Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Education Sport, Arts and Culture offers as one of the primary school curricula, an AIDS curriculum which all Grades 4 to 7 teachers in Zimbabwe’s primary schools mandatorily implement with a view to contributing towards the prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS among the young primary school learners. The purpose of this research was to explore and describe teachers’ understanding and implementation of Zimbabwe’s primary school AIDS curriculum regarding the ways in which they articulated teaching practices and processes in their classrooms. The study also aimed to elicit the teachers’ views on how personal and contextual factors impact their adaptation and enactment of the curriculum. The study also sought to establish teachers’ perceptions of their practical experiences with the implementation of Zimbabwe’s primary school AIDS curriculum and their suggestions for improving practice. The study follows a qualitative case study design with minimal quantitative results. It involved three purposively selected primary school grade six teachers (n=3) each of whom was asked to teach five lessons while being observed over a period of three months. Each teacher availed his or her teaching scheme/plan to the researcher who conducted document analysis to glean their symbolic conceptualisation of actual classroom practice of the curriculum. This was followed by three semi-structured interviews with each participating teacher to elicit their perceptions. A content analysis using ideas borrowed from the grounded theory approach was employed resulting in thematic findings. The findings of the study confirm and enhance the theoretical significance of the phenomenological-adaptive perspective of educational change and Honig’s (people, policy, places) and cognition model for describing teacher implementation of the mandatory AIDS curriculum. The findings also confirm the complex ways in which human-generated personal and contextual factors played out in framing and shaping teachers’ personal adaptation of the mandatory AIDS curriculum. The study confirms the adaptation claim that as cognitive sense-makers, teachers mutate and enact a curriculum according to their personal subjective interpretations in the context of unique use-setting implementation realities. Although one of the participants’ understanding and practice displayed considerable comprehension of the requirements of the curriculum, the other teachers displayed an understanding of this curriculum in a superficial way, and experienced few positive experiences and several conceptual and operational constraints in its implementation. Drawing on their practical experiences with the implementation of the curriculum, teachers offered suggestions for transforming the implementation proficiency of this curriculum, which formed part of the conceptual strategy I developed for improving practice. Thus the resultant achievement of the study was a conceptual strategy that was constructed from the key findings of the study to provide educational change leaders with nuanced ideas and insights for improving practice.

The purpose of this study is to identify and examine the factors that are affecting Chinese parental decisions to enroll their children in local private non-profit Christian primary schools in Hong Kong. Two research instruments were used to collect quantitative and qualitative data from parents. These include the questionnaire survey and the follow-up telephone interviews. A total of 1404 questionnaires were given out, to three different schools, with a return rate of 82%. A total of 59 parents who returned their questionnaires were interviewed for explanation of their responses. Documentary analyses were conducted to assess whether or not the case schools are in line with the parents' expressed preferences. The study identifies three leading criteria which parents use in the selection of a private primary school. The "academic-centered" aspects and the "child-centered" aspects (Woods, Bagley and Glatter, 1998) have been found to be parents' major concerns and they are closely linked to teacher attitudes which parents value highly. The selection criteria were perceived to be influenced by traditional Chinese cultural values on education and character development. A parent-school interaction pattern has been established in this study. It reflects the concern of parents on the effectiveness of the school in enhancing students' discipline and academic performance through teachers with positive attitudes. Common parental school choice factors are examined and discussed. The study established that parents perceived positive teacher attitudes to be interconnected with student's behavioural and academic performance. It also established that parents who perceived the effectiveness of Chinese cultural values on education also perceived improvements in child's behavioural and academic performance. This study provides school administrators with additional understanding of the interconnecting relations between children's school performance and teacher attitudes. A model of private school choice framework was created to show the interactions among parents, teachers, students and the school management.

