This dissertation, Constructing Hope: Narrative and the Foster Care Experience, analyzes the language used to explain the foster care experience to children under the care of Arizona's Child Protective Services (CPS). The dissertation proposes revisions to the language around foster care to make the experience less confusing and makes recommendations to encourage hope for foster children. This multi-methodological study combines ethnography and textography. Engaging narrative inquiry, relying particularly on Earnest Bormann and Walter Fisher, the dissertation analyzes Arizona's training material for Child Protective Services (CPS) case managers (CORE training) and Arizona's training material for foster parents (PS-MAPP training) along with interviews of case managers and foster parents. The analysis of the CORE training for CPS case managers reveals that narratives about CPS generally focus on the birth parent as central to the plot and situate children as supporting characters. Also, the analysis shows narrative disjunctures between the characterization of birth parents in the CORE training and the experiences of the case managers interviewed. I show how the language used in the CORE training could be more coherent with the experiences of case managers and the experiences of children. The analysis of the PS-MAPP training reveals a contradiction between the characterization of the foster caregiver and the metaphor of "parent" used to describe the foster caregiver. Also, the study demonstrates ways in which the strength/needs framework, which is central to the training, could be expanded to better prepare foster caregivers for their work. Finally, examining Aviva Children's Services' Life Book program reveals ways in which hope can be cultivated for foster children. The analysis of the Life Book project proposes a rhetoric of hope applicable to other populations who have undergone serious trauma.

This thesis investigates changes in Chinese undergraduate students’ language learning motivation during the transition from their home cultural setting to the host cultural setting, while studying on a China-UK 2+1 collaborative programme at the University of Bedfordshire. Since the 1990s, there has been growing attention to research on L2 motivation in classroom or other educational settings. To bridge the gap between general and L2 motivational theories, a number of theoretical frameworks have been developed. The most comprehensive of these is Dörnyei’s (1994a) three-level motivational framework. However, there is as yet little empirical evidence to verify this. The study employed mixed methods. Firstly, in order to identify whether these students’ language learning motivation changed over time, a two stage questionnaire survey was carried out with 158 students. Questionnaires were first administered in October shortly after students arrived in the UK to begin their courses and again in May when they were close to completing their degrees. Factor analysis was used to verify the structure of the questionnaire. Paired t-tests were used to evaluate whether significant changes had occurred in each of the motivational dimensions addressed. Secondly, in-depth face-to-face interviews were conducted with 14 of the questionnaire respondents. The interviews explored motivational change in more open-ended fashion and in greater depth. Students’ comments were transcribed, translated and categorised on the basis of Dörnyei’s (1994a) framework. The conclusions, triangulated by both the key findings and the interview results, indicate that Chinese students have strong instrumental orientations and that their language learning motivation changes significantly at the Learner Level and Language Learning Situation Level of the framework. Some patterns underlying these changes were also discovered. The research findings additionally served to support the applicability of the Dörnyei (1994a) framework. Based on the empirical research findings, some practical recommendations are offered respectively for Chinese students and academic staff. These include: 1) The university should provide more information, or relevant training, about the British academic system and culture. 2) Academic staff need to understand Chinese students more fully and might adjust their teaching style to accommodate them. 3) There is a need for the university to redesign the academic English module to help students efficiently cope with their studies in the UK.

