Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Best Practices In Assessment And Evaluation Of Literacy At The Secondary Level, Meaghan Kathleen Johnson

Graduate Research Papers

Research over the century has shown that grading practices in schools, especially at the secondary level, are commonly inconsistent, unreliable, and invalid amongst teachers. Grades have a large impact on students’ futures, determining scholarships, colleges, and career paths. Therefore, it is important that assessment and evaluation practices are consistent, reliable, and fair. This paper contains a review of research on the reasons for discrepancies in grading practices, followed by what research suggests is best practice for fair and reliable assessment and evaluation practices. Finally, these findings have been combined to develop a presentation on best practices in assessment and evaluation …

A Narrative Research Study Of Self-Selected Tracking On Motivation In 10th Grade English Language Arts Classes, Audra Greuel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The practice of tracking has had longstanding negative impacts on students, especially students in lower academic tracks. This research suggests that tracking develops the themes of a narrative of deficit through inequality and exclusion and impedes student motivation due to the negative implications. A common finding of outside research studies was that of disapproval for the current school organizational structure of tracking due to the negative consequences on students. Furthermore, several research studies developed an outline of positive ways to advocate for a unifying system of educational change. Educational leaders should heed the suggestions of researchers to promote changes within …

Beating The Bamboozle: Literacy Pedagogy Design And The Technicality Of Sfl, Erika Matruglio

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper explores the issue of metalanguage and writing instruction in the senior secondary curriculum. It reports on the use of a design based research collaboration between a very experienced teacher of Ancient History and a research team with the aim of improving literacy outcomes for a group of disadvantaged students. The case highlights some of the challenges implicated in this close work between educational linguistic theorists as language specialists and classroom practitioners as subject specialists. In particular, it raises the issue of how to provide already experienced teachers with a metalanguage to express their implicit knowledge about text more …

Emergent Bilinguals And Academic Language Acquisition Through The Use Of Sentence Frames, Leah Clougherty

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Emergent bilinguals are a growing demographic in the United States, but little research has been completed on certain aspects of language acquisition, such as the commonly known practice of using sentence frames as a means for academic language acquisition in the middle school classroom. In order to learn more about practices being implemented within my own classroom and to add to the body of research on academic language acquisition, I analyzed the effectiveness of student writing with and without use of sentence frames within the existing curriculum in a pilot study utilizing a mixed methods approach.

Poetically Composed, Educationally Imposed: Exploring Imagination And Poetics In Curriculum—A Memoir, Whitney J. Presnal

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Through the use of memoir, my work centers on how poetry is situated within public education curriculum. I explore the curricular context of poetry through the lenses of my lived experiences in early childhood, as a K-12 student, and as an early career classroom teacher. My dissertation draws upon a wide array of literature, honing in on the poetic perspectives of philosophers (Aristotle, 1996; Heidegger, 1947 & 1971/2013; Plato, 1955/2007), poets (Hall, 2003; Eliot, 1920 & 2009), and curriculum theorists (Leggo, 1997 & 2018; Pinar, 1994; Sameshima, 2007). The foundation of my work is drawn from my own circular experiences, …

“I Don't Read No Books”: How Teachers Can Use Students' Literacy Stories To Change Literacy Lives, Stephanie J. Malone

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

Practitioner knowledge, as the center for change in teacher education, is the heart of The Carnegie Project of the Educational Doctorate (CPED) program. Margaret Lata and Susan Wunder explain a key principle of CPED is to grow practitioners as change agents, through the development of a Problem of Practice. In their article, Investing in the Formative Nature of Professional Learning: Redirecting, Mediating, and Generating Education Practice-as-Policy (2012), they discuss how the capstone product that evolves from this Problem of Practice should impact the professional field by producing knowledge that informs and changes professional practice.