La maitrise de l’orthographe du français, l’une des plus complexes du monde, relève d’enjeux sociaux forts. Dans ce cadre, les accords représentent un enjeu d’apprentissage essentiel car ils rendent visibles les liens entre les mots ; ils relèvent certes de la connaissance de règles, mais aussi d’une intelligence du fonctionnement de langue. Leur complexité en fait une zone de très grande difficulté. La compréhension des difficultés qu’éprouvent les élèves à réaliser les accords grammaticaux ne peut se passer ni d’un examen des mécanismes linguistiques qui les régissent, ni d’une attention portée aux processus mis en œuvre par les scripteurs. C’est donc à partir d’une réflexion linguistique, psycholinguistique et didactique que cette thèse défend l’hypothèse que, d’une part, l’apprentissage des accords au sein du groupe nominal et celui des accords entre sujet et verbe doivent être disjoints et que, d’autre part, le travail de l’orthographe doit conduire, progressivement, les élèves à élargir l’empan de texte sur lequel faire porter l’attention, le cadre phrastique étant le plus pertinent pour l’apprentissage des accords. Il convient donc d’étendre la zone de réalisation des accords au moyen de procédures visant à complexifier les phrases, qui permettent un travail conjoint de l’orthographe et de la production. En associant dans des séquences de travail en cycle 3 des activités d’apprentissage de l’orthographe grammaticale et des activités de complexification syntaxique dans des productions écrites, l’expérimentation a montré qu’il était possible de faire progresser les élèves dans le domaine de l’orthographe et d’en tirer bénéfice lors de la production d’écrit. / Mastering French spelling is governed by major social issues, particularly as it is one of the more complex systems in the world. In this respect, linguistic agreements represent an integral part of the learning process because they highlight how words are connected; not only are they understood through a knowledge of grammatical rules, but also a keen awareness of how language works. Their complexity makes them a highly challenging subject matter. Their complexity makes it an area of great difficulty.Understanding of the difficulties students have in realizing grammatical agreements can not do without an examination of the linguistic mechanisms that govern them, nor of an attention paid to the processes implemented by the writers. It is on the basis of a linguistic, psycholinguistic and didactic reflection that this thesis defends the hypothesis that, on the one hand, the learning of agreements within the nominal group and that of the agreements between subject and verb must be disjoint and that, on the other hand, the work of spelling should gradually lead the pupils to enlarge the span of text on which to draw attention, the phrastic framework being most relevant for learning the agreements. It is therefore appropriate to extend the area of implementation of the agreements by means of procedures designed to make the sentences more complex, allowing joint spelling and production work. By combining learning activities in grammatical spelling and syntactic complexification activities in written productions in cycle 3 workflows, experimentation has shown that it is possible to advance students in the field of the spelling and benefit from it when producing writing.

NO-undervisningen idag ställer stora krav att lärarna ska erbjuda eleverna möjligheter att utveckla sina förmågor inom NO. I grundskolans årskurser 4-6 tilldelas de naturorienterande ämnena få antal timmar vilket leder till att många lärare känner en tidspress inför att hinna med det centrala innehållet inom det angivna tidsutrymmet. Utmaningen blir än mer problematisk av det faktum att bra, pedagogiskt läromedel ofta saknas. En pedagogisk modell som ofta används inom de naturvetenskapliga ämnena är ett elevaktivt öppet undersökande arbetssätt där eleverna får lära sig genom att utforma sina egna undersökningar i och om ämnet. Syftet med den här undersökningen är att belysa tankar, attityder och åsikter kring användandet av IBSE. Vilka möjligheter och hinder anser lärare att det finns med att använda IBSE? och hur påverkas attityderna beroende på deras arbetserfarenhet? Tre lärare med olika lång tid inom yrket intervjuades med semistrukturerade intervjuer. Resultatet av den här undersökningen visar att mer erfarna lärare känner sig mer bekväma med att använda IBSE än vad nya lärare gör. Flera kategorier identifieras som hinder och möjligheter. Samtidigt finns det flera likheter mellan de olika grupperna gällande vilka möjligheter och hinder man identifierar med IBSE och hur man lägger upp effektiv och elevaktiverande undervisning. / Biology education in primary schools today puts demands on teachers to develop classroom situations where students get the opportunity to develop their science abilities. In primary school, grade 4-6, the science subjects are assigned a few hours per week and many teachers feel stressed about dealing with the science curriculum’s content in the little amount of time assigned. The challenge gets even more complex by the fact that the lack of good, pedagogically teaching aid is severe. A pedagogically teaching method that is often used in science education is an inquiry approach where students learn by making their own inquiries in and about the subject science. This paper aims to elucidate teachers’ thoughts and attitudes towards an inquiry based science education. What possibilities and what difficulties are there for teachers using an inquiry approach? And how does that relate to the length of their experience as teachers? Three teachers were interviewed with semi-structured interview. The study concludes that more experienced teachers feel more secure and have a higher reliability with an inquiry based science education than newly graduated teachers have. There were different categories both with possibilities and difficulties. Simultaneously, there are several similarities between the two different groups of teachers according to difficulties and opportunities with an inquiry approach, and how to conduct an efficient education that is student centered and student dedicating.

