The purpose of this study was to predict placement and non-placement outcomes for mildly handicapped three through five year old children given knowledge of their developmental screening data. In order to do this, discrete discriminant analysis was used to demonstrate the prediction scheme and was modified for application to Child Find data. / Developmental screening data and placement outcomes were systematically retrieved from a longitudinal set (1982-1989) of Child Find records located at the Florida Diagnostic and Learning Resources System (FDLRS)/Sarasota network for 602 subjects. The independent variables included performance on developmental activities from the Comprehensive Identification Process (Zehrbach, 1975), including: (a) gross motor, (b) fine motor, (c) cognitive-verbal, (d) expressive language, (e) receptive language, (f) social-affective, and (g) the expressed concern of parents, guardians, or primary caregivers regarding observations of children's developmental performance. These independent variables were related to two outcome groups, namely, placement and non-placement. / In addition to the two outcome groups, placement and non-placement, 128 combinations of the seven developmental variables were specified. These combinations were statistically analyzed using discrete discriminant analysis, resulting in a prediction technique for estimating the outcomes of developmental screening efforts. The expected frequencies of subjects falling into the prescribed outcome groups were computed. Also, the relative costs of misclassification (prediction mistakes) of subjects into the wrong groups were determined. / For each cost function, a comparison was made between the predictions of the discriminant analysis and the observed outcomes for the 602 subjects. Chi-square tests were conducted to test the significance of the predictions for the placement groups with each of the cost functions. The null hypothesis, that the predictions using this technique were no better than what would be expected by chance, was rejected in each instance. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-12, Section: A, page: 3844. / Major Professor: Andrew Oseroff. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.

Thesis advisor: Robin Fleming / Britain’s long fifth century, 350-550 CE, was a period of transformative change across the island. It was not simply the end of one civilization and the beginning of another, but rather was a period during which people made meaningful choices about how important it was to them to continue acting like Romans or start acting like their new neighbors when the economy and social structures that had defined life in Britain for centuries dissolved. Historians can study material culture and burial practices to make these fifth-century inhabitants of Britain – invisible in the scarce textual accounts of the fifth century – visible in our historical narratives. Where living communities chose to bury their dead, what they chose to send with the deceased, and how they chose to build monuments to their memory can tell historians how they connected with or distanced themselves from the past that was, materially at least, rapidly disappearing and being replaced. Careful analysis of data from 8,602 burials in 102 cemetery populations, as well as burials of dogs and infants on settlements, indicates that changes in burial practices were the result not of migration from the continent nor the “fall” of Roman Britain, but rather were part of a larger shift from a society based upon Britain’s relationship with the Roman Empire to one based upon its local communities, whether composed of natives, or newcomers, or both. No matter where people came from, no two communities reacted to the upheaval of the fifth century in the same way, and there were no monolithic or universal ways of relating the past to the present and future. New practices appeared, and old practices continued, some of which were better suited to some fifth-century inhabitants of Britain than others.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

<p> The researcher completed a quantitative comparative content analysis of early childhood developmental programs in high-poverty and low-poverty counties across the state of Missouri. The researcher discussed the importance of early childhood programs in the longevity of academic, professional success and long-term health benefits. Although lawmakers, educators, parents and policy makers emphasized the immense importance of early childhood education, the state of Missouri had not completed an evaluation of early childhood developmental programs for over 15 years. The last study (Fuger et al., 2003), completed in 2003, only evaluated early childhood programs described as part of the state&rsquo;s Missouri Preschool Project (MPP). The research results stated the state of Missouri had not completed a study evaluating all early childhood programs in the state. </p><p> The researcher examined secondary data, specifically licensing reports from online, public records through the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) website, as well as programing costs, curriculum, and accreditation through brief interviews of administrators employed by various child care centers and public school early childhood preschool programs. The purpose of the study was to discover if inequity occurred in facilities located in high-poverty and low-poverty counties. The researcher explored whether high-poverty facilities had more licensing violations than those facilities in low-poverty areas and examined the type of violations and assessed differences in the number of violation types. After researching early childhood curriculum endorsed by the state of Missouri, the researcher examined the type of curriculums used by each facility to determine the quality of the curriculum. The researcher surveyed the cost differences of facilities and the affordability of programs, based on average income. The researcher also evaluated the overall quality of programs, based on the secondary data. </p><p> In summary, the researcher conducted the study to examine differences between the quality of early learning and developmental programs in high and low poverty counties around the state of Missouri. The researcher determined the quality of a program based on the percentage of licensing violations, type of violations, curricula used, if a center held extra accreditation, and the cost per week. The results of the study were mixed.</p><p>

