2.4 Doctoral program issues: commentary on companion dissertations  (Page 7/14)

Question one findings. Using specified decision rules for interpreting the pretest and posttest TL results, the Spanish early literacy intervention was determined to be effective for 15 of the 17 TL literacy components addressed in the intervention.

Question two findings. This Spanish early literacy intervention was determined to be "Highly Effective" or "Effective" for ten first grade students and "Partially Effective" for the remaining three first grade students.

Recommendations. Three recommendations were advanced for continuing the research agenda initiated in this inquiry. The first two recommendations focused on future research aimed at improving the TL. The first research recommendation called for developing a parallel form of the TL to eliminate the problem of test wiseness. The second research recommendation suggested a need to reexamine the validity of the Fluency and Reading Accuracy TL measures. The final recommendation proposes what practitioners should do to replicate this study for the same intervention population. (p. iii-iv)

As indicated in the abstract of McArthur, the purpose was”to evaluate whether a highly focused Spanish early literacy intervention increased pre-reading skills for sixteen culturally and linguistically diverse bilingual kindergarten students who were identified as most at risk for reading difficulties at the focus school (p. iii).”Mohr addressed the similar purpose in this way for these companion dissertations,“to determine the extent to which a highly focused Spanish early literacy intervention increased pre-reading skills for 13 culturally and linguistically diverse bilingual first grade students who were identified in their school as most at risk for reading difficulties (p.iii).”The evaluation model for companion dissertations focuses on the same topic/issue/concern being evaluated as evidence in the referenced cases of McArthur and Mohr on the evaluation of an intervention in early Spanish literacy.

Single Case Model

A fourth type of companion dissertation is a single case model in which one context or setting is selected for the study; however, differing target populations are studied within that context. For example, one companion dissertation (Creel, 2000) sought to determine differences in student achievement and attendance of African American students before and after the implementation of a standardized dress code in a suburban high school in Southeast Texas, while the other companion studied the same among Hispanic high school students (Widener, 2000). As part of the companion studies, differences in student attendance between African American students and Hispanic students were studied to determine if differences existed in two separate subpopulations in the same high school.

The organization of such a study follows: Chapter One (structured in the same way, but with differing information with the exception of the purpose which is stated the same but with different populations or samples), Chapter Two will be different because two differing groups are to be studied; therefore, the review of literature will be different, Chapter Three will have the same content with, of course, different samples or populations, Chapter Four and Five will be individually authored, and Chapter Six should be a companion cross-case analysis analyzed and written by the two candidates, so in this sense, Chapter Six will be the same in both dissertations.