published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Med.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.

This is a case study of the learning of physical science of a high achiever, selected on the assumption that instruction in learning strategies and styles used by successful learners may improve learning effectiveness of less successful learners. Operating in an interpretive paradigm, qualitative data was gathered by participant observation aimed at sensing the complexities of the case. A rich, holistic description is given, enabling readers to form naturalistic generalisations of their own. The data corpus spans three years and is composed of audio-recorded lessons and interviews, field notes and written material. Data collection, analysis and interpretation were done in an inductive, cyclic manner, guided by research questions about learning strategies used by the learner, instructional strategies used by the teacher, and the roles played by intrinsic factors, practical work and problem solving, in contributing to effective learning of physical science by the high achiever. The study implies that effective learning, even by the highly intelligent, involves struggle and requires the use of a variety of strategies. This fits a constructivist, rather than transmissionist, view of learning, and thus supports learner-centered transformations in South African education. The learner is interpreted to be intrinsically motivated by interest and a high regard for knowledge precision, elegance, and transferability, to use a large number of learning strategies, particularly while solving open-ended problems and performing practical investigations, in order to come to a deep understanding of physical science. The study suggests that teaching children how to learn, particularly by addressing their outlook on learning and introducing them to a variety of strategies, should be an aim of physical science instruction, and that interesting, open-ended, learner-centered tasks should be used in attempts to induce self-regulated learning. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

The study examined student perceptions of global issues when introduced through their Logarithms unit in the Principles of Math 12 course and student opinions regarding the suitability of the issues within the course. Through journal books, the students expressed thoughts, ideas, and concerns related to the mathematics and the global issues. With our global environment being threatened in numerous ways, a need to educate through 'responsibility' is essential. In mathematics, students require relevancy when expected to learn increasingly difficult material. The study addresses the questions of: do students concerns for global issues increase when viewed through a mathematical lens and do the students believe that the global issues have a place in the math class? The findings were varied based on individual experiences of students within the study. In summary, the majority of the students gave positive feedback towards the use of the global issues within the math class. However, there were concerns from weak and strong students and from students currently studying similar topics in Geography. As well, several ESL students expressed concerns surrounding their difficulties with the written language, and anxiety regarding their emergent academic standing. The students favoured global exposures in the math class when they were able to actively participate with a solution, and when direct links to the mathematics being studied at the time was relevant to the global issue. Conclusively, more accessible resources are required for instructors, and more time is needed in the classroom to effectively implement, for all learners, global issues in the mathematics course.

This study is postpositivist. Adopting an ontological framework of critical realism requires the researcher to take the position of “modified” objectivist, and explore opportunities for the qualitative interpretation of quantitative data. Grounded theory is explored as the primary methodological approach, and as such the study takes on an inductive, theory-generating form in an attempt to describe and explain student performance within the context of alternative access to tertiary science studies. True to grounded theory, the researcher begins the study without a theoretical framework, this being built as the study progresses. The researcher’s experience of teaching educationally disadvantaged students Foundation Biology in the Centre for Science Access on the Pietermaritzburg campus of KwaZulu-Natal is used as a starting point, from which the initial research question emerges, namely the performance of the Access students in a first-year Life and Environmental Science stream module relative to direct entry students. Results from quantitative data analysis on students’ final marks in the first-year module pose a second research question: what factors contribute to the differing success of the student groups in the first-year module? Drawing on extant international and South African literature on factors affecting university student performance in conjunction with Regression Tree Analysis on the first-year module final mark, a theoretical framework begins to emerge. The concept of the “advantaged disadvantaged” calls for the notion of Access to be reconsidered, and curriculum responsiveness is examined in some detail. Grounded theory method of constant comparison, seeking core categories, together with efforts of triangulation prompt the third line of enquiry, specifically to establish what factors are influencing the performance of the Foundation students in their Access year. Using students’ final Foundation marks as the outcome variable, further Classification and Regression Tree analysis is conducted, including biographical, socioeconomic, school history, and academic factors as well as a measure of student motivation. In addition, literature around Access contributes to theory building. This systematic abstraction and the conceptualization of empirical data result in a substantive theory: that it is English language proficiency, above all other possible variables that can best explain Life Science (Biology) student performance. Selection into the Foundation Biology module is found to be at odds with selection into the Programme as a whole, necessitating curriculum responsiveness at the modular level. The emergent grounded theory, and the notion of “fuzzy generalization”, seen to be appropriate to critical realist research, allows opportunities to explore remediation in the curriculum on the basis of these research findings. Attention is paid specifically to scaffolding literacy in biology through a “learning to read”, “reading to learn” approach. These measures are dicussed within the context of assisting students to achieve epistemic access that will enable them to successfully participate in the academic practice of Science. / Theses (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

This dissertation describes an action research study aimed at promoting critical thinking in learners while learning physical science within the South African national curriculum. The data were primarily qualitative in nature, and were collected primarily through participant observation, composed of audio- and video- recorded lessons, interviews, questionnaires, journal entries and written material. Data collection, analysis and interpretation were done in the inductive, cyclic manner of action research. This process was guided by research questions about task characteristics, their position in the teaching sequence, the role of the learning environment, and the need to adjust tasks to fit the needs of different learners, so as to effectively promote critical thinking. A pragmatic approach was used. It was found that it is possible, using particular strategies and tasks, to promote critical thinking while meeting the curriculum outcomes, although the intense syllabus pressure of the curriculum makes this challenging. Task design characteristics and positioning in the teaching sequence, and conditions of the learning environment, were found to affect a task’s effectiveness at promoting critical thinking. Various teaching strategies can improve attainability by a wider range of learners. An instructional model, The Ladder Approach, emerged as being most likely to promote success. This was found to be successful when evaluated against criteria of active engagement and interest by learners, attainability with effort, display of critical thinking traits, and compatibility with the South African curriculum. In this model, an interesting problem is posed at the start of a section, after which direct instruction and learner engagement with the problem run parallel to one another, linked by scaffolding tools which are engaged in individually and collaboratively. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

