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Exploring The Experiences And Practices Of Midwestern High School English Teachers, Melea Shimkus Feb 2024

Exploring The Experiences And Practices Of Midwestern High School English Teachers, Melea Shimkus

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem under study was that in a state in the midwestern United States, there was a disparity in reading scores between secondary schools of similar demographics. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore the strategies and approaches used by secondary teachers whose students’ reading achievements exceeded those of other students. Shulman’s pedagogical content knowledge and Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy were used as the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected from one-on-one interviews with 10 participants and analyzed with open coding. The findings indicated how to combine content and pedagogy; feeling efficacious about teaching had …


Teachers’ Perceptions Of Practices That May Contribute To Reading Proficiency In Massachusetts Elementary Schools, Melinda Bentley Feb 2024

Teachers’ Perceptions Of Practices That May Contribute To Reading Proficiency In Massachusetts Elementary Schools, Melinda Bentley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Sixty-eight percent of fourth-grade public school students in the United States performed below the National Assessment of Educational Progress proficient level on the 2022 reading assessment, yet Massachusetts fourth-grade students demonstrated better reading outcomes. The problem addressed through this study was a lack of knowledge regarding the practices used by third- and fourth-grade teachers that they perceive to improve reading proficiency in Massachusetts elementary students. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to describe the practices perceived by third- and fourth-grade teachers to improve the reading proficiency of Massachusetts elementary students. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory framed the study because it …


Literacy Score Gains In Grades K-2 In A Response To Intervention Program, Diana Dawn Thill Jan 2022

Literacy Score Gains In Grades K-2 In A Response To Intervention Program, Diana Dawn Thill

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Fewer than half of students demonstrated proficiency on Michigan state-administered summative assessments at the end of third grade at a rural, Title I school in Michigan. The purpose of this quantitative study was to compare reading fluency gains between grade levels (i.e., kindergarten, first, and second grades) in an effort to better understand which grade level demonstrates the most growth. The framework for this research study was the constructs of the variability of learning disabilities. Using a sample of 260 cases, this ex post facto pre-post quantitative study investigated the measurable fluency gains between grade levels in the Dynamic Indicators …


Third Grade Arabic And English Dual Language Learners’ Literacy Achievement Associated With The Scott Foresman Reading Street Program, Katina Latrice Walton Jan 2022

Third Grade Arabic And English Dual Language Learners’ Literacy Achievement Associated With The Scott Foresman Reading Street Program, Katina Latrice Walton

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The academic success of dual language learners (DLLs) has been studied extensively, but few studies have investigated the effectiveness of the Scott Foresman Reading Street (SFRS) program on DLL struggling readers. The purpose of this quantitative study, grounded in the linguistic interdependence theory, was to compare the Measure of Academic Progress Reading Fluency (MAP RF) Rasch Unit (RIT) scores of third grade DLL struggling readers before and after they participated in 1 year of the SFRS program at Commonwealth School in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The RIT scores measure students’ progress between grades. A repeated-measures t test was used to examine …


Expanding Stem Membership: Using Science Process Skills In A Social Justice Curriculum To Combat Stereotype Threats And Build Self-Efficacy In African American Students, Beverly A. King Miller, Alma D. Stevenson, Shelli L. Casler-Failing Oct 2021

Expanding Stem Membership: Using Science Process Skills In A Social Justice Curriculum To Combat Stereotype Threats And Build Self-Efficacy In African American Students, Beverly A. King Miller, Alma D. Stevenson, Shelli L. Casler-Failing

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

Science process skills were scaffolded throughout instruction over the ten-week program. The culminating project included the development, design, and testing of their own independent science fair project. The results reflect an increase in students’ self-efficacy which was evidenced by the students’ preparation and presentation of their projects in the science fair.


Exploring Novice Elementary Teachers' Use Of Academic Language In Planning, Teaching, And Assessment, Lori Teegarden Jan 2021

Exploring Novice Elementary Teachers' Use Of Academic Language In Planning, Teaching, And Assessment, Lori Teegarden

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Academic language is the key that promotes disciplinary reading, writing, speaking, and thinking. The novice teacher may not be prepared with the knowledge, skills, and strategies to effectively plan, teach, and assess for academic language achievement. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to understand the novice teacher’s experiences and perspectives of academic language development. The research questions focused on the novice elementary teacher’s practice of addressing academic language demands in teaching. The conceptual framework that guided the study comprised Bruner’s education theory that places teaching and learning within the culture and society and Rumelhart’s theory focused on vocabulary …


Families And Schools Together In Academic Partnerships And Student Literacy Achievement, Kathleen S. Reynolds Jan 2021

