The purpose of the study was to evaluate the teaching of evolution in selected grade 10 classrooms in Namibia. Some teachers from Oshikoto region in Onyaanya circuit have indicated the difficulties they have encountered when teaching the topic in Life Science of Namibian curriculum. Moreover, the teaching of evolution has a great practical value for student directly or indirectly, evolutionary biology has made many contributions to society. An understanding of evolution is essential in finding and using natural resources and it will be indispensable to establish sustainable relationship with the natural environment. Specifically, this study examined a set of variables including teachers’ understanding of evolution. The data were collected from Life Science teachers through administration of evolution content knowledge. Qualitative case study approach was employed. The population comprised of three Life Science grade 10 teachers from three schools. Three teachers were selected by using a purposive sampling technique. The sampling technique was chosen because is relevant to the conceptual framework and the research questions addressed by the research. The qualitative research was executed by applying the phenomenological method. Mason (2012) claims that: “qualitative research is used when the research wishes to understand meanings, beliefs and values”. The study was drawn from the theory of social constructivism theory by Vygotsky, 1978. According to Vygotsky, (1978) “much important learning by the child occurs through social interaction with a skilful tutor”. The researcher collected qualitative data by means of classroom observations and semi-structured I with three Life Science teachers from three different schools. The following research questions were attempt to be answered: What is the nature of teacher’s content knowledge on evolution teaching in grade 10? What is the nature of teachers’ instructional strategies during evolution teaching? How does the teachers’ content knowledge and instructional strategies shape the teacher’s interactions and discourse? The collected data was analysed using Classroom Practice Diagnostic Framework (CPDF). Participants used their teaching experiences to teach evolution. This study indicated a lack of content knowledge among teachers and teaching and learning resources at schools. It is recommended that the Ministry of Education allocate enough textbook funds to regions to cater for every learner’s textbook. Life Science education officer should collaborate with biology education officer to organise a workshop for Life Science teacher in their region. The workshop will equip teachers with more information on evolution and will help in the improvement of learners’ performances. / Science and Technology Education / M. Ed. (Natural Science Education)

Excerpts from classroom interaction in video recorded music lessons is analysed for dialogical structure and evidenced degree of shared topics. Each single turn is analysed according to agent, modality and function. It is suggested, that this analytical approach can be used both for comparative studies and as a means for teachers to improve their teaching.

This doctoral thesis is concerned with multi-participant interaction systems of school lessons in a seventh grade comprehensive school German class. The multi-participant factor is assumed to be crucial for the school lesson and thus for its analysis not only because the mere presence and specific ratification of school lesson participants constitute the very event in general. It is, moreover, argued that each participant is a co-producer of the social event as it emerges, develops, and turns out, and that only the cooperation of all the participants ensures the successful execution of the social event. With a conversation-analytical approach, the mechanisms of multi-participant cooperation in the classroom are primarily investigated with regard to all participants’ individual strategies of coping with the requirements of being a student or being a teacher during lesson discourses, which constitute the major part of the school lessons under scrutiny. Based on this, participation in classroom interaction can be described along the lines of leading and supporting activities conditioned by mutual attestations of inconspicuousness.

