Thesis (Ed. Spec.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [149]-158).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2007. / Principal faculty advisor: Sharon Walpole, School of Education. Includes bibliographical references.

Faculty of Humanities School of Education 0201596p m.hendricks@ru.ac.za / This thesis analyses the classroom writing of learners in their additional languages at four differently resourced schools in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The choice of languages on offer at schools and the medium of instruction seldom meet current language education policy requirements of additive bilingualism needed to support children’s home language and general cognitive growth. The central question of my study concerns how school writing practices contribute to the development of learners’ writing ability. The data collected and analysed in order to investigate this were all the regular classroom writing of Grade 7 children in Afrikaans, English and isiXhosa, where these were additional languages, not the children’s home language. My findings were that there is no check by the Education Department on whether schools meet the official national curriculum policy requirements with regard to the amount of curriculum time allocated to language. Also, that there is a mismatch between the languages on offer at schools and the home languages of learners, and teachers, which is not monitored. My key findings with regard to writing were that there are significant differences and inequalities in the amounts that learners write at these schools across Afrikaans, English and isiXhosa. Decontextualised grammar tasks predominate in what learners write in all three languages at all four schools. Children write relatively few extended texts, and these are mainly personal expressive texts which are unlikely to develop their ability to write abstract, context-reduced genres. Teachers’ neglect of impersonal formal and factual genres at all four schools makes it difficult for learners to experience the benefits of writing these genres – that these genres set the basis for the development of abstract cognitivelydemanding language proficiency and disciplinary knowledge. In the case of English, which is the commonest medium of instruction even though it is the home language of less than 10% of the population, this shortcoming is especially serious.

Thesis (MEd (Education))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2017. / Since 2012, the poor literacy levels of intermediate phase (IP) learners have been a concern for officials in the Western Cape Education Department (WCED). Responding to the literacy crisis, the WCED has implemented the South African Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), along with various other literacy interventions, but in the West Coast District, IP learners’ writing skills remain poor. Focusing on the West Coast District, this thesis sheds light on the implementation of the writing-instruction practices prescribed by CAPS: specifically, the implementation of “shared writing” as a scaffolding method for teaching writing to learners. The thesis maps the theoretical and conceptual framework of the writing process, with an emphasis on shared writing. In particular, it discusses Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s ideas on social-cognitive development and scaffolding. The gradual release of responsibility (GRR) and balanced language approach (BLA) instruction models propose that a competent adult should interactively model the writing process to learners before group writing (practice) and independent writing (assessment) are attempted. While these stages of instruction are included in CAPS, this study investigated the extent of their implementation. Current literature in the field of writing instruction foregrounds the concepts of “thinking aloud” and “shared pen”, according to which the teacher and the learner co-compose a text, allowing learners to become competent writers. In this study, quantitative and qualitative research methods were used to describe and understand West Coast District IP Afrikaans Home Language (HL) teachers’ perceptions of their use of shared writing to teach the writing process. Data collection consisted of quantitative and qualitative questionnaires, as well as interviews, with results converted into percentages. Subsequent data analysis disclosed the patterns, strengths, and weaknesses experienced by IP Afrikaans HL teachers in the West Coast District. Current IP writing-instruction practices can provide the South African Department of Basic Education (DBE) with valuable insights into the implementation of shared writing, and of CAPS as a whole.

