Teaching, Learning, Policy & Leadership Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2759
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Item AN ANALYSIS OF THE QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF PARENT/CHILD READING UTTERANCES WHILE READING DIFFERENT GENRES(2010) Becker, Cynthia Ann; Slater, Wayne H.; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to investigate how different genres affect the quality and quantity of parent/child reading utterances. I analyzed the reading utterances of parent/child dyads with preschool aged child while reading informational and narrative books contributing to this line of research by systematically selecting books based on scholarly criteria to minimize variability within and between genres. I invited families whose children attended preschool at a private school to participate in this study. On a weekly basis, over a six week period, participating families selected an informational book and a narrative book to be read. Each newly selected book was read at least once during that week. Each reading was audio-taped and tapes were transcribed, coded, and analyzed. Results indicate that genre affects both the quality and quantity of parents' and children's reading utterances. Both parents and children generated more total utterances and comprehension related utterances when reading informational books than when reading narrative books. Two parents demonstrated a marked increase in their use of comprehension related utterances while reading informational books than when reading narrative books. Four of the six children demonstrated a marked increase in their use of comprehension related utterances while being read informational books compared to narrative books. I then conducted a more fine-grained analysis to examine the parents' and children's reading utterances while reading specific informational books and specific narrative books. Regardless of genre, the type of book being read affected the number of utterances generated by the parents and children differently. The children demonstrated a preference for narrative books over informational books. Finally, I found that three themes, supported with vignettes, emerged from the data: Lost Opportunities, Grasped Opportunities, and Influences on Reading Behaviors. All three emergent themes addressed parent/child interactions and the affect they had on the reading sessions.Item Starting Our Day the Room 119 Way: A Qualitative Study of an Elementary Classroom Community and its Alternative to Traditional Morning Work(2009) Domire, Aimee; Selden, Steven; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explores the experiences of multicultural, Title I second-grade students as they experience a daily "Soft Landing," the time and space set aside for the first thirty minutes each morning for students to make choices about what activities to engage in. The portraiture methodology as outlined by Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis (1997) establishes the framework for this narrative inquiry. I address four questions: What is "Soft Landing;" How do students choose to use their "Soft Landing" time and how do these choices change over time; What does "Soft Landing" mean to students; What have I learned about myself as a teacher during "Soft Landing?" By observing and interviewing nine second-grade students over three months, I learn that when children are in charge of their own learning and thinking, they actually know how to structure their academic lives without waiting for someone else to do it for them.Item Illustrated Conversations: A Phenomenological Study of Listening to the Voices of Kindergartners(2009) Dean, Michele Ann; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explores the voices of kindergartners engaged in illustrated conversations. Max van Manen's methodology for hermeneutic phenomenological research provides a framework for the study, and the philosophical writings of Heidegger, Noddings, Bakhtin, van Manen, and Palmer guide the interpretations of how we come to be with young children through dialogue. Illustrated conversations, a process whereby the child writes his/her thoughts and drawings in a journal and then engages meaning-making with the teacher during a tape recorded dialogue, creates spaces for a teacher and student to have personal conversations about their lifeworlds. Using their own voices as the essential pathway winding through the experience, the study explores how the sixteen kindergarten children sense the spirit of home, explored the freedom to imagine their own ideas, acknowledged their identity, and developed relationships with others by engaging in illustrated conversation. Their wondrous voices echo their sense of home and family as they defined, and redefined, their identity through friendships with the researcher and peers. The silent conversations bring forth further meaning, uncovering how space and time with young children help them better hear their own voices and the voices of others. True listening becomes a part of pedagogy. Canvassed drawings and written thoughts, springboards for ideas, propel the conversations forward while also revealing how without voice, the meaning of the pictures and thoughts fell silent in the seeking of self. Children's voices--heard in dialogue, paused or silenced in between, and engraved on paper--connect pathways leading to self-identity. Truly listening to young children is a reflective experience that illuminates the voices and languages of young children. This study uncovers how listening to and reflecting upon the stories young children choose to tell in tactful and reciprocal conversation is pedagogy worth exploring. The study suggests that illustrated conversations can support teachers in balancing the new curriculum mandates being required in kindergarten classrooms with engaging and meaningful interactions that uncover the cognitive, language, and social/emotional development of children. Through illustrated conversation, teachers are able to hear and support the hundred languages of children.Item The Influence of a School District's Early Childhood Education Policy on Urban Students' Academic Achievement Towards Advanced Class Placement(2008-08-18) Bartley, Alice P.; Johnson, Martin L.; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE INFLUENCE OF A SCHOOL DISTRICT'S EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION POLICY ON URBAN STUDENTS' ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT TOWARDS ADVANCED CLASS PLACEMENT Alice P. Bartley, Doctor of Philosophy, 2008 Dissertation Directed By: Professor Martin L. Johnson, College of Education, Department of Curriculum and Instruction Kindergarten is one of the most important years of schooling, as it builds the foundational skills needed for later learning. This study explored school district's early childhood education policy reform initiative specifically designed to accelerate the early learning of students in high-need Title I schools. The purpose of this study was to discover if the reform intervention influenced disadvantaged students' enrollment in advanced mathematics classes in grade six. Mathematics and reading assessment data at the second and fifth grades were examined to determine if the kindergarten intervention influenced students' achievement as they progressed through the elementary school years into middle school. This study focused on achievement gains, sustainability, reduction