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

prepare anything for meetings. Teachers received no incentive for attending training
meetings but were informed during the meeting that they would be paid for each
storybook reading completed and also that each classroom would receive a copy of each
storybook included in the study at the end of the school year.
Intervention group. Training for teachers in the intervention group emphasized
the literacy and social-emotional intervention components as well as their integration in
storybook reading. Regarding the literacy component of the intervention, training
included an adapted version of the Stony Brook Emergent Literacy Curriculum
(Whitehurst, 1994). Specifically, the lead researcher first read and discussed the
information in Appendix K with teachers. The researcher then showed teachers a portion
of the Emergent Literacy Curriculum training video introducing the PEER and CROWD
acronyms and demonstrating appropriate uses of the techniques in reading books with
preschool-aged children (Whitehurst, 1992). Previous research has revealed that
compared to direct training, video training was not only less laborious but also more
effective at increasing children‘s literacy skills (see Arnold & Whitehurst, 1994).
Regarding the social-emotional component of the intervention, training included a
discussion of Gottman et al.‘s (1997) description of emotion-coaching families.
Specifically, the lead researcher read and discussed the information in Appendix L with
teachers. Because the contents of Appendix L came directly from Gottman et al. (1997),
content was directed toward parent-child relationships. This point was made, and the
significance of this content to teacher-child relationships was highlighted.
75