Joseph Schwab claimed that only teachers are capable of translating scholarly theory into curriculum, as only they have knowledge of and are able to co-ordinate its four cornerstones of subject matter, learners, context and the teacher. Organised around Schwab’s heuristic, this thesis explores from an ecological perspective the curriculum making practices of seven experienced, effective teachers of adult ESOL over the trajectory of a course that each one taught. While normative advice in second language teacher education texts encourages a more systems-based approach to curriculum development, there is increasing awareness in research-based literature that the instructional curriculum is in fact an interactive construction played out in a dynamic, non-linear process and particularised to a certain context and group of learners. This evidencebased study aims to illustrate how teachers engage with written curriculum sources, classroom and cultural contexts, their own theories of practice and the developing understandings and wishes of learners as they make the instructional curriculum. Data were collected from guided pre-course and post-course interviews with teachers as well as persistent, debriefing-type interviews throughout the courses, supported by course documentation and teaching materials. Themes emerging from the data and from relevant literature were coded and analysed qualitatively. Findings of this study illuminate significant aspects of teachers’ curriculum making practices, including the weaving of conceptual content onto the timeframe of the courses, teachers’ efforts to achieve coherence, balance and variety in the instructional curriculum, and the importance of time and process. They emphasise the central role of the teacher as synthesiser of a variety of considerations, and provide evidence of the rich and complex understandings of teachers’ professional knowledge in action. They also show the fundamental importance of good cognitive and affective rapport between teacher and learners, and the need for teachers to constantly monitor and adjust the instructional curriculum according to learners’ developmental needs, while at the same time taking into account a unique constellation of influences from its micro- and macro- context. Implications for ESOL teachers and teacher educators of this more detailed understanding of the instructional curriculum and of teachers’ professional knowledge bases are also explored.

This investigation was inspired by Carkhuff's postulated that the principles which underlie effective counseling are equally pertinent to everyday human relationships – such as one may observe in the family. Carkhuff has not articulated this postulate in any detail and the present investigation both develops the notion of family problem solving strategies and tests it out in a practical situation. The development of this notion of family problem solving strategies begins with an integration of Carkhuff's model of the counseling process with similar models put forward by other authors. This is followed by a detailed analysis of family problem solving strategies as reported in the literature, and collation of data from both sources into a so-called Family Transaction Model (FTM). This Model consists of a series of distinctive though related parameters of family problem solving which include inner feelings, listening, self-expression, conflict management, the determination and execution of action plans, and the roles adopted by family members. Each parameter is defined in terms of specific behaviours or skills, postulated as necessary for effective problem solving. This FTM is then subjected to empirical validation in a comprehensive field study using 75 members of 18 complete nuclear families. A factor analysis of data derived from videotaped family discussions shows up two distinctive factors, "supportive involvement" and "distracting involvement"; these cover the parameters postulated above albeit in modified format. The main measurement variables involved have satisfactory inter-examiner and test-retest reliability. The FTM plus ancillary measures is shown to be highly effective in discriminating between parents and children; the former virtually embody the characteristics of supportive involvement while the latter show its obverse or distracting involvement. The Model also differentiates between male and female parents and, to a lesser extent, between male and female children. But it does not differentiate between family groups defined as troubled or untroubled on the basis of their referral to some helping agency or their mutual ratings of problem solving effectiveness. The format used for this assessment phase of the investigation also demonstrates the viability of using questionnaire ratings to ascertain family problem solving strategies, the value of family group discussion of real issues as a means to gather diagnostic data, and the inhibiting effects of videotape recording on the interview behaviour of participants. Finally the FTM is used as basis for a short-term treatment programme of 4 further sessions, such as might be undertaken by community resource personnel who have limited time and skill. This programme proves ineffective in changing observed interview behaviour, though participants report beneficial changes in attitude, mutual understanding and family relationships outside the interview situation. The results further suggest that the FTM is a viable basis for a treatment programme but that it is too comprehensive for success to be achieved in so few sessions, that therapists require extensive prior experience and training, that family members need to be flexibly involved in treatment, and that the entire programme needs to be carefully planned with a high degree of structure in the initial stages. The results of the present study as a whole provide a basis for further investigation including the validation of the FTM with a wide range of family groups, the development of more comprehensive rating scales, modifications in the assessment interview’s format, the development of a more effective treatment programme, and the development of an appropriate training programme for community resource personnel.

