This paper describes an alternative approach to the teaching of concepts related to the English Curriculum. It combines a shift in the theory of school teaching with psychological theory development. This research was conducted at a private, Catholic Secondary School in Johannesburg over a period of almost six months with a class of twenty Grade Ten students. The research was designed in response to the fact that many traditional, ‘rote’ teaching methods are not effective in the classroom and that an alternative needs to be found. This research aimed at testing the theories of the Sociohistorical school in order to ascertain whether they could provide clues as to methods that might be more conducive to real learning. Vygotsky’s (1978) theoretical construct of the Zone of Proximal Development, Hedegaard’s (1996) idea of a ‘double move’ and the ideas posited by Wells (1996, 1999) and Tharp and Gallimore (1988, 1992) form the theoretical basis for these ‘alternative’ teaching methods. The results shown in this paper indicate that a ‘double move’ is possible within the context of the English classroom and that the ideas of the Socio-historical school indeed provide an alternative method that is far more successful than those traditionally used in most classrooms.

This essay examines Swedish nursery children’s oral vocabulary knowledge in English. The aim is to investigate what they know and find the source to their knowledge. This essay will focus on the receptive and productive knowledge the children know based on the categories tested, how much children learn in their Zone of Proximal Development, how much they learn from context and how much does media and electronic devices influence their learning. The data of this essay were collected from interviews of 25 children and from questionnaires answered by their parents. The results of the study indicate that the children have more receptive knowledge of the English words tested. It also suggests that the productive knowledge they have is connected with the words that sound similar in Swedish and that children learn English from their surroundings such as siblings and parents, and from games on iPads and video clips from YouTube.

The Common Core State Standards were written and implemented to prepare all students for college or career readiness including students with disabilities. Students with learning disabilities often have significant difficulties and face challenges when the instruction is framed within The Common Core State Standards. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of special educators on teaching students with learning disabilities using The Common Core State Standards. The two conceptual frameworks used in this study were the Universal Design for Learning and The Zone of Proximal Development. The research questions focused on teachers' perception regarding students with learning disabilities being instructed with Common Core instructions, how teachers perceive providing Common Core instructions to students with learning disabilities is preparing them for college and career readiness, and also, what teachers perceived to be the missing components for providing specialized instructions using Common Core to students with learning disabilities. In this qualitative case study participants were selected using recommendations of school district administrators. Data was collected using face-to-face interviews. Data collection also include observations and samples of students work. Additional data to establish trustworthiness of the study was obtained through observations and analysis of artifacts collected during the study. The intended outcome of the study was to bring about change in the instructional strategies adopted when using Common core State standards in teaching students with disabilities and that to ultimately pave a way for social change.

The methodology by which to teach these outcomes was not clear. An intervention programme, Philosophy for Children (P4C) is used in some countries across the world to promote thinking. Research across the world has shown that this programme has the ability to enhance the cognitive abilities of learners exposed to it. Stories for Thinking (SFT) is an intervention programme based on the principles of Philosophy for Children and was introduced in some schools in an Education District of the Western Cape. This study investigates the perceptions of Intermediate Phase educators about the implementation of Stories for Thinking in this Education District. Educators were asked their strengths and challenges of the approach, their way of using it and the support they received. A qualitative research method was used and data were gathered to answer the research questions by means of questionnaires and interviews. Research findings indicate that educators perceived that Stories for Thinking was able to enhance the reading ability of the learners, it showed a significant improvement in their confidence levels, and a positive change in their general behaviour. Language was seen as a barrier to learning, but the evidence indicates that the community of inquiry can be used as a tool to overcome some of the barriers. It seems as if educators valued the support from the project leaders. It is concluded that this kind of intervention programme is worth introducing as long as all the role-players play their part and the setting is conducive.

