Young children develop language and early literacy interactions that are the building blocks for future skilled reading. This study was designed to evaluate the early childhood classroom to determine teachers‟ knowledge of early literacy. Based on the Literacy Environment Checklist (LEC) of the Early Literacy and Language Classroom Observation (ELLCO) tool, the classrooms scored 100% proficiency in the Book Area and Book Selection categories. The results indicate the prekindergarten teachers knew how to design their classrooms to enhance early literacy. The classrooms scored 86% proficiency in the Writing Materials category, 73% proficiency in the Writing around the Room category, and 58% proficiency in the Book Use category. These results indicate that the teachers did not utilize early literacy materials or did not have necessary early literacy materials in the classrooms. Many of the teachers had minimal early literacy training. Without specific early literacy training, teachers did not design their classrooms in ways that would enhance early literacy.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to extend the understanding of the characteristics of a classroom environment that impact students’ engagement in academics and therefore has the potential to positively impact student achievement scores. Data were collected through content analysis to analyze for reoccurring themes to assess how the characteristics of the classroom environment impact student’s achievement. Ten classrooms within the Kingsport City District were observed and analyzed for this study. Six research questions guided this study, and qualitative data were analyzed for reoccurring themes. Findings from this study suggest that implementing certain characteristics in to the classroom environment can positively impact students’ academic success. The development and construction of classroom environments should include such characteristics as positive discipline, well laid out and organized classrooms, accountable talks, collaborative groups, positive teacher student interaction, and learning targets. As a result of this research a recommendation for practice is that districts support the development of classrooms that would positively impact student’s achievement.

No description available.

Contemporary neuroscientific evidence indicates that unrestricted movement and gesture enhance children’s physical, social and cognitive development by engaging them with the external properties of their environments. Current understanding of children’s engagement with indoor environments is limited. This knowledge gap matters because children’s health, social abilities and cognitive development may be compromised in physical environments that inhibit rather than enhance their movement capacities. This gap is especially problematic for physically disabled children because their motor impairments, exclusionary societal attitudes, safety concerns and environmental barriers curtail their movement. In this study, I describe and interpret the relationship between disabled and non-disabled children’s movement and a kindergarten classroom. Their bodies were conceptualized according to Deleuze’s premise that nothing can be known about bodies until they demonstrate what they can do (1988). The classroom was conceptualized according to Gibson’s theory of affordances, which posits that people and environments are inextricably related (1979). I used a choreographic perspective underpinned by Manning’s philosophy of relational movement (2009) to accentuate the dynamic reciprocity between children’s bodies and the classroom. Eight disabled and 12 non-disabled children participated in this interdisciplinary, ethnographic study. Data were elicited through observations, video recordings and semi-structured interviews. I developed a taxonomy of indoor affordances or ‘compositional elements’ to categorize classroom objects/features that children discovered and actualized through their movement interactions. Subsequently, I observed a dance-in-the-making that led to deeper understandings of the relational and emergent properties of these interactions. Findings suggest that assemblages of bodies, objects and features trigger dynamic movement, and indicate that disabled and non-disabled children alike discover and creatively assemble affordances to facilitate their movement. Overall, my findings recast children’s body-environment interactions and contribute to understandings about environmental features that enhance or inhibit movement capacities. This knowledge could be used to design i) learning environments that are redolent of movement possibilities, ii) interventions to enhance children’s physical, social and cognitive capacities, and iii) education and rehabilitation strategies that encourage them to explore, navigate and shape their environments.

With increasing access to powerful computer processing and broadband Internet connectivity, persistent immersive worlds like Second Life are being adopted for use as virtual learning environments. The flexibility of these spaces, however, offers little innate direction for educators in terms of design and pedagogy considerations, creating a space for research, shared experience, and possibly the development of “best practices” literature. This multiple-case study explores the unique affordances of immersive environments for distance education with reference to the design, pedagogy, and student experience of two university-accredited courses taught entirely “in-world” on the Second Life platform.

With increasing access to powerful computer processing and broadband Internet connectivity, persistent immersive worlds like Second Life are being adopted for use as virtual learning environments. The flexibility of these spaces, however, offers little innate direction for educators in terms of design and pedagogy considerations, creating a space for research, shared experience, and possibly the development of “best practices” literature. This multiple-case study explores the unique affordances of immersive environments for distance education with reference to the design, pedagogy, and student experience of two university-accredited courses taught entirely “in-world” on the Second Life platform.

