This dissertation presents a case study of a grade one-two class in the suburbs of Vancouver. The twenty-two students are diverse in terms of academic ability, culture, language, age, and personality. Participatory Democracy is researched. Participatory Collaborative Action Research is the methodology. The researcher, classroom teacher, and the students themselves, are immersed in the research setting as partners. Participatory Democracy is an inclusive arrangement where classroom members contribute to decision-making affecting the classroom. Therefore, the research methodology and the research topic are the same activity in which reflection by the participants yields both data and learning outcomes. The research and the classroom community develop together. Within this social orientation, autonomy and responsibility are investigated. An analysis of each concept and their relationship is offered. Possibilities for shared authority are also examined. These and other elements are conceptually intertwined and not easily separated. Complexity Theory is presented as a way of framing classroom research. A Participatory Democratic classroom is conceived of as a dynamic adaptive system, similar to an organism or society. This community is understood ecologically. It is self-organizing and continually coevolving. The importance of a sense of community as a context for learning about social elements becomes evident. An understanding of autonomy, responsibility, shared authority, and their relationship is demonstrated by children through their friendships and sometimes through verbal expression. The students and teacher establish negotiated, dynamic boundaries in which students express their autonomy within the limits of responsibility to the community. Since participation depends on discourse, non-verbal active discourse is encouraged in this community as legitimate communication and a support for language development. Authority, understood as embedded in the community, with the teacher as its interpreter, is shared with students. Rule setting is complex and dynamic, not absolute. Rules are explained and negotiated. An effort to achieve consensus forms the basis of decision-making. Within a democratic community that promotes participation and appreciates the complexity of social structures, the teacher must promote a sense of community, negotiate curriculum, negotiate frames for behavior and learning, plan and assess collaboratively, and reflect on the constantly changing complexity of the classroom community. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Establishing discipline in the contemporary classroom is a challenge to most educators. The real challenge lies in the implementation of discipline measures and procedures that uphold order in the classroom with understanding and compassion and more importantly, in the development of self-discipline in learners. The researcher adopted a qualitative approach to understand the phenomenon classroom discipline and to answer the research questions that sought to explore the meaning that is attached to the word “discipline” by individual educators, the challenges that educators are faced with in their classrooms, as well as the discipline strategies that they employ to establish discipline. A case study involving three high schools was conducted. Data was collected through interviews and observations. It has emerged in the findings that educators face a daily struggle in terms of establishing discipline in their classrooms; educators attach different meanings to the word “discipline” and the meaning that individual educators attach to “discipline” impacts on their choice of discipline strategies. Most of the discipline strategies employed by educators are control-oriented and thus hinge on rewards and punishment. The study also revealed that when these control-oriented strategies are employed to establish discipline, learners engage in various coping mechanisms, which ultimately render these strategies ineffective, and thus minimise any chance the child has to develop self-discipline. Essentially, learners who have been coerced usually show very little self-control when they are outside the influence of the controller. Recommendations based on findings and conclusions of this study are discussed and revolve mainly around the use of proactive discipline strategies that are geared to promote self-discipline and thus inner control. The recommendations outline proactive discipline strategies that could be employed by educators to establish discipline in their classrooms and suggest the creation of a good educator-learners relationship, the empowerment of learners to be in charge of their behaviour, responsibility training, inculcation of values, character development, modelling good behaviour, and strengthening of partnership with parents and other support structures in behaviour management. Benchmarking for best practices with other schools and conducting internal workshops for educators to share classroom discipline issues and solutions, as well as skills development programmes for training and development of educators are recommended. The study hopes to contribute to the existing body of knowledge and will be useful to educators by enabling them to find more constructive ways of building a culture of discipline among learners. It will also help educators develop personal systems of discipline tailored to their individual philosophies as well as to the needs and social realities of their schools and communities. / Dissertation (MEd (Education Management, Law and Policy Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

