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Dissertation submitted in partial compliance with the requirements for the Master's Diploma in Technology: Post-School Education, Technikon Natal, 1997. / The title of this research dissertation includes the appellation 'Natal'. Since the work began in 1989, the name of that province has officially become 'KwaZulu-Natal'. However, the previous designation has largely been used interchangeably with the present one, mainly because the course evaluated was and has been identified with Natal. This research was inspired by the assumption that the Communication Skills I course presently being offered to engineering students at technikons in South Africa did not appear to satisfy the workplace needs (in terms of content and time) of the engineering industry. This assumption arose out of a pilot study undertaken by the writer in 1989. In this pilot study, engineering companies were visited, and interviews were held with managers/directors/training managers, to ascertain the communication skills requirements of engineering technicians in the workplace. Many criticisms were made regarding the communication competency of engineering technicians in the workplace. According to the findings of the pilot study, engineering practitioners hold the view that the literacy skill demands of jobs are increasing while the basic skills of the available workforce, eg. reading, writing and speaking are decreasing. Employers expressed concern with the large numbers of workers who lack such skills in listening, speaking, reading, writing and thinking, and believe that this limits their chances of upward mobility in the workplace as well as their ability to adapt to workplace changes. All these factors, according to employers, have a negative impact on productivity levels. It was, as a result of the pilot study, suggested that engineering curricula, specifically the Communication Skills I course, should be fully evaluated to see to what extent they meet the workplace requirements of industry. What seems important is that the engineering technician should practise what has been learned and for the lecturer/instructor to bring practitioners and the workplace experiences into the classroom. / M

An attempt was made to investigate two aspects of the learning and teaching context. One deals with how the sets of beliefs or expectations pupils hold about some phenomena affect the sense they make of experiences given to them in science classes. The other deals with the potential effect of the inevitable use of "scientific" and "everyday" language by both teachers and pupils in instruction. A sample of thirty Portuguese students from grade five to grade nine (10-15 years old) were given laboratory experiences and "parallel" everyday phenomena to discuss individually with the interviewer and then were invited to describe orally what and why things happened. The fundamental conceptions that students hold, the changes of these conceptions with students' age, as well as their consistency in different contexts and in similar tasks were identified in this experiment. The results suggested that these students, although having been exposed to formal teaching, still retain and use intuitive notions to think: about experiences in science lessons. The focus of the second experiment was to investigate how teachers' own perceptions may influence the development of pupils' ideas. It was carried out by observing seven teachers during ordinary classroom activities, to discover the relative contributions of 'scientific' and 'everyday' meaning in the language they used. Common features in teachers' and students' conceptualizations of "heat", "temperature" and "energy" were identified. Two main questions were discussed: i) what are the implications of the semantic variability in the disparate linguistic references for science education? ii) how to bridge the gap between teachers' and students' understandings, i.e., what connections can be made between what teachers and students talk about and perceive from discourse in the classroom? The results of this study seemed to reinforce the idea that it is impossible to keep external, everyday, informal culture out of the science classroom.

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In recent years, leading educational scholars have argued for computational thinking to be an essential focus of K12 curriculum. Although now incorporated as an essential concept for STEM education, research has shown that curricular integration of computational thinking and modeling is a complex and challenging endeavor which involves the introduction and adoption of new literacies to both teachers and students, alongside disciplinary ideas and practices that students already find challenging to understand. This three-paper dissertation addresses the challenge of merging computational thinking and modeling with elementary science curricula along three dimensions â material, cognitive and social - by investigating how students and the classroom teacher make use of forms of activity that integrate agent-based computational modeling with other forms of scientific modeling to support the co-development of scientific and computational literacy in the elementary classroom. The first paper examines the close-interplay between the material and cognitive dimensions by investigating the forms of reasoning fourth graders utilized to develop more expert-like explanations of predator-prey relationships and population change due to natural selection after interacting with an agent-based model. The second paper elaborates on the interplay between the material and cognitive dimensions as well as extends the work conducted in the first paper by investigating how computational modeling is enhanced through its integration with other material forms, specifically with scientific modeling. The role of the teacher in re-shaping the structure of activity, and how those re-shapings influenced the knowledge that developed during activity was an additional component of this work. The third paper takes a more integrative stance and investigates the interplay between social, material and cognitive dimensions of emerging computational and scientific literacies through the development of sociomathematical norms across several months of activity. This paper advances an argument that the teacherâs emphasis on mathematizing and measurement as key forms of learning activities helped to meaningfully establish computation as the âlanguageâ of science in the elementary classroom. As a set, this work contributes to our understanding of how computational thinking and programming can transform elementary science education. Together, these papers illustrate how integration of computation as a language of science in the elementary classroom involves careful consideration of the complex interplay between materials, both computational and non-computational, cognition and classroom culture and highlights the complex social dimensions that allow (or do not allow) various computational competencies to thrive in a classroom setting.