This thesis explores the political and ethical entanglements of Early Years Teachers with human and non-human worlds. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) policy, research and professional practice frame expected ways of working with children. This highly-feminised workforce has historically been presented as deficient. I argue this notion sees them as dehumanised subjects (Snaza, 2015), in need of constant upskilling. Posthumanist theorising was employed to reveal Early Years Teachers in relations with other humans (children, teachers) and non-humans (classroom, outdoor environments, objects, policy) forming more-than-human subjectivities. A post-qualitative methodology was developed to attend to more-than-human entanglements, with material-ethno-carto-graphy proposed as a methodological undertaking pertinent to this inquiry. The reconfigured methods-as-affinity-groups built on ethnography to explore connections within/between four Early Years Teacher case studies. The resultant data generated was mapped and read both literally and diffractively where glow data (MacLure, 2010, 2013) was selected for diffractive analysis. I theorised the positions of becoming-professional and being-teacher to reveal how subjectivities take either a more material connected or a more normative subject position and employ the metaphor of the earthworm to debate these shifting forms. Data revealed becoming-professional and being-teacher saw wider relational entanglements within indoor and outdoor spaces drove new modes of professionalism. Furthermore, the influence of an online tool, Tapestry, on subjectivities was explored. Additionally, vital agentic materiality (Bennett, 2010) and cyborg figurations (Haraway, 1991) were encountered in ECEC classrooms. Finally, the influence of nature has been explored where Indigenous ontologies trouble traditional vistas. Generative ways to view the production of Early Years Teacher subjectivities show that human and non-human worlds are always in flux. The more-than-human moments reveal the interplay between becoming-professional and being-teacher as a re-humanising enactment with subjectivities distributed across human and material bodies. These relations are a counter movement to the reified professional in policy, research and professional practice.

This thesis investigates the twenty-six manuscripts which survive in the hand of the scribe Ralph Crane (1565?-1632?), and the manuscript culture in which he wrote and circulated these copies. It introduces six previously unknown Crane manuscripts, and fully evaluates Crane's scribal work as a whole for the first time. Chapter One considers the place of manuscript copies in early modern England. It introduces Crane as one of the figures responsible for the production of these copies, and details what is known of his life and career. Chapter Two situates Crane's work alongside that of other scribes, using the manuscript circulation of Sir Henry Mainwaring's early 1620s naval dictionary 'Parts and Things belonging to a Ship' as a case-study. Chapter Three looks at Crane's eight dramatic manuscripts, and argues that the presentational habits for which Crane is known were consciously adopted in order to turn dramatic texts into private, literary, presentation manuscripts. Chapter Four introduces two new Crane manuscripts, both of which contain early copies of Francis Bacon's correspondence. It considers how these Bacon manuscripts fit into the rest of Crane's scribal corpus, and how they capture an early moment in the construction of the statesman's literary legacy. Chapter Five examines Crane's manuscript poetry collections, and the other scribal circles in which these poems can be found. It finds that professional scribes, though operating separately, employed similar strategies. Finally, this thesis concludes by examining how all these copies can help to illuminate a recently discovered manuscript that otherwise gives little away. Crane's manuscripts show that he was an active textual agent: his activity arose from a responsive engagement with his texts, a consideration of their use, and a desire to produce professional and valuable volumes. His manuscripts are important witnesses to the role of the professional scribe and the manuscript circulation of literature in early modern England.

