The purpose of this study was to take a piece of popular culture, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and use it as a pedagogical tool in a graduate criminal theory course to serve as a pilot study. Evaluation data showed that using the Sorcerer's Stone is an effective way to teach students how to apply criminological theory hypothetical examples of behavior.

This study is postpositivist. Adopting an ontological framework of critical realism requires the researcher to take the position of “modified” objectivist, and explore opportunities for the qualitative interpretation of quantitative data. Grounded theory is explored as the primary methodological approach, and as such the study takes on an inductive, theory-generating form in an attempt to describe and explain student performance within the context of alternative access to tertiary science studies. True to grounded theory, the researcher begins the study without a theoretical framework, this being built as the study progresses. The researcher’s experience of teaching educationally disadvantaged students Foundation Biology in the Centre for Science Access on the Pietermaritzburg campus of KwaZulu-Natal is used as a starting point, from which the initial research question emerges, namely the performance of the Access students in a first-year Life and Environmental Science stream module relative to direct entry students. Results from quantitative data analysis on students’ final marks in the first-year module pose a second research question: what factors contribute to the differing success of the student groups in the first-year module? Drawing on extant international and South African literature on factors affecting university student performance in conjunction with Regression Tree Analysis on the first-year module final mark, a theoretical framework begins to emerge. The concept of the “advantaged disadvantaged” calls for the notion of Access to be reconsidered, and curriculum responsiveness is examined in some detail. Grounded theory method of constant comparison, seeking core categories, together with efforts of triangulation prompt the third line of enquiry, specifically to establish what factors are influencing the performance of the Foundation students in their Access year. Using students’ final Foundation marks as the outcome variable, further Classification and Regression Tree analysis is conducted, including biographical, socioeconomic, school history, and academic factors as well as a measure of student motivation. In addition, literature around Access contributes to theory building. This systematic abstraction and the conceptualization of empirical data result in a substantive theory: that it is English language proficiency, above all other possible variables that can best explain Life Science (Biology) student performance. Selection into the Foundation Biology module is found to be at odds with selection into the Programme as a whole, necessitating curriculum responsiveness at the modular level. The emergent grounded theory, and the notion of “fuzzy generalization”, seen to be appropriate to critical realist research, allows opportunities to explore remediation in the curriculum on the basis of these research findings. Attention is paid specifically to scaffolding literacy in biology through a “learning to read”, “reading to learn” approach. These measures are dicussed within the context of assisting students to achieve epistemic access that will enable them to successfully participate in the academic practice of Science. / Theses (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

Thesis (M.I.T.)--The Evergreen State College, 2009. / Title from title screen (viewed 7/16/2009). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-112).

The thesis is focused on creativity development of pupils in older school age in the work of teachers. First part of thesis acquainted with theory of creativity and explain basic concepts about creativity development and creative teaching in the work of teacher. The aim of this thesis is to find out the form, how teachers develop pupils' creativity in their work and how the teachers think about creativity teaching. The practical part contains a pilot study survey and four case studies implemented within the main research. Emphasis is placed on observing teaching activities and subsequent interviews with teachers about teaching course. Results showed, that teachers are able to use creativity teaching. However, there are still several options, how to improve the quality of creativity teaching. We suggested specific recomendations in the conclusion, how to improve the quality of creativity teaching. Key words Creativity, teacher, older school age, creative teaching.

No description available.

