Motivating students to learn and practice effective communication skills has always been a dilemma for teachers of all grade levels. Video cameras and camcorders are now being used as teaching tools in many schools to not only motivate students to use and practice a variety of skills, but to stimulate their creativity, as well. Loretto Elementary School in Jacksonville, Florida, is developing a program which incorporates student-written video productions into its existing curriculum. Loretta's innovative program is a direct result of a 10-rninute informational video tape production done by graduate student Jane Fleetwood and Continental Cablevision, a local cable television company. This paper describes the step-by-step procedures involved in that production, the business education partnership which exists between the school and the cable company, and the school's plans for making video productions as integral part of its curriculum.

By comparing listening comprehension to reading comprehension for above-average and below-average readers, one can come to some conclusions about where the problem resides for poor readers-whether it be lack of phonic skills or lack of general verbal competence. Because teachers need to know better where to invest their resources, investigations such as mine need to be done.

1. This pilot study is a survey of practices of natural sciences educators at Cape College of Education to establish if they reflect the conceptual development, development of skills, change of attitudes and values that are the pillars of the Outcomes Based Education (OBE). Their approaches of lecturing have been assessed to determine if they incorporate investigative approaches based on social constructivism, the theory underpinning Curriculum 2005. The status of science education in the college has been analyzed to establish whether the curriculum can adapt itself to the specifications of the new curriculum. It has been concluded that the educators at Cape College of Education need to be empowered about strategies that will help them function along the principles embracing Curriculum 2005 specifications. The educators have shown not to be ready to practice social constructivism and the assessment strategies incorporated in their programmes do not embrace a variety of approaches that will enable their learners to develop conceptually, skill wise and enable them to develop change in attitudes and values. Investigative approaches to practical work appear to be lacking in the college teaching/learning and this also indicates that Curriculum 2005 will take time to be properly implemented at Cape College of Education. 2. This study is based on the practices of science educators in the squatter-camp school in Khayelitsha, a densely populated area for blacks near Cape Town. Teachers at Vuselela primary school were interviewed about their teaching assessment strategies to establish whether they incorporate a learner centred approach, which is the necessity for the Outcomes Based Education approach. Also some of the lessons they taught were observed in order to find out whether they validate what transpired from the interviews through a process of triangulation. It has become evident that the teachers are to some extent aware of the changes the education system is going through in South Africa. It also became clear from the study that the teachers are still lacking expertise as to how to practice along the lines of Curriculum 2005, the South African version of Outcomes Based Education (OBE). They also showed that they are keen to learn and practice OBE even though more opportunities need to be created for their epistemological empowerment as well as empowerment on the content of science.

This research investigated the educational orientation of teacher educators in colleges of education in Botswana whether pedagogic or andragogic, and how they influence their educational practice. The methods of investigation were, a literature study of belief systems, andragogy and pedagogy as well as the nature of educational orientation, a survey of the educational orientation of teacher educators in Botswana using a structured Educational Orientation Questionnaire (EOQ) adopted from Hadley (Quam, 1998) and a semi-structured group interview to a stratified random sample of student teachers at two of the colleges of education. The results showed that most teacher educators in colleges of education in Botswana had a pedagogical rather than an andragogical orientation. They predominantly use educator-centred rather student-centred teaching methods. / Educational Studies / M Ed. (Didactics)

