The study reported in this dissertation is a response to the call for school science argumentation interventions to shift from a focus on argument framework towards epistemic criteria valued by the scientific community, and to focus on the practice of critiquing in addition to constructing arguments, as both practices are part of scientific…

Untreated perinatal mood and anxiety disorders have short- and long-term consequences for mental, physical, developmental, social, and economic outcomes affecting the mother, infant, family, and community. Online Health interventions are known to be effective in treating mental health disorders and increasing access to care. Successful perinatal…

Chronically low performing schools in the United States have required targeted support and interventions to increase student achievement. In recent years, the school turnaround model has emerged as a swift, dramatic, comprehensive approach to implementing interventions in the lowest performing schools (Calkins, Guenther, Belfiore, & Lash,…

This study investigated the effect of direct instruction in rhetorical analysis on students' critical thinking abilities, including knowledge, skills, and dispositions. The researcher investigated student perceptions of the effectiveness of argument mapping; Thinker's Guides, based on Paul's model of critical thinking; and Socratic questioning.…

While in-flight psychiatric emergencies occur at a lower rate than other medical emergencies (Matsumoto & Goebert, 2001), they tend to cause a higher degree of disruption for passengers (Gordan, Kingham, & Goodwin, 2004). However, flight attendants often receive training that is too basic, minimal, and insufficient to effectively manage…

This study examined the effectiveness of instruction in a genre-specific reading comprehension strategy, "Critical Analysis of Argumentative Text" (CAAT), which was designed to help students to identify, summarize and critically analyze parts of argumentative text. Based on the premise that reading and writing require similar knowledge of text…

School absenteeism and truancy have been of concern to schools, courts, communities and researchers since compulsory education laws were first put into effect. Despite the attention given to this problem and significant effort aimed at improving student attendance, school absenteeism remains a serious problem. A number of qualitative reviews of…

An economics-driven discourse about early literacy (Trudell, 2009) in sub-Saharan African settings often includes a list of reasons for poor levels of literacy that remain mired in deficit thinking or a deficiencies model in which the problem lies within the non-literate people themselves. Meanwhile, the established post-colonial educational…