This study uses qualitative research methodologies to explore the ways in which the Learning by Design framework facilitated the introduction of Multiliteracies and multimodal learning into the classrooms of three Queensland middle schooling teachers as they participated in a professional learning project during the second half of 2004. Recent Queensland education policy initiatives recognise the need for students to espand their 'lilterate' repertoires in this increasingly diverse cultural, linguistic, techno, and global-economic based society; an outcome that has drawn attention to the crucial role of professional learning in giving teachers the skills to produce curriculum and pedagogical designs in line with such a goal. While the documentation of conscious pedagogical choices in teachers' approaches to teaching and learning about Multiliteracies and subsequent classroom practice in Queensland has varied according to teachers' individual preferences and conte xts, this study aimed to investigate what differences occurred when teachers deployed the Learning by Design pedagogy to produce a deliberate articulation of the micro teaching and learning conditions necessary for multimodal learning. From the cross-case analysis and interpretation of the research data, five propositions have emerged: the relationahip between the depth and breadth of teacher expertise in multimodality and its effect on instruction/design, learner engagement and performance; the alignment of pedagogical choices to learning goals, pedagogical alignment to learner goals; pedagogical alignment to learner needs and dispositions; consideration of flexibility in preparation of learners in transition points during the middle years of schooling; and the importance of quality multi-supportive professional learning environments to produce reflective practitioners with genuine and purposeful new knowledge. In this research the effectivity of the Learning by Design pedagogical framework was found to be directly related to the extent of professional learning and expertise that teachers had developed in both multimodality and the theory and principles informing the Learning by Design framework itself. The teaching of multimodal literacy creates an enormous pedagogical challenge for teachers as well as students. The research raises important considerations, therefore, not only about pedagogy but about the importance of developing professional learning initiatives to euip teachers to achieve the policy goals set out in recent initiatives. The highlights the need for the development of an in-depth and wide-ranging approach to the issue of professional learning. It is clear from this research that the Learning by Design framework can be used to transform classroom practice. However, it is equally clear that there must be a greater emphasis on professional learning and more resources channelled into building the groundwork for these new teaching initiatives.

In this thesis I examine the representation of parents and schoolmasters and the conflicts between them in vernacular drama in Reformation England. This was a period of growth in public schooling and a time when numerous treatises on education and childrearing were in circulation in England. Prevailing pedagogical theory privileged the schoolmaster's authority over that of the parents, and set paternal authority over that of the mother. It sought to limit maternal power to the domestic sphere and the infant years, yet the drama examined here suggests that mothers, not fathers, were usually the parent in control of their children's education. The conflicts inherent in these oppositions are played out in drama dealing with schooling and childrearing; each of the works examined here participates in and contributes to public debate over school education and parenting practices in early modern England. The thesis conducts a close textual and contextual analysis of the representation of schoolmasters and parents and of parent-school relations in seven English plays. A variety of dramatic genres is represented: public drama (Love's Labour's Lost, Patient Grissill, The Winter's Tale), school drama (Nice Wanton, July and Julian, The Disobedient Child), and private royal entertainment (The Lady of May). The plays are explicated in terms of the Tudor school culture and the negotiation of authority between fathers, mothers and schoolmasters. The thesis draws extensively on sixteenth-century school dialogues and vulgaria and on education treatises, which were available in English in Tudor England, in particular the writings of Erasmus, Vives, Ascham, Mulcaster, Elyot, Brinsley and Becon. School records provide information on school conditions and curricula, the duties and qualities of schoolmasters and the role of schools in civic and public performances. The thesis addresses issues of gender, childrearing, public education and parental and pedagogical authority in the second half of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

