Digital Commons Network^™

Are 21st Century After School Programs An Effective Academic Intervention For Elementary School Students Attending High Poverty Schools?, Jennifer Scarpati

Doctoral Dissertations

In America, millions of children are living in poverty and/or attending high poverty schools. These students, on average, score lower on assessments of math and reading achievement than their more affluent peers. The federal government budgets money each year towards interventions targeted to raise the achievement of students living in poverty. 21st Century after school programs have received billions of dollars over the past 20 years towards this goal.

This is a secondary analysis of students attending five diverse, high poverty elementary schools in New Hampshire between 2008 and 2013. Ordinary Least Squares multiple regression analyses were used to estimate …

The Effect Of An Experiential, Adventure Based "Anti-Bullying Initiative" On Levels Of Resilience: A Mixed Methods Study, Jesse Beightol

Master's Theses and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of an experiential, adventure based program on levels of resilience. Specifically, a mixed methods, quasi-experimental design was implemented to measure the impact of an Anti-Bullying Initiative on students self reported Goals and Aspirations, Problem Solving, Empathy, and Self Efficacy traits. Quantitative data was gathered using the Anti-Bullying Initiative Survey and converged with results from focus groups, interviews, and program observations to assess both program outcomes and processes. Results indicated that this adventure education program did affect levels of resilience in the individual students as well as their school and home …

Three Points Of The Phonics Triangle: An Equilateral Relationship Among Pseudoword Reading, Name Reading, And Spelling, Annmarie Petrozzelli

Master's Theses and Capstones

This study evaluates the relationship among three commonly administered phonics measures. "Pseudoword Decoding," a norm-referenced assessment from Wechsler Individual Assessment Test - II (WIAT-II), the "Primary Spelling Inventory" and the "Names Test," criterion-referenced instruments, were administered to a general population of 56 second-grade students with mixed reading abilities. The "Elision" subtest, a norm referenced assessment from the "Phonological Awareness" composite on the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP), was also administered to all 56 students to discover whether the phonics measures correlated with it. Pearson product moment correlations were used to compare the four measures. Significant correlations were found among …

Third Graders Speak: Experiences And Perspectives Of Reading And Writing In Urban Public Schools, Kimberly A. Boothroyd

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences and perspectives of reading and writing among third grade students attending urban public schools. The study took place in a large urban district in the Northeastern United States and included two elementary schools, four classrooms, and 24 students. The study was designed and conducted as qualitative research. 24 students were interviewed at two different times in the school year using (1) a picture protocol for the first interview and (2) a semi-structured interview protocol for the second interview. Analysis of the 48 interviews yielded findings in three areas: (1) The …

Transition Voices: Perspectives, Concerns, And Discontinuities Expressed By Children, Parents, And Teachers As Children Transition From A University -Affiliated Kindergarten To A Public School First Grade, Laurie J. Harper

Doctoral Dissertations

Transition encompasses the events and experiences that occur as a child moves from kindergarten to first grade. Transition marks the time when children are separated from a familiar routine and environment and placed into an environment of uncertainty, changing roles, and expectations. Children who experience continuity with earlier educational experiences show increased motivation, improved relationships with peers and adults, and higher achievement.

Using a constructivist grounded theory approach this study documented the perspectives, concerns, and experiences of ten children and their parents as children transitioned from a University-affiliated kindergarten program to a public school first grade. Data were gathered using …

Documentation Panels: Evidence Of Scientific Literacy In A Primary Multi Age Classroom: Teaching At The Edge Of Magic, Charlene Garhart Kohn

Doctoral Dissertations

This project is the result of a question I raised about using documentation panels in my classroom; it is teacher research. Teacher researchers participate in their own inquiries, participating as both teacher and researcher in the study. Teacher research provides practitioners a method for investigating a question or wondering that arises from the classroom. This project aims to explicate the science learning demonstrated by 5, 6, 7, and 8 year old students through the use of student created documentation panels while at the same time providing me with an insightful and critical look at my pedagogy. Within the context of …

Knowledge, Inquiry, Action: Teacher Collaboration At Prospect Center's Summer Institute, Karen Hendrickson Woolf

Doctoral Dissertations

This two-year study describes the work of approximately thirty educators, kindergarten/post-secondary, who attend the Summer Institute on Descriptive Inquiry and November Conference under the auspices of The Prospect Archive and Center for Education and Research in North Bennington, Vermont. The purpose of this study is to portray the experience of collaborative inquiry using Prospect Center's descriptive processes.

