Education Commons^™

Florida's Adolescent Literacy Policy: An Alternative Reading And Response, Diane Kroeger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this qualitative case study, I constructed interpretations of the meanings conveyed by state-level discourse communities as they were manifested in the primary and secondary speech genres of Florida’s adolescent literacy policy. Meanings (or values, beliefs and feelings) are highly tacit understandings embedded in the language, actions and objects of policy (Yanow, 2000), and are conveyed through informal and formal speech (Bakhtin, 1986). Results revealed (a) state policy meanings convey multiple versions of literacy with a heavy focus on receptive aspects of literate practice; (b) a typology of students and their fit within the institutional system; and (c) an emphasis …

Passing As Literate: Gender, Dyslexia, And The Shaping Of Identities, Ellen Burns Hurst

Middle-Secondary Education and Instructional Technology Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate the ways in which currently diagnosed dyslexic females, who navigated adolescence and their concomitant schooling without a definitive diagnosis of dyslexia, negotiated their identities in the figured world of school. To explore this phenomenon, it was necessary to understand the complexity of dyslexia as well as the theoretical underpinnings of identity construction, adolescence, and ―passing as literate.‖ This case study is informed by poststructuralist thought; through this lens I examine how my subjects perceived their worlds and how they negotiated the challenges associated with undiagnosed dyslexia. As they describe their …

Challenges For Australian Education : Results From Pisa 2009 : The Pisa 2009 Assessment Of Students' Reading, Mathematical And Scientific Literacy, Sue Thomson, Lisa De Bortoli, Marina Nicholas, Kylie Hillman, Sarah Buckley

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Australia

Focusing on reading literacy as the major domain for the PISA 2009 assessment, this national report examines Australian students' achievement in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy. Results are reported for the states, by gender, for Indigenous students, by location, language background and by socioeconomic background.

Factors Affecting Literacy Achievement Of Eighth Grade Middle School Instrumental Music Students, Johnny T. Brauch Kurt

Student Work

The purpose of this pretest-posttest comparative efficacy study was to analyze factors affecting literacy achievement of eighth grade middle school instrumental music students (n = 38) including (a) socioeconomic status (SES), (b) gender, (c) grade point average (GPA), (d) music motivation, (e) music involvement, and (f) instrument section. The findings of this study indicate that, utilizing the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) reading comprehension, reading vocabulary, and science subtests and the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) Reading Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) as the dependent variables for each of the six independent variables, significant growth over time was made in …

Pisa In Brief : Highlights From The Full Australian Report : Challenges For Australian Education : Results From Pisa 2009 : The Pisa 2009 Assessment Of Students' Reading, Mathematical And Scientific Literacy, Sue Thomson, Lisa De Bortoli, Marina Nicholas, Kylie Hillman, Sarah Buckley

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Australia

PISA in Brief summarises the results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 assessment of students’ reading, mathematical and scientific literacy skills. It tells us about how students performed in the assessment and describes some wider findings about what lies behind their results. PISA 2009 assessed students’ capacities to apply knowledge and skills in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy. More assessment time was given to reading literacy, as this was the main focus for this cycle.

Implementing Reading And Writing In Secondary Mathematics, Mari E. Eisenhart

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Literacy in secondary mathematics continues to be difficult for many. Mathematics teachers and researchers continue to develop support documents for secondary math teachers. It is important to utilize the literacy strategies already established by other content areas. It is feasible to adjust these strategies to suit the needs of mathematics students. Literacy across the content areas is a relatively new idea in education, but literacy in mathematics is even more foreign. It is necessary to use the available literacy strategies to develop materials applicable in the secondary mathematics classroom.

Challenges And Strategies Of Mobile Advertising In India, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

Advertising is paid communication through a medium in which the sponsor is identified and the message is controlled. Every major medium is used to deliver these messages, including: television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, the Internet and today’s growing mobile advertising. Advertisements can also be seen on the seats of grocery carts, on the walls of an airport walkway, on the sides of buses, heard in telephone hold messages and instore PA systems but get paid for reading SMS on our mobile phones .It is the new way of marketing strategy for reaching subscribers. Mobile advertising is the business of encouraging …

Outstanding Educational Performance Awards: Highlighting High Achieving Arkansas Schools, 2010, James L. Woodworth, Jeffery R. Dean, James V. Shuls, Caleb P. Rose, Nathan C. Jensen, Gary W. Ritter

Arkansas Education Reports

So, in this Arkansas Education Report (AER) we aim to highlight excellent performance and give our congratulations. To that end, we are happy to highlight many high performing schools around the state in our now-annual AER entitled the Outstanding Educational Performance Awards.

