This dissertation is aimed at articulating and empirically characterizing an expansive orientation to field-based socio-ecological systems learning that elevates participatory and ethically-engaged approaches to teaching and learning. Grounded in relational ways of knowing, this dissertation works to expand and transform normative educational…

Research on Theory of Mind (ToM) and reading comprehension is a lively and active field with numerous publications a year. ToM describes a child's ability to identify and reason about the mental states of others (e.g., think, believe, intend, want). The burgeoning findings from this research suggests ToM plays an important role in the reading…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how reading teachers in southern urban schools described their use of prior knowledge and text clues in instructing high functioning ASD students in their use of inferencing to improve their reading comprehension. There were three research questions used in this study: RQ1: How do…

Education has always been and will continue to be the key that unlocks doors of opportunity and success for all. Our national test scores, over the last several decades, reveal that a majority of America's students are failing to meet academic benchmarks and standards, thus limiting the possibilities for opportunity. Mathematics, in particular,…

The digital age has profoundly changed the film industry and how consumers are able to access media. To foster language development, this mixed methods study takes advantage of this technological progress and investigates how an audiovisual media-based curriculum can be designed for and implemented in an intermediate German language course. In…

The ability to relate physical concepts and phenomena to multiple mathematical representations--and to move fluidly between these representations--is a critical outcome expected of physics instruction. In upper-division quantum mechanics, students must work with multiple symbolic notations, including some that they have not previously encountered.…

Researchers have demonstrated a much-needed shift in pedagogical practices to incorporate literacy strategies. This dissertation provides additional empirical evidence to expand the body of research by utilizing a comparative readability analysis that examines the academic language of a popular calculus textbook. A sample from the published…

Belief in psychological misconceptions, especially those regarding brain function and learning (i.e., neuromyths), hinders students' decision-making and learning. This necessitates conceptual change. Using an experimental design, this dissertation examined whether a utility value instructional induction (UVII) facilitated conceptual change.…

Early literacy skills such as print knowledge are essential building blocks for children's later reading and academic outcomes. Shared book reading activities in early childhood classrooms offer rich opportunities through which educators can support children's print knowledge development by explicitly referring to a book's print. Such references…

As the United States continues to grow with English language learners entering schools, teachers must focus on helping them improve their reading comprehension. The problem addressed in this study was the lack of vocabulary instruction implemented by teachers impedes the development of English language learners' reading comprehension. The purpose…

This study examined the challenges teachers faced in teaching reading comprehension to secondary students within the study school. Reading comprehension is a key skill for academic success, yet many students struggle to understand complex texts in subjects such as history, science, and mathematics. The purpose of this research is to assess how…

For decades, the majority of educational research has been preoccupied with understanding as a "product"--as various "learning achievements" and "subject mastery" to be measured and subsequently represented as statistics or test scores. This preoccupation is also observed in the field of second language education,…

For students to be successful in future mathematics classes, mathematics teachers must be able to help students decipher content in Algebra I, the foundation of higher mathematics. Research on vocabulary in the math classroom shows there are multiple ways to represent vocabulary and reading comprehension. The research question, which focused on…

The link between vocabulary knowledge acquisition and its effect on reading comprehension has been well established over years of research; however, students from low income backgrounds may have less access to the opportunities that allow for the building of this vocabulary knowledge prior to and including entry into formal schooling. Therefore,…

The purpose of this multiple-case study with a cross-case analysis was to determine how seven third-grade teachers conceptualized comprehension and its instruction and how those knowledge and beliefs about comprehension instruction were leveraged while planning lessons. Teachers were asked to design two comprehension lesson plans and answer…