Research in the area of early literacy has strongly supported instruction at the phonemic awareness level. In addition, a number of research articles have discussed the importance of involving parents in their children's education through home-based activities. This study examined the effects of a parent-training on early literacy skills in the areas of phonemic awareness and letter-identification. This study utilized a pre-experimental AB design. Thirty-nine kindergarten children from the northeast were administered early literacy measures (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills - DIBELS) ten times during both the base-line phase and treatment phases. Twenty children comprised the treatment group, and their parents participated in five training sessions and 10 weeks of interactive book reading and practice and instruction of specific skills with their children. Results were positive and significant for the three early literacy measures, (Onset Fluency, Letter-Naming Fluency, and Phoneme Segmentation). In addition, treatment integrity and acceptability were measured. Limitations to the study, implications for education and future research are also discussed.

The work of play theorists such as W. D. Winnicott, Gregory Bateson, and Erving Goffman suggests that the element of play has intriguing potential for the teaching and learning of writing: repositioning students in relation to dominant discourses, providing an avenue for risk-taking and experimentation, and offering students and teachers a subtle means to negotiate social roles. However, play as a discrete subject has drawn little attention in composition studies, and as yet there has been no attempt to enact a curriculum that deliberately foregrounds the element of play in all aspects of a composition course. The study described in this dissertation fills this gap. In Chapter 1, I discuss interdisciplinary theories of play in relation to work done in composition studies and develop a provisional definition of “play.” In Chapter 2, I present the methodology I used in this study, which focuses on three sections of a first-year composition course I taught during a single semester. In Chapter 3, I describe the curriculum I designed in light of the theories discussed in Chapter 1. I also relate my observations on how the curriculum was received, comment on my own experiences of play, and discuss spontaneous play initiatives. In Chapter 4, I present and discuss student reactions to the play activities as expressed in written reflections, individual and group interviews, and other artifacts. In Chapter 5, I focus on the identity negotiations of three students as these negotiations related to play in classroom discourse and their formal essays. Finally, in Chapter 6, I draw together, complicate, and extend the central themes of the previous chapters by discussing them in the context of the key questions that guided the study.

Though attention to academic language is a key component of the Teacher Performance Assessment and the new Common Core Standards, little has been researched regarding how pre-service teachers build academic language knowledge and integrate it into their practice teaching experience. This study focuses on the construction and delivery of academic language knowledge to pre-service teachers in a one year immersion teacher preparation program. It studies the pre-service teachers' use of academic language knowledge in their planning, teaching, and assessment throughout a practicum and clinical experience, as well as their use of academic language knowledge as part of reflective practice. Through analysis of classroom observation notes, interviews, and artifacts, the data show that after receiving instruction on academic language concepts in the areas of content-area terminology and language use, reading, and writing, pre-service teachers consciously integrated an attention to the terminology and language use of their content area into their practicum experience. However, faced with understanding themselves as teachers while navigating their mentor teacher's expectations, learning the curriculum they are teaching, and developing classroom management skills, etc., attention to academic language instruction in reading and writing was limited. Recognition that content-area terminology and language use is key to accessing content, though, influenced reflection on how content knowledge is accessed. This conscious understanding of the role terminology and language use plays in accessing content knowledge opened the door for a deeper reflection on the role academic language plays in the classroom. And, during their post-practicum clinical experience, these pre-service teachers were able to more knowledgeably reflect on how to integrate specific content-area reading and writing instruction into curriculum. These conclusions suggest that an introduction to academic language concepts and practices can reveal "blind spots" that enable pre-service teachers to better address content-area literacy in their future practice. They also suggest that more focus in academic language instruction in teacher education programs could help pre-service teachers more efficiently learn the complexities of their new role.

