Educational Methods Commons^™

Using Physical Activity To Improve Reading Comprehension, Jensen Flanigan

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Student reading proficiency lags grade-level expectations in the majority of the United States. Much research has demonstrated the moderating impact of student motivation on reading scores. The purpose of this action research was to study the effects of physical activity on reading motivation and reading comprehension, with a special focus on readers at risk for reading deficiencies as identified by FAST testing. The research was carried out on eighteen third grade students in rural Iowa, seven of whom were at risk for reading deficiency. The use of physical activity had a positive effect on both reading motivation and reading comprehension, …

Phonological Awareness And Phonics, Michelle Erbs

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Research shows that a student's phonics and phonemic awareness skills are learned and practiced through direct instruction with follow up activities. This literature review shows some of the many ways in which teachers could help grow their students' knowledge and deeper understanding of phonics and phonemic awareness. This literature review will spotlight peer reviewed, scholarly journals that were used in order to inform the reader. The results of the many journal findings show that frequent practice of learned phonetic skills will encourage growth of the child’s mind. Direct, explicit instruction followed by activities that include abundant teaching strategies have been …

Graphic Novels For Multimodal Learning: Equity For English Learners, Katherine Suender, Susan Piazza

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

This article provides a synthesis of current research and theory that makes a case for using graphic novels to improve adolescent literacy achievement through multimodal, equitable learning opportunities for English learners (ELs) while meeting the required English Learner Proficiency Standards (ELPS). Supported by multimodal theory and culturally responsive teaching (CRT) approaches, research shows that graphic novels are inspirational teaching tools for adolescent ELs to engage more deeply with reading and writing. Specific recommendations for classroom use of graphic novels include a focus on a) motivation and engagement, b) discussions, c) visual information, and d) multimodal composition. Educators can make use …

Using Transcendental Phenomenology To Explore Elementary Teachers’ Experiences With Struggling Readers During The Social Restrictions Precipitated By The Covid-19 Pandemic, Wyann C. Stanton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study provides a window into the experiences of elementary teachers with their struggling readers during the largest world-wide interruption to education that has ever been seen. This study gives insight to educational leaders and educators as they assist their struggling readers in rebounding from the disruption to school caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and as they work to improve the quality of schooling for struggling readers. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there had been a growing body of educational literature in pandemic-related information, practice, and research. Yet, there was a need to bring to light the phenomenon of …

Social Justice In The Language Classroom Series: Argentina, Graciela Báez

Early College Folio

This lesson plan, crafted during the Bard Early College Fellowship, details a unit in which students build their oral comprehension, speaking, reading and writing skills in Spanish. Students expand their vocabulary, adopt language to discuss and analyze films, and polish their writing and thinking skills in Spanish while learning about a historical moment that shaped an important social justice movement.

Critical Writing: Challenging But Not Impossible, Nesrin Mcmeekin

Early College Folio

This lesson plan, crafted during the Bard Early College Fellowship, details a semester-long project during which students write one long essay in three different stages. The continuity in students’ written work will give them time to challenge their own arguments, consider counter-arguments to their thesis, and expand their paper with new texts they will encounter throughout the term.

Early College Pedagogy: An Introduction To The Bard Early College Fellowship, Ligaya Franklin

Early College Folio

The author introduces the Bard Early College Fellowship, an opportunity for faculty from the network of Bard Early Colleges to craft a lesson series which centers Bardian pedagogical methods and student success. The author also highlights five projects that emerged from past fellows, also published in this issue.

How Padlet Encouraged Student Collaboration And Engagement In My Virtual Classroom, Annie Yon

New Jersey English Journal

With the growth of virtual classes, it is crucial for teachers to integrate strategies and resources that foster student engagement and build a sense of community in an online environment. One way to augment synchronous and asynchronous communication is to implement an online discussion board, which can provide rich opportunities for students to share insights, ask clarifying questions, collaborate, create multimodal projects, and have their voices heard. By incorporating an interactive discussion board, such as Padlet, as part of class resources, teachers can facilitate discourse among students that transcends the physical boundaries of the classroom, create a motivational environment, improve …

Uniting In A Reading Education Course To Support Mental Health Awareness During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Latasha Holt, Teesha Finkbeiner

New Jersey English Journal

This article discusses a unique attempt to support pre-service teachers in a reading course as they grappled with abrupt changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. A partnership raised awareness of mental health impacting pre-service teachers in the present and serving students in the future improving academic success.

