This research project sought to measure how students in large-classroom environments respond to supplemental, out-of-class learning options. Is their performance positively impacted by tutoring or by online, always-accessible lessons? Above and beyond demographics and skills, what motivates students to engage in use of supplemental learning options? Responding to theories of ?just-in-time? learning and the learner-centered philosophy of distributed learning, this study put three out-of-class tools in place during the course of a fall semester to allow the learner to decide what form of out-of-class aid he or she would rely upon. Those three options included tutoring services, streaming voice-over-PowerPoint lessons, and short YouTube.com-hosted videos featuring the instructor. Over the course of the fall 2008 semester, students responded to two surveys intended to (1) capture their motivational approach and preferred study strategies and learning styles; and (2) capture measures of their usage of these tools and their reported perception of the tools. In tests of data to determine what led to the most improvement in student scores and what led to students? highest reported levels of satisfaction and perceived value with the course, the short, lab instructor-created videos hosted on YouTube.com were the only significant predictor among all three supplemental learning options. This finding provides broad-based support for ?just-in-time? theories of learning, in which information and help are readily available just as students are seeking that information and extra guidance. Therefore, instructors seeking to improve student performance may serve their students well by preparing materials to facilitate any-time access to course content needed to complete major assignments or prepare for exams. But there is a caveat to simply making any form of content available online or available any-time, any-place. This study advances the theory of always-available resources and learner-centered environments by further refining what type of media stimulates the most improvement in performance. The answer, in part, seems to hinge on what is most appealing to students (video plus audio, shorter material, content geared toward assignment specifics rather than broad-based lectures), and warrants future study.

This thesis is concerned with communication in interprofessional practice, an issue which is identified as a ‘difficulty’ but ‘essential’ in the literature. The research is based on a case study focusing on the communication between professionals in a series of planning meetings held to support the transition of a child with additional support needs from playgroup into the nursery class of a primary school in Scotland. The study explores the dynamics and complexities of communication through the theoretical frameworks of ethnography of communication and Dewey’s concept of communication as participative action. This joint analysis illustrates the way in which the group worked together to make something in common and the extent of commonality that was needed for them to work actively together. The findings show the interprofessional group functioning as a speech community with a bounding feature of working with the child. The soft-shell of this community illustrates a flexibility of practice and the ability of the group to expand or contract to meet the needs of the child and family. The way in which the participants worked together to agree the outcomes they were working towards is an illustration of Deweyan communication, making something in common between them. This process included the recognition of the competence and responsibility of individual professions. The study demonstrates that the doctors who were members of the interprofessional group were recognised as holding more power than the other members of the group and were bound by the outcomes and procedures of their own profession. This difference affected the dynamics of communication within the interprofessional team. The findings add to our understanding of the complexities of communication in an interprofessional team and show that communication in a Deweyan sense can strengthen the work of an interprofessional group and develop their support for the child or family they are working with.

<p>Many people, organizations, institutions, and governments want and need to generate creative breakthroughs and foster creativity, but are not aware of what conversational conditions make their occurrence more likely. The creative collaborative process is dependent upon communication. There have been few studies that have analyzed in situ group creativity with a robust communication theory capable of showing what actual kinds of conversations create new and useful meaning. The purpose of this research was to identify conversational conditions that facilitate creative breakthroughs in collaborative workgroups. </p><p> A case study is presented of a 4-month creative collaboration between members of a design consultancy and a senior university design class tasked with designing 21^st century communication products for a well-known greeting-card company client. The research design utilized a social constructionist communication theory, the coordinated management of meaning, (CMM). Creative breakthrough moments were identified in three different interactions from questionnaires and videotaped data. Reflective interviews of all the participants also enabled insight into the creative breakthrough moments and the narrative process that developed new meaning. The videotaped conversational patterns that produced those creative breakthrough moments were then recursively examined and analyzed with conversational analysis, CMM research methodology, and figurative language. Six specific conversational conditions were discerned as present in creative breakthrough emergence. </p><p> A reflexive pattern of critique, relationship, responsibility, idea generation, and reframing authorship enabled participants to co-evolve design narratives that made new meaning. Creative breakthroughs and new creative meaning emerged from an improvisational structure of six specific conversational conditions. By participating within this improvisational structure, group members utilized critique as a creative springboard for innovation and took fresh perspectives. These findings are counter to the dominant themes in design and sociocultural literature that nonjudgmental conditions, brainstorming, and individuals building on input are the main pathways for creativity. </p><p> <i>Key Words</i>: Creative breakthrough, conversational conditions, facilitate, in vivo collaborative workgroups, relational responsibility moves, new meaning-making, improvisational language structure, figurative language, CMM, social constructionist communication theory, creative and generous listening, creative collaboration </p>

