This thesis examines the strategies young children use to develop a common set of goals when collaborating on a group art work. Teachers at Sabot School spend a great deal of time in discussion of children's group work. By concentrating on one project in my preschool classroom, I reached a greater understanding of the way children work together on a group project. This understanding enriched my practice of teaching so that I could become a better facilitator of similar projects in the future. The information is valuable to me and the other Sabot School teachers when planning future group projects, especially when discussing strategies for supporting children's group processes. It is also be of value to teachers and education students who are interested in learning about the Reggio Emilia approach in American classrooms, social constructivism in the classroom, and the possibilities of art in early childhood. In this project, my four and five year old students worked together to create a clay sculpture of a wild area outside the playground fence at our school. I was interested in the way I could support this group project using Vygotsky's idea of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). In the ZPD a child can accomplish tasks they are not developmentally ready to master if they have the support of a teacher or more skilled peer. This study revealed that children and teachers can use words and actions to support cognitive as well as social-emotional learning while working together.

The study explored the relationship of play and development in adolescents. It was developed to determine if play in adolescents has a cognitive developmental purpose. The research design was a quantitative study with qualitative elements. The design of the study consisted two groups of participants who engaged in either a computer program to test cognitive skills or a computer game which contains the same tests. The participants (N = 216) were adolescent males and females (ages 12-19) from urban mid-Atlantic Catholic high schools. After vetting the data, the total was N = 167 and only included males (ages 14-19). The study indicated that adolescent males performed the cognitive tasks of memory and reading better in the play condition than the work condition and performed the cognitive tasks of logic and mathematics better in the work condition than the play condition. Differences in performance related to age are not present. This study suggests that play may have an effect on adolescents’ cognitive development; therefore, it can be used as an effective method for some types of instruction. The study may contribute to the literature with the groundwork for further research exploring the cognitive nature of play in adolescents and its potential impact on identity formation.

Student Number : 0111318E - M Ed research report - School of Education - Faculty of Humanities / This research report explores the unique nature of literature and its efficacy as a dialogically mediating tool. In this study, drawing primarily on the theories of Vygotsky and Bakhtin, the dialogical small-group teaching of nine A Level students is considered, (with the teaching aimed to be within this group’s Zone of Proximal Development) it was found axiomatic that there was a supporting framework of schemes, tropes, narrative role taking, schemata theory and genre, among other concepts. Qualitative analysis of the edited transcripts from eight consecutive seminars substantiates these theoretical presumptions and leads to the conclusion that literature, in this case the prescribed poems of Elizabeth Jennings, is an highly efficacious, dialogically mediating, pedagogical tool.

This study aims to develop assessment which measures learning progressions for important scientific concepts such as oxidation-reduction (redox) and to identify students¡¦ zone of proximal development (ZPD) through teaching practice incorporating assessment feedback. The assessment items of redox were developed based on the framework of the BEAR (Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research) Assessment System. Six experts from chemistry, science education, and educational assessment, and three high school chemistry teachers with fruitful instructional experiences were recruited into the assessment team. Through 24 panel discussions, 28 ordered multiple-choice items were developed. Two samples of Taiwanese middle-school students participated in the test development: one for item revision and the other for validation. Sample 1 and 2 consisted of 626 middle school students (304 8th graders and 322 9th graders) and 903 9th graders, respectively. The materials for instruction integrated assessment feedback were designed by the researcher and two middle-school science teachers through seven group meetings. A teaching experiment was implemented to examine the effect of assessment feedback on students¡¦ understandings of redox and to identify their ZPD. The teaching experiment employed a quasi-experiment with a non-equivalent-group pretest-posttest design. Participants were 196 eighth graders (101 boys and 95 girls) from three middle schools. The findings showed that (a) the BEAR assessment system and Rasch measurement approaches provided a feasible framework for developing validated tools to assess learning progressions; (b) the empirical data supported students¡¦ learning of redox concept usually progressed ¡§from uni-structure to multi-structure¡¨ and ¡§from discrete sub-concepts to integrated concepts¡¨; (c) the teaching practice integrated assessment feedback effectively facilitated students¡¦ understanding of scientific concepts; (d) the assessment of learning progressions provided a mechanism for identifying students¡¦ ZPD and helped realize the abtract idea of ZPD in teaching practices. The main contributions of the study included (a) demostrating how to carry out the idea of ZPD into teaching practices through linking learning progressions and ZPD; (b) presenting how to apply BEAR assessment system and Rasch techniques to develop tools for assessing learning progressions; (c) developing a set of items for assessing learning progressions of redox and a series of materials for teaching practices integrated assessment feedback.