This Dissertation in Practice, “I …

Hermeneutic Phenomenological Interviewing: Going Beyond Semi-Structured Formats To Help Participants Revisit Experience, Alexandra A. Lauterbach

The Qualitative Report

Phenomenological research traditionally involves multiple focused interviews that rely on the participants’ memories and reflections to revisit experiences. There are many other interview formats that have the potential to support participants in this process by instead engaging with the phenomenon as it presents itself to their consciousness. In this paper, I present an example of how multiple interview formats, including think-aloud, stimulated recall, and semi-structured were used in a hermeneutic phenomenology study exploring expert teachers’ perceptions of teaching literacy within their content area to secondary students with learning disabilities. I provide example protocols in which I used multiple interview formats …

Empowering Indigenous Learners Through The Creation Of Graphic Novels, Deborah Begoray, Alexis Brown

Journal of Media Literacy Education

In this paper, we examine how Indigenous and non-Indigenous adolescents identify media influences as health/wellness related. We conducted research over a six-week period in two alternative high school settings: a culture-based Indigenous education program at one school and an arts-based program at another school, both in the same small, Western Canadian city. We taught students from both programs the principles of critical media health literacy. Small groups of students from the Indigenous program wrote narratives. Then small groups of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in an arts-based education program converted these stories into graphic novel/comic book format. Findings indicated a broad …

“Higher” School: Nineteenth-Century High Schools And The Secondary-College Divide, Amy J. Lueck

English

This article traces the emergence of nineteenth-century U.S. high schools in the landscape of higher education, attending to the gendered, raced, and classed distinctions at play in this development. Exploring differences in the conceptualization and status of high schools in Louisville, Kentucky, for white male, white female, and mixed-gender African American students, this article reminds us of how these institutional types have been situated, socially inflected, and structured in relation to broader political and power structures that transcend explicit pedagogical considerations. As a result, I argue for the recognition of high schools as historically significant sites in the history of …

Young Adult Book Review - Americanized: Rebel Without A Green Card, Danielle M. Butcher

The Journal of Balanced Literacy Research and Instruction

No abstract provided.

School Climate: A Comparison Of Teachers, Students, And Parents, James A. Jacobs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to examine the benefits of positive school climate and to measure the perceptions of school climate for intermediate grades in a Northeast Tennessee School district. An online school climate survey was used to collect responses from participants in intermediate grades and focused on the 3 major components of school climate: school engagement, school environment, and school safety. Data were collected for 2 consecutive years in 2016-2017 and 2017-2018. Response totals included 1,955 student responses, 116 teacher responses, and 210 parent responses that were analyzed and used for this study. Of the student totals, some students that …

Advanced College Credit Pathways: Six Undergraduates Reflect On Their Journeys As Writers, Candence Malhiet Robillard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study explored the writing habits and behaviors of six undergraduate students who earned advanced college credit from the International Baccalaureate diploma, Advanced Placement exam scores, or through dual enrollment partnerships with accredited colleges. Using narrative and case study methods, the study investigated the relationship between high school advanced credit composition courses and the requirements of undergraduate writing. At the time of the study the participants had already completed a minimum of three semesters of study on a college campus.Participants met a total of three times over the course of one semester. Inreflecting on their experiences and in sharing their …

Effects Of An Elementary Immersion Program On Academic Achievement In Core Subject Areas, Marlee Schmidt

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This study sought to find out if students who became bilingual score

higher, lower, or the same on standardized tests as their monolingual peers across

multiple disciplines. An answer was obtained by comparing the Minnesota

Comprehensive Assessment scores of Spanish language immersion students to

scores of non-immersion students for the following subject areas: reading in

grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10; math in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11; and science

in 5, 8, and high school. The scores used came from a graduating class of 2018

with approximately 342 students. Data was analyzed …

Impact On Student Learning: Monitoring Student Progress, Deanna T. Vaccaro, Laura D. Sabella

Journal of Practitioner Research

Monitoring each individual student’s learning can be a challenge. It is easy for a teacher to ask the whole group a question, but doing so is not an effective strategy to determine an individual student’s progress. In Florida, student teachers are required to ask the question, “What is my impact on student learning?” as a part of his/her final internship experience. This study takes place in the final internship of a Secondary English Education major’s eleventh grade English Honors class at a high performing, high achieving high school in one of the largest school districts in the country. A class …

The Effects Of Teacher Coaching In The Lincing Routine On The Vocabulary Knowledge Of Secondary Students With Disabilities, Dana W. Cho

Communication Disorders & Special Education Theses & Dissertations

A pretest-posttest time series design controlling for teacher coaching was used to evaluate the effects of the LINCing Routine to support secondary students with disabilities while increasing students’ vocabulary knowledge. Two special education teachers and 26 secondary students with disabilities participated in this study. Student performance was investigated in terms of increased accurate use of the LINCing Routine and overall improvement of vocabulary knowledge while controlling for teacher coaching. The dependent variable increased and remained stable throughout intervention. Pretest and posttest results were also favorable. Students reported average social validity while teachers reported high social validity for the intervention. The …

