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Collective Teacher Efficacy And Reading Achievement For Hispanic Students In Reading First And Non-Reading First Schools In Southwest Florida, Larry Hylemon Jan 2005

Collective Teacher Efficacy And Reading Achievement For Hispanic Students In Reading First And Non-Reading First Schools In Southwest Florida, Larry Hylemon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined explicit and systematic reading instruction for Hispanic, limited English, lower SES students in a southwest Florida school district. Additionally, collective teacher efficacy was assessed to determine if differences existed between a Reading First and a non-Reading First school. A total of 68 students participated in the study and were divided equally between a Reading First and non-Reading First school. While the Reading First school concentrated resources on grades 2 and 3, all students received some degree of Reading First strategies. Available reading measures for analyses at the time of the study included the Group Reading Assessment and …

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Liquid Crystal Optics For Communications, Signal Processing And 3-D Microscopic Imaging, Sajjad Khan Jan 2005

Liquid Crystal Optics For Communications, Signal Processing And 3-D Microscopic Imaging, Sajjad Khan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes, studies and experimentally demonstrates novel liquid crystal (LC) optics to solve challenging problems in RF and photonic signal processing, freespace and fiber optic communications and microscopic imaging. These include free-space optical scanners for military and optical wireless applications, variable fiber-optic attenuators for optical communications, photonic control techniques for phased array antennas and radar, and 3-D microscopic imaging. At the heart of the applications demonstrated in this thesis are LC devices that are non-pixelated and can be controlled either electrically or optically. Instead of the typical pixel-by-pixel control as is custom in LC devices, the phase profile across …

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An Examination Of Best Practices In Retention In The Associate Degree Nursing Programin The Florida Community College System, Mary Lewis Jan 2005

An Examination Of Best Practices In Retention In The Associate Degree Nursing Programin The Florida Community College System, Mary Lewis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This mixed-methods research examined student nurse retention methods perceived as best practice by directors and coordinators in selected Associate Degree Nursing (AND) programs within the Florida Community College System (FCCS). A critical nursing shortage is expected to worsen over the next twenty years due to the aging workforce and the inadequate supply of qualified nurse graduates. The Associate degree nursing programs supply the majority of nursing graduates to the workforce. Thus, the associate degree nursing programs and student retention measures were studied. The research was conducted using a Delphi survey of directors of nursing in ADN programs within the FCCS. …

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Time Estimation And Hand Preference, Maria Rodriguez Jan 2005

Time Estimation And Hand Preference, Maria Rodriguez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work examines the effect of participants' gender and handedness on the perception of short intervals of time. The time estimation task consisted of an empty production procedure with forty trials at each of four intervals of one, three, seven, and twenty seconds. The four target intervals represent a natural logarithmic progression and a series that bracket important temporal thresholds. The order of presentation of those intervals was randomized across participants but yoked across the sexes in each of the respective dominant hand groups. The two between-subject factors, with two levels each, were sex and handedness. Participants produced forty estimates …

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The Effects Of Looping On Student Achievement And Self-Efficacy Of Exceptional Education Students, Marybeth Thomas Jan 2005

The Effects Of Looping On Student Achievement And Self-Efficacy Of Exceptional Education Students, Marybeth Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The focus of the current study was to examine the effects of looping on academic achievement and self-efficacy for Exceptional Student Education (ESE) students. The basic design of this study was causal comparative, or ex post facto, because the researcher was seeking to identify a difference in achievement based on developmental scale scores between the two groups of looping and non-looping students with ESE classifications. A retrospective causal comparative study was chosen because the researcher began with a potential cause, looping, and studied the potential effects on achievement and self efficacy. The hypotheses were that the experimental group would outperform …

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The Relationship Between School Culture And Student Achievement In Middle Schools, Karen Vislocky Jan 2005

The Relationship Between School Culture And Student Achievement In Middle Schools, Karen Vislocky

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was developed to produce data about the cultures of selected Florida middle schools. The research was intended to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on collaboration, collegiality, and self-determination/efficacy as related to student achievement. The focus for this study was provided through three research questions: (a) to determine to what extent middle schools scoring in the top half and the bottom half on the modified version of Wagner and Masden-Copas' School Culture Triage Survey differed on various demographic elements; (b) to determine what differences, if any, existed between the cultures of the selected Florida middle schools and …

