Matching Items (2)
Description
The development of literacy abilities in young children has been a major concern for authorities and teachers in the USA for the last two decades. Significant effort has been devoted to ensure that preschool settings allow and motivate children to engage in literacy activities before entering kindergarten. Research has found that a rich classroom environment in preschool settings enables teachers to encourage literacy interest in children at a young age. While a large amount of research has concentrated in testing the effect of prescriptive modifications in the classroom environment, few have focused on studying the design process and tools that teachers follow to design their classrooms. Public policy and research studies in the United States, mention the design of the classroom environment among teacher's responsibilities, but they do not include practical or methodological guides for them to use. The purpose of this research was to study the design process and tools that teachers use to design literacy rich classrooms in preschool settings. A case study was conducted at the ASU Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College Preschool at Arizona State University. This setting provides a unique opportunity for an exploratory study of this nature because it is a private child development laboratory with a flexible curriculum. Participant observation sessions and in depth semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the design process used and experienced by the teachers. Findings revealed an iterative and cyclic design process that is repeated over time adjusting to the influence of numerous factors. Results also suggest that teacher's knowledge and beliefs highly influence the organization of their classrooms. Considering these factors as a standpoint allows for further exploration to determine a design process suitable for teachers when designing their learning environments. The use of a structured yet flexible design process, can be a potential tool for educators to design their classrooms, collaborate, document and transmit their knowledge. Although the findings correspond to a specific site studied, the implications are wide reaching as problems and opportunities expressed by the staff are common to other educational settings with similar characteristics.
ContributorsCortes, Catalina (Author) / Patel, Mookesh (Thesis advisor) / Heywood, William (Committee member) / Christie, James (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This qualitative study investigates the at-home educational efforts of six immigrant families as they prepare their children for school in the United States. The participants’ at-home educational activities were provided by the Mexican immigrant families using photographs of activities that they judged as skills which developed the child’s ability to engage with other children, teachers, and the curriculum on their first day at school. Photovoice methodology was used in order to provide the Mexican immigrants’ voice.
The families were recruited from a large urban city in the Southwest with a large immigrant population. They were recruited from medical centers, social support centers, churches with immigrant communities, and schools that had Mexican immigrant children in attendance. The schools and churches provided the greatest source of participants. The educational level of the parents varied from over fifteen years to three years of schooling in Mexico. The children in the study were citizens of the United States, were from two to four years of age, had not yet attended school in the U.S., but had siblings attending public schools in the United States. The families opened their life to the researcher and provided an insight through their photographs that could not have been gained if only interviews and/or questionnaires were used.
The twenty five photographs selected to identify the six educational themes that were highlighted throughout the study are demonstrative of what the families in the study were doing to prepare their children for their first day of school. Mexican immigrant parents have high expectations for their children and are willing to sacrifice for the children’s education.
The families were recruited from a large urban city in the Southwest with a large immigrant population. They were recruited from medical centers, social support centers, churches with immigrant communities, and schools that had Mexican immigrant children in attendance. The schools and churches provided the greatest source of participants. The educational level of the parents varied from over fifteen years to three years of schooling in Mexico. The children in the study were citizens of the United States, were from two to four years of age, had not yet attended school in the U.S., but had siblings attending public schools in the United States. The families opened their life to the researcher and provided an insight through their photographs that could not have been gained if only interviews and/or questionnaires were used.
The twenty five photographs selected to identify the six educational themes that were highlighted throughout the study are demonstrative of what the families in the study were doing to prepare their children for their first day of school. Mexican immigrant parents have high expectations for their children and are willing to sacrifice for the children’s education.
ContributorsZamora, Jerome Chavez (Author) / Garcia, Eugene E. (Thesis advisor) / Arias, Beatriz (Committee member) / Romero-Little, Mary Eunice (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015