The study investigates the potential of teacher talk in enhancing learner capacity to negotiate learning, premised on a view of classroom interaction as guided construction of knowledge. It examines the extent to which levels of oracy - essentially, awareness of the language of instruction, and the ability to use it more effectively - can be raised by exposing teachers to an in-service distance education language-based course. The main research questions are: a. What are the effects of the course in classroom text and discourse on oracy in the high school classroom? b. How can the quality of classroom discourse be assessed in a relatively systematic and objective manner? With regard to the second question, an analytical framework was developed that defined three key constructs in terms of discourse acts, namely teacher dominance, teacher effectiveness and learner initiative, and these constructs formed the basis of the three hypotheses. Patterns of interaction in English, mathematics and geography classes during the first year of high school in Harare, Zimbabwe (main study) and Zomba, Malawi (supplementary study) were analysed. The Zimbabwe study used a pretest-posttest control group design, with six teachers in the experimental group and three as controls, while the Malawi study used a posttest-only control group design with three teachers in each group. The experimental groups took part in an intervention programme known as the Litraid Project, a course on classroom text and discourse. The findings, interpreted both quantitatively and qualitatively, showed that after intervention the experimental group teachers dominated classrooms less and used discourse input more consciously and effectively. Similarly, their learners showed improved ability to negotiate learning, as reflected in their heightened levels of initiative and discourse output, both in class and group discussion. Hence the conclusion that classroom praxis, specifically in English second language situations, benefits from a conscious enhancement of oracy, leading to more effective teaching and learning. / Linguistics / D.Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

This thesis deals with politeness and its realization in a classroom discourse. The theoretical part describes the most influential politeness theories and also the findings on the topic of teaching pragmatics and linguistic politeness. The research in the thesis focuses on analysis of teachers' verbal realizations of politeness as found in the recordings of four English lessons. The research was designed to verify the two hypotheses: (1) teachers are basically polite in a classroom of English as a second language and (2) politeness strategies of Czech teachers of English differ from those of native speaking teachers. The analytical part adopts the viewpoint of Brown and Levinson's positive and negative politeness. The last part of the thesis aims at summarizing the implications that this thesis, its theoretical summary and its research, have for teaching English as a second language.

The aim of this thesis is to determine how English-language teaching in Sweden influences the subject-based communicative competence and language development in Swedish of upper secondary students. The focus is thus on the students’ mother tongue, i.e. the language which gets limited in the teaching practice within so-called content- and language-integrated learning (CLIL). Data was primarily collected by participatory observation in two science program classes, one taught in English and one in Swedish, during their three years in upper secondary school. Additional data was collected through interviews, questionnaires, audio taping of classroom interaction and writing tasks. This created conditions for a comprehensive and nuanced description and interpretation of the linguistic behaviour of teachers and students in the CLIL practice, as well as of the experiences and perceptions they report. Studies were carried out on classroom practice, student texts, and teacher and student experiences of CLIL instruction. These were linked to activity analysis, systemic-functional linguistics and ethnography of communication, i.e. research areas that emphasise the interplay between language, communication and social situation. The general conclusions are: (1) CLIL students use less relevant subject-based language in speech and writing than do control students. This holds for all subjects except Swedish, where both CLIL and control students share linguistic conditions; (2) Swedish is a prerequisite for the students’ own active, subject-based participation in classroom interaction. There is almost no interaction when the language of instruction is English; (3) English is an obstacle, and is also considered as such. The students avoid using English, and the teachers consistently use code-switching strategies in response to the policy that “language should not be an obstacle”. The results suggest that the CLIL environment is less conducive to learning, given current learning theories that focus on active participation. In the already teacher-dominated classroom, the linguistic and interactional demands that come with CLIL teaching seem to add to the challenge of assimilating advanced subject instruction.

The study investigates the potential of teacher talk in enhancing learner capacity to negotiate learning, premised on a view of classroom interaction as guided construction of knowledge. It examines the extent to which levels of oracy - essentially, awareness of the language of instruction, and the ability to use it more effectively - can be raised by exposing teachers to an in-service distance education language-based course. The main research questions are: a. What are the effects of the course in classroom text and discourse on oracy in the high school classroom? b. How can the quality of classroom discourse be assessed in a relatively systematic and objective manner? With regard to the second question, an analytical framework was developed that defined three key constructs in terms of discourse acts, namely teacher dominance, teacher effectiveness and learner initiative, and these constructs formed the basis of the three hypotheses. Patterns of interaction in English, mathematics and geography classes during the first year of high school in Harare, Zimbabwe (main study) and Zomba, Malawi (supplementary study) were analysed. The Zimbabwe study used a pretest-posttest control group design, with six teachers in the experimental group and three as controls, while the Malawi study used a posttest-only control group design with three teachers in each group. The experimental groups took part in an intervention programme known as the Litraid Project, a course on classroom text and discourse. The findings, interpreted both quantitatively and qualitatively, showed that after intervention the experimental group teachers dominated classrooms less and used discourse input more consciously and effectively. Similarly, their learners showed improved ability to negotiate learning, as reflected in their heightened levels of initiative and discourse output, both in class and group discussion. Hence the conclusion that classroom praxis, specifically in English second language situations, benefits from a conscious enhancement of oracy, leading to more effective teaching and learning. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