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Structural Study Of Disease Related Proteins, Ayse Sinem Ozyurt Jan 2005

Structural Study Of Disease Related Proteins, Ayse Sinem Ozyurt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The availability of complete sequences for the genomes of many organisms changes the researcher's attention from genome sequencing to finding the function of gene products, the proteins. The three dimensional (3D) structure of a protein is helpful to understand its function, because tertiary structure is more conserved in evolution than sequence. The 3D structures can be found quickly by using high-throughput (HT) methods for protein expression, purification, characterization and structure determination. This process is very challenging in every step. Therefore we selected nearly 200 cancer related proteins as targets to see the difficulties in trying to determine the web predicted …

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The Effects Of An Academic Support Services Unit On The Grade Point Average For Students Admitted On Probation, Keith Branham Jan 2005

The Effects Of An Academic Support Services Unit On The Grade Point Average For Students Admitted On Probation, Keith Branham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this research was to examine the effects, if any, the programs available from an Academic Support Services unit of a small, private, liberal arts college might have on the grade point averages of students admitted on probation over two major semesters. The assumption was that the students who utilized the services of the Academic Center for Excellence would demonstrate more increases in GPA than students who did not utilize the services. The literature review of this study found that, although there were many factors and student characteristics that could predict and explain student achievement in course work, …

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Design And Assessment Of Compact Optical Systems Towards Special Effects Imaging, Vesselin Chaoulov Jan 2005

Design And Assessment Of Compact Optical Systems Towards Special Effects Imaging, Vesselin Chaoulov

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A main challenge in the field of special effects is to create special effects in real time in a way that the user can preview the effect before taking the actual picture or movie sequence. There are many techniques currently used to create computer-simulated special effects, however current techniques in computer graphics do not provide the option for the creation of real-time texture synthesis. Thus, while computer graphics is a powerful tool in the field of special effects, it is neither portable nor does it provide work in real-time capabilities. Real-time special effects may, however, be created optically. Such approach …

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The Relationship Of Parent And Child Self-Talk In A College Sample, Reesa Donnelly Jan 2005

The Relationship Of Parent And Child Self-Talk In A College Sample, Reesa Donnelly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research has demonstrated the importance of early social interactions in the development of self-talk. It does not appear, however, that existing research has examined the relationship between parents' self-talk and the self-talk that develops in their children. This study examined the relationship between self-talk in parents and their college-age children. Results revealed significant relationships between students' and parents' positive self-talk, but not negative self-talk. Marginal relationships were found for self-talk ratios (ratios of positive and negative self-talk). Maternal communication was found to mediate the relationship between students' and their mothers' positive self-talk. Different trends also were noted between genders. Finally, …

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Tunable Liquid Crystal Photonic Devices, Yun-Hsing Fan Jan 2005

Tunable Liquid Crystal Photonic Devices, Yun-Hsing Fan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Liquid crystal (LC)-based adaptive optics are important for information processing, optical interconnections, photonics, integrated optics, and optical communications due to their tunable optical properties. In this dissertation, we describe novel liquid crystal photonic devices and their fabrication methods. The devices presented include inhomogeneous polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC), polymer network liquid crystals (PNLC) and phase-separated composite film (PSCOF). Liquid crystal/polymer composites could exist in different forms depending on the fabrication conditions. In Chap. 3, we demonstrate a novel nanoscale PDLC device that has inhomogeneous droplet size distribution. In such a PDLC, the inhomogeneous droplet size distribution is obtained by exposing the …

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Formalization Of Input And Output In Modern Operating Systems: The Hadley Model, Matthew Gerber Jan 2005

Formalization Of Input And Output In Modern Operating Systems: The Hadley Model, Matthew Gerber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We present the Hadley model, a formal descriptive model of input and output for modern computer operating systems. Our model is intentionally inspired by the Open Systems Interconnection model of networking; I/O as a process is defined as a set of translations between a set of computer-sensible forms, or layers, of information. To illustrate an initial application domain, we discuss the utility of the Hadley model and a potential associated I/O system as a tool for digital forensic investigators. To illustrate practical uses of the Hadley model we present the Hadley Specification Language, an essentially functional language designed to allow …

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A Survey Of School Principals And Teachers Regarding Teachers' Professional Development Participation, Richard Inge Jan 2005

