M.Ed. / This dissertation took as point of departure the problem definition of the report of the HSRC Working Committee on Curriculation and a great deal of attention was given to the curriculating role of the teacher at micro (classroom) level. The researcher tried to determine from available literature on this subject, what the viewpoint of other researchers were on the teacher's curriculating task at micro level. Almost without exception researchers were convinced that the teacher should play an important part as far as curriculum design, implementation and development are concerned. The researcher came to the conclusion that a lot of the reseachers are of the opinion that the word "curriculating" or "to curriculate" is part and parcel only of the meso (departmental) level, but in actual fact this term can only be relevant at the micro level. It is only the teacher who can actually "curriculate". People involved in curriculum development at the meso level can be called curriculum designers. Both teachers and curriculum designers are making use of the principles related to curriculum design, but they apply it in different ways. The second chapter was dedicated to the participants at the micro level. The two parties that play an active role at micro level are the teacher and the pupil, but there are also other people who are involved in the politics of education at micro level. Special attention was given to the teacher's role as curriculating and curriculum development agent in this regard. A proposal which flows from this dissertation is that student teachers and acting teachers must in one way or another be educated/trained to handle curriculum development as an applied skill. A training model for student teachers is also proposed, which should enable them to handle any given curriculum in a skilful way. In chapter 4 the assumptions that were made in the beginning of the study were tested against data obtained by means of an empirical survey. The data which has been obtained, confirmed the point of view that teachers feel that they have no say in matters related to the curriculum; that they are not trained properly in the handling of curricula and because of this they can not act as professionals. If the authorities were willing to adopt the recommendations proferred in this study it should lead to a more professional approach to curriculating, teaching and learning.

This study investigated how 2 different rating conditions, the controlled rating condition (CRC) and the uncontrolled rating condition (URC), effected rater behavior and the reliability of a performance assessment (PA) known as the Missionary Teaching Assessment (MTA). The CRC gives raters the capability to manipulate (pause, rewind, fast-forward) video recordings of an examinee's performance as they rate while the URC does not give them this capability (i.e., the rater must watch the recording straight through without making any manipulations). Few studies have compared the effect of these two rating conditions on ratings. Ryan et al. (1995) analyzed the impact of the CRC and URC on the accuracy of ratings, but few, if any, have analyzed its impact on reliability. The Missionary Teaching Assessment is a performance assessment used to assess the teaching abilities of missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the Missionary Training Center. In this study, 32 missionaries taught a 10-minute lesson that was recorded and later rated by trained raters based on a rubric containing 5 criteria. Each teaching sample was rated by 4 of 6 raters. Two of the 4 ratings were rated using the CRC and 2 using the URC. Camtasia Studio (2010), a screen capture software, was used to record when raters used any type of manipulation. The recordings were used to analyze if raters manipulated the recordings and if so, when and how frequently. Raters also performed think-alouds following a random sample of the ratings that were performed using the CRC. These data revealed that when raters had access to the CRC they took advantage of it the majority of the time, but they differed in how frequently they manipulated the recordings. The CRC did not add an exorbitant amount of time to the rating process. The reliability of the ratings was analyzed using both generalizability theory (G theory) and many-facets Rasch measurement (MFRM). Results indicated that, in general, the reliability of the ratings obtained from the 2 rating conditions were not statistically significantly different from each other. The implications of these findings are addressed.

La ricerca mette a fuoco le attività formative messe in atto in Italia per dotare con urgenza le scuole secondarie di secondo grado italiane di docenti competenti in ambito CLIL e intende dimostrare l’impatto che questa metodologia ha sulla formazione e lo sviluppo professionale. Dal 2014 il CLIL è obbligatorio nelle classi terminali dei licei e degli istituti tecnici. Ciò ha generato una forte domanda di formazione da parte di istituzioni e docenti chiamati a insegnare discipline in lingua straniera. Questo lavoro esplora la possibilità di sfruttare la video-formazione per fronteggiare le preoccupazioni di quei docenti che, senza essere formati alla glottodidattica, sono chiamati ad integrare obiettivi linguistici al curriculum disciplinare. Il nostro lavoro parte dall’esame di un corpus di video-lezioni da noi raccolte ai fini di una ricerca-azione commissionata dal MIUR volta ad indagare il grado di innovazione implicata dal CLIL, per poi giungere a dimostrare l’importanza dell’auto-osservazione e dell’auto-riflessione sulla prassi didattica, fino a proporre l’introduzione dell’esercizio di microteaching nella formazione dei docenti CLIL. Una ricca riflessione sull’organizzazione concettuale della propria disciplina e sulla sua trasposizione didattica conduce i docenti a un interessate lavoro sulla mediazione della conoscenza che sviluppa le loro competenze professionali. / Focusing on teaching and training activities implemented in Italy to provide secondary schools with teachers able to teach in the CLIL context, our research aims at demonstrating the impact of this methodology in teacher training and professional development. Since 2014 this methodology has become compulsory for the Italian secondary terminal classes (except vocational high schools). A strong demand for training prompted from institutions and teachers, urgently required to teach disciplines in a foreign language. The MIUR has therefore set up university courses aimed at integrating languages and disciplines. Here we explore the possibility of exploiting video-training to face Italian teachers’ concerns, who are asked, without being trained in language teaching, to integrate linguistic objectives into their curriculum. We examine a corpus of video-lessons collected for a research set on behalf of the Italian Ministry of Education to investigate at what extent CLIL brought an innovation into the Italian Education. Once highlighted the importance of (self)observation and (self)reflection upon classroom practices, we propose the introduction of micro-teaching practice in CLIL teacher training. A fruitful reflection on the conceptual organization and the didactic transposition of their discipline leads teachers work on the linguistic mediation of knowledge which improves their professional skills.