Despite the value of reading, research documents declining reading rates among American adolescents - a decline that exacerbates student dropout rates and academic performance. As a high school English teacher in a public, regional, suburban school, increasing the number of students who deeply read the assigned texts for class has been a…

This dissertation examines the meaning-making of children (ages 2-5) as they read and play with picture books related to social justice themes, such as identity and diversity, in a preschool and childcare center. The study goal is to investigate the analysis of children's meaning-making of picture books to understand the social world around them…

This research study explores the role of social annotation in supporting dialogic teaching in secondary English language arts. Grounded in Bakhtin's dialogism and building upon research into online discussion, this study describes how a high school English teacher and her students used a digital annotation tool to read and talk about texts.…

This study aimed to examine which genres parents are reading to children and for themselves. Furthermore, it aimed to examine mothers' and fathers' shared reading strategies for different book genres in relation to children's language and literacy development. Parents shared a narrative and an expository book with their preschool-aged children.…