The Stress Management Handbook: The High-Stakes Test Takers Of International Students, Shiying Sun

Master's Projects and Capstones

This article provides a brief overview of the current situation that high-stakes test takers are facing. A common problem the high-stakes test taker is experiencing is that they have to deal with tremendous pressure by themselves which could be caused by the test, the preparation process, the teachers and the parents. In results, their test performance could be affected, the decline of their mental health condition associated with the increasing stress level, and those issues could eventually escalate into suicide and physical violence. To shed light on those issues, the author developed a stress management handbook by choosing one of …

Video Games And Virtual Reality As Classroom Literature: Thoughts, Experiences, And Learning With 8th Grade Middle School Students, Miles M. Harvey

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This qualitative study utilized video games and virtual reality in an eighth-grade public middle school media literacy elective classroom in which the head researcher was also the official teacher for the students in the study. The nineteen students and their teacher used video games in small groups for five consecutive weeks. The teacher and nineteen students recorded data about their thoughts, experiences, and learning as they played in the classroom. Students responded to open-ended reader-response questions about their experiences after playing video games each day for forty-five minutes. Students reflected about their experiences in a thought journal. The teacher responded …

Effects Of Quizlet On Vocabulary Mastery, Suzanne C. Baptist

Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to answer three research questions: Do 11th grade students in an inclusion class (students with and without disabilities) that use Quizlet to master vocabulary words outperform students taught with a more traditional approach on vocabulary quizzes? Do the results differ for students with disabilities compared to typically developing students? And, Do students enjoy and benefit from completing the Quizlet treatment for mastering vocabulary? In a two group, counterbalanced design, students in each group received a different treatment. Group 1 used index cards and group 2 used Quizlet as a treatment for learning and mastering vocabulary; the groups …

Supporting English Language Learners Inside The Mathematics Classroom: One Teacher’S Unique Perspective Working With Students During Their First Years In America, Amy Marie Fendrick

Research and Evaluation in Education, Technology, Art, and Design

Reflecting upon my personal experiences teaching mathematics to English Language Learners (ELL) in a public high school in Lincoln, Nebraska, this essay largely focuses on the time I spent as the only Accelerated Math teacher in my school building. From 2012 – 2017, I taught three different subjects at this high school: Advanced Algebra, Algebra, and Accelerated Math. This essay highlights why I chose to become a math and ELL teacher, as well as the challenges, issues, struggles, and successes I experienced during my time teaching. I focus on the challenges I faced teaching students who did not share my …

Video Composition, Creative Discourse, And Facilitated Freedom: A Teacher's Journey To Reveal Student Potential, Michael A. Brinkmeyer

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This research project was conducted in response to students’ lack of engagement in traditional modes of instruction and composition in a high school English Language Arts course. In order to better understand students as creative composers of knowledge, this research project asked students to engage in the video production process in collaborative groups. The research was conducted over the course of eight class periods in three different sections of Junior-level English Language Arts courses. Analysis of the data from this study reveals three important findings: 1) students respond well to creative and relevant performance assessments; 2) students’ collaborative conversations, or …

“All The Kids We Are Most Concerned About”: Putting The At-Risk At Greater Risk By Teaching To The Common Core, Brian White, Lindsy Matteoni

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

A major, stated goal of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for the English Language Arts (ELA) is to provide equal, quality education in literacy for all students in order to reduce opportunity gaps and to prepare high school graduates of all backgrounds and all levels of ability for the demands of college and career. The authors of the CCSS claim that the ELA Standards raise the literacy bar for all students without either constituting a literacy curriculum or dictating literacy pedagogy. However, in both their publications and their public presentations, the CCSS authors have consistently denigrated certain teaching strategies …

What Will You March For?, Erinn Bentley, Madison Workman

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Every single day people in this country are advocating – from protesting racism, to fighting for or against legislation, to holding large scale marches in Washington, D.C., to posting a simple Tweet. In this article, two educators will describe how they transformed a "traditional" research paper into a project focused on real-world advocacy. In this project, students analyzed effective persuasive writing in a variety of mediums, conducted research on a topic of personal interest, and composed both a traditional research paper and a protest medium focused on their chosen topic.