At every educational level reading is a powerful tool for academic success because it provides students with access to information. Comprehension is crucial to reading. Many students at Lobatse College of Education, Botswana, have problems comprehending L2 reading materials and thus struggle academically because English is the medium of instruction. To some extent, methods of teaching L2 reading contribute to students’ reading failure. It is said that how we teach is as important as what we teach. Thus, how L2 reading is taught is important for improving students’ understanding of texts and their L2 academic performance. This study focuses on teaching reading as a process which involves an application of reading strategies in order to facilitate comprehension of texts. The overall aim of the research is concerned with the improvement of methods of teaching L2 reading comprehension in Botswana Colleges of Education. The specific objective was to implement reading strategy instruction programme (RSI) to see what effect it would have on (i) on L2 students’ use of strategies during reading (ii) on L2 students’ reading comprehension, and (iii) on L2 students’ English academic performance. Using a quasi-experimental pre-posttest design, an explicit RSI programme was implemented over six-week period in a Botswana College of Education. Two intact cohorts of second-year teacher trainees were randomly assigned to a control and intervention groups. A reading strategy questionnaire and a reading comprehension test were used to examine the relationship between strategy use and level of comprehension. A discrepancy emerged between the self-reports responses of the participants and their actual performance in reading text. Although they claimed to be strategic readers the results suggested that they were not in fact reading strategically.The Cohen’s d analysis yielded a large effect size. This corroborates the significant differences that emerged between the two cohorts in their posttest comprehension results. The intervention group showed significant gains in strategy use and reading comprehension after the six-week intervention period. This suggests that even a short period of intervention can be beneficial to L2 students. However, these effects did not manifest themselves in the students’ English academic performance. This suggests that students need more exposure and more opportunities to practice applying strategies to texts that they read before the effect spill over into academic performance in general. The findings from this study have important implications for the teaching reading in Botswana in both L1 and L2 context. This research also point to further avenues for reading research in Botswana, and cautions against a reliance on questionnaire data alone in reading research; the triangulation of data is important to gain an accurate and deeper understanding of reading practices and reading performance. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Applied Linguistics)

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:16:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5784.pdf: 3859050 bytes, checksum: 74a9df408cd3fbd95c3a1ae3f90120a1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-24 / Considering the low search for undergraduate research (UR) from the Distance Education (DE) students from Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), registered in the Scientific and Technological Undergraduate Research office of this University, we established a diagnosis near the population wrapped with this kind of education, on the reasons that lead to this low production of undergraduate researches, with the central objective to signal proceedings, products and services that could minimize this gap and promote bigger scientific productivity near the undergraduate students from distance education. For so much, we have done a data collection from a virtual focal group developed during the International Symposium of Distance Education and during the Investigators' Meeting in Distance Education promoting a reflection as for the involvement of these students in undergraduate research activities of their institutions. Subsequently a questionnaire had been applied near the degree course students in Pedagogy from distance education of Federal University of São Carlos, so much to complement the informations previously identified in the registers of production of UR in the University, as to validate the informations collected in the virtual focal group that disposed of the participation of different professionals from distance education and from different geographical regions from Brazil. The choice of the distance education degree course in Pedagogy as control group, fountain of data and of validation is due to the fact so much of being a degree course turned to the teachers' formation, main mark of the DE in Brazil, as because of being treated as the course with bigger number of enrolled students. We identified unknowing from these students relative to their participation on UR, as well as lack of interest of undergraduate research for lack of time, incentive and available mentors to guide them. Professionals of the area confirmed the low participation of the students of this kind of education in Brazil, confirming the hypothesis of this research. / Diante da baixa procura por iniciação científica e tecnológica (ICT) pelos alunos da Educação a Distância (EaD) da Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar), registrados na secretaria de Iniciação Científica e Tecnológica desta Universidade, estabelecemos um diagnóstico junto à população envolvida com esta modalidade de educação, sobre os motivos que levam a esta pouca produção de pesquisas de ICT, com o objetivo central de sinalizar procedimentos, produtos e serviços que possam minimizar esta lacuna e promover maior produtividade científica junto aos graduandos da EaD. Para tanto, foi feita uma coleta de dados a partir de um grupo focal virtual, desenvolvido durante o Simpósio Internacional de Educação a Distância (SIED) e do Encontro de Pesquisadores em Educação a Distância (EnPED) promovendo uma reflexão quanto ao envolvimento dos alunos da EaD nas atividade de ICT de suas instituições. Posteriormente fora aplicado um questionário junto aos alunos de Licenciatura em Pedagogia da EaD-UFSCar tanto para complementar as informações anteriormente identificadas nos registros de produção de ICT na Universidade, quanto para validar as informações coletadas no grupo focal virtual que contou com a participação de diferentes cursos e regiões geográficas do Brasil. A escolha do curso de licenciatura em pedagogia da EaD como grupo controle, fonte de dados e de validação, se deve ao fato, tanto de ser um curso de licenciatura voltado à formação de professores, principal meta da EaD no país, como por se tratar do curso com maior número de matriculados no Brasil. Identificamos desconhecimento dos alunos relativos a adesão à ICT, bem como desinteresse em pesquisa de ICT por falta de tempo, de incentivo e de professores disponíveis para orientá-los. Profissionais da área confirmam a baixa participação dos estudantes dessa modalidade de ensino pelo Brasil, confirmando as hipóteses desta pesquisa.

