Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

“How Come There’S No Spelling?”: What Spontaneous Comments Teach Us About Student Thinking During Vocabulary Learning Tasks, Susan J. Chambrè

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Vocabulary development remains an active and robust research area, yet little is known about what students, particularly young students, think during vocabulary learning. A commonly held assumption is that young learners employ few, if any, cognitive and metacognitive strategies when engaged in literacy tasks. Conversely, decades of research confirms that older learners with active metacognitive tools are better equipped to make meaning from text, of which vocabulary is a crucial component. To better understand the strategies and metacognitive actions young students make when learning vocabulary, student comments (N = 35) spontaneously produced during two experimental vocabulary learning tasks were reviewed …

Understanding Rural Communities: Crafting Local Inquiries As Praxis For Pre-Service Ela Students In Teaching Composition, Cathie English

The Rural Educator

This study focused upon a sequence of three inquiry assignments with pre-service teachers (PSTs) in English language arts in an advanced composition and theory methods course. Place conscious and critical literacy scholars argue for a deeper understanding of rural lifeways and note the deficit or lesser than assumptions associated with rural communities and the need to develop a critical rural literacy to address the specific needs of rural educators as well as address the long-standing stereotypes. This study’s purpose was to determine if these inquiry tools can be used to teach PSTs a critical literacy that can be applied in …

Why Word Problems Are Hard For High School Math Students: Problem Formulation And Disciplinary Literacy, Emily Charlotte Elliott

Senior Theses

This thesis is an extensive literature review designed to better understand the obstacles high school math students encounter when solving word problems (WPs). While many high school students find math difficult in general, students especially struggle with WPs. Often they are unable to provide correct solutions to WPs even when they are successful in solving computational problems using the same mathematical concepts (Cummins, 1988). Data from the 2007 National Survey of Algebra Teachers suggests that solving WPs is one of the skills that students are most unprepared for when entering Algebra 1 (Hoffer et al.). Additionally, many students try to …

The Impact Of Supplemental Phonemic Awareness Lessons On Phonological Awareness And Spelling Development Among Kindergarten And First Graders, Crystal Olinger

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Capstones

Reading is a developmental process that builds on complex cognitive processes and starts long before children enter school. This present study investigated the impact of supplemental phonemic awareness lessons on phonological awareness and spelling development among kindergarten and first graders. The Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP-2) measured phonological awareness. The Kindergarten Inventory of Developmental Spelling (KIDS) measured spelling development in kindergarten students. The Developmental Spelling Analysis (DSA) measured spelling development in first grade. Participants in the treatment group received 16 weeks of weekly word study instruction and 10-15 minute daily phonemic awareness instruction. A mixed design full factorial ANOVA …

Multilingual Zambia - Language Issues In Primary/Secondary Schools Of The Eastern/Southern Provinces, Kenzie Steiner

NUTR/GLST 498b: Global Research Experiences in Nutrition and Health

Introduction: Zambia is a multilingual country that uses 8 different languages for instruction including English and 7 other indigenous languages.

Methods: Survey research conducted between May-June 2022 on 6-7th graders within 9 Zambian schools. Classroom observations made and teachers interviewed.

Results: In Eastern and Southern Provinces, Zambian teachers speak an average of 5 languages while students speak an average of 2. Both teachers and students say English remains the most important language followed by first languages.

Conclusion: Continued research on language-in-education policies and impacts on student performance must be conducted if “One Zambia, One Nation” is meant to promote all …

Understanding The Relationships Between Social-Emotional Competency, Reading Fluency, Reading Comprehension, And Reading Achievement In Adolescent Students, David Phillips

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Capstones

The improvement of social-emotional factors is thought to help increase students’ achievement by 11% (Durlak et al., 2011). This current study is a descriptive study set in a rural setting, and it included 101 seventh and eighth-grade students. The study explored the relationship between social-emotional competency, reading ability, and reading achievement in adolescent students. Correlation results showed statistically positive relationships between reading measures and social-emotional measures except for social awareness and grit. Regression results revealed that social-emotional competencies explained from 7% to 36% of the variance in adolescent reading. Social-emotional competencies and reading ability measures together explained 51% to 53% …

Staying “Above The Fray” With Julia B. Lindsey’S Insights On Effective Reading Instruction, Troy Hicks, Emma Chappel, Kirstin Fish, Anne Hosking, Jill Johnston, Jodi Juergens, Georgianna Murray, Lindsay Picarski, Heidi Turchan, Meghan K. Block, Chad Waldron

Michigan Reading Journal

In this crowdsourced, collaborative book review, participants in an online book club share their insights on Julia B. Lindsey's 2022 Scholastic Professional text, Reading Above the Fray.

