A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Johannesburg, South Africa June, 2015 / This doctoral thesis investigates highly emotive and topical aspects of student learning in higher education namely, assessment and feedback. The study deals with the complexities and barriers to using learning-oriented assessment approaches to equip students with skills needed to thrive within the uncertainty, demands and challenges of rapidly changing societies. In the current research literature, views about assessment, and in particular formative assessment, are diverse and in some instances contradictory. The argument I make in this thesis is that assessment is situated within a local context, comprised of students and their teachers, which is regulated by disciplinary, professional and institutional traditions, expectations and needs. This research study was impelled by the realisation that most research into pedagogical views held by teachers and their students in higher education has examined them in isolation of each other. In recognition of this disparity in the literature, a more comprehensive study on teachers' and students’ views, expectations, and experiences of assessment was undertaken in the South African context. The study was conducted at a research-intensive university and investigated the aforementioned assessment aspects in students and teachers involved in second year compulsory bioscience courses. Using an exploratory, interpretative, mixed method research approach, data were collected through a combination of interviews, questionnaires and document analysis. An in-depth examination of documents from the selected courses, including students’ marked work, provided evidence of assessment and feedback practices experienced by the students registered in the courses. Teachers were interviewed about their assessment practices and their rationale for using these practices. Students' views and their reactions to assessment and feedback were ascertained through questionnaires and interviews. Interpretations that emerged from using a socio-cultural-historical theoretical lens were helpful in understanding the factors that present challenges to the implementation of learning-oriented assessment approaches. From the characterisation of assessment environments based on learning-oriented assessment principles it was apparent that there was limited active involvement of students in the process. The data highlighted a complex array of factors influencing teachers’ conceptions of assessment and subsequently their practices. Significant about the study was the identification of the effects of existing course level assessment cultures and histories on teachers’ assessment practices. Program and course factors had more influence on teachers’ practice than their subject expertise, pedagogical beliefs and values. The main highlights emerging from the study were the multiplicity of students’ and teachers’ views of assessment and feedback with a number of convergent and divergent perspectives. Notably, the cause of dissonance between academics and students stems from the tension between the competing needs of facilitating students’ independence and the desire to give them detailed corrective feedback. This dissonance translated into varied emotional responses to feedback from students. Although the focus of the study was on the comparison between students’ and teachers’ understanding of assessment, the preponderance of students’ emotional reactions to assessment feedback that emerged offered an important insight into an unpredicted social-relational dimension of assessment. My original contribution to research knowledge is the generation of the Assessment-Systems-for-Practice (ASP) framework, a reflection and methodological tool for investigating and analysing assessment practices. This framework provides a holistic way of dealing with the complex nature of assessment in higher education. The framework thus has implications for assessment design that would take into consideration cognitive, structural and social-relational dimensions, and its use could have a positive impact on teachers’ individual assessment practices.

This mixed-methods study investigated the relationship between Advanced Placement (AP) social studies teachers' utilization of academic course blogs and student achievement. Simultaneously, the study examined the participating teachers' perceptions on the use of course blogs and other social media as supplemental learning resources. The study further explored a possible moderating effect of the social studies subject on student achievement and a possible moderating effect of students' previous academic blog usage on student achievement within the study. Quantitative data were collected from students' pre-tests and unit tests scores and analyzed for statistical significance. Qualitative data were collected through teacher-generated notes during the blogs, individual interviews, and a follow-up focus group interview. The results of this study indicated that there was no overall significant difference in student achievement between the blogging and non-blogging groups. On the contrary , a significant interaction between the social studies subject area and the use of academic course blogs was found when examining student achievement. However, this practical interaction was revealed to be a weak one. Further findings indicated that there was no significant interaction between students' previous blog usage and academic achievement during the study. From the qualitative data, participating teachers perceived the course blogs to be potentially advantageous for students and themselves, yet expressed frustration when implementing the course blogs with their students. Instead, they endorsed the academic use of Facebook, a resource that some students from two participating courses separately utilized instead of (or in addition to) the course blogs during the study. Teachers further expressed concern about relinquishing their subject knowledge and AP expertise to readily available course content on the Internet. Implications and suggestions for future f or AP social studi / teachers' promising use of Facebook and for researchers investigating the use of socail media at the high school level. / by Seth Alper. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

