No description available.

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No description available.

The current educational climate of concern for children's achievement in literacy has resulted in a plethora of policies aimed at raising standards. Considerable research has been carried out in the field of popular culture and its potential for motivating and engaging children in literacy learning. However, there has been li ttle research on children's views on this issue. This study was influenced both by the changing perceptions of childhood, which recognises children's capabilities and agency, and by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child with its commitment to children's rights, and particularly to their participation. It aims to add to the literature on popular culture by presenting children's views on the use of popular culture in the teaching of writing. A variety of participatory methods was used to gather views from children from two Primary Three classrooms in two primary schools drawing from different socioeconomic catchment areas. A Children's Research Advisory Group (CRAG) was used in each school to assist with developing the research methods and interpreting the data. The results show that children have a strong desire for more choice when writing in school and, when given this choice, popular culture features strongly in what they would like to write about. All children, both boys and girls and chi ldren from different socio·economic backgrounds, demonstrated their diverse knowledge and enjoyment of a wide range of popular culture. However, Bourdieu's concept of habitus appears to be influential in the children's views on what their parents and teachers would think about the inclusion of popular culture in the classroom. This small scale study provides valuable insights into children's views on the use of popular culture for the teaching of writing and raises challenging questions for policy and practice in the continuous quest for a meaningful curriculum for contemporary children.

No description available.

No description available.

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At the heart of present literacy, and narrative, learning paradigms are the "literate behaviours" usually associated with aspects of learning to encode and decode print. These paradigms have been criticized for placing written and verbal language in a privileged position. Furthermore, whilst an increasing number of theorists and educators are asking for the inclusion of multimodal approaches to learning narrative, current curricula, and the research that informs it, continue to be founded on "verbocentric" approaches and linear forms of narrative expression. Through the development and evaluation of a curricular approach to narrative learning for 7-8 year-olds based on the visual arts, this study aims to ascertain whether there is a need for broader conceptions of narrative as well as for complementary modes of narrative composition than those currently being used in primary schools. Documentation in the form of the children‘s painted narratives and transcripts of the children's oral accounts of their narratives was the major component of data collection. Individual and small group interviews and participant observation were supplementary sources to assist in the interpretation of the narrative paintings the children composed. The children‘s narratives were analysed using a narratological semiotic model, which divides narrative into 'discourse' and 'story' and distinguishes between the 'content' and 'form' of each of these elements.

Η παρούσα ερευνητική εργασία ασχολείται με τη διδασκαλία του γραπτού λόγου και, πιο συγκεκριμένα, με το ζήτημα του γραπτού επιχειρηματολογικού λόγου. Σκοπός της εργασίας αυτής είναι να διερευνηθεί αν και κατά πόσο μπορούν οι μαθητές / τριες της Πρωτοβάθμιας Εκπαίδευσης, και συγκεκριμένα της Δ΄ τάξης του Δημοτικού Σχολείου, να ανταποκριθούν σε γραπτά θέματα επιχειρηματολογικού λόγου, δηλαδή αν είναι σε θέση, κατόπιν συστηματικής διδασκαλίας, να αναπτύξουν λόγο επιχειρηματολογικό και κατά πόσο σε αυτήν την ηλικία διαθέτουν την κριτική σκέψη που απαιτείται για την πραγμάτευση με το συγκεκριμένο κειμενικό είδους. / The present study deals with the teaching of writing and especially with the teaching of argumentative writing. The aim of this study is to investigate if ten years old pupils are able to cope with this genre.