The purpose of this study was to determine whether students' attitudes towards writing and their abilities to write were affected by their teacher's participation in their writing assignments. The null hypotheses that no significant differences would be found were supported. The control group and two experimental groups were all composed of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders from a racially mixed elementary school in a large metropolitan school district. The two experimental groups received identical instruction in writing skills except that the teacher wrote with one group and not with the other. The attitude scale, constructed for this experiment, proved to be statistically invalid and unreliable.

The purpose of this study is three-fold: 1. To determine the types, causes, and effects of maladjustments found in elementary children. 2. To suggest means of helping maladjusted children adjust themselves to a complex life. 3. To leave data on file for future reference and the use of future elementary teachers who will be confronted with the problems of maladjusted children.

The problem under consideration is to determine the effect of certain prevailing environmental conditions of a distracting nature upon the process of study in the first grade. The conditions selected, those which are common to the schoolroom or home environment, were chewing gum, physical education classes, room confusion, rhythm band, singing, and recorded music. This study attempted to determine to what degree, if any, each of these distracting environmental conditions affect the process of study in the first grade.

The purpose of this study was to find the type of stories in which the children in the first and second grades were most interested. The writer wanted to determine whether or not there was a preference for fantastic or realistic stories in these grades, whether or not boys preferred one type of stories and girls another, and whether or not age and intelligence entered in as determining factors.

No description available.

Thesis advisor: Laura M. O'Dwyer / The purpose of this study was to determine which of three competing models will provide, reliable, interpretable, and responsive measures of elementary students' understanding of the nature of science (NOS). The Nature of Science Instrument-Elementary (NOSI-E), a 28-item Rasch-based instrument, was used to assess students' NOS understanding. The NOS construct was conceptualized using five construct dimensions (Empirical, Inventive, Theory-laden, Certainty and Socially & Culturally Embedded). The competing models represent three internal models for the NOS construct. One postulate is that the NOS construct is unidimensional where one latent construct explains the relationship between the 28 items of the NOSI-E. Alternatively, the NOS construct is composed of five independent unidimensional constructs (the consecutive approach). Lastly, the NOS construct is multidimensional and composed of five inter-related but separate dimensions. A validity argument was developed that hypothesized that the internal structure of the NOS construct is best represented by the multidimensional Rasch model. Four sets of analyses were performed in which the three representations were compared. These analyses addressed five validity aspects (content, substantive, generalizability, structural and external) of construct validity. The vast body of evidence supported the claim that the NOS construct is composed of five separate but inter-related dimensions that is best represented by the multidimensional Rasch model. The results of the multidimensional analyses indicated that the items of the five subscales were of excellent technical quality, exhibited no differential item functioning (based on gender), had an item hierarchy that conformed to theoretical expectations; and together formed subscales of reasonable reliability (> 0.7 on each subscale) that were responsive to change in the construct Theory-laden scores from the multidimensional model predicted students' science achievement with scores from all five NOS dimensions significantly predicting students' perceptions of the constructivist nature of their classroom learning environment. The NOSI-E instrument is a theoretically grounded scale that can measure elementary students' NOS understanding and appears suitable for use in science education research. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation.

This study investigated the differential contribution of auditory-verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) on decoding skills in second- and fifth-grade children identified with poor decoding. Thirty-two second-grade students and 22 fifth-grade students completed measures that assessed simple and complex auditory-verbal and visuospatial memory, phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, listening comprehension and verbal and nonverbal intelligence. Bivariate correlations revealed that complex auditory-verbal WM was moderately and significantly correlated to word attack at second grade. The simple auditory-verbal WM measure was moderately and significantly correlated to word identification in fifth grade. The complex visuospatial WM measures were not correlated to word identification or word attack for second-grade students. However, for fifth-grade participants, there was a negative correlation between a complex visuospatial WM measure and word attack and a positive correlation between orthographic knowledge and word identification. Different types of WM measures predicted word identification and word attack ability in second and fifth graders. We wondered whether the processes involved in visuospatial memory (the visuospatial sketchpad) or auditory-verbal memory (the phonological loop), acting alone, would predict decoding skills. They did not. Similarly, the cognitive control abilities related to executive functions (measured by our complex memory tasks), acting alone, did not predict decoding at either grade. The optimal prediction models for each grade involved various combinations of storage, cognitive control, and retrieval processes. Second graders appeared to rely more on the processes involved in auditory-verbal WM when identifying words, while fifth-grade students relied on the visuospatial domains to identify words. For second-grade students, both complex visuospatial and auditory-verbal WM predicted word attack ability, but by fifth grade, only the visual domains predicted word attack. This study has implications for training instruction in reading. It was not the individual contributions of auditory-verbal or visuospatial WM that best predicted reading ability in second and fifth grade decoders, but rather, a combination of factors. Training WM in isolation of other skills does not increase reading ability. In fact, for young students, too much WM storage can interfere with learning to decode.

