In the midst of a national focus on improving student achievement, gifted educators within Louisiana were required to implement some or all aspects of a curriculum with a prescribed content structure. The study measured the perceptions of educators and administrators as they analyzed curricular expectations, program options, method of implementation for the Comprehensive Curriculum, a provided common curriculum, and strengths and weaknesses of the identified curriculum. Findings indicated that implementation of the Comprehensive Curriculum had a significant impact on gifted instruction delivered through Advanced Placement/Acceleration program models, and it created a slight shift toward use of enrichment models at the elementary and middle school levels. Findings also suggested factors that either increase or decrease curricular reform efforts at the school and district level of implementation. A measurement of the scope and nature of existing views provided a call for analysis of alternative curriculum models and showed the necessity for a curricular focus on differentiation toward identified needs of gifted learners.

This study examines the role of artistic education in shaping artistic beliefs and personal philosophy. Its central focus is the origins of a common belief among artists that artmaking or aesthetic response to art can be a form of spiritual activity or experience leading to spiritual insight. The primary data for this study is a series of in-depth oral history interviews with seven painters who studied with Henry Hensche at The Cape School of Art in Provincetown, MA, a school of American plein air painting that is linked with Impressionism. Charles W. Hawthorne, a painter who was a protégé of American Impressionist William Merritt Chase, founded the school in 1899. Each painter provided a life narrative of artistic education and development, discussed personal philosophy of art, shared views on the role of the artist in society, and related personal experiences of understanding and creating art. Spirituality in art is examined from perspectives of social and cultural traditions, personal spiritual orientations, and artistic education and practices.

This study was designed to evaluate the effects of allowing students to generate their own images in a science class as opposed to using pre-existing images. The participants in the study were 7th grade science students enrolled in a small, rural, Louisiana school. A mixed methods design was used so that call available data was collected and analyzed. The lessons used in the study were based on plant structure, growth, and propagation which fit into the mandated 7th grade science curriculum. The students were involved in the taking of still, time-lapse, and stroboscopic images throughout the study. Although an analysis of the quantitative data showed a significant increase in the test scores for both the control and treatment groups but no significant difference when they were compared to each other, the results of the qualitative study revealed many important findings about the value of the image-based learning interventions for enhancing students inquiry skills, on-task behavior, and observable satisfaction with studying science.

How does geography play a role in student learning and teacher instruction? Limited research efforts reveal that the needs of students in rural areas are quite distinct from other settings (Muijs & Reynolds, 2003; Rice, 2003). It is not until exclusive qualities are determined in both rural and urban environments that instructional plans can be geared to each student body. Addressing these sociocultural issues is crucial with an increasingly diverse population of students nationwide. Spradleys (1980) Developmental Research Sequence and ethnographic interviews of four classroom teachers within rural and urban schools are the primary methods utilized throughout this inquiry. The participants are selected based on their school-wide reputation for being highly regarded literacy teachers. Several instructional techniques found are unique to rural and urban areas. Administrators, specialists, and classroom teachers should find the results of this investigation useful. Implications reach across grade levels as models of effective literacy instruction can be developed.

The formal instruction process of teaching reading to emergent and beginning readers needs to incorporate a much more multimodal approach. People today, not only in America but in many other countries as well, are more graphically oriented than any other generation has ever been. Children in our society expect to experience pictures and images in almost everything they encounter. This graphic orientation needs to be taken advantage of and incorporated into the educational process in ways that can be beneficial to the learning environments of children in our schools. Reading programs need to forego one-dimensional teaching methods and learn how to expand their methodologies by taking advantage of various approaches that prove to be advantageous to the development of children. This study observed emergent readers as they demonstrated comprehension and retelling skills both with and without the aid of illustrations that would normally accompany a story. Observations and informal, descriptive assessment of indirect vocabulary development in relation to the books used in the study were conducted. These observations and assessments were directly linked to whether the studentparticipant was shown or not shown the illustrations of a story that was read to him or her. The study also described the personal impact that picture book illustrations had on students as they related to the processes of learning how to read. The study showed that students who visually experienced the illustrations accompanying a picture book had greater overall story comprehension and retelling ability than those who did not see the pictures of the story. It showed, as well, that the students who saw the pictures as a story was read to them had greater indirect vocabulary development than did those students who did not see the illustrations as the story was read aloud to them.

A large number of entering college and university students are unable to derive meaning from print at age-expected levels. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR; Klingner, Vaughn, Dimino, Schumm, & Bryant, 2001) in improving the reading comprehension skills of underprepared college students. Sixteen (8 experimental and 8 control) first-time male college student athletes entering their freshman year at a research-intensive university in the southeastern United States participated in the study. An experimental design was implemented to address the following research question: What effects does a multistrategy reading comprehension intervention (i.e., CSR) have on the reading comprehension skills of academically underprepared students entering a postsecondary setting? Results showed there were statistically significant findings in favor of the experimental group for an informal dependent measure and non-significant results for a standardized measure. Study implications, limitations, and areas of future research are discussed.

