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Interview With Monifa Love Asante, Sharynn Owens Etheridge

Short Story

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Excellence In Education, Winter 2007-08, University Of Northern Iowa. College Of Education

Excellence in Education

Inside this issue:

-- Message from the Dean

-- UNI Services as Catalyst for Elite Training Center

-- Desire to Teach Motivates 2+2 Graduates

--$5.5 million request for Mathematics/Science Education initiative receives Regents' support

-- High School Student Math/Science Summit launched at UNI

-- Science/Math Summer Enrichment for K-5 students

-- NPPS marks 13 years of: Keeping Children Safe

-- CLASS (Classroom Assessment Scoring System)

-- Faculty, students offer hands-on community engagement

-- UNI professor help write College Board Standards

-- Using non-fiction to develop elementary students' measurement sense

-- Stories to help citizen understanding

-- Iowa Writing Project format …

Home And School Literacy Partnerships : Building Stronger Tomorrows Hand In Hand, Tera Bockenstedt

Graduate Research Papers

This project aims to bring quality literacy interactions into homes of young children. These literacy interactions are important because research has shown that quality literacy experiences during the early childhood years impact a child's emergent literacy learning. Because children are not yet in formal schooling, many of these interactions can take place in home so family involvement is critical. The project is threefold: (a) to increase the quantity and quality of literacy interactions in the home, (b) to help parents become more informed contributors of their children's emergent literacy development, and (c) to promote more family involvement and two-way communication …

How Does Home Literacy Help Children?, Katie Pick

Graduate Research Papers

This review of literature paper focuses on the importance of home literacy programs. The literature shows the importance of parental involvement in their children's formal and informal educational process. Children who are exposed to home literacy have learned literacy better than children who are not. Many literacy activities for home are described. Many schools offer home literacy programs to assist parents within the home. This review of literature has implications for parents and teachers who try to implement home literacy.

The Effects Of Using Music And Movement To Enhance Learning, Lisa L. Snitker

Graduate Research Papers

This paper reviews the effects of using music and movement to enhance learning in early childhood years and in the elementary classroom. Information includes Howard Gardner's musical and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences, the effects of music on brain development in infants and children, studies in the effects of music on spatial-temporal reasoning, how music affects learning in the early childhood and primary years, and the effects of music on special learners. Appropriate for parents, caregivers, and educators, this review provides the basis for incorporating music into everyday early childhood and classroom experiences.

Identity Exploration In The Secondary Esl Setting, Sarah Wait

Graduate Research Papers

The investigation of the process of identity development is very complex, as a multitude of background information and influencing factors must be considered before suggestions can be made for incorporating identity exploration into a secondary school setting. Chapter One sets the groundwork for this investigation by first describing the nature of the issue and generally introducing topics which will be explored in later chapters. The research question is stated, then expanded upon to include the factors one must consider when attempting to answer the research question. The chapter continues by explaining the significance of the problem, as established in both …

Instructional Recommendations For The Teaching Of Writing, Bridgette Wagoner

Graduate Research Papers

Clearly, writing is an essential life, work, and educational skill, and far too many students without essential writing skills are receiving high school diplomas. These realities put many recent high school graduates at a disadvantage in personal, professional, and educational arenas. Writing skills are simply too important to be ignored. This reality begs an important question: Which instructional approaches are likely to lead to improved student writing? For the purposes of this paper, research will center mainly on controlled studies, though much insight also stands to be gained from studies of what writers and teachers of writing have to say …

Family Literacy Nights : Factors For Success, Crystal Betts

Graduate Research Papers

Family Literacy Nights were developed and held at a K-4 elementary building in a medium-sized town in eastern Iowa, demonstrating an example of part of a family literacy program. Family Literacy Nights involved parents and students from the two first grade classrooms at this elementary school. Parents completed surveys and participated in interviews to share their reactions and feelings towards family literacy programs.

