NEW LITERACIES, NEW CONTEXTS? A THEORETICAL DEFINITION OF READING CONTEXT J Patrick Tiedemann This dissertation presents research that leads to a new conceptualization of reading context. The question that evokes this reconceptualization is whether the concepts of context that inform reading theory, research, and pedagogy effectively describe the complexity of reading in the age of technologically-mediated, multimodal reading. I contend that current understandings of reading context are atheoretical and outdated. This dissertation contributes to reading theory and research by providing a theoretically defensible conceptualization of reading context under the current conditions, a new theoretical definition that is useful for understanding print-based alphabetic reading and the rapidly changing new reading practices developing in the current technological landscape. It contributes to reading theory by examining in depth a central idea in the literature that has until now gone undertheorized. Each chapter of this work is a round of analysis that defines a number of constituents that comprise reading context. Chapter 3 begins with an analysis of reading context according to cognitive reading theories. This school of thought provides my construct with the sub-categories orthography, syntax, and semantics as well as Rosenblatts transactional understanding of the importance of an individuals history of social and cultural experience. Chapter 4 examines the contextualizing dialectical structure of activity according to Cultural Historical Activity Theory, Deweys theory of the transactional and contextual situation, and context according to Contextualism. These three complimentary traditions lead to a working definition of context as the relational network of phenomena (material, linguistic, social, and conceptual) that gives an object its identity and meaning. Chapter 5 is an analysis of the constituents of context according to New Literacy Studies. NLS theory and research provide my construct with the sub-categories society (local and historical), culture (local and historical), history, politics, the material environment, time, and space. These are synthesized with the constituents derived from the previous rounds of analysis to provide my final definition of context that I then use to explore how the mediation of networked communication technologies alters reading context.

This study provides qualitative findings about informational text writing in a prekindergarten classroom. First, I examined childrens understandings of informational text features. Second, I analyzed how science journals, as informational texts, were created in social interaction. Lastly, I examined the nature of the childrens journals entries. The participants for this study were 17 low-income children in a public prekindergarten in the mid-South. Data collection included classroom observations by the researcher, videotape of classroom instruction and journal entries. Children were given an Informational Text Interview (ITI) to assess understandings of informational text genre features. An analysis of the ITI showed that children had different levels of interaction with the informational text: by naming key features in the photographs, by responding to how the genre features were functioning and by taking a meta-stance towards the text that considered authorial intention. An analysis of journal writing sessions showed that journals were produced through providing demonstrations, making authentic invitations and accepting childrens approximations. Analyses of focal journal entries showed that children used structures and visual and textual elements of informational texts including diagrams, captions and labels. Children at all stages of writing development were able to produce semantically accurate labels and captions for images.

Based on a synthesis of prior research, this study proposes a three dimensional framework to describe the cognitive achievements important for understanding area measurement in upper elementary school years (grade 4-6). Levels within each of the three dimensions were specified. Items were developed to elicit performances indicative of those levels. To refine the items prior to field testing, cognitive interviews were conducted with 28 students (grade 4-5) recruited from two schools in the southeastern US. Sixty items were selected and revised based on results of the cognitive interviews. These 60 items were then piloted with a sample of 267 students (grade 4-6) recruited from the same schools from which participants of the cognitive interviews were recruited. The psychometric properties of the items were analyzed using both classical methods and item response theories (IRT) models. The IRT analyses indicate that the three-dimensional model fits better than the one- and two-dimensional models. Furthermore, the order of the items in general follows the order of the levels they targeted. Quality of the assessment was examined regarding both its reliability and validity. While there might be some concerns of gender DIF in a few of the items, in general the psychometric properties of the assessment were satisfactory. In summary, the results of this study supports the three dimensional framework for describing cognitive achievements in understanding area measurement.

