The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential use of Second Life (Linden Labs, 2004) and Skype (Skype Limited, 2009) as simulated virtual professional development tools for pre-service teachers seeking endorsement in teaching English as a Second Official Language (ESOL. Second Life is an avatar-based Internet program that allows end-users to interact, using audio and chat features, with a digital representation of themselves (an avatar). Skype is an Internet-based video conferencing program that allows users to see each other by way of a webcam. Of particular interest to this study was how a group of 12 pre-service teacher education students internalized professional knowledge and if that knowledge was actually transferred into active teaching practice and professional identity development. To investigate this knowledge transfer, an exploratory case study (Yin, 2008) was conducted framed around the theories of sociocultural constructivism (Kanuka & Anderson, 1999; Vygotsky, 1978) and critical pedagogy (Freire, 1990). The components of one module from the ESOL II course that addressed hegemonic curriculum and teaching practices were recreated in Second Life and Skype or analysis. Using within-case analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994), vignettes (Ely, Vinz, Downing, & Anzul, 1997; Spalding & Phillips, 2007), and tallied collaborative utterances (Erben 2001), developmental progressions among the pre-service teachers were examined from the beginning to the end of the module and were evaluated for their relevance to knowledge transfer and self-regulation. The interactions were also examined for instances of amplifications and reductions of pedagogic practices (Erben 1999) through collaborative dialogue (Bakhtin, 2006; Erben, 2001; Wertsch, 1991). The findings of this study suggested the positive potential of using Second Life and Skype to enable self-regulation and pedagogic transformations to occur among the participants with appropriate considerations acknowledged for the teaching audience, developmental goals, and venue of instruction.

Student academic achievement is a collective effort of family, community, and school experience (Sloat, Makkonen, & Koehler, 2007). However the biggest burden is placed on teachers who are assumed and expected to possess the skills, knowledge, caring, and commitment to students often without the appropriate support, resources and professional development. With a focus on teacher development this work will listen to the voices of eight veteran educators from the Texas-Mexico border region and trace the steps in their formation and critical understandings of themselves and their professions to better diagnose students’ academic needs. The site of my study is in the southern-most part of the U.S.-Mexico border known as the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas (RGV). This dynamic region of our country was occupied by immigrant settlers in the middle 1700s and has seen much socio-political and cultural change throughout the years. Nucleus to the “browning of America” (Rodriguez, 2002), the demographic shift toward more ethnic/racial diversity, and in particular the ascent of Latinos as the largest minority in the country, the Border and its teachers provide key insights regarding effective ways to educate Latino children because they have served this community the longest. This study is a synthesis of historical sociology and cultural anthropology inquiries based on applied research method of interviews with Border educators. It includes: ethnographic and historical data, and testimonios, or critically documented histories, that address views on educational reform intended to foster academic success among Latino students. Latinos have become the nation’s largest majority at 16.3% of the population. The growth trend is also evident in Texas with a 37.6% and 90.4% for the RGV (Census, 2010). The correlation between poverty and educational attainment places this population at a significant disadvantage in the nation as well as in the RGV. Some observers have expressed concern that Latinos will represent the majority of the population by 2040 as the “poorer, less educated, and productive” (Jillson, 2012, p. xiii). My work challenges this conceptual relationship between poverty and school failure by focusing on a region where the student body has historically been predominantly Latino and economically disadvantaged with a 32.6% poverty rate compared to a national figure of 11.3% (Census, 2010). My findings on the epistemic value of identity demonstrated through my Spotlight Identity (SI) framework, support the notion that aligning students with teachers of similar experiential and cultural backgrounds positively impacts academic achievement and that, generally speaking, these affinities improve relations with families and allow for teachers to better understand the academic and personal challenges that the students are facing. My constructivist analysis suggests that academic success can be achieved, regardless of economic impediments when communities, schools, educators, and families work collaboratively with a child-centered approach. For participants in the study, barriers such as low socioeconomic (SES) were not seen as germane to student academic success when all the elements in their “educational equation” were in place. Academic success—construed by participants as significant student yearly progress, meeting grade level requirements, and high school completion—can be achieved, regardless of social and economic factors, when communities, schools, educators, and families work together through child-centered efforts and mediated through “critical bicultural education” (Darder, 1991). / text

This transformative participatory study was designed to address the issue of limited culturally relevant Spanish or bilingual mentor texts for use in writing workshop. The researcher references critical pedagogy theory, writing instruction theory and transformative education theory to set a theoretical framework. In the study 2 Dual Language teachers currently implementing a Two-Way Dual Language program engaged in a six session book study and article discussion using Alma Flor Ada’s and Isabel Campoy’s book Authors in the classroom: A transformative Education Process (2004). Sessions were audiotaped, reflections were collected, and a pre and post questionnaire was used to gather data. Using grounded theory the data was coded and findings are included in this report. / text

After the Mexican-American war, the educational experience of Mexican and Mexican -American students was one of segregation, discrimination, and inequalities. Latina/o histories and funds of knowledge have not been historically part of the classroom curriculum. Although scholars, educators, and social movements have challenged such inequalities, they still persist. Students became objects of the educational process. New theories and educational practices, such as critical pedagogy, have helped empowered students to become aware of their situation and encouraged students to become social agents of change. Literature circles, an educational practice of critical pedagogy, enable educators to provide students with an educational experience where they become the Subjects of their own learning; thus, transforming their educational experiences. / text

