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…

Humans have the remarkable ability to solve different tasks by simply reading textual instructions that define the tasks and looking at a few examples. Natural Language Processing (NLP) models built with the conventional machine learning paradigm, however, often struggle to generalize across tasks (e.g., a question-answering system cannot solve…

This study used corpus-based methodology to analyze what, if any, differences exist in the linguistic complexity of EdD and PhD dissertations in Educational Leadership. The study is conceptually framed around language variation within discipline and genre. The corpus created for this study, DISSCORP, was comprised of 200 dissertations, 100 EdD and…

To better understand Tennessee's new standardized science assessments, this quantitative study utilized a nonexperimental, descriptive-comparative design to compare the readability of the long-used science TCAP assessment with the newly created science TNReady assessment in grades three, four, and five. As new standards in the state boast higher…

Psychosocial competencies; such as prosocial behaviors, compliance with authority, attention regulation, independence, and emotional regulation; play a crucial role in child development. Higher levels of these competencies in childhood are linked to fewer behavior problems, while deficits in these competencies can predict future problem behaviors.…

Researchers have often considered addressing the readability of special education informational materials developed for parents to improve parent participation. Yet, research examining contextual document aspects is limited and no studies investigate procedural safeguards notices and related informational materials from a lens other than…

Graph data, especially large graph data, come up in many domains, such as social networks, the map of science, biological data, and even knitting! This presents a problem when we consider visualizing these structures. Layouts must be chosen carefully so that the structure of the graph is visible. Some graphs are large enough and connected enough…

To investigate how readability affects the way adults who are learning to read evaluate health information, a mixed methods research study was designed based on a sociotechnical framework and using theories of everyday life information seeking. The study analyzed a corpus of consumer health information documents (N = 501) using the CohMetrix text…

Reading scores have not made a significant shift since the 1990's when national and state standardized assessments initially tested grade level reading comprehension (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], n.d. & Florida Department of Education [FLDOE], n.d.). In addition, when analyzing subgroups, economically disadvantaged students…

Educators often inquire about the readability of books and other documents used in the classroom, with the idea that readability supports students' reading comprehension and growth. Documents used in classrooms tend to be language-based, so readability metrics have long focused on the complexity of language. However, such metrics are unsuitable…

In this mixed method study I evaluated the relationship between teachers' perceptions of text complexity and data of text complexity assessed by standard and non-standard measures in the disciplines of English Language Arts (ELA), science, and social studies. For the quantitative portion of this study, I evaluated and correlated the text…

Written assignments are, perhaps, one of the most common types of coursework that students will encounter in their undergraduate studies. This study describes the communicative purpose and textual and linguistic characteristics of university assignments written for content classes, taking into account variation across communicative text types and…

The following is a five-chapter dissertation surrounding the use of text mining techniques for better understanding the language of mathematics items from standardized tests to improve linguistic equity of these items to support assessment of English Language Learners. Introduction: The dissertation begins with an overview of the problem that…

The main purpose of this dissertation is to examine the (in)effectiveness of the Usage-based grammar approach through explicit instruction of adverbials in the US educational context. One area that can complicate the question of native speakers' grammar knowledge is their awareness of grammatical terms and their functions. Along with exploring…

The importance of input on language learning cannot be overstated. One method of providing input to learners at a level that is appropriate for them is called extensive reading, in which learners read an abundance of texts. In practice, for learners of English as a second or foreign language, these texts are often books that have been written and…