Actor Network Theory (ANT) is invoked in order to characterize the performance of objects in demonstrations around representational forms, examples of which include tables, equations, graphs, and embodied, narrative assemblies. Statisticians and medical scientists typically depict patterns within populations of objects from the clinic or the laboratory and bind features in (local) representational forms to (global) descriptions of objects elsewhere. Objects perform in the sense that consequential decisions or knowledge claims are posed as contingent upon what these objects do as revealed in impending representational forms. Within their cognitive practice, states of affairs are true because networks of relations have been forged to hold things together. This cognitive practice of demonstrating is shown to be historically rooted and special to the sciences. Drawing from Cognitive Ethnography, learning is characterized here in terms of adaptation within a complex system that includes people and infrastructure. The empirical cases presented here are interpreted from this perspective of ANT in order to provide images of the cognitive practice of learning and images of the cognitive practice of knowledge-production. These empirically-based descriptions provide relevant images of (1) modeling practices in schools, (2) the agency of humans with respect to the agency of mathematical objects with which they interact, and (3) the dialogic nature of learning scientific concepts and scientific practice.

This study aimed to investigate the influences that impact in-service teachers of ELLs professional development decisions. In this dissertation, I followed the work of four in-service ELL teachers in two different school districts to determine the nature of the various institutional systems within which their work occurred and the impact these systems had on the teachers continued learning. In blending sociocultural theory and an ecological perspective, I was able to view the interactions teachers had with their peers and larger systems of activity (i.e., the school district, the school-site, the classroom, and the legislative arena) as mediating factors in the decisions the ELL teacher made in their professional development. Through interviews, classroom observation, and document and artifact collection, I uncovered the ways in which these systems linked to exert influence on the participating teachers. I found that these teachers engaged in a wide variety of professional development activities, that they responded to various institutional influences, and that they translated what they learned into classroom practice. Further, this study suggests that the linkages that exist between the various systems in which teachers participate determine the professional development ELL teachers choose, as these linkages define the roles and responsibilities ELL teachers take up in their schools and districts. In sum, this study highlights the impact the specific contexts within which teachers work have on the professional development choices ELL teachers make.

This dissertation presents the first iteration of a design study that investigates an instructional setting that I call Walking Scale Geometry (WSG). WSG tasks are geometry problems that are meant to be solved at very large scale, outdoors, using everyday materials, by groups of students. This setting disrupts typical classroom mathematics in four ways: a) problems are solved outdoors, in large open spaces, rather than in classrooms at desks; b) classroom representational and conceptual tools like paper and pencil, rulers, protractors, and hands are replaced with everyday materials like ropes, lawn flags, and students whole bodies; c) students see geometric figures from intrinsic perspectives, rather than extrinsic, birds-eye- views; d) the division of labor is such that problems cannot be solved individually. WSG is designed to constitute a mediating setting that supports the recruitment of resources for learning and doing mathematics, and access to participation (opportunities to learn) not typically available in classroom instruction. Students shared experiences in the WSG setting can be leveraged in classroom instruction to support productive hybridity, improving geometry learning for all students. I compare implementation of WSG tasks in two different instructional contexts: an urban seventh grade mathematics class and a summer enrichment course for high achieving rising ninth and tenth graders. Data include audio, video, and photographic records of design and instruction, field notes, student work artifacts, and interviews. Micro-analysis focused on students joint, whole-bodied accomplishment of WSG tasks and the resources that students recruited for participation and problem-solving. I demonstrate that aspects of the multi-party, whole-bodied activity, the use of everyday materials in inventing new representational practices, and the interconnectedness of the inscriptional system support access to participation with a variety of forms of mathematical engagement, and make available novel resources for problem-solving. I conclude with comments regarding the next iteration of WSG task design, classroom instruction that can legerage students experiences in the WSG setting, and thoughts about what a design for ensemble mathematics might entail.