This thesis examines issues of power, culture and schooling as they apply to an indigenous community located on Saibai Island in the Torres Strait of northern Australia. The thesis combines literature research with ethnography to consider Saibaian schooling in various contexts. These include the history of schooling in the region, the relevant educational literature and the actual physical and social contexts of schooling on Saibai. Early chapters deal with methodology, history and educational literature. Later chapters deal with ethnographic material using the themes of separation, culture and collaborative decision-making to organise the data. The work of Michel Foucault informs the analytical approach to issues of power. Hence power is considered to be ubiquitous, productive and linked to issues of knowledge and culture. School principals are identified as key figures in schooling and therefore play a major role in the thesis. As the principals are all men of non-Islander (anglo) backgrounds, this thesis represents a significant break from works within the realm of indigenous education that are heavily influenced by cultural anthropology and tend to focus only on the Aboriginal or Islander participants as objects of study. The thesis considers how Saibaian people are excluded from schooling through various techniques and practices that tend to place the principal in a position of autocracy vis a vis the school. Furthermore, I show how various schooling practices that aim to include community members in schooling are shaped and transformed such that they actually serve to entrench the principal in his position of control over schooling. This applies even in the way that cultural activities are incorporated into the school illustrating that no aspect of schooling is immune to relations of power. Indeed, the notion of Saibaian Islanders belonging to a unique cultural group is used by some principals to argue that they are unsuited to roles within the school's decision-making process. Ultimately, then, this thesis is about relations between school principals and community members in the context of schooling on Saibai Island.

Middle schooling, although a contested phenomenon, has established its position on the huge landscape of secondary education. The philosophy of middle schooling claims that middle school has the best organisational structure for meeting the (educational, emotional, social and psychological) needs of adolescents1. This study is an attempt to see how successful schools of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) are in implementing the middle schooling program with respect to the General Design for a Whole School Approach to School Improvement (Hill & Cr�vola, 1997), which is used as theoretical framework for the evaluation. The three schools selected through purposive sampling for this study are considered exemplary for their implementation of programming consistent with the essential elements of middle schooling. The literature has recognised that, during last two decades, policy makers, educators, innovative reformers, and private foundations have manifested enormous commitment and interest in favour of the middle schooling program. The findings of this study indicate that, with certain adaptations, each of the three sample schools are implementing the salient features and characteristics of effective middle schools identified in the General Design and discussed widely in the literature. Each sample school is making its best efforts to improve the teaching and learning environment better to meet the needs of adolescents and is implementing middle school philosophy in accordance with the design. It is unlikely that any school can achieve "perfection" in all of the areas identified in the selected design (Hill & Cr�vola, 1997), and the possibilities for improvement are always there. Certain significant issues related to students� security and connectedness are identified as requiring some attention by the school organisation. The main question of this study�how responsive middle school reforms are in the enrichment of the physical, social and emotional growth of adolescents�has largely been answered positively in this study. Based on the findings of this study it is concluded that the middle schooling program is not a wasted effort on the landscape of secondary education in Australia. The results of this study have certain implications for policy makers, educators and researchers. These include recognition of the need for teacher training programs to provide teacher training with a greater understanding of the teaching and learning needs of adolescents and the need for educators to make extra efforts in making the school environments safe, secure and inviting for adolescents. Longitudinal studies will be required to determine the long-term outcomes of the middle schooling program, as claimed by the proponents of the middle schooling movement.

Thesis (M. Ed.(Educational psychology))-University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

<p>The purpose with my examination is to make a contribution to how, as a pedagogue, you can work to make it easier for pupils with Aspergers syndrome that are integrated in an “average” class. I will concentrate my work to these questions: how pedagogues can work to make it easier for pupils with Asperger syndrome that are integrated in an “average” class. If it affects the other pupils in the class when pupils with Asperger syndrome is integrated in the class and also if it affects the pedagogues work having these children integrated in their “average” class.I have decided to study research and other literature and also to do two interviews to find out how pedagogues can make it easier for children with the diagnosis Asperger syndrome. The pedagogues that I´ve interviewed has in different ways worked with pupils with Asperger syndrome. The first person works as a pedagogical instructor and the other one works as a teacher in a preschool-class. I compare the facts that I´ve found in research, literature and in the interviews to later be able to draw my own conclusions.The result of my examination shows that the facts that I got from the research and the literature broadly agree with the facts that I got from the interviews that I´ve done. The general conclusion of my work shows that pupils with Asperger syndrome need a clear and structured schooling. It´s important that the pedagogues proceed from the actual pupil when planning the schooling otherwise the pedagogue won´t be able to create the right opportunities for the pupil.</p>