Questioning Standards Of Evaluation In Educational Research: Do Educational Researchers Ventriloquize Learners’ Voices In L2 Education?, Anastasia A. Boldireff

The Qualitative Report

Learners are not stakeholders in their own education. Adhering to the quantitative gold standard in English as a Second Language (ESL) deprives the learner from having a voice in their learning process. This paper addresses voicelessness and ventriloquism in ESL, ventriloquism referring to the act of voicing the thoughts of another person, in this case the system overriding the learners’ experiences. This article addresses this problem, aligning itself with the Platinum standard while challenging the quantitative gold standard in ESL research. This paper offers resonance and semantic reliability as evaluative measures in educational research taken from literary criticism. The notion …

Coalition And Creativity On The Bridges And Fringes With Immigrant Student-Contributors In Nonprofit Adult Education, Katherine E. Entigar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The nonprofit education of adult immigrants is an under-researched aspect of U.S. education. Adult immigrants, often perceived as passive and quiescent, bring voices and contributions to learning in powerful yet unheard ways. This research agenda invokes a new critical lens in education scholarship to uplift and center these contributions as a coalitional, dialogical project. Drawing upon critical sociocultural, women of color feminist, and poststructual theories, critical intersectional epistemology, and Bakhtinian dialogical thinking, this research project pursues inductive, recursive meaning making as an innovative exploration. A multiphase, sequential study including surveys and two focus groups foregrounds the complex, fluid ways adult …

The Motivation And Attitude Of Arab Heritage Children And Their Parents’ Perspectives Toward Learning Arabic, Nada Naji

Theses and Dissertations

Due to the unstable circumstances in the Middle East in the last decade, a large number of immigrants from Arab origins immigrated to non-Arab countries. This immigration created a new generation of Arab heritage learners who want to learn the Arabic language as a heritage language for different reasons. This study investigates the motivation and attitude of Arab heritage children between 10 and 16 years of age and their parents’ perspectives toward learning Arabic as a heritage language in host countries. 143 participants (92 parents, 51 children) living in 17 different non-Arab countries have participated in this study. The method …

Uncommon And Non-Traditional Urban Relationship Strategies: From Relationship Loss To Relationship Recovery, Lasonya L. Moore

Journal of English Learner Education

With increasing student diversity across our nation, there is a growing need to scale up educational innovations related to building holistic relationships. Many students in K-12 public schools enter educational settings with uncommon and nontraditional ways of building and developing longitudinal relationships that allow students to thrive and not just survive. Specifically, teachers/educators feel ill-equipped and ill-trained to adequately support the increasing number of English learners(ELs) and Exceptional education students (specifically Students of Color (SOC) with emotional and behavioral disorders) identified in inclusive classrooms. Thus, there remains an urgent need to share uncommon and non-traditional strategies to develop and build …

Factors Influencing Intelligibility And Comprehensibility: A Critical Review Of Research On Second Language English Speakers, Venus Chan

Journal of English Learner Education

The varieties of English have led to the paradigm of Global Englishes, which describes the ideologies of English as a lingua franca (ELF) and World Englishes (differential uses of English internationally) in diverse sociolinguistic contexts. Global Englishes literature complicates intelligibility and comprehensibility since it tends to problematize “native norms” as the only benchmarks for successful lingua franca use. Intelligibility and comprehensibility studies have recently been concerned with the interaction between non-native speakers using English as a second language for communication. Thus, this paper critically evaluates research on intelligibility and comprehensibility of second language (L2) English speakers. It is observed that …

Analysis Of Elementary School English Teachers’ Perceptions Of And Design For Differentiated Reading Instruction, Chin-Wen Chien

Journal of English Learner Education

This study explored the influence of a course in an endorsement program on 22 elementary school Taiwanese English teachers’ perceptions of and designs for differentiated reading instruction. Based on the data analysis of the questionnaire, peer- and self-evaluation, and final projects, this study has two major findings. First, participants gained competence in research-based instructional strategies and approaches for differentiated reading instruction through the endorsement program. Tiered assignments were the most popular activities designed by the participants for differentiated reading instruction. Secondly, their self-efficacy gained in terms of improving their learners’ reading performance and solving their reading problems. This study suggested …

Multilingual And Multicultural Education: The Intersectionality Of Culture Mindset And Instructional Practices, Brendon Thiry, James P. Concannon

Journal of English Learner Education

The new mainstream classroom is both multilingual and multicultural. How prepared are teachers to work with English language learners and students with interrupted or informal education? This study aimed to determine if teacher growth mindset and cultural competency significantly predicted teacher’s use of responsive teaching practices with English language learners. Utilizing a multiple regression model, growth mindset and cultural competency did not predict teacher’s use of responsive teaching practices. However, by conducting an itemized analysis of the cultural competency survey, certain items stood out as potential predictors of responsive teaching practices. Results from this study suggest that the cultural competency …

Dual Language Effectiveness To Narrow Achievement Gaps: A Quantitative Correlational Study, Belinda Reyes Ed.D.

