Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Reciprocity In The Practice Of Publicly Engaged Scholarship – Reflections From A Transnational Literacy Project, Kate E. Kedley, Hector Efren Flores A.

College of Education Departmental Research

We examine the concept of “reciprocity” in publicly engaged literacy scholarship. The idea of reciprocity suggests that projects using a publicly engaged research model should be two-way partnerships with an effort given to balancing benefits to the researcher and to community partners. We (the researcher and the community partner) explore this dynamic by considering our own experiences working on a project with groups of youth in Honduras and in the United States. The groups share their cultures and experiences through writing and technology and challenge ideas about security and public space. Given the national, racial, cultural, economic, linguistic, and power …

An Examination Of Concepts Of School Readiness Among Parents And Educators In Ireland, Maire Mhic Mhathuna, Emer Ring, Noirin Hayes, Patsy Stafford, Siobhan Keegan, Cathy Kelleher, Martina Ozonyia, Mary Moloney, Deirdre Breathnach, Des Carswell, Des Mccafferty, Anne O'Keefe, Aisling Leavy, Ruth Madden

Reports

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs commissioned research through the Irish Research Council (IRC) to examine concepts of school readiness as they are understood by early years educators and managers, primary school principals, junior infant teachers and parents of children participating in the first Free Preschool Year in Ireland. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, involving interviews, an online survey and “draw and tell” sessions with children. Representative samples of FPSY settings and primary schools were selected and an online survey based on the findings of the qualitative phase was sent to 500 pre-primary settings and 500 primary schools. In …

Soft(A)Ware In The English Classroom: (Re)Framing Education For Equity: Acknowledging Outputs And Inputs In Literacies Education, Noah Asher Golden

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"The way that our field of English education frames what and, at times, who are problems requiring solutions is at the heart of meaningful teaching and learning. Software and digital technologies play a role in the framing that grounds current educational reform policies in and beyond our field; a framing that works both to obscure and perpetuate inequitable systems. Software and digital technologies contribute to seemingly neutral educational policies and practices that obscure issues of structural racism, opportunity and access, and the privileging of a limited understanding of what it means to be literate and educated."

Growing Effective Cld Teachers For Today’S Classrooms Of Cld Children, Gayla Lohfink, Amanda Morales, Gail Shroyer, Sally Yahnke

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

Using a case study design, this investigation examined the effective teaching characteristics of nontraditional, culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) student teachers placed in rural, elementary schools with high populations of Latino/a students. Data collected reflected high percentages of effective teaching characteristics in multiple domains with specific indicators reflective of consistent teaching over time. A discussion of these findings considered aspects within the distance-delivery model that facilitated the CLD participants’ development of effective teaching and noted (1) consistent leadership, (2) explicit teacher instruction within CLD school settings, and (3) the strong cohesive nature of the CLD participants’ cohort as positively affecting …

Profiles And Perspectives: Learning Through Descriptive Inquiry At The Cypress Hills Community School, Laura Ascenzi-Moreno, Cecilia M. Espinosa, Sarah Ferholt, Michael Loeb, Berky Lugo-Salcedo, Cecilia Traugh

Publications and Research

This paper describes the work of a collaborative study group on exploring the multiple literacies of students at one school in Brooklyn, NY. Through descriptive review, the group developed knowledge about how to support student language and bilingualism through responsive techniques.

The Attitudes Of Children With Specialized Language-Learning Needs Toward Process Writing, Kara M. Mcalister

Masters Theses

Students with specialized language-learning needs, who had participated in a computer-based writing lab at Western Michigan University, were interviewed regarding their knowledge about and attitudes toward a process approach to writing instruction. The students orally answered questions posed by the researcher in individual thirty-minute interviews. A Likert-type scale was used to measure the students' attitude toward process writing along with open-ended questions to investigate the students' knowledge about process writing. Qualitative techniques were used to analyze the data.

Responses to the knowledge questions indicated that the students have a better understanding of the meaning and purpose of author groups than …

The Relationship Between Gender Differences And Writing Topic Choices Of Middle School Students, Elisa B. Probst

Theses and Dissertations

This study was an investigative comparison of free writing topic choices between the genders. For the purposes of this study, twenty male and twenty female subjects were randomly selected from the seventh grade population of a junior high.

Over a period of four weeks, ten free writing samples were collected from each student's writing journal. Each sample was analyzed and placed in its appropriate category on Graves' Territorial Distribution Scale of Thematic Choices. A frequency count was conducted. Frequencies between the genders' topic choices were compared using a Chi Square test of significance. The Chi Square Analysis showed no significant …

Teacher Attitude And Teaching The Black Dialect Student To Write Using Standard English, Julia Holmes-Williams

Theses and Dissertations

This descriptive study examined the relationship between low achievement in writing and teacher attitudes, both positive and negative, toward nonstandard language use. The study also examined teacher attitude toward strategies to improve those skills. Finally, this study compared the methods selected to teach Black-dialect speakers with those selected to teach whites.

Participants in this study were language arts teachers in four rural Southwest Georgia counties. The data gathering Instrument was a Likert-scale questionnaire. Comparisons were made based on participants' years experience and level of training. The results indicated that these teachers were positive concerning the Black-dialect speakers' ability to write …