The aim of this one year descriptive longitudinal study was to investigate the efficient strategies some competent novice readers used while learning to read in an existing reading programme for which text reading was the main instructional task. The prior teaching of sounds or of words in isolation or in lists was not emphasized in this programme. The authors of the texts tried to use the language of New Zealand Children. These texts provide the support for the Auckland child who comes to the new task of reading with a set of responses learnt from his past experience with oral language. Other important questions of the study related to whether children in such a programme could read not only unseen classroom texts, but also texts from a programme with a decoding emphasis. Fifty-two competent readers were chosen by a stratified random sampling method from 242 six-year-old children attending 20 randomly selected schools in Auckland. Strategy usage in oral reading was related to 3 factors: learning opportunities over time, (at 6:0, 6:6 and 7:0); reader proficiency, (Average, High Average, Good and Excellent); and text difficulty, (Easy, Moderately Difficult, Difficult and Phonically Regular). The children’s performances on oral reading and an oral sentence repetition test at 6:0 and 7:0 were compared. The data comprising errors and self corrections were analyzed at three linguistic levels (graphemic/phonemic, syntactic and semantic), to infer strategies. The Friedman two-way analysis of variance test for related samples was used for most comparisons. Th level of significance was set at p<0.05. The findings suggest that the Auckland child used the facilitating effects of meaning and structure in both reading and sentence repetition tasks. The control which children gained from 6:0 to 7:0 over texts with the decoding emphasis was achieved by attention to both graphemic cues and cues from structure and meaning. The competent novice reader also showed flexibility in selecting different strategies to deal with easy, familiar texts and difficult or novel texts. Such strategies are a necessary part of a model of mature reading which dies not see reading as exclusively the use of anticipatory mechanisms nor solely the use of sequential letter-by-letter processing. The competent novice reader was apparently learning to use either, or combinations, of these processes. The results of the study highlight the complex nature of learning to read and suggest that while some teaching programmes that emphasize a particular learning strategy may be successful, they may not take full advantage of other equally valid strategies which children can develop. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

The current study assessed children’s ideas on light and optics using a cross-sectional design. Given current literature and theory within cognitive psychology, history of science and science education, it was expected that (i) older children would be more likely than younger children to have a modern scientific understanding of light concepts; (ii) for many of the light concepts, there would be a parallel between the pattern of progression and change in children’s conceptions of light and scientists’ conceptions of light throughout history, and, finally; (iii) employing a historical lens would allow for a better understanding of not only the age-related patterns in children’s ideas of light but also children’s age specific alternative conceptions of light. A Light Core Concepts Questionnaire (LCCQ) was administered to participants (N=757) from across a wide age group (6 to 12 years). The participants were representative of ethnic groups attending a range of primary schools situated in a large New Zealand city. None of the participants had received classroom instruction in light and optics. The verbally delivered LCCQ was used to elicit children’s responses about prerequisite concepts necessary for a scientific understanding of the physics of light and employed two-choice, multi-choice and open-ended questions. Some questions were specifically designed to compare children’s conceptual understanding on light and optics with ideas adopted throughout the history of science. The results of the current research found that with increasing age (6 to 12 years old) children’s modern scientific understanding for many concepts on the physics of light increases. In comparison with other research, a higher proportion of children participating in the current study held correct views at younger ages. On easily observable phenomena, children as young as 7 years could identify common light sources and knew that some objects are reflectors of light. By age 12, the majority of children could correctly identify more abstract concepts such as what causes colours in rainbows. Results of the present research indicate there is a parallel between the age-related patterns of children’s ideas on light and the historical progression of scientific knowledge of the physics of light. With regard to light and vision, both early scientists and children held a similar range of alternative beliefs, that is, extramission, intromission or Eastern Islamic theories. Similar beliefs were shared about other concepts that were accepted as true theories in the history of science. For example, colour is the property of the object and when an object is placed in water it becomes distorted because water is less perfect than air. The results indicate that the pattern of alternative conceptions held by children as they relate to history provides further understanding of why there are differences in children’s beliefs about light and optics across age groups. For more difficult concepts, children and early scientists initially formulate similar theories based on their observations and what appears to be commonsense. As they reconceptualise their ideas, children and scientists formulate similar more abstract theories. In addition to discussing the value of the history of science as a lens to better understand children’s conceptions, the implications of these results are discussed as they relate to specific kinds of interventions or instructional approaches to elicit successful conceptual change in the classroom.