Nebraska Reading First Final Report, Guy Trainin, Kathryn Ac Wilson

Research and Evaluation in Education, Technology, Art, and Design

Reading First has been implemented in Nebraska since the 2004-5 academic year. In two rounds of funding and participation, schools have transformed the way they trained their teachers, measured student progress, and taught. This transformation is one of the hardest tasks in education and it has taken the considerable dedication of school personnel as well as dedicated leaders from the Nebraska Department of education. The program has seen great success in increasing the proportion of students acquiring basic literacy skills of phonemic awareness, decoding, and oral reading fluency. That initial success has led to an increase in outcomes even for …

“Grounded” Technology Integration: Instructional Planning Using Curriculum-Based Activity Type Taxonomies, Judith B. Harris, Mark J. Hofer, Denise A. Schmidt, Margaret R. Blanchard, Neal Grandgenett, Marcela Van Olphen

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK or TPACK) – the highly practical professional educational knowledge that enables and supports technology integration – is comprised of teachers’ concurrent and interdependent knowledge of curriculum content, general pedagogy, and technological understanding. Teachers’ planning – which expresses teachers’ professional knowledge (including TPACK) in pragmatic ways -- is situated, contextually sensitive, routinized, and activity-based. To assist with technology integration, therefore, we suggest using what is understood from research about teachers’ knowledge and instructional planning to form an approach to curriculum-based technology integration that is predicated upon teachers combining technologically supported learning activity types selected from content-keyed …

Using Children's Literature To Assess Reading Comprehension In The Early Years Of School, Marion Meiers

Marion Meiers (1941-2018)

This paper reports some findings from the first three years of a longitudinal study designed to follow students' growth in literacy from the earliest years at school. A feature of the study was the use of quality children's literature, in the form of picture story books. These texts were the basis of instruments designed to investigate students' developing comprehension, their understanding and knowledge of narrative texts, and their skills in recognising, explaining and making connections with the themes and ideas in the texts. The selection of texts appropriate for these purposes has raised many points of interest, such as the …

Qepr Review Of Progress: Review Of Progress Towards Implementing The Government Response To The Queensland Education Performance Review And Related State School Initiatives In Literacy, Numeracy And Science, Geoff N. Masters

Assessment and Reporting

This review was undertaken at the request of the Director-General of the Queensland Department of Education and Training. It reviews progress and makes recommendations ‘about initiatives aimed at improving the performance of Queensland students in literacy, numeracy and science’. More specifically, the Terms of Reference for the review requested an analysis and recommendations relating to:

• the effectiveness of the initiatives implemented in the Government response to the five recommendations of the Queensland Education Performance Review (QEPR); and
• the effectiveness of identified key initiatives in Queensland state primary schools to improve performance in literacy, numeracy and science.

The review was asked …

Literacy Coaching, Patricia Jane May

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Examines the experience of four elementary level classroom teachers and one coach as they engaged in a year-long literacy coaching program. Analysis of coach/teacher interactions highlights the role of reflective thought in teacher learning and positions reflective thought as a foundational premise of teacher learning. In addition, as a result of the discovery process inherent in the grounded theory design, finds that teachers' goal setting influenced movement along a gradual release of responsibility (GRR) continuum of adult learning.

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 …

Gjr Volume 33 Number 1 Spring 2010, Elizabeth Pendergraft, Sheryl Dasinger

The Georgia Journal of Reading Archive

The Georgia Journal of Reading's Spring 2010 issue includes:

Message From the Editors by Elizabeth Pendergraft (pg.5)

President’s Page by Sallie Averitt Miller (pg. 6)

Using Children’s Literature as a Resource Within Middle Grades Social Studies Curriculum by Christine A. Draper (pg. 7)

Critical Literacy: From Theory to Practice by Katie Simon Kurumada (pg. 12)

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!: Tapping Students’ Popular Culture Interest Through An Elementary School Newspaper by Andrew Huddleston (pg. 16)

Can Digital Storytelling Improve Literacy Outcomes for Students with Autism? by Brent Daigle and Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell (pg. 25)

Project Pen Pal: A Win-Win …

Elementary Principals' Literacy Practices And Their Relationship To Student Achievement In Reading, Sandra Carper Cox

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

Principal behavior is under intense scrutiny, particularly in light of increased demands for higher and higher levels of student achievement. Reading achievement is the measure by which schools as well as principal leadership are judged. This study examined principals' literacy practices and their relationship to student achievement in reading. Measures used for analyses included a researcher-developed survey instrument, the Principal Quality Literacy Practices Survey, and results from the grade five Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) English: Reading test.

