This research project aims to answer the following questions: 1) How do the reading strategies students learn in their classes transfer from college to their professional lives, 2) What reading strategies are being taught in college courses that alumni consider to be most beneficial for their careers post-graduation, and what reading practices do…

This dissertation investigates the impact of a pedagogical class and a Community of Practice (CoP) on the implementation of reading strategies by faculty at a community college. It explores the types of reading strategies instructors plan to use, their integration into classroom practices, the factors enabling or impeding this implementation, and…

Although academic success among diverse community college students requires effective reading skills, providing support for struggling readers is becoming increasingly more difficult. The problem addressed in this quantitative study was that due to Assembly Bill 705, prohibiting colleges from offering remedial courses without data to substantiate…

Only 35% of fourth graders in the United States can read at the proficient level, and only 34% of eighth graders can read proficiently (National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP], 2022). The purpose of this study was to determine how preservice teachers (PSTs) describe their experience of the methodology of teaching reading in their…

In this dissertation, I report results from a study that investigated the impact of students' engagement in a series of tasks in an introductory proof course that was designed to stimulate their learning of reading strategies to support their comprehension of mathematics proofs. Specifically, I investigated the impact of the design of five…

The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine if, and to what extent, a correlation existed between dimensions of metacognitive reading strategies with the grade point averages (GPAs) of college students with learning disabilities and attention disorders in four-year colleges in the United States. Flavell's theory of the…

This dissertation explored how effectively first-year writing (FYW) evaluated and selected sources for their researched writing assignments. Though students were taught how to access sources from the library and offered sources on the course management system, most often they obtained sources via the open internet. As mis- and disinformation…

While online information is abundant and easily accessible, its quality varies widely. Fact-checkers evaluate online information by reading laterally, i.e., opening a new browser tab to research sources and verify claims. This dissertation consisted of three studies that used course outcomes assessment data to examine the impact of a lateral…

Student retention is a major issue that has spanned multiple decades in higher education in the United States, corresponding with greater access to higher education and a rise in non-traditional students. Innumerable challenges can interfere with a student's academic performance or ability to remain in and complete a degree program. All manner of…

This qualitative case study explores the processes that occurred when pre-service teachers in an undergraduate elementary education literacy methods course were asked to interact with contextually challenging texts in a comprehension module and implement comprehension instruction in a tutoring field experience placement. The goal was to understand…

Primary literature serves an integral role within disciplinary communities to facilitate communication and mediate knowledge construction. As such, scientists devote much of their time immersed in primary literature to negotiate and update disciplinary knowledge. Despite the importance and relevance of this task, many biology students express…

Is there a way of reading literature that is specialized for teaching? Research into the teaching of mathematics has identified a specialized form of content knowledge (SCK, Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008) that is significantly linked to student learning (Hill, Ball, & Rowan, 2005). Despite the centrality of literature to the teaching of…

The transition to college may present beginning college learners with novel academic opportunities and challenges, including the requirement to learn independently from complex college-level texts. Several achievement motivation factors may play a role in explaining differences in beginning college learners' use of deep-level reading comprehension…

Readers read for different purposes and the texts they read vary in topic and difficulty. These situational factors influence standards of coherence--how much understanding a reader aims to have for a given text. Three studies examined whether individual differences in reader-based standards of coherence influenced off-line and on-line…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the use of reading strategies being implemented in an urban school district in the Southeast. This study was framed on the SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) Model (Echevarria et al., 2017). SIOP is an instructional framework that has been used in K-12 schools since the 1980s. It is a…