A Survey Of School Principals And Teachers Regarding Teachers' Professional Development Participation, Richard Inge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was twofold: First, to gather perspectives of randomly selected administrators and teachers in two central Florida school districts concerning the participation of teachers in professional development (PD), and secondly, to determine if there was a significant differences in the amount of participation of teachers from different academic departments in these activities. Results indicated that a teacher's assignment to a particular academic department has a relationship to the amount of PD involvement. Results also suggested that building principals' perceptions concerning teacher support of and participation in these activities were moderately accurate. Data were collected using two …

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Effects Of Bedding Void On Internal Moment Increase In Concrete Pipes, Jad Kazma Jan 2005

Effects Of Bedding Void On Internal Moment Increase In Concrete Pipes, Jad Kazma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Large diameter concrete pipes have been used in many areas of central Florida to carry pressured sewage flow. These pipes have been typically located at six feet below finished roadway elevation, and ranges in diameter from thirty six to sixty inches. The water table is typically located at shallow depth below finished roadway elevation, and generally fluctuates between five to ten feet depending on the relative roadway elevation to mean sea level. These pipes are under pressure when carrying the sewage flow, but return to normal atmospheric pressures when the flow stops. Since the water table encases most of the …

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Characteristics Associated With The Effectiveness Of Resource Development Programs At Florida Community Colleges, Nancy Morgan Jan 2005

Characteristics Associated With The Effectiveness Of Resource Development Programs At Florida Community Colleges, Nancy Morgan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As educational funding from traditional sources decreases and the cost of operating educational programs increases, community colleges are seeking ways to diversify funding streams and increase revenue. For many 2-year colleges, resource development, particularly the procurement of government grants and contracts, represents a viable source of revenue. The purpose of this research was (a) to establish a profile of grant development programs in Florida community colleges and (b) to identify factors associated with successful grant development. A cross-sectional survey design was used to collect information about grant development programs at the 28 publicly-supported community colleges in the state of Florida. …

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A Dynamic Model Of The Human/Cooling System/Clothing/Environment System, Zhengxiang Pu Jan 2005

A Dynamic Model Of The Human/Cooling System/Clothing/Environment System, Zhengxiang Pu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The human body compensates well for moderate climatic heat stress, but artificial environments often block or overwhelm physiological defense mechanism. Personal protective equipment (PPE) is one of sources of heat stress. It protects individual from chemical, physical, or biological hazards, but the high thermal insulation and low vapor permeability of PPE may also lead to substantial heat stress. Personal cooling is widely used to alleviate heat stress, especially for those situations where ambient environmental cooling is not economically viable or feasible. It is important to predict the physiological responses of a person wearing PPE with personal cooling to make sure …

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The Effects Of Journal Writing On Student Attitudes And Performance In Problem Solving, Christine Quinones Jan 2005

The Effects Of Journal Writing On Student Attitudes And Performance In Problem Solving, Christine Quinones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study summarizes research conducted in a second grade classroom at a rural elementary school in the fall of 2004. This study investigated the practice of using writing activities in mathematics to improve student attitudes and performance in problem solving. The classroom teacher supplemented traditional mathematics instruction with daily problem solving activities and affective journal writing. Students were asked to complete daily problem solving prompts and write about their problem-solving solutions. Attitude data was collected using a pre and post attitude survey as well as affective journal writing assignments. Performance data was collected using a performance based problem-solving rubric. Results …

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Teacher Attrition And Retention In Exceptional Student Education: An Evaluation Of The Skills, Tips, And Routines For Teacher Success (Starts) Initiative Of Volusia County, Florida Schools, Mary Speidel Jan 2005

Teacher Attrition And Retention In Exceptional Student Education: An Evaluation Of The Skills, Tips, And Routines For Teacher Success (Starts) Initiative Of Volusia County, Florida Schools, Mary Speidel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teacher attrition affects the quality of services for students in K-12 education and poses an ongoing challenge for educational leaders, especially in the area of special education. Special educators leave the profession at higher rates than general educators. As a growing state, Florida has identified special education as a critical teacher shortage area. This study evaluated the Skills, Tips, and Routines for Teacher Success (STARTS) initiative of Volusia County Schools, a large district in east central Florida. Implemented in 2001 for new ESE teachers, STARTS offered four days of training in policies and procedures, curriculum, and classroom management. Research questions …

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Famtile: An Algorithm For Learning High-Level Tactical Behavior From Observation, Brian Stensrud Jan 2005

