Scientific literacy is the foundation on which both California's currently adopted science standards and the recommended new standards for science are based (CDE, 2000; NRC, 2011). The Writing for Science Literacy (WSL) curriculum focuses on a series of writing and discussion tasks aimed at increasing students' scientific literacy. These tasks are based on three teaching and learning constructs: thought and language, scaffolding, and meta- cognition. To this end, WSL is focused on incorporating several strategies from the Rhetorical Approach to Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking to engage students in activities designed to increase their scientific literacy; their ability to both identify an author's claim and evidence and to develop their own arguments based on a claim and evidence. Students participated in scaffolded activities designed to strengthen their written and oral discourse, hone their rhetorical skills and improve their meta-cognition. These activities required students to participate in both writing and discussion tasks to create meaning and build their science content knowledge. Students who participated in the WSL curriculum increased their written and oral fluency and were able to accurately write an evidence-based conclusion all while increasing their conceptual knowledge. This finding implies that a discourse rich curriculum can lead to an increase in scientific knowledge

The dissertation studied secondary student perceptions of mobile technology in a 1:1 implementation setting. The study resulted in three major findings; students reported learning that was specific to their use of tablets, students reported an increase in metacognitive strategies utilized due to continuous access to their school data, and there was a change in the communication ecology of students over a prolonged period of device use (one year). The purpose of this study was to better understand how the use of mobile technologies impacts the education of secondary school students. Specifically, this study addresses how the use of iPads for one year impacts middle school students' conceptions of their own learning. The research questions were how do students' conceptions of their own learning change after using mobile technologies, how do 8th grade students think about their own learning, after a year of using mobile tablets, and how do their conceptions of learning compare to those of 7th grade students, who are about to use mobile tablets? To address the research questions, a mixed methods cross-sectional study was conducted where the unit of analysis was the individual middle school student. Surveys of both seventh and eighth grade students were collected to determine how students are utilizing their iPads in both formal and informal educational settings. Additionally, interviews were conducted to further determine how students perceive their own learning with and without the use of iPads. The findings from this study adds to the limited amount of research on students' perceptions of mobile technology use in a secondary school setting with a 1:1 device implementation