Centering Community In Disciplinary Literacy Implementation: One District’S Story, Jenelle Williams, Stacie Angel, Jennifer Wilcox, Angela Church

Michigan Reading Journal

In this article, the authors describe the various ways they have centered community while implementing disciplinary literacy in their district. They outline how the work began, the role of professional learning, and the systemic approaches that are effectively moving the work forward. This story offers an alternate approach to implementation--one that honors educators' expertise, differentiates approaches, and develops collective efficacy.

Reading Coaches For A 40 Book Challenge: Creating An Online Reading Community To Support Sixth Graders’ Independent Reading, Amy Carpenter Ford, Kayla Szymanski, Isabel Slate, Rachel Derusha

Michigan Reading Journal

English teacher candidates, or “Reading Coaches,” conducted virtual reading conferences with sixth graders using the digital platforms Zoom and Flip to support students’ independent reading as part of a 40 Book Challenge in an online and blended learning environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. As evidence of students’ participation and engagement, we present survey results and draw from conference records, observation notes, and a content analysis of video transcripts, triangulating across data sets to illuminate important design features. Connecting research with practice, we offer educators tangible resources of a Conference Guide, Flip design, record-keeping system, and training materials, as well as …

Why Not Sign? Classrooms As Sites Of D/Deaf And Multilingual Literacy Development, Dawnavyn James, Brianne R. Pitts

Michigan Reading Journal

While often, “bilingual” literacy instruction has overlooked the potential of incorporating ASL in classrooms (U.S.DPE, 2021), this article engages discussions of practice from a Missouri Kindergarten classroom to argue that teachers can improve student literacy outcomes by leveraging d/Deaf and hard of hearing multilingual learning (DML) strategies as a way of (re)imagining students’ multimodal literacy development. By engaging with a variety of strategies learned from DML students, readers may conceptualize DML inclusive classroom practices. Following a review of the literature and discussion, games, instructional strategies, and text recommendations for educators seeking DML inclusive literacy environments are provided.

Write The Book! How To Share Research And Promising Practices To Support Underserved Students, Douglas Rife

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

The needs of our students have grown exponentially in the last two years. Educators, community services and care givers are at a loss to support all of the academic, physical and emotional challenges our students are facing. Learn tips and processes for writing a book to share your research, experience and solutions to ensure the happiness and success of ALL students.

Envisioning Online English Teaching In Indonesia: A Digital Autoethnographic Account, Muhalim Muhalim

The Qualitative Report

The onset of the global pandemic has become a radical turn of brick-and-mortar schooling to online distance learning. In this respect, continuous dialogue, and evaluation around the issue of online learning should be nurtured, particularly from actual pedagogical practices. Drawing on a digital autoethnographic account of the author, this article explores everyday online English teaching in tertiary education. I collected data using textual, visual, and aural experiences, corroborated by Zoom auto-recorded chats and screenshots as the artefacts of my online learning and teaching activities. The data were analyzed using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework that focused on social, cognitive, …

The Impact Of Poverty Informed Faculty On Community College Student Success, Barbara J. Embacher

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Community college completion has been proven to be a ticket to a middle-class life. Moreover, we know that poverty causes educational barriers, including community college completion. Community colleges across the nation are identifying significant equity gaps between students from poor versus middle-class or affluent households. One solution to close equity gaps and increase student success rates for students experiencing poverty is to educate college faculty through professional development. This includes 1) information on the causes, myths, stereotypes, and other facts about poverty, 2) the impact poverty has on student achievement, and 3) instructional strategies that can help students experiencing poverty …

知源育利用のガイド, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

知源育を応用するための様々な角度からのヒントを学ぶことができるガイドです。実勢んをしながら、時々このガイドを参照することで、より高いレベルでの実践が可能になるでしょう。

Introduction To A Universal Performance Improvement Method (Chigen-Iku), Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

This brief article introduces a universal performance improvement method called Chigen-iku, which has been developed carefully and extensively over more than 25 years through more than 100 individual and group projects based on the principles that were selected through my doctorial study in the field of Instructional Psychology and Technology.