This ten week study examined the impact of the teachers instructional strategies in teaching phonemic awareness to kindergarten and first grade students. Three questions were explored. These questions were: (a) How do teachers determine the appropriate instructional strategies to use in teaching phonemic awareness?, (b) What are the similarities and differences that each teacher demonstrates in implementing appropriate instructional strategies in teaching phonemic awareness?, and (c) How have the teachers efforts in implementing a Reading First program been rewarded? The participants in this study are two first grade teachers, two kindergarten teachers, and one kindergarten and first grade reading interventionist. Qualitative methods of single, cross case analysis were utilized for this study with data sources that included: field notes, responses from questionnaires, and the researchers observations. During the 90 minutes of uninterrupted reading instruction, the teachers were required to teach explicitly and systematic phonemic awareness from the prescribed method in the reading manual. The prescribed method consisted of verbatim scripts of: what the teachers should say, how the teachers should say it, and the answer for the students response. Data gathered showed that teachers used explicit and systematic instructional strategies when teaching phonemic awareness from the prescribed reading series; however, some teachers used additional instructional strategies to teach phonemic awareness. There were differences and similarities that were prevalent across grade levels. The differences of the instructional strategies consisted of utilization of hand motion and other techniques and using phonemic awareness in context. The similarities of the strategies utilized included sounding out individual phonemes, segmenting phonemes, phoneme counting, and adding, deleting, and substituting phonemes. The teachers were intrinsically motivated by their students progression. The teachers ability to impact phonemic awareness instruction is indirectly a result of their desire to be adequately prepared to deliver phonemic awareness instruction. The students satisfactory progress in attaining the appropriate reading level suggests that the teachers positively impacted instruction.

This case study explores the implementation of scaffolding in literacy learning in a first grade classroom setting. The complexities and nuisances of scaffolding present in the elementary school classroom context during reading and writing instruction are examined. Ten first graders, five from a pilot study an five from the case study, are followed in reading and writing in a public school classroom. Themes indicate that students in lower elementary grades benefit from reading and writing instruction that include the following strategic elements: 1) leveled predictable texts; 2) small group guided reading and writing instruction; 3) systematic, strategic instruction based upon performance-based observation of student's interaction with texts and self-generated writing; 4)integration of reading and writing lessons; and 5) teacher/student dialogues and conversations supporting language acquisition and development of student understandings.

The purpose of this research was to determine how dendrochronology can be used in an experiential unit to enhance high school students understanding of environmental change. Dendrochronology, the visual examination of tree ring cross sections provides opportunities to relate environmental change to growth patterns of trees and can be used to show the students both how scientists can investigate the past and how the environment can affect trees. Students engaged in a 10-day unit that employed a variety of constructivist learning activities to investigate environmental change, climate change, and tree growth. The culminating activity was student-created experiments that investigated various aspects of the relationship of trees to their environment. This research was a mixed method design and was conducted at a small public high school in the Deep South. The school is a Title One school on a four by four block schedule and is located in a rural area where forestry is one of the major industries. Twenty five juniors and seniors who were members of two environmental science classes were the participants in the research. As evaluated by the Wilcoxon matched-pair signed rank test, students scored significantly higher on the posttest (P < .01) than on the pretest with average scores of 9.52 on the pretest and 18.76 on the posttest. Most of these gains were in questions that evaluated the students understanding of climate change, tree anatomy and statistical analyses of tree growth data. The qualitative components of the research supported that these were the areas of greatest growth and revealed that the students greatly enjoyed participating in investigations of their own.

The focus of this study was to identify major conceptual difficulties that selected public high school physical science students encounter in understanding a standard electromagnetic spectrum diagram. A research-driven, modified version of that standard diagram was used in this study to determine the value added to student understanding of electromagnetic waves. A content analysis was performed on electromagnetic spectrum diagrams found in US textbooks from the 1950s through the present. A class of public high school physical science students participated in a study consisting of four activities conducted during a three-week unit. Students were given a pre- and post-achievement test and a pre- and post-survey on the regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. At the conclusion of each activity, selected students were interviewed and each co-constructed a concept map with the researcher. The Electromagnetic Spectrum Literacy Rubric (ESLR) was designed and used to assess students conceptual understanding periodically as they proceeded through the unit study. A mixed methods analysis was performed, employing both qualitative and quantitative data. A paired t- test determined that there was a statistically significant difference (p = 0.014) between the pre- and post-achievement test scores for the class of students participating in the unit study. Effect sizes also determined that students have difficulties with mathematical calculations and wave properties. These topics present conceptual challenges which must be overcome to understand and use an electromagnetic spectrum diagram effectively.