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The purpose of this project was to explicate specialized knowledge a successful teacher utilizes while making decisions in complex classroom environments and obtain her professional explanation of how she employs this knowledge in these same complex situations. This research is based on teacher narrative and story about managing events that occur in classroom settings and contexts, the enacted curriculum. This is similar to research and practice that has been progressing in medicine and aeronautics concerning "naturalistic decision making" and "situation awareness." In these fields case method has been used to examine, illustrate, or tap stores of knowledge that have remained secluded. Although intended for use by doctors or pilots the theoretical parallels are compelling for research in teaching and exposition of specialized teacher knowledge. Such research and specialized knowledge might be employed by the novice professional/practitioner or even by experienced individuals in quickly changing, dynamic classroom systems and environments. Issues of perception, cognition, and decision making processes in contexts which contain elements of risk, complexity, and constant change are central to this research. In addition, the unique capability of cases, story, and narrative to give individuals (particularly female professionals) voice, and their ability to get at and unpack specialized knowledge is utilized. For this project narrative data were collected in stimulated recall interviews about thirty different contextual case decisions a first grade teacher made during the course of a regularly occurring, two-week curriculum unit. These data were then transcribed for use in various steps of a cognitive task analysis similar to Critical Decision Method. Findings demonstrated evidence that this teacher recognized and described external and internal cues possessing potential, perceived, or real influence on the situation in which she intended her program of action to be enacted. In the narrative, these cues were reported by the teacher as knowledge that had undergone processes of "chunking" and "differentiation," processes which order and assign immediate or long term significance to events/cues in teacher's knowledge schemata. It was also found that this teacher utilized stories as a means of ordering and making sense of cues in her event structured knowledge.

This multiple case study examined one start-up and one conversion charter school in California. Eighty hours of classroom observations and thirteen teacher interviews were the basis for this descriptive comparative study. The research was guided by the following questions: (1) Do classrooms and school structures in these two charter schools appear different than traditional public schools; (2) Have teachers' methodologies changed since coming to teach at the charter school; (3) What are the similarities and differences between these two charter schools; and (4) Has teachers' autonomy changed since coming to a charter school? This study found that in comparison to teachers' previous position, (1) Teachers had not changed how they taught; and (2) Most teachers had the same amount of classroom autonomy. Additionally: (3) Teachers felt their primary motivation for innovating within their classroom was themselves, their time, and their energy; (4) Teachers did not think teaching in a charter school affected their innovativeness; (5) Teachers did not mention autonomy as a factor influencing their classroom innovativeness; (6) Teachers believed they had more autonomy regarding hiring and budgeting decisions; (7) There were no significant differences in the innovativeness between the teachers of the start-up or conversion schools; the conversion school had the most and the least innovative teachers; (8) The start-up charter school was slightly more innovative overall than the conversion charter school; (9) The two charter schools had more in common than they had differences; (10) New consensus-based, teacher-led decision-making at both schools intensified the micro-politics and burdens placed upon teachers' time, impacting their classroom performance. Unique to the start-up: (11) New operational paradigms required teachers to take on additional support services resulting in less planning time, teachers' feeling overwhelmed, and concern with keeping staff; (12) Parents and students influenced teachers to change back to less innovative practices; and (13) A small campus, faculty, and number of students appeared to create a family-like atmosphere. Based on the findings of this study, two underpinnings of the charter school movement, creating innovative classrooms and increasing teacher autonomy behind the classroom doors were problematic at these charter schools.

The purpose of this study was to examine a first grade teacher's personal theory about curriculum, and explore the ways in which this theory manifested itself about the content and the curriculum enactment process in a classroom context. Special attention was paid to analyze Sarah's (the teacher) classroom curriculum components in order to develop a theoretical model to describe Sarah's enactment theory of the curriculum in her context as a whole language teacher. The primary mode for conducting this study was classroom observations and in-depth teacher interviews. Formal curriculum standards, lesson plans, and reflective journals were used as supplementary resources for the primary data in this study. The analysis of the data suggested that this teacher had a well-developed theory about the content of her classroom curriculum that she used to set up the stage for enacting the curriculum at the classroom level. The curriculum enactment was carried out in the forms of stories, songs, group work activities, and direct teaching as structured events. In addition, Sarah used her rhythmic knowledge to process the curriculum as different segments across the classroom day. Moreover, Sarah enacted the curriculum through organizing students in different forms of communities to establish a culture for learning. The three major implications of this study are: that prospective teachers need to understand curriculum enactment as structured events, to use rhythms to help students make sense of their classroom time and predict the flow of classroom activities, and to establish a culture of learning in which students work as partners in the enacting process of classroom curriculum. Further research is needed to study the cognitive and social impacts of classroom tasks, conduct studies about curriculum enactment in different learning settings, or examine the impact of teachers' daily agenda on curriculum enactment in their context.

