Matching Items (6)
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- All Subjects: Reading Instruction
- Creators: Blasingame, James
- Creators: Moses, Lindsey
Description
ABSTRACT This mixed methods study examines 126 community college students enrolled in developmental reading courses at a mid-sized Southwestern community college. These students participated in a survey-based study regarding their reading experiences and practices, social influence upon those practices, reading sponsorship, and reading self-efficacy. The survey featured 33 structured response prompts and six free response prompts, allowing for both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The study¡&brkbar;s results reflected the diverse reading interests and practices of developmental college students, revealing four main themes: -the diversity and complexity of their reading practices; -the diversity in reading genre preferences; -the strong influence of family members and teachers as reading sponsors in the past with that influence shifting to friends and college professors in the present; and, -the possible connection between self-efficacy and social engagement with reading. Findings from this study suggest these college students, often depicted as underprepared or developmental readers, are engaging in diverse and sophisticated reading practices and perceive reading as a means to achieve their success-oriented goals and to learn about the real world.This study adds to the limited field of community college literacy research, provides a more nuanced view of what it means to be an underprepared college reader, and points to ways community college educators can better support their students by acknowledging and building upon their socio-culturally influenced literacy practices. At the same time, educators can advantage students academically in terms of building their cultural capital with overt inculcation into disciplinary literacies and related repertoires of practice. Keywords: college students, reading, sponsorship, multimodal reading practices, developmental education, social networking, and literacy
ContributorsKiefer, Cynthia (Author) / Early, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Blasingame, James (Committee member) / Marsh, Josephine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Gendered language has been a topic of study for centuries. The most recent efforts to promote inclusive language have been championed by parents, teachers, and social reformers over the last thirty years. Replicating in part a research study that was done over thirty years ago, this study examines what effects have taken place in children's perceptions of male and female roles in regards to specific activities and occupations and how their perceptions compare to the current work force, what role children's literature has played in these changes, and what children's natural speech in describing personified animals can tell us about their subconscious gender labeling. The results were remarkable in two ways: native language evidently exudes little emphasis on pronoun choice, and children are more readily acceptable of gender equality than that portrayed in either Caldecott winning children's books or real life as seen through current labor statistics.
ContributorsArter, Lisa Maxwell (Author) / Nilsen, Alleen (Thesis advisor) / Blasingame, James (Committee member) / Grace, Judy (Committee member) / Mathur, Sarup (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
How hard should the books be in elementary small-group reading? This study explored text difficulty for bilingual students reading below grade level in third grade. Using a convergent parallel mixed methods design, I used qualitative methods to analyze students’ engagement and discussion during small groups and single case design to evaluate students’ fluency and reading comprehension after reading and discussing texts in small groups.
Six Spanish-English bilingual students, split into two groups of three, participated in twelve, 30-minute, small-group reading sessions. Students in Group 1 read approximately one year below grade level, and students in Group 2 read approximately a year and a half below grade level. In six of the twelve sessions, students read and discussed texts matched to their reading levels, and in the other six they read and discussed texts one year ahead of their reading levels. I assigned matched and difficult texts across the twelve days by blocked randomization.
I analyzed video transcripts of each session to understand students’ engagement (focus of engagement, strategies, and interaction) and discussion (inferential vs. literal responses, instances of verbal participation). At the end of each session, students reread and retold the book the group had read and discussed that day to produce a fluency (words correct per minute) and comprehension (ideas correctly retold) score.
Findings were complex and revealed that different levels of texts have both advantages and drawbacks. Key findings included: For fluency, half of the students benefited from matched texts. The other half read difficult texts with similar fluency to matched texts. For comprehension, text difficulty did not matter for anyone except one student, and for him it only had an effect on 3 of 12 days. Group 2 engaged much more with texts and ideas in difficult books and with pictures in matched books. Group 1 had more inferential/interpretive responses with matched texts, and Group 2 had more inferential and interpretive responses with difficult texts. Most students participated evenly regardless of the difficulty of the text under discussion. However, two students talked more when discussing matched texts.
Six Spanish-English bilingual students, split into two groups of three, participated in twelve, 30-minute, small-group reading sessions. Students in Group 1 read approximately one year below grade level, and students in Group 2 read approximately a year and a half below grade level. In six of the twelve sessions, students read and discussed texts matched to their reading levels, and in the other six they read and discussed texts one year ahead of their reading levels. I assigned matched and difficult texts across the twelve days by blocked randomization.
I analyzed video transcripts of each session to understand students’ engagement (focus of engagement, strategies, and interaction) and discussion (inferential vs. literal responses, instances of verbal participation). At the end of each session, students reread and retold the book the group had read and discussed that day to produce a fluency (words correct per minute) and comprehension (ideas correctly retold) score.