in special education placement, and increase in advanced mathematics classes. This longitudinal study included a sample of 9858 cases which were distributed among nine kindergarten cohort groups (three intervention cohorts and six comparison cohorts) for three consecutive years (one pre-intervention year and two intervention years). One-way analysis of variance, hierarchical regression, and logistic regression were used to analyze the dataset. The major findings of the study indicate the intervention cohorts of students demonstrated mean score gains in mathematics and reading when compared to the cohort group from the same population prior to the intervention. Mean score gains were also found when comparing the intervention cohorts to the six more economically advantaged comparison cohorts. The findings also indicate a reduction in special education enrollment and an increase in enrollment in advanced mathematics at the sixth grade level for the high-need Title I intervention cohorts. The findings of this study contribute to the very limited body of literature on accelerated early learning and later advanced class placement.Item Crossing the Divide: A Phenomenological Study of Early Childhood Literacy Teachers Who Choose To Work With Children In High Poverty Schools(2007-09-05) Landa, Melissa Simone Hare; O'Flahavan, John F; Hultgren, Francine; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this phenomenological study, I explore the lived experiences of five early childhood educators, teaching literacy in high poverty schools. My work is guided by the research question: "What are the lived experiences of White early literacy teachers who choose to work with minority children in high poverty schools?" As phenomenology demands, my work is grounded in philosophy, and I turn to the writings of Sartre, Levinas, Derrida, Levin, and Gadamer. For methodological guidance, I rely on the work of Max van Manen. Through the voices of my participants, I excavate the meaning beneath their experiences. In my initial conversations with two of my participants, Will and Paula, I detect their chosen dedication to working in Title I schools, and their respect for children's individual needs and multiple identities. Identity continues to emerge as a central structure, both in the lived experiences of each of my five participants and in their pedagogical practice. While each of my participants is White, each one conveys a sense of having a multiplicity of identities, which enables them to connect with their students and families. Through their pedagogy, my participants also attend to the various aspects of their students' identities. They address needs relating to language, family, literacy, community, and the difficult choices and challenges that await their students in society. Throughout our conversations, the notions of choice and of crossing boundaries remain central. These teachers choose to work in low-income communities, where they move back-and-forth from their middle-class homes. As they teach a transformative curriculum, they also cross the boundary of curriculum, as they attend to the demands of standardization. Finally, I suggest that teacher education programs examine how boundary-crossing might inform their own pedagogical practice. Through pre-service teachers' exploration of their own identities and their experiences with families in Title I neighborhoods, they can become boundary-crossers, comfortably moving between two divided worlds. And, by learning how to integrate reading, writing, listening, and speaking throughout all aspects of the curriculum, they can teach children about the socially transformative power of literacy.Item LISTENING TO THE SPONTANEOUS MUSIC-MAKING OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN IN PLAY: LIVING A PEDAGOGY OF WONDER(2006-11-28) Kierstead, Judith Kerschner; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study sings with joy the wonder of preschool children spontaneously being music-makers in play. Through hermenuetic phenomenological methodology provided by van Manen (2003), voices of Heidegger (1962, being-with), Levin (1989, listening), Ihde (1976, music-language), Casey (1993, place), Merleau-Ponty (1962, the body), Levinas (1987, "we"), Arendt (1959, new beginnings), and Steiner (1984; 1985a,b; 1998, human development, freedom) support the work. The study asks: What is the lived experience of preschool children spontaneously making music in play? In Waldorf preschools, forty-six children in three age-differentiated classes are observed and tape-recorded in a pre-study; observations of twenty-four children in a mixed-age class and, during outdoor playtime, an additional twenty-four children from a similar class are observed and recorded in note-taking during a year-long study. Significant themes of will-ing, be-ing, and time-in-place emerge. Freedom to move about in play with peers is essential to music-making that spontaneously expresses Life-lived-in-the-moment. The phenomena of this study -- the songs, chant, and other sound-shapes -- are the being of children, who are not bound by time or by space. In this study, musical form includes a sung-tryptich, a communal-collage, call-response, a transforming chant, and language that sings and stretches into many, varied sound-shapes. The wonder of Life shines through. Teaching music of early childhood is being one's self a music-maker in being-with children. This teaching is preparing a place of beauty, order, and caring, where a rhythmic framework of fine- and living-arts experiences extends the letting-learn, and where the children move about, playing freely with materials that nurture the imagination, indoors and out daily, rain or shine. Teaching is moving through richly developed integrated-circles (songs, poems, and verses, with gestures), worthy of the children's imitation. Teaching is telling tales from the heart, planting seeds of wisdom. Teaching is "reading the children" then creating soft edges in moving-with-one's-own-singing from one activity to another. This is a Pedagogy of Wonder that respects the child's will, enriches the child's Being, lets-be the spontaneous music-making of preschool children in play, nourishing that music-making by being-with the child musically. Listening to the spontaneous music-making of preshcool children in play offers a new beginning.Item Color Selection in Object Drawings of Young Children(2006-03-20) Drosinos, Karen Jesuit; Hendricks, Susan M; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This action research study examined the selection of color used in six object drawings of young children. Study sample size consisted of eighteen Kindergarten students from a public elementary school in Prince George's County Public School System, Maryland. This study was organized into three phases. Each phase asked student participants to draw six familiar objects (tree, house, boy, dog, girl, car) while limiting the amount of color selection in each phase. The use of logical color and expressive color was investigated and scores were given to each drawing in order to compare logical color usage. Color trends were also documented to show possible color associations in young children's representation of everyday objects. The results found that there was an increase in the use of logical color as the selection of color in each phase was minimized. Strong color trends were shown in the representation of the tree and boy images.