The importance of family involvement is highlighted by findings that parents’ behaviours, beliefs and attitudes affect children’s behaviour in a major way. The Family Maths programme, which is the focus of this study, provides support for the transformative education practices targeted by the South African Department of Education by offering an intervention which includes teachers, learners and their families in an affirming learning community. In this study participating parents were interviewed to investigate their perceptions of the Family Maths programme mainly in terms of their engagement, enjoyment and confidence levels. The major themes and ideas that were generated in this study include the development of positive attitudes, parents and children working and talking together, and the skills exhibited by Family Maths facilitators. These findings are analysed within the parameters of complexity science and the pre-requisite conditions for developing a complex learning community, viz. internal diversity, redundancy, decentralized control, organised randomness and neighbour interactions.

Cette thèse se situe dans le domaine de l’Instructional Design, un champ de recherche anglo-saxon qui génère des connaissances pour améliorer la conception des environnements destinés aux apprentissages directs et explicites. Les recherches actuelles montrent que les apprentissages à partir d’environnements complexes permettent de confronter les apprenants à des situations authentiques des réalités de la vie et montrent des performances intéressantes, notamment dans les situations de transfert. Les environnements complexes sont caractérisés par la présence de nombreux éléments et de nombreuses interactions qui peuvent être difficilement traités par la mémoire de travail et dégrader fortement les performances d’apprentissage. Dans ce cas, la théorie de la charge cognitive préconise une approche en deux étapes en présentant en premier les éléments extraits du tout puis le tout. A partir d’une contribution empirique fondée sur quatre expérimentations où sont manipulés le niveau de complexité du matériel d’apprentissage, le degré d’isolement des éléments et le séquencement de la présentation, nous montrons que pour du matériel très complexe, les meilleures performances d’apprentissage sont obtenues en présentant de la complexité dans la première étape. Pour expliquer ces résultats, nous nous appuyons sur la théorie des desirable difficulties et sur les théories de l’engagement. / This thesis is in the field of Instructional Design, an Anglo-Saxon field of research that generates knowledge to improve the design of environments for direct and explicit learning. Current research shows that learning from complex environments allow learners to confront authentic situations from the realities of life and show interesting performance, especially in transfer situations. Complex environments are characterized by the presence of many elements and many interactions that can’t be easily dealt with by the working memory and greatly degrade the learning performance. In this case, the cognitive load theory recommends a two-step approach by presenting first extracts elements of the whole and the whole. From an empirical contribution based on four experiments which handled the complexity of the learning material, the degree of isolation and sequencing of the presentation, we show that for highly complex environments, the best learning performance are obtained by introducing the complexity in the first step. To explain these results, we rely on the desirable difficulties theory and theories of engagement.

This research explored the factors that influence whether Learning Support Assistants (LSAs), who support the learning of pupils with very complex learning needs, are equipped with the necessary skills to help these students learn. A significant feature in the delivery of educational support to pupils with low incidence needs is that it is LSAs who provide the majority of educational instruction and, furthermore, these paraeducators work with only limited supervision from class teachers. It therefore follows that if high quality educational assistance is to be available to pupils, then those undertaking the majority of this support need to have appropriate pedagogical knowledge. I explored this complex subject by undertaking a workplace ethnography at a single special school over the course of an academic year. In my ethnography, I used a number of data collection methods, including semi-structured interviews with teachers, LSAs and therapists, as well as participant and non-participant observations. The limited literature on the topic of LSA learning concludes that they are not being provided with the learning opportunities they need for the demanding work they do. However, because of the scarcity of information in the literature pertaining to the development of this important group of the educational workforce, I needed to look to the literature on organisational learning more broadly to inform my work and relate it to my own area of interest. The lack of priority given to non-formal learning was a key theme across these texts, with opportunities for participative learning emerging as an important feature. However, this aspect alone could not explain the reasons why these paraeducators did not have access to learning provision appropriate to their needs and so I looked to other theories of workplace learning. The conceptual and analytical approach of the Working as Learning Framework (WALF) (Felstead, et al., 2009), with its incorporation of the concepts of systems of production, discretion, and learning environments and territories, offered me the opportunity to scrutinise the situation regarding the learning and development of LSAs from a wide perspective. Through my adoption of the WALF I have identified the influences that shaped the workplace learning environment of the LSAs at the special school. In doing so, I have added to the limited research on this important and yet inadequately understood group. Although my study focused on one special school this research can inform how the abilities of paraeducators in different educational settings can be developed, because of my adoption of the theoretical standpoint of the WALF. Furthermore, by applying the WALF, my thesis has utilised workplace learning theory to make an important intellectual contribution to the discussion about how high quality educational provision can be delivered. My thesis is also apposite, because the number of children with more complex learning difficulties is increasing and these individuals require specialist paraeducators to be appropriately equipped to meet their needs, whether they are being educated in special or mainstream schools.

