The acquisition of reading skills is a critical component of early education in the United States, beginning with the introduction of pre-literacy skills to children as young as pre-school age. Students are tasked with developing the ability to decode and comprehend text across various subject areas. However, national reading data indicates that a…

Literacy coaching has the potential to center humanizing professional learning pedagogies--promoting equity, disrupting oppression, and recognizing the complex humanity of teachers. This potential can be realized through the use of deep reflection to support teachers' awareness of what guides their behavior and further strengthened by complex…

The problem addressed in this qualitative case study was that teachers in Title 1 schools often struggle to provide the support needed by students to meet the required reading comprehension levels. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the perceptions of literacy coaches and general education teachers regarding the…

This research investigated how a Critical Sociocultural Linguistics Literacy (CriSoLL) approach to authentic materials supports student literacy in a mixed Spanish heritage language (SHL) and additional language (L2) Spanish intermediate course at the university level. Using a qualitative approach (Cho, 2018; Esposito & Evans-Winters, 2021)…

Instructional coaches are facing challenges as they support our schools with the implementation of evidence-based practices. Tasked with helping teachers address learning gaps after the pandemic, coupled with providing general support to schools, coaches have a challenging workload. This study undertook a rigorous intervention designed to improve…

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into how elementary school leaders work collaboratively to foster Science of Reading instructional strategies to enhance early literacy. A multiple case study design was implemented whereby six elementary schools in the metro Birmingham area were purposely selected based on their documented increases…

The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative study is to examine differences in structured literacy knowledge between dyslexia interventionists at the therapy level, the teaching or practitioner level and dyslexia interventionists with training with fewer requirements than the aforementioned. Reading scores across the United States continue…

This study investigates the competency of elementary school principals in supporting structured literacy and evaluating university preparation programs' effectiveness. It addresses a gap in the literature regarding principals' readiness for literacy instruction leadership, focusing on how well these programs prepare them for this role. The…

In schools, literacy is often positioned as a fixed set of reading and writing skills. This can limit what counts as an academically acceptable literacy practice despite the complex and nuanced ways people communicate in their personal and social contexts. With this tension around conceptions of literacy in mind, I wondered how teachers thought…

A departmentalized classroom setting allows educators to focus their time on one content area, thus mastering their knowledge and craft in that subject area. However, many elementary school teachers are trained to be generalists who spend the entire year with one group of students, commonly referred to as self-contained classrooms. The problem…

This qualitative study explored the perspectives of literacy teachers in grades 3-6 regarding how the Science of Reading (SoR) has influenced teacher beliefs and instructional practices in relation to fostering students' critical literacy skills. The research was framed around the following three questions: What are literacy teachers' current…

This dissertation examines the processes and procedures high schools utilize to increase student voice and student efficacy within the identification and enrollment of students into grade 9 literacy intervention. The purpose of this collective case study is to investigate how schools identified students for additional literacy support and how they…

Young learners were observed in a summer literacy program at a southern university in order to identify and understand literacy entanglements and how they contributed to the way children developed literacy. Data collection consisted of observations, researcher journals with extensive field notes, and a collection of artifacts relating to…

Low levels of health literacy have been linked statistically with decreased health and quality of life, increased mortality, and financial and economic impoverishment at the individual and community levels of analysis. The problem space for this dissertation research was comprised of the problem of low levels of health literacy, problems that are…

Building on AsianCrit, reader response theory, and critical literacy perspective, this dissertation study investigated how second-generation Chinese American students at age eight to twelve respond to culturally relevant texts which portray contemporary and historical Chinese American people's lives and experiences in the United States. In…