The present investigation aimed to apply Wenger’s (1998) conceptualisation of the ‘communities of practice’ concept (being one concept within the broader framework of social learning theory) to video gaming, based on Gee’s (2003) suggestion that video gaming could be viewed as a ‘community of practice’. In addition, Paechter’s (2003a) recommendation that masculinities (after Connell, 1995, and inclusive of a Foucaultian notion of knowledge/power relations), could be additionally conceptualised as ‘communities of masculinities practice’ was explored in relation to video gaming. The choice of ‘communities of practice’ as the unifying concept for this study was favoured due to the application of the concept to a number of New Zealand, Ministry of Education initiatives. The research project aimed to evaluate the usefulness of the ‘communities of practice’ concept for application to boys (and) video gaming as a model for how the concept might be applied to a range of education-related social learning environments. A total of 284 Year 9 boys (13-14 years old), from five New Zealand schools were surveyed about their video gaming behaviours and understandings, and further 42 boys from a selection of these same schools took part in ‘lessons’ to discuss in detail aspects of their video gaming. Evidence supported that; video gaming in itself cannot be conceptualised as a ‘community of practice’ because there is no sense of mutual engagement in a joint enterprise in the playing of video games, (that was, there is no evidence to support the conceptual understanding of ‘community’ or ‘practice’); and in addition, that while masculinities can be convincingly conceptualised as ‘communities of practice’, it is only when the activity of video gaming is seen as a resource within the shared repertoire of the ‘communities of masculinities practice’, in which masculinities, both hegemonic and less hegemonic are performed and reproduced, that video gaming can be linked with the ‘communities of practice’ concept. The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to where the conceptual and analytical lens offered by the ‘communities of practice’ concept, appear to be more applicable to the world of boys and video gaming. Also reiterated is that romanticised notions of ‘community’, applied to the likes of an educational environment but devoid of conceptual foundation, can be little more than rhetoric when not carefully considered and supported by empirical evidence.

Joseph Schwab claimed that only teachers are capable of translating scholarly theory into curriculum, as only they have knowledge of and are able to co-ordinate its four cornerstones of subject matter, learners, context and the teacher. Organised around Schwab’s heuristic, this thesis explores from an ecological perspective the curriculum making practices of seven experienced, effective teachers of adult ESOL over the trajectory of a course that each one taught. While normative advice in second language teacher education texts encourages a more systems-based approach to curriculum development, there is increasing awareness in research-based literature that the instructional curriculum is in fact an interactive construction played out in a dynamic, non-linear process and particularised to a certain context and group of learners. This evidencebased study aims to illustrate how teachers engage with written curriculum sources, classroom and cultural contexts, their own theories of practice and the developing understandings and wishes of learners as they make the instructional curriculum. Data were collected from guided pre-course and post-course interviews with teachers as well as persistent, debriefing-type interviews throughout the courses, supported by course documentation and teaching materials. Themes emerging from the data and from relevant literature were coded and analysed qualitatively. Findings of this study illuminate significant aspects of teachers’ curriculum making practices, including the weaving of conceptual content onto the timeframe of the courses, teachers’ efforts to achieve coherence, balance and variety in the instructional curriculum, and the importance of time and process. They emphasise the central role of the teacher as synthesiser of a variety of considerations, and provide evidence of the rich and complex understandings of teachers’ professional knowledge in action. They also show the fundamental importance of good cognitive and affective rapport between teacher and learners, and the need for teachers to constantly monitor and adjust the instructional curriculum according to learners’ developmental needs, while at the same time taking into account a unique constellation of influences from its micro- and macro- context. Implications for ESOL teachers and teacher educators of this more detailed understanding of the instructional curriculum and of teachers’ professional knowledge bases are also explored.

