M. Tech. (Information Technology, Faculty of Applied and Computer Sciences) Vaal University of Technology / The majority of research studies completed on podcasting technology focused on the acceptance of podcasting technology in the educational settings and the challenges that it poses for higher education institutions and instructors. Very little interest has been accorded to the effect that podcasting could have on the learners‟ academic performance. Utilizing a quasi-experimental non-equivalent group posttest, a wide used research method in the education discipline, the relationship between podcasting technology and academic performance, is investigated. The quasi-experimental was performed based on data collected over a period of 12 months, in which a non-random sample of 150 learners was taken from a population group of 350 management and entrepreneurship undergraduate learners at the Tshwane University of Technology. The sample was separated into two groups, namely the experimental group of 75 students, and the control group of 75 students. Both groups were offered the same subject by the same instructor. Control group learners are learners who have already completed the subject in the first semester before the podcasting technology was introduced in the subject. The experimental group learners are learners who have completed the subject through the support of podcasting technology. The assessment marks for four formal tests of the two groups were compared by means of a t-test to determine the effect of the intervention. The outcomes of the study showed an increase in the overall mean score of the experimental group in comparison to the mean score of the control group. The number of students obtaining distinctions also increased, compared to the control group. These considerations possibly indicate a positive relationship between the availability of podcast lectures and academic performance.

