The purpose of this study was to explore how Korean college students developed their English composition abilities based on their teacher's written comments on their class assignments. Drawing upon Vygotsky's (1978) socioconstructivist perspective on learning and Noddings' (1984) concept of care, I focused on the relationship between teacher and students and the effects of that relationship on the feedback and revision process. Participants included one non-native teacher of English and 14 students enrolled in a six-week summer English academic writing class in a Korean university in which the teacher employed the process writing approach to help students learn to write in English and the students were encouraged to revise their drafts from her written comments. Data were collected from formal, informal, and text-based interviews, class observations, and students' writing samples commented on by the teacher. In this study, the feedback and revision process was not portrayed as an intellectual activity involving only the teacher and each student, but as a social activity that involved a highly complex, dynamic, and interpersonal process. Despite various constraints and conditions, when the teacher committed herself to helping her students learn to write in English, the students generally responded to her with respect and appreciation. Particularly, her written comments allowed her and her students to meet as the one-caring and the cared-fors respectively. However, for caring to be developed and sustained, building trust in each other was a necessary condition, one that was problematic for some students. Three major contributions of the study include the following: (1) an expansion of Noddings' (1984) conception of caring to the English academic writing education in a foreign language context; (2) a re-envisionment of the cognitive process model of writing and revision in which the success of writing and revision was determined by students' knowledge and their intention in revision, now adding the role of the relationship between teacher and student; and (3) a new view of the feedback and revision process not as a product but as a frame within an EFL classroom. / text

The research began with the study of teachers' written comments on pupils' written work in an English teaching context. There were several reasons for the selection of the written comment as the subject of an investigation: first, the comment communicates the teacher's response to the pupil's work, and as such it offers a potential source of information to the pupil of relevance to his learning. In addition, written comments, as a form of individualised teaching on an informal day-to-day basis, seem likely to represent a significant portion of the total feedback received by any one pupil in relation to his individual performance. Third, to date, teachers' comments have not figured to any real extent as an area of research. Where they have, they have tended to be part of a wider study which did not involve the conceptualisation of comments as providing instructive information of value to the learner. For all of these reasons, an investigation of the character and possible contribution of the written comment to pupil learning seemed a potentially worthwhile area for research. Hence, the written comment is the focus of the first part of this study. Though the work began with the written comment, in time the questions emerging from the initial investigation suggested the value of extending the field to include a detailed study of the relationship between the classroom context and the written comment; and, more significantly as it turned out, of the oral comment as instructive feedback to the learner. Oral comments, therefore, are the subject of the second part. In the third section, the main questions arising from the oral comment data are examined. This meant in fact consideration of some teachers' images of the aspect of their teaching which most features the oral comment. In summary, the three parts of the study are: 1) an investigation of written comments; 2) an investigation of oral comments; 3) a report of teachers' accounts of one major aspect of their teaching.

This study was designed to investigate the following problem: Among a selected group of secondary school students who are considered to be youth-in-trouble, what perceptual patterns exist concerning their personal relationships within the school and the home? The setting is in a rapidly growing community in the southwestern United States. A theoretical framework was selected which emphasized personal processes. It included the categories of: (1) contact, (2) consult, (3) share, (4) choose. A search of literature related to the categories of the framework was conducted. On the basis of the theoretical framework, a questionnaire was designed with statements consisting of 16 items reflecting the four categories of contact, consult, share, and choose and was administered to a sample of youth who were judged to be youth-in-trouble to probe certain relationships experienced by youth-in-trouble in the school and in the home. The data derived from the questionnaire were then organized under the four categories of the theoretical framework. According to "The Theory of Personal Processes" used in this investigation, contact must occur at the outset of any interaction and must persist throughout the relationship. At a very early point in the interaction, consultation becomes an extension of contact and thereby supplies the means by which the interests of the youths are discovered. These interests constitute the basic ingredient for the interaction. As the interactive process continues, sharing, a mutual exchange of ideas and interests, is the basis of cooperative effort. Throughout the interactive process, choosing should be at a maximum if there is to be a high degree of freedom and democratic living. The investigation revealed the followng patterns: (1) Contact: The youth-in-trouble reported little effective contact between themselves and their parents. The youth-in-trouble reported little effective contact between themselves and their teachers. (2) Consult: The youth-in-trouble reported little effective consultation between themselves and their parents. The youth-in-trouble reported little effective consultation between themselves and their teachers. (3) Share: The youth-in-trouble reported little effective sharing between themselves and their parents. The youth-in-trouble reported litttle effective sharing between themselves and their teachers. (4) Choose: The youth-in-trouble reported little effective choosing between themselves and their parents. The youth-in-trouble reported little effective choosing between themselves and their teachers. In light of the above findings, it can be concluded that the youth-in-trouble who were studied in this investigation generally seemed not to perceive themselves as operating in home and school environments of freedom and democratic living.