This thesis’ main theme is the relation between school practices and the constitutive values explicitly endorsed in the Swedish national curriculum. It consists of four articles. Article I examines the new educational circumstances in a multicultural society. It problematizes the school’s task to find a balance between contributing to a certain cultural consensus, the common and shared, and to increase the ability to live with a cultural multiplicity. The article addresses the need for intercultural education for the realisation of a democratic classroom. Article II addresses the challenge for schools to advocate constitutive values in a multicultural society. It problematizes the relation between the curriculum’s values, stipulated at central level, and their interpretation and implementation at local level, i.e., in the class-room. An action-research project in a Swedish school illustrates the teachers’ struggle to realize these values in daily practice. The project resulted in the teachers move from abstract to concrete discussions of the constitutive values, as well as changes in their daily practice. Overall, the paper focuses on possibilities for deliberation in a multicultural school. Article III highlights schooling as a moral practice. It builds on a field study which investigates the relation between the curriculum’s stipulated values and the enacted curriculum. Episodes of moral steering are presented together with the teachers’ subsequent evaluation of these incidents. These episodes suggest that insofar as individual beliefs and moment-by-moment responses may lead to actions with counteract constitutive values, moral practices must also be a deliberative practice where alternatives are weighed and courses of action are adopted. Article IV develops the discussion concerning the school as a moral arena. A short lunch episode from the school study illustrates the discrepancy between the curriculum’s constitutive values and their realization in practice. The paper suggests that episodes at the margins of school practices may be just as important to the moral curriculum of school as the knowledge-related elements conventionally deemed to be the core of the curriculum. In summary, the thesis demonstrates that the assignment to foster the coming citizens in a multicultural school is complex. Other values than those stipulated in the curriculum steer teachers’ actions. Moreover, it is a thorny mission to accomplish an equal school in an unequal society. Nonetheless, there is a need for awareness among pedagogues concerning the correspondence between societal values, the hierarchy of social groups, individual values, the curriculum’s values, and the teacher’s assignment. The curriculum’s values have to be taken into account just as well as individual attitudes, prejudices and taken-for-granted notions have to be clarified, confronted, defended or abandoned. Interpreting, internalising and applying democratic values in school is a never-ending process.

This essay is a study about school success for immigrant pupils whose ages are between 16 and 19 years when they arrive to Sweden. The purpose of this study is to examine pupils difficulties in the school and the faktors which affect their success in the school and even possibilities which they can be offered by the school. This research carried out at two upper secondary schools in the municipality of “Södertälje”. The method which I have used is a qualitative research method which depends on interviews. The results of the research shows pupils difficulties and the different faktors which influence their success in the school. My conclusions are that these pupils have many difficulties and to reach a successful schooling, the shcool have to give these pupils a variety of possibilities which builds with pupils self possibilities a foundation for a good and successful schooling. The research also shows that the both schools are not giving enough possibilities to these pupils. The education system in these schools doesn’t fits for multi – lingual pupils. The pupils in these schools are trying to adapt themselves to the education system.

