Mis- and disinformation are rampant issues in our world today which has led to a huge increase in the number of studies researching the topic and its potential solutions. One area that has received attention is how to evaluate media sources and often times, how to evaluate bias in media. Despite past research largely not deciding a joint understanding of this phrase, it has persisted in the research field and in teaching practices. This dissertation had two primary goals: 1) better understand the power that perceptions of bias have on our ability to evaluate information 2) utilize three different methodologies that could replace the term bias in favor of more concrete and identifiable practices and criteria. Study 1 examines the power that perceptions have and specifically the relationship between source perceptions and epistemology. Studies 2 and 3 utilize agenda setting, framing and sentiment analyses to compare various media types to online partisan media. Findings from these studies have strong implications on the research field and how to better teach evaluation of media in today’s highly dynamic informational spaces.

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate how the quality and quantity of literacy instruction are related to children's language and reading achievement at the elementary level. To this end, I conducted three studies: Study 1 used a meta-analytic approach to synthesize extant research findings regarding the correlational coefficients reported between the observed classroom practices (including both quality and quantity of teaching behaviors) and students’ language and literacy achievement from Pre-K to 6th grade; Study 2 employed multilevel multivariate models to examine the how the instructional quantity (i.e., amount of code-based or meaning-based instruction) is related to Grade 1 to Grade 3 students’ reading outcomes while accounting for the relation of students’ initial reading skills to teachers’ instruction as well as a variety of student-and teacher-level characteristics such as students’ race, gender and teachers’ teaching experience; Study 3 employed multilevel multivariate models to examine the how the instructional quality (i.e., teacher warmth and responsiveness, and organization for instruction) is related to student language (listening comprehension) and reading achievement while accounting for the relation of students’ initial reading skills to teachers’ instruction in Grade 1 to Grade 3.

Study 1 obtained a significant but weak association between the observed classroom practices and students’ language and literacy achievement from 108 studies: the average zero-order correlation is .12 and the partial correlation is .04. The relation was slightly weaker in upper than in lower grade levels and stronger for observations capturing macro quality and an instructional dimension than those capturing micro quantitative measurement and an emotional or structural dimension, respectively. Study 2 used data from 800 students and their teachers from Grade 1 to Grade 3, and detected a positive relation of a greater amount of meaning-based instruction to Grade 1 and Grade 2 students’ reading comprehension and a negative relation of the increasing amount of code-based instruction to Grade 2 and Grade 3 students’ reading comprehension. Study 3 used data from 372 students and their teachers in Grade 1 to Grade 3 (part of the sample in Study 2), and found a positive relation of teacher warmth and responsiveness to students’ word reading in Grade 2 and a positive relation of organization for instruction to listening comprehension in Grade 3. These results collectively suggest a weak relation of the observed quantity and quality of literacy instruction to students’ language and reading development at the elementary level. In addition, this dissertation shed light on the complexity and multidimensionality of classroom instruction and advocated more deliberated consideration in developing and applying observational tools in informing teaching and monitoring students’ language and literacy development.

Keywords: classroom observation, language and literacy development, meta-analysis, elementary education

This dissertation investigated second graders’ oral discourse production regarding three aspects: 1) oral discourse production by discourse context, 2) dimensionality of oral discourse production, and 3) contributions of language and cognitive skills to oral discourse production. Data came from 330 second grade students (53% boys) from the Southeastern part of the United States, and oral discourse production was measured through picture description task which was transcribed verbatim and coded for linguistic (e.g., adverb, conjunction, pronominal, elaborated noun phrase, mental state talk) and discourse features (e.g., proper character introduction, degree of decontextualization, perspective taking). Study 1 examined how second graders vary linguistic and discourse features depending on discourse conditions: contextualized condition—describing the picture to an examiner while looking at it together—and decontextualized condition—pretending to describe the picture to a friend while sitting in front of the examiner. Results of multilevel regression showed that type-token ratio, higher degrees of decontextualization, and complex perspective taking were higher in the contextualized condition whereas some elaborated noun phrases, coordinating conjunctions, non-clauses, and proper character introduction occurred more frequently in the decontextualized condition, controlling for total productivity and student demographics. The findings illustrated the extent to which children used their discourse knowledge in oral discourse production. Study 2 looked at the factor structure of oral discourse production using a total of nine linguistic and discourse features identified from the same picture description task in Study 1. Results from confirmatory factor analysis showed that a bi-factor structure consisting of a general oral discourse production factor and two specific linguistic features and discourse features factors provided the best fit to the data. The only reliable factor was the general factor reflecting the common variance among the linguistic and discourse features. Study 3 investigated the structural relations of children’s domain-general cognitive skills (working memory, attentional control), foundational language skills (vocabulary, grammatical knowledge), and higher-order cognitive skills (knowledge-based inference, perspective taking, and comprehension monitoring) to oral discourse production. Oral discourse production was measured by the same picture description task as in Study 1. The results from structural equation models showed that domain-general cognitive skills and foundational language skills had indirect contributions to oral discourse production through the higher-order cognitive skill of inference, highlighting the supporting role of language and cognitive skills and their direct and indirect relations to oral discourse production.

Reading is a complex skill composed of a wide array of language and literacy subskills. In this dissertation, I explored how morphological awareness is related with vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension in Korean and English in the context of Korean-speaking middle school students in South Korea who were learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). In Study 1, I examined how morphological awareness, vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension were directly and indirectly related for the students’ Korean, their L1. Then, in Study 2, I looked at their aforementioned skills in both Korean (L1) and English (L2). I first tested the multidimensionality of morphological awareness in Korean and English, using three types of morphological awareness—inflectional, derivational, and compound morphological awareness. Then, I explored how their morphological awareness was related with vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension across Korean and English. Lastly, for Study 3, I delved into morphological analysis—one of the mechanisms through which morphological awareness is associated with vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension—and examined whether it played a role in explaining the relation of morphological awareness with vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension for the Korean students’ English.One hundred and twenty-one Grade 7 students from two middle schools in a metropolitan city in South Korea participated in this study. The students were measured in morphological awareness, vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension in Korean and English, and morphological analysis only in English. In Study 1, I found morphological awareness predicted reading comprehension both directly and indirectly via word reading in Korean. In Study 2, morphological awareness was found to be multidimensional by language (Korean and English), and morphological awareness in Korean predicted reading comprehension in English via reading comprehension in Korean and morphological awareness in English. Study 3 revealed that morphological analysis partially mediated the relation of morphological awareness with reading comprehension over and above vocabulary and word reading in English.

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