Introduction: The development of thinking skills is increasingly evolving as the one most important goals of formal primary and secondary education. Storybook reading is a well-established routine in early learning classrooms ranging from early preschool to foundation phase. As these interactions can typically be quite rich in exchanges and inquiry, the impact of book reading routines is significant, particularly as reading to young children plays a significant role in preparing them for later schooling. Aim: To describe how teachers interact during storybook reading with Grade R children. Methods: This study investigated five teacher’s interactions during storybook reading with their grade R (reception) classes in rural Zululand. The teachers were videotaped during 3 storybook reading sessions, these interactions were translated, transcribed and coded. Results and analysis: The results indicated that all five teachers interacted with the children throughout the storybook reading procedure. The teachers used a number of techniques that were suggested by researchers to increase oral language gains, emergent literacy gains and high cognitive thinking skills. Although teachers mainly used low cognitively challenging utterances, it was found that the teachers who gave the children the focus of control in the session, produced more high cognitively challenging utterances. The unfamiliar book was found to produce a higher percentage of high cognitive level utterances and teachers, who focused, not only on the story itself but on other concepts, produced more high level cognitive utterances. In general teachers seemed to favor requesting of information as a method of interaction and the highest percentage of high cognitive utterances, were found during the after reading period. Directions for intervention and for future research are discussed in light of the results. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CAAC) / Unrestricted

La trisomie 21 (t21) est l'anomalie génétique la plus fréquente à l'origine d'une déficience intellectuelle. Bien que la recherche concernant le stéréotype social de la t21 soit limitée, les personnes porteuses de t21, et particulièrement les enfants, semblent être associées à des traits de personnalité tels que « affectueux » et « heureux », les caractéristiques positives l'emportant sur les négatives comme « retardé ». Cependant, ce stéréotype positif coexiste avec des attitudes ambivalentes notamment à propos de l'intégration scolaire de ces enfants. L'objectif principal de cette thèse est d'étudier ce stéréotype au niveau implicite ainsi que l'impact des caractéristiques faciales sur le stéréotype au niveau explicite et implicite. Nos résultats confirment d'une part, un stéréotype social positif explicite dans des échantillons d'étudiants, d'adultes non étudiant et de professionnels du handicap intellectuel. Les visages d'enfants présentant plus de traits faciaux associés à la t21 sont associés à un stéréotype moins positif que ceux en présentant moins. D'autre part, nous mettons en évidence un stéréotype négatif au niveau implicite, même chez les professionnels du handicap. Nous étudions l'influence des variables individuelles sexe, familiarité avec la t21 et théories implicites de l'intelligence sur le stéréotype explicite et implicite. Puis, nous montrons une relation négative entre la typicalité des visages et le jugement sur l'intelligence alors que nous n'observons pas de relation significative entre la typicalité des visages et le niveau cognitif. Nous discutons l'implication de ces résultats sur l'étude du stéréotype et sur les personnes stigmatisées. / Trisomy 21 (t21) or Down syndrome is the most frequent genetic disorder associated with intellectual disability. Although research on the social stereotype toward t21 is very limited, it seems that persons with t21 are typically viewed as “affectionate” and “happy”; with positive personality traits prevailing over the negative ones (e.g., “mentally retarded”). However, this positive stereotype coexists with ambivalent attitudes. The main objective of this study was to investigate the stereotype at the implicit level and the impact of t21 facial features on the stereotype of t21 at the both explicit and implicit levels. Our results confirm, on one hand, a positive social stereotype explicit in samples of young adult students, non-student adults and professional caregivers working with intellectually disabled persons. The positive bias typically found in explicit judgments of children with t21 is smaller for those whose facial features are highly characteristic of this disorder, compared to their counterparts with less distinctive features and to typically developing children. On the other hand, we also show that this bias can coexist with negative evaluations at the implicit level, even among professional caregivers but to a lesser extent. We study the influence of individual variables sex, familiarity with the t21 and implicit theories of intelligence on explicit and implicit stereotypes. Finally, we show a negative relationship between t21 typicality of faces and the judgment of the intelligence as we do not observe a significant relationship between typicality and the cognitive level. We discuss the implications of these results.