This study examined teachers' learning and understanding of mathematical representation through the Middle School Mathematics Project (MSMP) professional development, investigated teachers' use of mathematics representations in teaching fractions and algebraic functions, and addressed patterns of teachers' changes in learning and using representation corresponding to Teachers' Zone of Proximal Development (TZPD). Using a qualitative research design, data were collected over a 2-year period, from eleven participating 6th and 7th grade mathematics teachers from four school districts in Texas in a research-designed professional development workshop that focused on helping teachers understand and use of mathematical representations. Teachers were given two questionnaires and had lessons videotaped before and after the workshop, a survey before the workshop, and learning and discussion videotapes during the workshop. In addition, ten teachers were interviewed to find out the patterns of their changes in learning and using mathematics representations. The results show that all teachers have levels of TZPD which can move to a higher level with the help of capable others. Teachers' knowledge growth is measurable and follows a sequential order of TZPD. Teachers will make transitions once they grasp the specific content and strategies in mathematics representation. The patterns of teacher change depend on their learning and use of mathematics representations and their beliefs about them. This study advocates teachers using mathematics representations as a tool in making connections between concrete and abstract understanding. Teachers should understand and be able to develop multiple representations to facilitate students' conceptual understanding without relying on any one particular representation. They must focus on the conceptual developmental transformation from one representation to another. They should also understand their students' appropriate development levels in mathematical representations. The findings suggest that TZPD can be used as an approach in professional development to design programs for effecting teacher changes. Professional developers should provide teachers with opportunities to interact with peers and reflect on their teaching. More importantly, teachers' differences in beliefs and backgrounds must be considered when designing professional development. In addition, professional development should focus on roles and strategies of representations, with ongoing and sustained support for teachers as they integrate representation strategies into their daily teaching.

<p>Inom området barnets utveckling borde pedagogiken och kognitionsvetenskapen samarbeta. Pedagogikinriktningen Reggio Emilia påstår bygga sin verksamhet på delar av bland annat Vygotskys teorier. I denna rapport utvärderas detta påstående utifrån frågan: Har förskollärarna inom Reggio Emilia-förskolan stöd hos Vygotskys teorier när det gäller deras roll i barnets vardagsspråkliga utveckling. Reggio Emilia-inriktningens och Vygotskys åsikter om språk och lärarens roll analyseras och jämförs med ett hermeneutiskt angreppssätt. Analysen visar att det finns skillnader mellan Reggio Emilia-inriktningens syn på förskollärarens roll när det gäller barnets vardagsspråkliga utveckling och Vygotskys teorier inom området. Trots skillnaderna visar ändå analysen att Reggio Emilia-inriktningen har fått stora influenser ifrån Vygotsky. Resultatet visar således att även om stödet från Vygotskys teorier inte är hundraprocentigt så finns det där. Undersökningen visar också att pedagogiken och kognitionsvetenskapen kan samarbeta framgångsrikt.</p>

The purpose of this degree project has been to examine the implications of the provision of certain methodological support mechanisms, what has often been referred to as "instructional scaffolding" in literary didactics, to assist students in the ESL/EFL classroom in their interaction with the various literary texts into which they come into contact during their English language education at the upper secondary level in Sweden. My primary interest has been to gauge the response of the students involved in this study to the particular types of literary didactic methods utilized, for example, regarding their effectiveness in aiding the learning process as well as their impact on the literary, or aesthetic, experience itself. An analysis of student responses to a literature instruction module based on a reading of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness will demonstrate that certain forms of literary didactic methods in general, and significantly, particular forms of what can be conceptualized as instructional scaffolding, play a crucial role for both the learning process and the student's aesthetic experience of literature.

