Education Commons^™

Siwi In An Itinerant Teaching Setting: Contextual Factors Impacting Instruction, Rachel Machelle Saulsburry

Doctoral Dissertations

In the last 40 years, there has been a shift in where deaf and hard-of-hearing (d/hh) students have been educated (Foster & Cue, 2009), with a majority of d/hh students now spending at least part of their school day in the general education classroom instead of residential or day-schools for the deaf. Many of these students receive specialized support from an itinerant teacher. D/hh children have unique language needs due to their access (or lack thereof) to natural language for acquisition purposes. Insufficient access to language, ASL or English, may be due to: delays in identification and/or amplification, auditory input …

Examining The Writing Motivation And Achievement Of At-Risk Elementary-Aged Students, Melissa Sue Martin

Doctoral Dissertations

Writing achievement of students in the United States is weak. Approximately 75% of 12th graders are not proficient writers (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2012) and performance of students in poverty lags behind that of more affluent peers. Because writing is complex (Torrance & Galbraith, 2006) and often viewed as aversive to students (Boscolo & Gelati, 2013), motivation is an important consideration for teachers. However, little research exists examining writing motivation.

A correlational research design was employed to examine writing achievement and motivation (i.e., self-efficacy and attributions) of at-risk elementary-aged students (N = 61). Participants, who attended Title 1 …

Evaluating Context-Aware Applications Accessed Through Wearable Devices As Assistive Technology For Students With Disabilities, Rachel Elizabeth Wright

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of these two single subject design studies was to evaluate the use of the wearable and context-aware technologies for college students with intellectual disability and autism as tools to increase independence and vocational skills. There is a compelling need for the development of tools and strategies that will facilitate independence, self-sufficiency, and address poor outcomes in adulthood for students with disabilities. Technology is considered to be a great equalizer for people with disabilities. The proliferation of new technologies allows access to real-time, contextually-based information as a means to compensate for limitations in cognitive functioning and decrease the complexity …

Remediating Secondary Alternative School Students’ Academic Outcomes Using The Writing And Sharing Connections Process, Laura Karen Kildare

Doctoral Dissertations

Given steady increase in numbers of students enrolled in alternative schools (U.S. Department of Education, 2003, 2008), a lack of emphasis on academic gains, as opposed to behavior control (Fuchs, Fuchs, & Stecker, 2010), and the well-documented school-to-prison pipeline for students considered school behavior problems (Wald & Losen, 2003), there is a need to establish viable, engaging instructional approaches with youth in alternative school settings. This study was designed to investigate effects on secondary alternative students’ attitudes toward writing and their ability to express complex ideas in writing, as a function of implementation of Writing and Sharing Connections (W&SC) (Wooten, …