Famtile: An Algorithm For Learning High-Level Tactical Behavior From Observation, Brian Stensrud

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research focuses on the learning of a class of behaviors defined as high-level behaviors. High-level behaviors are defined here as behaviors that can be executed using a sequence of identifiable behaviors. Represented by low-level contexts, these behaviors are known a priori to learning and can be modeled separately by a knowledge engineer. The learning task, which is achieved by observing an expert within simulation, then becomes the identification and representation of the low-level context sequence executed by the expert. To learn this sequence, this research proposes FAMTILE - the Fuzzy ARTMAP / Template-Based Interpretation Learning Engine. This algorithm attempts …

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Developing An Object-Oriented Approach For Operations Simulation In Speedes, Amit Wasadikar Jan 2005

Developing An Object-Oriented Approach For Operations Simulation In Speedes, Amit Wasadikar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using simulation techniques, performance of any proposed system can be tested for different scenarios with a generated model. However, it is difficult to rapidly create simulation models that will accurately represent the complexity of the system. In recent years, Object-Oriented Discrete-Event Simulation has emerged as the potential technology to implement rapid simulation schemes. A number of software based on programming languages like C++ and Java are available for carrying out Object Oriented Discrete-Event Simulation. These software packages establish a general framework for simulation in computer programs, but need to be further customized for desired end-use applications. In this thesis, a …

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System Design And Optimization Of Optical Coherence Tomography, Avni Ceyhun Akcay Jan 2005

System Design And Optimization Of Optical Coherence Tomography, Avni Ceyhun Akcay

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Optical coherence imaging, including tomography (OCT) and microscopy (OCM), has been a growing research field in biomedical optical imaging in the last decade. In this imaging modality, a broadband light source, thus of short temporal coherence length, is used to perform imaging via interferometry. A challenge in optical coherence imaging, as in any imaging system towards biomedical diagnosis, is the quantification of image quality and optimization of the system components, both a primary focus of this research. We concentrated our efforts on the optimization of the imaging system from two main standpoints: axial point spread function (PSF) and practical steps …

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Interferometry-Based Free Space Communication And Information Processing, Muzamil Arshad Arain Jan 2005

Interferometry-Based Free Space Communication And Information Processing, Muzamil Arshad Arain

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies, analyzes, and experimentally demonstrates the innovative use of interference phenomenon in the field of opto-electronic information processing and optical communications. A number of optical systems using interferometric techniques both in the optical and the electronic domains has been demonstrated in the filed of signal transmission and processing, optical metrology, defense, and physical sensors. Specifically it has been shown that the interference of waves in the form of holography can be exploited to realize a novel optical scanner called Code Multiplexed Optical Scanner (C-MOS). The C-MOS features large aperture, wide scan angles, 3-D beam control, no moving parts, …

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The Effects Of A Responsibility-Based Character Education Program On Middle School Academic Achievement And School Climate At An International School In East Africa, Terry Allen Howard Jan 2005

The Effects Of A Responsibility-Based Character Education Program On Middle School Academic Achievement And School Climate At An International School In East Africa, Terry Allen Howard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to determine the effectiveness of a character education program on middle school student academic performance, effort and attitude about their school located in an international setting. Middle school students at the participating international school were assigned to either an experimental or control group. Those students in the experimental group classes received a series of 12 lessons focusing on the character trait of responsibility. Those students in the control group classes did not receive these lessons. Twelve responsibility-based lessons were presented to students in the experimental group. Student academic grades in six different academic subjects, …

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Addressing The Impact That Workshop Site Coordinators And Administrators Have On The Teaching Of Science In The Classroom, Valerie Elaine Mckenna Jan 2005

Addressing The Impact That Workshop Site Coordinators And Administrators Have On The Teaching Of Science In The Classroom, Valerie Elaine Mckenna

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studied the beliefs and practices of principals, workshop site coordinators, and science support personnel in two Central Florida school districts and compared those beliefs and practices to the literature on effective science in-service education. It is important to understand these beliefs and practices because they directly affect the content and pedagogical knowledge of classroom teachers, yet this aspect of instructional practices has been ignored in the science education literature. This study used a grounded theory methodology using open-ended individual interviews, participants observation, and documented analysis. Constant comparisons were built through analyzing the data. The research shows that in-service …