This research report follows a group of educators, project managers and scientists involved in a norm-critical project: Norm Creative Certification. The aim of this study is to examine the proposal for, and obstacles to, a norm-critical change that the group discusses in relation to the project and its educational context. The research report also examines whom are expected to make the norm-critical change. For gathering the empirical material the method participant observation is used. Further, the material has been analyzed inspired by Carol Bacchis policy analysis method What is the problem represented to be? Carol Bacchis method has worked indicative, since the material is more organic than a policy. The research report has been analyzed in the context of theories of intersectionality and Kevin Kumashiros theory about antioppressive pedagogy. The obstacles that the reference group refers to a norm-critical change is partly a threatening outside world and an internal feminist critic, the lack of action, a fake (internal) self-image and a fear of the discomfort and resistance that norm-critical change raises. The components that the group suggests for a positive development, is linked to the experience-based learning, an interested attitude of the practitioner, the relation to time and an understanding of conflict, power and domination. What also emerges is that the norm-critical change occurs in the individual, which is assumed not to have any experience of being outside the norm. A duality emerges overall as the group relates to two parallel ideas and pedagogical approaches. Partly the group relates to a "market" where assignments will be carried out and where it is stressed that action without understanding is a way to a norm-critical change. At the same time signed an opposite condition for a norm-critical change, where time, your own experience, understanding and self-reflexivity stands in the center. Here the focus is on longer processes, the individual and the learning processes.

This qualitative dissertation explores the classroom experiences of international undergraduate students in the U.S. with a specific focus on perceptions of undergraduate Chinese international students. The study starts with a literature review of the field of study where I identify classroom practices that, instead of promoting integration of international students into classroom activities, facilitated exclusion and segregation of these students. Subsequently, I explore different classroom practices perceived by 15 Chinese international undergraduate students to be effective and those perceived to be ineffective. At the same time, perceived identity of these Chinese international students in a U.S. classroom setting and how these affect their experiences and sense of membership are also explored. The study concludes with a series of recommendations under a proposed critical pedagogy of internationalization that address some of the challenges identified in this dissertation and develop students' identities, critical thinking skills with a comparative perspective, intercultural communication, cultural competence, and social justice.

The purpose of this study is to find out which attitudes, norms and values exists about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) families in preschools. Based on five qualitative interviews with teachers that work at a LGBT-certified preschool and one that is active in their work with norm critical pedagogy. To be able to fulfil my purpose of this study I concentrated on why these teachers believed that it was of importance to counter society’s heteronormativity, to prevent discrimination and mistreatments towards children and their LGBT parents in preschool. I wanted to find out what the teachers thoughts were on the concept of what a family is and how the diversity of families is shown in the preschools material and pedagogy. When I analysed the results of my qualitative interviews I used queer theories that include heteronormativity and norm critical pedagogy. The interviews of the teachers showed that they thought it was of great importance to work with a norm critical pedagogy because they did not believe that society’s heteronormativity could or should rule in preschools. The assumption that the majority, to not say all of the children, come from nuclear families does not agree with the reality of many children in our society. To assume such thing can lead to discrimination and obscureness. The results of my study show that by reviewing your own norms and perceptions of normality, will allow you to work with a norm critical approach. It also gives you an awareness that will help you as an educator to make sure that more children and families feel that they are acknowledged and respected. The active choice of methods and materials in the preschool helps the teachers to ensure that the children can be seen and reflected on a daily basis. By questioning heteronormativity in preschool, teachers offer children more opportunities and presents different realities. It also helps them to develop measures to analyse the norms and not just assume that there is only one right way to live.

This research examines the ways in which the Vancouver Olympics emblem, an Inuit inuksuk, and other Aboriginal symbols have been ‘adopted’ by the organizers of the 2010 Winter Olympics, how visual and textual Aboriginal representations have been incorporated into the public education mandate of the Games, and how this relates to the Aboriginal Participation Goals of the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC). I use Freirian critical cultural pedagogy and Foucauldian theories along with a visual research method, semiotic analysis, as a way to examine the material presented on the official Vancouver 2010 Olympic website and related websites.

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This investigation is a case-study of adolescent literacy practices and some of the texts arising from them. Forty-five texts were initially analysed for their generic structure and semiotic composition from within the traditions of the sociolinguistic paradigm. Findings from these two processes of analysis were then reinterpreted from a Deleuzean perspective with the aim of opening out otherwise imperceptible generative forces implicated in differences between the creation of online texts such as MXIT instant messages; Facebook texts and emails, and traditional print-and-paper school based writing. The context for the study was a Pietermaritzburg government girls’ only high school. A mixed-methods approach was used throughout the research process. The sample of twelve learners was purposefully selected from across two grade 9 classes to whom subject-English was taught. The core component of the data is a single writing exercise in which the pupils were asked to write a film appraisal as 1) a MXIT or SMS message; 2) an email; 3) a Facebook message and 4) a conventional film review. There are two major findings from this study. First, in some contexts, adolescents demonstrate a high degree of differentiated control over the structural, linguistic and semiotic composition of their writing in English; second, in online literacy, there is a complex configuration of motivating contextual variables that teenagers co-opt. These generate dynamic forces that serve adolescents’ own social and affective purposes and which can supersede, subvert or cooperate with the stated purpose of a genre. A Deleuzean framework helps reveal the complex processes underlying adolescent literacies and enables the beginning of an interrogation of the pedagogic implications of recent innovations in communication technology and practices. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.