Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring The Efficacy Of School And Community Based Literacy Intervention Programmes: A Case Of Literacy Development And Learning Outcomes In Low Resource Environments, Anyanzo John Philip

Master of Education

Literacy is perceived as a crucial tool for acquiring a wide range of learning skills and acts as an inducement for everyday life and life-long learning. Besides, literacy is one of the pillars that support individual and societal development as well as playing key role in poverty reduction. As such, this study explored the factors influencing the efficacy of school and community based literacy intervention programmes in context of literacy development, and learning outcomes in low resource communities. The study was conducted in two public primary schools, and two community literacy intervention centres, in Koboko district, Uganda. The study used …

The Effects Of Implementing Close Reading In A Third, Fourth, And Fifth Grade Public School Setting To Improve Student Achievement, Cory Valentine

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this ex-post facto, causal-comparative study is to determine the effects of close reading on student achievement. Close reading is a strategy developed through literary criticism and the influences of I. A. Richards and the New Critics. This study analyzes close reading to determine the most efficient practice to help students develop critical reading, thinking, and written communication skills. The researcher examined 2013 to 2015 New York State English Language Arts Exam data from 10 school districts located in the Broome-Tioga BOCES Region. For the study, 6,040 student exams in Grades 3, 4, and 5 were analyzed. Using …

The Effect Of Prosody On Preschool Children’S Emotional, Cognitive, And Behavioral-Eye And Behavioral-Body Engagement During Story Time, Trevor Rowe

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Many children have insufficient early literacy experiences and fail to obtain proficient emergent literacy before they enter kindergarten. Reading to young children has been positively linked to improving their emergent literacy. Numerous factors influence how engaged children are while being read to including the adult’s prosody, receptive vocabulary, and the home literacy environment. Using a quantitative quasi-experimental design, this study sought to understand the association among prosody, child engagement (emotional, cognitive, behavioral-eye, and behavioral-body), receptive vocabulary, and the home literacy environment. The sample included 76 3- to 5-year-old children from local child care centers and their parents. To understand the …

The Effects Of Bilingualism On Language Development Of Children, Kelly Wallner

Communication Sciences and Disorders: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

This essay examines the effects of bilingualism on the language development of children by analyzing the development of literacy skills in children learning a second language, and the models and benefits of bilingualism. This essay also observes factors influencing variability in second language acquisition among children.

Economic Well-Being And Social Justice Through Pleasure Reading, Pauline Dewan

Library Publications

Purpose – Librarians planning for the future and unsure about the place of books in an age dominated by technology and media need evidence to make sound decisions. Library and information science researchers have studied the impact of pleasure reading on individuals but not on society. The purpose of this article is to raise awareness about the benefits of recreational reading for societies and to consider the implications of these findings for libraries.

Design/methodology/approach – Examining a wide range of studies by government bodies, intergovernmental agencies, and academics, this article addresses a gap in the library literature by critically evaluating …

Writing & Linguistics News, Georgia Southern University

Writing & Linguistics News (2012-2022)

• 2016 Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

The Story In The Standards: Creating Counter-Narratives In The Common Core State Standards, Jarret Alexander Smith

Dissertations

The research question guiding this study is: How might educators create counter-narratives, particularly related to the diversity of texts, experiences and knowledge bases represented in the CCSS? The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy on the engagement in literacy acquisition of African American students in middle and high school. The basic framework for this study is situated within and informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP). The study focuses on creating counter-narratives for African American students in spite of the silence of the Common Core State Standards on cultural …

How Reference With Demonstratives Creates Cohesion In A Physical Science Textbook, Amy Marie Petersen Sagrado

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this project is How are demonstratives used as reference in a 10th grade physical science textbook? The purpose was to inform the instruction of English learners when using a grade level text through a text analysis by understanding how demonstratives are used, whether as a determiner or pronoun, the direction the demonstrative points, the distance to the referent, whether the referent is a noun phrase, clause or inference and the clarity of the referent. Among the findings, it was concluded that demonstrative determiners are used more frequently in text than demonstrative pronouns and tend to …

Using Evidence-Based Spelling Instruction To Support Elementary Students: A Self-Study, Brigid Ayn Berger