The included literature review explores parental involvement and family literacy programs. It looks at the effects of parent involvement on student achievement. The difference between parent involvement programs and family literacy programs is explored. Family literacy programs …

Use Of Learning Styles In The Selection Of Instructional Strategies : Does Pedagogy Lead To Practice?, Roger E. Baker

Graduate Research Papers

Much has been written about the importance of learning styles in instructional design. Learning styles can be measured by the use of personality profiles such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Learning styles can also be measured by Learning Style Inventories and defined by cognitive theory such as Gardner's multiple intelligences. This literature review explores the different approaches to the study of learning styles and the practical use of learning style indicators as a tool for selecting instructional strategies.

Many challenges exist in designing instruction to the personal level including costs, time, and instructor limits. Philosophical questions on the benefits …

A Case Study Using Guided Reading And Teacher Read-Alouds While Monitoring English Language Learners' And Native English Speakers' Reading Achievement, Kelsey M. Baker

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The number of English Language Learners (ELLs) in the United States continues to increase (U.S. Census Bureau, 2002); therefore, schools and educators are affected by the growing differences in students' language skills, prior experiences, and progress. This research addresses the need for understanding ELLs and how ELLs benefit from adults effectively reading aloud to them. Further research is needed on effective reading instruction for ELLs for several reasons. First, teachers are becoming ELL teachers by default and feel overwhelmed because of the responsibility to teach both language and content (Gersten, 2002). Second, an achievement gap exists between ELLs and native …

An Analysis Of Coaching Efficacy In Volunteer Soccer Coaches, Christopher Lee Kowalski

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between five independent variables and volunteer soccer coaches' overall coaching efficacy as measured by motivation efficacy, character building efficacy, game strategy efficacy, and technique efficacy and five independent variables. The five independent variables explored included the age of a coach, a coach's gender, previous years of coaching experience, participation in a coaching training/licensing/certification program, and previous playing experience.

The study involved 69 participants who coached for the Cedar Valley Youth Soccer Association (CVYSA). The first part of the instrument used to measure coaching efficacy was a questionnaire discussing the various …

Considerations For Delivery Of Online Professional Development Courses For Childcare Professionals, Heather Marie Bauer Olsen

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

In an age of increasing accountability, childcare professionals are held responsible for providing young children quality early care and education. The unfortunate reality is that it is challenging for childcare professionals to pursue training because of the cost of training, family responsibilities, and scheduling conflicts. The Internet has the capability to knock down those barriers in the childcare profession, and has expanded the availability of information and has created avenues for teaching and learning.

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the factors that will give online professional development instructors a better insight into the characteristics …

Język: Attitudes Toward Language In Poland, Angela Ott

Honors Program Theses

Perceptual dialectology is the study of how people perceive differences in language. This study was designed to discover Polish college students' attitudes toward the dialects in Poland. Modeled after Dennis Preston's 1986 study of language attitudes in the United States, a map questionnaire was distributed to 100 Jagiellonian University and Krosno College students in Fall 2006. Participants drew boundaries around the areas where people speak differently in Poland and rated each area's correctness compared to Standard Polish. Most participants indicated between three to five regions; the most commonly named regions were Podhale, Katowice, Katowice/Wroclaw, Poznan, and Warsaw. Over half of …

Spelling Instruction In The Primary Grades, Kathleen Ziegler

Graduate Research Papers

This paper chronicles a multi-year effort to study best practices according to spelling research and the implementation of these practices into a primary classroom. This effort occurred in a school situated in the inner city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The school consists of approximately 330 students grades one through five and serves a diverse population of students. Over the years of this work, approximately fifty percent of students at the school were African American with the remaining students primarily Caucasian. Sixty-nine percent of students are considered low SES ( socioeconomic status) as they qualified for the free and reduced meal …

Interior Design For The Classroom, Jessica Hellmann

Honors Program Theses

For my honors thesis, I chose to investigate the topic of classroom design. 1 specifically focused on classroom layout and seating arrangement, color schemes, visual displays (student work compared to commercially prepared products), and accommodations that could be made in the physical environment for students with special needs. All of these components of the interior design of the classroom greatly impact student learning and should be carefully analyzed and evaluated before setting up one's classroom.

