Morris Council: Department of Educational Studies
Dissertation Title: Investigating Librarian Involvement with a Tier-Two Reading Intervention on the Achievement of Primary-Aged Urban Learners.
One of the greatest risk factors for special education placement, school failure, and later life marginalization is reading incompetence (Fuchs, Fuchs, Safer, & McInerny, 2005). The National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000) identified five basic components critical for reading instruction (i.e., phonemic awareness, alphabetic principal, vocabulary development, fluency, and comprehension) but noted that fluency is often an overlooked aspect of explicit classroom reading instruction. They also mention that oral reading fluency should be developed during beginning reading instruction and that repeated reading intervention is one evidence-based practice that can be used effectively for this purpose. Many young children who show special education risk, especially students of color in urban schools, struggle with reading fluency and would benefit from explicit fluency training. Some authorities posit beginning reading can be further enhanced by using culturally relevant (CR) materials along with repeated reading (e.g., Bishop, 2007; Gay, 2004) particularly for students of color who are struggling readers.
My dissertation examines the involvement of a school librarian in monitoring a computer software program (Reading RACES – Relevant and Culturally Engaging Stories) to five second-graders attending an urban school, who demonstrated reading risk. The Reading RACES program was designed to deliver a repeated reading interventions using culturally relevant literature. A multiple baseline probe across participants’ design was employed to determine the effects of Reading RACES on oral reading fluency (ORF) and comprehension of the participants. This study also used a descriptive analysis of the librarian’s ability to monitor the intervention.
This Fall, I will begin a tenure-track position at the University of West Georgia as an Assistant Professor in Special Education. My research interest includes academic and social interventions for learners considered at-risk for academic failure and/or diagnosed with high incidence disabilities. I also hope to explores the intersections between evidence-based intervention and sociocultural approaches to education.
David Bwire: Department of Teaching and Learning
My dissertation focuses on transcultural literacy practices and global education based on an online, collaborative writing project between middle school students in Nairobi, Kenya and Aleknagik, Alaska. I investigate how students’ strategies of communication across cultural and geospatial difference signal the impact of implicit and explicit sociocultural practices on intercultural communication. In this study, I also seek to better understand how students’ communicative strategies, which draw from resources inside and outside schools, can make a case for connecting schools to communities, and offer pedagogical strategies for teaching diverse learners. Additionally, my dissertation visualizes and amplifies marginalized and silenced identities (selves) and voices. That is, Aleknagik students who are Yup’ik, like other Alaskan Natives, are oftentimes silenced and considered to be nonmainstream
in Alaska. Kenyan students in cosmopolitan, multiethnic, multicultural Nairobi and whose language is characterized by urban plurilingualism, speak in ways that are peripheralized in classrooms because of policies that regulate language use. Overall, this dissertation theorizes and makes visible the resourcefulness of these rarely examined student experiences, and explores how technology, multiculturalism, and multilingualism intersect with pedagogy and classroom communication.
The position, which is at The College of New Jersey, is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education, Language, and Literacy with responsibilities in teaching, scholarship in literacy, service, and advisement. The position also requires experience in and practice of inclusive education, school-to-community collaboration, and a focus on literacy and access.
I have always tapped into my prior teaching experience in my scholarship and plan to continue this journey of reflection on the role of education in a pluralistic, transcultural, and globalizing world. I look forward to opportunities where I can tap into various instructional approaches and formal and informal assessment in order to engage with resources from students’ culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. My scholarly path is grounded on my upbringing and experiences that began in linguistically and culturally diverse settings in Kenya, and continue to extend internationally. Having been raised in a country with over 40 indigenous languages, a national language (Swahili), and an official language (standard Kenyan English), I am cognizant of how contested repertoires of communication impact identity formation. I plan to continue my journey in understanding my, and other people’s transcultural literacy practices and strategies of intercultural communication as I reflect on the resourcefulness that diversity brings to learning.