The overall aim of the study is to investigate tutors’ understanding of a competence-based curriculum (CBC) and how they train the student-teachers to implement CBC in actual classroom situations in ordinary level (O-level) secondary schools in Tanzania. The study employed a qualitative research approach informed by the interpretive paradigm. It involved a total of 12 methodology tutors. The tutors were purposively and conveniently selected from four teachers’ colleges in Tanzania that offer the Diploma in Secondary Education. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and document review methods. Deductive and inductive approaches as well as the hermeneutic phenomenology tradition informed data analysis and interpretations, respectively. The findings, in brief, reveal that in certain respects tutors understand CBC in relatively different ways and thus give it different meanings. Two main understandings with regard to CBC’s meaning and intentions are identified: CBC as an application-oriented curriculum and CBC as an activity-based curriculum. In the former, CBC is understood as a curriculum emphasising the building of learners’ ability to become practical, creative, and applying the skills they receive to solving real problems in daily life and become functional in society. In the latter, CBC is understood as nothing but a curriculum emphasising learning through activities in the classroom. The key difference between the two categories of understanding is that, in the latter category, tutors are less sensitive to applying what is learned beyond classroom and subject contexts. As for reasons for the CBC introduction in Tanzania, five categories of understanding are identified, such as education being too theoretical, coping with global trends, the desire for a creative and independent generation, external influences, and poor academic performance. Interestingly, all tutors held an understanding that the teaching approaches relevant for CBC are learner-centred approaches. Moreover, the findings reveal that tutors’ instructional practices contradicted their understanding of CBC as a curriculum that basically emphasises invisible pedagogic practices. The tutors’ instructional practices could be described as more teacher-centred, theoretical, and maintaining instructions of an authoritarian, rather than a learner-centred character, as the new curricula seem to emphasise. Lecture-dominated instructions characterised by strong framing and classification are the norm. The findings of tutors’ understandings and their instructional practices can be attributed to the various contextual factors coined as administrative, pedagogical, and physical and ecological factors. The results show that contextual cues are possibly more powerful factors to explain tutors’ instructional practices and they may thus need to be accorded due attention. The tutors proposed some conditions to establish a long-term framework for tutor learning to support educational change. The tutors’ ideas are theorized in a framework constituting a combination of such conditions as reflection, community, conceptual inputs, action, and an institution dealing with education change. / Abstract (svenska) Avhandlingens övergripande syfte är att undersöka hur lärarutbildare uppfattar en kompetensbaserad läroplan (competence-based curriculum, CBC) och hur de utbildar sina lärarkandidater att realisera den i klassrumssituationer i grundskolan i Tanzania. I avhandlingen användes en kvalitativ forskningsansats grundad i ett tolkande paradigm.  Den omfattar totalt 12 metodiklärare. Urvalet av lärarutbildare gjordes medvetet från fyra lärarhögskolor i Tanzania som erbjuder ämneslärarexamen. Data genererades genom semistrukturerade intervjuer, klassrumsobservationer och metoder för dokumentgranskning. Deduktiva och induktiva tillvägagångssätt tillsammans med traditionell hermeneutisk fenomenologi har legat till grund för analys och tolkning.   Resultatet visar att lärarutbildarna i vissa avseenden skiljer sig åt i sina uppfattningar om CBC och att deras tolkning av dess innebörd skiftar. Två huvudsakliga uppfattningar om meningen och avsikterna med CBC har identifierats: dels CBC som tillämpningsinriktad läroplan, dels CBC som tillämpningsbaserad läroplan.  I den förra uppfattas CBC som en läroplan som betonar uppbyggnaden av studenternas förmåga att arbeta praktiskt och kreativt och att tillämpa de färdigheter de erhållit för att lösa verkliga problem i vardagen och fungera i samhället. Enligt den senare uppfattningen utgör CBC enbart en läroplan som betonar inlärning genom aktiviteter inom klassrummets ram. Den väsentliga skillnaden mellan de två kategorierna är att lärarutbildarna i den senare är mindre mottagliga för att tillämpa vad de lärt sig utanför klassrummets och ämnets kontexter. Vad beträffar motiven för införandet av CBC i Tanzania har fem skäl identifierats, nämligen att: utbildningen är för teoretisk, att den ska anknyta till globala trender, att den strävar efter att forma en kreativ och självständig generation, att den har påverkats utifrån, och att de akademiska prestationerna är för svaga. Intressant nog delade alla lärarutbildare uppfattningen att de undervisningsstrategier som är relevanta för CBC är de som är elevcentrerade. Dessutom visar resultaten att lärarutbildarnas undervisningspraktik motsäger deras uppfattning om CBC som en läroplan som främst betonar en osynlig pedagogisk praktik. Lärarutbildarnas undervisningspraktik kan beskrivas som mer lärarcentrerad och teoretisk med bibehållande av en auktoritativ hållning snarare än den mer elevcentrerade som de nya läroplanerna framhåller.   Normen i lärarutbildarnas praktik utgörs av en undervisning som domineras av föreläsningar inom fastställda ramar och klassifikationer. Slutsatsen beträffande lärarutbildarnas uppfattningar och undervisningspraktik kan tillskrivas olika kontextuella faktorer såsom administrativa, pedagogiska samt fysiska och ekologiska. Kontextuella aspekter förklarar eventuellt en större del av hur lärarutbildarnas undervisningspraktik ser ut, och dessa aspekter bör ges vederbörlig uppmärksamhet. Lärarutbildarna föreslog själva vissa förutsättningar för att upprätta långsiktiga ramar till stöd för deras eget lärande om att stödja förändringar i utbildningen.  Uppfattningarna hos lärarutbildarna har teoretiserats inom en ram som utgör en kombination av förutsättningar som reflektion, gemenskap, begreppstillskott, handlande, samt en organisation som kan handskas med förändringar i utbildningen.

The purpose of the study was to provide training to peer tutors to teach students with mild and moderate disabilities sales tax computation using a simultaneous prompting procedure with fidelity. Non-target information presented during training sessions and generalization to natural environment settings was assessed. A multiple probe (days) across participants design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention on the dependent variables. The results showed peer tutors could use the simultaneous prompting procedure with fidelity to teach sales tax computation and students with disabilities could acquire sales tax computation. The students acquired the non-target information presented and generalization occurred in a natural setting.

Postgraduate tutors have an important role to play in teaching and learning in higher education. There has been substantial research conducted in this area - much of it is orientated towards improving the quality of the methods of instruction and classroom practice. Far less research has been focused on the postgraduate tutors as producers of content. This research is based on an intervention that tasked five postgraduate tutors with planning two tutorials and designing an assessment task: activities that fell outside the scope of their usual work and roles. The aim of the research is to discover more about how postgraduate tutors, who typically have extensive and expert content knowledge, but very little pedagogical knowledge, develop pedagogical content knowledge. The study tracks the decision making process and the knowledge reservoirs that the participants emphasise in their planning and design in order learn about the teaching beliefs and priorities of these novice teachers. The analysis goes on to explore the criteria for legitimation that the postgraduate tutors establish and/ or entrench. The study finds that the participants are highly sensitive to the many kinds of constraints that circulate and that they in turn re-circulated. It goes on to suggest that postgraduate tutors are likely to reproduce the regulative rules that they find in operation and the cumulative messages of what is valued in terms of student and teacher performance in a given context.