This investigation was inspired by Carkhuff's postulated that the principles which underlie effective counseling are equally pertinent to everyday human relationships – such as one may observe in the family. Carkhuff has not articulated this postulate in any detail and the present investigation both develops the notion of family problem solving strategies and tests it out in a practical situation. The development of this notion of family problem solving strategies begins with an integration of Carkhuff's model of the counseling process with similar models put forward by other authors. This is followed by a detailed analysis of family problem solving strategies as reported in the literature, and collation of data from both sources into a so-called Family Transaction Model (FTM). This Model consists of a series of distinctive though related parameters of family problem solving which include inner feelings, listening, self-expression, conflict management, the determination and execution of action plans, and the roles adopted by family members. Each parameter is defined in terms of specific behaviours or skills, postulated as necessary for effective problem solving. This FTM is then subjected to empirical validation in a comprehensive field study using 75 members of 18 complete nuclear families. A factor analysis of data derived from videotaped family discussions shows up two distinctive factors, "supportive involvement" and "distracting involvement"; these cover the parameters postulated above albeit in modified format. The main measurement variables involved have satisfactory inter-examiner and test-retest reliability. The FTM plus ancillary measures is shown to be highly effective in discriminating between parents and children; the former virtually embody the characteristics of supportive involvement while the latter show its obverse or distracting involvement. The Model also differentiates between male and female parents and, to a lesser extent, between male and female children. But it does not differentiate between family groups defined as troubled or untroubled on the basis of their referral to some helping agency or their mutual ratings of problem solving effectiveness. The format used for this assessment phase of the investigation also demonstrates the viability of using questionnaire ratings to ascertain family problem solving strategies, the value of family group discussion of real issues as a means to gather diagnostic data, and the inhibiting effects of videotape recording on the interview behaviour of participants. Finally the FTM is used as basis for a short-term treatment programme of 4 further sessions, such as might be undertaken by community resource personnel who have limited time and skill. This programme proves ineffective in changing observed interview behaviour, though participants report beneficial changes in attitude, mutual understanding and family relationships outside the interview situation. The results further suggest that the FTM is a viable basis for a treatment programme but that it is too comprehensive for success to be achieved in so few sessions, that therapists require extensive prior experience and training, that family members need to be flexibly involved in treatment, and that the entire programme needs to be carefully planned with a high degree of structure in the initial stages. The results of the present study as a whole provide a basis for further investigation including the validation of the FTM with a wide range of family groups, the development of more comprehensive rating scales, modifications in the assessment interview’s format, the development of a more effective treatment programme, and the development of an appropriate training programme for community resource personnel.

The aim of this one year descriptive longitudinal study was to investigate the efficient strategies some competent novice readers used while learning to read in an existing reading programme for which text reading was the main instructional task. The prior teaching of sounds or of words in isolation or in lists was not emphasized in this programme. The authors of the texts tried to use the language of New Zealand Children. These texts provide the support for the Auckland child who comes to the new task of reading with a set of responses learnt from his past experience with oral language. Other important questions of the study related to whether children in such a programme could read not only unseen classroom texts, but also texts from a programme with a decoding emphasis. Fifty-two competent readers were chosen by a stratified random sampling method from 242 six-year-old children attending 20 randomly selected schools in Auckland. Strategy usage in oral reading was related to 3 factors: learning opportunities over time, (at 6:0, 6:6 and 7:0); reader proficiency, (Average, High Average, Good and Excellent); and text difficulty, (Easy, Moderately Difficult, Difficult and Phonically Regular). The children’s performances on oral reading and an oral sentence repetition test at 6:0 and 7:0 were compared. The data comprising errors and self corrections were analyzed at three linguistic levels (graphemic/phonemic, syntactic and semantic), to infer strategies. The Friedman two-way analysis of variance test for related samples was used for most comparisons. Th level of significance was set at p<0.05. The findings suggest that the Auckland child used the facilitating effects of meaning and structure in both reading and sentence repetition tasks. The control which children gained from 6:0 to 7:0 over texts with the decoding emphasis was achieved by attention to both graphemic cues and cues from structure and meaning. The competent novice reader also showed flexibility in selecting different strategies to deal with easy, familiar texts and difficult or novel texts. Such strategies are a necessary part of a model of mature reading which dies not see reading as exclusively the use of anticipatory mechanisms nor solely the use of sequential letter-by-letter processing. The competent novice reader was apparently learning to use either, or combinations, of these processes. The results of the study highlight the complex nature of learning to read and suggest that while some teaching programmes that emphasize a particular learning strategy may be successful, they may not take full advantage of other equally valid strategies which children can develop. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

