There are hidden difficulties in teaching a foreign language in a classroom context that have not been examined. Using ethnographic research methods of participant observation, field notes, audio-taping of classroom conversational exchange, and interviews with participants of the interactions, the hidden issues were identified through data analysis focusing on the discourse between teachers and students of Chinese language. While many classroom interaction studies focus on teaching methods or content that should be taught, this research study examines language classroom interactions from a sociocultural perspective. It provides a description of the cultural and social factors that influence the communicative process in classroom interactions. The underlying assumption guiding this study is that effective foreign language teaching and learning is a communicative process that involves more than simply instruction about the formal features of language and cultural knowledge. The purpose of this process is to develop the individual learner's communicative competence. This competence includes not only language competence and cultural competence but also the openness and readiness of the mind and the flexibility of cognition to function in cross-cultural contexts. The study reveals that a central cause of language classroom miscommunication is the difficulty participants have in creating contextual coherence and meaning. This problem is the direct result of the participants' simplified assumptions of cultural and social stereotypes. The stereotyping of individual and power relationships in the classroom hinders the learning process and can lead to underdeveloped perspectives of cultural images and social roles of individuals. With stereotyped cultural images and the narrowly defined social roles of participants in the classroom, the teaching and learning process limits opportunities to actively develop the learners' communicative competence. The practice of teaching and learning thus may reinforce inflexibility in communicative negotiation and in dealing with the cultural, social, and individual diversities in the cross-cultural interactions outside the classroom. Therefore, cross-cultural openness--the awareness of sociocultural and individual diversity in cross-cultural interactions--is significant in language teaching and learning. The significance of cross-cultural openness is that it not only influences the process of language teaching and learning, but also the content of language teaching and learning.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes that adults entering an adult basic education program went through while they learned to read and write. Two research goals were used to examine six individuals while attending The Literacy Project, Inc., Greenfield, Massachusetts. They were, (1) To examine the relationship between learning to read and write and learning to adapt to change among adults considered illiterate; and (2) To examine how local and community conditions including those of the program as community, affect a literacy program and its curriculum. This study utilized ethnographic methods. The data for the case studies was collected from observations, teacher log entries, student writings, student folders, and interviews with clients, teachers, and aides. The setting of the study was The Literacy Project which is a non-profit community based program which uses a whole-language curriculum. Teaching is also done in groups. A head teacher is in charge and several volunteers are used as aides. Changes were discovered across the case studies. Students went through at least four changes: (1) The Initial Change, (2) Change In Old Strategies: Conning, (3) Change in Self Confidence, and (4) Change in Student/Teacher Relationships, including the way in which students perceived the role of the teacher. The implications for curriculum and programs are described in Chapter 5. They were: (1) A need for teachers to broaden their ideas and concepts of curriculum to include students with opportunities to participate in the developement of curriculum. (2) A need for teachers to broaden their ideas of learning. Learning needs to be viewed as an interactive pursuit. (3) There is a need for community to be developed in the classroom. (4) There is a need for continuity in programs which includes the need for continuity in teachers.

Schools in New Jersey are beginning to transform their middle school music programs from a general music based curriculum to an elective, performance-based curriculum. These changes bring new challenges to music educators as they work to expand their performance-based curriculums to include what was taught in general music. Adding to the work that needs to be done to adapt performance-based classes, teachers are beginning to feel frustrated that their needs and the needs of their students are getting lost with the added addition of assessment guidelines and other administrative requirements,. The aim of this research project was to work within the framework of Paulo Freire’s Culture circle to support teachers during scheduled Professional Learning Community meetings. Through a series of eight bi-weekly meetings, a group of four music teachers and a dance instructor works to identify generative themes present in their teaching practice. Through problem posing dialogue they worked to understand their generative theme. The teachers in this Professional Learning Community worked together to create and implement individual action plans to address their generative theme. This group of teachers work together in support of each other while they were working within their separate contexts and classrooms. This collaborative action research study positioned the researcher as a facilitator, one who supported the needs of the group and questioned long standing beliefs that help propel the conversation forward. Teachers reflected that they saw a change in what they believed the purpose of these meetings was. They found in impactful to focus on their teaching practices rather than the more administrative tasks involved in teaching. Teachers also reported that by dialoguing about their teacher and the action plans they were working on, they felt more successful in its implementation. Through their action plans, this group of teachers began to see possibilities to have their students create and work in small groups that was not evident before. While the teachers in this study felt an impact of the culture circle, there is more to learn from this group of teachers, and the possibilities culture circles have to effect positive change in teachers and student learning.

The purpose of this study was to describe how meaning was socially constructed within a task-based small cooperative learning group. The group was composed of five native English and English as a Second Language speaking teachers and teachers-in-training enrolled in a graduate course entitled "Curriculum Development for Heterogeneous Classes" in the Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies Department in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts. This study examined the claim that participants in cooperative learning groups must be willing to set their personal beliefs, desires, and agendas aside in order to focus their attention on the learning needs of their peers and to shift the attention of their peers to explicitly relevant information (Gee, 1990). Further, groupwork is described as an interactional experience that involves conflict, tension, and individual risk-taking behaviors (McCutcheon, 1995). This study examined the claim that these behaviors can have a positive effect on a group's process when the willingness to analyze conflict and tension through the risk-taking process of revealing one's experience, perception, and self are present (McCutcheon, 1995). This study researched these claims by investigating the discourse of a small cooperative learning group in this course. This study provides an ethnographic thick description of the normative patterns that emerged through the group's work. These include the communicative norms that were co-constructed prior to and after the naming and analyzing of conflict. The results of this study reveal that participants were willing to focus their attention onto the needs of their peers and were willing to focus the attention of their peers to explicitly relevant information after conflict was named. Analyzing conflict was not easily obtained in this group. Members avoided and resisted this process. However, naming conflict was seen to have a purpose in this cooperative learning group and provided a rich source of insight about the complexities of conflict, tension, and individual risk-taking behaviors in cooperative learning settings composed of native English and English as a Second Language speaking learners.

