Education Commons^™

Parents As Partners In Kindergarten And Second Grade Literacy Instruction: A Qualitative Inquiry Into Student-Authored Traveling Books, Dorothy C. Little

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this research was to study a sociocognitive “student/parent/peer authoring community” called Traveling Books (TBks) in kindergarten and second grade in a public elementary school setting. TBks are teacher-made vehicles for involving parents in peer-based literacy environments. The study was based on Epstein's theory that increasing overlap of students' spheres of influence, home, school, and community, creates a greater likelihood that children will learn what the parents want them to learn. The aim was to locate essential elements that triggered learning processes to occur and to discover research-based fundamentals still missing from TBks.

This qualitative inquiry incorporated the …

The Effects Of Training In Peer Assessment On University Students' Writing Performance And Peer Assessment Quality In An Online Environment, Yun Xiao

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

This study was designed to examine the effects of peer-assessment skill training on students' writing performance, the quality of students' feedback, the quality (validity and reliability) of student-generated scores, and the students' satisfaction with the peer assessment method in an online environment. A quasi-experimental design was employed to test group differences on the dependent variables. Four hundred and seventy-three sophomore and junior undergraduate students who were enrolled in a Foundations of Education course were selected by convenience sampling at a Large East-Coast Urban University. Students enrolled in Spring and Fall semesters of 2008 were assigned to the two experimental groups …

Technology Use In A First-Year Composition Program, Estee Natee Beck

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study examines how instructors view and work with technology in a firstyear composition program at a four-year, public university in central Appalachia. Six interview questions were developed for this study as a means to explore the instructor’s definition of technology, level of use (functional, critical, and or rhetorical), difficulties using technology, pedagogy, and socioeconomics of the student population. Using qualitative methods to find patterns in the data, correlations were present among participant responses with functional uses, access, and socioeconomics. Educators primarily use technology functionally for the purpose of creating linear-based essays; have broad access to technology, but do not …