This thesis explores the effectiveness of a professional education model that was specifically developed for on-the-job training to assist seven child care trainees in six Child Care Centres in Queensland, Australia, to develop the competencies, motives, strategies and processes required to become expert educarers of pre-school age children. The intervention, which took place over 65 days, was implemented by six expert educarers who had previously been trained in using the Zone of Proximal Development (socio-cultural theory) to extend both the adult and the child learner’s development. The educarers were asked to assist the trainees’ demonstration of motives, strategies, and processes during daily activities, and the educarers and trainees were asked to assist the children’s demonstration of competencies in daily activities through the Zone of Proximal Development. As mass training for child care workers in group child care is still a relatively new phenomenon in Australia, and as little research has addressed both an adult and child learner’s demonstration of competencies in the workplace with a permanent work-based instructor interacting through the Zone of Proximal Development, qualitative and quantitative approaches to analysing the data were chosen. These approaches present both a descriptive and a measured analysis of the day-to-day operations in which the training occurred. The study aimed to generate substantive theoretical ideas by extending socio-cultural theory (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988) with Activity Theory (Leont’ev, 1979), Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and Cognitive Apprenticeship (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989). Data collection occurred through questionnaires at three periods of the study, through pre- and post-training Semantic Differentials, through the trainees’ daily journals and the professional tutors’ comments, and the educarers’ weekly and monthly reports. The study provides a triangulated perspective of two foci. The primary focus was on the changing relationship of the trainees with the educarers during the training programme, and whether this led to a converging understanding and the development of an evolving, mutual meaning structure. The perspectives are the trainees, the educarers, and their joint interactions. The personal experiences of the trainees as observers and participants in the day to day activities of the centre are interwoven with the modelling and assistance of the educarers and demonstration of the children. The results revealed that some of the trainees’ relationships with some of the educarers changed over three phases. These changes demonstrated that, in Phase I, the trainees observed and practiced activities under the supervision of the educarers who instructed them what to do and why, and discussed parents, as they started to develop a mutual meaning structure. Their relationship reflected that of a novice-expert. In Phase II the seven trainees acted independently, planning and implementing minor activities, still under the educarer’s supervision however. In this phase the educarers modelled, observed, and commented on the trainees’ performance, as an evolving mutual meaning structure that reflected an aspiring expert-expert relationship developed. Three trainees attained only Phase II, while the other four continued into Phase III. In Phase III, the four trainees planned and implemented major activities independently while the educarers observed and commented on their performance and engaged jointly in tasks. Their relationships, which evidenced a developing and evolving mutual meaning structure reflecting a converging understanding, became collaborative for one dyad, one educarer perceived the relationship was collaborative and the trainee perceived it to be an aspiring expert-expert, while the other two dyads demonstrated an expert-expert relationship. It appears that the trainees, who experienced education motives with various strategies and processes implemented by the educarers through the ZPD in the training programme, demonstrated the greatest change in the relationships. For these trainees the peripherality of participation changed from Phase I, operating at the outer peripherality of the child care practice to operating closer to the centre of the practice in Phase II. The four trainees who transitioned to the centre of the practice in Phase III experienced educarers who exhibited consistent motives with flexible strategies and processes combining a wide variety of interactions through the ZPD. Emerging from the data, a dominant authentic activity, and a secondary aspect of this study was classroom management in general and morally acceptable behaviour (MAB) in particular. The dominance of this activity reinforces Tharp and Gallimore’s (1988) finding that classroom management was the most stressful activity for first year teachers. The trainees’ appropriation of the motives, strategies and processes in episodes of morally acceptable behaviour as modelled by the educarers, showed, over the study, a convergence of understanding and the development of an evolving mutual meaning structure between the dyads. The second focus of the study provides a triangulated perspective on the changes in the relationship between the trainees and children during the training programme. The trainees’ and children’s demonstration of competencies in morally acceptable behaviour is also addressed in this section: the perspectives are the trainees, the educarers and joint trainee-child interactions. The results reveal that the trainees’ relationship with children changed over the three Phases of the training programme. With a minor focus on children in Phase I, the trainees observed and practiced implementing activities demonstrating a novice-novice relationship. In Phase II, increasing their focus on children, the trainees took responsibility in minor activities demonstrating an aspiring expert-novice relationship. However in Phase III, with a dominant focus on children, expert-novice relationships were apparent. The four competencies developed for trainees to facilitate the children’s demonstration of competencies in morally acceptable behaviour, discussing feelings and discussing actions, and showing verbal and non-verbal empathy, were acquired and used by the trainees who experienced education motives in the training programme, in Phases II and III. Concurrently, the children developed and increased their competencies in verbal and non-verbal acceptance of the interventions, and showed increased understanding of cause and effect and the ability to formulate hypotheses. Changes were also evidenced in the trainees’ conceptual understanding of educaring children as they integrated the concepts of discipline and control with three other essentials of educaring (caring, teaching and learning), into their conceptual understanding of educaring over the study. The development of an evolving, mutual meaning structure of the authentic activities that were practiced in the child care centres, showed a converging understanding was being established between educarers, trainees and children. There was also evidence of reciprocal assistance. Influence, assistance and teaching were not a one-way process. They did not flow in one direction only, from professional tutor to educarer to trainee to child. The child in turn influenced the trainee who influenced the educarer who influenced the professional tutor.