Teacher network groups generally center around specific content areas such as language arts or science. In contrast, Prospect Center is an independent national network of educators committed to guided observation and disciplined description as a grounding for teaching practice and inquiry. Generated by …

The Manifestation Of Leadership In Three High -Flying New Hampshire Elementary Schools, Steven Thomas Kelley

Doctoral Dissertations

Perhaps the most dominant feature marking today's educational landscape is the presence and growth of "reform efforts" occurring in schools everywhere. Educational institutions across the U.S. struggle to reform and improve the teaching and learning that occurs within their walls. The public demands higher standards, has greater expectations, and demands academic excellence. State testing has pointed out strengths and weaknesses present in our schools and in some cases, prompted state governments to intervene in an attempt to "rescue" schools that are not demonstrating adequate progress.

Over the past fifty years, school administrators and educational researchers have been captivated by the …

Elementary Accreditation: Pro Forma Or Substance? A View From Inside The Schoolhouse Gates, Maryann Johnson Minard

Doctoral Dissertations

Since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1986, educators, government officials and community members have grappled with the unwieldy task of defining effective measures of school improvement. Calls for accountability and improvement resound in the halls of legislatures, the media, and in communities nationwide. The accreditation of schools has served as a conduit for accountability, but has it served as a vehicle for improvement?

This study sought to determine how closely the process of elementary accreditation through the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) aligns with research-based models of effective school change and acts as a …

Third-Grade Evaluators Thrive As Readers, Amy Frances Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

This study addresses the question, "When third grade students become evaluators of themselves as readers, what new roles do they negotiate for themselves?" I studied third grade students who became evaluators of themselves as readers, examining evaluation process. This included their own determination of their strengths, goals, assignments, and what to use as documentation of their learning processes in portfolios, as well as the influence of the classroom community on goal setting. Using observation, co-teaching, and group and individual interviews, I documented the new roles students adopted as they became better evaluators of their learning needs and took a more …

The Level Of Teacher Involvement In The Vermont Mathematics Portfolio Assessment Process And Instructional Practices In Grade 4 Classrooms, Carol Anne Fritz

Doctoral Dissertations

The comprehensive assessment system in Vermont includes student mathematics portfolios that are submitted to the state Department of Education for scoring. A student portfolio should include 5--7 pieces of best work selected by the student that can be scored. This alternative assessment process has been in place for ten years, but limited information has been available from classroom teachers about the instructional practices they use when teaching mathematics, or whether or not those practices have been influenced by the portfolio process.

The study was developed to answer questions about the instructional practices used by teachers. Teachers' responses were compared to …

The Perceived Effects Of State -Mandated Testing In New Hampshire, Stephen A. Kossakoski

Doctoral Dissertations

The purposes of this study were: (1) to examine the perceptions of third grade teachers in the state of New Hampshire concerning the state's mandated testing program, and (2) to determine if there was a relationship between teachers' perceptions and their schools' socioeconomic status. The survey instrument designed for this study contained 61 closed response Likert scale items that measured teachers' perceptions regarding changes in curriculum and instruction, sources of pressure to improve test scores, and attitude toward the third grade test. A stratified random sample of 310 third grade teachers was selected to participate in this study. The percentage …

Finding A Voice: Poetry And Performance With First Graders, Lisa Lenz Bianchi

Doctoral Dissertations

This is a qualitative research study of a ten week immersion unit in the reading, writing, and performance of poetry conducted in a first grade classroom in Closter, New Jersey during the winter of 1995. The three girls selected as case studies show the ways in which remarkably different children expand their repertoires of ways with words as speakers, readers, and writers. Danielle, a performative speaker, learns to make her tacit knowledge about performance part of her explicit frames of reference. This shift enables her to serve as a coach for peers who are less adept at crafting performative texts. …

Mentoring In Adolescence: A Sociocultural And Cognitive Developmental Study Of Undergraduate Women And Sixth-Grade Girls In A Mentoring Program, Katharina Maria Fachin Lucas

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was two-fold. First, a quasi-experimental study was conducted to explore the cognitive developmental effects of taking on the role of "mentor" as an undergraduate or the role of "mentee" as a sixth grader in one university-based mentoring program. Second, an ethnographic study was conducted to study the experiences of ten sixth graders and ten undergraduates as they took on the role of "mentor" or "mentee" in a planned mentoring relationship. A sociocultural analysis explored processes occurring on the personal, interpersonal, and community level that shaped the mentoring experiences of the participants.

The participants in this …

Thinking Through Performance: Children Make Sense Of Characters And Social Relationships Through A Gesture-Based Theatre Convention (Tableau), Georgia Patricia Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

This inquiry considers a gesture-based theatre convention called tableau as used by first and second graders during language arts instruction. I argue that tableau acts as a medium of thinking, used to make sense of literary text and of social relationships. Tableau is largely non-language-based; it augments instructional practices that are primarily language-based. Tableau reveals sophisticated understandings children cannot yet put into language. As such, tableau offers educators a means to cast children as capable analysts of literature.

