The aim of this thesis is to develop knowledge about what students actually learn in lower secondary school science, regardless of intentions and policies. This is conceptualized as a study of the lived curriculum. During the last decades, new ways of organizing classroom work have evolved in Sweden. Students are to an increasing extent expected to take responsibility for what, when, and how they study. The aim of this thesis is therefore delimited to the study of which lived curriculum is constituted in such an individually organized science classroom practice. The theoretical foundation is a cultural-historical activity-theoretical perspective on human learning and development. The point of departure is that what we learn must be understood as an aspect of the activities we engage in. The research approach is ethnographic; field studies were conducted in two science classes, grades six and seven (ages 12 to 14 years old), in a Swedish midsized compulsory school during one school-year. The first result is that two different practices are discerned in the studied science classroom. One classroom practice is a criteria-based practice, where students work individually with local school criteria determining what students must be able to do in order to get a pass or a pass with distinction in the natural science subjects. The other classroom practice is a laboratory practice, where students do laboratory experiments and write laboratory reports. The second result is that students, in both practices, participate in different actions; either production and reproduction of correct answers or development of conceptual relations. These actions correspond in varying degrees to different motives; as a consequence, different scientific formation is made possible in the two different actions. A third result is that classroom practice supports student participation in the action of reproducing correct answers; while participation in the development of conceptual relations is a more risky and uncertain endeavour. However, there is evidence that students’ ways of participating can change, to a more qualified, as conditions for work change. A conclusion is that work in science classroom practice cannot, as suggested in previous research, be comprehended in terms of cultural border-crossings, between a culture of science and student cultures. Rather, work in science classroom practice must be conceptualized in terms of schooling.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wyoming, 2005. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Oct. 16, 2007). Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-243).

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how active primary school teachers describe and embody the concept of student influence. The study also processes how the teachers allow students to apply student influence practically in the classroom environment. In order to investigate in this matter I have used the socio-cultural perspective of mediation, appropriation and the proximal development zone as key concepts. A qualitative research method was chosen, and six teachers were interviewed from four different schools in a big city. According to the results, the teachers interpreted student influence as students being involved in making decisions that concern them. The teachers' aim is to follow the development of students' knowledge by adapting their teaching to students individually and offering a learning environment with different working procedures and methods. In addition, students take part in class and student councils. An informant experienced the assignment as complex by an informant, as the teacher is to individualize the teaching and accommodate each student. Teachers point out that the responsibility lies with them if student influence is obtained in their teachings or not. It becomes a lonely task, as there is no peer cooperation and no support from the principal. / Syftet med föreliggande examensarbete är att undersöka hur verksamma lärare uppfattar begreppet elevinflytande och hur det praktiskt tillämpas i undervisningen. Undersökningen bearbetar även hur lärarna praktiskt låter eleverna tillämpa elevinflytande i klassrumsmiljön. För att undersöka detta har jag använt mig av det sociokulturella perspektivet med mediering, appropriering och den proximala utvecklingszonen som teoretiska begrepp. Min undersökning är kvalitativ och som undersökningsmetod har intervjuer på lärare konstruerats. Sex verksamma lärare intervjuades från fyra olika skolor i en storstad. Enligt de resultat som framkom tolkade lärarna begreppet elevinflytande utifrån att eleverna ska vara med och fatta beslut som rör dem. Lärarna strävar efter att följa elevens kunskapsutveckling genom att elevernas undervisning individanpassas och de erbjuds en lärmiljö med olika arbetssätt och arbetsformer, samt att eleverna deltar i klass- och elevråd. Uppdraget upplevs också komplext av en informant, eftersom läraren ska individanpassa undervisningen och tillgodose alla elevers behov i klassen. Lärarna påpekar att ansvaret ligger hos dem att elevinflytande råder i undervisningen, vilket de menar blir ett ensamarbete då de inte samarbetar kollegialt och inte har rektorernas stöttning.

