The film <em>Der Untergang</em> (2004), directed by Oliver HIRSCHBIEGEL and written and produced by Bernd EICHINGER, is based on Joachim FEST's historical monograph <em>Der Untergang</em> (2002) and Traudl JUNGE's and Melissa M??LLER's <em>Bis zur letzten Stunde</em> (2003). Taking place in April, 1945, the movie depicts the last days of Adolf Hitler and his staff in the 'F??hrerbunker'. The appearance of the film sparked wide-spread controversy concerning the propriety of Germans illuminating this most controversial aspect of their history. Specifically, the debate centred on the historical accuracy of the film and the dangers associated with the filmmakers' goal of portraying Hitler not as a caricature or one-sided figure but rather as a complete human being whose troubles and human qualities might well earn the sympathy of the viewers. <br /><br /> After surveying a variety of films that portray Adolf Hitler, the thesis analyses <em>Der Untergang</em> by focusing first on the cinematic and narrative aspects of the film itself and then on the figure of Hitler. It aims to demonstrate that the presentation of Hitler as a complex character reflects the circumstances of the film's time and culture. In particular, this thesis discusses two main aspects: first, it describes a figure of Hitler constructed in the film and conveyed to the viewers; second, it demonstrates that the film's construction of Hitler is embedded in the sociocultural context of the film's creation, thereby establishing that this is a Hitler for contemporary German society and the current state of German culture's reckoning with its fascist past. <br /><br /> The results of the analysis, in particular the depiction of Hitler and the representation of death and suicide, demonstrate that the film presents a multiple point of view. The film also faces the problematic issue of representing history adequately. The consideration of the German sociocultural context brings up some reasons that can explain the increased interest in the personal side of the perpetrators and especially in the figure of Hitler. <br /><br /> Finally, this thesis maintains that <em>Der Untergang</em> gives a complex but subsequently inconsistent picture of Adolf Hitler because it gets entangled by the attempt to be informative and entertaining at the same time. Though the film cannot replace historical investigation and analysis, it still informs Germans about Adolf Hitler and reflects how their society deals with its own troubled past.

Internships are an increasingly popular activity for university students wishing to learn about the world of work, and the term can encompass many types of opportunities for learning about industries, occupations, or simply the experience of a professional workplace. The present study examines students following full-time degree courses across a range of subjects, in internships that are not integrated into course requirements. Internships of this kind are often located within the ‘employability agenda’ for higher education, developing students’ transferable skills to enable them to make smooth transitions to knowledge work outside the university. University careers advisors therefore encourage these internships as a form of experiential learning, and the notion of student employability is implicitly accepted by policymakers and universities. Yet, little is known about how or what students learn in internships. This study, which took place over three summers, examines how six students from one university made sense of their ten-week summer internships in an investment bank. The students were interviewed prior to their internships, three times during the banking internship, and again on return to the university. Using conceptual tools from sociocultural theory, the study starts from an understanding of movement between university and workplace as a matter of transition, rather than transfer and application, of knowledge and skills from university to the workplace. Adopting the idea of the ‘figured world’ (Holland et al., 1998) permits examination of how the students engaged with the cultural world of the workplace setting, interpreting and engaging with the practices there, and experiencing identity struggles that were of significance to them. The findings reveal the lack of support for the students’ engagement both before and during their placements, and have implications for the careers advising given to students undertaking internships. The study therefore concludes with a presentation of the principles that underpin student experience of internships. Universities can assist this by providing more resources for guidance to students undertaking internships, by assisting them with developing an awareness of the motives that are inherent in the workplace, as well as their own motives and those of employers providing internships.

The research for this doctoral study focused on children’s learning in mathematics and its relationship with independent pupil-pupil talk. In particular the interest was in how younger lower attaining children (aged 6-7) exchanged meaning as they talked together within a mathematical task. The data for the doctoral study had been gathered as part of the Talking Counts Project which I directed with colleagues at the University of Exeter. The project developed an intervention to encourage exploratory talk in mathematics with younger lower attaining children. Video material and transcripts of the mathematics lessons from nine classrooms that were part of the TC Project were used as the data set for the doctoral study. The focus of the analysis was on the independent pupil-pupil talk from one pre intervention session and one post intervention session from these nine classrooms. In using an existing data base, analysis was carried out in more depth and from a new perspective. A Vygotskyan sociocultural approach was maintained but analysis of the learning in the doctoral study was refocused in line with theories of situated meaning in discourse and with theories of the emergence of mathematical objects. Hence my examination of the children’s learning for the doctoral study went beyond the original research carried out in the TC Project. Within an interpretivist paradigm the methods of analysis related to the functional use of the children’s language. Interpretations were made of the children’s speech acts and their use of functional grammar. This enabled a study of both social and emotional aspects of shared intentionality as well as personal, social and cultural constructs of mathematical objects. The findings suggested that, where the talk was productive, the children were using deixis in sharing intentions and that this use could be related to the exchange of meaning and objectifying deixis.

