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Teachers' attitudes are shaped by the language, culture, and power constructs surrounding the disability in our society. This qualitative case study investigated how a sociocultural lens supported an English teacher's efforts to plan and implement lessons that use literature to examine disability critically. The theories of Bakhtin (1981), Rosenblatt (2005), as well as literature that highlights the use of disability studies, social justice, and dialogic pedagogy guided the methods of the study. The sample included the teacher and one ninth grade English Language Arts class of approximately 25 students in a rural high school. Methods involved three semi-structured workshops which served to guide the teacher in an examination of the social discourses surrounding disability, encouragement of aesthetic responses to reading, and the facilitation of a dialogic pedagogy. Participant interviews, lesson plans, observation field notes, and reflective journals were transcribed and triangulated with researcher field notes. Attention was paid to the participant's learning as a social act which leads to a teacher's "ideological becoming" and development of the self as a "process of selectively assimilating the words of others" (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 341). Therefore, the lenses of Transactional Analysis (Stewart, 2011) and content analysis (Schreier, 2014) was used to examine the context and process of planning and implementation for an ELA teacher in order to uncover the meaning-making processes that the teacher undergoes when using literature to examine disability critically. Findings give insight into the development of a teacher as he learns how to apply a sociocultural lens to literary study, as well as how he contextualized and situated his understanding of disability as connected to other forms of difference. While this study is not generalizable due to its qualitative nature, it can be transferable by providing insight into how a teacher guides students through texts that portray disability. / Doctor of Philosophy / This study explored how one English Language Arts teacher used a sociocultural lens to plan and implement lessons that use literature to examine disability critically. The sample included the teacher and one ninth grade English Language Arts class of approximately 25 students in a rural high school. Through a series of three semi-structured workshops, the teacher and researcher examined the social discourses surrounding disability, as well as how to encourage student aesthetic responses to reading and the facilitation of a dialogic pedagogy. Participant interviews, lesson plans, observation field notes, and reflective journals were analyzed. Findings give insight into the development of a teacher as he learns how to apply a sociocultural lens to literary study, as well as how he used this new understanding of disability as connected to other forms of difference. This study provides insight into how a teacher guided students through texts focused on disability as a way of critically analyzing disability in general.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--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. / The experience of children and adolescents is increasingly mediated by information and communication technologies. Yet, the trajectory for literacy education in U.S. schools continues to prioritize print literacy. As a result, students often lack the knowledge, skills, and expertise needed to ‘read and write’ in the digital world of the twenty-first century. Concerned by the influence of media to empower or exploit young people, educators at many levels are discovering media literacy as an augmentation to traditional literacy. The purpose of this research was to investigate how teachers implemented media literacy in practice. The following subquestions were also examined: (1) How do teachers define 'media literacy'? (2) Why do teachers teach media literacy? (3) What are the outcomes of media literacy teaching? (4) What are the challenges, limitations, and opportunities teachers experience when implementing media literacy? To answer these questions, a case study was conducted of three teachers as they collaborated in implementing a media literacy curriculum at the middle level. The results suggest that teachers who implement media literacy were motivated by awareness and knowledge of childhood and adolescent development, particularly related to increases in media use and the extent to which media shape the choices of children and teens. Media literacy practice was constructivist, embodying a student-centered approach where teachers served to guide students' media literacy learning, facilitating active learning, co-viewing , critical inquiry and reflection in a classroom climate where students' analysis and interpretations of media messages were respected and valued. Teachers worked to preserve students' enjoyment of media, acknowledging popular media as a valuable part of adolescent culture and identity, while encouraging critical inquiry. Media literacy activities consisted of viewing, labeling, and discussing commercial media that was relevant, accessible, and meaningful for students . Learning outcomes included: (a) increased awareness of all media messages as constructed; (b) the development of vocabulary to analyze and deconstruct media messages; (c) skill building in critical inquiry; and (d) empowerment via video production as assessment. Despite findings related to effective teaching practices, the results also indicate that curricular placement for media literacy continues to be a challenge for interested teachers and administrators. / 2999-01-01

The present study explored the relationship between indirect and direct assessment of preschoolers' emergent literacy skills. Subjects were 207 preschool-aged children, ranging in age from three to five years old who attended either the Mailman Segal Institute (MSI) Family Center, a private preschool comprised of children from primarily upper middle-class homes, or Jack and Jill Children's Center, a publicly subsidized preschool. Indirect assessment of the children's emergent literacy skills was gathered through the completion of the Teacher Rating of Oral Language and Literacy (TROLL) and a modified version of the Pupil Rating Scale (PRS). Direct measurement of the children's emergent literacy skills was obtained through multiple assessments including the Get Ready to Read! (GRTR!),the standardization version of the Preschool Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (Pre-CTOPP), and the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities (WJ IIII COG) and Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement (WJ III ACH). Overall, results revealed a moderate positive correlation between indirect assessments and direct assessment of emergent literacy with higher teacher ratings on the TROLL and modified PRS correlated with higher scores on the direct assessment measures. When comparing the two preschools, results revealed inconsistent relationships between direct and indirect assessment of emergent literacy skills depending on which assessment measure was utilized.

This thesis is a study of the role of written texts in processes of identity construction and maintenance in a Catholic parish community. It is based on a critical realist understanding of society which sees social practice as the locus of continuity and change and requires detailed observation of social activity explained within a theoretical framework to achieve an understanding of the mechanisms at work in society. Social practice is understood as "habitualised ways, tied to particular times and places, in which people apply resources (material or symbolic) to act together in the world" (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999: 21). Social practices are drawn on and continued in social activity, a process which articulates four moments: material activity, social relations and processes, mental phenomena, and meaning-making processes. These moments are not understood as being discrete but rather as existing in dialectical relations of reciprocal intemalisation. Language and literacy are analysed in terms of their embeddedness within this model of social practice. Identity is conceived of as particular ways of being which are realised in social activity as people engage in particular social practices. Within this framework, the study analyses data consisting of written texts and fieldnotes describing the practices within which those texts were embedded, which was collected during a year's participation-observation in three domains of a Catholic parish community, using a grounded approach. Three concepts are developed to explain the role of text in each of these domains: recontextualisation of identity, negotiated legitimation, and synchronisation of communities. These mechanisms are then explained in terms of the social contexts within which they are situated. Finally, the role of these mechanisms within social practice is analysed. It is argued that in each of them, the crucial role of written text is to provide an intertextual means by which relational links can be made between different communities and different elements of individuals' identities.

Presentation. Critical Librarianship & Pedagogy Symposium, February 25-26, 2016, The University of Arizona. / Academic instruction librarians often introduce students to the concept of evaluating information by having them compare “scholarly versus popular” sources--an approach that wrongly implies these two kinds of information are a binary, and that they are in competition with one another. This presentation will question the motivations behind presenting scholarly and popular information in this way, as well as offer recommendations for how librarians can adapt this activity into something which allows for critical discussions of context and authority in the classroom.