Survey data from 109 principals and 160 reading specialists from Southeastern Virginia were utilized. Principals and reading specialists reported that overall principals' …

Making Waves With Critical Literacy, Carolyn Fortuna

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

A qualitative study undertaken in 2007 that explores the application of critical literacy pedagogy within English language arts classes of an upper middle class public high school. Results demonstrate that when students recontextualize their own modalities, literacies, and cultures as part of their learning experience, they begin to understand the concept of social justice for all.

The Effects Of Classroom Environmental Quality On The Early Literacy Outcomes Of A Regionally Heterogeneous Population Of Latino Children, Maria M. Marin

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between classroom environmental quality and early literacy outcomes amongst a sample of Latino children from various Latin-American countries. Participants included 116 preschoolers that attended various childcare centers in Southeast Florida. Participant’s literacy knowledge was assessed using the Test of Preschool Early Literacy. Classrooms were assessed on environmental quality using the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale-Revised. A regression analysis revealed that classroom environmental quality did not account for Latino children’s early literacy outcomes. However, a multiple regression analysis was significant (R2= .15, F(5, 115) = 3.86, p< .05) indicating that quality has a varying impact on children’s early literacy skills based on children’s region of origin. Findings suggest that high classroom environmental quality does not necessarily mean better literacy development for Latino children. Additionally, Latino children should not be viewed as a homogeneous group, particularly in relation to their development of literacy skills in English.

Spelling Errors In Children With Autism, Khalyn I. Wiggins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study was to examine the spelling errors of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) when asked to spell morphologically complex words. Specifically, this study sought to determine if percent accuracy across morphological areas would be similar to patterns noted in typical developing children, correlate with participant age, and correlate to performance on standardized measures of achievement. Additionally, the study wanted to highlight the types of errors made by children with ASD on homonyms and the specific linguistic patterns noted when spelling derivational and inflectional word types.

Participants included 29 children diagnosed with Autism, PDD-NOS, and Asperger’s …

Knowledge Building And Vocabulary Growth Over Two Years, Grades 3 And 4, Yanqing Sun, Jianwei Zhang, Marlene Scardamalia

Educational Theory and Practice Faculty Scholarship

High-level literacy and productive knowledge work are central to educational reforms. In the research reported in this article, students were engaged in sustained, collaborative knowledge building in science and social studies. The vocabulary growth of 22 students over Grades 3 and 4 was traced, based on their entries to Knowledge Forum—a knowledge building environment used as an integral part of classroom work. It is the communal space where ideas, reference material, results of experiments, and other inquiry work are entered and continually improved. Analysis of lexical frequency profiles indicated significant growth in productive written vocabulary, including academic words. In a …

Meeting The Needs Of Struggling Readers In High School: What Are Rural Schools Doing?, William D. Bursuck, Susan Robbins, Kurt Lazaroff

The Rural Educator

Implementing effective reading programs to meet the demans of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) represents an immense challenge for all high schools, but the challenges for rural high schools may be particularly acute. Rural schools have large concentrations of children living in poverty, greater per-pupil costs and low fiscal capacity, all of which can make meeting the demands of NCLB difficult. The purpose of this article is to report the results of research that examined the question of what rural high schools are doing to meet the needs of their struggling readers. The results of focus groups from …

Theatre Of The Oppressed A Manual For Educators, Gopal Midha

Master's Capstone Projects

Promoting social equity and justice, I think, are not just important but essential qualities in a good educator. My experience as a graduate student at University of Massachusetts helped me understand and practice different ways in which this could be done. For instance, I learnt how I could promote social justice through changes in curriculum, co-operative learning, inter-group dialogues or multicultural education. However, my search was for a method that did not require literacy as a pre-requisite and that went beyond mere conversations about social justice. One of the key elements of the power structures which lead to oppression, I …

Name Games: Literacy And Play In The Prekindergarten Classroom, Laura A. May, Gary Bingham, Jennifer Barrett-Mynes

Early Childhood and Elementary Education Faculty Publications

Teachers and researchers have found that having writing materials in all play centers in early childhood classrooms makes it easy for children to experience and work with print as they play with names. Children’s interest in their own names can be used as a tool for increasing their awareness of and experiences with print awareness and writing.