This thesis examines what it is that enables postgraduate student teachers to promote the recently introduced curriculum innovation, dialogic talk, in primary classrooms. Drawing on literature relating to the way talk has been enacted in English classrooms for the last thirty five years, it suggests that patterns of verbal interaction have continued to prove resistant to change, despite policy imperatives and university courses. Adopting a collaborative action research approach, data were collected in three cycles over three years to investigate the perceptions of three successive cohorts of postgraduate students of the role of talk in learning, and the place of the teacher in developing it. Using a sociocultural lens, students’ conceptual and pedagogic understanding of dialogic talk, and their ability to promote it, is examined in depth through nine case studies, as are the factors which the participants themselves identify as enabling or inhibiting engagement with innovation. It is suggested that the lack of a commonly agreed definition, and of readily available theoretical guidance, has reduced dialogic talk to just another label. As such, it can play no significant part in developing practice beyond rapid question-and-answer routines of ‘interactive teaching’ and the potentially reductive IRF (Initiation, Response, Feedback) script recorded by researchers (Mroz et al, 2000; Myhill, 2006) before, and after the inception of the National Literacy Strategy (1998a). Turning to the role of the university, it questions the place of the ‘demonstration lesson’ and whole cohort lectures, urging that significant changes need to be made to the role of the teaching practice tutor, and the nature of ‘partnership’ between schools and university departments. Finally, it speculates that without a significant change in the way university departments examine, and address, the values, attitudes and memories of talk that student teachers bring with them from their own primary classrooms, there will continue to be replication of practice.

No description available.

The purpose of this study is toget an understanding of howpreschool teachers think about and work with pedagogical documentation and how they visualizeparticipation of the children. As a theoretical frame,we have used the sociocultural perspective of learning and education that is about progress and learning, which is achieved by interaction and cooperation in a social context. This survey is based on interviews and observations which has been compared in order for us to come to conclusions to see if the pedagogical thoughts is equivalent to the practice. The result of the study shows that all of the preschool teachers agree that the pedagogical documentation is an important way to work in order for the children to declare their thoughts and wonders in the environment of the preschool. The thoughts of the children are important in order to develop the organization. The teachers organize the education in a way to create conditions for the children to be able to affect and change thepreschool. The teachers are well aware of their own way to think and act which affects the children’s ability to participate. / I denna studie har vi undersökt förskollärares arbetssätt i den pedagogiska dokumentationenoch strävat efter att få en inblick i pedagogernas tankar kringhur de arbetar för att synliggöra barns delaktighet.Studienutgår från det sociokulturellaperspektivet. Vihar genomfört intervjuer och observationer och jämfört dessa med varandra för att kunna dra slutsatser kring hur de pedagogiska tankarna stämmer överens med praktiken. Studiens resultat visar hur de undersökta pedagogerna arbetar med den pedagogiska dokumentationen.Pedagogernaanser att barnens uttryck är viktiga för innehållet i verksamheten, och de skapar förutsättningar för att barnen ska kunna påverka och förändraarbetssättetoch verksamheten. Studienvisar att pedagogerna har stor medvetenhet kring sitt eget förhållningssätt och hur detta spelar roll för vilkenmöjlighetdet har för barns delaktighet, samt hur de rent praktiskt arbetar med den pedagogiska dokumentationen.

This thesis examines technological framings for communication and identity issues, with a particular focus on Swedish mainstream schools where children with cochlear implants are pupils. Based on a sociocultural perspective on learning, the thesis focuses on how pupils and teachers interact with (and thus learn from) each other in classroom settings. The study comprises a) a sociohistorical analysis of three Swedish non-governmental organizations’ periodicals from 1891 to 2010, and b) an ethnographic study including micro-analyses of interaction in two mainstream classrooms where there are children with cochlear implants. The sociohistorical analysis illustrates how different technologies, in a range of ways, have shaped (i) how people with hearing loss communicate and interact with others and (ii) their identity positions. The analysis also demonstrates the presence of language ideologies in settings where children with hearing loss are taught. Here the main preference is for spoken communication, even though different types of visual communication emerge during the 1980s and 1990s. In addition, the issue of integration has been a matter of debate since the 1970s and provides a backdrop for the current situation, where an increasing number of children with cochlear implants receive their schooling in mainstream public rather than segregated regional deaf schools. Against this background, micro-analyses have been carried out of classroom interaction and recurring patterns and activities have been identified. The results illustrate that audiologically-oriented and communicative-link technologies play major roles in the classrooms and these both facilitate and limit the pupils’ participation. Based on postcolonial theory, the results can be understood in terms of participation and non-participation of the pupil with cochlear implants, who acquire peripheral identity positions in these classroom settings. The analysis also illuminates unequal power relations regarding technologies in use, and expressions of language ideologies in the classrooms, where spoken communication is preferred. Overall, the everyday life of children with cochlear implants in mainstream schools appears to be complex, and it is technologies in use that frame the conditions for their participation in interaction and communication.

