrations of the FCAT 2.0 in Reading and the first two administrations of the FSA ELA for 9th and 10th grade students using descriptive statistics to identify the mean and distribution of the data for three distinct groups. This research project also evaluates if there have been any changes to the performance gap with the implementation of the new standardized assessments. This study evaluates the performance gap for six large high schools in the State of Florida, three of which are Title 1 schools and three of which are Non-Tile 1 schools. This study evaluates the difference in student performance from year to year and between the school types. This study analyzes archival student performance data for approximately 25,000 students in 9th and 10th grades. This research study found that a performance gap exists specifically with students attending Title 1 schools which results in a performance gap for the group as a whole. This study also found that over the course of time evaluated the performance gap has widened and the performance of students attending Non-Title 1 schools has dropped almost to the level of creating a performance gap.</p><p>