Thesis (MTech (Public Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2006. / The right of learners to participate in decision-making as stakeholders in their own education was a significant area of controversy between learners and education authorities prior to 1994. At the end of the apartheid regime in 1994 the foundation was laid for a South Africa based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights as provided for in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (Act 108 of 1996), hereinafter referred to as the Constitution RSA. To give effect to these constitutional rights and to entrench the democratic values in society, a new system of education and training which required the phasing-in of new education legislation had to be created. The National Education Policy Act, 1996 (Act 27 of 1996) [NEPAl was the first comprehensive new act promulgated by the government after 1994. This act mainly provides for the promulgation of education policy by the Minister of Education. The South African Schools Act, 1996 (Act 84 of 1996) [SASAj, as amended, provides a national system of school education that advances democracy, the development of all leamers and the protection of rights, as well as promoting acceptance of responsibility by learners, parents and educators for the organisation of the school, its governance and its funding. The SASA has entrenched the rights of learners to participate as stakeholders in education by affording them representation in school governing bodies which have the status of being the only legitimate bodies representing parents and learners in public schools.

In Namibian schools, learner voice and leadership are being promoted through the policy document entitled the Education Act 16 of2001 which provides an opportunity to establish Learner Representative Councils (LRCs) in secondary schools. However, recent studies have found that this body of learner leaders do not function all that effectively and sometimes exist for the sake of adhering to the policy. This prompted me to conduct an activity theoretical interventionist case- study within the critical paradigm, to develop LRC voice and leadership in a newly established Namibian school. Framed by Cultural Historical Activity Theory, the study was divided into two phases to answer the over-arching question: How can LRC voice and leadership be developed in a school? Phase one was largely interpretive, the contextual profiling phase, where document analysis, individual interviews, questionnaires and observations were used to generate data to answer the following research sub-questions: How is learner leadership understood in the school? What leadership development opportunities for the LRC currently exist in the school? What underlying factors constrain the development of LRC voice and leadership in the newly established school? Phase two of the study was the expansive learning phase, which consisted of three intervention workshops. The Change Laboratory method and a focus group interview were used to generate data in response to the last research sub-question: In what ways can LRC participation in a Change Laboratory process contribute to their leadership development? Data generated were inductively and deductively analysed, using the activity theoretical principles of contradictions and double stimulation. Data revealed that learner leadership was largely understood as managerial roles carried out by the LRC in the school. Unlike many schools in Namibia, this case-study school offered numerous leadership development opportunities for the LRC. The community networking events such as: School Exchange Programmes, Town Council breakfast and Junior Regional Council, were opportunities offered to the LRC to solicit information, exchange ideas and discuss matters of common interest with the LRCs of the fully established schools. However, there were a number of challenges that constrained LRC voice and leadership development, the major one being the fact that this was a newly established school. Of significance was that LRC participation in the Change Laboratory process contributed positively to the development of voice and leadership in learners. During this Change Laboratory process, the LRC developed a new artefact - the vision and mission statement of the school - this signified that the learners expansively transformed the object of their activity. Recommendations emerging out of the study included that the School Management Team see the ‘newly established’ status of the school as an opportunity for development, rather than a limitation, and therefore invite the LRC to participate in the different leadership practices as the school becomes established. A significant recommendation for school leadership research is to use the third generation of CHAT to expand the unit of analysis, in order to understand the leadership relations and power dynamics between multiple activity systems in schools as complex organisations.

