The purpose of this research study was to investigate the learning of print concepts (PCs) by preschool children at risk for literacy problems using an experimental treatment: explicit, non-evocative print referencing. Children from low socio-economic status (SES) families have been determined to be at-risk for literacy learning problems including…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions and beliefs of teachers at a Midwestern suburban middle school about students, student learning, and about teacher's beliefs of their collective abilities to achieve the task of school improvement. Saddleback Middle School (SMS) has experienced low standardized test scores since the…

Accountability is not new to the educational arena; however, emphasis on using student achievement data as a means of holding schools accountable is (Betebenner & Linn, 2009). The No Child Left Behind Act requires local schools and districts to measure performance with student achievement data (NCLB, 2002). This requirement becomes…

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 assessed whether and how self-explanation reading training, provided by iSTART (Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking), improves the effectiveness of comprehension processes. iSTART teaches students how to self-explain and which strategies will most effectively aid comprehension from moment-to-moment. We used…

This study used a randomized experimental design to examine the relationship between teacher-student ratio and literacy learning outcomes for experienced intervention teachers working with the most at-risk first-grade students. Eighty-five Reading Recovery teachers, working with 170 students, each taught in a 1:1 and a small-group instructional…

This study investigated the cognitive strategies used by Persian EFL (English as a foreign language) graduate students while reading a hypermedia text. Prior to the start of the study, the Nelson-Denny Reading Test was used in order to measure the reading ability of the students. Data was collected through think-aloud protocols, and the strategies…

The reading scores on the "Nation's Report Card for 2007" indicate that not all children share the same proficiency in literacy. Reading and writing require the use of similar cognitive processes, yet few studies focus on this relationship or how writing can be a tool for reading remediation. The research questions in this study addressed the…

This dissertation research examined the changes in item RIT calibration that occurred when adding audio to a set of currently calibrated RIT items and then placing these new items as field test items in the modified assessments on the NWEA MAP test platform. The researcher used test results from over 600 students in the Poway School District in…

America's public schools have faced challenges in educating students, particularly those identified as at risk. According to the No Child Left Behind Act, nearly 70% of 4th grade students are unable to perform on a basic level on national reading tests. The research problem in this study addressed the significance of guided reading instruction,…

This article investigates plausible explanations for the observed heterogeneity among jurisdictions in the exclusion rates of students with disabilities and English language learners in administrations of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It also examines the operating characteristics of a particular class of methods, called…

Comparability studies on computer- and paper-based reading tests have focused on short texts and selected-response items via almost exclusively statistical modeling of test performance. The psychological effects of presentation mode and computer familiarity on individual students are under-researched. In this study, 157 students read extended…

This study examines the relationship between TABE-R performance and performance on selected, more focused reading component tests after 42 hours of adult education classroom instruction. Specifically, measures of expressive vocabulary, reading fluency, sight word reading, and decoding were administered to 98 participants along with the TABE-R.…

This investigation examined the listening comprehension (LC) performance of two groups of adolescent struggling readers, one group with word-finding difficulties (WFD) and one with no word-finding difficulties (NWFD). Of interest was whether the expressive language difficulties of the WFD group would interfere with their success on a LC assessment…

Readers' reading purpose is of great significance to their use of text processing strategies, their achievement in recall and reading comprehension in L1 reading research. To test its role in EFL learning, the author conducted an experiment to 18 EFL Chinese learners of English. Think-aloud and written recall methods were adopted and the result…