This mixed methods study investigates the relationship between fifth-grade teachers' social studies knowledge and beliefs and their relationship to classroom practices. Quantitative data were collected through a beliefs and classroom practices survey and 60-item knowledge test covering the areas of American History, America and the World, Political Philosophy and American Government, and The Market Economy, in order to provide a comprehensive picture of fifth-grade teachers' knowledge, beliefs, and self-reported classroom practices relating to social studies. Additionally, qualitative data were collected through individual and focus group interviews. These data were used to provide an in-depth look that expanded on fifth-grade teachers' knowledge, beliefs, and self-reported classroom practices relating to social studies. The findings of this study indicate that there is a relationship between teachers' beliefs and their self-reported classroom practices in the areas of resources, best practice, time, the Sunshine State Standards, and personal interest. While there were no significant relationships between teachers' knowledge of social studies as a whole and their self-reported classroom practices, there were several significant correlations found in the areas of American History and Political Philosophy and American Government. Further findings indicate that teaching experience and demographic variables, such as age, gender, and education level moderate some of these relationships. Implications and suggestions for further research are offered for elementary education, teacher education, and the field of social studies. / by Michele Harcarik. / Thesis (Ed.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This dissertation explores the work-based language education practices of undocumented Latino and Korean immigrants employed in Korean supermarkets and restaurants of Koreatown, New York City. The primary goal of this dissertation is to understand how immigrants educate each other about the communication strategies necessary for accomplishing work together. In Koreatown, Latinos and Koreans engage in cooperative sense-making in workplace "communities of practice" where they participate in joint activities, build new ways of using language together, and learn to dominate language. Interviews, handwritten glossaries, and audio-recorded multilingual workplace conversations reveal how immigrants' engage in sense-making together and learn about the rules, norms, and expectations of their new environments. Analysis of everyday labor practices shows how kitchen assistants, dishwashers, and supermarket workers transform their social positions through evolving language practices. This study also shows how experienced immigrants actively participate as teachers, translators, and guides for immigrant newcomers in Koreatown, transcending cultural and linguistic boundaries in the process.

This dissertation study explored the literacies and socialization practices that middle school youth used while engaging in a school-wide Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) class. The primary aims of the dissertation were to contribute to literature on YPAR and to examine the literacy and socialization practices that young people drew upon as resources in developing agentive identities. Relying on what is named as an agentive ecological approach, this study built upon sociocultural theories of literacy and learning to emphasize young people’s development of agency through their shared participation in a YPAR class that was shaped not only by the multiple identities they carried with them into the classroom, but also by factors such as the pedagogy of the teacher, the philosophies of school administrators, and the sociopolitical context of school. This study also relied on the ongoing traditions of critical literacy and critical pedagogy to highlight the ways that YPAR served as a mediator of important critical literacies that allowed students to learn about and directly respond to the social, historical, and cultural contexts of inequality that they encountered. Situated in one of New York City’s most ethnically diverse middle schools, this critical ethnographic study used multimodal and ethnographic methodologies to excavate the experiences of 7th and 8th grade students enrolled in a newly implemented YPAR course at their school. In this year-long course, students were apprenticed as critical social researchers of educational issues while simultaneously provided with opportunities to utilize digital media tools toward civic ends. Methods for this study included 112 hours of participant observation where the researcher captured field notes, weekly memos, and photographs of classroom life across six months of the course; three semi-structured interviews each with six randomly selected students enrolled in 13 sections of YPAR; and multimodal literacy artifacts that included YPAR film materials, Google Classroom assignments, photographs, and digital stories. Three focus group interviews were also conducted with a group of students selected for enrollment in a “YPAR filmmaking course”, where they were tasked with creating a film about the impact of YPAR on the school. This group had a unique vantage point in that that they participated in iterations of YPAR across all three years of their middle school experiences, affording a much needed phenomenological perspective. Finally, two semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teacher of the course, who also provided curriculum and planning documents for analysis. Constant comparative method and Critical Discourse Analysis were the primary methodological tools used to analyze the data in the study. Major findings revealed how the cultivation of critical literacies in the YPAR course afforded youth the opportunity to identify and respond to barriers in their educational contexts, allowing them to assert more humanizing portraits of themselves and their communities. Moreover, students’ leveraging of digital media tools toward civic ends permitted them space to offer perspectives concerning issues like Islamophobia and global violence, assisting them in the brokering of sociopolitical identities that changed the way they saw themselves, others, and the world surrounding them. Findings from the YPAR filmmaking class revealed the ways that youth constructed stories about imagined futures and their perceived role in shaping those futures, signaling new ways that critical digital literacy practices might be cultivated in service of healthy social, civic, and academic identities.