Over the past decade, politicians, businesspersons, and educators have pushed for “higher,” “tougher,” and “world-class” standards for K–12 students. This standards movement includes state standardized, curriculum-based tests. Massachusetts recently developed the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). MCAS is considered a high-stakes test because a passing score determines graduation for students, and sanctions and rewards for teachers and schools. The experiences of 16 Massachusetts English teachers in teaching under the MCAS high-stakes testing requirement were explored using a qualitative research method known as in-depth interviewing from a phenomenological perspective (Seidman, 1998). These participants taught a variety of students in a range of Massachusetts public schools. Over the course of three 90-minute interviews, each participant established context through life histories, detailed their current teaching experiences, and made meaning of these experiences. Using an inductive process of analysis, data were reduced and coded; essential features, relationships, and patterns were explored. The findings were organized into three major themes. This study found that teachers narrowed their curriculum, changed instruction, and designed classroom assessments to match the content and skills that MCAS tests. Teachers associated both gains and losses with these changes. Moreover, this high-stakes test both enhanced and undermined their professional identities. MCAS and related professional activities empowered teachers; MCAS also disempowered teachers by imposing policies that controlled curriculum and instruction, threatened sanctions, and damaged reputations. Teachers voiced their socio-political analysis of the theories that underpin this high-stakes testing movement, the motives behind MCAS, and the current state of education. The findings reveal that the line between educational reform and improved education is neither unidirectional nor linear. Rather, it is a complex web of influences, motives, and actions. How policy winds its way into practice depends on the varied contexts in which teachers perceive and experience reform. This study suggests implications for policymakers, politicians, teachers, teacher educators, and researchers. Among other things, it makes a plea to policymakers and legislators to define what they mean by standards, re-examine the narrow content of the test, and include teachers as legitimate participants in making policy decisions that affect them and their students.

The purpose of this year long strategic ethnography is to discover how introducing digital storytelling into an urban second grade classroom impacts the study of language arts and repositions students as literacy learners. Research questions include: (1) In a classroom where most of the students have never used computers before as learning tools, what happens as they learn to create books using digital means? (2) How do the students position themselves as authors, and how do they use imagery in representing their alphabetic (or regular print) texts? For this study, the students write stories in cooperative writing groups and choose their own topics. The students illustrate their stories and the illustrations are scanned for digitalization. The students learn how to word process their stories, and the students also learn how to incorporate both image and text onto a page using a computer application. The researcher is a participant/observer, spending one language arts period per week in this classroom. The methods of data collection include: fieldnotes, digital photographs, audio tapes, video tapes, student surveys, teacher interviews, news stories and demographic information collected from Winterdale school system, student generated texts and other student artifacts. The frameworks of this study include: The New London Group’s theory of multiliteracies, Kress and van Leeuwen’s theory of semiotics, and Spradley’s analysis techniques based on ethnographic participant observation. Analysis of these student generated texts using the frameworks mentioned, critical discourse analysis and domain analysis help to reveal emerging themes and how the students position themselves as writers. Video footage, fieldnotes, participant observation and dialogical data show that the students in this study were excited and energized by their involvement with the Digital Storytelling Project (DSP) and that the use of computer and digital media technology was very well received. As the students shared in the decision making involved in designing a story, they positioned themselves and one another as authorities, and as successful and creative writers and illustrators. Creating the images for their stories opened up yet another mode of communication and became a source of competence for the students. They used their imaginations and elaborated on their story lines as they added visual details that were not found in the written texts. The DSP also raised the classroom teacher’s awareness of computer technology and gave her the courage to be an active participant in the realm of technology alongside her students. Three of the student participants exhibited positive behavior changes as a result of participating in this project. This study implies that pairing social semiotics with computer technology can enable students, including at-risk students, to find modes of communication that they can employ, and this has the potential to increase active engagement with literacy learning.

The current case study evaluates a program of professional development aimed at engaging two groups of elementary teachers in communities of practice (CoPs) focused on improving teachers' vocabulary instruction and students' vocabulary learning. The professional development program took place over five months in the 2008-2009 school year. The purpose of the evaluation was to evaluate the merit and worth of the professional development program and identify changes that could be implemented by the primary evaluator in future efforts to develop and refine an effective method for teaching teachers about vocabulary instruction. An explanatory case study design was used to achieve a deep understanding of the program using both quantitative and qualitative data analyses. The evaluation measured aspects of collaborative practices engaged in by teachers over the course of the program, as well as teachers' instructional practices and students' learning before and after program implementation. Evaluation questions were designed to explore the theory that teacher collaboration leads to increases in teacher knowledge and skills, which in turn lead to increases in teachers' classroom use of new knowledge and skills, which ultimately lead to increases in student achievement. Overall, the evaluation was successful in that it was able to clearly describe the collaborative practices engaged in by teachers, provide evidence of teacher and student learning, and provide extensive insights into changes and improvements that were then implemented in an extension to the CoP in the same district during the subsequent school year. Additionally, the evaluation uncovered key variables that may act to impede teacher collaboration.