Journal of English Learner Education

An increase in the English learner (EL) population is evident in public schools throughout the United States. Academic achievement gaps between ELs and non-EL peers persist from early childhood through the post-secondary level (Florida Department of Education, 2019c). The gap in the literature is the lack of studies analyzing the language acquisition of ELs enrolled in dual language programs to narrow the achievement gap of ELs. Transformative Learning Theory and the Dynamic Systems Theory are the foundation of the theoretical framework. Key research questions seek data on the relationship between standardized assessments measuring language acquisition and academic performance of third-grade …

Implementation Of Culturally Relevant Teaching In Namibian Classrooms: Understanding Impediments And Identifying Assets, Fransisko Constantino

Education | Master's Theses

Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) is a teaching approach that can be utilized to improve academic outcomes among diverse student populations. Currently, however, there is a lack of research examining why some teachers struggle to implement CRP, particularly in educational contexts beyond the U.S. This study examined why there is a lack of implementation of CRP within combined schools in the Kavango East region of Namibia. More specifically, this study assessed the role of CRP within Namibian English Second Language (ESL) classrooms and examined how the experiences of ESL teachers affected their ability to implement CRP. In addition, this study explored …

Academic Literacy For Deaf Postsecondary Students Through Integrated Reading And Writing Instruction, Sue Livingston

Publications and Research

Based on theoretical findings from the literature on the integration of reading and writing pedagogies used with hearing postsecondary students to advance academic literacy, this article offers a model of instruction for achieving academic literacy in developmental and freshman composition courses composed of deaf students. Academic literacy is viewed as the product of acts of composing in reading and writing which best transpire through reciprocal rather than separate reading and writing activities. Pedagogical practices based on theoretical findings and teacher experience are presented as a model of instruction, exemplified as artifacts in online supplementary materials and juxtaposed with practices used …

Approaches To Narrative Instruction For Second Language Learners, Mathew Peters

MA TESOL Collection

Narratives have reemerged as a dominant form of rhetoric over the last fifty years. This dominant use of narrative discourse has only increased with the rise of social media. Walther Fisher (1987) proposed the narrative paradigm as a unifying theory of human communication. His major claim is that people are inherently storytellers and that people use a narrative rationality and a logic of good reasons to inform their beliefs, values, and actions. This paper utilizes his theories, along with recent findings in neuroscience, to establish an argument for greater inclusion of narratives into second language teaching. Narratives can have a …

Using Language Ideology, Social Positioning And Performativity To Assess Second Language Learning And Identity Transformation: A Qualitative Case Study Of Three Chinese Queer Immigrants In The U.S., Yih Ren

Master's Theses

This thesis aims to explore the directionality of the relationships between cultural identity, sexuality, ideology, and English learning. My study included three participants, and each represents a specific acculturating and immigrant group in the U.S., namely, international students, permanent residents (green card holders), and naturalized citizens. Language ideology and social positioning theory are employed to examine English hegemony and internalized oppression. I argue that English hegemony is ideological and reinforces further discrimination and social hierarchy; further, performativity provides a new cannon to view language production and acquisition as it shifts the emphasis from the technical processes of language acquisition to …

Students’ And Teacher Perceptions On The “Really Great Reading” Phonics Program And Its Effectiveness, Savanna Simmons

Masters of Education in Teaching and Learning

Choosing a phonics instructional approach to use in the classroom can be a difficult task for teachers, which is why many schools have started implementing specific phonics programs. The purpose of this study was to determine the student and teacher perceptions of the “Really Great Reading” phonics program and its effectiveness for helping students learn to read and spell. The study took place in a second-grade classroom with twenty in-person students and the classroom teacher. The researcher gathered data from surveys, interviews, and pre- and post-assessments. Qualitative data was analyzed using the constant comparative method and quantitative data was analyzed …

