Keywords

Literacy in science, content area reading, professional development, grounded theory research

Abstract

Classroom teachers deal with numerous pressures in their classrooms including students’ difficulty with reading at the middle and high school levels. Often, teachers can identify the problems, but are often unable to rectify them because of a lack of understanding and support in incorporating reading as part of their content area instruction. This research was conducted to investigate the impact of a sustained, online reading professional development on the teaching practice of middle school and high school science teachers who took the 14-week course. This grounded theory research used the reflective assignment, a comprehensive, 10-week, job-embedded assignment of 62 science teachers, to generate categories and themes about the reading challenges they perceived in their own classrooms, what strategies and tools they chose to remedy those challenges, and the perceived changes they saw in their students and themselves. The theory that was derived from the data speaks to how effective, job-embedded reading professional development can impact the knowledge, motivation, and instructional practice of science teachers in the classroom

Notes

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Graduation Date

2012

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Zygouris-Coe, Vicky

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Education and Human Performance

Degree Program

Education; Science Education

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0004618

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004618

Language

English

Release Date

December 2012

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Education, Education -- Dissertations, Academic

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