Technology is now being utilized in schools in an effort to address the lack of engagement most students have experienced in mathematics when learning foundational skills at the elementary school level. While there are a number of studies that have described teacher perceptions of engagement through the use of technology during the school day,…

Autonomy is the sense that one has control over one's actions within an environment or that one has some degree of choice over his or her own life. Autonomy support involves an individual who is in a position of authority, (e.g., parent, teacher, coach), taking the perspective of another (e.g. student, child), acknowledging their feelings, and…

In response to the low passing rate of its students with disabilities, administrators at a small urban elementary school in south Texas implemented coteaching. Guided by Nonaka and Takeuchi's collaborative learning framework, this qualitative instrumental case study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of collaborative teaching in the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of linguistic knowledge in spelling by analyzing spelling errors made by 220 students in the fourth, fifth, and seventh grades. A 25-word researcher-designed spelling test with considerations of word frequency, word familiarity, and word type (based on morphological complexity) was administered.…

Today's mathematics standards require teachers to use concrete math manipulatives (CMM) to increase the proficiency of students, but many upper elementary teachers fail to use these resources. The effects of this resource disuse may decrease student learning potential and impede successful standardized test results. This case study allows leaders…

The study examined the contributions of "orthographic processing" factors to the spelling achievement of typically developing middle-elementary students. The researcher framed orthographic processing as a multilinguistic, multidimensional construct involving process factors related to procedural orthographic operations and product…

It is evident from reading research that students with learning disabilities (LD) greatly benefit from teacher-student interactions during small group comprehension instruction (e.g., Berkeley, Scruggs, & Mastropieri, 2010). Given that questioning takes up the vast majority of instructional interactions between teachers and students (Chin,…

The phenomenon of bullying in K-12 school districts in the United States continues to undergo examination. The purpose of this study was to understand the issues of bullying from teacher and administrator perspectives and to describe components needed to build a quality program to prevent bullying. Research questions involved understanding…

Eighty-seven 4th, 5th and 6th grade students were administered the "Derivational Relatedness Interview" (DRI) (Templeton, Smith, Moloney, Van Pelt, & Ives, 2009). The purpose of this instrument is to explore students' understanding of derivational morphology. During the same week, the subjects were also administered an Upper…

This study examined how the use of African American literature that depicts Black males influences the reading comprehension and the reading motivation of Black boys as demonstrated through oral, written, and creative expressions. Studies have been conducted using children's literature with Black boys to examine their social interaction with the…

Over the last decade there has been an increased focus on high-stakes standardized tests in reading and math. Social studies has been devalued in the classroom as many teachers and administrators focus their attention on reading and math instruction to avoid the punitive consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act. (2001). Based on this…

International research and academic performance measures indicate that boys are scoring lower on standardized tests than girls in reading and writing. At the time of this study, boys had lower standardized test scores than girls in an elementary school in a southeastern state in the United States. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to…

At its most fundamental level, like all instruction, comprehension instruction is composed of moment-to-moment interactions among students and between students and their teacher. Children's competence at making meaning from texts and their motivation to read are shaped by a variety of classroom influences, one of the most important of which may be…