Orientador: Lilian Lopes Martins da Silva / Dissertação (mestrado)- Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-22T00:20:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rochetti_PaulaVirginiadeAlmeida_M.pdf: 2455447 bytes, checksum: 45da087542c6188da73dd6b63087d95b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: Percebemos indícios de locações de livros desde o século XVIII. Essa forma de acesso aos livros, tão legítima quanto a compra em livrarias ou o empréstimo em bibliotecas, está presente ainda hoje. Encontrar uma locadora de livros em Campinas, SP, possibilitou a nossa aproximação desse universo, das práticas presentes nesse espaço e dos leitores e das leituras que ali encontramos. Este trabalho procura apresentar a locadora de livros, sua forma de funcionamento e características comerciais; os leitores, suas principais características e a rede que formam; assim como suas leituras, preferências e modos de praticá-la. Os dados foram construídos a partir de informações colhidas através de observações, entrevistas, questionários e conversas com a proprietária. O trabalho se apoia em contribuições da pesquisa qualitativa em educação e na história cultural, com autores como Roger Chartier, Robert Darnton, Michael Certeau. / Abstract: We noticed indications of book renting dating back eighteenth century. This form of access to books, which is as legitimate as buying from bookstores or borrowing from libraries, is still present today. Finding a book rental store in Campinas, SP made it possible for us to have a closer look at this universe, the readers and readings we found there, as well as the practices that occur in such space. This paper seeks to present the book rental store, the way it works and its commercial aspects; the readers, their main characteristics and the network they form; as well as their readings, their preferences and their ways of practicing it. The data was organized according to information gathered from observation, interviews, questionnaires and conversations with the owner. This paper relies on qualitative research in education as well as in studies of cultural history, with authors such as Roger Chartier, Robert Darnton and Michael Certeau. / Mestrado / Educação, Conhecimento, Linguagem e Arte / Mestra em Educação

More information is now readily available to computer users than at any time in human history; however, much of this information is often inaccessible to people with blindness or low-vision, for whom information must be presented non-visually. Currently, screen readers are able to verbalize on-screen text using text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis; however, much of this vocalization is inadequate for browsing the Internet. An auditory interface that incorporates auditory-spatial orientation was created and tested. For information that can be structured as a two-dimensional table, links can be semantically grouped as cells in a row within an auditory table, which provides a consistent structure for auditory navigation. An auditory display prototype was tested. Sixteen legally blind subjects participated in this research study. Results demonstrated that stereo panning was an effective technique for audio-spatially orienting non-visual navigation in a five-row, six-column HTML table as compared to a centered, stationary synthesized voice. These results were based on measuring the time- to-target (TTT), or the amount of time elapsed from the first prompting to the selection of each tabular link. Preliminary analysis of the TTT values recorded during the experiment showed that the populations did not conform to the ANOVA requirements of normality and equality of variances. Therefore, the data were transformed using the natural logarithm. The repeated-measures two-factor ANOVA results show that the logarithmically-transformed TTTs were significantly affected by the tonal variation method, F(1,15) = 6.194, p= 0.025. Similarly, the results show that the logarithmically transformed TTTs were marginally affected by the stereo spatialization method, F(1,15) = 4.240, p=0.057. The results show that the logarithmically transformed TTTs were not significantly affected by the interaction of both methods, F(1,15) = 1.381, p=0.258. These results suggest that some confusion may be caused in the subject when employing both of these methods simultaneously. The significant effect of tonal variation indicates that the effect is actually increasing the average TTT. In other words, the presence of preceding tones increases task completion time on average. The marginally-significant effect of stereo spatialization decreases the average log(TTT) from 2.405 to 2.264.

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The purpose of this thesis has been to prepare a group interpretation script based on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and its major manned programs. The script is designed to inform high school students and the general public of the space program. Available literature on oral interpretation and readers theatre have been investigated with particular attention given to the value of readers theatre as a means of instruction. Questionnaires were circulated among aerospace professors throughout the country and companies involved in the space industry. In their responses, aerospace company officials indicate strong support of this thesis and indicate a pressing need for such an informative script.

In a democratic school system, all students should be included regardless of their individual differences. However, dyslexic students run the risk of being left behind in the process of becoming an independent reader. Being an independent reader facilitates further academic endeavors, helps the individual navigate the globalized world and invites the individual to read for pleasure. Due to a deficit in phonological awareness, dyslexic L2 English students face obstacles in reading tasks which they could overcome with the help of auditory aid. This study aims to investigate in what ways auditory aid can aid Swedish dyslexic L2 English students in secondary school, and what obstacles said group face with regard to the classroom environment, teaching methods and didactical considerations that language and special teachers apply. A survey was constructed to collect data regarding language and special teachers didactical choices. The results show that a majority of the participants use some kind of auditory aid in reading tasks when teaching dyslexic L2 students. However, the results also suggest that a number of language and special teachers do not incorporate individualized learner profiles and programs which are specifically designed to aid dyslexic students. This implies that language and special teachers may be unsure of the actual role of such programs. In addition, the effectiveness of auditory aid in individualized programs needs to be investigated further.

This study presents a multicase study that looked at the fluency development of three fourth grade readers of varying reading abilities. The participants were chosen based on two scores, their words correct per minute (WCPM) score and their Multidimensional Fluency Scale score (MFS). The three students participated in an eight-week intervention in which readers theaters were used for fluency instruction and practice. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used as the researcher observed the students during the literacy block of the day; interviewed the three participants three times; one-on-one, gathered self-report sheets that the participants filled out weekly; and recorded their WCPM and MFS scores weekly. Findings of this study suggest that students' engagement in readers theater helped develop various aspects of fluency: expression, volume, and pace. Motivation and confidence were also found to increase through the use of readers theaters.