Families And Schools Together In Academic Partnerships And Student Literacy Achievement, Kathleen S. Reynolds

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractFamily engagement in schooling has academic benefits for students and has been cited in decreasing the achievement gap. Half of all study district first-grade students did not meet benchmark goals on continuous text reading assessments. Further, first-grade treatment school students performed below published benchmarks on measures of sight word identification fluency (WIF). The purpose of this study was to examine changes to WIF scores after participation in the Families and Schools Together in Academic Partnerships (FAST-AP) pilot and to examine the effect of parent participation on changes to continuous text reading scores. Emergent literacy and sociocultural learning theories provided the …


Educator And Parent Collaborative Literacy Support In A Title I School, Larhonda Young Jan 2021

Educator And Parent Collaborative Literacy Support In A Title I School, Larhonda Young

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In an urban elementary school serving a large percentage of low-socioeconomic status (SES) students in a southern state, the problem was that over 50% of student literacy scores remained below the state standard between 2016 and 2019. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to examine educators’ perceptions of teacher–parent collaboration to support literacy in the home and how these strategies may improve low-SES students’ literacy skills at the elementary target site. Using Bourdieu’s educational habitus theory, educators’ perceptions of teacher–parent collaboration strategies to enhance literacy and the advantages and barriers of fostering collaboration were examined for low-SES students …


Perceptions Of Reproductive Health Services Of Young African American Mothers With Low Literacy, Timika S. Anderson-Reeves Jan 2020

Perceptions Of Reproductive Health Services Of Young African American Mothers With Low Literacy, Timika S. Anderson-Reeves

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

As they begin to shift decision-making from their parents to themselves, many African American adolescent girls embracing motherhood and living with low literacy seek reproductive health services at federally qualified health centers (FQHCs). Emerging adult African American mothers engaged in reproductive health services at urban FQHCs are provided services based on the centers’ promulgated health policies. Although FQHC staff assess for health literacy levels, they often do not design organizational processes to support reproductive health mothers with literacy challenges and diverse learning styles, and little is known about how young African American mothers with low literacy experience FQHCs’ reproductive health …


Career And Technical Education Teachers Integrating Literacy And The Support Administrators Provide, Heather Denese Piccott-Bryan Jan 2020

Career And Technical Education Teachers Integrating Literacy And The Support Administrators Provide, Heather Denese Piccott-Bryan

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Education regulations in many U. S. schools require teachers, including career and technical education (CTE) teachers, to integrate literacy skills into the curriculum to support student performance on standardized tests. Changes in teaching strategies and content for literacy integration require administrators to improve the support systems for CTE teachers. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore CTE teachers' experiences in integrating literacy into the curriculum and the support they receive from administrators. Fullan's change model informed the conceptual framework for this study. Individual interviews with 4 teachers and 3 administrators from a state on the east coast …


Principals’ Experiences Leading Strategic Planning In High-Performing Primary Schools In Trinidad And Tobago, Adesh Reitoo Ramlal Jan 2019

Principals’ Experiences Leading Strategic Planning In High-Performing Primary Schools In Trinidad And Tobago, Adesh Reitoo Ramlal

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In the education system in Trinidad and Tobago, only 60% of students are achieving mastery in literacy and numeracy as documented by national tests. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore principals’ experiences leading strategic planning designed to increase achievement in literacy and numeracy in 8 high-performing primary schools in Trinidad and Tobago. Fullan’s change process theory provided the framework for the study. Data were collected from interviews with 8 principals. Data analysis included coding, categorizing, and identifying themes. Findings indicated that principals plan, implement, and monitor the facilitation of change processes through in-depth strategies in teaching …


The Long-Term Effect Of Reading Recovery On Fourth Grade Reading Achievement, Stephany Renee Carr Jan 2019

The Long-Term Effect Of Reading Recovery On Fourth Grade Reading Achievement, Stephany Renee Carr

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Reading Recovery is a first-grade literacy intervention program with notable short-term benefits, but there are sustainability studies that highlight inconclusive evidence of its enduring success. It was unclear if formerly enrolled Reading Recovery students continue to have long-term literacy skill retention after exiting the literacy intervention. The problem was essential to this rural district because Reading Recovery was costly to implement, and the literacy standardized test scores remained low. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if formerly enrolled Reading Recovery students had sustainable literacy skills. The theoretical framework was the literacy processing theory, which entails how emergent …


Teacher Perspectives Of The Implementation Of The Journeys Early Literacy Program, Milton Bernard Reese Jan 2019

Teacher Perspectives Of The Implementation Of The Journeys Early Literacy Program, Milton Bernard Reese