Numa escola particular da cidade de São Paulo, em 2002, o professor de Física propôs um novo projeto: desenvolver uma monitoria com seus alunos do 1° ano do Ensino Médio. Alguns alunos foram selecionados e convidados a atuarem como monitores de seus colegas de turma na disciplina de Física. Sua função era estar sempre à disposição dos colegas para ajudá-los, coordenar plantões de dúvidas em horários previamente definidos e participar de outras atividades ligadas à monitoria propostas pelo professor ao longo do ano. O grupo, formado pelos monitores e o professor, se encontrava uma vez por semana para discutir assuntos relacionados à monitoria. Nos anos seguintes a experiência foi repetida com novos grupos de alunos, obtendo bons resultados, sendo que os grupos se tornavam criativos e capazes de solucionar problemas. Depois de três anos de sucesso, passamos a acompanhar os grupos nos anos de 2005 e 2006, com turmas do 3° ano do Ensino Médio. Diferente dos anos anteriores, os grupos estavam pouco engajados na tarefa de ajudar os colegas e não enfrentavam os problemas com criatividade. Assim, nos propusemos a investigar o processo de ascensão e declínio do projeto de monitoria identificando as dinâmicas grupais estabelecidas em cada uma das suas cinco edições. Para tanto, utilizamos como referencial teórico a teoria de grupos operativos de Enrique Pichon-Rivière, que leva em conta aspectos subjetivos que permeiam o trabalho coletivo. Nossos dados foram compostos pelo relato do professor referente aos anos que não acompanhamos, e gravações em vídeo dos encontros, entrevistas com os monitores e com o professor e notas de campo dos anos em que estivemos presente nas reuniões de monitoria. Constatamos que fatores como a mudança de contexto do projeto (do primeiro para o terceiro ano do ensino médio), as relações afetivas estabelecidas entre os membros do grupo e o envolvimento da instituição são fatores importantes para a implantação de um projeto inovador no ambiente escolar. / In 2002, a Physics teacher from a private school in the city of São Paulo proposed a new project: students from the first year of High School acting as tutors of their classmates. Some students were selected and invited to take part in this project by assisting their classmates from the Physics class as if they were their tutors. They were supposed to be always available to help their classmates, coordinate \"doubt sessions\" in previously defined times and join other activities suggested by the teacher throughout the year. The group, formed by the tutors and the teacher, met once a week to discuss issues related to the project. In the following years, the experience was repeated with new groups of students and it was possible to notice good results, since they became more creative and capable of solving problems. After three successful years, we started observing the groups from 2005 and 2006, with students from the third year of High School. Unlike the previous years, the groups were little engaged in the task of helping the classmates and they didn\'t face the problems with creativity. That way, we proposed to investigate the process of rising and decline of the project identifying the group activities established in each one of the five editions. For that, we used as a reference, the operative groups\' theory of Enrique Pichon-Rivière, which considers the subjective aspects that concern the collective work. Our data came from the report of the teacher about the years we didn\'t observe, video records of the meetings, interviews with the tutors and with the teacher and notes from the years that we were present during the meetings of the project. We noticed that factors like the change of context of the project (from the first to the third year of High School), the affective relationships established among the members of the group and the engagement of the institutions are important to the establishment of an innovative project in the school environment.