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

Teachers have been slow to adopt research-based best practices for spelling instruction. The purpose of this project was to identify effective spelling practices and reflect on the practical implementation of those practices in a first grade classroom. The research question was, how can teachers use research-based strategies to support elementary students as they develop spelling skills? This paper provides a review of English orthography and developmental spelling instruction before contrasting effective and ineffective instructional strategies. The author, a first grade teacher, conducts a self-study in which she implements formative assessments into her spelling routines and reflects upon the process of …

How Does Culturally Responsive Curriculum Impact African American Student’S Literacy Development In The Primary Grades?, Kaylan Louise Carlson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this capstone was: How does culturally responsive curriculum impact African American student’s literacy development in the primary grades? The work explores common classroom practice, culturally responsive teaching, multicultural education and the implications for a literacy curriculum that is culturally responsive. It documents an educator’s creation of a unit using the tenets of Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998) and involving elements of culturally responsive teaching through multicultural education, in addition to resources and text sets. The lesson plans and resources were created for use in the primary level but may be altered for use …

Thematic Learning And English Learners: Integrating Authentic Literacy In An Experience-Based Summer Program For English Learners, Miranda Michelle Gamayunov

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

Research indicates that the most successful summer programs and after school experiences do not simply mimic the school year but rather complement it. The purpose of this capstone was to create a stronger connection between the district’s school year literacy curriculum and its summer program for English Learners while maintaining the experience-based nature of the program. The research question explored: How can I best integrate authentic reading and writing into a hands-on, experience-based summer program for English Learners resulted in a series of six lessons complementing the program’s varied experiences and the district’s units of study thereby allowing for an …

How Can Implementing Oral Language Strategies Support First Grade Struggling Readers?, Alexandra Kraemer Askew

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this project was, how can implementing oral language strategies support first grade struggling readers? In this project, action research was conducted in an urban first grade classroom with nine student participants. All of the student participants were categorized as first grade struggling readers and came from many different diverse backgrounds. During the research two oral language strategies were implemented during a four-week period with two reading groups. Pre and post assessments were given to monitor student progress and gauge the success of the strategy implementation. At the end of the four-week period, all students made …

An Effective Instructional Model For Teaching English Language Learners Within The Mainstream Classroom, Sofia Viktorova Vladimirova

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine an effective educational model for teaching language to English Language Learners as well as to determine effective instructional methods within the mainstream classroom. The study aimed to assess the effectiveness of the Integrated Services Approach. This approach involved a classroom teacher, an English Language specialist, a Special Education teacher, and a reading interventionist. All four educators taught ten English Language Learners within a mainstream classroom. The ten English Language Learners were periodically assessed to determine academic growth and language acquisition level. Assessment data suggests that the Integrated Services Approach is an effective …

How Can Text-­Based Debates Increase Empathy In Upper Elementary Students, Melissa M. Ogden

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this project was, how can text­based debates increase empathy in upper elementary students? It explores research around critical literacy, social­emotional learning, and debates with a specific focus on alternative perspectives and empathy development. The researcher combines research around different forms of debate, argumentation and collaborative reasoning, to create a text­based debate protocol. The action research studies the impact on students’ empathy development for characters found in read aloud texts through participation in weekly text­based debates and written reflections. Students debated two opposing perspectives regarding a character’s personality and wrote reflections in which they explained both …

Diversity In Literature: Preparing Literacy Teachers For A Multicultural World, Antonio Causarano

Education Faculty Articles

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that by 2023, 50 percent of the student population will be children with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Iwai, 2015). Furthermore, 10 percent of the school population in the U.S. is currently identified as having a disability that affects their ability to perform in the classroom (O’Leary, 2011). The reality is that teachers and literacy teachers in particular are faced with the difficult task of teaching a more diverse student population than ever before. The literature review analyzed and discussed in the present article examines studies that support the systematic use of multicultural literature in …

Fun Bilingual-Bimodal Ebooks For Deaf Children, Donna Jo Napoli, E. R. Mirus

Linguistics Faculty Works

Ebooks provide new ways to advance developing literacy among deaf children. While some aim to promote literacy through explicit pedagogical techniques, the new ebooks described here aim only to offer stories that are fun to share, encouraging learning through interaction that naturally fosters language and preliteracy skills. Reading for pleasure is recognized as valuable for hearing children; it needs to be recognized as such for deaf children. We present the rationale for these ebooks and give examples of how they advance preliteracy skills, in the hopes that those raising and educating deaf children will use them, offered gratis on the …

