This thesis documents the findings of an intrinsic case study examining the impacts of a digital or e-classroom environment on the social, affective, and cognitive development of a group of 33 year 5 and 6 students, in an urban primary school in Northland, New Zealand.It examines the manner in which the e-classroom concept was developed and implemented, the rationale behind its development, and the role of key players in this process. It further examines the impact of this environment on student work processes and practices, and identifies the unique blend of teacher philosophy, curriculum design and organisation, and computer application that comprised the learning environment for these students.Results of this study indicate particular issues associated with the successful operation of this e-classroom. These issues relate to such aspects as difficulties in managing and monitoring student progress when engaged in the multiplicity of learning tasks enabled by such an environment, the importance of student group composition and selection, the limitations of computers in supporting important knowledge development, and the manner in which students interact with and manipulate the features of software.The thesis concludes by presenting an analysis of the impact that these, and other vital areas of student engagement with computers, have on the effectiveness of utilising technological resources in this manner. It presents a series of recommendations for changes to improve the effectiveness of the learning environment in this e-classroom, and identifies a series of considerations for other schools considering undertaking similar initiatives.

This study attempts to answer the question of why some children fail while others succeed in the first year of school when they appear to have at least average abilities and to come from family environments which seem, on the surface at least, to provide similar developmental opportunities. The researcher observed in ten, four-year-old children's homes over a period of four days for each child and followed these intensive home observations with three-monthly, informal interviews with adult family members. Each child was observed in school intensively, on entry to school and every three months following entry until six years of age. Informal interviews were conducted with the class teachers every three months. During the 'intensive' home and school observations continuous hand-written narrative recordings of natural communication incidents were made of all the oral language and activities of the focal child, and of the language and activities of other children and adults when what they said and did was in the vicinity of the focal child. Notes were made of the location, atmosphere, body language, people present, and focal objects throughout the time of the observations. Field notes were made each night after every home, school or pre-school visit. Each child was tested with a battery of tests on entry into school at five years, at five-and-a-half years and at six years. The gathering of these different data meant a wide variety of information about the child's total ecological environment was gathered. A variety of ways for examining the data for a relationship between the behaviours and social experience of the child which occurred at home and measures of achievement in school were explored. These included a variety of language variables (e. g. exposure to question types, statement types, amount of talk) and measures of variables related to socia-economic status and home environmental factors (e.g. the HOME Scale, Caldwell & Bradley, 1979). Al though some of these variables were significantly correlated with school achievement, it was not clear that the problem of why some children succeeded in school while others failed had been satisfactorily solved. A more detailed analysis of the data was carried out which differed from most other psychological or educational studies in that it focused on the underlying structures of the natural socio-linguistic patterns of interaction in both home and school first year classrooms. The task was to describe observable social interaction in terms of the underlying structures which characterised the home subcultural experience of the children and the sub-cultural learning (acculturation) required of the children in order to successfully adapt to the school environment. The theory generated to explain this complex problem was adapted from a theory sometimes termed script theory, or schema theory. It was developed into a framework which could deal with both children's present school experience and the children's past experience of the structure of meaningful social interactions. The results showed that the underlying structure of patterns of interaction (schema) which the children brought with them from home to school did indeed cause failure for some children at school. The children's experience of patterns of interaction in the homes which were like school patterns of interaction correlated 0.91 with achievement in school. The greater the variety of school-like patterns of interaction occurring in the homes the greater a child's achievement rate was likely to be. This study has implications for classroom organisation, for the structure of classroom patterns of interaction and for young people who come from home ecological environments which are significantly different from the present classroom environment. It is argued that children are our nation's most important resource and we need to examine with great care what we are doing to promote alternative classroom environments.

This study involved using a classroom environment questionnaire in North Carolina to assess and improve biology classroom environments and to relate classroom environment to the student outcomes of achievement and attitudes. Part 1 of the study involved 364 Grade 9 and 10 students in Biology 1 at a large comprehensive urban high school in Charlotte, North Carolina. These students completed preferred and actual forms of a modified version of the What Is Happening In this Class? learning environment questionnaire assessing student cohesiveness, teacher support, involvement, investigation, task orientation, cooperation, and equity. Also an eight-item scale from the Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA) was included to measure students' attitudes towards science. Finally, student achievement in biology was assessed using the results of a districtwide achievement test. Analyses of data collected in Part 1 of the study supported the WIHIC's a priori factor structure, internal consistency reliability, discriminant validity and ability to differentiate between the perceptions of students in different classrooms. Investigation of gender and ethnic (black vs non-black) differences in classroom environment revealed no ethnic differences, but there were gender differences for several scales (with boys perceiving more involvement and investigation and less cooperation than girls). / Various analyses of outcome-environment relationships suggested that student achievement is higher in more cohesive classes, whereas student attitudes to science are particularly favourable in investigative, task-oriented and equitable classes. Part 2 involved one class in intervention aimed at improving both classroom environment and student achievement by giving greater emphasis to those features of the learning environment found to be empirically linked to achievement in Part 1. The students involved in the intervention were chosen because they were `at risk' of failing at school. It was found that this intervention involving a cooperative action research plan led to improvement in both classroom environment and achievement for these `at risk' students. Because the methods used in the intervention are lowcost and available to most teachers, they are of wide potential interest to others.

A sample of 817 Grade 4-5 mathematics students in the diverse school district of Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS), Florida, USA was involved in an evaluation of the use of hands-on activities in terms of students' achievement, students' attitudes and students' perceptions of the mathematics classroom environment. Other aims included validating generally-applicable measures of classroom learning environments and students' attitudes to mathematics, and investigating associations between the classroom learning environment and the student outcomes of performance and attitudes. The study was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 had a sample of 442 participants and classroom environment was assessed with scales selected from the My Class Inventory, Questionnaire on Teacher lnteraction and Science Laboratory Environment Inventory. Factor analysis provided a degree of support for the factorial validity and internal consistency reliability (using Cronbach's alpha coefficient) for each of five classroom environment scales. Because of the small number of items per scale (15 items in five scales for the My Class Inventory, 12 items in four scales for the Question on Teacher Interaction and 15 items in five scales for the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory) in Phase I, it was not possible to replicate the a priori factor structure of each instrument scale. Scale reliabilities generally were acceptable. Phase 2, involving a sample of 375 Grades 4 and 5 students in four elementary schools, was necessary because questionnaires in Phase 1 had too few items to enable the researcher to establish satisfactory levels of reliability and validity. / The What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC) was modified to four scales and 29 questions for use in Phase 2. Factor analysis supported the structure of the WIHIC and internal consistency reliability was satisfactory for two units of analyses, namely, the individual and the class mean. In Phase 1 of the study, differences between an experimental group (that used manipulatives for 60% of the time) and a control group (that used manipulatives for less than 40% of the time), were described in terms of the effect size (magnitude of the difference in standard deviations) and statistical significance for each learning environment, attitude, and achievement scale. Differences between the pretest and posttest for the set of six dependent variables (Student Cohesiveness, Teacher Support, Task Orientation, Cooperation from the WIHIC and Adoption of Mathematical Attitudes and Enjoyment of Mathematics Lessons for the TOMRA) were analyzed in Phase 2 using a MANOVA for repeated measures. Effect sizes were used to describe the magnitude, as distinct from the statistical significance, of prepost changes. In Phase 2, associations between student attitudes and their perceptions of the learning environment were relatively weak for both pretest and posttest data with either the individual or the class mean as the as the unit of analysis. These results were unexpected and are inconsistent with past research, therefore highlighting the need for further research.

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