<p>South Africa had a change in government and in education after the 1994 elections. A new curriculum was introduced and some of the underlying critical outcomes were to develop the learners to become critical thinkers. The methodology by which to teach these outcomes was not clear. An intervention programme, Philosophy for Children (P4C) is used in some countries across the world to promote thinking. Research across the world has shown that this programme has the ability to enhance the cognitive abilities of learners exposed to it. Stories for Thinking (SFT) is an intervention programme based on the principles of Philosophy for Children and was introduced in some schools in an Education District of the Western Cape. This study investigates the perceptions of Intermediate Phase educators about the implementation of Stories for Thinking in this Education District. Educators were asked their strengths and challenges of the approach, their way of using it and the support they received. A qualitative research method was used and data were gathered to answer the research questions by means of questionnaires and interviews. Research findings indicate that educators perceived that Stories for Thinking was able to enhance the reading ability of the learners, it showed a significant improvement in their confidence levels, and a positive change in their general behaviour. Language was seen as a barrier to learning, but the evidence indicates that the community of inquiry can be used as a tool to overcome some of the barriers. It seems as if educators valued the support from the project leaders. It is concluded that this kind of intervention programme is worth introducing as long as all the role-players play their part and the setting is conducive.</p>

The purpose of the present study was to use an alternate psychoeducational assessment method to examine learning potential of Indian students in an academic domain, specifically Algebra. The study examined six Indian adolescents early in their Year Seven Mathematics. For the purpose of this study, the students were classified as achievers or non-achievers based on Canadian Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) grade equivalent scores, and Grade 7 Mathematics marks on the First Report Card.<p> A cross-case analysis of verbal and nonverbal protocol data gathered from the six Indian achieving and non-achieving Grade Seven students, and reduced through use of a technique developed by Giorgi, yielded information regarding the subjects' internalization processes of algebraic concepts. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development methodology, which was employed in the study, permitted the researcher to investigate processes used by the students during learning, maintenance, and near and far transfer tasks. While verbal and nonverbal communication styles appeared to distinguish achieving from non-achieving students, those same traits did not seem to affect efficiency in problem solving as observed during the present study. Other characteristics such as language usage, questioning techniques, and risk taking were the traits which most clearly affected the students' problem solving skills.<p> During the present study, formal metacognitive data proved hard to collect. This may be attributed to the reluctance of some students to participate in the questioning, and to the difficulty other students experienced In understanding the questions. All students had difficulty at some stage of the study in generating a rule to explain how they had solved the problems.<p> The results of the present study indicated that there were qualitative differences in problem solving between subjects. Those qualitative differences did not follow a pattern of achievement versus non-achievement as delineated by CTBS scores and classroom evaluation in Mathematics. Zone proximal development methodology provided a process assessment which uncovered learning potential profiles that were masked by static standardized tests.

The purpose of the present study was to use an alternate psychoeducational assessment method to examine learning potential of Indian students in an academic domain, specifically Algebra. The study examined six Indian adolescents early in their Year Seven Mathematics. For the purpose of this study, the students were classified as achievers or non-achievers based on Canadian Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) grade equivalent scores, and Grade 7 Mathematics marks on the First Report Card.<p> A cross-case analysis of verbal and nonverbal protocol data gathered from the six Indian achieving and non-achieving Grade Seven students, and reduced through use of a technique developed by Giorgi, yielded information regarding the subjects' internalization processes of algebraic concepts. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development methodology, which was employed in the study, permitted the researcher to investigate processes used by the students during learning, maintenance, and near and far transfer tasks. While verbal and nonverbal communication styles appeared to distinguish achieving from non-achieving students, those same traits did not seem to affect efficiency in problem solving as observed during the present study. Other characteristics such as language usage, questioning techniques, and risk taking were the traits which most clearly affected the students' problem solving skills.<p> During the present study, formal metacognitive data proved hard to collect. This may be attributed to the reluctance of some students to participate in the questioning, and to the difficulty other students experienced In understanding the questions. All students had difficulty at some stage of the study in generating a rule to explain how they had solved the problems.<p> The results of the present study indicated that there were qualitative differences in problem solving between subjects. Those qualitative differences did not follow a pattern of achievement versus non-achievement as delineated by CTBS scores and classroom evaluation in Mathematics. Zone proximal development methodology provided a process assessment which uncovered learning potential profiles that were masked by static standardized tests.