“I Feel Like I’M More Likely To Get Triggered, I Guess?”: A Poetry Cluster About Safety In Rape Culture Research, Amber Moore

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This paper offers and explores a poetry cluster of found list poems written from data collected in a feminist literacy education research study. The larger project examined secondary English teacher candidates’ responses to teaching and learning about sexual assault narratives from a trauma text set, as well as pedagogy for addressing sexual violence, rape culture, and Tarana Burke’s MeToo movement, in the literature classroom. The selected poems are raw, much like the subject matter they collectively speak to, and function together as micro collection that carry a particular politics: exploring what it means to resist rape culture as a witness …

Committing To Anti-Bias Anti-Racist Teaching: From Activity To Habits Of Mind, Tierney B. Hinman, Elizabeth Y. Stevens, Tess M. Dussling, Nance S. Wilson, Amy Tondreau, Wendy Gardiner, Kristen White, Sophie Degener

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

With the need to prepare teacher candidates to work with an increasingly diverse student body in U.S. schools, a multi-institutional collaborative self-study group was formed to examine ways in which teacher educators could expand beyond practice-based literacy preparation to support candidates’ understanding and implementation of critical pedagogies. The self-study served as a catalyst for interrogating the identities the teacher educators brought to their practice and began a journey that transformed a focus on critical literacies into a commitment to action for change through anti-bias anti-racist work. This paper draws from group dialogue and reflective journals to examine specific practices implemented …

Explanation Needed: Understanding The Low Graduation Rates Of Spanish-Speaking English Learners In Southeastern Louisiana, Alice I. Garcia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative research study used the case study method of one-on-one interviews to collect and examine the experiences of former English learners (ELs) who were unable to finish high school in southeastern Louisiana. This study aimed to identify specific factors that, using Everett Lee’s theory, pushed or pulled these ELs from school and affected their ability to graduate. The push factors that were identified included language, inadequate support, academic performance, discrimination, and lack of connection with school and culture. Pull factors that were identified included lack of prior education, immigration, poverty, pregnancy, being far from family, financially supporting family, and …

Report Highlights: Evaluation Of Australia's Investment In Teacher Development In Lao Pdr: Final Report (Lao Version), Debbie Wong, Hilary Hollingsworth, Prue Anderson, Payal Goundar, Agnes Mercer

Education Analytics Service

The Australian Government is supporting the Government of Lao PDR to undertake significant primary education reforms through its flagship Basic Education Quality and Access in Lao PDR program (BEQUAL), including a new primary curriculum. Phase 1 of BEQUAL (2015-22) supported the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) to rollout the new primary curriculum in schools, starting with Grade 1 (G1) in 2019. Specific teaching practices were introduced, including active learning, student-centred learning approaches, formative assessment, and a phonics approach to teaching reading. New practices were complemented by face-to-face orientation training and grants in BEQUAL target districts to strengthen communities of …

Teacher Development Multi-Year Study Series. Report Highlights. Vanuatu: Final Report (Bislama Version), Elizabeth Cassity, Debbie Wong, Jevelin Wendiady, Jennie Chainey

Education Analytics Service

The Australian Government is supporting the Government of Vanuatu (GoV) through its Vanuatu Education Support Program (VESP) to undertake long-term education reforms. A key focus is the rollout of a new national curriculum in conjunction with the National Language Policy (2012), intended to introduce new content and pedagogies, better sequence content, and support the use of Bislama or the vernacular in the early grades. Together, these reforms are intended to improve teaching quality and student learning outcomes. The multi-year study was commissioned by the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), to investigate teaching and learning development initiatives …

Teacher Development Multi-Year Study Series. Report Highlights. Vanuatu: Final Report, Elizabeth Cassity, Debbie Wong, Jevelin Wendiady, Jennie Chainey

Education Analytics Service

The Australian Government is supporting the Government of Vanuatu (GoV) through its Vanuatu Education Support Program (VESP) to undertake long-term education reforms. A key focus is the rollout of a new national curriculum in conjunction with the National Language Policy (2012), intended to introduce new content and pedagogies, better sequence content, and support the use of Bislama or the vernacular in the early grades. Together, these reforms are intended to improve teaching quality and student learning outcomes. The multi-year study was commissioned by the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), to investigate teaching and learning development initiatives …

Addressing Equity And Antiracism In A Reading Specialist Program, Sophie Degener, Tina Curry, Mary Hoch, Gloria Mcdaniel-Hall, Ruth Quiroa, Courtney Brookins

NCE Research Residencies

This study deeply examined the Reading Master’s program at our university to understand better how the program itself and the courses within it perpetuated or pushed back on oppressive approaches to reading instruction, assessment, and intervention and how we could make program and course revisions to reflect anti-bias/anti-racist beliefs. We utilized a case study approach, seeking feedback from all involved in or impacted by our program. Beginning with self-study, we (the researchers) met monthly to discuss shared readings on equity-focused topics and interrogate our teaching to understand how our pedagogy and course assignments and readings either upheld or resisted racist …

In Plain Sight: Oppressive Dynamics And Learning Challenges In Adult Esol Programs In The United States, David A. Housel