Reading is a fundamental skill that each person needs to develop during early childhood and continue to enhance into adulthood. While children/teenagers depend on this skill to advance academically and become educated individuals, adults are expected to acquire a certain level of proficiency in reading so that they can engage in social/civic activities and successfully participate in the workforce. A step towards assisting individuals to become lifelong readers is to provide them adequate reading selections which can cultivate their intellectual and emotional growth. Turning to (web) search engines for such reading choices can be overwhelming, given the huge volume of reading materials offered as a result of a search. An alternative is to rely on reading materials suggested by existing recommendation systems, which unfortunately are not capable of simultaneously matching the information needs, preferences, and reading abilities of individual readers. In this dissertation, we present novel recommendation strategies which identify appealing reading materials that the readers can comprehend, which in turn can motivate them to read. In accomplishing this task, we have examined used-defined data, in addition to information retrieved/inferred from reputable and freely-accessible online sources. We have incorporated the concept of “social trust” when making recommendations for advanced readers and suggested fiction books that match the reading ability of individual K-12 readers using our readability-analysis tool for books. Furthermore, we have emulated the readers' advisory service offered at school/public libraries in making recommendations for K-12 readers, which can be applied to advanced readers as well. A major contribution of our work is in the development of unsupervised recommendation strategies for advanced readers which suggest reading materials for both entertainment and learning acquisition purposes. Unlike their counterparts, these recommendation strategies are unaffected by the cold-start or long-tail problems, since they exploit user-defined data (if available) while taking advantage of alternative publicly-available metadata. Our readability-analysis tool is innovative, which can predict the readability-levels of books on-the-fly, even in the absence of excerpts from books, a task that cannot be accomplished by any of the well-known readability tools/strategies. Moreover, our multi-dimensional recommendation strategy is novel, since it simultaneously analyzes the reading abilities of K-12 readers, which books readers enjoy, why the books are appealing to them, and what subject matters the readers favor. Besides assisting K-12 readers, our recommender can be used by parents/teachers/librarians in locating reading materials to be suggested to their (K-12) children/students/patrons. We have validated the performance of each methodology presented in this dissertation using existing benchmark datasets or datasets we created for the evaluation purpose (which is another contribution we make to the research community). We have also compared the performance of our proposed methodologies with their corresponding baselines and state-of-the-art counterparts, which further verifies the correctness of the proposed methodologies.

<p> The experiments presented here investigated the effects of manipulating the visibility of spelling patterns in English print, without concurrent oral segmentation, on the word identification skills of beginning non-readers. Visibility of the orthographic patterns was manipulated by presenting material organized into rime families (blocked) or with rime families distributed throughout training (unblocked), as well as through highlighting common rimes in the same colour of print. Experiment 1 demonstrated that while a program emphasizing the orthographic patterns in the English writing system (without concurrent phonological segmentation) led to rapid improvements in beginning non-readers' on line word identification, the benefits of such training did not persist beyond the training context. Experiments 2A and 2B investigated whether the failure to transfer word reading skills beyond the blocked training context was mitigated by training programs that required increased focus on the letter patterns (2A) and the letter-sound relations (2B). These manipulations did not influence performance; children continued to demonstrate poor transfer beyond the training context. Experiment 3 focused on determining the mechanisms underlying the poor transfer following blocked training. To evaluate performance, this final experiment used a novel measure comprising word identification as well as onset and rime identification. Training materials were blocked either by rimes or onsets. The question of interest was whether training on material that blocks by orthographic units allows children to identify the blocked units during training without actively decoding their letter-sound relations, thus decreasing the probability of forming connections between the graphemes and phonemes comprising them. Results indicated that this is the case when children were trained on material blocked by rimes, but not that blocked by onsets. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Student success is important for student learning, for parents, and for schools; however, in the last decade standardized test data has shed much light on the need for improved student performance across grade levels. Research findings identify that there are millions of struggling readers in US schools. Using assessment data, schools are implementing various types of intervention systems in an effort to meet all students' needs. Response to Intervention (RtI) is a method of intervention that provides systematic assistance to students who have learning difficulties and need additional support beyond regular classroom instruction. Results showed that RtI related activities (i.e., academic, behavioral, social) encompassed the majority of the participating school counselors' time and responsibilities. Additional results showed that because of the increased number of struggling learners in schools and the way schools view the school counselor's responsibilities, a shift has occurred in their overall role. Participating counselors reported that they spend a fraction of their time in counseling and the majority of their time in "managing" cases; they deal with countless hours of paperwork and testing. Study results also raised questions about what RtI is, how the model is implemented in schools, and about a need to revisit the role of the school counselor within the RtI framework. Our students will benefit not only from quality instruction, assessment, support, and services, but they also need the valuable services of a school counselor. School counselors with the collaboration of teachers and parents provide the most beneficial way for student success.

In this qualitative study, I explored teacher beliefs and practices about struggling adolescent readers. I chose to study 3 middle school 7th- and 8th-grade English teachers based on purposeful and convenience sampling through principal recommendation. My data consisted of interviews, observations, and documents to understand what teachers believe about struggling adolescent readers and what teachers of struggling middle school students do during instruction. I created the interviews and observation protocols and analyzed the data using the How People Learn Framework (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; National Research Council, 2000). Findings suggest (1) negative extrinsic motivation was used to boost student assessment performance, (2) the lack of foundational reading skills can cause problems through adolescence, (3) discussion strategies were used to assist struggling adolescent readers, (4) teachers had strong opinions about data walls, and (5) positive relationships with and between students were beneficial. These findings suggest implications for teachers and school leaders.