With the implementation of more rigorous reading standards nationwide, teachers are feeling less secure about their abilities to teach students to become proficient readers. Utilizing Bandura's theory of self-efficacy as the conceptual framework, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how teachers perceived their self-efficacy to teach complex reading standards to struggling readers. Seven middle school English language arts teachers from 2 schools in a southern school district participated in this study. The research questions addressed teachers' understanding of the recent Common Core literacy standards and perceptions of their own self-efficacy to teach mastery of these standards to struggling readers. Semi-structured interviews with teacher study participants were recorded, transcribed, coded, and then analyzed in search of common themes. Findings showed that teachers perceived themselves to be knowledgeable about the literacy standards but, believed themselves unprepared to teach mastery of the standards to students who read significantly below grade level. Middle school teachers in this study claimed they had received no training that emphasized effective strategies for struggling readers and believed that training in such strategies and more collaboration with colleagues would increase their self-efficacy to enhance reading skills of struggling students. The resulting project created from the findings was a series of professional development sessions for middle school teachers to explain reading strategies that support the reading development of struggling readers. This study could affect positive social change by identifying ways in which middle school teachers may become more empowered to teach struggling readers. When teachers are empowered, their confidence and self-efficacy levels increase, and students benefit from effective instruction.

High cognitive demand (HCD) tasks can help students develop a deeper understanding of mathematics. Teachers need interventions that encourage students to engage in HCD activities. Small-group discourse provides HCD opportunities for students while solving mathematics problems. Discourse can take place after students solve problems individually (reflective) or in groups as students solve problems (exploratory). This study looks at the relationship between these two types of small-group discourse and student-enacted cognitive demand. This study looks at how students engage with tasks that were designed at four different cognitive demand levels using Webb’s depth of knowledge (DOK) framework. Ninety-seven grade 5 students from four different classrooms were grouped in small groups of two or three students to solve two sets of mathematics problems on operations with fractions and decimals. Each class engaged in Reflective Discourse after solving one set and engage in Exploratory Discourse while solving the other set. To help understand any order effects, half the classes used Reflective Discourse with Set 1 while the other half used Exploratory Discourse with Set 1. Then, they switched for Set 2, so that whoever used Reflective Discourse with Set 1 used Exploratory Discourse with Set 2 and vice versa. The researcher analyzed whether there were patterns in levels of cognitive demand and quality of the discussion when students engaged in each type of discourse for math problems at four different levels. First, the researcher looked at any numerical differences between the intended cognitive demand of the problems and how students engaged with the problems using frequency tables, heat maps, and statistical analyses. Next, the researcher looked at differences in student actions and the way they talked about the math problems. Findings showed that both Reflective and Exploratory Discourse can be used by teachers to promote high student-enacted levels of cognitive demand. Results also showed that a supportive environment, such as the environment created by Reflective Discourse, can help support typically struggling students. Finally, this research reinforced the importance of dissonance in prompting students to engage with the tasks at higher levels of cognitive demand.

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This qualitative case study investigated the nature of motivational change among eight adolescent participants who made notable advances in reading while in middle school. Data was gathered through interviews, observations, and artifact analysis. Guthrie's (2001) work identified a list of essential elements for reading engagement: autonomy support, interesting texts, goal orientation, real-world instruction, evaluation, strategy instruction, teacher involvement, collaborative learning, and the use of praise and rewards. Using Guthrie's (2001) work as a guide, a line of inquiry was formulated that could yield useful data on which factors were most influential in accounting for motivational and achievement growth among this unique population of improved readers. At the end of a six month study, interesting texts and real-world connections were found to be the most significant of Guthrie's (2001) contexts for engagement in facilitating participants' growth as readers. However, the personal accounts of the students, parents, and teachers in this study reveal a more complex picture of the nature of the motivational change among these adolescent readers. From this data, seven themes emerged that related to participants' motivational experiences in the categories of ethnicity, gender, and disability status. The three themes that emerged on the topic of ethnicity were "Resisting a fear of failure," "Meeting readers where they are," and "Tying literacy to the real world." On the subject of gender, two themes also emerged from the data: "Genders appearing more similar than different" and "Girls preferring intrinsic motivation." On the subject of students with disabilities, an additional two themes emerged: "Experiencing more reading frustrations" and "Combining learning support and interesting texts." Several of these themes suggested findings that differed from previous research on motivation and adolescent readers. Based on these findings, implications for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers were explored. / CITE/Language Arts

Voice is an integral part of writing instruction, and over half of state writing assessments include voice on scoring rubrics; yet, there is a dearth of research on voice and writing instruction with adolescents. Increasingly new literacies and digital tools are being used in the high school English classroom but with relatively little known about how these tools can teach voice during writing instruction. This qualitative single-case study examined how a public school, ninth-grade English teacher used new literacies to develop voice in students' writing and participants' perception of these instructional choices. The sample included the teacher and 14 students, and data collection included classroom observations, participant interviews, motivation inventories, reflective logs, state writing scores, students' writing folders, and wiki documents. An iterative process of inductive and deductive analysis led to key findings about instructional planning, purposeful writing assignments, teacher feedback, and participant response. Findings indicate that further attention is needed with respect to text structure development, writing pedagogy, and voice in writing; teachers' response to students' writing in digital environments; and motivation and adolescent writing. / Ph. D.

Fractions are an essential skill for students to master, and one students struggling in mathematics face particular difficulty with (National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008; Mazzocco & Devlin, 2008). This study employed the multi-probe multiple baseline design to examine the effectiveness of the concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) approach and explicit teaching practices to teach fraction equivalence to students struggling in mathematics. The study was conducted across four students, and replicated simultaneously across four more. The CRA approach included concrete aids such as fraction circles and fraction strips, representations such as pictures of fraction circles and polygons, and algorithms. Explicit teaching involved following a model-lead-test sequence and included an advanced organizer, corrective feedback and cumulative reviews. Results of this study indicated that the intervention program was effective to improve students‟ performances in fraction equivalence tasks. In particular, the use of vii representations was seen to impact performance and concrete aids alone may not be sufficient to improve performance. With regards types of representational and concrete aids employed, results of this study tended to favor the use of linear versus circular aids. Results indicated that students whose performances tend to vary may not benefit to the same extent as those who have stable profiles. Students who demonstrate variable profiles may require additional practice to master skills being taught. This study also examined transfer of skills to word problems and, results demonstrated that the CRA and explicit teaching approaches were beneficial in helping aiding transfer. Several aspects of the program may have contributed to aiding transfer including, minimal exposure to word problems during intervention, drawing connections between representations and abstract information, and incorporating the fair sharing understanding or quotient interpretation of fractions. This program concluded that students were able to maintain performances over time, and that representations in particular appeared to aid conceptual understanding and promote maintenance of skills. / text

abstract: High school students with high-incidence disabilities and struggling writers face considerable challenges when taking high-stakes writing assessments designed to examine their suitability for entrance to college. I examined the effectiveness of a writing intervention for improving these students’ performance on a popular college entrance exam, the writing assessment for the ACT. Students were taught a planning and composing strategy for successfully taking this test using the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model. A randomized control trial was conducted where 20 high school students were randomly assigned to a treatment (N = 10) or control (N = 10) condition. Control students received ACT math preparation. SRSD instruction statistically enhanced students’ planning, the quality of their written text (including ideas and analysis, development and support, organization, and language use), the inclusion of argumentative elements in their compositions, and the use of transition words in written text. Limitations of the study, future research, and implications for practice are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Learning, Literacies and Technologies 2017