This study looks at a student writing culture in a fifth grade English language arts classroom through the lens of Foucauldian power dynamics to examine the power relationships in the classroom and curriculum. The research questions were: (1) What is the nature of a writing culture in a fifth-grade writing classroom?; (2) What are students'…

Federal and state mandates for public education have a long history of changes that have occurred over the past thirty-four years since the publication of "A Nation at Risk" in 1983. Since then, educators have continued to raise student achievement levels to meet the growing demand to compete in a global society. Research has shown the…

This dissertation reports the results of a research project that examined the effects of varying rates of reinforcement on students' math performance and assignment preference. The relationship between students' instructional level and the rate of reinforcement threshold for influencing assignment preference was also explored. Participants were…

This exploratory case study involved the development and enactment of a multicultural unit. As the population of the school continues to become more diverse there became a need to educate students to become more culturally aware. The main purpose of the study was to raise students' awareness and appreciation for cultural diversity through…

This study examined the functional relation between the use of a computer-based graphic organizer (CBGO) with embedded technology features and the improvements in the personal narrative writing by upper elementary students with high-incidence disabilities. In addition, this study explored the improvements in the students' digital literacy skills…

This qualitative multiple case study explored the factors that impact the recreational reading selections of gifted students. Eleven students in grades four and five participated in the study. The methods of data collection included in-depth personal interviews and analysis of library circulation records and independent reading program data. The…

Young students' genre knowledge and learning have been of interest to literacy researchers for some time. How students learn and recognize genres, how they deploy them, how they learn the circumstances under which to deploy particular genres are key concerns for literacy educators and researchers. While the field of Composition Studies has long…

This study investigated the writing results from an existing data set of 36 students who performed braille writing dictation through the repeated writing activity in the braille writing app. The data was the writing results of students between the first and the sixth grade levels. Results were categorized into types of errors, the most common…

Many students in third, fourth and fifth grades struggle at the lowest levels of reading proficiency. In fact, fewer than 40% of fourth graders in the United States read at or above the "proficient" level on state standardized tests in 2009 (D'Ardenne, Barnes, Hightower, Lamason, Mason, Patterson, Stephens, Wilson, Smith & Erickson,…

This quantitative study explored if significant differences exist between how fifth-grade students produce a written response to a narrative prompt using online versus offline writing platforms. The cultural and social trend of instructional and assessment writing paradigms in education is shifting to online writing platforms (National Assessment…

Problem: The problem of this study was to determine the difference in Bible comprehension scores among gender-based groups of older children using selected passages from three Bible translations: the Children's Bible, the Easy Bible, and the New Revised Korean Bible. Procedures: A total of 288 older children in three churches (Beautiful Baptist…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how engagement, mood and number of assignments completed on computerized differentiated homework using an iPad in a one-to-one mobile device environment influenced the growth index and normalized gain in reading literature benchmark assessments of students in grades five, six, and seven. Furthermore,…

This quantitative study explored the impact of literacy integration in a science inquiry classroom involving the use of science notebooks on the academic language development and conceptual understanding of students from diverse (i.e., English Language Learners, or ELLs) and low socio-economic status (low-SES) backgrounds. The study derived from a…

The author replicated and extended a study by Flowerday, Schraw, & Stevens (2004) that examined the effects of choice, topic interest, and situational interest on reading engagement, attitude, and learning in college-age students. The study was replicated using fourth and fifth graders as subjects. The study was extended to examine the effects of…

This mixed methods study combining a single-subject experimental design with an embedded case study focuses on the impact of a visual treatment on the handwritten and typed output of a struggling male writer during his 5th through 7th grades who has undergone a longitudinal remedial phase of two and a half years creating text-only material as well…