This applied dissertation was designed to provide perceptual teacher data as well as summative testing data to educational leaders concerning the effects of implementing Investigations in Number, Data, and Space® (Investigations) in three Title I elementary school settings, two Title I schools, and one non-Title I school. Data collected during…

This dissertation study investigated the efficacy of a supplementary preschool embedded multimedia curriculum that was designed to increase one type of conceptual knowledge: taxonomic categories. Named the World of Words (WOW), this curriculum focused on teaching the properties and concepts associated with seven taxonomic categories and providing…

The purpose of this study was to examine an activity-based intervention, dialogic reading with embedded explicit phonological awareness strategies, applied as a preventive approach by parents in their home settings located within a culturally and ethnically diverse urban region. This study investigated the effects of training parents to employ a…

Joint attention has long been considered absent or deviant in children with autism. Although this deficit is seen, there is variability in joint attention within the population and some children with autism employ it. Little is known about the profile of joint attention skills of these children or how joint attention use affects concurrent…

This dissertation investigates how distributional information in the speech stream can assist infants in the initial stages of acquisition of their native language phonology. An exploratory statistical analysis derives this information from the adult speech data in the corpus of conversations between adults and young children in Russian. Because…

Kindergarten transition is a critical experience for children because of its potential long-term impact on school performance. Recognizing this impact, the field of early childhood education has been making great efforts to facilitate children's smooth transition to kindergarten through various approaches. One of the most widely accepted…

In North Carolina, the eligibility criteria for enrollment in Part C early intervention services do not exclude infants and toddlers based on the severity or laterality of hearing loss. As such, the state's early intervention population represents a widely diverse array of children ranging from those with minimal to profound hearing losses. While…

In this dissertation, the participation of 5-year-old Spanish speaking children in a kindergarten classroom community was explored. The school was located in a working and middle-class community in Southern Arizona, where pursuant to state law; the language of instruction was English. Student participants spent four hours every day in an English…

A challenge for todays instructional leaders is identifying the most effective method of educating English Language Learners (ELLs) who participate in the English as a Second Language (ESL) program. The primary purpose of the study was to compare the effectiveness of three programs used for ESL students in twelve elementary schools in a Urban…

Although research-based interventions for young students with Autism Spectrum Disorders exist and are supported in the literature, early intervention teachers in public schools often lack knowledge and training in the adoption and proper use of these effective-intervention interventions. The purpose of this study was to investigate current…

Three main purposes provided the foundation for this study. The first purpose was to investigate academic achievement through analyses of data obtained through formal and informal assessments among kindergarten through eighth grade students who participated in a Head Start program, center-based care program, or home-based care prior to school…