Stories are a vehicle through which experiences and events are communicated amongst people. Stories have the potential to influence people’s understandings and beliefs, and essentially, promote a societal and cultural change. Grounded in literature pointing to the value of narrative in supporting learning and the need to explore new modes of communicating science, this study explores the potential of narrative in science education. The aim was to explore the use of a Story-Based Learning Design in a Grade 4 Science and Technology classroom. Using a qualitative case study research design the researcher took on the role of participant-observer. Data were collected through observations, learner verbal and written descriptions of a final product and teacher reflective interviews. The findings of this study illustrate the value of stories, as learning tools, in science education. In this regard pertinent conclusions were derived, namely, that stories attract learners and have the potential to be used as a vehicle for learning scientific concepts and the target vocabulary, that stories enable learners to make meaning of abstract concepts and relate it to their world and finally that the use of the imagination assists learners to visualise concepts making learning relevant.

Good communication and maintaining effective relationships within a school community are essential for achieving high academic standards. The aim of effective communication between teachers and learners is to elicit and ensure behaviour that will enhance the learning process. It is therefore important that teachers relate to learners in a sensitive manner when they communicate their knowledge (Bingham and Sidorkin 2004, 5). Sotto (2007, 96) further contends that teachers‟ communication styles reveal their core attitude towards learning and that the success of their teaching will be partially determined by how effectively they communicate. Many schools are experiencing disciplinary problems, low teacher and learner expectations, a breakdown of the social order, and a high incidence of academic failure. Bingham and Sidorkin (2004, 5) explain the above-mentioned problems as symptoms of a breakdown in communication between educators and learners. Once relationships in a school have been jeopardised, it becomes increasingly difficult to achieve high academic standards. It is therefore essential that educators create meaningful interactions in an environment in which all individuals can develop to their full potential. The National Education Policy Act No. 27 of 1996 (Education Labour Relations Council 2003, A- 4) advocates the enhancement of quality education and innovation through systematic research and development. The principles contained therein are directed towards enabling the education system to contribute to the full development of each learner, respecting each learner‟s right to freedom of thought, opinion and expression within a culture of respect for teaching and learning. The establishment and strengthening of relationships in a school will contribute to improved academic achievement.

Current evaluations in science education research of discovery based science programs give no clear indication of the merit of these new science programs. Getzels and Jackson's studies in creativity suggest that permissive and authoritarian family environments may influence development of creativity and IQ respectively in children. It was reasoned that findings relating family and school environments to creativity could have relevance in science education where discovery based science programs are having a profound effect on altering science classroom environment. It was hypothesized that permissive science classroom environments would produce significantly higher posttest creativity means than the control. Since a current science education goal is to enhance student question asking skill (e.g. Inquiry Training) and since findings indicate question asking styles are related to aptitudes, it is hypothesized that high creative and high permissive groups will have significantly higher factual and yes-no question score means whereas high intelligence and low permissive groups will have significantly higher explanation question score means. Creativity tests used in this study include Guilford's Uses Test and the Question Test from Torrance's Ask-and-Guess Test. The Question Test also yields factual, yes-no, and explanation question scores. To assess classroom environment, the Classroom Environment Scale was developed. Item choices were classified by seven judges into the three environmental categories. The sample consisted of four grade seven classes, three experimental and one control. Experimental groups were taught the ESS unit, Batteries and Bulbs. The experimental groups included a semipermissive group which was taught the unit according to suggestions in the teacher's guide, and the permissive and authoritarian groups which, respectively, had less and more teacher control of classroom environment than the semi-permissive group. Experimental groups were shown to have significantly different classroom environment means in the direction expected. Data for testing hypotheses of this project came from a field experiment and a field study. For the field experiment a before and after design was used, analysis of covariance being employed on the group post creativity means with significant covariates derived from step-down regression analysis of pretest data. All significance levels are at the 5% level. Results of the field experiment indicate that for the more valid creativity test, the Uses Test, the group post creativity means of the permissive and authoritarian groups were significantly larger than the control group post mean. With the Question Test, which lacked discriminant validity in regard to intelligence, only the authoritarian group post creativity mean was significantly larger than the control post mean. For the field study high and low groups were formed using medians of creativity, intelligence and classroom environment as cutoffs, with analysis of variance and the F-test used to detect significant differences in means of question scores or question gains of these high and low groups. When question gain data showed non-normality the Chi-square test was used with significance at 1%. Field study results show that the high creative group had significantly higher mean yes-no and factual question scores than the low creative group, whereas the high intelligence group had a significantly higher mean explanation question score than the low intelligence group. Chi-square analysis revealed significant divergence in factual and explanation question gains for low and high permissive groups. For aptitude-environment interaction low aptitude-low permissive interactions contribute most to divergence of factual question gains and high aptitude-low permissive interactions contribute most to divergence of explanation question gains. Strongest divergences in group question gains came from intelligence environment interaction. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