Abstract This thesis concentrates on investigating the social construction of learning and teaching in a classroom that was encultured into working and acting as a community of inquiry across the curriculum. The theoretical and methodological premises of the study draw on sociocultural and sociolinguistic views on learning and instruction. Through this framework, the study aims at investigating the development, implementation and evaluation of the processes and conditions for communal inquiry across different pedagogical situations and across the curriculum in the case study classroom. In addition, the study aims at creating a pedagogical rationale for supporting meaningful, student-centred and problem-based learning in classroom. The research project was realised as a series of qualitative case studies. The subjects of the study were seventeen third-grade students from a Finnish elementary school and their teacher. The empirical data corpus consists of nine hours of videotaped classroom sessions gathered from the domains of philosophy, science and mathematics. Detailed, micro- and multilevel analyses were completed on the transcribed video recordings of whole classroom interaction. The results of the research project indicate that social interactions in the case study classroom were quite dominantly characterized by multilateral interactions amongst classroom members. Instead of mere information exchange, the nature of knowledge in this classroom was largely based upon sharing and defining views as well as negotiating evidence. In general, the students in this classroom clearly took charge of the cognitive work whereas the teacher’s responsibility was more directed towards managing the interactional practices during the joint discussions. However, there were occasions when the teacher stepped in as an analytic authority. The teacher scaffolding was grounded in the on-going interactions and varied in both quantity and quality whilst engaging in dialogue with individual students demonstrating different participation modes. Overall, the results of the study indicate that teacher scaffolding in this classroom supported communal inquiry from both the cognitive, social and socio-emotional perspectives. / Tiivistelmä Väitöstutkimus tarkastelee oppimisen ja opetuksen sosiaalista rakentumista luokassa, jonka toimintakulttuuri rakentuu tutkivan yhteisön periaatteille yli oppiainerajojen. Tutkimuksen teoreettinen viitekehys perustuu sosiokulttuurisille ja sosiolingvistisille oppimis- ja opetuskäsityksille. Tästä teoriataustasta käsin tutkimuksen tavoitteena on tarkastella tutkivan yhteisön periaatteille rakentuvan toimintakulttuurin prosesseja ja ehtoja tapaustutkimusluokassa. Lisäksi tutkimuksen pedagogisena tavoitteena on kehittää suuntaviivoja merkitykselliselle, oppilaskeskeiselle ja ongelmalähtöiselle oppimiselle. Tutkimusprojekti toteutettiin laadullisten tapaustutkimusten sarjana. Tutkimuskohteena ovat seitsemäntoista suomalaisen alakoulun 3. luokan oppilasta ja heidän opettajansa. Tutkimusaineisto koostuu yhdeksästä tunnista videoituja oppituntitilanteita filosofian, luonnontiedon ja matematiikan oppiaineissa. Koko luokan vuorovaikutustilanteita sisältävät litteroidut videotallenteet analysoitiin yksityiskohtaisin, mikro- ja monitasoisin analyysimenetelmin. Tutkimustulokset osoittavat, että tapaustutkimusluokan sosiaaliset vuorovaikutustilanteet rakentuivat vahvasti jäsenten väliselle, monenkeskiselle vuorovaikutukselle. Pelkän informaation vaihdon sijaan tiedon luonne tutkimuskohteena olleessa luokassa perustui yhteiselle näkökulmien jakamiselle, tarkentamiselle ja perustelemiselle. Luokan oppilaat ottivat vastuuta tiedollisista neuvotteluista, kun taas opettajan vastuu kohdentui enemmänkin vuorovaikutuksen ohjaamiseen yhteisten keskustelujen aikana. Kuitenkin opettaja astui esiin luokan vuorovaikutustilanteissa välillä myös analyyttisenä asiantuntijana. Opettajan tuki määrittyi luokan vuorovaikutustilanteiden kautta, ja se vaihteli määrältään ja laadultaan opettajan ollessa vuorovaikutuksessa osallistumiseltaan erilaisten oppilaiden kanssa. Kaiken kaikkiaan tutkimustulokset osoittavat, että opettajan ohjaus luokkayhteisössä tuki tutkivan yhteisön rakentumista niin tiedollisesta, sosiaalisesta kuin sosioemotionaalisesta näkökulmasta.