The Hilmar Unified School District came into existence on July 1st, 1950, after three years of meetings by local patrons and County Committees, with final approval by the regional and State Commissions, as provided for in Chapter 16 of the Education Code. One of the primary objectives for the reorganization and unification was an improved curriculum. Curriculum study is complex and can include all parts of the school and its program. Curriculum is interwoven with personnel, finance, facilities, type of organization, and many other factors. For that reason, curriculum problems will vary in almost every school. In order to understand the basis of the reasoning for the several problems, it is necessary that a brief background be given, as well as information on the financial ability of the district. In this way, problems found in the Hilmar Unified School District can be studied in the light of comparable problems in other districts.

Pupils. teachers. supervisors, administrators, parents and other citizens have always needed to work together for better educational programs in their communities. Curriculum planning and improvement in our complex and changing world have been a necessity and a cooperative responsibility.

The problem is : Does the business curriculum of Oakdale Joint Union High School meet the needs of the recent graduates who plan to enter business as a career?

This paper concerns the development of the instructional program in Broward County, Florida, from 1941 to the present. The purposes of the paper are, briefly, as follows: (1) to give the reader a general knowledge of the manner in which the instructional program has developed, (2) to trace the history and functions of the supervisory program since its initiation in the county, (3) to give a statement of the philosophy underlying the instructional program, (4) to reveal county-wide practices as these affect the improvement of instruction, ( 5 ) partially, to evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional program in the light of prevailing nation-wide practices, and (6) to make recommendations for next steps in the improvement. / Typescript. / "Aug., 1949." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts under Plan II." / Advisor: W. Edwards, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-51).

"The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of establishing routines in nursery schools and kindergartens. It will discuss the factors to be considered, procedures to be followed, and examples of establishing routines. This paper will not attempt to discuss in detail the establishing of routines in the home, but will show the relationship of the home and the school"--Introduction. / "August, 1951." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Sarah Lou Hammond, Professor Directing Paper. / Typescript. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-59).

Facing the growing competition in the globalized economy, Japan’s private sector has been looking out for human resources that can fill in the managerial positions of international branches. In response to this demand, policymakers conceived of the idea of Global Human Resources and launched several initiatives to internationalize education. Among these initiatives, this study focuses on the reform attempt to establish 200 International Baccalaureate (IB) schools. Interestingly, the cabinet led this initiative by forming complex relationship with the Ministry of Education (MoE), a traditional key actor in Japan’s education policy. Therefore, by studying the IB reform in Japan, this study intends to shed light on the interactions that occur within the government. Numerous studies have been conducted in the field of comparative education, exposing the changing relationship between public and private sectors or actors across different levels, such as international and local ones. However, scholars in the field have paid little attention to the complexity inside the government and how different actors within it interact and shape the policy process. Drawing on neo-institutional and organizational approaches, this dissertation examines the policy process of the IB reform through the three analytical units: institutions, ideas, and networks. In other words, it analyzes how different policy actors form networks and employ different ideas to promote their preferred modes of the reform under the institutional constraints that typically exist in the form of laws. To identify the aforementioned three elements relevant to the IB reform, I conducted a qualitative analysis by analyzing various kinds of documents, such as, policy reports, meeting transcripts, newspaper articles, and miscellaneous documents, which were either written by relevant policy actors or written for engaging them. In addition, I conducted 12 interviews with policy actors involved in the reform as members of policymaking bodies. To reduce the bias stemming from my positionality, I also held feedback sessions with three researchers in the relevant field. Finally, I performed a quantitative network analysis using lists of council members and identified which policy actor held strategically important positions. Through the analysis, I attempted to confirm the importance of key actors observed in the qualitative inquiry using the previously studied documents and conducted interviews. The study revealed how the interactions between the cabinet and the MoE arose from the changes in the three analytical units and influenced the consequence of the IB reform. Institutional changes in the policy process and education law enabled the cabinet to exercise greater influence on education since 2000. Particularly, the redefinition of the national curriculum as a minimum standard made it possible for the cabinet to introduce the IB, which did not align with the requirements of the national curriculum. Key policy actors emerged from both the cabinet and the MoE and formed a network to tap into the reconfiguration of institutional conditions, which led to the successful launch of the IB reform. However, the ideational gap between the cabinet and the MoE (particularly, its core segment, the Elementary and Secondary Education Bureau) persisted. While the former presented itself as a hub of novel ideas, intended to innovate education, and highlighted the need to raise talented students, the focus of the latter centered on maintaining the nation and increasing the standard of average or even low-achieving students. These normative differences were not easily reconcilable, and the network eventually broke into the two streams: the cabinet with the Association of National Universities and high-school stakeholders with the MoE (the Bureau). While the former introduced the IB as one mode of entrance exams, the former did not agree on using the IB as a tool for evaluating students’ thinking skills. This study contributes to the field of comparative education by presenting the analysis of the IB reform, in which novel actors emerged in education policy, that is, executives such as presidents and cabinets. Similar to private actors criticizing and attempting to intervene in public education, these executives intend to transform public education from within the public sector. More importantly, their primary interest is in producing elites. As shown in this study, the important task of educating the rest of the population may be assigned to the MoE, which suffers from financial shortage. If the executives coordinate with the business sector and concentrate resources on the select few, this division of work may threaten equity in public education.