Learner participation in leadership in Namibian schools was legislated in 2001 through the Namibian Education Act, No. 16 of2001. This has then become a requirement for all secondary schools to establish a Learner Representative Council (LRC). However, this legislation only gives mandates to schools with grade 8-12. Despite the impetus of having a LRC in secondary schools, learner leadership and voice remains limited, given that we are 26 years into our democracy. This awakened my interest to conduct a study aimed at developing leadership and voice within the LRC in a Namibian secondary school. Additionally, this study was conducted to contribute to filling the gap in literature of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) studies in the field of Education Leadership and Management. In this critical case orientation, the LRC were the subjects and the object of the activity was voice and leadership development within the LRC. I investigated participants’ perspectives on LRC leadership opportunities that existed in the case study school as well as factors that enabled and constrained leadership and voice development within the LRC of Omukumo (pseudonym) Secondary School in the northern part of Namibia. My study adopted a formative intervention design, using qualitative methodologies such as document analysis, observation, interviews, questionnaires and Change Laboratory Workshops. This study was framed by the second generation of CHAT. CHAT in this study was used as a methodological and analytical tool to surface the contradictions. Additionally, data were analysed by means of constructing categories and themes. Five sets of findings emerged: (1) a lack of conceptual awareness of the construct ‘learner leadership’: learner leadership was understood in terms of the LRC, (2) LRC members were not really acknowledged as equal participants in the school decision-making due to unequal power relations between the teachers and the LRC members, (3) misinterpretation of LRC policy that speak about the establishment of learners club and inadequate LRC training hindered the development of voice and leadership within the LRC, (4) the overall leadership role assigned to the LRC was to oversee the adherence of the school rules, and last (5) learner leadership and voice was still developing in the case study school. My key recommendation based on the research findings is the need for on-going LRC training at regional level; a need for large scale comparative studies between two African countries (Namibia, & South Africa) on the topic of learner leadership development and last, a need for workshops to train teachers on the implementation of national policies in schools, in particular those that speak to issues of learner voice and leadership.

The issue of student participation in school governance is not a new concept in Namibian schools. Student involvement dates back to the 1970's when the country's administration was under the South African apartheid regime. Back then the involvement of students in school affairs was seen by the regime as a political act and attempts by student leaders to involve themselves in educational issues were often quashed. When the country became independent student representation continued as Student Representative Councils (SRC's), later renamed Learners Representative Councils (LRCs). This study attempted to investigate the perceptions of LRCs and other stakeholders - narnely the school principals and the school board members - of the role of students in school governance. The study was conducted in three Senior Secondary Schools in the Kavango region in Namibia. The research respondents were school principals, chairpersons of the LRCs and one chairperson of a school board. The study was conducted in the interpretive paradigm employing the following three qualitative research methods interviews, observation and document analysis to collect data. Through triangulation it was possible to formulate a rich response to the research question. The study found that, although the notion of student participation in school governance was widely accepted, a number of challenges exist that hamper the effectiveness of LRCs in the schools. It was revealed that there was no national policy docunlent that outlined the roles and function of the LRCs. As a result schools had little direction about the LRCs and subsequently they were given little or no attention by the school authorities. This resulted in misunderstandings and in some cases conflict between learners and the school management. The most significant consequence of these problems was the fact that LRCs were not regarded as true role players in school governance. The study thus recommends that a national policy document that legitimates the role of students in school governance be drafted to provide direction and that schools embark on meaningful training programmes for LRC members. The study also calls for further research to address the gap in literature on this phenomenon, particularly in Namibia.

M.Ed. / The aim of this study was to develop guidelines for principals and teachers when they identify leaders in secondary schools. That enables pupils with potential to function successfully as leaders in a school environment. Leadership in the secondary school has for too long been misinterpreted, misunderstood and grossly underscored in far too many ways. There is mistrust towards the identifying process. Present day demands require a specific form of education and training in leadership at school level to enable our youth to cope with these requirements. Educational authorities - especially school authorities are therefore compelled to address the matter of training and identification in a new light. Most of the existing research about identification of school leaders at secondary school level is of a quantitative nature and consisted of the completion of questionnaires. This brought about the testing and retesting of stereotyped proposals. In this study a qualitative research program was followed. By means of focus group interviews the views of a principal, teachers and secondary school pupils where collected. The research question in this study developed was the following: In what way does the personality of the pupil influences the teachers' choice of leaders at school level? The aim that followed was: To find out if there are personality traits that is necessary for a school leader at secondary school level to be successful. An explanatory, descriptive research design was used as part of qualitative research method during phase 1 of the research. The aim of phase 2 was to compare the results of the focus group interviews with a literature review. During phase 3 guidelines were developed for the identification of leaders in secondary schools. The conclusions of the research showed that the focus groups reflected reality, namely that the teachers lacked knowledge about leadership and that the pupils meaning reflects the findings of the literature study. Further it became apparent that although personality is relevant in leadership identification, it shouldn't be the main focus. Pupils should be helped to develop leadership skills which could be learned and to develop their personality or capabilities and in order to enable them to develop their full potential and to apply the leadership skills in their lives.