The current study assessed children’s ideas on light and optics using a cross-sectional design. Given current literature and theory within cognitive psychology, history of science and science education, it was expected that (i) older children would be more likely than younger children to have a modern scientific understanding of light concepts; (ii) for many of the light concepts, there would be a parallel between the pattern of progression and change in children’s conceptions of light and scientists’ conceptions of light throughout history, and, finally; (iii) employing a historical lens would allow for a better understanding of not only the age-related patterns in children’s ideas of light but also children’s age specific alternative conceptions of light. A Light Core Concepts Questionnaire (LCCQ) was administered to participants (N=757) from across a wide age group (6 to 12 years). The participants were representative of ethnic groups attending a range of primary schools situated in a large New Zealand city. None of the participants had received classroom instruction in light and optics. The verbally delivered LCCQ was used to elicit children’s responses about prerequisite concepts necessary for a scientific understanding of the physics of light and employed two-choice, multi-choice and open-ended questions. Some questions were specifically designed to compare children’s conceptual understanding on light and optics with ideas adopted throughout the history of science. The results of the current research found that with increasing age (6 to 12 years old) children’s modern scientific understanding for many concepts on the physics of light increases. In comparison with other research, a higher proportion of children participating in the current study held correct views at younger ages. On easily observable phenomena, children as young as 7 years could identify common light sources and knew that some objects are reflectors of light. By age 12, the majority of children could correctly identify more abstract concepts such as what causes colours in rainbows. Results of the present research indicate there is a parallel between the age-related patterns of children’s ideas on light and the historical progression of scientific knowledge of the physics of light. With regard to light and vision, both early scientists and children held a similar range of alternative beliefs, that is, extramission, intromission or Eastern Islamic theories. Similar beliefs were shared about other concepts that were accepted as true theories in the history of science. For example, colour is the property of the object and when an object is placed in water it becomes distorted because water is less perfect than air. The results indicate that the pattern of alternative conceptions held by children as they relate to history provides further understanding of why there are differences in children’s beliefs about light and optics across age groups. For more difficult concepts, children and early scientists initially formulate similar theories based on their observations and what appears to be commonsense. As they reconceptualise their ideas, children and scientists formulate similar more abstract theories. In addition to discussing the value of the history of science as a lens to better understand children’s conceptions, the implications of these results are discussed as they relate to specific kinds of interventions or instructional approaches to elicit successful conceptual change in the classroom.

The present investigation aimed to apply Wenger’s (1998) conceptualisation of the ‘communities of practice’ concept (being one concept within the broader framework of social learning theory) to video gaming, based on Gee’s (2003) suggestion that video gaming could be viewed as a ‘community of practice’. In addition, Paechter’s (2003a) recommendation that masculinities (after Connell, 1995, and inclusive of a Foucaultian notion of knowledge/power relations), could be additionally conceptualised as ‘communities of masculinities practice’ was explored in relation to video gaming. The choice of ‘communities of practice’ as the unifying concept for this study was favoured due to the application of the concept to a number of New Zealand, Ministry of Education initiatives. The research project aimed to evaluate the usefulness of the ‘communities of practice’ concept for application to boys (and) video gaming as a model for how the concept might be applied to a range of education-related social learning environments. A total of 284 Year 9 boys (13-14 years old), from five New Zealand schools were surveyed about their video gaming behaviours and understandings, and further 42 boys from a selection of these same schools took part in ‘lessons’ to discuss in detail aspects of their video gaming. Evidence supported that; video gaming in itself cannot be conceptualised as a ‘community of practice’ because there is no sense of mutual engagement in a joint enterprise in the playing of video games, (that was, there is no evidence to support the conceptual understanding of ‘community’ or ‘practice’); and in addition, that while masculinities can be convincingly conceptualised as ‘communities of practice’, it is only when the activity of video gaming is seen as a resource within the shared repertoire of the ‘communities of masculinities practice’, in which masculinities, both hegemonic and less hegemonic are performed and reproduced, that video gaming can be linked with the ‘communities of practice’ concept. The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to where the conceptual and analytical lens offered by the ‘communities of practice’ concept, appear to be more applicable to the world of boys and video gaming. Also reiterated is that romanticised notions of ‘community’, applied to the likes of an educational environment but devoid of conceptual foundation, can be little more than rhetoric when not carefully considered and supported by empirical evidence.