The early childhood curriculum is too-often based on narrowed/ing conceptualizations of “literacy” and “language,” which negatively position nonacademic (read: nondominant) literacy and language practices and result in schools failing and further marginalizing working-class children and families across racial identifications. It is therefore pertinent to (re)conceptualize language and literacy by interrogating dominantly-positioned academic practices. Exploring early childhood teachers’ sense- making and enactment of the curriculum elucidates how nonacademic practices are (under)valued in and through the mandated curriculum. With this aim, through a critical ethnographic case study, I engaged in observations of classroom interactions and teacher team meetings, artifact collection, and interviews with four White female public kindergarten teachers in a predominantly-White working-class North Carolina mountain community. I found that the four teachers’ language ideologies had been constructed, understood, and developed from early childhood, through schooling experiences, and in teacher learning. These ideologies, while not always recognized, influenced how they were making sense of and enacting the curriculum. Their own childhood literacy experiences impacted approaches to teaching literacy; these White female teachers talked about what they had needed as students and how this influenced their approaches to teaching young children. Talk around students’ language and literacy practices illustrated a desire to prepare children for school and to support student success; although, this talk was underpinned with some deficit perspectives (pervasive in the mandated curriculum) concerning nonacademic language and literacy practices. The teachers were negotiating the mandated curriculum on a daily basis, as they strived to do what they deemed best for students, most of whom were being introduced to formal schooling in kindergarten. They were confident about what their students needed and sought greater trust in their own knowledge and capabilities as teachers, and they often discussed validating children’s language and literacy practices. Concurrently, teachers often talked about moving from or fixing children’s home practices, or modeling correct (academic) practices. Informed by the findings of this study, early childhood teachers can work to reconstruct definitions of language and literacy as we engage working-class children’s multiple, purposeful, and sophisticated ways of making and assigning meaning and of communicating (i.e., their literacy and language practices).

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There are Stories that we are told, stories that we tell, and Stories that are told through us. This text sets out to ask whether self-regulation is a tool to support the progressivist educator or something that undermines the goals of progressivism. But we cannot avoid the footnotes or philosophy in educational research. What is ‘progressivism?’ How does its theory connect or disconnect from its practice? Can it function or live up to its name if those who call themselves ‘progressive’ teachers or parents are distracted by The Question of ‘How do I get them to do what I want them to do?’ And, what about the follow-up fear of control or chaos or the belief that ‘Those kids can’t handle their freedom?’ Employing an ‘out-of-the-box’ narrative academic writing approach, weaving stories from personal parenting and teaching moments with case studies, the questions surrounding self-regulation reveal some surprising answers. Can the narrative surrounding Classroom Management co-exist with progressivist educational goals or the tool of self-regulation? Can democracy be promoted, taught, or lived without praxis? / Graduate

The teacher of the emotionally disturbed student must provide an educational setting for pupils unable, or unwilling, to appropriately interact within the regular educational setting. The teacher, ultimately, decides classroom scheduling, academic experiences, social interactions and order of the room. In short, teaching style and the teaching personality shape the learning environment. Style of teaching is evidenced by the management techniques utilized within the classroom. The purpose of this study is to determine if differences exist in the classroom management techniques employed by educators of emotionally disturbed children and youth assigned to (a) resource rooms in the public school setting, (b) self-contained classrooms in the public school setting, and (c) residential treatment centers as determined by the Classroom Management Profile (Bullock & Zagar, 1980).

