Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-126).

Cognitive self-regulation, or the ability to direct one’s attention and actively participate in learning, is a valuable asset because it promotes successful adjustment across the lifespan. Although cross-sectional studies have provided some information about the stability and change in cognitive self-regulation from early childhood through the elementary school years (ages 3-12), less is known about the other child characteristics that influence its development. This study is designed to examine multiple dimensions of preschool skills in relation to children’s attention and engaged learning across the elementary school years. Rich longitudinal data are used from a sample of 1,364 typically developing children from across the U.S. who participated in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Variation in preschool attentional skills, social behavior, and early academic skills was used to predict average level and rate of change in attention, planning, work habits, and classroom engagement from first through sixth grades. Results indicate that high levels of teacher-rated attention problems in the fall of kindergarten are consistently related to lower levels of attention and engaged learning in elementary school. High scores on kindergarten teacher-rated internalizing problems and social skills are linked with high attention and classroom work habits according to elementary school teachers. Finally, early academic skills (particularly oral language skills) are associated with high performance on the Tower of Hanoi planning task and high observed classroom engagement. These results suggest that programs designed to promote school readiness would be remiss in emphasizing early academic skills to the detriment of addressing children’s attention problems and social behavior. / text

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published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

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This dissertation examines the ways in which elementary school teachers view their job as political. I asked teachers to reflect on how they construct their identity, inside and outside the classroom; their relationship with the community, inside and outside the educational institution; and what behavior they consider political.Teachers' identity is constructed through personal ideology and through societal influences such as historical context and popular culture. Radical pedagogy and feminist theory are the ideological lenses by which I measured the attitudes of teachers.Using grounded theory I found that elementary school teachers characterize their actions as moral rather than political, what they called "doing the right thing." This research is important for looking at ways that political involvement on the part of teachers can be reframed as moral behavior. It includes implications for the relationship of elementary school teachers' pedagogy and a democratic society.

This dissertation seeks to identify teachers' perspectives and practices which play a role in the literacy process. The qualitative method was used in the examination of four first-grade classes in a school serving a slum population in Porto Alegre, Brazil. / The concepts "classification" and "frame" of educational knowledge (Bernstein, 1975), the "process of social stratification" in the classroom (Sharp and Green, 1975), and the "we-they-relationships" (Schutz, 1971) are used in the analysis. Participant and non-participant observations demonstrated the presence of political, economic extra-school factors which interfered with effective teaching. Nevertheless, pupils with a long career in the first grade as well as first-time students became literate during 180 school days. / Factors influencing the success of literacy teaching were: (a) the teachers' competence; (b) their belief in education as essential to the improvement of the standard of living of slum-dwellers; (c) the establishment of a "we-relationship" where the teachers assume responsibility for the learning of each pupil and reject the rigid categorization of scholastic failure.

For the past 100 years the majority of schools in North America have been organized on a graded basis. The classification of children by grades, the common method in Quebec, assumes that if a child is ten years old and in grade five then he should be able to work at the same level as his peers in all the subjects of the curriculum. [...]

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