Submitted by Jailda Nascimento (jmnascimento@pucsp.br) on 2016-10-26T21:05:04Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Juliana de Carvalho Moral Queiroz Pereira.pdf: 20716825 bytes, checksum: f640145b07311ebf61c29c0d123b9201 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-26T21:05:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Juliana de Carvalho Moral Queiroz Pereira.pdf: 20716825 bytes, checksum: f640145b07311ebf61c29c0d123b9201 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-05 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This research aimed to analyze the conceptions about the teaching-learning process of teacher educators and teachers of English to children up to 6 years old and examine if they see gaps in the academic education that needs to be filled so that the teacher is able to perform in a satisfactory way in basic education regular schools. For this purpose, the leading questions were: a) What are the English as additional language teaching-learning conceptions by teacher educators and preschool English teachers in schools of the private sector? and b) Are there specific knowledge that may contribute to the performance of these teachers? This study is relevant due the lack of academic researches about indispensable issues to the education of preschool teachers, including methodology and theoretical aspects related to the age and English language teaching. This research has its theoretical background based on very young learners English teaching (NUNAN, 2011; HARMER, 2007; CAMERON, 2005; BROWN, 2001; ROTH, 1998; HALLIWELL, 1992), in Brazilian documents with respect to preschool Infantil (BRASIL, 1998a, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016) and relevant concepts concerning the teaching-learning process in the Sociocultural Theory (VIGOTSKI, 1934/2007). The investigated data includes semi- structures interviews (STAKE, 2011; MINAYO, 2008; TRIVIÑOS, 1987), that were analyzed though theme content (BRONKCART, 1999/2007). Results reveal the necessity of teacher education programs that are anchored in the vygotskian perspective of play in order to facilitate child development / O objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar as concepções de ensino-aprendizagem de formadores e professores de inglês para crianças de até 6 anos e verificar se entendem que há brechas na formação acadêmica que precisem ser preenchidas a fim de que o docente tenha a possibilidade de desempenhar seu papel satisfatoriamente no contexto de escolas regulares da educação básica. Para tanto, as perguntas norteadoras são: a) Quais são as concepções de ensino-aprendizagem de inglês como língua adicional de formadores e professores que atuam no contexto da Educação Infantil em instituições da rede particular de ensino? e b) Há saberes específicos que podem contribuir para a atuação dos profissionais nesse contexto? A importância da realização deste estudo está na carência de trabalhos acadêmicos que tratem de aspectos imprescindíveis à formação de profissionais da educação que atuem em séries da Educação Infantil, englobando aspectos teórico- metodológicos relacionados tanto à faixa etária quanto ao ensino de língua inglesa. Esta pesquisa tem sua fundamentação teórica apoiada nos aspectos de ensino- aprendizado de língua inglesa para crianças (NUNAN, 2011; HARMER, 2007; CAMERON, 2005; BROWN, 2001; ROTH, 1998; HALLIWELL, 1992), nos documentos oficiais brasileiros elaborados pelo Ministério da Educação que fazem referência à Educação Infantil (BRASIL, 1998a, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016) e em conceitos relevantes ao processo de aprendizagem e desenvolvimento da Teoria Sócio-Histórico-Cultural (VIGOTSKI, 1934/2007, 1934/2008). Foram realizadas entrevistas semiestruturadas (STAKE, 2011; MINAYO, 2008; TRIVIÑOS, 1987) e a análise por meio de conteúdos temáticos (BRONKCART, 1999/2007). Obtivemos como resultado a necessidade de propostas de formação de professores de inglês alicerçadas no brincar vygotskiano para de fato proporcionar o desenvolvimento infantil

Orientador: João Antonio Telles / Banca: Stela Miller / Banca: Nelson Viana / Resumo: Estudos recentes mostram que nem sempre é possível para o professor colocar suas crenças em prática. Tendo em vista tal perspectiva, nesta dissertação, parti do pressuposto que fatores contextuais são um dos grandes responsáveis pela dissonância entre as crenças e as práticas pedagógicas dos professores de línguas estrangeiras. Meus objetivos foram (a) explicitar e analisar minhas crenças e as da professora participante sobre o ensino de línguas estrangeiras; (b) detectar e analisar quais são nossas práticas pedagógicas; (c) por meio desse processo de interlocução, buscar possíveis relações entre o que acreditamos e o que fazemos em sala de aula; (d) produzir conhecimentos que possam contribuir para a formação continuada de professores de língua inglesa e para intervenções mais adequadas, segundo seus contextos de ensino. As perguntas que orientaram esta dissertação foram: (1) quais são as crenças sobre o processo de ensino-aprendizagem de língua estrangeira de duas professoras de língua inglesa da rede pública de ensino? (2) quais as possíveis relações que se estabelecem entre essas crenças e as práticas pedagógicas das duas participantes? O arcabouço teórico deste estudo se fundamenta em um conceito de língua como instrumento de interação e nos estudos sobre crenças. O arcabouço metodológico se fundamenta na Pesquisa Narrativa, por meio da qual escrevo textos de pesquisa, tentando tecer significados acerca de nossas crenças e práticas a partir do material documentário coletado - (a) as histórias de nossa prática pedagógica narradas por mim e pela professora participante, (b) encontros reflexivos, (c) entrevista semiestruturada, (d) filmagem de aulas e (e) observações de aulas. Baseada nos princípios da Hermenêutica, a análise do material documentário objetivou confrontar nossos discursos e ações como professoras de línguas ...(Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Recent studies on teachers' beliefs show that they are not necessarily expressed in their pedagogical practice. This dissertation is grounded on such perspective and on the presupposition that contextual factors are mainly responsible for the discontinuity between foreign language teachers' beliefs and their work in the classroom. The objectives of this study were: (a) to make explicit and to analyze my own beliefs regarding foreign language teaching and those of my participant teacher; (b) to detect and to analyze our pedagogical practices; (c) by means of shared reflection, to search for possible relationships between what we believe in and what we do in our classrooms; (d) to produce knowledge as to contribute with the continuing development of teachers of English and adequate intervention in their respective teaching contexts. The research questions that guided my inquiry were the following: (a) what are the beliefs regarding the teaching/learning processes of two public schools teachers of English? (b) what possible relationships can be traced between the beliefs and the pedagogical practice of both participants? The theoretical framework of this study is grounded on a concept of language as an instrument of interaction and on the studies about teachers' beliefs. The methodological framework draws on the principles of Narrative Inquiry in which I write research texts trying to weave meanings about our beliefs and practices based on the documentary materials that were collected - a) the stories that were told by me and my participant; (b) reflective conversations; (c) semi-structured interviews; (d) video-taped classes; and (e) classroom observation. The analysis of the documentary material was based on hermeneutic principles and aimed at confronting our discourses and actions as foreign language teachers...(Complete abstract, click electronic access below) / Mestre

Foreign language immersion programs, wherein the regular school curriculum is taught through the foreign language, have become increasingly widespread in recent years. Although there have been a plethora of studies reporting on second language immersion programs involving school-age programs, there is a dearth of information describing such programs for preschoolers. The purpose of this study was to observe and describe an immersion program for three-year-olds, particularly with respect to specific features of early stages of the language acquisition process. The primary area of interest was to determine the existence of and features of a silent period for these children. Secondary goals included analyzing the kinds of speech that emerged in the early stages of language acquisition, to whom it was directed, and the circumstances under which it was produced; discovering when and how the children manifest bilingual awareness; and ascertaining what strategies were used by them for comprehension. Using a qualitative case study approach, eight monolingual three-year-olds attending a Spanish-language immersion school were observed using participant observation methodology for a total of 98.35 hours between September 6, 1994 and March 17, 1995. Classroom observation was supplemented by questionnaires completed by the children's parents, and by interviews of parents. The data generated revealed that although there is wide variation in the amount of speech produced by the children and when it was produced, there was no silent period for most children. These results are inconsistent with the literature which generally assumes that such a period exists. The study also revealed that although language mixing occurred, it appeared to be a function of language dominance and did not reflect mixing in the input. Children used a variety of strategies to make sense of the Spanish surrounding them, the most important of which was attending to context clues. Finally, all the children manifested bilingual awareness at the same time they began to produce Spanish utterances.

The thesis deals with teaching of the English language from the viewpoint of development of a relationship to the school subject in the course of primary education. The theoretical part describes findings of developmental psychology with a focus on specific features of primary school learners; the thesis also characterizes key teaching areas of the English language and it concentrates on emotions accompanying the educational process. It compares various views of experts and describes preconditions for efficient education of schoolchildren. The practical part of the thesis is based on structured interviews. The obtained data are used to explain development of the relationship of children to English as a school subject. The thesis also explores selected methods and approaches as they are seen by current schoolchildren and future teachers at the first level of elementary schools.