This thesis presents an investigation into secondary school English teachers’ and students’ conceptualisations of good writing, and how they might use their understandings of quality in writing for the purpose of improving writing. By focusing on the views and classroom practices of twelve-year-old students and their teachers, the research aims to advance understanding of teachers’ and students’ conceptual thinking about writing quality, and the underlying constructs. The research utilises data from an ESRC-funded project titled Grammar for Writing?: The Impact of Contextualised Grammar Teaching on Pupils’ Writing and Pupils’ Metalinguistic Understanding (grant number RES-062-23-0775). This data was gathered from thirty-one teachers and their Year 8 students over three terms. Lesson observations took place once each term, and were followed by interviews with each project teacher and one teacher-chosen student from each class. Interview questions relating to beliefs about good writing were included in the project schedules and were inductively analysed to discern themes in participants’ responses. Interviews with students took the form of ‘writing conversations’ during which students commented on samples of their own and their peers’ writing. A small-scale follow-up study with three Year 8 classes in one secondary school was used to confirm initial findings and to provide additional data on students’ beliefs about good writing. The research found that teachers’ conceptualisations of writing quality were internally consistent but that variation between teachers was marked. Teachers not only valued different qualities in writing but experienced different degrees of conflict and ambiguity when relating their personal construct of quality to the official, public construct, as embodied in national assessment criteria. The findings support earlier views of teacher judgement as richly textured and complex, drawing on different available indexes, including idiosyncratic conceptualisations of writing quality. Whilst students’ criteria for good writing echoed their teachers’ criteria to some extent, there was also evidence of students drawing on their own conceptualisations of quality, especially in relation to the intended impact of writing on the reader. Many students expressed a strong awareness of writing for an audience and clearly valued writing as a social practice. They especially valued peer judgement of their writing. However, students’ strategies for improving writing were often difficult to articulate, formulaic and generalised, or circumscribed by limited linguistic subject knowledge. The study is significant in offering an insight into teachers’ and students’ conceptualisations of writing quality and how these might be brought into play in the writing classroom. The findings may have particular resonance since they are reported at a time of radical change to assessment policy and practice in secondary schools in England.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-229).

nÃo hà / O jornal escolar pode ser utilizado nÃo apenas como instrumento de ensino-aprendizagem da linguagem escrita, mas tambÃm como mÃdia interativa entre os estudantes, proporcionando, assim, um desenvolvimento mais eficaz de seus letramentos. Partindo desse pressuposto, traÃamos como objetivo geral, para esta dissertaÃÃo, investigar as caracterÃsticas do letramento jornalÃstico de estudantes do ensino fundamental que compÃem o Clube do Jornal, em uma escola pÃblica municipal de tempo integral na cidade de Fortaleza, a partir do processo de editoraÃÃo e de divulgaÃÃo impressa do jornal escolar. Para alcanÃar o objetivo citado, adotamos os conceitos que Buckingham (2010) traÃou para descrever o letramento midiÃtico: produÃÃo, lÃngua, representaÃÃo e audiÃncia. Nesse percurso teÃrico, utilizamos ainda o estudo sobre gÃneros do discurso de Bakhtin (2003), o de letramentos sociais desenvolvido por Street (2014), bem como as ideias de Antunes (2003) sobre o ensino de lÃngua materna na escola e as abordagens de Baltar (2010) e de Bonini (2011) sobre o jornal escolar. Sendo uma pesquisa qualitativa, de cunho etnogrÃfico, utilizamos como tÃcnicas de construÃÃo de dados: observaÃÃo participante das aÃÃes desenvolvidas pelo Clube do Jornal; entrevista semiestruturada com dois membros pertencentes a cargos de gestÃo do clube; cartas pessoais redigidas pela maioria de seus integrantes e, por fim, coleta de amostras de trÃs ediÃÃes impressas do jornal escolar, divulgadas em 2017. Como resultados, percebemos que o processo de editoraÃÃo do jornal nÃo conta com uma efetiva orientaÃÃo, quanto à perspectiva dos letramentos, por parte dos professores e dos gestores da escola. A tarefa de produzir, entÃo, fica sob a dependÃncia do protagonismo intuitivo dos estudantes e de suas inferÃncias acerca do que eles conhecem a respeito da esfera midiÃtico-jornalÃstica. Desse modo, a produÃÃo dos gÃneros e a audiÃncia almejada pelos estudantes refletem, juntamente com as representaÃÃes veiculadas e com os usos que fazem da lÃngua escrita, aspectos de uma prÃtica de linguagem circunscrita predominantemente ao meio escolar, embora esses sujeitos realizem inovaÃÃes significativas quanto ao processo e ao produto desse suporte. Com isso, podemos concluir que o letramento jornalÃstico desses estudantes do Clube do Jornal ainda à bastante caracterizado pelos valores da cultura escolar, necessitando ser ampliado em possibilidades discursivas em relaÃÃo Ãs perspectivas crÃtica, social e ideolÃgica, considerando os multiletramentos, atravÃs de um olhar mais cuidadoso por parte dos agentes pedagÃgicos da instituiÃÃo.