Intelligent Tutoring Systems are notoriously costly to construct, and require PhD level experience in cognitive science and rule based programming. The purpose of this research was to ease the development process for building pseudo-tutors. Pseudo-tutors are ITS constructs that mimic cognitive tutors but are limited in that they only apply to a single problem. The Assistment Builder is a tool designed to rapidly create, test, and deploy simple pseudo-tutors. These tutors provide a simplified cognitive model based upon a state graph designed for a specific problem. These tutors offer many of the features of rule-based tutors, but with shorter creation time. The system simplifies the process of tutor creation to allow users with little or no ITS experience to develop content. The system provides a web-based interface as a means to build and store these simple tutors we have called Assistments. This paper describes our attempt to make the process of developing, testing, and deploying content easy for teachers. We present data to suggest that users can develop a tutor that can be released to students in approximately an hour.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD (Nursing) / Nursing is the largest healthcare profession in Malawi with more than 11,000 registered Nurses (RNs) and Nurse Technicians and Midwives (NTM) practicing in hospitals and other settings like nursing colleges nationwide. Nursing tutors in all the nursing colleges use numerous types of teaching aids in student preparation. There are numerous teaching strategies that suit pedagogical learning, however not all can yield the desired outcome and are properly applied in both classroom and clinical areas. Therefore, identifying the new teaching strategies for nurse tutors is very critical in nursing education hence this study concentrates on teaching competence, interaction and performance on the use of the strategies. Nurse tutors must encourage teaching and learning discovery through deliberate interactive teaching actions. However, some outcome actions, competences and performance or interactive behaviour of the nurse tutor are much to be desired in most nursing colleges in Malawi. Nurses need to possess classroom and clinical teaching competences to perform the role of a tutor properly.

Using the World Bank Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) 2004 data, propensity score matching is utilized to infer a causal impact of private tutoring on the numeracy, literacy, and total outcomes for fourth grade public school students. This research finds that students who self-report that they participate in private tutoring everyday as compared to their peers who never participate in private tutoring scored higher in literacy, numeracy, and total scores. A small Matthew Effect was found as the statistically significant variables used as predictors aligned with socio-economic status. This alignment depicts that the rich become academically richer while the poor become academically poorer. The hybrid public-private education system in Cambodia may be exacerbating inequity for the most marginalized populations.

abstract: Throughout the field of corrections in the United States, the prevalent question in regard to reentry preparation of offenders is, “what works?” With a renewed focus on providing meaningful program opportunities for offenders that enable real and sustained changes for reentry success, which has been partially driven by overcrowded prison systems and soaring corrections budgets, the quest has been energized for program models with results that are empirically based. As part of this quest, the Rand Corporation in 2014 (Davis, et al., 2014) published a comprehensive review of correctional education programs based on a meta-analysis of past studies and reported that offenders involved in education programs were significantly more likely to realize success after release from prison than those that were not involved in these programs. In their 2014 final report, the Rand Corporation made recommendations for research efforts at the state and federal levels (Davis et al., 2014). One of their recommendations was to determine what types of instruction and curriculum delivery are most effective in a correctional education setting. Another recommendation was to determine what principles from adult learning are applicable in correctional education. This study was designed to provide data for those two questions. This mixed methods, experimentally-designed study is framed in three research questions that are focused on gaining knowledge of the potential benefit of using trained peer tutors to supplement the instruction in adult basic education classes and General Education Development (GED) classes in a correctional environment. Theoretical applications are grounded in social learning theory and adult learning theories. Quantitative data were collected on academic performance, attendance, and perceived value and interest in education. Qualitative data supplemented and enhanced the quantitative data and provided an excellent insight into the thoughts of the tutors regarding their role in helping others. Statistical significance was found with the aid of the tutors in the adult basic education classes in terms of academic performance, but not with the GED class. Principles of andragogical instruction were examined, discussed, and supported by all students. Expressions of tutor support and help were repeatedly presented as beneficial during interviews. Further questions about attendance were raised. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2019

Writing Fellows Programs (WFP) are in effect among college campuses across the country, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Nova Southeastern University; however, Florida Atlantic University has yet to establish a peer tutoring program that is tied to writing-intensive courses that would enable disciplines across campus to share the responsibility of improving student writing instead of delegating the task to the English Department or college writing center. There is also an apparent disconnect between the writing skills being taught within the non-English Department courses and the work being done within the University Center for Excellence in Writing (UCEW) to teach the effectiveness of strong, academic writing to students. This disconnect can be eliminated with the help of peer tutors acting as the bridge connecting the faculty across the disciplines to the UCEW. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection