Not available / text

This thesis address the question of agency that children with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) have in educational contexts. Teachers and educators do not usually regard children with PMLD in terms of their agency, because of their profound and multiple impairments. Discourses on children and adults with PMLD are linear, systematic, defining and closed to contingency. The discourses normally applied with regard to children with PMLD attending school are mapped out in the beginning of the thesis. The thesis provides an account of my becoming-teacher and my becoming-researcher It is my journey with students whom I worked with directly as their teacher in a segregated specialised school for children with PMLD, and also as a participant observer in two mainstream primary classrooms. The works of Jacques Derrida, Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze were crucial in reading the lives of these children together with mine. Nine stories with comments are the central focus of this thesis, where through the writing of these stories my own becoming-teacher is mapped out. The thesis shows how students with PMLD are able to provide teachers with spaces of possibilities in the linear and closed discourses mentioned above. Students themselves are able to introduce in the life of teachers, their classroom and at times even at school level, the ‘non-sense’ that help teachers ‘think again’ the discourses that they are working with. They are able to help teachers open up discourses, and see that they are ‘assemblages’, characterised by contingency, contradictions and aporias. Students with PMLD provide possibilities (potentials) for engagement in these assemblages. The identity of a teacher is shaken when she experiences her identity as an assemblage, but even more so when such an identity is seen as a process of becoming by engaging with the possibilities. Here the end is not important and is unknown; what is important is the process. What is argued is that the teacher’s identity is seen as becoming-teacher through becoming-PMLD. This thesis concludes that there needs to be a desire to engage with students with PMLD to continue the process of becoming-teacher.

This study focuses on perceptions of a group of Computing lecturers at a large post ’92 Scottish university of the changes that have occurred in the student body. It also considers whether or not the changes have had any impact on the identity and role of the lecturers and whether the lecturers have adapted their practice to accommodate the needs of the diverse student population. An empirical approach was used consisting of semi-structured interviews with a targeted random sample of lecturers. The findings indicate that the impact of the changes which have taken place within higher education have not been uniform and have varied depending on the perceived status of the institution as well as the discipline within the Higher Education (HE) hierarchy. The findings identify a number of areas for consideration by university managers, lecturers and higher education researchers. There appears to be a gap between university policies on widening access and student retention and the implementation of the policies by the lecturers. The findings show that the lecturers are aware of the greater diversity of the student body, but that many of the lecturers share the traditional view of a university student and therefore expect the students to adapt to fit the existing system rather than considering changing their approaches to suit the students. The lecturers in my study have adopted a number of strategies to cope with the constant changes taking place within higher education. However, many of them are unclear as to what is expected of them and unsure about how they should prioritise the numerous demands on their time. This study differs from and complements other work because it focuses on the lecturers’ perceptions of the changes in their role as well as in the student body. The outcome of my study is a better understanding of the perceptions lecturers have of their role and the students that they teach. Although my study is small scale and specific to a particular academic discipline within a large university, the findings should be of value not only to the particular institution in the study, but the wider academic community as well.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Philosophy

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Australian Centre for Educational Studies, Special Education Centre, 2006. / Bibliography: leaves 458-476. / Introduction -- Teacher perceptions of troublesome classroom behaviour -- Troublesome classroom behaviour and teacher stress in New South Wales secondary classrooms: Part I -- Troublesome classroom behaviour and teacher stress in New South Wales secondary classrooms: Part II -- Troublesome classroom behaviour and teacher stress in New South Wales secondary classrooms: Part III -- Student perceptions of the classroom environment in New South Wales secondary classrooms -- Natural rates of teacher approval and disapproval in the classroom -- Natural rates of teacher approval and disapproval in secondary classrooms in New South Wales -- Differential teacher attention to boys and girls in the classroom -- Differential teacher attention to boys and girls in New South Wales secondary classrooms -- Perceptions versus reality: behavioural interactions between teachers and students in New South Wales secondary classrooms. / The focus of this thesis is troublesome classroom behaviour and the behavioural interactions between teachers and students in secondary school. Following a review of the extant research literature, Section A of the thesis reports a study examining the perceptions of 145 secondary teachers from New South Wales with regard to behaviours they find troublesome in their classrooms. Talking out of turn was clearly identified as the classroom behaviour of most concern, most frequently occurring and, importantly, the main misbehaviour of the most troublesome individual students. In two studies completed in parallel, it was similarly shown that teachers who identified themselves as having particular difficulties with classroom behaviour, or who had identified ten percent or more of their class as troublesome, experienced higher levels of stress related to classroom behaviour and their students perceived the classroom environment to be characterised by differential treatment of students. Section B of the thesis comprises observational studies of teachers and classroom behaviour with a substantial focus on student and teacher gender. Reviews of the literature on teachers' "natural" use of approval and disapproval and on differential teacher behaviour towards boys and girls were followed by two parallel studies. The first study, involving 79 New South Wales secondary school teachers and their classes, showed that while teachers typically responded to students with more approval than disapproval, almost all approval was reserved for academic behaviour whereas approval for appropriate classroom behaviour was very infrequent. Teachers typically reprimanded students for inappropriate behaviour at a very high rate. The second study showed that boys attracted far more teacher responses than girls but that most of this involved reprimands for inappropriate behaviour. Section C of the thesis relates teacher perceptions to observed classroom behaviour. It was concluded that in classes with larger numbers of troublesome students there was reduced academic feedback to students and where teachers' rates of negative responding were higher there was a reduced perception of participation by students. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / vi, 500 leaves

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Duquesne University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-98) and abstract.