Qualitatively oriented, this inquiry uses instrumental case study methods of observation and data analysis coupled with a concurrent conceptual study of the …

In Pursuit Of "A Good Healthy Chat": The Roles Of Organization And Rapport-Building In Effective Middle School Literacy Instruction, Douglas Kingsley Kaufman

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study I explore what classroom conditions a master eighth-grade language arts teacher created in order to become a more effective listener. I defined effective listening as a deep receptivity that leads the listener to create responses that satisfy the other's needs. Responses must help students move their ideas and work progressively forward. Conditions that promote effective listening, then, serve two purposes: they (1) enhance teacher receptivity and (2) help students better articulate their interests, knowledge, and needs.

During the 1996-1997 school year I conducted a qualitative study that drew heavily upon ethnographic methodologies. As a participant-observer I took …

Music And The General Classroom: Literacy In A New Key, F Dan Seger

Doctoral Dissertations

After a personal description of the traditional role of music education and its relationship to the overall curriculum of an American elementary school, this dissertation asks: What do grade 4/5 students do when their classroom and music teachers integrate music more deliberately into classroom life? Set in a classroom in a small New England town, the dissertation describes how a collaboration between a classroom teacher and a music teacher brought the music curriculum into the daily lives of students in a school where scheduled music class occurred only once per week.

Viewing music as a valid means to represent thought …

The Teaching Portfolio As A Vehicle For Professional Growth, John James Freeman

Doctoral Dissertations

This study considered the utility of the teaching portfolio as a structure which might enhance the professional growth of public school teachers. The study was guided by the question: Does the development of individual teaching portfolios support reflection, self-assessment, and professional development on the part of teachers who develop portfolios? Other issues considered were reasons for developing portfolios, the nature of artifacts included in portfolios, structures which support teachers in the development of their portfolios, changes in classroom practice which may result from portfolio development, plans for future portfolio use, and suggestions which portfolio developers might have for others considering …

Student Interactions And Mathematics Discourse: A Study Of The Development Of Discussions In A Fifth-Grade Classroom, Sharon Marie Soucy Mccrone

Doctoral Dissertations

Mathematics reform efforts are gaining attention and support in the years since the dissemination of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Standards documents. Encouraging student interactions in small and large group settings, and promoting discussion and argumentation of mathematical ideas among students are two possible implications of the vision presented in the Standards. The goal of having mathematics discussions, however, can present a variety of classroom challenges. Many factors influence classroom discourse and need to be addressed in ways that inform teachers as they work toward creating a more interactive, discussion-based mathematics classroom.

The study examines the development …

Literacy Portfolios: Considering Issues Of Purpose, Power, And Potential, Carol A. Wilcox

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I examine the complexities of incorporating literacy portfolios into an elementary school classroom: the purposes for using portfolios, issues of ownership and audience, the nature of children's evaluative decisions, adults' responsibilities in children's development as evaluators, and the institutional pressures impacting adults' abilities to incorporate children's voices into existing evaluative practices.

The study was conducted in a third grade classroom where children read and wrote in a variety of genres for authentic purposes and audiences every day. Although the study cannot be described as an ethnography in the strictest sense, research methodology is drawn from that discipline. …

Fourth- And Fifth-Grade Students As Problem Finders Within The Discourse Of Mediation, Judith Marie Ferrara

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe from students' perspectives how a peer mediation program became part of one urban elementary school's culture during six months of program implementation. Peer mediation is a process which enables disputing students to voluntarily resolve conflicts with the help of a pair of trained student mediators and without the direct participation of adults. Descriptions of students' perceptions of the role of mediator and the mediation process grew from field notes, interview transcripts, video transcripts and print documentation gathered by the researcher in her roles as participant observer and mediation program coordinator/trainer.

The …

From Eighth-Grade To High School: A Story Of Enculturation And Adaptation, M Cyrene Wells

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study I describe and interpret the transition students made when they graduated from a process-oriented, learner-centered eighth grade to attend a traditional high school. I explore the students' shared understandings of school literacies, the climate of the two schools, and the adaptations students made to their new learning environment.