Repeat After Me: The Use Of Errorless Learning In The Foreign Language Classroom, Mark Adam Foster

Honors Program Theses

Errorless learning is one of these concepts. It is a technique that allows for efficient learning devoid of the frustrating process of making countless errors; something that is usually associated with the mastering of almost any topic. Errorless learning has proved beneficial to many specialized populations, yet has eluded implementation in a normal classroom setting. It seems especially well suited for use in foreign language classrooms. It has been noted that these classrooms often lack specialized teaching strategies, particularly in regards to vocabulary and pronunciation learning (Gonzalez-Bueno, 2001; Barcroft, 2004). Errorless learning is an effective teaching strategy, and could be …

Ready Or Not, Here They Come : A Look At Kindergarten Readiness, Sara J. Swyter

Graduate Research Papers

This study examined the subject of kindergarten readiness. Both socially and academically mature and immature children were included in this study. An intervention model was presented for children who assessed behind their peers socially and academically. It was documented and reported that children who were assessed as below their peers socially and academically were able to make good progress through the intense one-on-one interventions performed; however, their growth was not enough to completely catch them up to their non-struggling peers. Results were shared and recommendations were made for future children academically and socially immature.

Contesting The Social Borderlands: Portraits Of Three Young People With Significant Disabilities And Their Struggle For Positive Relationships, Janet Story Sauer

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Over eighty countries are signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2007), which states "that disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers" (p. 1). The United States is not a signatory to the Convention but the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 recognizes disability as "a natural part of the human experience" and one which ensures children's rights to "contribute to society, and experience full integration and inclusion into all aspects of society." This qualitative study examined the complexities involved in the communication and co-construction of meaning …

“Out From Gens Romulum Into The Weal-Kin”: Re-Locating Modernist Poetics In David Jones’ AnathéMata And Basil Bunting’S Briggflatts, Lucie Boukalova

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

In the decades following its publication in 1922, T.S. Eliot's Waste Land has become an epitome of the modernist sensibility and situation. This thesis challenges the poem's dominance and dictate over the canon of modernist poetry persisting in the academic discourse and general cultural awareness. Focusing on two post-WWII sequences by Eliot's younger contemporaries, David Jones' s Anathemata (1952) and Basil Bunting's Briggflatts (1966), this study explores alternative models and inspirative sources of the modernist poetic sequence. Through the constant comparison and contrast with Eliot's earlier articulation of the modern historico-cultural circumstance, Jones' and Bunting's specific foci and methods emerge …

(Un)Gendered Sentiments: The Relationship Between Modernism And Gender In The Works Of Barnfield And Woolf, Brittany Kay Jungck

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

By examining the history of literature through the lens of a gender critic, a person is able to discern how society and history frame our understanding of certain concepts. In this study, I have examined the lives and works of Richard Barnfield, a famed poet from the English Renaissance, and Virginia Woolf, a noted twentieth-century British novelist. The analysis of various aspects of Barnfield's and Woolf's creations reveals a connection between gendered language and modernity.

Gender Inequalities In Toddler Confrontation Teachers' Responses, Jessica Hermeyer

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This research examined the differences in confrontational interaction between boy and girl toddlers, and differences in how caregivers react to the children involved based on the children's gender. It is important to examine these differences in order to understand how gender differences are reproduced as children are socialized in day care culture.

Using content analysis of teacher-reported incidents occurring in a day care center, I explore the details of toddler confrontational behaviors from the teachers' perspectives following the incidents. My findings indicate that during confrontational interaction the children's gendered behavior in this study was similar to adults' gendered behavior revealing …

Motor Learning And Its Application To Accent Modification, Lindsey Nicole Clark

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

As the numbers of immigrants and non-native speakers of English continue to be high in the United States, there will also continue to be those who wish to alter their manner of speaking. Currently, there is little research discussing the effectiveness of traditional therapy techniques (i.e. auditory training, drill, and phonetic placement; Schmidt and Meyers, 1995). However, in recent years, research has shown high success rates in therapies based on motor learning principles ( e.g. Backer, 2003; Mueller, 2004; Nelson, 2004). By definition, motor learning is "a set of processes associated with practice or experience leading to relatively permanent changes …

Uni Schedule Of Classes, Fall 2006, University Of Northern Iowa

UNI Schedule of Classes

A listing and schedule of the courses being taught as well as policies and procedures concerning attending classes at the University of Northern Iowa.