Identity Creation And World-Building Through Discourse In Video Game Narratives, Barbara Jedruszczak

Dissertations - ALL

An exploration of how characters develop identity through language use in a video game’s narrative, specifically in video games that do not allow for players to make narrative-altering choices. The concept of literacies is used to create a critical framework through which to view video games themselves as a literacy, as well as to view them as a discourse. This thesis analyzes how dialogue is used to develop and showcase gender, sexuality, personality, moral identity in characters in and out of the player’s control, as well as how dialogue builds the narrative world in which these characters exist. This thesis …

Preparing Teachers As Literacy Leaders In A Hybrid Classroom, Tamara Spencer

Occasional Paper Series

The author describes and analyzes how she developed a course (Literacy in the Elementary Grades) in hybrid format—50% online and 50% face-to-face teaching. First, she draws upon two overlapping frameworks in literacy studies—sociocultural theory and new literacy studies to describe the broader theoretical framework that grounds both the course design and the approach to literacy taken with the course. From there, the author provides a detailed analysis of the course, the objectives, overall content and assignments, and how she modified the course to be hybrid.

Subtext Of Decisions: Literacy Practices In The Context Of Coding, Julia Hagge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I present findings from a qualitative case study of five early adolescents engaged in an online programming community. As a researcher, I was interested in how early adolescents designed digital media as they learned how to code within an online programming community known as Scratch. My research was guided by two questions: (1) What are the literacy practices and processes embedded in the design and collaboration of products created within an online programming community? (2) In what ways do participants make decisions in the design of their projects created in Scratch? The data collected for …

Dorjé Tarchin, The Mélong, And The Tibet Mirror Press: Negotiating Discourse On The Religious And The Secular, Nicole Willock

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

Much scholarly attention has been given to the importance of the Mélong, the first Tibetan newspaper, in the discursive formation of Tibetan nationalism; yet in claiming the Mélong as ‘secular’ and ‘modern,’ previous scholarship has also evaded the press’s Christian and colonial roots. This paper investigates the secularization of the Mélong and the Tibet Mirror Press as an historical project, and as a corollary demonstrates the emergence of a vernacular project of secularism that aligned pan-Tibetan national identity with religious pluralism against the threat of communism. As a Tibetan Christian intellectual, the Mélong’s founder Dorjé Tarchin (1890-1976) creatively responded to …

How Does Explicit Instruction Enhance The Understanding Of Academic Vocabulary For Middle School English Learners?, Katherine Marie Kermes

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

One of the barriers to English Learners finding success at school is proficiency with academic vocabulary. This paper documents the need for explicit instruction of academic vocabulary in addition to effective teaching and assessment strategies to use with students. The author describes an academic vocabulary unit which they implemented with middle school English Learners. The unit was based on the research of Graves and Beck, McKeown and Kucan as well as others. The author reaches the conclusion that explicit instruction positively impacts the ability of English Learners to understand and use academic vocabulary terms.

Word Study Promotes The Application Of Spelling Skills Within Elementary Students’ Independent Writing, Sarah Kay Rabideau

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this project was how does a balanced literacy program that includes word study promote application of spelling skills within elementary students’ independent writing? It documents the implementation of effective word study components within an elementary setting. The action research project included whole group lessons, followed by guided practice using interactive writing and writing conferences, and also individualized, hands-on, independent word work. These strategies were based off of the research of Fountas and Pinnell and the resource Word Matters (2001). Through the implementation of these components the author developed a deeper understanding of effective word study …

Form And Function Focused Language Activities And Their Effects On Student Writing In A Spanish Immersion Classroom, Brian John Rice

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this project was, how does implementing (Spanish) form and function focused language activities during independent reading time affect subject-verb agreement and opinion formation in third grade students’ writing? The study was grounded in the idea of cross-curricular transfer (Meyer & Schendel, 2014; Zwiers, 2006). Students utilized scaffolded form and function focused Spanish language frames in a peer-to-peer reciprocal teaching setting during reading, with the intent that the linguistic learning would transfer to students’ writing. Using Brown's (1973) Obligatory Occasion Analysis method as outlined by Ellis and Barkhuizen (2005) the researcher found substantial improvement in subject-verb …