The importance of family involvement is highlighted by findings that parents’ behaviours, beliefs and attitudes affect children’s behaviour in a major way. The Family Maths programme, which is the focus of this study, provides support for the transformative education practices targeted by the South African Department of Education by offering an intervention which includes teachers, learners and their families in an affirming learning community. In this study participating parents were interviewed to investigate their perceptions of the Family Maths programme mainly in terms of their engagement, enjoyment and confidence levels. The major themes and ideas that were generated in this study include the development of positive attitudes, parents and children working and talking together, and the skills exhibited by Family Maths facilitators. These findings are analysed within the parameters of complexity science and the pre-requisite conditions for developing a complex learning community, viz. internal diversity, redundancy, decentralized control, organised randomness and neighbour interactions.

<p>Biochemistry is part of life science: a fast developing multidisciplinary area. The overall aims of this thesis and the work underlying it were to find ways in which to develop competence in biochemistry at university level and to assess complex learning. A particular interest was the development of experimental work as a means to promote learning.</p><p>The study focuses on changes made in two educational settings. The aim of the changes was to develop competence, amongst both students and teachers. Therefore, the research in the three first papers has in some aspects, and to different extent, the characteristics of action research. Broadly, the changes can be described as making experiments more open, with multiple formative and authentic assessment methods involving both students and teachers. The empirical studies included questionnaires, interviews, questions asked during experimental work, written material as formulated objectives, examination questions and answers, reports, other products; and grades/judgements made by teachers and students. Collected data were analyzed in several different ways. Statistical methods included the use of mean values, paired T-tests, Spearman rank correlation coefficients and Principal Component Analysis. Interview data as well as some questionnaire data were analyzed using analytical induction techniques. Some categories were based on thematic content analysis, while others were based on Bloom’s taxonomy. Students’ attitude positions were categorized according to Perry’s framework. </p><p>The main results can be summarized as follows; </p><p>The students’ learning was improved by open ended versions of experimental work, according to both their and the researchers’ opinions. Planning, approaching problems from different perspectives and evaluating the results of their own experimental work promote the students’ capacity for higher order cognitive thinking. However, the synthesis level constitutes a threshold and particular support is needed for students with a more dualistic view of teaching, learning and experimental work. </p><p>Introducing formative and authentic assessment is a way to help students to make progress, and to develop competence. The importance was clearly demonstrated of involving both teachers and students in discussions of aims and criteria and of making them explicit. Feedback from teachers’ and students’ own reflective activities about subject content, and their learning as well as affective factors were shown to be central for complex learning. Based on our studies, areas were identified for the critical development of competence and for promoting learning in biochemistry at university level. These areas are; multidisciplinary and complex learning, communication skills of different types, metacognitive perspectives, attitude development, and affective factors. </p><p>The students see experimental work as crucial for their learning and therefore important in terms of assessment. Therefore, experimental work can and ought to be assessed. However, similarities and discrepancies were observed between students’ and teachers’ perspectives for both the aims and assessment of experimental work. Our conclusion is that a combination of assessment methods is needed in order to be able to make a high qualitative assessment.</p>

Biochemistry is part of life science: a fast developing multidisciplinary area. The overall aims of this thesis and the work underlying it were to find ways in which to develop competence in biochemistry at university level and to assess complex learning. A particular interest was the development of experimental work as a means to promote learning. The study focuses on changes made in two educational settings. The aim of the changes was to develop competence, amongst both students and teachers. Therefore, the research in the three first papers has in some aspects, and to different extent, the characteristics of action research. Broadly, the changes can be described as making experiments more open, with multiple formative and authentic assessment methods involving both students and teachers. The empirical studies included questionnaires, interviews, questions asked during experimental work, written material as formulated objectives, examination questions and answers, reports, other products; and grades/judgements made by teachers and students. Collected data were analyzed in several different ways. Statistical methods included the use of mean values, paired T-tests, Spearman rank correlation coefficients and Principal Component Analysis. Interview data as well as some questionnaire data were analyzed using analytical induction techniques. Some categories were based on thematic content analysis, while others were based on Bloom’s taxonomy. Students’ attitude positions were categorized according to Perry’s framework. The main results can be summarized as follows; The students’ learning was improved by open ended versions of experimental work, according to both their and the researchers’ opinions. Planning, approaching problems from different perspectives and evaluating the results of their own experimental work promote the students’ capacity for higher order cognitive thinking. However, the synthesis level constitutes a threshold and particular support is needed for students with a more dualistic view of teaching, learning and experimental work. Introducing formative and authentic assessment is a way to help students to make progress, and to develop competence. The importance was clearly demonstrated of involving both teachers and students in discussions of aims and criteria and of making them explicit. Feedback from teachers’ and students’ own reflective activities about subject content, and their learning as well as affective factors were shown to be central for complex learning. Based on our studies, areas were identified for the critical development of competence and for promoting learning in biochemistry at university level. These areas are; multidisciplinary and complex learning, communication skills of different types, metacognitive perspectives, attitude development, and affective factors. The students see experimental work as crucial for their learning and therefore important in terms of assessment. Therefore, experimental work can and ought to be assessed. However, similarities and discrepancies were observed between students’ and teachers’ perspectives for both the aims and assessment of experimental work. Our conclusion is that a combination of assessment methods is needed in order to be able to make a high qualitative assessment.