<p> This instrumental, collective, targeted case study explores decisions elementary preservice teachers make with respect to culturally responsive teaching through the lens of dialogic teaching. Most candidates currently enrolled in elementary teacher education programs in the United States are young, white, and female. Meanwhile, the population of students in U.S. schools grows increasingly diverse, leading to a widening cultural gap between teachers and many of their students. Many preservice teachers opt not to use culturally responsive instructional strategies, particularly those related to communication, also known as dialogic teaching practices, despite research indicating such practices foster improved academic achievement for all students-but especially for students of color who are typically underserved in U.S. schools. Who the preservice teachers are when they enter teacher education programs, their experiences inside and outside of school, plus factors as broad as the context of schooling in the United States to as narrow as the impact of one particular student in a classroom, influence the choices a preservice teacher makes when faced with a lesson to teach, a room full of young children, and a ticking clock. Explicating decisions made by preservice teachers through direct classroom observations, followed by one-on-one interviews, provides a glimpse into factors promoting or inhibiting participants' use of dialogic teaching strategies. This study is part of the larger effort to support student discourse and teacher preparation through the use of one component of culturally responsive instruction as viewed through the lens of dialogic teaching, thus addressing the need to better serve all children in our nation's schools. </p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-06, Section: A, page: 2243. Adviser: Cara A. Finnegan. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 281-303) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, March, 2010. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D.Phil. Linguistics(Unit for Academic Literacy))-University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

The purpose of this dissertation project was to understand how institutions of higher education, through both punishments and rewards, ensure that dominant cultural codes are "taught" to students of color in ways that normalize whiteness ideologies. I wanted to understand racism in higher education through the lens of socialization to show the ways in which institutional members (un)intentionally conflate dominant cultural codes with the "correct" or "normal" way to think, act, or speak. Furthermore, I was interested in the ways that students of color take up, defer, resist, adapt, mix, subvert, and/or accommodate the institutional practices that (re)produce racial power within contemporary U.S. higher education. To pursue these goals, I focused on topics of racism, socialization through the white habitus, and civility utilizing critical-qualitative methodologies. I interviewed fourteen participants of various racial backgrounds a total of twenty-eight times to understand how they identified and negotiated the institutional norms of higher education. Specially, I utilized in-depth interviewing methods with narrative analysis and counterstory techniques to generate themes and present stories concerning my topics. My analysis of participants' responses generated insights related to my areas of study. First, I showed how racism manifests in a myriad of ways, including stereotypes and stereotype threats, microaggressions of invisibility, and overt forms of physical/mental violence. These themes indicate that racism still presents a significant threat to the health, well-being, and success of students of color within higher education. Second, I utilized Co-Cultural Theory to analyze participants' descriptions of higher education as a space that is dominated by the white habitus. That is, participants described specific communicative codes that constituted the practices of an idealized White identity within higher education and the ways they assimilated, accommodated, and separated from that identity. Third, I drew upon the notion of civility to understand the ways that its practice can function to perpetuate or subvert racism within higher education. Participants described appeals to covering ground and common courtesy as ways that conversations about race and racism are elided by dominant members in higher education thereby perpetuating whiteness. Additionally, I found that participants utilized purposive silence, niceness, and absurdity as ways to subvert the hegemonic dimensions of civility. Overall, my analysis points to the relationships among cultural, institutional, and individual rules and performances of race and racism. I concluded my dissertation by describing the major findings of the project and offering ways to combat racism in higher education. I offered that this dissertation can further whiteness studies by focusing attention on the cultural norms and practices that constitute the socializing mechanisms of higher education (or other institutions). This type of analysis is important because it does not rely upon essentialized racial identities (e.g., linking whiteness to White bodies); instead, it focuses attention on the institutional rules and norms that constitute yet transcend racial categories. I also drew upon Black Feminist Thought and Critical Communication Pedagogy to map out a dialogic ethic that serves as a foundation for communicating through inclusive civility to provide a guide for coalitional politics for social-justice work. I ended with the hope that such an ethic may provide a necessary step in the work to elicit institutional change and cultural renewal.

This thesis deals with possibilities of education of adults with hearing impairment in the Czech Republic. The theoretical part of the thesis deals in the first chapter with the basic terminology of the branch. The second chapter focuses on communication of persons with hearing disabilities. The third chapter is devoted to problems of adult education, lifelong learning, tertiary education and also brings the greatest possible comprehensive list of organizations dealing with this issue and the current offer of education. The final chapter is devoted to the question of quality of life and the related job opportunities for these individuals. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the current educational opportunities of persons with hearing disabilities. Partial objectives of this thesis is to analyze the sufficiency of existing supply of educational possibilities, the level of awareness of people with hearing disabilities about this offer and satisfaction with the applicability of the knowledge thus acquired in the labor market. The practical part of this thesis focuses on the evaluation of the survey, which was carried out in connection with completing of this thesis, and its conclusion focuses on comments on the results of the survey. The work should serve especially to the summary...

Communication skill is one of the key competencies that pupils should achieve during the compulsory education. The subject of this work - teaching pragmatic aspects is closely related to communication competence. The thesis focuses on teaching of pragmatic aspects in primary schools. Based on the theoretical literature there are defined basic terms such as cooperative communication, politeness principle, manipulation, argumentation, nonverbal communication and assertiveness. In the practical part the thesis focuses on the analysis of textbooks - how are the pragmatic aspects included in the textbooks. Other part is concerned with the analysis of the survey in which several teachers were asked about how the pragmatic aspects of speech communication are taught and how well is this subject matter mastered by their pupils. The last section includes worksheets, in which the activities are designed to practice examined pragmatic aspects.