Enduring misconceptions exist regarding the value of learning history. Many history teachers are engaged in lecture- and recitation-based forms of instruction that seem to be at odds with the goal of helping students to develop skills and dispositions important for democratic citizenship. This study asked whether history teachers’ most ubiquitous core teaching practice, the explanation of historical content, had the potential to support civic ends. The study analyzed transcriptions of 43 classroom observations and interviews of ten U.S. history teachers. Findings pointed to five forms of historical explanation that have the potential to make explanation meaningful for preparing students for democratic citizenship. Findings also revealed factors that influenced teachers to make decisions to explain historical content in particular ways. The study has implications for improving teacher education and professional development with the goal of helping history teachers to make explanation meaningful and contributory toward their students’ preparation for democratic citizenship.

This dissertation study documented and analyzed the key curricular and pedagogical features of three secondary social studies teachers who center issues of race and racism in their classrooms by examining their decision-making processes and the impact of relevant lived experiences on their practice. I utilized portraiture methodology, which included ethnographic field notes, document analysis, interviews, and impressionistic records to document and analyze the key curricular and pedagogical features of each teacher. Data were collected during the 2016-2017 school year across three racially diverse social studies classrooms located in southern New England. My findings were that each teacher treated race and racism as central objects of historical inquiry and enacted a set of curricular and pedagogical moves that were guided by a combination of what they know (technical pedagogy) and who they are (relational pedagogy). I refer to the relevant lived experiences that give shape and form to each teacher’s practice as their pedagogical origin stories. This study has implications for teacher education and underscores the importance of focusing on technical and relational curricular and pedagogical development in novice and veteran social studies teachers. Teacher education programs need to focus on preparing preservice teachers to recognize and, at times, reconcile the relationships between our respective origin stories and the curricular and pedagogical decisions and moves that we make in classrooms when we teach about issues of race and racism.

Recent problems in global affairs have prompted social scientists to note that Americans' awareness of foreign culture and civilization is drastically underdeveloped. order to promote greater world understanding, especially the United States focal position in an expanding globalinterdependent society, educators are advocating a broader global education curriculum in the secondary schools.It was the intent of this research to provide secondary school teachers of the social studies a more balanced curricular approach to the teaching of global history. In an effort to assist social studies teachers of history, the study presented behaviorally stated objectives providing for cognitive and affective learning and psychomotor skills. The study also presented a narrative outline of the history of African and Asian civilizations, with student activities, term identification and textbook cross referencing. The activities included and those listed under selected resource materials were designed to promote higher level thinking, while providing motivating activities for developing student interest.This study would provide educators with the opportunity to effect a more balanced global perspective in the social studies classroom. In order to accomplish the goal of understanding the United States' membership in a growing global interdependent community, American youth must learn and acquire a knowledge of the varied cultures and civilizations that compose world society.

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published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education