Developing A Culturally Responsive Literacy Pedagogy: Preservice Teachers, Teaching Cases, And Postcard Narratives, Annmarie Alberton Gunn

USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Using Facebook To Teach Rhetorical Analysis, Jane Fife

English Faculty Publications

The attraction of Facebook is a puzzle to many people over the age of thirty five, and that includes most college faculty. Yet students confess to spending significant amounts of time on Facebook, sometimes hours a day. If you teach in a computer classroom, you have probably observed students using Facebook when you walk in the room. Literacy practices that fall outside the realm of traditional academic writing, like Facebook, can easily be seen as a threat to print literacy by teachers, especially when they sneak into the classroom uninvited as students check their Facebook profiles instead of participating in …

First-Time First-Year Full-Tim Students Transitioning From High School To The University Of Kentucky: The Academic Readiness Program, 2009-2010, Randolph Hollingsworth

Undergraduate Education White Papers

This documents the collaborative efforts between the Deans Council, Office of Enrollment Management, Office of Institutional Diversity, Division of Student Affairs and the Office of Undergraduate Education in rolling out the University's response to the state's regulations on college admission and placement for students whose ACT scores are below the regulated cutoff scores. The Academic Readiness Program was developed using the learning outcomes developed by the Directors of Undergraduate Studies in the UK departments of Mathematics and English as well as the expert consultants in the Collaborative Center for Literacy Development. This paper includes the assessment of the 2009-10 Program …

Implementation Of Language And Literacy Practices By Prekindergarten Teachers In The West Virginia Universal Pre-K System, Leslie Papelier

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study investigated the perceived frequency of implementation of language and literacy practices for 217 West Virginia Pre-K teachers. Teachers were employed in public school-based and community-based classrooms for 4-year-olds. Respondents completed the Language and Literacy Practice Survey (LLPS), which measured their perceived frequency of implementation of 18 language and literacy practices. Their overall perceived ability level for implementing effective language and literacy instruction was also assessed. Respondents also rated their use of resources and materials to facilitate effective language and literacy instruction. Additionally, respondents answered open-ended qualitative questions to determine perceived constraints that may hinder their effective implementation of …

College-Readiness: The Current State Of Affairs, W. Barnes

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal

Imagine a nation in which every student, from Boston to Houston, from Cleveland to Miami, from Chicago’s South side to Compton, from a New Mexico Indian reservation to the Appalachian Mountains, characteristically graduates from high school prepared for postsecondary training (i.e., college, university, trade school, or workforce training). Further, imagine being able to say to every child “you will be provided with a high school that will educate you, challenge you, care for you, support you, and graduate you ready to compete and succeed in this world” (Balfanz & Letgers, 2004, p. 2). The current realities of the proposed outcomes …

The Saga Of Diagnosing The Entry Behaviors Of Ghanaian First Graders, Francis Godwyll

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal

In Ghana, on average, a child enters the first year of the primary school at the age of six because few manage to go to first grade at the age of five. About 30% of these children would have had access to kindergarten or nursery education for at least one year (Ministry of Education, 1995). There are some children who before entering first grade, would have had early education on a continuum from one to three years. Yet, the majority of children will enter the first year in the primary school with no prior exposure to early education. Therefore, they …

Interdisciplinary Theoretical Foundations For Literacy Teaching And Learning, Ruth Farrar, K. S. Al-Qatawneh

Elementary and Early Childhood Education Faculty Publications

This article presents an interdisciplinary approach to literacy teaching and learning. The approach views literacy as involving numerous functions, including linguistic, psychological, cognitive, social, and critical functions. Research on the teaching and learning of literacy that underlies the model is discussed first. The interdisciplinary approach is defined and discussed next. The article concludes with a discussion of conclusions and implications for literacy education.