Several studies have identified positive relationships between strong principal instructional leadership and improved student outcomes. However, few researchers have examined how principals influence the nature of instruction, particularly as it relates to ambitious goals for student learning. I conducted a mixed-methods analysis to investigate relationships between principalsâ understanding of inquiry-oriented mathematics instruction, district context, school context, and the extent to which they implemented strategies that had the potential to support teachersâ development of ambitious instructional practices. In a logistic regression analysis, I found district membership significantly predicted the implementation of improvement strategies rather than principalsâ understanding of inquiry-oriented mathematics instruction. A follow-up qualitative analysis revealed that principals who implemented improvement strategies often sought out other instructional leaders (e.g. district math specialists, school math coach) to both diagnose issues in current math instruction and facilitate learning events (e.g. professional development) to foster improvements in the quality of instruction. Additionally, principals who implemented instructional improvement strategies worked in districts that provided more support for principals as instructional leaders and worked with teachers who had greater instructional expertise. Additional research is needed to understand how principals come to recognize and value instructional leaders with expertise in inquiry-oriented math instruction.

Much of the research on vocabulary development in preschool children has focused on the dimension of breadth, or the number of words known. However, vocabulary depth, or the quality of knowledge for known words, predicts reading comprehension above and beyond the contribution made by breadth. A focus on depth can also better inform instruction by providing more detailed information about childrenâs word-learning. This three-paper dissertation is aimed at clarifying depth as a concept, tracking how it develops and how it can be fostered in preschoolers, and examining how it can be measured. The first paper looks at preschoolersâ depth of learning for words from different form classes, examining the kinds of semantic information that were learned during a book-reading and play intervention. The second paper is a conceptual review of vocabulary measures used with preK-1st grade children. This paper maps these measures on to features of depth, making visible the aspects of word knowledge assessed by each, and also argues for the use and development of measures that tap higher-quality word knowledge. The third paper reports the results of an informational book-reading and play intervention designed to support preschoolersâ depth of word knowledge. This paper examines the impact of the intervention, and also looks at specific features of instruction and interaction that may contribute to depth, such as teaching words in taxonomies and the potential benefit of using target words in responsive interactions. As a set, these papers seek to add to the fieldâs theoretical understanding of depth and to shift the focus in vocabulary interventions and measurement to include a greater attention to quality of word knowledge.

This dissertation examines how teachers learn to implement translingual pedagogy in a language arts classroom. I analyze data from a five-week professional development study in which three middle school teachers learned and enacted an approach to pedagogical translation called TRANSLATE. TRANSLATE is adapted from small group guided reading, and describes specific steps and flexible strategies for guiding students to collaboratively translate short passages from grade level texts to improve reading comprehension. Focusing on teacher reflections on teaching TRANSLATE, I first examine how teachersâ professional vision of translingual pedagogy led to changes in their practice of pedagogical translation. Teachersâ initial orientations on pedagogical translation were highly individualized; conditioned by their normative pedagogical routines, their histories of engagement with particular students, and their participation in other related practices, especially second language learning experiences. As translation routines stabilized, however, teachersâ professional vision of translingual pedagogy began to converge through opportunities provided within the professional development for collaborative discussion of the goals of the practice. Drawing on social practice theory and multimodal discourse analysis procedures, I then examine lesson transcripts and video to investigate how teacher participation in language problem solving events (LPSEs) facilitated studentsâ metalinguistic understanding and teacher learning. This analysis suggests that studentsâ tendency to make explicit metalinguistic connections during collaborative translation is facilitated by bodily and material arrangements that promote shared attention on texts, especially on alternative translation choices. It also describes power struggles that arise when studentsâ focus on communicating essential text information conflicts with teachersâ goal of exploring the meaning of unusual vocabulary. Finally, this study suggests teachersâ participation in LPSEs is more strategic and effective when translation is regarded as a tool to achieve curricular objectives, rather than an end in itself. This study contributes to research and practice in translingual pedagogy by expanding our understanding of how teachers learn to leverage student background knowledge toward pedagogical goals in multilingual classrooms.

As efforts are made in pre-kindergarten settings to design and model high quality programs, there is a growing need to attend to the aspects of the local context that may influence the ways that teachers and staff make sense of visions for their practice. Yet, the professional cultures in which teachers and other educators make sense of their practice are multifaceted and not well understood, particularly in early childhood settings. This exploratory case study examines collaboration and mentorship network structures, the alignment between formal structures and informal networks, and the beliefs among leaders, teachers, and assistants in three pre-kindergarten schools that comprised an initiative to build a model pre-kindergarten program. Social network surveys and self-reported beliefs from 75 educators were used to develop a composite picture of professional culture at each school, complemented by interviews participants. Results indicate distinct cultures at each of the three schools and sparse ties across the three schools. More specifically, variations in the network cohesion and teacher assistant positioning, in the alignment between formal and informal networks, and in autonomy and teacher-assistant trust at the schools were combined into different types of professional culture. Interview statements and examples provide evidence for each type of professional culture. Implications for policymakers and practitioners hoping to develop strong positive professional cultures are included. Future research is needed that uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to generate more comprehensive pictures of professional culture in a variety of schools.

The problem with which this study is concerned is the development of a mathematical model and theory of teaching. The mathematical model consists of a set of abstract axioms. The fundamental elements or terms of the axioms are undefined. These primitive or undefined terms obtain their definitions only implicitly through the axioms.