“Imagine This:” Disengendered Fiction Writers, Susan M. Rochette

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This article recites in brief a story the author wrote that caused conversation and reflection on behalf of herself, her teachers and her students over the years of her writing as a fictionist and fiction writing teacher. The point of the article is to both demonstrate by doing and to make comment on the issue of women writing in the masculine voice.

Bad Ass Or Punk Ass?: The Contours Of Street Masculinity, Christopher W. Mullins, Robin M. Cardwell-Mullins

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

In this article, we examine the utility of R.W. Connell’s conceptualization of hegemonic and subordinate masculinities through the examination of qualitative interviews with active criminal offenders in Saint Louis, Missouri. The article describes contours of “bad ass” masculinity, the hegemonic form, and “punk” masculinity, the primary subordinate form. After an examination of the nature of these masculinities, we discuss how these elements of the cognitive map of the streets are refractions of mainstream masculinities, exploring the convergences and divergences that emerged in the data. Finally, we point out how the work on masculinities is important to gender studies and feminist …

Uni Schedule Of Classes, Spring 2006, University Of Northern Iowa

UNI Schedule of Classes

A listing and schedule of the courses being taught as well as policies and procedures concerning attending classes at the University of Northern Iowa.

Beyond That “It's Just A Flesh Wound...” Kind Of Feeling: A Medieval Game1 Proposal, Carol Robinson

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

In his book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, James Paul Gee argues that “the power of video games, for good or ill, resides in the ways in which they meld learning and identity…,” and he cautions that this power can be used to miscommunicate wrong ideology (such as might be found in a neo-Nazi game that encourages the player to conduct ethnic cleansing (199). However, Gee advocates “understanding the ‘play’ of identities and perspectives as they work for and against each other in the world, now and throughout history” (200). The art – …

A Case In Which A Revitalization Of Something Medieval Turned Out Not To Be Medievalism, Mette B. Bruun

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

The Cistercian Order was founded in Burgundy, France, in 1098 in a wake of the reform-enthusiasm related to the so-called Gregorian reform. The Order saw a rapid success in the 12th century and spread through most of Europe not least thanks to its main figure, Bernard Clairvaux (1090-1153). Bernard was an influential man. He corresponded with princes and popes and engaged in a wide array of ecclesiastical causes and politics. He was constantly on the watch for heresy or relapse in whichever guise and persistently sought to drive his contemporaries into soteriologically safer havens: Cistercian monasteries, crusades, orthodoxy, or, if …

Exteriority And Authenticity: A Trope On Østrem’S “Interiority And Authenticity”: Author As Scholar & Artist, Nils Holger Petersen

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Østrem establishes an intimate connection between personal, individual experience - and memory - and the wider scope of a historical narrative basing his account among other things on Hayden White's thought. I will take my point of departure in the two following well-known statements from White's Tropics of Discourse:

• Many historians continue to treat their "facts" as though they were "given" and refuse to recognize, unlike most scientists, that they are not so much found as constructed by the kinds of questions which the investigator asks of the phenomena before him. It is the same notion of objectivity that …

Iowa Academy Of Science: The New Bulletin, V02n1, Winter 2006, Iowa Academy Of Science

New Bulletin

Inside This Issue:

--Message from the Executive Director

--Pare Lorentz Award for Iowa Documentary

--118th Iowa Academy of Science Annual Meeting

--Iowa Summit on Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education

--Iowa Science Teachers Journal

--Considering Reorganizing the IAS Sections

--GLOBE ONE

--Grants & Award Program Announcements

--IAS Honors New Fellows

--Now Accepting 2006 Fellows Nominations