The aim of the study is to examine how teachers work with writing in order to promote pupils literacy. The object is also to study what possibilities and confines the teachers see with ICT as a teaching aid regarding literacy. The empiricism of the study is made up of the answers from the interviews. A conscious selection concerning the assortment of the participating teachers has been made and therefore only teachers who work with preschool and primary school have been interviewed. The teachers all work in the same municipality but on different schools in order to make the result as varied as possible. The theoretical framework for the study is the socio-cultural perspective and the emergent literacy in which pupils learn through interaction. My study shows that teachers use writing to a high extent and all of them emphasize that writing and reading are intensely connected. Several teachers point out that many pupils learn to write before they learn how to read. The study also showed that participating teachers varied their method of working with writing. The most characteristic way of working was that all of the teachers started writing during the pupils first year in school and also that several of the teachers used the writing of a mutual diary as the pupils introduction to the world of writing. The results show that all of the teachers use computers and other ICT based tools as a teaching aid but that the purpose of using ICT varies. / Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur lärare arbetar med skrivandet för att främja elevers läsinlärning. Syftet är också att undersöka vilka möjligheter och begränsningar lärarna ser med IKT som hjälpmedel i ett sådant arbete. Undersökningens empiri utgörs av intervjusvaren. Ett medvetet urval vad beträffar informanterna har gjorts där jag valt verksamma lärare i årskurs F-3 i samma kommun men på olika skolor för att få ett så varierat resultat som möjligt. Studiens teoretiska utgångspunkt är det sociokulturella perspektivet samt emergent literacy där elever lär sig genom att interagera med andra. Min undersökning visar att lärare ägnar mycket tid åt skrivandet och att samtliga lärare poängterar att skrivandet och läsningen hör ihop. Ett flertal lärare framhöll att många elever lär sig skriva innan de kan läsa. Det framkom att informanterna varierade arbetssätt beträffande skrivande. De arbetssätt som var mest utmärkande var att samtliga elever skrev redan från årskurs ett och att många började med att skriva gemensamma texter i dagböcker. Resultatet har visat att samtliga lärare använder sig av datorer och andra IKT- baserade redskap som hjälpmedel men syftet med att använda IKT ser olika ut.

In primary school classrooms, teacher-student relations, student’s school engagement, achievement, and the frequency of teachers’ academic interactions are related to higher levels of student engagement. Since different strategies teachers use to initiate classroom interactions have different impacts on students’ engagement, the aim of this thesis is to explore how teacher-student classroom interactions in primary school influence their classroom engagement. A systematic literature review was conducted by using three databases. Eight studies that fit inclusion criteria were exerted and identified. The results show that teachers’ positive strategies (eg. emotional support, help, give instruction) in classroom interaction can significantly increase students’ behavior engagement, improve students’ social engagement and some of the strategies can also hinder students’ emotional engagement in classroom This thesis identifies actions teachers use to conduct classroom interaction and shows how these actions influence students’ behavioral, social, and emotional engagement in primary schools, which gives teachers an overview of the positive consequences of these interaction strategies in primary school classrooms. The suggestions for future research are, further studies can also include studies that perceived classroom interaction from teachers’ perspective and measured the influence of teachers’ negative interaction strategies (eg. criticism, punishment).

Educational Psychologists (EPs) are often asked to see children that may have difficulties with attention or children with impairments in executive function. Research suggests that there is a link between attention and executive function. There is research evidence linking Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with executive function difficulties. It is proposed that there will be a link between primary school children’s attention and executive function skills as measured by standardised assessment. The present study involved assessing 31 participants on subtests of the Test of Everyday Attention in Children (TEA-Ch) (to gain a measure of attention) and the Neuropsychological Assessment (Second Edition) (NEPSY-II) (to gain a measure of executive function).Participants were aged between 6;01 and 10;08 (mean 8;06) when they were assessed at the pre-intervention stage. Participants were all from one primary school in the North West of England. Significant correlations between participants’ performance on the TEA-Ch and NEPSY-II were found. There is some research evidence that executive function interventions can improve children’s executive functions, but this is at the individual case level. There were no studies identified that looked at whole school executive function interventions. Executive function staff training was developed and delivered to teachers and teaching assistants in the primary school. A supporting pack of written materials was produced to help staff. Evaluation questionnaires and staff interviews identified useful aspects of the training. It is proposed that the consultation model of training delivery was particularly important. Staff interviews indicated that interventions had been carried out at the whole school and class level. Participants were reassessed at the post-intervention stage using the TEA-Ch and the NEPSY-II. Results indicated significant improvements in both attention and executive function skills for participants overall. Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests identified that there were significant increases in participants’ mean TEA-Ch and mean NEPSY scores following the whole school intervention. The results suggest the intervention may have been most successful in improving children’s selective attention, response inhibition, flexibility and task initiation skills.

The research reported in this study is located in a major curriculum reform programme commissioned by the Cypriot government and introduced into all public primary schools in September 2011. The study has a specific focus on teacher professional identity in changing times, not least through examining how teachers engage with an external intervention. The study identifies and deploys conceptual tools to examine how and why teachers have been positioned through this reform, and how there is a need to recognise their role as architects and key agents to curriculum reform policies. This research uses a case study approach and operates on three levels. At the micro level, I report on four primary school teachers’ professional lives utilising multiple sources of evidence. At the meso level, I locate these four teachers into a wider context by reporting on data collected from 308 questionnaires distributed to teachers in 29 schools before the implementation of the reform programme and a year after. Finally, at the macro level I report on the national policy context by looking at documents and interviews with two purposively selected curriculum coordinators. Research data revealed that teachers’ professional identity and its underpinning constructs such as emotions, job satisfaction and professional commitment, autonomy, and confidence were constantly challenged and negotiated within the changing educational setting. Contextual and professional factors were found to affect to a great extent teachers’ identity. The unfolding of the research findings derived from the three levels of this research and the use of Foucauldian governmentality as a theoretical lens led to the exposition of the power relations embedded in teachers’ professional lives and contributed to the further analysis of teachers’ identity within educational policy. The case is made that the complexity of professional identity needs to be taken into account by reform designers because teachers are the ones who embrace, reinterpret and develop such efforts. The way and degree to which teachers understand, adjust, perceive and enact on reforms are affected by the extent to which these innovations interact with and challenge existing identities. This research project examines how policy interplays with practice as well as how teachers in a highly centralised system experience and respond to changes in their professional lives, what constitutes, shapes, supports and undermines their practice, thus, making a contribution to the evidence and theory base for the educational policy field. The study enriches the international literature on professional identity and fills in the gaps with respect to teachers’ professional identity at a time of system wide change at a national level in Cyprus. Finally, there is a methodological contribution as it concentrates on primary teachers and utilises methods which are not widely used as the majority of undertaken research is based mainly on surveys and interviews and focuses on secondary teachers.