Children Who Are Deaf Deserve Researched Based Education, Cheryl Ann Hermann

Dissertations

Deaf Education includes many complex components, including: 1) Academics, 2) Cognitive, 3) Hearing, 4) Speech, 5) Language: American Sign Language and English, 6) Social Skills & Emotional Well Being, 7) Deaf Culture, and 8) Instructional Methods. Evidence indicates that children who are deaf achieve academically at the same levels as their peers, “Postsecondary enrollment and degree completion by deaf individuals in colleges, universities, and career and technical education schools have increased dramatically over the past several decades,” (Marc Marschark, 2015, p. 5). However, most of the current research shows that despite numerous interventions and philosophies, children who are deaf continue …

Ignoring Ethics With Style: Writing Sentences For "Non U.S. Persons", Ryan Smith Madan

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Ignoring Ethics with Style: Writing Sentences for "Non U.S. Persons" argues for the importance of understanding the ethical dimensions of sentence writing. To illustrate, I cite the stylistic features of a recent public exchange about the legality of government surveillance between Director of Intelligence James Clapper and U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. I also discuss my own experience teaching writing to college students in order to reflect on need for a new generation of writers to recognize the relationship between clarity and ethics.

To My Betas, Endless Chocolate Frogs! : Exploring The Intersections Of Emotion, The Body, And Literacy In Online Fanfiction., Brittany Kelley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project examines the complex intersections of identity, including gender, sexuality, and social class, in the literacy practices of online fanfiction. Previous scholarship has focused solely on the gender and/or pedagogical implications of fanfiction communities, and my project engages and extends these conversations by analyzing how fanfiction practices provide a distinctive space to explore how we understand identity, digital technologies, and fannish participation. I conducted textual analysis of stories, authors' notes, "how-to" guides, and questionnaires and interviews. A close inspection of fanfiction practices provide insight into how digital technologies and literacy practices interact within exchange economies. My dissertation is divided …

Dorjé Tarchin, The Mélong, And The Tibet Mirror Press: Negotiating Discourse On The Religious And The Secular, Nicole Willock

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Much scholarly attention has been given to the importance of the Mélong, the first Tibetan newspaper, in the discursive formation of Tibetan nationalism; yet in claiming the Mélong as ‘secular’ and ‘modern,’ previous scholarship has also evaded the press’s Christian and colonial roots. This paper investigates the secularization of the Mélong and the Tibet Mirror Press as an historical project, and as a corollary demonstrates the emergence of a vernacular project of secularism that aligned pan-Tibetan national identity with religious pluralism against the threat of communism. As a Tibetan Christian intellectual, the Mélong’s founder Dorjé Tarchin (1890-1976) creatively responded to …

Facilitating Literacy Acquisition In At-Risk Second-Grade Students Using A Rhythmic Intervention: A Case Study, Deborah Jones-Gensel

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this intrinsic, holistic case study was to describe and analyze the impact of a rhythmic intervention designed to support literacy skills in second-grade students at-risk of failure of state mandated reading assessment. The theories used to guide this study were Finkelstein (2001) and Hunt’s (1966) disability theory, and critical realism posited by Bhaskar and Danemark (2006). Critical realism, as applied to disability theory, reflects a unique combination of needs a person with disability faces: socio-economic, physical, biological, psycho-social and emotional, psychological, cultural, and normative. Research suggested musical instruction could be used to teach literacy skills as a …

Integrating Standards And 21st Century Skills To Increase Engagement, Andrea Michelle Peterson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this project was, how can I create curriculum using the principals of project based learning and the Language Arts Common Core State Standards in a fourth grade social studies setting that may increase student engagement? The purpose of this capstone was to create a curriculum that integrates the Language Arts Common Core State Standards and Minnesota Social Studies Standards with project based learning so that students are actively participating in their learning to strengthen life-long and critical thinking skills. The capstone provides an explanation of how project based learning integrates 21st century skills and Common …

Literacy Across Disciplines: An Investigation Of Text Used In Content-Specific Classrooms, Pam Mcdonald

Honors Scholar Theses

This pilot study focused on literacy in secondary settings, where classes are content-specific and organized into varying levels. Teacher views on literacy instruction as well as the types of texts used across the disciplines and course levels were explored. The following research questions guided the study: 1) Do early high school teachers view their class’ reading tasks as more discipline- or content-focused? 2) Does the complexity of the texts assigned in early high school vary across the various course levels? 3) Does the complexity of the texts assigned in early high school vary across the disciplines? 4) Does the authenticity …