Sample A: Cover Page of Thesis, Project, or Dissertation Proposal

educators‘ emotion coaching skills (Denham, 2005) and through the implementation of
interventions maintaining emotionally positive as well as cognitively enriching classroom
contexts (Raver & Knitze, 2002). Regarding teacher-child relationships, previous
research has dictated a need for further research investigating outcomes related to altering
teacher-childhood discourse and for research investigating the psychosocial as well as the
physical aspects of positive literacy environments (Makin, 2003). Further, according to
Pianta (2006), intervention methods enhancing relational as well as instructional
functions of the teacher-child relationship, versus one or the other, better support
classroom environments in facilitating children‘s literacy development. The proposed
intervention intended to facilitate both the academic and relational facets of teacher-child
relationships by encouraging emotional communication between teachers and children
with methodologies previously documented as effective in enhancing children‘s
vocabulary skills (see Whitehurst et al., 1994, 1999).
Second, this research could prove helpful for preschool programs such that its
success would offer preschool programs a cost- and time-effective means of
simultaneously enhancing both children‘s literacy and social-emotional skills, thus
allowing programs to allocate greater time and resources to achieving other educational
goals. The implementation of many successful social-emotional intervention programs,
such as the PATHS curricula (Domitrovich et al., 2007), require large-scale efforts and
many resources. In contrast, variations of dialogic reading methods have been shown
effective when implemented within a number of contexts (e.g., children‘s homes and
preschool classrooms, Lonigan & Whitehurst, 1998), within varied time frames (e.g., 1
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