Inom området barnets utveckling borde pedagogiken och kognitionsvetenskapen samarbeta. Pedagogikinriktningen Reggio Emilia påstår bygga sin verksamhet på delar av bland annat Vygotskys teorier. I denna rapport utvärderas detta påstående utifrån frågan: Har förskollärarna inom Reggio Emilia-förskolan stöd hos Vygotskys teorier när det gäller deras roll i barnets vardagsspråkliga utveckling. Reggio Emilia-inriktningens och Vygotskys åsikter om språk och lärarens roll analyseras och jämförs med ett hermeneutiskt angreppssätt. Analysen visar att det finns skillnader mellan Reggio Emilia-inriktningens syn på förskollärarens roll när det gäller barnets vardagsspråkliga utveckling och Vygotskys teorier inom området. Trots skillnaderna visar ändå analysen att Reggio Emilia-inriktningen har fått stora influenser ifrån Vygotsky. Resultatet visar således att även om stödet från Vygotskys teorier inte är hundraprocentigt så finns det där. Undersökningen visar också att pedagogiken och kognitionsvetenskapen kan samarbeta framgångsrikt.

Abstract This study investigates the relationship between play and child development. This work is the continuation of a thesis on children’s verbal creativity stimulated by dialogical drama intervention which I defended in 2001 at the Vilnius Pedagogical University, Lithuania. The first doctoral thesis in educology resulted in the main intervention method (Dialogical Drama with Puppets) used in this project. The theoretical framework of the study is based on cultural-historical theories developed by Vygotsky and his followers. This approach has influenced on the methodological choices of the study and the concept of the zone of proximal development is a central concept in Vygotskian theory of human cultural development. The concept has been elaborated in an earlier publication (Hakkarainen &#38; Bredikyte 2008) and is now used as an analytic tool. Other theoretical concepts of Vygotsky like the social situation of development, the unit, environment and mechanism of development are used. This study is a small sample from the whole research project, which integrated research studies, theoretical courses and practice of master’s degree students in early education. For families and children the project was a play club. From the theoretical point of view the project was a “genetic experiment”, a “playworld” and intervention study aiming at joint creative play of adults and children. In cultural-historical theory (cultural) environment is the source of qualitative developmental changes of individuals, but each child has to be motivated and self carry out developmental acts. These theoretical principles require special forms of social interaction “mutual interventions”. The methodological approach opens a new perspective to the study of play and development. Individual play development of some children is followed up several years. Cumulative effects and qualitative changes can be detected easier in this setting. Multi-age child groups change our understanding about play development. Empirical part of this study consists of a few cases, which demonstrate what kind of developmental trajectories are possible. It is impossible to tell exactly what the effect of our play environment is, but observations and interpretations can guide further research activity. The results of this study demonstrate in which conditions narrative intervention in joint playworld environment can lead to creative acts, what steps are necessary in the development of joint play, how mutuality in adult-child play supports child development, and what elements are essential in play producing pedagogy and professional growth. / Tiivistelmä Tämä tutkimus selvittää leikin ja lasten kehityksen välistä yhteyttä. Siinä työssä jatkuu tekijän edellisessä Vilnan pedagogisen yliopiston edukologian väitöskirjassa 2001 aloittama lasten luovuuden tutkimus dialogista draamaa käyttäen. Tämä tutkimus tuotti keskeisen intervention menetelmän (Dialoginen nukkedraama), jota nyt käytetään. Tämän tutkimuksen viitekehys perustuu Vygotskin ja hänen seuraajiensa kehittelemään kulttuuri-historialliseen teoriaan. Metodologiset ratkaisut ja Vygotskin kulttuurisen kehityksen teorian keskeinen käsite – lähikehityksen vyöhyke – ovat vaikuttaneet tutkimuksen toteutukseen. Tätä käsitettä on kehitelty aikaisemmassa julkaisussa (Hakkarainen &#38; Bredikyte, 2008) ja sitä käytetään nyt analyyttisenä työvälineenä. Vygotskin muitakin teoreettisia käsitteitä kuten ”kehityksen sosiaalinen tilanne”, ”kehityksen analyysiyksikkö”, ”kehityksen ympäristö”, ja ”kehitysmekanismi” on otettu käyttöön. Tämä tutkimus on pieni siivu koko tutkimusprojektista, johon kytkeytyi varhaiskasvatuksen maisteriopiskelijoiden tutkimusopintoja, teoriakursseja ja harjoittelua. Perheiden ja osallistuvien lasten näkökulmasta projekti oli leikkikerho. Teoreettiselta näkökulmalta projektin ydin oli ”geneettinen eksperimentti”, ”leikkimaailma” ja ”interventiotutkimus”, joka pyrkii saamaan aikaan aikuisten ja lasten yhteistä luovaa leikkiä. Kulttuuri-historiallisessa teoriassa (psykologinen/ kulttuurinen) ymäristö on yksilön laadullisten kehityksen muutosten lähde, mutta jokaisen lapsen on oltava motivoitunut ja itse toteutettava kehittävät teot. Nämä teoreettiset periaatteet edellyttävät erityistä sosiaalisen vuorovaikutuksen muotoa ”vastavuoroista interventiota”. Käytetty metodologinen lähestymistapa avaa uuden mahdollisuuden tutkia leikkiä ja kehitystä. Joidenkin yksittäisten lasten leikin kehitystä on voitu seurata useita vuosia. Kasautuvat vaikutukset ja laadulliset muutokset voidaan todeta helpommin tällaisella tutkimusotteella. Eri-ikäisten lasten yhteiset leikkiryhmät auttavat ymmärtämään paremmin leikin olemusta ja kehitystä. Tutkimuksen empiirinen osa muodostuu yksitäistapauksista, jotka kertovat millaiset kehityskaaret ovat mahdollisia. Tarkkoja syitä ja seurauksia ei ole mahdollista leikkiympäristössä osoittaa, mutta havainnot ja tulkinnat ohjaavat jatkotutkimusta. Tutkimuksen tulokset kertovat millaisissa olosuhteissa narratiivinen interventio yhteisessä leikkiympäristössä voi johtaa luoviin tekoihin, miten yhteinen leikki voi kehittyä ja kehittää, millainen vastavuoroisuus aikuisen ja lasten leikissä tukee kehitystä sekä mitkä asiat ovat välttämättömiä leikin pedagogiikassa ja ammatillisessa kasvussa.