I gathered descriptive data during two years of participant observation among adolescents in the elementary and high school; conducted formal and informal interviews with students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community members; collected school and town documents; and analyzed students' school work. In order to compare the ethos of schools …

A Computer Model Of The Role Of Text Integration In The Solution Of Arithmetic Word Problems, Mark David Leblanc

Doctoral Dissertations

Understanding arithmetic word problems involves a complex interaction of text comprehension and mathematical processes. This work presents a computer model of the hypothesized processes that are required of a young student solving arithmetic word problems, including the processes of sentence-level leading and text integration. Unlike previous computer simulations of word problem solving, which neglect the early stages of text processing, this model forces a detailed consideration of the linguistic process, which is being increasingly recognized as a primary source of difficulty. Three experiments were conducted to isolate critical test comprehension processes. Children's probability of solution was analyzed in regression analyses …

Culturally Responsive Talk Between A Second-Grade Teacher And Hawaiian Children During Writing Workshop, John Timothy Rynkofs

Doctoral Dissertations

This study addresses issues of linguistic and cultural differences in the context of writing workshop in a second grade classroom in Hawaii. The major purpose of the study was to look at the ways a native born teacher responds orally to her students who share her own bidialectical background. Most of the students are part-Hawaiian and speak a nonprestigious dialect called Hawaii Creole English (HCE) as their primary language and standard English (SE) as their secondary language. Not only do these students speak a dialect particular to the Hawaiian Islands, but their classroom interactions can be strikingly different from those …

An Ecological Perspective Of Writing: Teachers, Peers, And Authors As Resources In A Response-Based Classroom, Margaret L. Murray

Doctoral Dissertations

The present study examines the ways in which the available resources of books, classmates, and teacher affect three fourth-grade students' writing development within the same classroom. The study's unique contribution is its holistic description of how all three resources contribute collectively to the ongoing writing of these individuals over the better part of their school year. The study describes the ways in which the children's writing and their notions of good writing are being formed in the dialectical processes of interaction with these resources. Further, the study describes the global traits of their particular classroom's culture--its extant written forms and …

More Than Print: The Home And School Literacies Of Three Fourth-Graders, Margaret M. Voss

Doctoral Dissertations

Through ethnographic case studies of three fourth-grade children, this study investigates the relationships between children's home and school literacies. The data were collected through participant-observation in the children's homes and at school; interviews of children, parents, and teacher; and analysis of children's products and processes (such as written work and hand-made crafts).

The study defines a literacy as a meaning-making system which can be used functionally, communicatively, reflectively, flexibly, and pleasurably. Schools typically focus on print literacy and do not always recognize or value the range of literacies children bring with them from home. This research shows children using not …

Large-Scale Portfolio Evaluation Of Writing, Jay Simmons

Doctoral Dissertations

Schools, districts, states, and testing organizations routinely assess writing ability with timed, prompted writing samples. Based on these results, those in control swing the gate open or slam it shut for thousands of students, teachers, administrators and schools, in decisions about promotion, admission, retention or funding.

This study demonstrates that timed writing samples poorly predict actual classroom writing performance, underestimating the weakest and poorest while overrating the strongest. Self-selected portfolios from 263 randomly selected students in grades five, eight, and eleven across eleven school unions also provide a clearer picture of the development of writing abilities from elementary through high …

Learning To Live: Values And Experience In The Life Of A Classroom, Mary Comstock

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the question, "How are the values of the people who comprise a classroom manifested there?" The results of this ethnographic study are reported in descriptive narrative and cover events which took place in a grade five classroom over a period of four and a half months.

The body of the narrative entails events in an experiential learning environment in which the teaching of content area curriculum was accompanied by numerous field trips and other hands-on activities. Moreover, lessons intended to raise the children's awareness of environment, community, ethics and values were also taught.

This study concludes that …

Playful Literacy: First-Graders As Meaning-Makers In The Literacies Of Play, The Creative Arts, And The Language Arts, Judith Macdonald Fueyo

Doctoral Dissertations

This ethnographic study of a first grade classroom examines the interdependence and synergism of multiple symbol systems. Children's oral language, their idiosyncratic use of time and space in the classroom, as well as their play and artmaking all suggest dynamic interrelationships with their writing. Simply put, the study asks, How do play, work in the creative arts, and the language arts influence each other?

Historically, language arts studies have been verbocentric. Such an exclusively verbal conception of language arts limits expressive potential in general, and in particular, limits writing development. Nearly a decade ago, Janet Emig asked writing researchers, "...for …

A Study Of Children's Reading/Writing Relationships In A Grade Five Classroom, Mary-Ellen Macmillan

Doctoral Dissertations

This research is based on an ethnographic study of how children in grade five choose to relate reading and writing. The two-year study, which took place in Mary Ann Wessells' grade five classroom in Stratham Memorial School, investigated how changing the classroom environment enabled the children to engage in the processes of reading and writing and make connections between learning in both areas. The data were collected through participant-observation in the room with fieldnotes, interviews with the children, and the children's writing, writing folders, reading folders and journals as primary data sources. The results of the study describe: (1) the …