This dissertation, "Old Constraints, New Possibilities: Genre Theory, Student Reflections, and ePortfolios in the First Year Writing Classroom," explores the findings of an IRB-approved study on the reflective practices employed in FYW multimodal ePortfolios. The University of Alabama (UA) FYW conducted an ePortfolio Initiative in 2019…

Communication is a critical component of effective healthcare. Students interested in going into healthcare fields require training to learn how to effectively communicate. These students have a need to learn communication skills. Understanding students' value for learning these skills is necessary for increasing the motivation to learn. In this…

Learner corpus research has expanded from focusing primarily on English as a second language (L2) to include languages such as L2 Spanish, reflecting the growing importance of corpus linguistics in second language acquisition (SLA) research. In this context, and because prompts are the means by which learner corpora gather their texts, it has…

For 10 weeks, an online writing club was a place where seven children, ages 5 to 8, came together to co-construct a space for sharing favorite texts and composing practices. This study documents the ways that the writing club offered a space for children to construct shared literacy practices that allowed for new meaning-making, social…

Writing in second Chinese writing is viewed as one of the least used skills in classroom practice for educators (Kubler, 1997). While writing research has emphasized the importance of regarding writing as a social activity, mainstream writing instruction and task design remain to decontextualized and monologic (Liu, 2015). This dissertation…

The purpose of the study was to describe how ESOL teachers used student self-assessment to develop writing skills in ELL adolescent students within the Midwest. The study was based on the theoretical foundation of behaviorism and four writing teaching models: ARCS, Modelling, Genre, and the Writing workshop Model. The research questions of the…

This thesis evaluates the curricula implemented in four mother-tongue based multilingual education programs in the Philippines, Thailand, East Timor, and Cameroon. The method for conducting research in this thesis is based on the five principles to enhance learning presented by the World Bank and the prism model developed by Thomas and Collier.…

This multi-method case study explored the actual and perceived mathematical growth, as measured by the counting and measuring, problem writing tasks (CaMPWTs) and focus student interviews respectively, of fifth graders at Catherine Elementary Middle School as they completed tasks designed specifically to scaffold the development of a set of math…

This dissertation presents an in-depth case study investigating the developmental writing program at a small, private Christian liberal arts university in the Southwest United States. This developmental writing program featured an accelerated workshop model with course-embedded peer tutors. Research questions centered on understanding the…