A Teacher's Guide To Plurilingual Pedagogy, Elisabeth Wichser-Krajcik

MA TESOL Collection

Language teaching practices have been dominated by monolingual, deficit approaches in which students are expected to compartmentalize languages, ignore prior knowledge, and emulate how natives speak the target language—though there have also been many teachers who have challenged these approaches through the years. Plurilingualism and plurilingual pedagogy reject such ideas and practices and instead seek to cultivate linguistic repertoires (including partial or uneven skills across languages), engage prior knowledge and lived experience, and develop metalinguistic and metacognitive competencies. Drawing on decades of research in applied linguistics and associated fields, plurilingual pedagogy aims to teach language in a way that is …

The Light Switch Of Language: Code-Switching, Cierra Johnson

Emerging Writers

Many students are held back from the opportunities life has to offer, simply because of language. This article examines the use of code-switching and argues that it could be the key to pulling all students together, giving them equal chances at success.

Defining Higher Education Writing Centers From The Perspectives Of Writing Center Directors, Paul D. Ludwig Mr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to discover what defines a writing center by interviewing directors of writing centers in the Southern Appalachian area. This qualitative study was based on a single round of recorded telephone interviews with 13 writing center directors who meet the criteria for inclusion in the study. Many researchers have written about writing centers, their efficacy, and what defines them; yet, no clear consensus exists. Without a clear definition there is no means of determining the efficacy of writing centers.

As a result of the interviews with the writing center directors three critical components of writing …

Implementing Instructional Scaffolding To Support Secondary Students' Abilities To Write Mathematical Explanations, Camry J. Cowan

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This study examined the implementation of an instructional scaffolding teaching strategy in the secondary mathematics classroom. An iterative process was used to implement an initial design of instructional scaffolding, reflect on its efficacy, and adjust the design as needed. The goal was to assist students in learning to write responses of high epistemic complexity, which is an indicator of the degree of conceptual understanding. A total of 94 responses written by 35 students in two high school Algebra 2 courses were analyzed for epistemic complexity. Across three iterations of the implementation of instructional scaffolding, students wrote at the highest levels …

Reframing The Pedagogical Underpinnings Of To Kill A Mockingbird: Queering A High School Text, Hovsep Hovannesian

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Given the current climate for social and political change in relation to identity and being, traditional high school texts like To Kill A Mockingbird are being rejected as degrading, out of touch, and even regressive and are being taken off the pedagogical shelf. This article pushes back on this outlook by suggesting that a more critical approach to such texts can make them not only useful but enlightening for the high school population asked to read them. Specifically, by proposing that high school pedagogy apply the foundations and frameworks of critical, identity-focused theories, like queer theory, to traditional high school …

The Effects Of Multiple Exemplar Instruction On The Textual Responding Of Secondary Students With Reading Delays, Ariana D’Arms

Dissertations

A majority of eighth-grade students in the United States read below a proficient level, which means that they may have difficulty reading and comprehending grade-level text. Research indicates that older struggling readers may be missing phoneme-related skills, which limits their ability to read proficiently. Unfortunately, there is little research examining strategies for establishing such skills in older struggling readers. Multiple exemplar instruction (MEI), which has benefited young readers with phoneme-related skill deficits, is an intervention that may also be effective for older struggling readers who need phonemic skills. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of …

Pedagogy Or Andragogy?: Which Teaching Method Produces Successful Esl Tutoring That Involves Musical Activities?, Julia Cormack

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Considering the connections between music and language, as well as Chi et al.’s (2001) theory, this thesis introduces an original case study investigation: which teaching method, pedagogy or andragogy, will be most effective in one-on-one ESL tutoring sessions that use music as source material? The term pedagogy often describes the art and science of teaching. However, its Greek roots refer to the method of the teacher leading the classroom. Meanwhile, andragogy describes a teaching method where the teacher engages with the students in the learning and leading; Greek for “leader of man,” andragogy most often refers to teaching adults. To …

Creativity Through Arts: Expanding Creativity For A New Fluency In Imaginative Thinking, Tanya M. Knudsen

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The Torrance Incubation Model beckons creativity into education. That was in 1961. Like the subconscious automatic and multidimensional act of breathing, and formulating language, creativity is within us, materializing on a Mobius Loop structure continually moving in and out of incubation, creation, and the shaping of outcome. Creativity is unique in that is both a verb and noun adding weight and value to its illusive form and potential. Creativity Through Arts expands the Torrance Incubation Model of Creative Teaching and Learning in an expressed combination of creativity and arts to immerse creativity into curricula, cracking a new code for finding …