Teaching for social justice is the attempt by classroom teachers to use their position in the classroom to promote social and educational reform within and despite current educational conditions and mandates. However, while a growing number of K-12 teachers have published anecdotal reports of their attempts to teach for social justice in secondary classrooms (e.g., Bender-Slack, 2007; Christensen, 2000; Singer, 2005), there is great variability among these accounts, and scant evaluation of their impact on specific academic, behavioral/motivational, and attitudinal outcomes (see Grant & Agosto, 2008; Kelly & Brandes, 2008; Poplin & Rivera, 2005). This qualitative study addresses this research gap by offering a concrete framework for teaching for social justice that is informed by multiple education reform traditions (including democratic education, critical (Freirian) pedagogy, multicultural education, culturally responsive education, and social justice education) and associated with positive academic, behavioral/motivational, and attitudinal outcomes. Next, I present the results of a constructivist grounded theory analysis examining how twenty-four English Language Arts teachers conceptualize teaching for social justice, as well as a content (lesson plan) analysis detailing how they operationalize the practice through the use of standards-based curriculum. Findings indicate that secondary ELA teachers define teaching for social justice as having three primary dimensions: curriculum, pedagogy, and social action. These priorities are reflected in their curriculum, which addressed all four strands of the Massachusetts ELA Curricular Frameworks (Language, Reading and Literature, Writing, and Media) and a range of social justice topics. Additional study findings examine challenges associated with teaching for social justice, the impact of teachers’ identities and school contexts on their social justice practice, and variance in how teachers conceptualize and implement teaching for social justice according to their sociopolitical emphases. This study has several implications for policy and practice. Specifically, this study challenges critics’ attempts to portray social justice education as poorly aligned with academically rigorous content-area instruction (e.g., Will, 2006), offers curricular guidance to pre- and in-service teachers interested in transforming their own practice, and lays the foundation for future empirical research related to how teaching for social justice affects student outcomes.

The primary goal of this dissertation is to examine the impact of Spanish as a Second Language instruction within a bilingual setting. The first chapter provides an overview of those issues which must be considered when developing and implementing a second language program. These issues are too often addressed in isolation by foreign language, English as a Second Language and bilingual educators. All three disciplines are concerned with language acquisition and literacy development. To date, not enough has been done to bring about collaboration among the three disciplines. The sharing of ideas and resources can only help to promote language development for all students. The second chapter reviews the literature in four specific areas: theories of second language acquisition, methodology and techniques used in the study of a second language, attitudes towards foreign language teaching and learning, and foreign language study within a bilingual setting. The exploration of these four areas provides information about theoretical frameworks on which many second language programs are based. It also emphasizes the value of integrating a second language into the overall education of youngsters. In addition, it provides one example of an educational schema which shows promise in promoting bilingualism for all children. The third chapter provides an analysis of the process followed in this study to arrive at some conclusions about the benefits of an SSL Program within a bilingual setting. The findings of the study are reported in chapter four. Results indicated that children participating in SSL made important gains in the acquisition of oral proficiency. Also, educators who were surveyed favored the approach that was used in the SSL Program because it considered the following characteristics: (1) The value of learning a second language; (2) Curriculum; (3) Methods and techniques; (4) Assessment; (5) Support for SSL instruction; (6) SSL instruction within a bilingual setting. Chapter V offers a summary of the study, the conclusions, the recommendations for applications of the findings and possible further research.

The purpose of this dissertation is to define and implement a theoretical construct of decolonizing theory as it pertains to the current issues of multicultural teacher education. A direct application of decolonizing methodologies and design will occur by focusing on the critical personal narratives of four preservice teachers and instructor involved in an introductory course on multicultural education. The rhetoric of multicultural teacher education and the challenging realities facing the field today will be addressed through qualitative research with a emphasis on critical ethnography and decolonization. The significance of this study is embedded in the voices of the students and instructor affected by the neocolonial conditions of U.S. schools, policies and practices. The goals of this research are to further the discourses on the sociopolitical constructs of decolonizing multicultural teacher education and to critically examine multicultural course construction and the potentially transformative praxis for future teachers.

This study explores the nature of the visual creative process of an artist. Most of the literature is secondary and seems only to meet the needs of the writer, critic or publication. This is a limited study, because as an artist I created a body of work on the Macintosh computer to track the creative process. Because of this special subjectivity, my project was intensely personal, dealing with my own feelings, memory, and psychological makeup. Though limited, the study does, nevertheless, add to the literature about the creative process. I have choosen the Holocaust-- an historical event because its scale and its particular horrors, touch all people. I shared my art work with Holocaust survivors, and asked them for responses. Their responses were a crucial part of my research. In this way I hope to broaden knowledge about the impact that the visual arts have, and how that impact happens. Finally, this research has pedagogical implications to help define the creative process in the visual arts. My own creative process, noted by me, served as a model of one possible way the visual creative process works, and this model was useful in leading students to uncover their own processes.