Educational Methods Commons^™

Using Standardized Test Reading Comprehension Software To Improve Student Academic Achievement In Reading Comprehension, Andy James Kubitza

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this quantitative design research study for fourth grade students was to examine whether a web-based Standardized Test Preparation Intervention for reading comprehension was more effective and efficient in improving student academic achievement in reading comprehension than a paper-based Standarized Test Preparation Intervention. It was found that the paper-based reading comprehension intervention was equally effective as the web-based.

21st Century Skills For 21st Century Learners, Jennifer Lynne Shopshear

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of the project was to develop and implement a survey for the purpose of better understanding how teacher's attitude affect their ability to achieve success and overcome challenges associated with the implementation of a 1 on 1 Learning Program. This project was intended to increase awareness as to how teachers currently use technology, their attitudes about the technology they use, and their perceptions as to how students will use technology. Research in this study affirms this can improve teacher/student achievements; promote creativity and motivation through effective communication. The significance of this project was to identify teacher's attitudes about …

Dual-Language Drama As A Door To Classic Literature, Ezekiel Glenn Stear

Theses Digitization Project

The author believes that the mediation of classic literature through drama would increase student's opportunity for academic success on the secondary and post-secondary levels of education. This project develops curriculum and materials using dramatic adaptations of ancient literature created by the author.

Creating A School Based Family Literacy Institute, Teresa Ann Cimino

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project is to assist parents, through the development of a school-based Family Literacy Institute, to learn to actively help their children when they read at home. The study will teach parents how to pick appropriate books for and with their children and use them as a read aloud. It is, also, to get parents involved with their children's literacy development and to support their educational experiences from elementary school through high school.

The Effects Of Experiential Learning: An Examination Of Three Styles Of Experiential Education Programs And Their Implications For Conventional Classrooms, Mary Pizarchik

Theses Digitization Project

Using methodologies of interviews and observation, this study focuses on three distinctive and successful kinds of experiential education: a summer arts program, an outdoor science program and a wilderness education program. The project applies insights from the programs to the central question of this thesis: How can experiential learning be utilized within the traditional classroom given the constraints of the No Child Left Behind Law and standardized teaching?

Increasing Fluency In Struggling Readers Through Newspaper Reading, Kimberly Bonice Koch

Theses Digitization Project

The focus on this study was on improving the oral reading fluency of third grade students who struggle in reading. One third grade teacher and six of her students participated in this 4 week study that examined the effect on fluency of newspaper reading and various constructive reading and engagement activites. These six students were assigned to an Optimal Learning Model pull-out fluency instruction using the newspaper as text. Results from the Developmental Reading Assessment instrument reveal significantly improved effects in the number if miscues, correct words per minute, and prosody for the six students. From the results, it is …

The Use Of Reciprocal Teaching As A Mediational Tool To Enhance Reading Comprehension, Luz Elena Nguyen

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project was to study how Reciprocal Teaching can best serve students in a third grade classroom for reading comprehension. A curriculum was developed to help the classroom teacher find a better way to teach reading comprehension using four important reading strategies: predicting, summarzing, clarifying and questioning. Several mediated tools were developed to enhance reading comprehension with clear explanations on how to implement Reciprocal Teaching with the current curriculum and California Standards on comprehension.

A Reading Apprenticeship Model For Improving Literacy: A Pre-Service Teacher Case Study, Divonna M. Stebick, Diana J. Pool, Jonelle Pool

Education Faculty Publications

A major challenge of today's standards-based assessment movement targets the need to address and improve the achievement of struggling readers. As teacher education programs must prepare content teachers to address the challenges of teaching students who lack reading skills, we need to prepare out pre-service teachers to help students make meaning while reading any text. To accomplish such a goal, comprehension instruction must be explicit, direct, and effective. As VanDeWeghe (2004b) notes, even though students may still need development as readers at the secondary level, there may be confusion surrounding where reading instruction is addressed in the secondary curriculum. After …

Online Problem-Based Learning Approach In Higher Education., Roisin Donnelly

Books/Book Chapters

This paper begins with a brief review of the history of problem-based learning (PBL) integrated with online learning, and surveys relevant learning theory, including constructivism and cognitivism. Recent case-study research on a postgraduate diploma module in learning and teaching for faculty and lecturers in higher education is then provided to illustrate the key issues for both faculty and students in this evolving area. Emerging trends in combining PBL and online learning are outlined, along with potential opportunity to continue to research the topic in a different light. The paper concludes with an overview of the research area, aspects of which …