Publications and Research

A previous convergent mixed methods study conducted by the author revealed that, based on their preservice preparation and access to in-service professional development, instructors of adult emergent bi/multilingual learners (EBLs) in the United States often felt ill-equipped to address the oppressive dynamics and learning challenges that might manifest in their adult ESOL classrooms. This follow-up interview study explored the prevalence of these oppressive dynamics, such as racism, sexism, and linguicism, and learning challenges, such as neurodiversity, and investigated how preservice preparation, continuous professional development, program administration, and the field of TESOL might address these issues more consistently and equitably. Semi-structured …

What Counts As Literacy In The Polytechnic Hispanic Serving Institution? Culturally Sustaining Frameworks For Writing Assignments, Assessment, And Language Use, Lisa Tremain, Jill Anderson, Beth Eschenbach, Nicolette Amann, Kerry Marsden

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article theorizes and describes classroom pedagogies that support the development of students’ disciplinary literacies through culturally sustaining, socially just approaches. Drawing primarily from the framework of culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSP) (Paris, 2012; Alim, Paris & Wong, 2020), the authors suggest strategies for writing assignment and assessment designs that support students’ multilingual and multiliterate ways of knowing. These strategies intentionally invite and integrate students’ multiple ways of knowing and being in and outside of the polytechnic HSI. They also ask instructors to decenter the ways that whiteness operates in their curricula and programs. The authors conclude the article by arguing …

In-House Efforts To Enhance Pre-Service Language Teachers’ Intercultural Competence, Nur Gedik Bal

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The goal of the current study was to ascertain pre-service English language teachers’ impressions of the impact of thematic speaking tasks on the development of their intercultural competence in an online Spoken English course. Moreover, the effect of certain demographic variables on pre-service teachers’ cultural intelligence (CQ) was also investigated. The findings revealed a significant difference between the CQ of students with and without overseas experience. Pre-service teachers who could speak languages other than their mother tongue and English had significantly higher CQ scores than students who could not speak other languages. However, there was not a significant difference between …

Student Teachers As Readers: The Reading Experiences And Reading Pedagogy Of Finnish And British Student Teachers, Juli-Anna Aerila, Merja Kauppinen, Teresa Cremin, Mari Siipola, Sarah Jane Mukherjee, Johanna Lähteelä

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

As the pedagogy of teachers depends partly on their earlier life experiences, investigating the prior reading practices of student teachers is crucial. This study investigated Finnish and English student teachers’ (N = 353) own reading, the importance of their own reading to their reading pedagogy, and the relationship of these to teachers’ content knowledge of reading pedagogy. The data were collected via an online questionnaire and analysed via quantitative methods. According to the findings, nearly all the student teachers enjoy reading, have a positive attitude towards reading, and consider the teachers’ own reading important for the pedagogy they implement. However, …

Removing The Masc: Dismantling Gendered Occupations Through Social Work Education, Austin M. Raines

DSW Capstone Projects

The “Masculine mystique” refers to a psychological mask that men wear, enabling them to maintain power and distance themselves from traits associated with femininity” (Kahn, 2009, p. 283). This capstone project seeks to solve the Social Work Grand Challenge of improving the lives that hegemonic masculinity harms and limits. It emphasizes the relationship between the two areas of life (work-home), once thought to exist in different realms but are today more interwoven than ever (Lin & Burgard, 2018; Sok et al., 2014). Men have higher rates of traumatic injuries and exposure to significant physical risks, violence hazards, and stricter normative …

Student With Twice-Exceptionalities Iep Meeting Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

General education teachers should remember that all students are general education students, first. We need to be prepared to work with students of all abilities in our classrooms. As general education teachers, we have an active role on a child’s IEP team and an active role during the IEP meeting. This assignment asked preservice teachers to develop a script of what they would say at an IEP meeting of one character from four different novels that would be considered a child with twice-exceptionalities.

The Journey Box: Promoting Language Development While Exploring One’S Identity, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

A Journey Box allows students to explore and share their family’s historical narrative using primary sources like interviews and artifacts. Students explore different facets of their own family’s history and journey to America while engaging in a larger shared experience among classmates to understand different perspectives. The Journey Box develops oral and written language skills while supporting individual’s exploration of their culture and identity.

Journey “Box” Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

The Journey “Box” allows preservice teachers to explore and share their own historical narrative as they different aspects of their own family’s journey to America. The Journey “Box” first asks preservice teachers to explore themes by reading children’s literature and then positions preservice teachers as interviewers as they seek out different facets of their family’s historical narrative from members of their family. Preservice teachers then use their experience with a Journey “Box” to design an inquiry that could be used in their field experience. The Journey “Box” integrates social studies standards and best practices with ELA standards.