Teaching Peer Feedback As Ethical Practice, Derek Miller, Troy Hicks, Susan Golab

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Even with weeks of building a classroom community and deliberate instructional scaffolding, students may not engage in thoughtful peer review. One teacher discovers how he must place a deep, intentional value on the feedback itself—and the writers who provided it to one another.

Advocating For The Affective: Writing Hope Into School Spaces, Nicole Sieben

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Several scholars in the field of English education advocate for student voice and emotion to take precedence in our English language arts (ELA) classrooms. Because emotions are inextricably tied to learning processes (Smagorinsky, 2017), we know that we cannot effectively teach English language arts unless we consider the affective components of our students’ educational experiences. When students are given opportunities to access the deepest parts of themselves, they can then begin to unpack their full potentials as critical readers, writers, and thinkers in the world. This piece provides several frameworks and strategies for teaching with affective advocacy in mind in …

A Blend Of Absurdism And Humanism: Defending Kurt Vonnegut’S Place In The Secondary Setting, Krisandra R. Johnson

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

This essay argues that Kurt Vonnegut blends a unique humanist stance into his absurdist plots and characters, ultimately urging readers to confront the absurd with a kindness and human decency his protagonists often find rare. As a result of this absurd and humanist synthesis, I defend and promote Vonnegut’s place in the secondary English curriculum, despite his rank on many banned books lists, since his characters’ journeys correlate thematically with the growth and process of postmodern adolescents and encourage moral responsibility without sentimental manipulation.

Focusing on Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and Slaughterhouse-Five as primary sources, specifically …

Historical Traditions And Critical Perspectives: An Exploration Of The Textual And Pedagogical Choices Of Four Language Arts Teachers In An Urban, Diverse Secondary School, Annmarie L. Sheahan

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Even as current critical research in the teaching of English calls for a widening of traditional secondary texts and curricula choices, the presence of certain district, local, and state policies continue to permeate classrooms in extensive and oppressive ways that have limited the literature, the instructional strategies, and the autonomy that teachers bring into educational spaces. This qualitative study examines the pedagogical choices of four secondary language arts teachers within the framework of both historical and critical perspectives on the teaching of literature and within the realities of a high-stakes, evaluative teaching environment. Utilizing participatory action research (PAR) and collaborative …

Lumos Literacy: Utilizing Harry Potter As A Guide For English Language Learners, Kayla Punt

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This research paper and project looks at teaching literacy in a 9^th grade Standard English classroom with accommodations for high-level English Language Learners through JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It explores three schools of thought surrounding ESL education: transitional bilingual education, developmental bilingual education, and two-way immersion, and then uses this information to guide a full unit plan, complete with assessments, a lesson map for 20 days, and two appendixes of lesson plans. Drawing inspiration from Parker Palmer (1997), Lourdes Ortega (2013), and Kylene Beers (2003), the unit focuses on the engaging elements of Harry Potter …

Mirrors & Maps: Using Ya Literature To Navigate Risks In Adolescent Life, Lesley Roessing

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

YA literature allows adolescents to mirror themselves in books, safely discussing problems in their lives through conversations about how characters handle/mishandle problems. Novels provide maps to navigate risks and issues experienced by teens. The presenter, a former middle-grades teacher and author of No More “Us” and “Them,” teaches Bibliotherapy and will share Young Adult novels/memoirs and strategies that focus discussions on risks contemporary adolescents face.

Blind Date Poetry: Introducing Poetry To Today’S High School Students, Amy Rottmann

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

This study examined an early college high school English teacher's instructional method of introducing poetry through Blind Date Poetry. Blind Date Poetry was created by the teacher to introduce her students to 25 poems in a 90-min class session. The study was to find if the poetry introduction engaged and motivated students to learn poetry. The collected data showed that students preferred autonomy, quick decision-making, and personal interest when being introduced to poetry. Also, the instructional method increased students’ engagement and motivation to learn about the poems they had chosen.

A Program For Teacher Induction, Patricia Lager 7701725, Katherine Bertolini

Empowering Research for Educators

Even though many novice teachers are prepared academically to deal with subject matter, many of them enter the teaching field unprepared for many of the other aspects of teaching such as dealing with grading programs, insurance claims, inventory and various other matters that differ from school-to-school. Often these new teachers feel isolated and unsupported and possibly do not realize what they do not know or the proper questions to ask. This results in nearly 29% of them leaving the field within their first three years and around 39% leaving within their first five years. This project proposes creating a teacher …