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Explanations In Contextual Graphs: A Solution To Accountability In Knowledge Based Systems, Brian W. Sherwell Jan 2005

Explanations In Contextual Graphs: A Solution To Accountability In Knowledge Based Systems, Brian W. Sherwell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In order for intelligent systems to be a viable and utilized tool, a user must be able to understand how the system comes to a decision. Without understanding how the system arrived at an answer, a user will be less likely to trust its decision. One way to increase a user's understanding of how the system functions is by employing explanations to account for the output produced. There have been attempts to explain intelligent systems over the past three decades. However, each attempt has had shortcomings that separated the logic used to produce the output and that used to produce …

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Network Intrusion Detection: Monitoring, Simulation And Visualization, Mian Zhou Jan 2005

Network Intrusion Detection: Monitoring, Simulation And Visualization, Mian Zhou

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents our work on network intrusion detection and intrusion sim- ulation. The work in intrusion detection consists of two different network anomaly-based approaches. The work in intrusion simulation introduces a model using explicit traffic gen- eration for the packet level traffic simulation. The process of anomaly detection is to first build profiles for the normal network activity and then mark any events or activities that deviate from the normal profiles as suspicious. Based on the different schemes of creating the normal activity profiles, we introduce two approaches for intrusion detection. The first one is a frequency-based approach which …

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Optical Wave Propagation In Discrete Waveguide Arrays, Jared Hudock Jan 2005

Optical Wave Propagation In Discrete Waveguide Arrays, Jared Hudock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The propagation dynamics of light in optical waveguide arrays is characteristic of that encountered in discrete systems. As a result, it is possible to engineer the diffraction properties of such structures, which leads to the ability to control the flow of light in ways that are impossible in continuous media. In this work, a detailed theoretical investigation of both linear and nonlinear optical wave propagation in one- and two-dimensional waveguide lattices is presented. The ability to completely overcome the effects of discrete diffraction through the mutual trapping of two orthogonally polarized coherent beams interacting in Kerr nonlinear arrays of birefringent …

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High Gain / Broadband Oxide Glasses For Next Generation Raman Amplifiers, Clara Rivero Jan 2005

High Gain / Broadband Oxide Glasses For Next Generation Raman Amplifiers, Clara Rivero

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Interest in Raman amplification has undergone a revival due to the rapidly increasing bandwidth requirements for communications transmission, both for long haul and local area networks, and recent developments in the telecom fiber industry and diode laser technology. In contrast to rare earth doped fiber amplifiers, for which the range of wavelengths is fixed and limited, Raman gain bandwidths are larger and the operating wavelength is fixed only by the pump wavelength and the bandwidth of the Raman active medium. In this context, glasses are the material of choice for this application due to their relatively broad spectral response, and …

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The Use And Development Of Laser Microdissection To Separate Spermatozoa From Epithelial Cells For Str Analysis, Christine Sanders Jan 2005

The Use And Development Of Laser Microdissection To Separate Spermatozoa From Epithelial Cells For Str Analysis, Christine Sanders

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Short Tandem Repeat (STR) analysis has become a valuable tool in identifying the source of biological stains, particularly from the investigation of sexual assault crimes. Difficulties in analysis arise primarily in the interpretation of mixed genotypes when cell separation of the sexual assailant's sperm from the victim's cells is incomplete. The forensic community continues to seek improvements in cell separation methods from mixtures for DNA typing. This report describes the use of laser microdissection (LMD) for the separation of pure populations of spermatozoa from two-donor cell mixtures. In this study, cell separation was demonstrated by microscopic identification of histologically stained …

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An Action Research Study Involving Fifth-Grade Students Learning Fractions Through A Situative Perspective With Story Problems, Colleen Allen Jan 2005

An Action Research Study Involving Fifth-Grade Students Learning Fractions Through A Situative Perspective With Story Problems, Colleen Allen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research study was to investigate the affects of teaching through a situative perspective with story problems on students' understanding of fraction concepts and operations in my fifth-grade mathematics classroom. Students participated in twelve weeks of instruction. Data was collected in the form of pre and post tests, audiotaped and videotaped recordings of instructional sessions, and student work samples. Data analysis revealed that my students constructed their own knowledge about various fraction concepts and operations because students engaged in discussions, after solving story problems, that developed, extended and restructured their knowledge. One example of this occurred …

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