In order to examine the factors that impinge on an on-going change, this Field Study involved a consideration of the first two Royal Society of Arts Courses In The Teaching of English in Singapore Schools (RSA TESL). These were part-time courses offered to graduate teachers to enable them to further improve their skills in English Language teaching. The study was based on a questionnaire that incorporated the following components: the general background of the teacher the school climate the level of attainment in relation to the competencies identified the level of sharing the methods of dissemination Of the teachers from courses one and two who were invited to attend a feedback session, forty-eight responded. The questionnaire was designed to elicit responses from the participants in relation to the main factors mentioned above. The results of the study were subjected to three main types of analyses viz, comparisons based on raw data co-relations of the different factors using the Pearson's Product Moment Co-efficient Chi-square and T-score analyses of means of the different factors to ascertain degrees of relationship. Since the course had a task-based emphasis, it was not surprising that the study revealed a high level of attainment of the teachers in relation to the main competencies developed in the course. This in turn was shown to have a significant effect on the confidence of the teachers to share their knowledge and skills with other teachers. Another factor that was significant in terms of the levels of sharing achieved by the teachers was the position held by them. It was found that a greater degree of sharing of skills and knowledge was achieved by the senior subject teachers than those who were not. This was also confirmed when a comparison of courses one and two was made. The degree of sharing achieved by the course one participants was higher because there were more senior subject teachers among them. Furthermore, this difference in sharing in relation to position was marked in both schools that had a good climate or those that had a poor climate. The school climate also significantly affected the relative level of sharing of skills and knowledge achieved by the teachers. Even among the senior subject teachers, the level of sharing was greater in schools with a good climate than in those with a poor climate. Finally, in terms of the method of dissemination, it was found that the senior subject teachers used both the formal (demonstrations, workshops) and informal methods of dissemination while the ordinary teachers used mainly the informal (discussions etc) methods of dissemination. The four main findings arising from the study have had a significant impact on the future developments in relation to the RSA TESL course as well as other in-service courses where a transfer of knowledge/skills is expected on completion of the course.

This project is an archival case study of the multimedia artist and writer David Wojnarowicz. I discuss Wojnarowicz's legacy as a queer activist and public intellectual to explore the potential of his posthumous rhetorical agency. I define "posthumous rhetorical agency" as a process enacted by the living to facilitate the participation of the deceased in public life. I emphasize that developing a theory of posthumous rhetorical agency can fuel the "momentum of the archival turn" while also deepening a "commitment to the queer turn" in rhetorical studies (Morris and Rawson; Crichton). I establish that Wojnarowicz's archive possesses the ability to reach into the future with remarkable velocity to contribute to his posthumous agency because he drew on extant queer kinship networks and engaged multiple mediums as a visual artist, writer, musician, performance artist, and filmmaker. I extend Avery Gordon's position that haunting differs from trauma because haunting produces a "something-to-be-done" quality, which leads to an engagement with the present and a desire "to reveal and learn from subjugated knowledge." I argue that Wojnarowicz's legacy has a "something-to-be-done" quality about it. His legacy stands as an indictment of a nation lulled into apathetic indifference and cowed into fear of social difference: at a national level when the AIDS epidemic began, politicians and corporations were inexcusably slow to respond because the disease was assumed to infect only gay men and other "high risk" populations. Thus, in understanding Wojnarowicz's suffering - as an individual and, to take this line of argument further, as part of a collective of people with AIDS who died due to the US government's neglect of a public health crisis from which the "general public" was assumed to be safe - one can conceive of his posthumous legacy as a positive and needful presence that calls attention to the value of integrating a partially erased or forgotten history more fully into the nation's history. I conclude that a viable theory of posthumous rhetorical agency must attend to issues of how to responsibly and justly represent the work of those who have been systematically excluded, censored, or erased from the historical record.

