Adolescents' motivation is a critical factor for reading success. The lack of motivation adversely affects adolescents' abilities to enhance vocabulary and reading comprehension skills as well as developing powerful reading strategies (Roberts, Torgesen, Boardman, & Scammacca, 2008). Starting in the fourth grade, students' academic…

This dissertation focuses on a key challenge facing developing countries intent on enhancing their human capital base--namely, the issue of quality. One of the chapters evaluates the effectiveness of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative in Nepal's primary and lower-secondary schools. Although the OLPC program is being heavily promoted in…

Several authors have suggested that a teacher's ability to encourage a disposition to read may be linked to their personal reading habits and views of literacy. This study examined the relationship between elementary school teachers' reading habits, knowledge of children's literature, and their use of literacy best practices in the classroom. One…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether third grade literacy students who receive incentive rewards as part of their instruction will exhibit significantly higher reading habits and attitudes toward recreational reading than they did before the incentives were introduced. The study examined 19 third grade students with fairly high…

This study examines the relationships among third and fourth grade teacher practices in cognitive development: understanding, application, synthesis, and judgment; emotional/social development; their students' self-reported opportunities for emotional/social development; and academic self-concept. In addition, this study investigates the…