Forskning har visat att fritidsskrivandet för dagens ungdomar har förändrats. Kopplat till detta är syftet med studien att undersöka elevers och lärares uppfattningar om elevers skrivande på fritiden samt vilka didaktiska implikationer detta kan få för svenskundervisningen. Metoden var semistrukturerade intervjuer med fyra elever i årskurs 9 och två svensklärare på högstadiet. Urvalet utgjordes av ett bekvämlighetsurval och ett målstyrt urval. Data delades in i teman och analyserades utifrån ett didaktiskt perspektiv. Som teoretisk utgångspunkt har kognitivt, sociokulturellt och multimedialt skrivande, den didaktiska triangeln och Self Determination Theory använts. Resultaten visar att fritidsskrivandet har förändrats från att ha liknat skolskrivande till att bli en helt annan skrivpraktik. Dessutom har lärare och elever något olika uppfattningar om vad som motiverar elever att skriva. Medan eleverna föredrar skrivande i ett socialt sammanhang och möjligheten att kombinera text med andra uttryckssätt betonar lärarna även utvecklandet av olika färdigheter som genreskrivande och skrivregler. Trots att lärarnas kunskaper om elevers fritidsskrivande är begränsad visar de en vilja att anpassa skrivundervisningen i skolan. En slutsats är att lärarna behöver lära sig mer om elevernas fritidsskrivande och även förmedla till eleverna att utvecklandet av kognitiva resurser kan förbättra deras fritidsskrivande. I och med detta skulle en bro mellan skol- och fritidsskrivande kunna byggas. / Research has shown that leisure writing for today’s youth has changed. Connected to this, the purpose of the study is to investigate students’ and teachers’ perceptions of students’ leisure writing and the didactic implications this may have for education in the Swedish subject. The method involved semi-structured interviews with four ninth-grade students and two Swedish teachers in secondary school. The selection consisted of a convenience sample and a purposeful sample. Data were categorized into themes and analyzed from a didactic perspective. Three theories on writing were used as a theoretical framework: cognitive, sociocultural, and multimodal, along with the didactic triangle and Self Determination Theory. The results show that leisure writing has evolved from resembling school writing to becoming a completely different writing practice. Furthermore, teachers and students have somewhat different views on what motivates students to write. While students prefer writing in a social context and the opportunity to combine text with other forms of expression, teachers also emphasize the development of various skills such as genre writing and writing norms. Despite teachers’ limited knowledge of student’s leisure writing, they show a willingness to adapt writing lessons. One conclusion is that teachers need to learn more about students’ leisure writing and convey to students that the development of cognitive resources can enhance their leisure writing. Through this, a bridge between school and leisure writing could be built.

This diploma thesis deals with applying fanfiction to the Czech language and literature lessons for the 2nd stage of basic school. The main focus is on writing with esthetical focus. First part deals with fanfiction set on its application in education. Next part is studying the demands of Czech curriculum on teaching writing methods and the goals and methods of creative writing. Third part opens the possibilities of fanfiction and discusses reasons why fanfiction is useful. It gives ideas how to use fanfiction in education in specific ways to explore student's literacy and other skills. Last part contains four lesson plans based on work with fanfiction and its curriculum's themes. Three of these lessons were experienced with years 7, 8 and 9 students. Applying fanfiction seems to be useful, especially with theme setting and students' motivation.