This quasi-experimental study investigated how recasts and prompts benefited Chinese learners' acquisition of regular and irregular English past tense. The research hypotheses were: 1) Learners who receive corrective feedback while performing the communicative activities will outperform those in the control group who are carrying out the communicative activity only; 2) Prompts will have more beneficial effects than recasts in learning regular past tense forms; 3) Recasts will better assist learners in learning irregular past tense forms than prompts. Seventy-two adult EFL learners in 3 intact classes at the university level participated in the study. The 3 classes were randomly assigned to one prompt group (n = 22), one recast group (n = 25), and one control group (n = 25). The instructional treatment included four communicative tasks which highlighted the target forms and elicited oral production of the target forms from the students. In the two feedback groups, teachers consistently provided one type of feedback (i.e., either recast or prompt) in response to learners' errors during the communicative activities, whereas in the control group the teacher provided feedback only on content of the communicative tasks. Participants' acquisition of the past tense forms was assessed through an oral and a written test prior to, immediately after, and two weeks after the treatment. Results of mixed-model repeated measures ANOVA showed that all three groups significantly improved their accuracy scores over time in both oral and written production. Results of the written production measure indicated that the prompt group outperformed the control group and this improvement result / Cette étude quasi-expérimentale a examiné les effets de deux techniques de rétroaction, reformulations et incitations, sur l'acquisition des verbes réguliers et irréguliers au passé (en anglais) par des apprenants chinois. Les hypothèses de recherche étaient les suivantes : 1) les apprenants qui reçoivent une rétroaction corrective dans le cours d'activités de communication seront plus performants que les membres du groupe témoin qui réalisent seulement les activités de communication ; 2) les incitations auront davantage d'effets bénéfiques que les reformulations dans l'apprentissage de verbes réguliers au passé ; 3) les reformulations seront plus avantageuses pour l'apprentissage de verbes irréguliers au passé. Soixante-douze apprenants d'anglais langue étrangère dans trois classes complètes de niveau universitaire ont participé à l'étude. Les apprenants des trois classes ont été répartis, au hasard, en trois groupes : un groupe « incitation » (n = 22), un groupe « reformulation » (n = 25) et un groupe témoin (n = 25). L'expérience pédagogique comportait quatre tâches de communication qui mettaient en présence les structures ciblées et suscitaient la production orale de ces structures par les apprenants. Dans les deux groupes « rétroaction », les professeurs donnaient invariablement un type de rétroaction (soit reformulation, soit incitation) en réponse aux erreurs des apprenants dans le cours des activités de communication tandis que, dans le groupe témoin, le professeur ne fournissait de la rétroaction que sur le contenu. L'acquisition par les participants des verbes au passé a été évaluée au moyen d'un test oral