This study analyzes visual artifacts from three case studies, Hetch Hetchy Valley, Echo Park, and Glen Canyon, in order to contribute to scholarship devoted to environmental visual rhetoric. Through these studies, I address connections between aesthetics and environmental ethics and challenge scholarship that argues mainstream preservationist perspectives have adhered to an anthropocentric ideological paradigm. Grounding my argument in philosopher Arnold Berleant's notion of participatory aesthetics and deploying social semiotics and media analysis methodologies, I propose that two particular aesthetic grammars have been at use in mainstream environmental rhetorics, that which I call the wilderness sublime and the wilderness interactive. Present in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and well documented in existing scholarship, the aesthetic of the wilderness sublime has operated through strict dichotomies between nature and culture that promote reductive views of human relationships with nature. Conversely, I argue that the aesthetic of the wilderness interactive, discoverable in artifacts from the mid-20th century to today, has worked to resist these dichotomies through the use of participatory elements that feature humans and nature in what Berleant calls a "relationship of mutual influence," falling within a more ecocentric ideological view. Through my analysis, I extend Berleant's theoretical application from photography to websites to argue that web-based rhetorics contain distinct potential for the realization of participatory features. In particular, I focus on the aesthetic, technological, social, archival, subjective, and epistemological dimensions proposed by Melinda Turnley to discuss dialogic features of websites that can work to engage diverse stakeholders. Through my findings, I offer a visual analysis heuristic that can be used to discover participatory aesthetics within visual artifacts and resist dualistic views of the environment. Likewise, I present a user analysis heuristic that can help identify targeted stakeholders and recognize participatory aesthetics within websites. Ultimately, this study answers the call of environmental aesthetics to address the realization of perceptual norms that offer more ethical conceptions of human relationships with nature, and it extends this focus into the digital environment to discuss the ability of web design and aesthetics to promote generative stakeholder dialogue in environmental protection and restoration.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2008-06-17Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:32:39Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 oliveira_rmr_me_mar.pdf: 912708 bytes, checksum: 3982e30ad11275a474c27b57efa6a79d (MD5) / Estudos recentes mostram que nem sempre é possível para o professor colocar suas crenças em prática. Tendo em vista tal perspectiva, nesta dissertação, parti do pressuposto que fatores contextuais são um dos grandes responsáveis pela dissonância entre as crenças e as práticas pedagógicas dos professores de línguas estrangeiras. Meus objetivos foram (a) explicitar e analisar minhas crenças e as da professora participante sobre o ensino de línguas estrangeiras; (b) detectar e analisar quais são nossas práticas pedagógicas; (c) por meio desse processo de interlocução, buscar possíveis relações entre o que acreditamos e o que fazemos em sala de aula; (d) produzir conhecimentos que possam contribuir para a formação continuada de professores de língua inglesa e para intervenções mais adequadas, segundo seus contextos de ensino. As perguntas que orientaram esta dissertação foram: (1) quais são as crenças sobre o processo de ensino-aprendizagem de língua estrangeira de duas professoras de língua inglesa da rede pública de ensino? (2) quais as possíveis relações que se estabelecem entre essas crenças e as práticas pedagógicas das duas participantes? O arcabouço teórico deste estudo se fundamenta em um conceito de língua como instrumento de interação e nos estudos sobre crenças. O arcabouço metodológico se fundamenta na Pesquisa Narrativa, por meio da qual escrevo textos de pesquisa, tentando tecer significados acerca de nossas crenças e práticas a partir do material documentário coletado - (a) as histórias de nossa prática pedagógica narradas por mim e pela professora participante, (b) encontros reflexivos, (c) entrevista semiestruturada, (d) filmagem de aulas e (e) observações de aulas. Baseada nos princípios da Hermenêutica, a análise do material documentário objetivou confrontar nossos discursos e ações como professoras de línguas... / Recent studies on teachers’ beliefs show that they are not necessarily expressed in their pedagogical practice. This dissertation is grounded on such perspective and on the presupposition that contextual factors are mainly responsible for the discontinuity between foreign language teachers’ beliefs and their work in the classroom. The objectives of this study were: (a) to make explicit and to analyze my own beliefs regarding foreign language teaching and those of my participant teacher; (b) to detect and to analyze our pedagogical practices; (c) by means of shared reflection, to search for possible relationships between what we believe in and what we do in our classrooms; (d) to produce knowledge as to contribute with the continuing development of teachers of English and adequate intervention in their respective teaching contexts. The research questions that guided my inquiry were the following: (a) what are the beliefs regarding the teaching/learning processes of two public schools teachers of English? (b) what possible relationships can be traced between the beliefs and the pedagogical practice of both participants? The theoretical framework of this study is grounded on a concept of language as an instrument of interaction and on the studies about teachers’ beliefs. The methodological framework draws on the principles of Narrative Inquiry in which I write research texts trying to weave meanings about our beliefs and practices based on the documentary materials that were collected – a) the stories that were told by me and my participant; (b) reflective conversations; (c) semi-structured interviews; (d) video-taped classes; and (e) classroom observation. The analysis of the documentary material was based on hermeneutic principles and aimed at confronting our discourses and actions as foreign language teachers...(Complete abstract, click electronic access below)