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2018

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Higher Education

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Articles 1 - 16 of 16

Full-Text Articles in Language and Literacy Education

The Effects Of An Interprofessional Emergent Writing Intervention For Preschoolers, Danika L. Pfeiffer Dec 2018

The Effects Of An Interprofessional Emergent Writing Intervention For Preschoolers, Danika L. Pfeiffer

Dissertations, 2014-2019

This pre-post design study explored the effects of an emergent writing interprofessional education (IPE) experience for preprofessional speech-language pathology (SLPs) and occupational therapy (OT) students. Six preprofessional SLP students and three preprofessional OT students participated in the study, which had two conditions: (a) unpaired SLPs, and (b) SLP and OT pairs. The preprofessional students delivered 8-10 emergent writing interventions to preschoolers in small groups. The preprofessional students’ learning about emergent writing concepts and interprofessional collaborative practice (IPP) was supported through structured debriefs with their clinical supervisors after each session, as well as facilitated discussions to discuss supplemental readings and their …

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Pakistani English Language Teachers’ Preparedness: An Investigation Of Ideological Meaning-Making In Higher Education Institutions In Pakistan, Yasir Hussain Nov 2018

Pakistani English Language Teachers’ Preparedness: An Investigation Of Ideological Meaning-Making In Higher Education Institutions In Pakistan, Yasir Hussain

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This research study is an attempt to understand the ideological preparedness of English language teachers at the higher education institutions (HEIs) in Pakistan. The construct of preparedness is unique in this study because the phenomenon of preparedness is simplified for pedagogical methodologies and teaching practices. This study is a journey of understanding ideology, its representations through discourse, and its enactment through discursive practices of the participant-teachers. In this hermeneutical phenomenological study, I used interview texts as the data source and critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the analytical framework. The participants included 15 English language teachers at nine different HEIs in …

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School Climate: A Comparison Of Teachers, Students, And Parents, James A. Jacobs Aug 2018

School Climate: A Comparison Of Teachers, Students, And Parents, James A. Jacobs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to examine the benefits of positive school climate and to measure the perceptions of school climate for intermediate grades in a Northeast Tennessee School district. An online school climate survey was used to collect responses from participants in intermediate grades and focused on the 3 major components of school climate: school engagement, school environment, and school safety. Data were collected for 2 consecutive years in 2016-2017 and 2017-2018. Response totals included 1,955 student responses, 116 teacher responses, and 210 parent responses that were analyzed and used for this study. Of the student totals, some students that …

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A Multi Case Study Of Community College Discipline Faculty’S Participation In A Disciplinary Literacy Professional Learning Community, Kristen Howell Gregory Jul 2018

A Multi Case Study Of Community College Discipline Faculty’S Participation In A Disciplinary Literacy Professional Learning Community, Kristen Howell Gregory

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

Many students enter college with inadequate reading, writing, and critical thinking skills to successfully navigate discipline-specific college-level coursework (Duff, 2010; Hyland, 2006; Lea & Street, 1998; Tsui, 2002). As such, college faculty, and specifically community college faculty, are challenged to meet the multiple literacy needs of their students while still maintaining high expectations within their discipline-specific courses. One option is for discipline faculty (e.g., history) to integrate disciplinary literacy instruction within their courses. As discipline faculty are deemed experts in their content area and often not trained in literacy, professional development focused on disciplinary literacy could provide the knowledge and …

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The Stress Management Handbook: The High-Stakes Test Takers Of International Students, Shiying Sun May 2018

The Stress Management Handbook: The High-Stakes Test Takers Of International Students, Shiying Sun

Master's Projects and Capstones

This article provides a brief overview of the current situation that high-stakes test takers are facing. A common problem the high-stakes test taker is experiencing is that they have to deal with tremendous pressure by themselves which could be caused by the test, the preparation process, the teachers and the parents. In results, their test performance could be affected, the decline of their mental health condition associated with the increasing stress level, and those issues could eventually escalate into suicide and physical violence. To shed light on those issues, the author developed a stress management handbook by choosing one of …

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The Role Of Discourse And Its Effects On Reading Comprehension In The Ela Classroom, Laurie Coville Apr 2018

The Role Of Discourse And Its Effects On Reading Comprehension In The Ela Classroom, Laurie Coville

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

Researchers have consistently found a link between quality classroom discourse and the increase in student reading comprehension. Classroom discussions help students make sense of fiction and nonfiction texts while deepening their understanding. Incorporating the principles of Vygotsky’s social constructivism as the theoretical framework, the aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the use of accountable talk sentence stems and the quality of discussion using the fishbowl discussion strategy as a means of increasing student comprehension of a text. Observation of the effects of student discourse of 18 students over the duration of six weeks yielded measurable differences …

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Engaging The Disengaged: Using Every Trick In The Book, Brooke Prusaczyk Apr 2018

Engaging The Disengaged: Using Every Trick In The Book, Brooke Prusaczyk

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

Researchers have affirmed a connection between students’ engagement in reading to their academic achievement. Struggling readers in particular are generally not engaged or motivated to read. While the construct of reading engagement is difficult to measure, a student’s motivation seems to be the driving force behind reading development. Additionally, today’s students are involved in and more motivated by the many different activities outside of school, which poses challenges for both teachers and parents. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of instructional techniques on student engagement in reading. To measure the academic progress of 21 fifth grade …

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Fluency: What Does It Really Mean?, Jacquelyn E. Depierro Apr 2018