The general aim of this thesis was to identify the indicators of reading disability and to analyze the effect of these factors in preschool age children in order to determine which factors play a principal role in the development of dyslexia. Various theories of developmental dyslexia have been investigated and the key components of major theories are presented in this paper. It is a generally held view that dyslexia is caused by a deficit in phonological processing which is an inability to understand the sound structure of language. This thesis aims to unite current research findings in order to better classify dyslexia as well as to determine approaches to intervention which are critical to a preschool child’s development of literacy. Three studies were conducted. The goal of study 1 was to determine the discrepancies in performance between non-dyslexic readers and dyslexic readers. Study 2 investigated phonological awareness abilities in preschool age children and their relationship with intelligence. An intervention study was then carried out on the preschool participants to determine the effects of instruction in the alphabetic principle on elements related to intelligence and phonological awareness. The results of this thesis and the studies conducted herein found a wide range of domains that were causal to reading disability. These include visuo-spatial discrimination skills, phonological knowledge and working memory. These studies also indicate that early identification of weaknesses in these areas can be mediated by well informed instruction in letter-sound correspondence and can be a critical determinant of future reading ability.

Five studies were conducted examining a pattern of interaction children use as a mechanism for learning from others. The three components of this interaction pattern consisted of children’s questions, adults’ explanations and children’s follow-up. I was interested in how individual differences might influence this interaction pattern. In Study 1, I performed a secondary data analysis to explore the entire pattern of interaction. Analyses revealed that children across diverse socioeconomic groups asked a similar proportion of information seeking questions in daily conversations with caregivers. However, when looking at the responses children received, caregivers from low-SES families offered significantly fewer exemplary responses (those that include explanations) to causal questions than mid-SES caregivers. When exploring the quality of explanations that caregivers offered, low-SES caregivers provided more circular explanations while mid-SES caregivers provided more non-circular explanations. Finally, when exploring children’s follow-up to unsatisfactory responses, no differences were found when looking at fact-based questions. Indeed, children from low-SES and mid-SES families were most likely to re-ask their original question which indicates that children across diverse backgrounds purposely use their questions to acquire new knowledge. Significant differences were found when looking at follow-up to unsatisfactory responses to causal questions. Mid-SES children were significantly more likely to provide their own explanations. These findings extend previous work and suggest that this interaction pattern may not look the same across diverse backgrounds. Studies 2, 3 and 4 explored the first half of this interaction pattern: questions and adult explanations. Here I focused on 3- and 5-year-olds’ evaluation of non-circular and circular explanations, and their use of such explanations to determine informant credibility. Whereas 5-year-olds demonstrated a selective preference for non-circular over circular explanations (Study 2: long explanations; Study 3: short explanations), 3-year-olds only demonstrated a preference for the non-circular when the explanations were shortened (Study 3). Children’s evaluation of the explanations extended to their inferences about the informants’ future credibility. Both age groups demonstrated a selective preference for learning novel explanations from an informant who had previously provided non-circular explanations – although only 5-year-olds also preferred to learn novel labels from her. However, when looking at individual differences in these preferences by socioeconomic status (Study 4) children from low-SES families selectively preferred informants who provided circular explanations, whereas mid-SES children showed a preference for non-circular explanations. Study 5 explored the second half of the interaction pattern: adult explanations and children’s follow-up. Here I explored individual differences in epistemological beliefs and their impact on caregiver’s explanations and children’s subsequent learning. Epistemological stance predicted children’s learning. Children of caregivers who adopted an evaluativist stance learned more than children of caregivers who used an absolutist stance. Taken together, these results have the potential to inform caregivers, daycare providers and classroom teachers about the importance of the responses they offer to children’s questions. These responses are integral to the question, explanation, follow-up pattern of interaction that children use when acquiring new knowledge from others. Understanding how individual differences impact this interaction pattern may help decrease cognitive disparities between children across sociocultural contexts before the onset of formal schooling.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

<p> The purpose of this case study was to explore the successes and challenges faced by a private, faith-based preschool in Los Angeles County in providing quality care and education to homeless children and their families. The study included interviews with parents, teachers, and administrator/staff to gather their perspectives as well as examined program structure through field observations and analysis of relevant documents. The National Association for the Education of Young Children&rsquo;s quality standards were used to examine the quality of the program. Findings showed that the relationships among all stakeholders involved in the preschool program were crucial to the success of this preschool. The study&rsquo;s findings highlighted some challenges in the following areas: support for teachers, sustained teacher training and development, strong administrative program structure, and funding. The findings bear important implications, both at the program and policy-level, for early childhood education programs serving children in exceptional circumstances, and specifically homeless children and their families.</p><p>