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This study explores the ways in which teachers' interventions interact with and occasion the growth of students' mathematical understanding. Two 'cases' were documented, and these form the two strands of my research. The first strand concerns data collected in my own high school classroom at a time when I was a full-time teacher of mathematics in a small, rural secondary school in the United Kingdom. The second strand concerns data collected in a mathematics classroom in a large, urban high school in Vancouver, British Columbia. The data consist of videotaped lessons in each of the two classrooms, videotaped interviews with students from both strands of the data, copies of students' work from both strands, videotaped interviews with the Vancouver teacher, and my own journal entries. Analysis of the data, which is described in six stages, resulted in the generation of fifteen themes to describe the teachers' actions-in-the-moment. Three of these themes are distinguished from the others as teaching styles, as contrasted with the remaining twelve teaching strategies, and a number of the teaching strategies are clustered within the three teaching styles. The notion of a 'continuum of telling' is developed, upon which the three teaching styles lie, and this continuum is explored in order to probe the ways in which teachers' interventions interact with the growth of students' mathematical understanding. The ways in which teachers' interventions occasion the growth of students' mathematical understanding is probed through an integration of detailed traces of the students' growth of understanding with contemporaneous considerations of the teachers' strategies and styles. Implications to be drawn from these analyses, both for the research community and for teaching and learning, are discussed. I also share my reflections on my own growth as a teacher and as a researcher that I have experienced as a result of participating in, and conducting, this study.

Education and delivery methods of this education to students are always chaning. To teach students in geographically separated locations, many technologies are being used and one of these technologies is video-conferencing. However, the human element of education must neither be lost nor forgotten as we continue with new ways of educating students of the future. That is, the value of the student-instructor relationship and the critical role it plays in effective teaching and learning must be retained by distance educators. To develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between instructors and students of a video-conferenced classroom is the goal of this study. This case of student-teacher rapport in video-conferencing was conducted over a six-week summer course. Data were collected by questionnaire, student and instructor interviews, and class observations from both sites. From these primarily qualitative research techniques, several recurring themes emerged. All of these were central to the establishment and perceptions of an instructor-student rapport. Some of these areas were crucial to this video-conferencing case study and will serve to assist futre educators. The primary result of this case study was that very little rapport was established between the instructor and his students and it was perceived by the instructor and the students that this scant amount of rapport was sufficient. The paramount themes which were revealed include: the lack of name knowledge on the part of the instructor and the students' perception that this was acceptable; the technological problems; the question-asking procedures; and the amount of side-chatter and other off-task behaviours. All of these factors compounded to suppress the existence of an instructor-student rapport in this course. Recommendations for distance educators are included. / xiii, 223 leaves : ill. ; 28 cm.

The purpose of this study was to explore with fourth year nursing baccalaureate students, their perceptions of experiences of caring using ethnographic design, and examine the phenomenon of caring and whether the development of caring relationships occurs among students and faculty members. Furthermore, the study sought to understand how nursing students perceive these relationships as influential in their learning, and ability to cope with stress. The sample consisted of ten fourth year nursing students who volunteered to be interviewed as well as one focus group of seven faculty members. The major findings of the study illuminated five general constructs: (1) The caring art of nursing in large part is a way of being in the world, an attitude that is inherent in the personality; (2) the caring science of nurse doing can indeed be taught and learned; (3) non-caring behaviors, experiences and relationships negatively impact the learning environment and therefore the learning outcomes for students; (4) Problem Based Learning (PBL) method cultivates a safe and caring learning environment; (5) caring is valued by students and positively impacts their educational experience, including learning outcomes, clinical experiences and their ability to cope with stress. The findings of the study may be utilized as a component of faculty growth and development as well as internal curriculum review. / x, 131 leaves ; 29 cm

This study explores how developing purposeful relationships with students fosters engagement. Grade seven students were surveyed, interviewed, and given the opportunity to reflect on the first seven years of their schooling. Based in Appreciative Inquiry (AI), the students took a closer look at attitudes, teaching skills and the relationship with an enjoyable teacher and added their own personal experiences to research-based examples of factors contributing to engagement. The results confirm that developing purposeful relationships contribute to raising student engagement and yield numerous examples of what students value. These examples were compiled and highlight that there is an undeniable human aspect to teaching. Building purposeful relationships does not solve all school related issues but provides students with a more positive outlook on schooling. / xiv, 168 leaves : ill. (chiefly col.) ; 29 cm

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