Den här studien har för avsikt att ta reda på hur olika typer av problemlösningsuppgifter påverkar elevernas förmåga att rimlighetsbedöma sina lösningar och svar. Studien syftar också till att ta reda på hur elever relaterar till verkligheten när de löser olika typer av problemlösningsuppgifter. För att uppnå syftet med studien genomfördes en undersökning i flera elevgrupper i årskurs två (ålder 8 år). Resultatet på undersökningen visar att olika typer av problemlösningsuppgifter påverkar hur eleverna resonerar kring rimlighet. Resultatet från undersökningen visar också att olika typer av uppgifter påverkar hur mycket eleverna reflekterar över verkligheten. Det har även framkommit under studiens gång att det är väldigt viktigt att kunna uppfatta det muntliga resonemanget som eleverna för att kunna bedöma hur eleverna kommer fram till lösningar och svar. Mycket av förmågan att bedöma rimlighet framkommer endast genom muntliga resonemanget och är därför väldigt svårt att se i skrivna svar. / This study aims to find out how different types of problem solving tasks affect students’ ability to plausible evaluate their solutions and answers. The study also intends to find out how students relate to reality when solving different types of problem solving tasks. In order to achieve the purpose of the study, a survey was conducted in several classes with grade two students (age 8). The results of the survey shows that the type of problem solving tasks can partially affect the students’ ability to assess plausibility. The results of the survey also shows that different types of problem solving tasks, affect how much the students reflect to reality. During the study it also became clear that the oral reasoning is crucial to perceive in order to be able to assess how students come to solutions and answers. Much of the ability to assess plausibility emerges through oral reasoning and is therefore very difficult to detect in written answers.

The aim of this thesis is to develop an understanding of primary school teachers’ knowledge of Inquiry- and Context-Based Science Education (IC-BaSE) from different perspectives: what it is, how to use it and why these strategies are used. There are at least two reasons for performing research in this field. First, there is a need for professional development in teaching science among primary school teachers. Second, IC-BaSE has been suggested to provide useful instructional strategies for stimulating students’ interests in learning science. The thesis contains four papers with the overall research question: How do primary school teachers reflect on Inquiry- and Context-based Science Education as a framework for teaching and learning in the primary school classroom? Both quantitative and qualitative research methods have been used. The main participants in the studies were twelve primary school teachers working with 10-12 year old students. The results are discussed with reference to theories mainly based on pragmatism, but also from a sociocultural perspective. Primary school teachers found IC-BaSE to provide useful instructional strategies in the primary school classroom, as it engaged their students and developed their skills in planning inquiries. The teachers developed their knowledge about IC-BaSE, what it is and how to use it.  Furthermore, the primary purpose of using IC-BaSE seemed to be that students should have fun. Students also responded positive to the use of IC-BaSE. However when teachers were informed about their students’ responses to IC-BaSE, they became more aware of the importance of informing the students about the purposes of the activities. The findings presented show that teachers need to move forward, not only be “doing”, but also knowing why they are doing the activities and how to do them. Students’ experiences can contribute to this awareness among teachers and develop the teaching practice. / Inquiry- and context-based science education (IC-BaSE) have been suggested as useful, stimulating students´ interests in learning science. The aim of this thesis is to develop an understanding of primary school teachers’ knowledge of IC-BaSE from different perspectives: what it is, how to use it and why these strategies are used. The results are discussed with reference to theories mainly based on pragmatism, but also from a sociocultural perspective. The findings show that primary school teachers found IC-BaSE useful in the primary school classroom, as it engaged their students and developed their skills in planning inquiries. Students´ experiences of IC-BaSE are included and show positive responses to the use of these strategies. However, when teachers were informed about their students’ responses, they became more aware of the importance of informing the students about the purposes of the activities, and to reflect on why they themselves choose IC-BaSE as instructional strategies. The findings presented show that teachers need to move forward, not only be “doing”, but also knowing why they are doing the activities and how to do them. Students’ experiences can contribute to this awareness among teachers and develop the teaching practice.