SCHMIDLIN, Iraci de Oliveira Moraes. Presença em educação a distância: o caso dos cursos superiores da UAB/IFCE. 2013. 137f. – Dissertação (Mestrado) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Programa de Pós-graduação em Educação Brasileira, Fortaleza (CE), 2013. / Submitted by Márcia Araújo (marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2014-08-05T16:58:04Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2013_dis_iomschmidlin.pdf: 9116873 bytes, checksum: fadc6f3455302ddac8ea3103cef1cddc (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Márcia Araújo(marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2014-08-05T17:26:06Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2013_dis_iomschmidlin.pdf: 9116873 bytes, checksum: fadc6f3455302ddac8ea3103cef1cddc (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-08-05T17:26:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2013_dis_iomschmidlin.pdf: 9116873 bytes, checksum: fadc6f3455302ddac8ea3103cef1cddc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / This research is focused on the types of presence and its implications in the context of distance learning. What are the forms to be present in everyday situations, including distance learning, considering the advancement of digital technologies and Internet communications? This issue is discussed taking the Instituto Federal do Ceará (IFCE) and its Diretoria de Educação a Distância (DEaD) as the environment for research and analysis. The undergraduate courses chosen for this case study are offered in the blended learning model via the Universidade Aberta do Brasil (UAB): Tecnologia em Hospitalidade and Licenciatura em Matemática. The research aims to analyse the main types of presence of the student in distance education, and discuss the concept of presence and their interrelations with the concepts of distance, absence, interaction and interactivity in distance education, and describe ways of measuring presence of the student and the tutor used in blended learning model, from the student perspective. The research is mainly based on Michael Moore’s Theory of Transactional Distance, and the types of interaction on the Cesar Coll’s didactic triangle, as well as in the works of Romero Tori, Karla Godoy, Marco Silva, Erving Goffman and Mikhail Bakhtin, among other authors. This case study analyzed qualitatively the results from a questionnaire applied among students of both courses, an in-depth interview conducted with a teacher, and a document analysis of DEaD-IFCE. The results show that the student understands that his presence is assessed through the tutor’s observation to their engagement in the activities. It was also found that the student relates the concept of being present mainly with interaction (especially the student-student interaction), and the sense of belonging to the group (social presence). The social and cognitive presences, beyond the physical presence, were usually in the descriptions made by the students. The results also revealed that the bias towards the physical presence and the paradigms of on-site learning are still very strong in the context UAB/DEaD/IFCE. Although Distance Learning students often need autonomy and flexibility of time and space, they signals in their placements that physical presence in their learning process brings better results. / Esta pesquisa tem como tema central as formas de presença e suas implicações na aprendizagem. Quais são as formas de estar presente nas situações cotidianas, como na aprendizagem a distância, considerando o avanço das tecnologias digitais e da comunicação via web? Discute-se essa questão tomando como espaço de análise e pesquisa o IFCE e sua Diretoria de Educação a Distância. Os objetos escolhidos para este estudo de caso são os cursos de graduação ofertados na modalidade semipresencial, via UAB: Tecnologia em Hotelaria e Licenciatura em Matemática. A pesquisa tem como objetivo principal analisar as formas de presença do aluno na EaD, além de discutir o conceito de presença e suas interrelações com os conceitos de distância, ausência, interação e interatividade na EaD; e descrever as formas de aferição da presença do aluno e do professor tutor utilizadas na modalidade semipresencial, pela perspectiva do aluno. A investigação fixa-se principalmente na Teoria da Distância Transacional, de Michael Moore, e nos tipos de interação do triângulo interativo de Cesar Coll, bem como nas obras de Romero Tori, Karla Godoy, Marco Silva, Erving Goffman e Mikhail Bakhtin, entre outros. Trata-se de um estudo de caso, tendo como metodologia a análise qualitativa dos resultados, a partir de questionário aplicado entre os alunos de ambos os cursos, de entrevista realizada com uma professora formadora e tutora, e de análise documental da DEaD-IFCE. Os resultados apontam que o aluno entende que sua presença é aferida pela observação e avaliação que o professor tutor faz de suas participações. Identificou-se ainda que o aluno relaciona o conceito de estar presente principalmente com interação (especialmente a interação aluno-aluno) e o senso de pertença ao grupo. As presenças social e cognitiva, além da física, estavam geralmente nas descrições feitas pelos alunos. Os resultados revelaram ainda que a inclinação à presença física na aprendizagem e os paradigmas do ensino presencial ainda são fortes no contexto UAB/DEaD/IFCE. Embora o aluno que escolhe estudar a distância precise da autonomia e da flexibilidade de tempo e espaço, o mesmo sinaliza em suas colocações que a presença física em seu processo de aprendizagem lhe traz melhores resultados.