State universities in Saudi Arabia have adopted a new educational policy, which made English the medium of instruction for all scientific departments. This has led to establishing a Foundation Year Programme (FYP) in the English Language Institute (ELI) of those universities, which aims to prepare university students to cope with the new academic requirements in their chosen majors and to improve their overall language competence. This study investigates teachers’ roles and beliefs regarding assessment practices in the ELI with the aim to uncover not only the role(s) teachers play in both continuous and summative assessment practices, but also teachers’ understandings of and attitudes towards assessment and their roles in it. Findings will also include how teachers perceive this role in this interpretive study, where the data were collected using open-ended interviews with twenty male and female expatriate and Saudi EFL teachers who work in the ELI of a specific Saudi university. The data were analysed on the basis of participants’ views and explanations about their roles in both continuous and summative assessment in the institution. The findings revealed that teachers had no role in summative assessment unless they were members of the Assessment Committee and that most teachers wanted to have a voice and be more involved. While teachers had a limited role in continuous assessment in the classroom, they felt the need for more involvement in the choice of materials/topics employed as well as more freedom regarding the way it is administered. The study also revealed that the ELI was not well receptive of criticism from teachers, which made teachers sometimes reluctant to being more involved in assessment or voicing their views in fear of being labelled negatively. Finally, some contributions to knowledge, implications for the context and recommendations are provided as well as some suggestions for improving teachers’ roles in assessment for future consideration.

This study investigates the development of the subject of English in Swedish upper secondary schools through an analysis of the syllabi in the curricula Lgy 70, Lpf 94 and Lgy 11, with a focus on English teaching and learning. In the last 50 years, the Swedish upper secondary school has undergone three major reforms. These three reforms have had an impact on the ways of teaching the English subject. By employing Fairclough’s (1992a) three-dimensional model, the study finds that these three major reforms had an impact on English teaching and learning in terms of communicative competence and individualization and teachers’ roles. The finding is important because it indicates that the current upper secondary English classroom needs to be changed when it comes to teaching and learning methods.

The purpose of this qualitative, narrative study was to examine the stories of public elementary school teachers who hold doctorates and to discover what these stories tell about their understanding of education within the context of public schools. Specifically, investigation centered on reasons teachers in this group pursued doctorates. This study also examined the ways in which they describe their role as educators within the public school system; the ways in which they view their relationships with public school colleagues; and the ways in which the doctoral experience has influenced their beliefs about teaching, public schooling, and education. Participants included seven California elementary public school teachers who took part in two tape recorded interviews and contributed one story from their professional experience and/or a personal reflection on the interview process. Analysis of the data involved restorying the participants' stories, identifying segments of information, labeling the segments with codes that describe their meaning, grouping the codes into themes, and identifying examples from the data that supported the themes. Six themes emerged from the collected data: learning, connection and collaboration, conflict, leadership, satisfaction, and respect . The participants described their various learning experiences, how they connect and collaborate with others, the ways in which they experience conflict, the contexts in which they exhibit leadership skills, the circumstances that have brought about personal satisfaction, and the ways in which they have observed and experienced respect. Results revealed that the teachers pursued a doctorate in order to broaden their knowledge base and educational experience and that the doctoral experience has given them a broader perspective of education. They have assumed a leadership role within the public school system, and although they acknowledged that they have a different viewpoint of education and schooling than their colleagues, they see those with whom they work as valuable members of the school community. Implications from the results focused on the importance of change within the learning process and the responsibility of leadership that comes with advanced knowledge and experience.

Ce mémoire présente une analyse des représentations de dix-sept enseignants quant à l’intégration linguistique, socioscolaire, scolaire et sociale d’élèves allophones immigrants dans trois écoles secondaires pluriethniques de la région de Montréal. Cette étude a eu lieu dans le cadre d’un projet visant à décrire les modèles de services destinés aux élèves allophones immigrants à travers les perceptions d’acteurs scolaires québécois (De Koninck, Z. et F. Armand, 2012). Les représentations de huit enseignants de classes d’accueil et celles de neuf enseignants de classes ordinaires ont été dégagées à partir d’une analyse thématique de leur discours recueilli au moyen de six entrevues de groupe. Le questionnaire d’entrevue a mené les enseignants à dresser des bilans de l’intégration d’élèves allophones immigrants et à porter un regard sur leurs rôles. L’interprétation des résultats a permis de situer les représentations de l’intégration des enseignants sur un continuum d’acculturation. Les résultats révèlent que les enseignants de classes d’accueil ont généralement mis l’accent sur le bien-être affectif de leurs élèves et sur l’enseignement du français langue seconde, alors que les enseignants de classes ordinaires ont souvent rapporté traiter tous leurs élèves de manière égale. Par contre, des préoccupations en lien avec la place de la langue française au Québec ont mené plusieurs enseignants à justifier des dynamiques de ségrégation et à se représenter la langue maternelle et le milieu familial des élèves allophones immigrants comme des obstacles à l’intégration. Lorsqu’on les situe sur un continuum d’acculturation, les représentations de l’intégration de certains enseignants tendent vers le modèle interculturel, alors que celles d’autres enseignants se rapprochent de l’assimilation. / This thesis presents an analysis of seventeen high school teachers’ representations of the integration of newly arrived immigrant students and host language learners in three multiethnic schools situated in the Montreal area. Particular attention is paid to the teachers’ evaluation of the different facets of integration, such as acquiring the host language, participating socially within the school, learning curriculum content and participating in the host society. Through the analysis of six focus group interviews, eight host language teachers and nine content area teachers’ roles are explored. Interpretation of the teachers’ discourse led to situating their representations of integration on an acculturation continuum. This inquiry took place within the context of a larger project which sought to describe the different organizational models for the integration of immigrant students from the viewpoint of educational stakeholders in French language public schools in Québec (De Koninck, Z. et F. Armand, 2012). The results reveal that the second language teachers interviewed focused primarily on the emotional well-being of their immigrant students, while the content area teachers often reported treating all their students equally. However, some teachers’ focus on the status of the French language in Quebec led them to justify institutional practices within the three schools which temporarily segregated immigrant students. Furthermore, the teachers generally shared a tendency to represent the immigrant students’ mother tongue and family environment as obstacles for integration. Regarding the acculturation continuum, while some of the teachers’ representations of integration seem to fit with the intercultural model, others teachers viewed the process as a form of assimilation.