The thesis deals with the formation of the initial graphomotor skills in the last year of kindergarten education with connection to the system of teaching writing in the first grade of primary school. The work consists of two parts. The theoretical part is generally aimed at preschool age and a system of preschoolers preparation, especially in the formation of hygiene and work habits. It also deals with the issue of left-handedness. The second part of my thesis is based on research of practical use. The research was conducted in kindergarten schools with a focus on the health and work habits (proper grip and pen direction for right-handers and left-handers, proper seating, etc.). The attention was also paid to uppercase block letters (mirror writing) and graphomotor development (graphomotor exercises). The results are compared with theoretical part and supported by extensive appendix.

A healthy civil society depends on citizens who have mature critical thinking skills and a willingness to entertain opposing points of view. The development of critical thinking in young adults has long been studied, but there has been little agreement on what the attributes of critical thinking are and how to reliably assess them. While many studies have attempted to assess the critical thinking abilities of college students, none have yet measured critical thinking through using the Critical Thinking Analytic Rubric (CTAR) to assess first-year college students' writing. This study used a modified version of the CTAR rubric to investigate students' critical thinking in writing completed for an American Heritage course. Four hypotheses were tested: (1) that raters would use the rubric with high inter-rater reliability estimates; (2) that there would be a significant relationship between the scores from the earlier holistic rubric used in the 2015 Hansen et al. study and the scores from the analytic rubric used in this study; (3) that there would be a significant relationship between analytic scores and ACT and GPA scores; (4) that there would be a significant relationship between essay score and gender. Findings included the following: (1) The inter-rater reliability for the overall scores of the papers was 0.898, which exceeds the 0.70 acceptable level. However, the inter-rater reliability for sub-scores was negative and required further investigation. (2) There was no significant relationship between the scores of the Hansen et al. study and this study. (3) There was no significant relationship between essay scores and ACT and GPA scores. (4) There was a significant relationship between essay scores and gender, with female students scoring higher than male students.

<p>The Elon Research Seminar, <i>Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer</i>, was a coalition of rhetoric and composition scholars’ attempt at codifying writing transfer knowledge for teaching and research purposes. Although the seminar was an important leap in transfer research, many ‘behind the scenes’ decisions of writing transfer, often those not involving the writing program, go unnoticed, yet play a pivotal role in how writing programs encourage and reproduce writing transfer in the classroom. This dissertation study, inspired by a pilot study conducted in Fall 2018 on writing across the curriculum programs and their role in writing transfer, illustrates how an institution’s context systems (e.g., macrosystem, mesosystem, microsystem, etc.) affect writing programs’ processes—i.e., curriculum components, assessment, and administrative structure and budget—and vice versa. Using Bronfenbrenner and Morris’ (2006) bioecological model, I show how writing programs and their context systems interact to reproduce writing transfer practices. Through ten interviews with writing program administrators at state comprehensive universities, I delineate specific actions that each writing program could take to encourage writing transfer. I develop a list of roles and responsibilities a university’s context systems play in advocating writing transfer practices. The results of the study show that research beyond the writing classroom and students is necessary to understand how writing transfer opportunities arise in university cultures of writing.</p>

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