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A small rural school district in the southwestern part of the United States required teachers to provide highly effective literacy instruction by implementing an evidence-based reading program called Journeys. With consistently low reading achievement, it was unclear whether teachers were implementing Journeys as prescribed. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore teacher implementation of the Journeys program for students at an elementary school in the district. The theoretical framework used to guide the study was Clay’s emergent literacy theory. The conceptual framework included 5 strands of the Journeys reading curriculum, which was derived from Clay’s theory. A …


Perceptions And Experiences Of Teachers And Literacy Coaches' Literacy Instruction, April Jessup Giddens Jan 2018

Perceptions And Experiences Of Teachers And Literacy Coaches' Literacy Instruction, April Jessup Giddens

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The literacy rate in Louisiana remains lower than the national average. This is especially true at Rosewood Elementary School (pseudonym), a D-rated school on a scale of A-F. The problem is that teachers are unsuccessful in trying to improve students' literacy test scores, despite several targeted efforts to give them tools to make these improvements. The purpose of this study is to explore the literacy practices, beliefs, and professional development of teachers at Rosewood Elementary. The conceptual framework of this study included Clark and Peterson's cognitive process teacher model, which focuses on teachers' thought processes and their behaviors in the …


European Alternative Preschool Philosophies, Styles, And Emergent Literacy Skill Development, Lynne M. Lawson Jan 2018

European Alternative Preschool Philosophies, Styles, And Emergent Literacy Skill Development, Lynne M. Lawson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many American preschool children enter kindergarten without the emergent literacy skills needed to learn to read. To address this problem, this multicase qualitative study investigated the emergent literacy practices at Steiner Waldorf-inspired and Reggio Emilia-inspired schools. The research questions focused on how alternative preschool philosophies help staff cultivate emergent literacy skills in young children. The conceptual framework came from Piaget's cognitive development theory, and Vygotsky's sociocultural theory. The study included eight participants from two Reggio Emilia-inspired and two Steiner Waldorf-inspired preschools. Data were collected through open-ended interviews, observations, and analyses of de-identified student work, then subjected to thematic cross-case analysis. …


Second Grade Teachers' Perspectives On Differentiated Instruction, Alyssa Simmons Jan 2018

Second Grade Teachers' Perspectives On Differentiated Instruction, Alyssa Simmons

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite various instructional efforts, the second grade students in a mid-sized Southwestern school district failed to progress in reading. Although differentiated instruction has been shown to improve literacy skills for young readers, many teachers at the study site did not differentiate instruction for all students. Grounded in theories of social constructivism and differentiated instruction, the purpose of this study was to investigate second grade teachers' perspectives about using differentiated literacy instruction and the effect of their teaching experience and participation in professional development on those perspectives. Data for this nonexperimental, causal-comparative study were collected from 93 second grade teachers via …


Translation And Validation Of The Spanish Version Of The Rapid Estimate Of Adult Literacy In Dentistry-30, Wilma Luquis Jan 2017

Translation And Validation Of The Spanish Version Of The Rapid Estimate Of Adult Literacy In Dentistry-30, Wilma Luquis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Low or marginal health literacy affect nearly 90 million citizens in the United States, compromising health outcomes, including oral health. Oral health literacy has been studied in diverse populations, yet the assessments used were developed and validated for English-speaking populations. A validated Spanish-language oral health literacy assessment was needed to help researchers and practitioners evaluate oral health literacy in the Hispanic population. Using the oral health literacy framework, the purpose of this study was to translate, culturally adapt, and validate a Spanish version of a previously validated English-language oral health literacy. A translation-back-translation process was applied to the English version …


Teachers' Knowledge Of Dominie Reading And Writing Assessment Portfolio Word-Level Reading, Maxine Y. Kershaw Jan 2017

Teachers' Knowledge Of Dominie Reading And Writing Assessment Portfolio Word-Level Reading, Maxine Y. Kershaw

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

There is confusion among teachers in a school district in a southeastern state about the instructional use of the state-mandated Dominie assessment for word-level reading and phonemic awareness skills for kindergarten and first-grade students. Recent assessment data indicated that 20% of students tested in kindergarten and first grade needed remediation. The purpose of this qualitative, bounded case study of a primary school was to understand teachers' perceptions about using the Dominie assessment for instruction, and how these perceptions contribute to the decline in reading scores. Using constructivism as a conceptual framework, the research questions focused on the trends in students' …


Educators' Perceptions Of Best Practices For Increasing Literacy Among High-Poverty Students, Giuseppe Di Monte Jan 2017

Educators' Perceptions Of Best Practices For Increasing Literacy Among High-Poverty Students, Giuseppe Di Monte