The purpose of this study was to explore how teachers and special educators wished to organize education in a Swedish city´s upper secondary school system in order to reach all admitted students. The purpose was also to identify what pedagogical needs of students and school staff that teachers and special educators enquire for in order to fulfil these goals. Presenting the study, its settings, its author, its purpose and research questions, the introduction and background chapters revolve around considerations regarding “a school for all”. Special educational organising principles in the city of inquiry are outlined, as well as special educational perspectives from research and school debate. Dichotomic views on how to reach a school for all are presented. Modern perspectives problematizing and striving to go beyond such dichotomy concludes the background chapter. The research area concerns students’ social and academical goal fulfilment, teachers’ social professional role, and school organization. Outlining these research areas, a sample of six studies, consisting of international and Swedish studies from 1999 to 2020, are presented. Ontologically, a symbolic interactionist perspective in relation to the study’s purpose led to a reflexive approach, using semi-structured interviews and interpretative analysis. Interviews were held with three teachers and two special educators. Several aspects of research ethics were seen as having affected methodological choices and the study as a whole. Reflexive analysis, and theorizing from a symbolic interactionist perspective regarding interview participants intentions, led to results presented under the themes participation, communication, and learning. Several dilemmas appear as possible obstacles in reaching what’s interpreted as intended outcomes. Dilemmas are described with inspiration from Nilholms (2020) description of the Dilemma Perspective. As the results showed several similarities between teachers’ and special educators’ views are, conclusions are presented as a whole. Conclusions mainly show that the participants wish to strengthen the employment of communicative relational practices in school. Similarities with the Communicative Relational Perspective described by Ahlberg (2015) are noted. Dilemmas relating to implementing such practices are viewed in relation to different social and organizational levels. Pedagogical needs intended to be fulfilled are concluded as the need to feel secure, through maintaining personal integrity, mutual respect and reciprocity in teacher-student as well as school staff relationships, to facilitate participation and learning. Suggestions for future research include looking more closely at dilemmas related to achieving “a school for all”, as well as inquiring more directly regarding students’ perspectives and needs relating to the same subject, and performing further studies related to the practices outlined in the Communicative Relational Perspective.

This dissertation is an analysis of reports from selected K-8 teachers, who received their Multiple Subject teaching credentials from 1997 to 2009, regarding their classroom implementation of the California Teaching Standard for Engaging and Supporting all Students in Learning. This study also examined selected teachers' personal strategies and obstacles encountered when implementing this standard. Student engagement research at the elementary and high school levels has increased since the 1980s in an effort to reform student achievement and negate trends towards student mediocrity and dropout rates, yet research suggests student engagement continues to decline. Using survey methodology, this exploratory study sought to analyze selected teachers' reports in order to gain understanding of student engagement methods from their perspective. Using quantitative analysis, respondents reported that 28 of the 31 areas in the standard were implemented in the classroom with a 73.8% or higher response rate. Using qualitative thematic coding, 42 strategies and obstacles were identified in the respondents' reports. Results also indicated over 75% had received some type of training in student engagement. These findings can provide teachers, teacher preparation programs, district administrators, site administrators, educational leaders, policy makers, institutions, and researchers with information from K-8 teachers' reports regarding strategies used, obstacles faced, and classroom implementation of the California Teaching Standard for Engaging and Supporting all Students in Learning. These findings may be useful for researchers seeking to understand teachers' reported methods in increasing student engagement levels and possibly fostering greater student achievement.