This thesis focuses on how different semiotic resources, such as spoken and written texts, artefacts and activities interact with classroom design and classroom communication in three school subjects in Swedish secondary school: Home and Consumer Studies, Biology and Chemistry. The research process has been concerned with the affordances that are created through different semiotic resources in classroom design and in classroom communication in the three school subjects, focusing on academic language and student participation. The study used an ethnographic approach, employing multiple methods for material production and analysis. Video and audio recordings formed the foundation for analysis. Material production also includes field notes, photographs and interviews with teachers and students. The research draws on sociocultural theory using a three-legged theoretical framework based in sociocultural theory. Basil Bernstein’s sociological theories were used as an overarching theory for understanding the results. The sociosemiotic theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Social Semiotic Multimodality were adopted for analyzing classroom design and classroom communication. This study shows that classroom design and classroom communication are tied together. Classroom design presents affordances for a subject’s ideational and interpersonal meaning. These affordances are reproduced in classroom communication. In classrooms with subject-focused design, classroom communication is school-focused. Learning is segmented without connection between school subjects or other contexts. In one classroom, designed to create relevance for both school and everyday knowledge, communication is both school-focused and also creates relevance for students’ use of the contents in other contexts. Learning in this classroom is cumulative and students’ participation and meaning-making is integrated in teaching and design. This study also shows how different semiotic resources influence teacher’s and students’ linguistic choices. Vertical discourse, i.e. abstract and distant academic language, is realised in written texts such as text books and whiteboard texts. Few other artefacts introduce and encourage participants’ vertical discourse. Teacher and student communication realises mainly horizontal discourse, i.e. context embedded everyday language. Classroom communication provides few opportunities for students to appropriate academic language through semantic waves, as academic language is only unpacked into everyday language and not repacked into academic language.

abstract: The development of literacy abilities in young children has been a major concern for authorities and teachers in the USA for the last two decades. Significant effort has been devoted to ensure that preschool settings allow and motivate children to engage in literacy activities before entering kindergarten. Research has found that a rich classroom environment in preschool settings enables teachers to encourage literacy interest in children at a young age. While a large amount of research has concentrated in testing the effect of prescriptive modifications in the classroom environment, few have focused on studying the design process and tools that teachers follow to design their classrooms. Public policy and research studies in the United States, mention the design of the classroom environment among teacher's responsibilities, but they do not include practical or methodological guides for them to use. The purpose of this research was to study the design process and tools that teachers use to design literacy rich classrooms in preschool settings. A case study was conducted at the ASU Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College Preschool at Arizona State University. This setting provides a unique opportunity for an exploratory study of this nature because it is a private child development laboratory with a flexible curriculum. Participant observation sessions and in depth semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the design process used and experienced by the teachers. Findings revealed an iterative and cyclic design process that is repeated over time adjusting to the influence of numerous factors. Results also suggest that teacher's knowledge and beliefs highly influence the organization of their classrooms. Considering these factors as a standpoint allows for further exploration to determine a design process suitable for teachers when designing their learning environments. The use of a structured yet flexible design process, can be a potential tool for educators to design their classrooms, collaborate, document and transmit their knowledge. Although the findings correspond to a specific site studied, the implications are wide reaching as problems and opportunities expressed by the staff are common to other educational settings with similar characteristics. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S.D. Design 2013

No description available.

本研究的主要目的，在調查臺北縣市國小普通教室空間規畫之現況以及近十年內之趨勢，瞭解臺北縣市國小教師教學型態運用情形並探討其與教室空間規畫的關係、調查教師認為其教學所需之普通教室空間形式與附屬教學設備為何、進而提出對普通教室教學空間規畫的建議，俾作為未來普通教室空間規畫之參考。 本研究選取臺北縣、市各38所學校為研究對象，每所學校各抽取12位(偏遠學校為6位)班級的導師共864位為研究對象(有效樣本526人，包含臺北縣233人、臺北市293人)，進行問卷調查，並以次數百分比統計和卡方考驗進行分析，從研究結果發現中我們得到以下的結論： 壹、臺北縣市國小普通教室空間規畫之現況 一、近十年來之學校空間設計朝多元化、彈性化之開放空間的趨勢發展 1.教室平形狀擺脫標準之「傳統長方形平面」的窠臼 2.教室空間形式之設計趨向多邊形、開放、彈性之原則 3.教室走廊空間形式由單邊走廊之單一形式轉變為雙邊走廊之多用途形式 4.舊校設備比新校設備的數量多 二、班級座位安排法的多元化與校舍新舊、教室空間形式、課桌形式以及教師教學型態等因素的差異性達顯著 三、學習角落的設置需要空間，並和教師教學型態有關 貳、臺北縣市國小教師之教學型態及其與教學空間規畫之關係 一、教師教學型態多元化程度與普通教室空間形式、教室附屬教學設備多寡等教室空間設計因素的差異性達顯著 二、教師教學型態多元化程度與教室課桌形式、班級座位安排法以及學習角落設置個數等教室空間配置等因素的差異性達顯著 參、教學革新趨勢下教師理想中之普通教室空間規畫 　一、絕大多數教師心目中的理想教室空間為彈性、開放、多元化的空間 　二、有七成的教師認為理想的座位安排方式為小組式座位安排法，而有六成教師認為理想的課桌椅形式為長方形單人課桌 　三、有五成以上教師認為最需要的附屬教學設備以科技化教學設備為主，也有五成以上教師認為最需要設置的學習角落為語文圖書角、電腦角與遊戲角。 研究者根據文獻探討與研究發現，提出下列幾點建議： 一、普通教室平面形狀方面，應配合班級人數來設計長短邊之比例 二、普通教室空間形式方面，應以開放、彈性、多元化為原則 三、普通教室走廊空間的設計應以具多用途功能之空間為原則 四、普通教室附屬教學設備應增加科技化教學設備的設置 五、革新課桌椅形式，以利教師依教學需求變化班級座位安排 六、教師應依學生學習之需求彈性地調整教室空間的配置，並提昇使用教學設備的能力 七、未來研究可以進一步地針對不同教室空間的個案進行深入的觀察與訪談，來探討其對教師教學的影響