This thesis examines languages of education in the Burkinabè educational system and implications for development issues. Burkina Faso is a West African country which since 1994 has been putting into place a bilingual primary education system. This initiative includes African languages, literacy, local culture, and rural economic activities in addition to the French language. Since colonial times, this country has been administered exclusively in the French language, a language that is only spoken by 10-15% of the Burkinabè population. This thesis asks: Which type of elementary education, bilingual or monolingual, contributes best to the sustainable human development of Burkina Faso? To address this question, this thesis examines the experience of twenty adults, former bilingual- and monolingual-school students from the same rural area. Participants were asked to discuss their educational experience in relation to the United Nation’s five dimensions of sustainable human development: culture, gender, economy, politics and the environment. Data collection included semi-structured interviews with each participant, as well as classroom observations in both types of schools. These observations enabled a deeper understanding of the different pedagogical and philosophical educational approaches. Data was analyzed using perspectives from sociolinguistic theory and critical postcolonial theory. The first chapter of this thesis describes the origins of this research project. The second chapter presents the study’s conceptual framework, with particular attention to the meaning of two concepts in African education: “language” and “development.” The third chapter traces the history of public education in Burkina Faso, from pre-colonial times to the present. The following chapters present the main impact of bilingual education on the cultural and economical sustainability and development of the participants. The interviews with the participants show that the re / Cette thèse porte sur les enjeux relatifs aux langues d’enseignement et d’apprentissage et les relations de pouvoir associées au système éducatif burkinabè. Le Burkina Faso est un pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest qui, depuis 1994, met graduellement en place un système éducatif primaire bilingue intégrant les langues africaines, la littératie, les activités économiques et culturelles locales en plus d’enseigner la langue française. Depuis sa colonisation, ce pays est administré exclusivement en langue française, langue parlée par seulement 10-15 % de la population burkinabè.Dans ce processus d’affranchissement, cette thèse compare des sortants d’âge adulte d’écoles bilingues avec leurs homologues d’écoles unilingues d’une même localité. Les participants nous informent sur la question centrale de cette thèse : quel type d’école favorise davantage le développement humain durable au Burkina Faso? Vingt finissants d’écoles bilingues et unilingues parlent des retombées de leur parcours éducatif respectif sur chacune des variables du développement humain durable: la culture, le genre, l’économie, la politique et l’environnement. Les entretiens semi-dirigés avec les participants d’âge adulte sont enrichis d’observations en classe dans des écoles bilingues et unilingues pour approfondir la compréhension des différentes approches et philosophies éducatives. Les témoignages des participants et les observations sont mis en relation avec la littérature sociolinguistique et postcoloniale critique.Le chapitre après l’introduction situe conceptuellement les enjeux éducatifs associés aux définitions de langue et de développement. Le chapitre suivant traite de l’historique des expériences éducatives du Burkina Faso de l’époque précoloniale à aujourd’hui. Cette étude ethnographique indique que les principales retombées de l’éducation bilingue se situent aux niveaux de la préservation et du dével

A literature review of student outcomes from inquiry instruction generated a list of 23 criterion-referenced student outcomes. These included more commonly addressed outcomes such as content knowledge and process skills, and less commonly addressed outcomes such as creativity, motivation, collaborative ability, and autonomy. This list was adapted into a questionnaire probing to what extent the various outcomes were perceived in classrooms by teachers working at varying self-rated levels of inquiry use (low, middle, high). Analyses were performed on a sample of 74. Teachers' self-ratings of inquiry use were significantly and positively related to the inquiry outcomes categorized as learning competencies and personal motivation. At moderate levels of inquiry use, teachers recognized that students adopted new learning roles. Teachers appeared to perceive changes in students' roles before their own but this result could be explained by recognition of the positive value of collaboration and, unexpectedly, memorization within high levels of inquiry. / Un survol de la littérature des résultats d'élèves ayant suivi une démarche par investigation raisonnée nous a permis d'établir une liste de résultats d'étudiants avec 23 critères référentiels. Ceux-ci incluaient des résultats plus usuels, tels que la connaissance du contenu ou les habiletés procédurales, mais aussi des résultats moins souvent abordés, comme la créativité, la motivation, les habiletés à collaborer, et l'autonomie. Cette liste a été adaptée sous forme de questionnaire visant à déterminer jusqu'à quel point les divers résultats étaient perçus en classe par les enseignants dans leur auto-évaluation des divers niveaux d'utilisation (faible/moyen/élevé) de leur approche par investigation raisonnée. Des analyses ont été faites avec un échantillon de 74 individus. L'auto-analyse des enseignants de l'approche par investigation raisonnée était définitivement reliée de façon significative à la démarche par investigation de la catégorie des compétences d'apprentissage et de la motivation personnelle. Selon les enseignants, l'utilisation modérée de l'approche par investigation a permis aux élèves d'adopter de nouveaux rôles d'apprenants. Les enseignants ont semblé percevoir des changements dans le rôle des élèves avant de les constater dans leurs rangs, mais ce résultat pourrait s'expliquer par la reconnaissance de la valeur positive de la collaboration, et, de façon inattendue, de la mémorisation aux niveaux supérieurs de l'approche par investigation raisonnée.