My creative project is the construction of a local history handbook to be used by third grade teachers in the Youngstown City Schools to teach their students the history of Youngstown as a part of their social studies curriculum. The local history handbook that I have constructed has two main parts; a teacher's edition and a student's edition. The teacher's edition is detailed history of Youngstown, written to an adult level of comprehension, and is meant to prepare the teacher with the information needed to answer students' questions. The student's edition is based on the teacher's edition. The student's edition is written to a student's level of understanding and is highlighted with numerous images and activities to further the students' learning of the subject matter.The local history handbook is one component of a larger program, Getting to Know my Downtown in the 3rd Grade, aimed at teaching local third graders the history of their town. Other parts of the program include local history experts and local government leaders coming to speak with the students; traveling activity resource packets; a three — dimensional, interactive map of the downtown; and a culminating field trip to the downtown where students visit many locations important to local history and government. One objective of this project is to establish and strengthen the students' "pride of place" and to prepare them to be better stewards of their local history and built environment in the future. A second objective is to give students a better understanding of how local government operates and the numerous ways for them to make a positive impact on their community. / Department of Architecture

The purpose of the study was to determine if social studies achievement and positive attitudes about social studies would increase when the traditional single textbook approach was supplemented by a related work of children's literature. Two intact classes were randomly assigned to the treatment group which received instruction based on the regularly adopted textbook and the trade book My Brother Sam Is Dead, by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier. Two randomly assigned classes composed the control group and received instruction based on the textbook only.The participants in the study were filth grade students at an urban magnet school. Each of two teachers served as instructors working with one control class and one treatment class. The instruments used were the Attitudes Toward Social Studies instrument and the Macmillan test written for the unit of instruction entitled The Colonies Become a Nation. Pretests and posttests were administered to students in each group to assess differences in mean gain scores between groups in both attitude and achievement. In order to determine if the difference between mean gains between the two groups was significant, t-tests were used. An analysis of variance and the Tukey HSD multiple comparison procedure were used to determine how the four sections differed in attitude toward social studies and which differences were significant.There was no significant difference in mean social studies achievement gains between the treatment group and the control group. A significant difference in mean attitude gains between control and treatment groups was found. The results of the t test showed a significant mean gain in positive attitudes about social studies favoring the control group. Evidence from the analysis of variance and the Tukey HSD multiple comparison procedure indicated that the positive attitude gain was linked to the Hawthorne Effect. / Department of Elementary Education

Current research on cognitive learning is applied to the designing of several experiments for use in high school physical science and physics classes. The goal of the project was to use simple inexpensive materials to construct experiments and demonstrations that illustrate physics concepts and can easily be modeled using simple mathematics.Saline solutions are used to show simple examples of refraction and effects of a solution of varying density. The refractive index of two liquids is measured. The continuous refraction of a stratified fluid is demonstrated. Fluid flow is investigated. This leads to a simple experiment that leads to an easy way to measure the acceleration of gravity.The goal was met with several simple experiments using inexpensive materials, modeling techniques, and simple mathematics derivations were designed and tested. Data from the experiments gives results that are very close to the accepted values. / Department of Physics and Astronomy

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of teaching a study strategy on the ability of fifth-grade students to read a social studies textbook. The specific strategy was survey, question, read, recite, and review (SQ3R) (Robinson, 1961). It was taught as an integral part of the social studies lesson. The effect of gender and reading level on the SQ3R strategy was studied.The subjects were 72 students enrolled in four intact fifth-grade classrooms of two schools in an urban, midwestern school district. The classes were randomly assigned to a control group consisting of 37 subjects and an experimental group consisting of 35 subjects.The instrument used was the Sequential Tests of Educational Progress III (STEP III). The ability to read a social studies textbook was measured by the social studies subtest during pre- and posttesting procedures. The reading grade level indicator was determined by the reading subtest during the pretesting procedures.An inservice session conducted by the researcher trained the teachers of the experimental group in the SQ3R strategy. Traditional teaching procedures were followed by the control group teachers for the 9-week period.An analysis of covariance was used to examine the results at the p<.05 level of significance. The pretest score of the social studies subtest of the STEP III was used as the covariant.Statistical analysis of data generated the following results:1. There was a significant difference in the preinstructional knowledge of social studies between the experimental and control groups.2. There was no significant difference in the mean scores of the social studies subtest of the STEP III of fifth-grade students taught the SQ3R strategy and those taught the traditional way.3. There was no significant difference in the mean scores of the social studies subtest of the STEP III of males and females taught the SQ3R strategy and those taught the traditional way.4. There was no significant difference in the mean scores of the social studies subtest of the STEP III of above-average, average, and below-average readers taught the SQ3R strategy and those taught the traditional way.5. There was no interaction among the mean scores of the social studies subtest of the STEP III, the gender, and the reading level of fifth-grade students taught the SQ3R strategy and those taught the traditional way.