As the mosaic of our classrooms becomes more diverse, teachers need to be able to celebrate the multilingual, multicultural students and provide the academic and social opportunities for their students. As well, teachers need to use culturally relevant pedagogy and diverse instructional strategies within the curriculum that will allow all students to develop meaningful language experiences. Through narrative inquiry and through qualitative research, I have examined my teaching practices and methodologies in relation to the observations and critical conversations with EAL teachers directly involved in the instruction and English language development as support for linguistically and culturally challenged students in the elementary school setting. I have taught a community of diverse learners with rich heritages and backgrounds in a multilingual classroom, and I have learned, from these four specialist teachers, to be more knowledgeable in teaching strategies and more adaptable in implementing culturally relevant content. For a brief time, I was able to enter four different classrooms of students, who had come from many different countries and had been removed from their regular classrooms to receive EAL support. Through observations of these students, and interviews and dialogues with specialist EAL teachers, I have been able to critically reflect upon and analyze my results, expanding my repertoire of instructional practices as a multilingual classroom teacher. By allowing me into their professional spaces, and by sharing their teaching practices as English language specialist teachers helping students, I have been both inspired and enlightened.<p> EAL students in our communities and classrooms will bring their personal experiences and rich cultural backgrounds, created from their multigenerational histories. As teachers create welcoming classrooms, all students will receive the language support that they need, without losing their cultural beliefs and values. School families and communities can become the threads that will eventually create a fabric, rich in design and texture. In representing the Canadian mosaic of individuals, this journey metaphorically takes our students, from individual fabrics to quilts of many hues and patterns.

Creative development in students is an important aim for the art educator. The visual arts class can be a realm for exploring and nurturing creativity in students. While all students may not grow up to produce works of art outside the classroom, visual arts education can impact a student’s understanding of their own creativity. This paper explores the creativity beliefs of elementary students. The research seeks to understand the implicit theories or beliefs of creativity that shape creative self-efficacy and what factors may influence these beliefs in students.

As the mosaic of our classrooms becomes more diverse, teachers need to be able to celebrate the multilingual, multicultural students and provide the academic and social opportunities for their students. As well, teachers need to use culturally relevant pedagogy and diverse instructional strategies within the curriculum that will allow all students to develop meaningful language experiences. Through narrative inquiry and through qualitative research, I have examined my teaching practices and methodologies in relation to the observations and critical conversations with EAL teachers directly involved in the instruction and English language development as support for linguistically and culturally challenged students in the elementary school setting. I have taught a community of diverse learners with rich heritages and backgrounds in a multilingual classroom, and I have learned, from these four specialist teachers, to be more knowledgeable in teaching strategies and more adaptable in implementing culturally relevant content. For a brief time, I was able to enter four different classrooms of students, who had come from many different countries and had been removed from their regular classrooms to receive EAL support. Through observations of these students, and interviews and dialogues with specialist EAL teachers, I have been able to critically reflect upon and analyze my results, expanding my repertoire of instructional practices as a multilingual classroom teacher. By allowing me into their professional spaces, and by sharing their teaching practices as English language specialist teachers helping students, I have been both inspired and enlightened.<p> EAL students in our communities and classrooms will bring their personal experiences and rich cultural backgrounds, created from their multigenerational histories. As teachers create welcoming classrooms, all students will receive the language support that they need, without losing their cultural beliefs and values. School families and communities can become the threads that will eventually create a fabric, rich in design and texture. In representing the Canadian mosaic of individuals, this journey metaphorically takes our students, from individual fabrics to quilts of many hues and patterns.