When I found out that in 2022 there were about 18 000 students who did not have the qualifications to applay to high school after they finished ninth grade, I became curious about how I, in my future profession as a teacher, will be able to help students achieve passing grades in my subject social studies at the end of ninth grade. I have therefore studied what is required of the school´s curriculum Lgr 22 and how I can motivate the students as well as which working methods are presented in theory and previous research as the best working methods to enable the students to reach the right understanding of different subjects. It has been shown that co-creative teaching has been shown to provide a good basis for enabling this through, for example group work, which gave me the ideafor this study´s design. This development work is based on co-creative teaching in the form of a group project, where the students have answered a questionnaire and described how they experienced the teacher´s work before the task and how the teacher had structured everything around the task. The questions to the students have also touched on the subject of how the students experience group work and co-creative working methods and how they prefer to present their assignments in the future. The results of the study showed that the students need a lot of support and close cooperation with the teacher. They find it difficult to cooperate and, as research shows, it is difficult to find good group compositions.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

本文旨在探討台灣中學英語教師的創意教學，並且進一步探究社會文化情境因素如何影響老師的創意教學。本研究的個案為兩位資深且具有豐富教學經驗的創意教師，分別任教於國中以及高中。本研究採質性研究法，藉由教室觀察、訪談以及文件分析收集資料。 本研究顯示兩位創意教師的教學創意主要展現在：(1) 採用多樣化的教材以及教具，(2) 語言教學結合真實語言使用，(3) 採用學習者中心的教學法，(4) 採用多元性的評量以及 (5) 展現純熟的教室管理技巧。此外本研究也發現社會文化情境因素的確對教師發展教學創意有影響，特別是學門的守門人。而兩位創意教師的教學經歷也顯示出發展創意教學可能遇到的困境。即便創意教學的本質被認可，但是在沒有滿足社會期待的狀況下，並不一定會被學門或是領域所認同。有鑑於兩位個案教師所曾經歷的困境，本研究提出教學上的建議：實行創意教學應當先從教學上做小規模的改變，從小規模的改變開始慢慢發展，以期達到發展創意教學以及減少無法滿足社會期待的衝突。 / The preset study aimed to investigate teacher’s creativity in teaching foreign languages, with emphasis on high school English teachers in Taiwan, and further investigated how sociocultural contexts influence the teachers’ creativity. The participants are two acknowledged creative English teachers, teaching in junior high school and senior high school respectively. The data collection instruments include classroom observations, interviews and document collection. The data was analyzed qualitatively to see how two creative teachers employ their creativity in teaching English as a foreign language in everyday classroom practice and how the sociocultural contexts influence the teachers’ creativity. Through analyzing the data, the two teachers’ teaching creativity was found to be demonstrated in (1) adopting a variety of teaching materials and aids; (2) making connections between language learning and real life; (3) giving ample space for learner-centered instruction; (4) creating multiple ways of assessment; and (5) exhibiting sophisticated classroom management strategies. Besides, the results indicated that sociocultural contexts have indeed had impacts on the teachers’ development, especially from school authority and students’ parents. Difficulties that the two teachers encountered suggest that not all the creative teaching efforts would be accepted with appreciation, although the efforts might be recognized as creative. With regard to challenges that the language teachers faced, the result suggested that implementation of creative language teaching should start with rather smaller-scale changes in teaching and progress gradually in order to maintain a balance between creative teaching and social expectations.

The purpose of this study is to present a personal interpretation of progressive education and its function in "teaching" primary music. A few supplementary aids are provided to correlate with the Amarillo, Texas, Course of Study for Primary Grades to lend aid and encouragement toward a rhythmic approach to child learning.

This diploma thesis deals with the activation of activities teachers, which has a stimulating effect on the activities of students in learning the German language at secondary schools in Jihocesky county. German language was chosen purposely, because the most important thing while teaching foreign languages is to involve the student into a mutual communication as much as possible. The student has to be very active to be able to assume the foreign language. This thesis is divided into theoretical and research. The theme of this thesis is to release the ways how teachers stimulate the activity of pupils in the German language teaching. It is also important to find out if there is any interaction between the activation of activities teachers and a student?s activity during the lesson. We can get to know this interaction by statistical calculations. Among one of the methods of quantitatively directed analyses belongs standardized method of observation, which was used right for this research. To be specific it was an interactive analysis. There was applied Flanders observation system for an activity of a teacher and Tabers observation system for an activity of a student. There are described various ways and methods how to stimulate a student to be more active.