The relationship between peer-editing and composition quality was investigated. The thirty subjects involved were 11th-grade English students randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. During a nine week period, both groups received the same assignments and teacher evaluation. The control group, which did not revise unless upon individual initiative, participated in a dramatics workshop while the experimental group used a worksheet developed by Leila Christenbury (1982) to edit and proofread each other's writing before evaluation by the teacher. Pre and post writing assignments were blind rated at the end of the experiment using the Diederich Rating Scale. Individual item scores and total scores were compared. The t-ratios proved insignificant at the .05 level. Positive student feedback, however, indicated that the procedure deserves further investigation.

This study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the language experience approach (LEA) for teaching reading and writing skills to functionally illiterate high school students who were identified as learning disabled. Twenty-one 9th-grade students ages fifteen to sixteen participated. The students were divided into a control group and an experimental group. The control group was instructed through the use of a commercial reading kit, Reader's Workshop I (1974). The experimental group received instruction using the LEA which uses student written material to generate reading skill activities. To verify effectiveness of the LEA, pre- and posttests of the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (1976), or SDRT, brown level, forms A and B and the Sentence Writing Strategy Pretest (1985), or SWSP, were administered to both the control and experimental groups. The results on the subtests of the SDRT indicated no significant gains or losses of reading skill ability for either group. The SWSP though, indicated a significant gain in sentence writing ability of 29 percentage points for the experimental group while the control group lost 11 percentage points. It is therefore evident that the language experience approach can be successful for teaching reading and writing skills to functionally illiterate high school students because it integrates reading and writing rather than providing detached skill instruction.

Learning to write their own words increases students' success in learning to read, provides practice in thinking skills, increases their self-concept and provides early positive attitudes about writing. However, most writing done in first grade classrooms today consists mainly of copying from the blackboard. This is a tedious and boring task for first graders, and gives them bad attitudes about writing as they begin their school careers. Many teachers don't require young students to write their own words because of the students' inability to spell words and form grammatically correct sentences. However, if a teacher is accepting of the students' imperfect spelling and grammar, the students will feel free to express their thoughts on paper. This project provides a year long curriculum design along with the activities necessary to teach first grade students to write creatively.

This study examined the relationship between student use of substances and extent of participation in school and/or community sponsored sport or nonsport activity. The study also examined student substance use and extent of participation in sport or nonsport activity together with extent of employment. Data were provided by 24,699 public school youths who attended grades 6 through 12 and completed the 2001-2002 Duval Secondary Substance Use and Violence Survey: Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors. Frequency tables, crosstabulation, chi-square tests, and loglinear analysis were used to analyze the data. The study found: (a) a higher percentage of respondents who participated in 11 or more hours of sport/athletic activity or nonsport activity reported using substances almost every day than did respondents who participated in 1-5 hours of activity (b) a higher percentage of students reported using alcohol almost every day when involved in greater than 20 hours of work per week and 11 or more hours of sport/athletic or nonsport participation than did those with lesser involvement in activity in conjunction with work at any level. Extracurricular programs and student employment may function as protective factors in discouraging adolescent substance use. Extracurricular programs and student employment may also place the student at greater risk for substance abuse when such involvement exceeds 20 hours per week in work and more than 11 hours per week of extracurricular activity. While extracurricular programs and student employment should be designed and offered to encourage widespread student participation, extent of participation should be monitored to assure healthy participation.