Audio-Assisted Reading With Digital Audiobooks For Upper Elementary Students With Reading Disabilities, Kelli J. Esteves

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Audio-assisted reading has been used as an effective instructional intervention for students with learning disabilities (Carbo, 1978; Gilbert, Williams, & McLaughlin, 1996) and with struggling readers (Chomsky, 1976; Hollingsworth, 1978; Hoskisson & Krohm, 1974; Koskinen, Blum, Bisson, Phillips, Creamer, & Baker, 2000; Rasinski, 1990). The strategy involves reading along while listening to an audio recording of a fluent model (Evans, 1997).

The goal of this study was to compare the efficacy o f audio-assisted reading with digital audiobooks against the traditional practice of sustained silent reading in terms of reading fluency rates and reading attitude scores with upper elementary students …

Tying It All Together: Implications For Classrooms, Schools, And Districts, Ryan Flessner, Kenneth Zeichner, Kalani Eggington

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Ryan Flessner, Kenneth Zeichner, and Kalani Eggington's contribution to "Creating Equitable Classrooms through Action Research"

These - Are - The "Breaks": A Roundtable Discussion On Teaching The Post-Soul Aesthetic, Bertram D. Ashe, Crystal Anderson, Mark Anthony Neal, Evie Shockley, Alexander Weheliye

English Faculty Publications

We met at Duke University - mid-summer, in the mid Atlantic, at mid-campus - to talk about teaching courses that focused on the post-soul aesthetic. We met outside the John Hope Franklin Center, and soon enough we five youngish black professors were walking a hallway towards a conference room near the African and African American Studies program. Not at all surprisingly, the walls of the hallway were lined with framed photographs of the esteemed John Hope Franklin at various stages throughout his long and storied career. For me, given the topic I was about to raise among these professional colleagues, …

Experiential Programs: Best Practice: Effective Programs Are Experiential, Allison Brody

Education about the Environment

“Teaching by pouring in” refers to a medieval belief that we could teach people by drilling holes in the human head and, with a funnel, pour information into the brain. We laugh at this idea, yet we still see educators and interpreters use passive instruction to “fill up” the brains of their audiences.

Think back on how you learned to ride a bicycle. You took an action, saw the consequences of that action, and chose either to continue or to take a new and different action. What allowed you to master the new skill of riding a bicycle was your …

“I Was Bitten By A Scorpion”: Reading In And Out Of School In A Refugee’S Life, Loukia K. Sarroub, Todd Pernicek, Tracy Sweeney

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

A refugee student’s literacy practices are examined. Discrepancies between his in-school and out-of-school literacies highlight the tension he and his teachers experience.

The purpose of this study is to examine a high school boy’s experiences in an ELL language acquisition program, at home, and in the work place. Within these contexts, we explore Hayder’s participation in literacy events in light of his identity as a Yezidi Kurdish refugee in and out of school.

Our study indicates that reading instruction works for students such as Hayder when certain support structures are in place. Teaching “styles” matter, as does the content of …

Role Of Reflection In Facilitating Teachers For Gender Sensitive Political Literacy Instruction, Sadaf Furqan

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

This paper is written around the study that was initiated to analyze the challenges that students especially girls face in being developed as leaders in the political sphere. It was carried out to understand how a teacher educator could facilitate gender sensitive political literacy instruction in schools through action research. Reflection is embedded at every stage in Action Research. Reflection helps teachers in shifting the focus from what they teach to what students learn. The research process involved exploring, understanding and reflecting on teachers’ current perceptions and practices of gender sensitive political literacy instruction. Later, teachers were facilitated to teach …

Social Constructivist E-Learning: A Case Study, Michael K. Barbour, Peter Rich

Education Faculty Publications

This paper considers the use of Knowledge Forum to complete a curriculum-based project with students enrolled in asynchronous, web-based Advanced Placement courses in Canada and the United States. Knowledge Forum is an online database that promotes written interaction in a social constructivist environment. The paper looks at how students utilized the system to enhance learning, more so than traditional environments, at both lower-order and higher-order levels.

Jaepl, Vol. 13, Winter 2007-2008, Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Linda T. Calendrillo

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Essays

Bell Hooks. Writing for Reconciliation: A Musing

Devan Cook. The Value of Mutual Respect: What We Learn from Student Complaints .

