The Barbara Bush Fellows at TCALL
A Program Sponsored by the Barbara Bush Texas Fund for Family Literacy
2010-2011 Academic Year
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Report Prepared by
Dr. Mary V. Alfred
Alicia Friday
Quinita Ogletree
Juana Vaquero
Harriet Vardiman Smith
Peggy Sue Durbin
Texas Center for the Advancement of Literacy & Learning
Department of Educational Administration & Human Resource Development
College of Education & Human Development
Texas A&M University
July 30, 2011
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Barbara Bush Fellowships consist of one-time, one-year awards to doctoral students conducting research in the area of Family Literacy. The three 2010-2011 Fellows were Alicia Friday, Quinita Ogletree, and Juana Vaquero. Dr. Mary Alfred served as research mentor for the fellows and guided them through the completion of their projects.
Collectively, the fellows’ accomplishments this past year include:
- Research Study in Progress: 1
- Refereed Journal Articles/Policy Briefs (Submitted or in Progress): 7
- Conference Presentations (Presented): 10
- Conference Presentations (Accepted or Under Review): 3
- Conference Papers in Published Proceedings: 1
These accomplishments are based upon the fellows’ research projects, which were completed this year. A summary of each project is presented below.
Alicia Friday is a doctoral student in adult education and human resource development. Her research focused on the integration of instructional technology in Texas family literacy programs. Participants were family literacy teachers in Texas who were currently utilizing technology to help facilitate family literacy education. This study sought to identify how technology was being used to teach family literacy, the perceived benefits and challenges of using technology, and the ways using technology has impacted the delivery of family literacy programs as a whole. The participants revealed that using the internet to find activities and gather information for family literacy instruction was a primary way that they integrated technology. Websites were mentioned by all eight participants as a resource they used in their classrooms. The internet provided a means for the instructors to access more literacy information to supplement the content of their lessons. Additionally, the internet served as a source for literacy students to connect to websites that they use in their personal life, such as on-line banking, prescription needs, bill paying, and e-mail communication. By integrating time into their instruction for students to use the internet, the amount of information available to them increased dramatically.
Quinita Ogletree is a doctoral student in the Urban Education Program in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture with a background in early childhood education. For her research, she examined the impact of family literacy programs on the receptive vocabulary and upper case alphabet knowledge of culturally, linguistically and ethnically diverse (CLED) low income students who are consistently below the norm of the population. Focusing on one Even Start program in Texas, the study showed that family literacy programs have a significant impact on the upper case alphabet knowledge and receptive language of CLED students in the Even Start Family Literacy Programs. Results of the pretest of the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening for Preschool (PALS-Pre-K), 66% of the participants scored at least one standard deviation below the mean. However, the results of the posttest placed the participants within one standard deviation of the norm. This result places all the participants within the range of students who were shown to be successful readers in the fall of first grade.
Juana Vaquero is a doctoral student in the School Psychology Program in the Department of Educational Psychology. Her research examined the effects of a 12-week, parent-delivered shared book reading intervention on the literacy and language skills of low-income, preschool English Language Learners (ELLs) participating in Head Start. The study included 20 Spanish-speaking mother-child dyads who were assigned to either the intervention (interactive shared-book reading) or the control group (practice as usual). The study examined the acquisition of target words that were selected for the study, knowledge of print concepts (understanding or reading conventions) and general receptive and expressive vocabulary gains. All of the participants in the study received 24 books (two per week) but only ten families received training on interactive shared-book reading. The results indicate that children in the intervention group obtained higher scores, on average, on the standardized and research-developed receptive vocabulary measures and print awareness. This finding provides further evidence that receptive vocabulary can be developed during interactive shared-book reading. More specifically, the findings suggest that when parents read to their children in an interactive manner and deliberately discuss words in the context of the books, children’s receptive vocabulary is enhanced.
CONCLUSION
The fellows have spent time refining their research design, getting approval from Internal Review Board to conduct the proposed research, and collecting and analyzing preliminary data. They have presented papers at conferences and participated in academic courses to fulfill their degree requirements. Juanita and Quinita completed course work and successfully completed their doctoral preliminary exam. Alicia is in the process of completing her coursework and putting together her doctoral committee. The fellows are excited about the acceptance of their NCFL (National Center for Family Literacy) proposal which will be presented at the upcoming conference in April 2012. In addition to the collaborative proposal, Alicia and Quinita also had individual papers accepted for presentation.
