Memoirs, movements, and meaning: Teacher/student research in freshman composition

The author interprets her memoirs as a reader and writer to describe how the movement from I to We, a process of repositioning, shifted her perceptions from hating school to wanting to teach. She begins by tracing her roots as a white, working-class woman from Cleveland (1952--1970) and ends by disclosing what worked and what didn\u27t work when teaching freshman composition at the University of New Hampshire (1994--1997). She draws on feminist, ethnographic, rhetorical, and critical theory to compose thick descriptions of her reading, writing, and teaching life. She juxtaposes her struggles with Others\u27, like Min-Zhan Lu, to identify, interpret, and critique the cultural values and forces at work when coming to voice. The author thinks back through her mother to note how gender and economic class contributed to her struggles. She unveils the disempowering narrative structures in fairy tales and romance fictions she read as a child and names five psychological needs that were never met in school. She recalls her father\u27s utilitarian view of literacy and her difficulties with the foreign discursive practices of graduate school. She confronts more authoritative discourses in Alcoholics Anonymous and discloses conversations among women who gathered to talk about what they couldn\u27t or wouldn\u27t talk about in an AA meeting. She transforms her interpersonal memoirs into a curriculum for freshman composition. The author then focuses on the case studies of two students, Lyn and Connie, to illustrate the issues, contradictions and struggles that arise when she and her students move from I to We. Lyn moved from I to We when her interpretations of her siblings\u27 deaths led her to read to the terminally ill at a local hospital. Connie moved from I to We when her interpretations of her family\u27s Christian values led her to participate in a discussion group at a battered women\u27s shelter. The author then compares the two case studies and finds that Lyn walked her talk at her research site, whereas Connie contradicted herself. The author then juxtaposes her struggles with the struggles that Lyn and Connie encountered when moving from I to We. She then asks her students and herself to determine what knowing they value, where they obtained that knowledge and how they can use their own experiences to transform current language practices into acts of liberation

An Ppproach to Teaching Music Reading in Grades One Through Six

The problem for this study is to find approaches in teaching music reading in grades one through six. The ability to read music is an essential part of a well-rounded music education, and its development should be given proper consideration in the general music class. It is a step to musical understanding and appreciation-one which well taught, leads to perpetually delightful adventures into the realm of music lessons and disagreeable task to be laid aside as quickly as possible. It is important, therefore, that teachers know how to present music reading in an interesting and meaningful way. Their aims should be, (1) to have children enjoy and use music,4 (2) to help the child acquire a knowledge of music notations and symbols, (3) to help the child develop aural powers and to know by sound what he knows by sight, (4) to make the child more aware of the aesthetic values of music through its theoretical approach. The significant factors for teaching music reading, are basically to help the child to gain a better understanding of music notation, to instill self-confidence of musical knowledge and to make the child more aware of the aesthetic values of music through its theoretical approach. This study is limited to the population of one-hundred and twenty-five in Atlanta, Texas with an enrollment of five-hundred or more pupils. 4Anne E. Pierce, Teaching Music in the Elementary School (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), p. 88

Health Literacy, Cognitive Impairment, and Medication Adherence in Veterans with Heart Failure

Background: Heart failure (HF) affects 5.8 million people in the United States, costly in terms of patient mortality and morbidity as well as healthcare dollars. One important manifestation of poor HF outcomes is the excessive admission-readmission cycle. Non-adherence to medication is responsible for the majority of HF readmissions. Identification and intervention for key factors contributing to poor medication adherence is critical to improving outcomes. Two such factors prevalent in persons with HF are cognitive impairment (CI) and poor health literacy (HL). There is a paucity of tested interventions designed to improve medication adherence by addressing underlying CI or HL. A recent study tested a pictorial medication sheet to improve medication adherence in veterans with HF and CI, however no information on HL was collected. This new study examines what mediating effects HL may have played in the adherence scores of subjects in the completed study. Study Aims: Aim 1. Describe the level of HL in the study population. Aim 2. Determine the strength and direction of the relationships between reading HL and numeracy HL and selected clinical and demographic variables in the study population. Aim 3. Determine the direct and indirect effects that reading HL and numeracy HL and other key variables (including the intervention) have upon medication adherence in cognitively impaired veteran outpatients with HF based on prior data from an interventional study testing a pictorial medication sheet to improve medication adherence. Study Design A retrospective, correlational, cross-sectional design was employed to analyze HL scores from medical records with data from the completed study using conventional statistics and structural equation modeling. Results: 27 subjects with a mean age of 65.3 years (SD 8.2, range 45-80) had evaluable data. HL was less than adequate in 19% of the sample. HL scores were strongly correlated with cognition. HL did not significantly affect relationships between study covariates (cognition scores, depression, number of medications) and medication adherence. Conclusions and Significance: HL scores were associated with cognitive function scores. More research is needed to evaluate the prevalence and effect of poor HL in veterans with HF upon adherence