This essay discusses the emotional labor of teaching and the ways writing programs can support that work.

Elizabeth Gardner, Patricia Calderwood, and Roben Toroysan. Dangerous Pedagogy

Using data primarily drawn from undergraduate psychology classes, we reflect upon what humane but "dangerous" pedagogy illustrates about our teaching and our students' learning.

Karen Surman Paley. Applying "Men and Women for Others" to Writing about Archeology.

This essay explores one archeology professor's pedagogy of caring during a summer field study …

The Value Of Mutual Respect: What We Learn From Student Complaints, Devan Cook

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This essay discusses the emotional labor of teaching and the ways writing programs can support that work.

Applying “Men And Women For Others” To Writing About Archeology, Karen Surman Paley

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This essay explores one archeology professor's pedagogy of caring during a summer field study of a former state school and orphanage.

The “Not Trying” Of Writing, Rachel Forrester

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

A very spiritual "not trying," or non-work, is at the heart of composition.

Front Matter

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Editors' Message

Whitman writes in "Reconciliation":

For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead, I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I draw near, Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

For Whitman, reconciliation is the "Word over all, beautiful as the sky," the deed that washes the world clean of the carnage of conflict. Without the act of reconciliation—the bringing together of that which …

Writing For Reconciliation: A Musing, Bell Hooks

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This musing grew out of the AEPL Summer Conference in Berea, Kentucky, June 2006, at which bell hooks was the keynote speaker.

Connecting, Helen Walker, Steven Degeorge, Johanna Rodgers, Jeremiah Conway

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Helen Walker. Connecting.

Steven DeGeorge —The Things They Bring to School .

Johanna Rodgers —Translating Authority

Jeremiah Conway —Emily's Cave

Dangerous Pedagogy, Elizabeth B. Gardner, Patricia E. Calderwood, Roben Torosyan

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Using data primarily drawn from undergraduate psychology classes, we reflect upon what humane but "dangerous" pedagogy illustrates about our teaching and our students' learning.

Reading Othello In Kentucky, Elizabeth Oakes, Heather Adkins, Maggie Brown, Carrie Carman, Gary Crump, Cle'shea Crain, Amanda Hayes, Tara Koger, Mike Sobiech, Chuck Williamson

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Members of a graduate Shakespeare class at Western Kentucky University discuss Otherness in the context of Othello and national perceptions of Kentucky.

The Other End Of The Kaleidoscope: Configuring Circles Of Teaching And Learning, Eudora Watson, Jennifer Mitchell, Victoria Levitt

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

To reflect on and participate in reconsideration of convention in academic discourse, this essay presents three voices in three genres.

Back Matter

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

No abstract provided.

Roles And Reflections : Using Team Teaching To Improve Literacy Teaching, Jennifer L. Frett

Graduate Research Papers

This article describes the development of a team teaching model by a first grade team consisting of classroom and Title 1 teachers. This project grew out of a study group designed to look at best practice in literacy education and evolved in response to student achievement data. Four factors influenced the progress of the project including peer collaboration and demonstration, professional reading, reflection by teachers and the facilitator, and leadership roles. The role of the facilitator receives special attention, as – unlike most efforts at classroom change involving a grade level team – this effort began within the team, and …

Synecdoche And Surprise: Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production, Anne Dalke, Elizabeth Mccormack

Literatures in English Faculty Research and Scholarship

Using contemporary insights from feminist critical theory and the literary device of synecdoche, we argue that transdisciplinary knowledge is productive because it maximizes serendipity. We draw on student learning experiences in a course on “Gender and Science” to illustrate how the dichotomous frameworks and part-whole correspondences that are predominant in much disciplinary discourse must be dismantled for innovative intellectual work to take place. In such a process, disciplinary presumptions interrogate and unsettle one another to produce novel questions and answers.

Development Of An E-Learning Module For Global Navigation Satellite Systemstraining, Eugene Mcgovern, Audrey Martin, Kevin Mooney

Conference Papers

The Global Positioning System (GPS) has been operational since the early 1990’s. The system is constantly being upgraded while the Russian GLONASS and the European GALILEO systems will complement GPS in the next few years. Generically, these satellite-based positioning systems are referred to as Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). Previously, a part-time evening course in GPS was run at the Technological University Dublin (DIT) by the Department of Spatial Information Sciences (DSIS). This is now being replaced by two e-learning modules in GNSS designed for distance-based, on-line delivery. The first module covers GNSS for navigation and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) …