The purpose of this research is to shed light on the formation of historical myths in Post-Soviet secondary school history classrooms from 1991 to 2010. Specifically, this thesis provides insight into how Russian high school teachers and textbook authors shaped historical interpretations of the perestroika era under the leadership of Mikhail S. Gorbachev and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This case study of the teaching of the historical time period of 1985 to 1991 illuminates the ways in which Russians reinterpreted the final years of communist rule, as well as the dominant factors influencing those assessments, including memory and the state. The historical narratives taught in post-Soviet Russian classrooms, serve as an indicator of the evolution of democratic processes, national identity and historical consciousness in Russia.<p> In addition to a survey of secondary source literature, my methodology includes the evaluation of interviews and surveys I conducted in 2009 and 2010 from over thirty secondary school history teachers in six Russian localities (in the Novosibirsk region, Moscow and St. Petersburg). I also assess the chapter contents of 15 widely-used high school history textbooks from the period of 1988 to 2009.<p> In the newly democratic Russian state, the government (including the Ministry of Education) played a central role in the reform agenda of schools. During these formative decades, the process took a revolutionary pattern, with a radical, more liberal, stage of reform occurring in the early 1990s and a more conservative, traditional retreat taking place from the mid-1990s onwards. In response to societys widespread discontent over the changes which took place in Russian schools in the 1990s, President Vladimir V. Putin took a more active role in education reform than his predecessor, Boris N. Yeltsin, especially in the realm of history education. Putins more centralized approach resulted in stricter controls on curriculum and textbook publication. Accordingly, history education was employed as a tool of the state to shape patriotic citizens through the restricting of various historical interpretations.<p> Gorbachev as leader, perestroika and the end of the Soviet Union are controversial historical topics in Russia due to the social and economic upheaval that took place during and after these years. Textbook analysis of this period often reflected dominant political discourses in Russia. In the 1990s the interpretations were quite varied as Russians were unsure of how to assess such recent history. In the 2000s the textbook interpretations became more streamlined, and Gorbachev became a scapegoat for many subsequent state problems. In contrast, history teachers opinions about the Gorbachev era did not appear to change as markedly. Many factors weigh in on an individuals interpretation of this historical period, but memory plays an especially prominent role in the teaching of the topic. Nevertheless, history teachers and textbook authors, reflecting Russian society at large, used historical myths in the teaching of the Gorbachev era, and this thesis documents these myths and sheds light on which were most prevalent and which lost favour.

This dissertation consists of three essays investigating the role of early life events, family environment and personal choices in shaping a child’s chances for human capital accumulation. The first essay examines how physical stature of a child measured in terms of age standardized height influences his/her selection for family labor activities vs. schooling in rural Ethiopia using malnutrition caused by exposure to significant weather shocks in early childhood as sources of identification for the child’s physical stature. We find no evidence that better physical stature of the child leads to his/her positive selection for full-time child labor activities. On the other hand we found reasonably strong and consistent evidence that physically more robust children are more likely to combine child labor and schooling than physically weaker children. The findings indicate that, although better early childhood nutrition leads to higher chances of attending school, it may also put the child at additional pressure to participate in family labor activities which may be reflected in poor performance in schooling. The second essay empirically investigates whether the quantity deficit in the children of the mother’s preferred gender is compensated through their favorable treatment in terms of investment in schooling and nutrition (referred to as compensating hypothesis) and to what extent the mother uses her bargaining power in the family to influence this process. We use data from siblings and twins in two rounds of the demographic and health surveys of Ethiopia with robustness checks using a similar but larger data set from India. We find the mother’s bargaining power working in the opposite direction to that of the compensating hypothesis in the case of child schooling and having no substantive role in the case of child nutritional health. Our findings for child schooling imply that mother’s empowerment could turn out to be unfavorable to a child’s attendance of schooling in the circumstances where the child is needed to help out with family activities. In the third essay we use date from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of the Youth (NLSY97) to examine the extent to which high school completion (and to a limited extent college enrollment) are influenced by the choice teenagers make as to when to start dating and/or engage in sex, how many dating and/or sex partners to maintain, and how frequently to engage in sexual and/or dating activities. We use indicators of parental and peer religiosity as instruments for teenager’s involvement in sex and dating activities. While our results for teenage dating are generally weaker than those for teenage sex, the overall pattern of our estimates suggests that teenage sex and dating could have significant effects not only on high school completion but also the subsequent enrollment in a college.