This thesis is a series of meditations, stories and poetry focusing on living in classrooms with children, and on the meaning and place of education and schools in our lives. This writing is the emergent result of a commitment to the seeking of a generous language to understand and describe the work of teachers in schools, to the hope for human(e) and compassionate spaces for children to spend their days, to living with openness and creativity, to the having of challenging and wonderful conversations about life with children, and to the freedom to raise questions about the ways children and teachers (might) live together in schools. This writing is a story emerging at the point of intersection between what we might learn from children if we listen to them and remember them, and reflections on readings in ethics, education and literature. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF EDUCATION in the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education of the Faculty of Education at the University of Zululand, 2006. / This research was conducted to determine whether classroom climate influences academic achievement of secondary school learners. The literature study indicates that the classroom climate factors such as organization of learning space, learner involvement and discipline have a direct influence on academic achievement. To confirm the influence of the above factors, the research was conducted at four secondary schools in the Amajuba District of Newcastle. The research revealed that a significant positive correlation exists between classroom climate and academic achievement of learners in secondary schools. The research further confirmed that the lack of organization of learning space, lack of learner involvement in lessons and lack of classroom discipline contributes to poor academic achievement in secondary schools. A positive classroom climate is facilitated by educators being given maximum opportunity to teach and learners being given maximum opportunity to learn. The benefit of a positive classroom climate is that the joy of learning is unfolded in an environment that enables each learner to thrive and to soar to greatness by achieving academic success. Ultimately the positive transformation of our society lies within the domain of our emerging generation. Thus positive classroom climate is necessary to raise matric the pass rate of 70% in the Kwa-Zulu Natal Province.

The current way of “doing” inclusive education in many US public schools includes re-imagining the spaces where a young person is receiving their educational services. Still, many schools and programs are set up to provide specialized educational services in a specific place. Most often, this place is outside of the general education classroom and deemed to have rehabilitative properties. Therefore, research that draws on the lived experiences of people in restricted educational programs is needed to understand more clearly how policies of inclusion and exclusion are not only enacted, but lived by the people inhabiting those spaces. By designing a qualitative study that is an ethnographic narrative inquiry, this project describes restricted educational programs from the perspectives of the people who occupy them. This study draws on the words and experiences of participants within restricted educational programs to explore what a concerted focus on the spatial dimension illuminates about these spaces and youth learning. Taking an iterative approach this study used ethnographic methods such as, participant observation and open-ended and semi-structured interviewing to inquire alongside educators who work with young people with disabilities and young people who are court involved in restrictive educational programs. The methodological choice to collect data at two separate restricted educational programs, one in-school and one after school was intentional to investigate the nature of the label “restrictive” and its spatial properties. The research demonstrates that spaces are dynamic and fluid but often limited by the socio-spatial location such as, during or after school. Often it is the adults within each respective space who engage in practices of teaching and learning which either limit youth or provide youth with more expansive curricular possibilities. More consistently youth engage in practices, which add to the dynamic nature of how spaces are socially produced. From this an understanding of the project of inclusive education emerges which demands concerted attention be paid to the spatial dimension of inquiry, one that requires educators, more broadly, to participate in reflexive practices related to understanding their own socio-spatial position along with the socio-spatial position of the youth with whom they are constructing spaces.

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What students do as they work to complete academic tasks will determine what they learn from those tasks, Teachers often receive unexpected responses on completed tasks, indicating that the students did, perhaps, unexpected things as they completed those tasks, The purpose of this study was to describe how students, given similar instruction, responded differently to academic reading tasks in the elementary school classroom. This study describes what students did as they worked through classroom reading tasks--the ways they defined the tasks, the goals they set, and the strategies and resources they used to complete the tasks, It also describes the factors within the classroom which may have influenced what those students did--the dimensions of the task as set by the teacher and the text, as well as the social and environmental demands impacting on the student. The principal research question was: what are the dimensions of the task environment and the features of task definitions that contribute to students' successful or unsuccessful completion of assigned tasks in elementary classrooms? Data was collected from one fifth-grade classroom. Four focal students, differing in their success as school readers, were selected for in-depth study. Participant observation, interviews, and protocol analysis were the primary data collection techniques used in this study. Analysis of the data indicated that though students were asked to complete some comprehension and rote memory tasks, most reading tasks which required a written response were procedural. Those tasks which were ambiguous or procedurally complex were the most problematic for the students. This study suggests that though students sometimes did not attend, occasionally chose not to respond. and at times lacked content knowledge crucial to task completion, these were not the main reasons for their failure to respond to tasks as the teacher expected. Most often they provided unexpected responses to reading tasks because the tasks were ambiguous and they did not understand what the task was asking them to do. / Ed. D. / incomplete_metadata

In recent years, naturalistic studies of planning have shown the "hidden side of teaching," pictures of the ways teachers think before and after they enter the classroom. Few, however, have shown how prescriptive planning models impact on teacher thought and the classroom environments the they create; and none has looked at the impact of prescriptive planning models on preservice teacher thought. The purpose of my study was to create ethnographic descriptions of two preservice teachers’ thoughts and of the classroom environments they created. The major difference between the two participants was the prescriptive planning model used. One used a rational means-end planning model -- the model most commonly taught to prospective teachers when they are first introduced to unit planning. This model encourages the teacher to develop a written unit plan with a rationale, objectives, activities, and evaluation standards prior to the teaching of a lesson or set of lessons. The other preservice teacher used a recently developed recursive planning model that encourages brainstorming, design, and reflection based on a list of educational design variables that research has indicated have an impact on educational environments. My ethnographic findings reveal that the use of both planning models impacted on preservice teacher thought and on the classroom environments they created in terms of: 1. The quantity, quality, and content of the planners’ preactive and postactive thought, 2. the quantity of unplanned decisions that the planners made while teaching, 3. the overall organizing principle of their classroom environments, and 4. the way preservice teachers defined and practiced planning. / Ed. D. / incomplete_metadata