Ce travail se situe à la croisée de la didactique des langues étrangères [L2], des sciences de l'éducation et de la psychologie sociale. L'hypothèse de départ porte sur la possibilité que des enseignants de L2 montrent, face aux apprenants et au cours d'une rencontre en classe de L2, des comportements allant au-delà de leurs fonctions institutionnelles d'organiser, faciliter et participer à la communication. Il est question caractériser la manière dont des enseignants de L2 se représentent leur métier. Nous travail adhérons ainsi au courant des études sur la cognition des enseignants qui explorent leurs croyances hétéroclites. Nous avons d'abord observé des rencontres en classe de L2 en présentiel que nous avons ensuite analysées à la manière de l'analyse conversationnelle. Le recours à l'analyse conversationnelle nous a permis de déterminer la manière dont les participants co-construisent la rencontre en classe de L2. Certaines des pratiques repérées chez l'enseignant, telles que la désaffiliation, la légitimation du rire, ont été caractérisées comme des actions motivées par ses croyances. Enfin, le recours à des entretiens d'auto-confrontation a permis de confronter les enseignants avec leur propre pratique afin qu'ils la commentent selon leur logique et leur ressenti. Ce dispositif a rendu possible un dialogue entre le chercheur et les enseignants grâce auquel leur savoir-être enseignant a été caractérisée finement. / This work is at the crossroads of applied linguistics – namely foreign language [L2] teaching – education studies and social psychology. Its ultimate goal is to characterize the way in which L2 teachers represent their profession. This work draws on teachers' cognition studies in order to explore the heterogeneous beliefs of teachers. It also draws on conversation analysis [CA]: the classroom observation conducted in four fields has produced recordings that have become L2 classroom transcripts. The use of CA has helped to determine the participants' attitude as they coconstruct the situation in which they participate – namely a L2 classroom, which constitutes, in principle, an institutional setting. As regards the L2 teachers, the identification of certain practices – their disaffiliation, their choice of subject, their legitimation of laughter – indicates the possibility that they have made certain decisions according to the manner in which they co-manage the classroom situation, but also in relation to their own beliefs. Finally, we use recall-interviews, by means of which the teachers are confronted the teachers with their own practice; this may conduce to their characterising their own actions according to a certain pedagogical logic, but also according to their feelings. By means of integrating these three sources of information a dialogue between the teachers and the researcher has become possible; this dialogue has allowed for a fine description of the teachers' teaching know-how.

Theoretical-empirical work is focused on innovation education with using cooperative learning. The theme of labour is evaluation in cooperative learning and his specifics. The theoretical part is devoted to the description of cooperative learning, school rating and especially the evaluation of cooperative activities. The empirical part is a report from the action research of own lessons at the second level of elementary school, describes the transformation of teaching by introducing work in cooperative groups and monitors pupils' involvement in teaching in relation to the evaluation criteria. Part of the research is an analysis of pupils' self-image and a reflection of cooperative activities.