Fluency: What Does It Really Mean?, Jacquelyn E. Depierro

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

Shared and repeated readings are assumed to reflect influence on increasing oral reading fluency abilities through accuracy, rate, expression, and phrasing. The purpose of the study was to examine how repeated reading increased students’ oral reading scores across the six-dimensions of fluency transferring phonics instruction to oral reading. Specifically, we tested the repeated reading process that focused on improving early fluency skills on 6-7-year-old students in a first grade classroom who were reading at or below grade level expectations and received a score of 2 or below in terms of their oral reading fluency as measured by the Fountas and …

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The Mania Of Morphemic Analysis: Multisyllabic, Meaningful, Magical, Jennifer Fritz Apr 2018

The Mania Of Morphemic Analysis: Multisyllabic, Meaningful, Magical, Jennifer Fritz

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

As academic expectations have increased in recent years due to the rigors of the Common Core State Standards, students are encountering a greater rate of multisyllabic words earlier in their schooling. Proficiency in reading has not paralleled this upward trend. Students are not receiving sufficient instruction to enable them to successfully decode and derive meaning from the multisyllabic words in their texts. To ascertain the effects of multisyllabic instruction on student performance in upper elementary students, we formulated an instructional model to teach syllabication and word morphology to determine if explicit instruction in syllabication and structural analysis had an effect …

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Discourse In The Elementary Classroom, Kathryn Hardy Apr 2018

Discourse In The Elementary Classroom, Kathryn Hardy

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

As literacy standards across the country grow more rigorous, literacy practices need to follow suit. With the implementation of the Common Core Speaking and Listening Standards in 2010, classroom instruction in the facilitation of student discourse has become not only beneficial, but required. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an instructional framework for student discourse called Statement Stem Discourse/Accountable Talk (SSD/AT). This instructional frame included discussion stems, teacher prompts, and guidelines for student responses. This study observed the impacts of discourse on 19 students over the course of six weeks. With a focus on questions …

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Employing Engagement To Enhance Literacy Learning, Kerry Zrenda Apr 2018

Employing Engagement To Enhance Literacy Learning, Kerry Zrenda

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

Numerous studies have identified a symbiotic relationship between student engagement and academic achievement. However, over the last three years, nearly half of Connecticut’s students have failed to meet the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts. Social constructivism and metacognitive theories frame this study, which aimed to examine instructional techniques that positively impacted student engagement. Specifically, we used engagement inventories to record student behaviors before, during, and after a six-week instructional period, throughout which we implemented several different engagement techniques. We coded student behaviors in order to analyze the effects that heightened student choice, structured peer discourse tools, and …

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Visual Literacy In Central Appalachian Community College Classrooms: A Guide To Image First Learning For Individualized Learning And Improved Outcomes, Natasha B. Watts Apr 2018

Visual Literacy In Central Appalachian Community College Classrooms: A Guide To Image First Learning For Individualized Learning And Improved Outcomes, Natasha B. Watts

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the College of Education at Morehead State University by Natasha B. Watts on April 19, 2018

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Addressing The Assumption; A Case Study On Student Motivations And Barriers To Study Second Language Abroad, Rebecca Schano Apr 2018

Addressing The Assumption; A Case Study On Student Motivations And Barriers To Study Second Language Abroad, Rebecca Schano

Capstone Collection

Historically, second language learning and study abroad programming have run in natural conjunction. However, in recent years there has been a slow but steady decline in the number of foreign language students in higher education who are choosing to study abroad to further their second language acquisition. This study explores this topic through a case study at Marquette University, and aims to answer the research question: What are the motivations and barriers of foreign language students to study their second language abroad? Using a student survey and in-person interviews with professionals in the field, data is collected on the most …

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The Enactment Of Academic Language Policy In The International University: A Mixed-Methods Investigation, Le Chen Mar 2018

The Enactment Of Academic Language Policy In The International University: A Mixed-Methods Investigation, Le Chen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The existing literature on international education in relation to language policy has suggested that internationalizing higher education (HE) does not ensure interculturality (Bash, 2009; Durant & Shepherd, 2009; Jenkins, 2014; Seidlhofer, 2011); the potential relationship between the internationalization of HE and language remains unclear (Jenkins, 2014; Meyer, Gekeler, Manger, & Urank, 2012; Saarinen, 2012). This study responds to the timely question regarding what kind of language policy can meet the needs of international students in an increasingly globalized academic culture (Jenkins, 2014) by adding a Canadian voice to the debate and featuring the changing sociolinguistic realities in internationalized Canadian HE. …

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When Writing Becomes Nightmare: Helping Students Pinpoint Writing Topics, Carla Capelo Mar 2018

When Writing Becomes Nightmare: Helping Students Pinpoint Writing Topics, Carla Capelo

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

When deciding on topics for academic research papers, many students face difficulties that vary from choosing themes whose scope is too extensive to be satisfactorily analyzed in the given task, to selecting topics that are too limited, to not being able to make a decision on a topic at all. Such struggles seem to manifest themselves in both native and non-native speakers of English. Despite extensive research on the writing process and its strategies, be it for academic writing or other genres, and even research focused on writers’ difficulties, previous research has found little about the troubles students must overcome …

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Comparing Online English Language Learning And Face-To-Face English Language Learning At El Bosque University In Colombia, Marta L. Montiel-Chamorro Jan 2018

Comparing Online English Language Learning And Face-To-Face English Language Learning At El Bosque University In Colombia, Marta L. Montiel-Chamorro

Theses and Dissertations

Although there is significant research surrounding online foreign language education, there are still questions on whether the outcomes are comparable to those obtained in the traditional face-to-face classroom. This study examined four classes, two online and two face-to-face, where students took the second course of a 6-level program of English as a Second Language at El Bosque University in Colombia. The International Test of English Proficiency (iTEP) was administered to students before classes started in order to establish a baseline, and then again after the courses finished. This test evaluates English language proficiency per skill: speaking, listening, reading, writing and …

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