The thesis presents a qualitative study which examines teachers’ and pupils’ experiences of drama tasks in secondary school subject lessons other than Drama, where the tasks are incorporated in pursuit of curriculum-defined teaching and learning goals. I take a cultural-historical perspective in my analysis, interrogating the possibilities for meaningful appropriations of drama as a pedagogical toolkit by examining social interaction and communication within the cultural context of the classroom and how these practices may have developed over time. Set in four secondary school classrooms in the UK, the study focused on the experiences of teachers, (who are not trained drama specialists), and their pupils as they undertook drama tasks as part of curriculum lessons. I carried out a series of lesson observations, supplemented by interviews with participants. Using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (Cole 1996, Engeström 1987, Engeström 1999) as a heuristic tool, I created an analytical framework that explored the tensions between communicative tools, rules of the classroom space, and teacher-pupil and peer relations. This theoretical stance appreciates both the dynamic nature of classrooms and the possibilities for pedagogies of choice. The emphasis on tool-mediated action offers a fresh perspective in that it creates a structured and detailed framework for exploring the subtle and complex process of empathetic thought. This study reveals some of the ways in which tensions occur and existing and historically-embedded cultural practices are brought to the surface, and reinforced or challenged. I provide extracts from the data to illustrate a concern for an assessment-driven acquisition of curriculum content is a particular constraint, along with varying opportunities for both teacher and pupils to construct a framework for spontaneous in-role action within the dramatic form. The appropriation of communicative tools, although influential in achieving goals, does not always preclude emotional investment in the tasks. Although there are shifts from teacher authority to increased pupil decision-making, the way in which the teacher and pupils operate in these drama tasks reveals as much about the established and reinforced learning and social practices of the classroom, as the way these practices are changed. The research considers how drama as a pedagogical toolkit has developed historically, and it reveals implications for future study and practice relating to the understanding of drama-as-toolkit within formal educational settings.

This study investigated the conflict resolution abilities employed by 3-4 year old children within an Israeli kindergarten that was inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach in Italy. Conflict resolution is a significant phenomenon worldwide and the subject of considerable research, due to potential negative outcomes from involvement in conflict, and escalation of the conflict to a stage of violence. Nevertheless, a gap in knowledge was identified, regarding the Reggio Emilia educational approach, as an intervention to support the development of children‘s social-emotional competence to enable them to resolve interpersonal conflicts using pro-social strategies. An in-depth case study was conducted using grounded theory principles to develop a model to answer the question: To what extent might a Reggio Emilia inspired approach support resolution of interpersonal conflicts between 3-4 year old children in an Israeli kindergarten class? The rich qualitative data were gathered through video filmed observations, teacher's semi-structured interviews, children's interviews, documents, and field notes. A four-phase content analysis of the data enabled conceptualisation of the characteristics of the educational setting and the children's conflict resolution strategies. The findings allowed the emergence of a model evidencing that both direct and indirect intervention strategies were used to support the conflict resolution among the children. Teachers responded in a range of ways to children's request for direct intervention, and most especially used a clarification-mediation conversation. Indirectly, they promoted democratic pedagogy with children through participation, listening and dialogue. The findings reveal the children's development in their conflict resolution, which indicate a significant advancement in their pro-social negotiation abilities. Additionally, the findings show a significant increase in the children's spontaneous intervention as peer observers of the conflict and a decrease in their request of teacher intervention. The research suggests that over time, no extra-curricular intervention is needed within a supportive and democratic educational approach, such as the Reggio Emilia inspired approach provides. It illuminates strategies to support teachers, teacher trainers and policy makers for enabling children resolving conflicts independently using pro-social strategies. The research contributes to knowledge regarding selecting an intervention for improving kindergarten children's conflict resolution strategies.

For people in Sweden one of the favourites places to go on vacation is Spain. It is warm, inexpensive and they like Spanish culture, this helps explain why the Spanish language is so popular in schools in Sweden. To learn a foreign language means more than learning how to speak and writing, it also means learning about the culture of that language because the culture is intrinsically related to the language. Additionally, is very significant as teacher to give your students the knowledge of sociocultural of Spanish speaking countries, the knowledge of the world and in this way create multicultural students. For this reason, we decided to do a quantitative research about what sociocultural topics are thought in the classroom in Lulea (Sweden) and how teachers are developing multiculturalism in their students. As result of our work we can mention that teachers include sociocultural topics in their classes but there are certain sociocultural subjects that are not taught, we could also confirm that the textbook has many gaps in sociocultural subjects.