The purpose of this investigation was to conduct a content analysis of the publications of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers (ALER), previously known as College Reading Association (CRA), in the area of preservice teacher education in literacy. As a service to the organization, 71 articles published in ALER's flagship…

Scholars and practitioners advocate for the use of social skills interventions for students with emotional disabilities because significant social skills deficits are common among these students. Yet contemporary practices must be vetted for empirical evidence of their efficacy and effectiveness to ensure students are provided appropriate…

Objectives: This study sought to make the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ) to be more informative about illness representation among older adults with hypertension. The authors developed categories for coding the open-ended question regarding cause of illness in the BIPQ--a pervasive quantitative measure for illness representation.…

This article explores instances of humor in literature as it relates to children with disabilities and offers ways to help children and adolescents build an authentic understanding of disability and disability humor. The prevalent message in the books reviewed is that children with disability not only appreciate humor but also can produce various…

Mobile learning is seeing a fast adoption with the increasing availability and affordability of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. As the creation and consumption of educational multimedia content on mobile devices is also increasing fast, educators and mobile learning providers are faced with the challenge to adapt multimedia type…

The purpose of this study was to determine if a pre-hire structured interview with competency-based behavioral questions can be linked to the teaching performance ratings of faculty at member institutions of the Florida State University System (SUS). Insights gained from this investigation can support the initiative for a proactive Human Resource…

We report on an empirical study grounded in our sustained implementation over ten years of a sequence of three-term undergraduate core mathematics courses centred on microworlds. The survey study investigates students' views on 15 competencies potentially developed as they, individually or in pairs, create 12 Exploratory Objects, i.e.,…

The use of smartphones has drastically increased in recent years, heralding an explosion in the use of QR codes. The black and white square barcodes that link the physical and digital world are everywhere. These simple codes can provide many opportunities to connect people in the physical world with many of Extension online resources. The…

This research uses enclosed whole shapes, rather than visual form fragments, to demonstrate that children's use of local geometric information is influenced by global shapes in small-scale spaces. Three- to six-year-old children and adults participated in two experiments with a table-top task. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with a…

In this thesis, we consider estimation, coding, and sensor scheduling for energy efficient operation of wireless visual sensor networks (VSN), which consist of battery-powered wireless sensors with sensing (imaging), computation, and communication capabilities. The competing requirements for applications of these wireless sensor networks (WSN)…

This research investigated how student social interactions within two approaches to an inquiry-based science curriculum could be related to student motivation and achievement outcomes. This qualitative case study consisted of two cases, Off-Campus and On-Campus, and used ethnographic techniques of participant observation. Research participants…

Researchers have recognized the potential of educational computer games in improving students' learning engagement and outcomes; however, facilitating effective learning behaviors during the gaming process remains an important and challenging issue. In this paper, a collaborative knowledge construction strategy was incorporated into an educational…

Background: Deafness has an adverse impact on children's ability to acquire spoken languages. Signed languages offer a more accessible input for deaf children, but because the vast majority are born to hearing parents who do not sign, their early exposure to sign language is limited. Deaf children as a whole are therefore at high risk of language…

Experiences of 10 high-achieving first-generation college students from low-income backgrounds were the focus of this qualitative research study. Family adversity and difficult personal experiences during adolescence were major themes; however, students benefitted from emotionally supportive K-12 educators and academic rigor in high school.…

In a sample of 128 Canadian junior kindergarten children (66 boys), we examined sex differences in emergent literacy and behaviour when listening to and interacting with books of four types: alphabet books with simple text and illustrations, traditional alphabet books with complex text and illustrations, alphabet eBooks, and illustrated…