This study described instructional and emotional classroom environments, as well as the learning engagement of children involved in various classroom tasks, and explored whether variability in childrens classroom experiences was related to childrens gains in academic skills from fall to spring of the prekindergarten year. Participants were 57 classrooms and their children and teachers located in state-funded prekindergarten and Head Start classrooms. Classroom instructional practices and emotional tone in combination were found to be related to childrens achievement gains. Also, the strength of the influence of instructional classroom practices on achievement gains was dependent on the affective tone of the teacher and assistant. In classrooms with more positive emotional tone, children benefited more from high-level instructional support. The amount of and the complexity of childrens learning engagement observed in a classroom predicted childrens academic gains. Also, children who were more frequently engaged in learning and those who were engaged in more complex learning activities had greater gains than their peers within the same classroom who demonstrated relatively infrequent and less complex engagement in learning activities. It was expected that classroom learning engagement would mediate the effect of classroom environment on childrens achievement gains. The hypothesized mediation was not supported. Also, the exploration of the moderating effect of childrens initial academic skills on the relationship between classroom environment and achievement gains yielded non-significant finding. These findings have implications for understanding the role of classroom experiences in the improvement of economically disadvantaged childrens success in school.

In this mixed methods study, I investigated the practice of literacy differentiation in its organizational context. First, to identify social and organizational variables that reliably predicted the outcome of literacy differentiation, I fitted data from a cluster randomized field trial (with 164 fourth and fifth grade teachers in 31 schools) to a sequence of multilevel growth models. Quantitative results indicated that teachers differentiated their literacy instruction to a higher extent when they reported valuing the professional development and when they attended more consultative support sessions. Further, when principals reported valuing the professional development in differentiated instruction, teachers in their schools increased their literacy differentiation at a higher rate. Second, to understand how literacy differentiation was supported in school contexts, I purposively identified, recruited, and interviewed teachers (n=15) and principals (n=3) at three schools that showed positive growth in literacy differentiation. Qualitative results indicated that literacy differentiation was supported in multiple ways. Across settings, differentiation was a long-term focus and actively supported by local, district, and external brokers. In addition to providing teachers with common planning time to share resources and narratives, principals recruited teachers based on their beliefs about differentiation, evaluated teachers during periods of the day when teachers would be differentiating, and strategically networked teachers so that they could observe other educators enacting differentiated lessons. Potential implications for research and policy are discussed.

In recent years, the field of mathematics education has advocated for an expanded view of what it means to know mathematics and participate in mathematics as a practice. Here, I present three papers that describe my investigations of how students participate in the important mathematical practice of defining. The first paper consists of a review of research about how K-16 students participated in establishing and refining mathematical definitions. Analysis of the forms of activity revealed by this research led to the construction of a synthetic framework to more closely describe the practice of defining, which I termed Aspects of Definitional Practice. These aspects included asking definitional questions, constructing and/or evaluating examples, and constructing definitional explanations or arguments. In the second paper, the Aspects framework served as a lens for investigating how defining was initially established in one middle school classroom. The analysis focused on how defining was realized in interactions among students and between the teacher and students. The third paper describes how students participation in Aspects of Definitional Practice developed over time, and how change in participation influenced the development of mathematical knowledge. Collectively, the three papers provide: (a) an analytic and theoretical framework for examining the mathematical practice of defining as it might be constituted in classrooms; (b) an analysis of the initial establishment of this form of practice as instantiated in interaction among students and their teacher; and (c) an investigation of how knowledge, practice and the interactions that contribute to their co-constitution develop and change over time.

This dissertation presents the results of a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of peer-mediated learning for English Language Learners(ELLs). The sample included 44 independent studies reporting five distinct outcome types, and analyses included main effects analysis, heterogeneity analysis, analysis of publication bias, and moderator analysis. Results indicate that peer-mediated learning is effective for ELLs across every outcome type analyzed, with estimates for most outcomes proving robust to potential distortions from cluster-randomization, outliers, and publication bias. Few moderators proved significant at the α=.05 level; nonetheless, study quality and post hoc adjustments for pre-test differences were significant for a number of outcome types indicating that study quality variables proved the largest moderators of effectiveness estimates. However, qualitative analyses indicate that effect sizes varied across a number of theoretically important moderators, including: segregated settings, interventions using students native languages, students age, language learning setting, and language and cultural backgrounds of the students.