Education Commons^™

The Role Of Passage Topic Knowledge In Typical And Poor Comprehenders' Recall, Chelsea E. Meenan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role of topic knowledge (TK) in comprehension among typical readers and those with Specifically Poor Comprehension (SPC), i.e., those who demonstrate deficits in understanding what they read despite adequate decoding. Previous studies of poor comprehension have focused on weaknesses in specific skills, such as word decoding and inferencing ability, but this dissertation examined a different factor: whether deficits in availability and use of TK underlie poor comprehension. It is well known that TK tends to facilitate comprehension among typical readers, but its interaction with working memory and word decoding is unclear, particularly among participants with deficits …

Media Literacy Education, Elizabeth Etherington Wood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study offers an analysis of media literacy practices and techniques used at local public middle and high schools in Colorado. Media literacy is an emerging field in education that blends literacy skills such as critical analysis and evaluation with an inquiry-based questioning process that encourages students to process information using cognitive, moral, aesthetic and emotional dimensions. This inquiry-based process is not a new educational approach; it has been used to critically evaluate literature for centuries. However, media literacy scholars argue that applying inquiry-based approaches can enhance learning across all grades and content levels by applying new methodologies.

The literature …