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The local problem addressed in this study was the low reading achievement of high-poverty fourth-grade students in a small rural school in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The purpose of this instrumental case study was to examine the perceptions of the campus principal and teachers at a sampled high-poverty and high achieving elementary school to determine best practices for meeting literacy needs of high-poverty students. This knowledge is important because student success in reading achievement contributes to overall academic success. The neo-sociocultural conceptual paradigm of Wertsch, del Rio, and Alverez, which links cognitive and cultural learning processes, was …


Health Literacy Of Nursing Students And Their Awareness Of Patient Literacy Needs, Jennifer Potter Jan 2017

Health Literacy Of Nursing Students And Their Awareness Of Patient Literacy Needs, Jennifer Potter

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Research has suggested that providers of health services must be aware of health literacy tools as elements of communication with patients. Poor health literacy is an epidemic that affects quality of care. The purpose of this study was to examine the functional health literacy of associate-degree nursing (ADN) students and their awareness of patients' health literacy needs. This correlational study was designed to examine the relationship between the functional health literacy of ADN students and their awareness of their patients' health literacy needs using the asset model and the health literate care model. A convenience sample of 131 ADN students …


Influences Of Provider-Patient Communication On Health Literacy And Public Policy Relevant Outcomes, Rachel Carla Cartwright-Vanzant Jan 2017

Influences Of Provider-Patient Communication On Health Literacy And Public Policy Relevant Outcomes, Rachel Carla Cartwright-Vanzant

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Several artifacts of federal policy address the connection between health literacy of patients and health outcomes. These laws include The Plain Writing Act, Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Even with this policy structure, little is known about how nurses' knowledge of health literacy may influence patient understanding of medical information and health outcomes. Using Knowles' principles of effective communication, the purpose of this mixed-methods study was to concurrently examine the relationship between nurse knowledge of health literacy and communication techniques used by nurses to identify any causal relationships in …


Improving Health Literacy With Clear Communication, Carol Barbara Wilson Jan 2016

Improving Health Literacy With Clear Communication, Carol Barbara Wilson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Health literacy is demonstrated when individuals can obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Veteran health literacy is believed to be lower than the general population due to the aging and culturally diverse population. Veterans require adequate health literacy to manage their diverse high acuity physical injuries, psychological conditions, and chronic diseases. Clear communication between the clinician and veteran patient is essential to provide high quality health services. The objective of this quality-improvement project was to evaluate the ability of nurses in the ambulatory environment to identify low health literacy patients and …


An Investigation Of Teacher Librarians' Use Of Interactive Whiteboard Technology For Literacy Instruction, Judith Carroll Stanton Jan 2015

An Investigation Of Teacher Librarians' Use Of Interactive Whiteboard Technology For Literacy Instruction, Judith Carroll Stanton

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Although school systems have made investments in technology with the intention of raising student scores on state and national tests, improvements in student achievement have not always followed. The purpose of this study was to investigate teacher librarians' use of interactive whiteboards to improve student literacy. This qualitative case study was guided by the theory of social constructivism, wherein individuals learn through interaction with peers and knowledgeable others. The research questions were focused on how teacher librarians integrated multi-literacies and technological skills into pedagogical goals. Data were collected from a 4-member focus group interview, a questionnaire delivered to a subset …


Partial Inclusion Effects On Students With Special Needs In English, Jayna Michelle Jensen Jan 2015

Partial Inclusion Effects On Students With Special Needs In English, Jayna Michelle Jensen

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A special education population failed to meet the state target in English. This occurrence drove educational leaders to review their program options to address the problem. Their decision to offer a partial inclusion English program setting is important because it supports using data to provide students a Free and Appropriate Education (FAPE) in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE). The purpose of this study was to examine if the new setting was supported by an increase in student academic achievement scores. The theoretical framework included the social relationship model by Reindal and Gürgür and Uzuner's successful inclusion practices theory. The guiding …


Investigating Writing Performance And Institutional Supports Among Teacher Candidates Who Transferred From Community Colleges, Katharine Pace Miles, Leslie Craigo, Selenid Gonzalez-Frey Nov 2011

Investigating Writing Performance And Institutional Supports Among Teacher Candidates Who Transferred From Community Colleges, Katharine Pace Miles, Leslie Craigo, Selenid Gonzalez-Frey

Higher Learning Research Communications

To provide a snapshot of the skills of community college students as compared to senior college students, this study investigated writing performance and college experience of initial two-year enrolled (community college transfer students, n = 17) versus initial four-year enrolled students (n = 12) in a teacher preparation program. Results of independent samples t-tests on in-class writing, research paper, and final score were non-significant (p =.28, p = .54, p = .15, respectively) indicating that two-year and four-year start teacher candidates did not differ in their performance on these assignments nor overall in the course. Qualitative data indicated that while …