Findings were complex and revealed that different levels of texts have both advantages and drawbacks. Key findings included: For fluency, half of the students benefited from matched texts. The other half read difficult texts with similar fluency to matched texts. For comprehension, text difficulty did not matter for anyone except one student, and for him it only had an effect on 3 of 12 days. Group 2 engaged much more with texts and ideas in difficult books and with pictures in matched books. Group 1 had more inferential/interpretive responses with matched texts, and Group 2 had more inferential and interpretive responses with difficult texts. Most students participated evenly regardless of the difficulty of the text under discussion. However, two students talked more when discussing matched texts.
ContributorsKelly, Laura Beth (Author) / Jimenez-Silva, Margarita (Thesis advisor) / Moses, Lindsey (Thesis advisor) / Restrepo, Laida (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This educational case study looked at student engagement and motivation in a collaborative environment, one that provided students the freedom to be critical thinkers and problem solvers. In order to create this collaborative environment, students in a third-grade elementary classroom participated in a Project-Based Learning unit. The unit culminated in hands-on projects. Sociocultural theory and Self Determination theory were used to guide the development of the innovation and the formulation of the research design. The qualitative data collection tools that were used in this study consisted of observations through video and audio recordings, researcher's field notes, student interviews, and artifacts. The artifacts gathered consisted of student journal entries reflecting on their experiences within the innovation and their learning process throughout. Data were collected, transcribed, and analyzed using multiple rounds of both deductive and inductive coding. This research suggests that a Project-Based Learning environment positively impacts student participation both within a single lesson and throughout the unit by increasing students’ background and competence. Additionally, within a Project-Based Learning environment, students co-construct new meaning through goal-oriented group work designed by the teacher. The teacher also supports student thinking through clarifying and questioning statements designed to support students’ learning and development of ideas. Finally, this educational case study suggests that students demonstrate an increase in intrinsic motivation over time as demonstrated by an eagerness to apply their new learning beyond the Project-Based Learning lessons. Students applied the learning within their classroom, school, and even their homes.
ContributorsLund, Stephanie (Author) / Bertrand, Melanie (Thesis advisor) / Imel, Breck (Committee member) / Moses, Lindsey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This interpretive dissertation study sought to understand what happened when a seventh-grade teacher introduced multimodal concepts and texts into his English Language Arts classroom. Multimodal texts contain linguistic features (words and sentences) but also images and graphic design features. The classroom teacher described himself as a novice with regards to multimodal literacies instruction and had previously focused predominantly on written or spoken texts. Motivating his decision to design and enact a multimodal literacies pedagogy was his belief that students needed to garner experience interpreting and composing the kinds of texts that populated his students’ social worlds. Therefore, I asked: What happened when multimodal narratives were used as mentor texts in a seventh-grade English Language Arts classroom? Drawing from ethnographic and case study methods, I observed and gathered data regarding how the teacher and his students enacted and experienced an eight-week curriculum unit centered on multimodal concepts and multimodal texts. My findings describe the classroom teacher’s design decisions, the messiness that occurred as the classroom was (re)made into a classroom community that valued modes beyond written and spoken language, and the students’ experiences of the curriculum as classroom work, lifework, play, and drudgery. Based on my findings, I developed six assertions: (1) when designing and enacting multimodal literacies curriculum for the first time, exposing students to a wide range of multimodal texts took precedence; (2) adapted and new multimodal literacy practices began to emerge, becoming valued practices over time; (3) literacy events occurred without being grounded in literacy practices; (4) in a classroom dedicated to writing, modes of representation and communication and their associated tools and materials provided students with resources for use in their own writing/making; (5) the roles of the teacher and his students underwent change as modal expertise became sourced from across the classroom community; and (6) students experienced the multimodal literacies curriculum as play, classroom work, lifework, and drudgery. The dissertation study concludes with implications for teachers and researchers looking to converge multimodality theory with pedagogical practices and maps future research possibilities.
ContributorsReid, Stephanie Francesca (Author) / Serafini, Frank (Thesis advisor) / Moses, Lindsey (Committee member) / Marsh, Josephine (Committee member) / Williams, Wendy R. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Do adolescents read? What do they read? This purpose of this study was to examine the voluntary fiction reading experiences of secondary students. Literature was reviewed concerning the adolescent reader and voluntary fiction reading. The readers were found to be capable of making profound meanings out of text. The readers found characters, plot, learning from their books, and the desire to read more beneficial to their engagement and reading pleasure.
ContributorsJones, Charles Aron (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis advisor) / Quintero, Henry (Committee member) / Zertuche, Lorena (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020