One of the main goals of the national curriculum is to encourage children’s personal opinion and support them in development of argumentation ability and communication skills. All this is very important for the children as members of the future society. The purpose of this essay is to investigate how primary school teachers estimate the meaning of the pupil’s argumentation as well as which methods and approaches are assumed by the teachers to be most appropriate for children’s argumentation development. The study also considers the questions how the teachers motivate their pupil has to argue in the classroom and how the students by themselves understand the concept of argumentation. The last important part of this investigation is related to the students' own argumentation in different school situations. In order to approach the main aim, one should formulate the following questions: How do the pedagogues reflect on the importance of the student’s argumentation? What methods and procedures of those that the teachers themselves use, do they consider being most beneficial both to motivate students for argumentation and to develop their ability to argue? How the pupils argue in some conversation situations during the lecture, after school recreation centre, and in the pupils’ council and what kind of knowledge do they have of concept of argumentation? To get a deeper understanding of my study I used the qualitative method as a general approach for data collection. The qualitative method is supplemented with a quantitative approach in form of a questionnaire survey. The study is based on interviews with the teachers and students separately, on observations and the questionnaire survey. There are in total five interviews with teachers from three different schools, grade P-3. The collected material is analyzed using Sociocultural Theory, which includes Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development. Both theory and concept are based on the idea that development and learning occurs by means of social interaction and collaboration. The result of this investigation shows that the pedagogues use different approaches for teaching argumentation. Some teachers prefer the implicit way of teaching argumentation, the rest of them believe that the explicit way is more effective. All teachers find argumentation to be an important aspect in the development of the student’s language. Moreover, the ability to argue is associated with democratic rights written in the national curriculum.

The methodology by which to teach these outcomes was not clear. An intervention programme, Philosophy for Children (P4C) is used in some countries across the world to promote thinking. Research across the world has shown that this programme has the ability to enhance the cognitive abilities of learners exposed to it. Stories for Thinking (SFT) is an intervention programme based on the principles of Philosophy for Children and was introduced in some schools in an Education District of the Western Cape. This study investigates the perceptions of Intermediate Phase educators about the implementation of Stories for Thinking in this Education District. Educators were asked their strengths and challenges of the approach, their way of using it and the support they received. A qualitative research method was used and data were gathered to answer the research questions by means of questionnaires and interviews. Research findings indicate that educators perceived that Stories for Thinking was able to enhance the reading ability of the learners, it showed a significant improvement in their confidence levels, and a positive change in their general behaviour. Language was seen as a barrier to learning, but the evidence indicates that the community of inquiry can be used as a tool to overcome some of the barriers. It seems as if educators valued the support from the project leaders. It is concluded that this kind of intervention programme is worth introducing as long as all the role-players play their part and the setting is conducive.

<p>South Africa had a change in government and in education after the 1994 elections. A new curriculum was introduced and some of the underlying critical outcomes were to develop the learners to become critical thinkers. The methodology by which to teach these outcomes was not clear. An intervention programme, Philosophy for Children (P4C) is used in some countries across the world to promote thinking. Research across the world has shown that this programme has the ability to enhance the cognitive abilities of learners exposed to it. Stories for Thinking (SFT) is an intervention programme based on the principles of Philosophy for Children and was introduced in some schools in an Education District of the Western Cape. This study investigates the perceptions of Intermediate Phase educators about the implementation of Stories for Thinking in this Education District. Educators were asked their strengths and challenges of the approach, their way of using it and the support they received. A qualitative research method was used and data were gathered to answer the research questions by means of questionnaires and interviews. Research findings indicate that educators perceived that Stories for Thinking was able to enhance the reading ability of the learners, it showed a significant improvement in their confidence levels, and a positive change in their general behaviour. Language was seen as a barrier to learning, but the evidence indicates that the community of inquiry can be used as a tool to overcome some of the barriers. It seems as if educators valued the support from the project leaders. It is concluded that this kind of intervention programme is worth introducing as long as all the role-players play their part and the setting is conducive.</p>