How Students Make Book Choices

In an effort to learn the extent and variety of factors that influence students\u27 book selection, the study reported here was undertaken. The researchers also questioned students regarding what they liked to read about, what authors they liked, and books they had recently read and enjoyed. A total of 688 fifth through eighth grade students enrolled in public schools in two small cities in Nebraska and California responded to a questionnaire. Numbers of respondents from both sexes were fairly evenly distributed across four grades

Fanfiction as playable media

This dissertation offers one way to reconcile what can sometimes seem like an increasingly wide division between text-based and more consciously multimodal composition practices in digital environments. Drawing on Lev Manovich’s theory of digital production, I demonstrate that fanfiction replicates the material structures that produce it: the internet. In this model, a fandom’s canon knowledge is a database, and fanfiction is the interface through which we approach the canon. I continue by examining the virtual linking mechanisms that ground fanfiction reading and writing practices. While the hyperlinked structure of internet environments is frequently considered destabilizing, I argue the conceptual hyperlinks that ground fanfiction are navigational structures that allow for and require significantly different literacy practices than reading and creating traditional literary works such as novels. Instead, these works operate more like aural and visual compositions. Fanfiction is grounded in invention, memory, and arrangement, viewing all texts not as content to be absorbed, but as material that can be connected to other ideas and transformed into something else. These texts emerge from ongoing conversations, relying on extant context from both creator and audience while simultaneously adding new layers of context and conversation. Finally, I position fanfiction as a useful part of new media rhetoric and composition pedagogical practices. In looking at fanfiction as an inherently rhetorical genre, my dissertation differs from existing conversations on fandom and new media writing, which often center on fanfiction as a form of feminist rebellion, and digital writing as either remix writing or decentered and destabilized texts. Countering the common assumption that fanfiction is derivative or childish, my dissertation proves it creates readers and writers who can easily shift perspectives, think carefully about their audience, and critically analyze social narratives. Although fanfiction draws upon long traditions of storytelling, its persistent concern with its own medium separates it from other genres. Fanfiction is a kind of storytelling that is always pointing to something outside of itself, to its source texts and its own materiality. In this way, it creates, in textual form, a dynamic representation of process-based understanding and composition.Englis

Early Pennsylvanian Conodont-Ammonoid Biostratigraphy and the Witts Springs Problem, North-Central Arkansas

The Witts Springs Formation was proposed as a lithostratigraphic unit in north-central Arkansas to include the interval from a horizon equivalent to the base of the Prairie Grove Member, Hale Formation to the top of the Bloyd Formation, of the type Morrowan Series, northwestern Arkansas. The top of the Witts Springs Formation was regarded as being unconformably succeeded by the middle Pennsylvanian Atoka Formation. Recent investigation of this unit in its type area has shown that the presumed Atokan Sandstone is actually a unit confined to the Bloyd Formation. Thus, the type section of the Witts Springs in Searcy County, Arkansas only comprises the Prairie Grove and Brentwood interval. This determination is supported by the recovery of the conodonts Idlognatholdes sinuatus, Neognathodus symmetrlcus and Idiognathodus delicatus, and the ammonoids Arkanites, Branneroceras and Gastrioceras from a succession of calcareous units below the middle Bloyd sandstone throughout the type Witts Springs and other sections in the type region. The Witts Springs should continue to be interpreted in the sense of its original definition, although a supplementary reference section is needed for the upper Witts Springs which spans the Morrowan- Atokan boundary with removal of the Trace Creek from the Morrowan

Positive development in emerging adulthood

Positive functioning in the developmental period of emerging adulthood has received little investigation. The current study investigated components of positive development using confirmatory factor analysis of Australian Temperament Project data collected from 1,158 young adults aged 19-20 years. Positive development constructs that have been theoretically conceptualised were examined to test core concepts. Five first-order constructs were identified in this sample: Civic Action and Engagement, Social Competence, Life Satisfaction, Trust and Tolerance of Others, and Trust in Authorities and Organisations. A second-order positive development factor defined by these constructs provided good fit for the data. This model of positive development in emerging adulthood can provide an outcome measure that can then be used to investigate the developmental processes and pathways involved.<br /

School adjustment and academic achievement of head start participants compared with eligible non-participants

Project Head Start, established in 1965 by the Federal Government, attempted to meet some of the physical, mental, social, and emotional needs of the culturally deprived preschool child. Head Start provided experiences to develop skills and abilities that help to prepare these children for adjustment to and success in public schools. The purposes of this study were (1) to compare children's readiness for first-grade instruction before and after their participation in Head Start and (2) at the end of first grade, to compare the school adjustment ratings, academic achievement test scores, and verbal intelligence quotients of these Head Start participants with eligible non-participants