Diversity is now an essential matter in US public schools. For the first time in America's history, students of color will constitute a majority of the public school enrollment; on the other hand, most early childhood and elementary teachers remain monolingual, white, middle-class females (Hussar & Bailey, 2019). The demographic mismatch between students and teachers presents a critical concern for teacher preparation programs (Banks et al., 2005; Gay, 2018; Muñiz, 2019). Therefore, this study proposed that understanding the relationship between pre-service teachers' epistemological beliefs and their culturally responsive classroom management self-efficacy illustrated factors that may improve their teaching concept toward diversity. The study also evaluated whether early childhood (PreK-3) pre-service teachers held different personal epistemologies of teaching and culturally responsive classroom management self-efficacy beliefs than elementary (K-5) pre-service teachers. Lastly, the study explored factors that may contribute to pre-service teachers' personal epistemological beliefs of teaching and their self-efficacious beliefs about culturally responsive classroom management. The study used the explanatory sequential mixed-methods design that contained two phases. In Phase I, 111 pre-service teachers completed two surveys: the teachers' Personal Epistemologies of Teaching Scale (PT-PETS) and the Culturally Responsive Classroom Management Self-Efficacy scale (CRCMSE). In Phase II, six pre-service teachers participated in semi-structured interviews. The results indicated no significant linear correlation between pre-service teachers' sophisticated personal epistemological beliefs and their confidence in employing culturally responsive classroom management. In addition, the integration of the quantitative and the qualitative data demonstrated that pre-service teachers held sophisticated personal epistemological beliefs of teaching. They also showed different confidence levels about applying culturally responsive classroom management. A two-way ANOVA revealed that only semester level significantly affected the PT-PETS scores, where pre-service teachers in the seventh semester performed better than those in the fifth semester. The current study illustrated various positive and negative factors that may influence pre-service teachers' epistemological beliefs of teaching and their self-efficacious beliefs in culturally responsive classroom management, which may provide insight for teacher preparation programs.

Thesis (M. Ed. (Science Education)) -- University of Limpopo, 2018 / This study explored the science teachers' views about the nature of science and how these views influenced their classroom. The study was conducted in three public quantile-three schools in Dimamo Circuit of Capricorn District-Limpopo Province. It was a case study with twenty participants filling the open-ended questionnaire with four teachers who were observed and interviewed. The teachers were from the FET band with teaching experience ranging between one year and thirty years. The essential research questions addressed in this study are, namely: What are science teachers’ views about the nature of science? How do the science teachers’ views about the nature of science influence their classroom practices? Data were collected all the way through open-ended questionnaires, classroom observations and semi-structured interviews. The data collected were analysed through groups of themes. The four teachers observed and interviewed were grouped as one case. It was found that most of the teachers held informed views about the nature of science from both data collected from the open-ended questionnaires and semi structured interviews. There was a group of teachers whose views about the nature of science being tentative reflected uninformed views and the majority of teachers revealing uninformed views about the difference between scientific law and scientific theory. The teachers believed that theories develop into laws. There was also a majority of teachers who believed that scientific investigation follows only one universal route. It was also found that the same teachers who reflected informed views were not able to back them in their classroom practices. The majority of those teachers reflected no informed views in their classroom as such it was impossible to tell how their views influenced their classroom practices. KEY WORDS Nature of science, Classroom practice, Scientific law, Tentative, Scientific theory

Thesis (M. Dev.) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / Recent changes in the South African education department have led to many learners’ deviant behaviour in the classroom. The abolishing of corporal punishment has accelerated lack of discipline among learners in the Ehlanzeni education region. This challenge has resulted in different perceptions among the teachers. Hence, this study aims at investigating teachers’ perceptions of learner discipline in the intermediate phase schools of the Ehlanzeni Region of Mpumalanga province. In this study, the researcher uses the mixed approach, a method which includes both quantitative and qualitative research. Data is collected through survey and semi structured interviews with principals, deputy principals, heads of departments (HOD’s) and teachers. Stratified and purposive sampling methods were used to facilitate the above process. The findings show that factors such as abolishing of corporal punishment, lack of parental involvement, lack of extramural activities and lack of clarity on policy have negatively influenced discipline in the intermediate schools. Hence, there is a need for alternative strategies to enhance the implementation of new disciplinary measures in the intermediate schools. These anomalies call for senior management or policy makers in the Department of Education (DoE) to develop relevant alternative strategies and to train teachers on policy implementation before the new disciplinary measures can be employed. This will assist teachers to prevent ill-discipline in Mpumalanga.