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This report describes a study of how the teachers in Sweden are working with the dialog in their classrooms. The aim was to find out how the teachers are using the dialog in their teaching. And if they think that the dialog has a meaning for the pupils learning, and how they think the pupils learn. Even the difficulties whit the use of dialog in the classrooms and which in the classroom should speak the most was examined. The methods that I used in this qualitative report were interviews and observations of four teachers in the primary school. The research questions in this report were: Which meaning do the teachers think that dialog affects the pupils learning? How does the teachers work whit dialog in their classrooms? Who is leading the dialog in the classroom? Which are the difficulties when working with dialog in the classrooms? I found out that the teachers view on knowledge belonged together with how they worked with the dialog. The teachers that had a more social constructivism view hade more dialog in their classrooms then the other. But all the teachers thought that pupils will learn more if they are using dialog. The teachers disagreed of how much the teacher should talk in the classroom. Some of the teacher meant that they should have the most of the dialog and some that the pupils should have the most dialog, and the teachers job was to support them in this. Even here had the teachers view on knowledge a part in how they think about who should leading the dialog. But all the teachers were working with dialog in their classrooms, and they used the most ordinary methods either the “dialogic classroom” or the “deliberativa talking”. The difficulties that the teachers brought up were the sound volume, the difficulties of knowing who should speak, and how to distribute the word. Also to get the pupils of talking about the relevant things was brought up

Previous research on philosophy for children in schools has almost exclusively focused on how it is perceived by students. The aim of this study is to focus on how it is perceived by five teachers and other adults involved in implementing philosophy for children in schools, in total four teachers participated and one adult who worked with implementing took part in the study. The theoretical background is composed of Olga Dysthes view that knowledge is not only constructed but that the object that one intends to gain knowledge of has to be interacted with and how she applies this view dialogues in the classroom. The study was conducted by interviewing the participants. The results found that the teachers saw philosophy for children as something more than a tool to work with questions that were important to students, they were also viewed as a way to work with language and building solidarity within the class. Some of the informants also expressed views that they were certain that the discussions would end in the students aquiring the values that the school represented but that if this was not the case they would have to step in to steer the conversation towards these values. The study also found ambiguity towards the role of teachers as fascilitators of these discussions. There was a concern that the teacher as fascilitator could result in the students either returning to normal classroom behaviour or that they would alter what they said to fit what they were expecting the teacher to hold as the right answer. However the positive sides to having a teacher fascilitator was that these would know the class better and better be able to establish an environment that is suited for a philosophical discussion.

This study explored student teachers' level of problem representation over the course of the practicum experience in the face of instructional problems specific to the domains of teaching. The purposes of this study were: (1) to analyze the growth and development of student teachers' levels of problem representation during their practicum in the areas of adaptation of instruction to individual differences among learners and classroom/ behaviour management through an application of Case's (1991) neo-Piagetian theory of intellectual development, (2) to use these levels to compare student teachers' representations of hypothetical teaching dilemmas and their representations of their own teaching problems, and (3) to explore how student teachers represent and re-represent their teaching challenges during the practicum through the use of concept maps and reflective interviews. Eighteen elementary level student teachers and their six faculty advisors completed written and oral output measures during the practicum. Student teachers' responses were rated according to the levels of problem representation derived from Case's neo-Piagetian theory of intellectual development. Faculty advisors' ratings and observations provided a means of assessing whether student teachers translated their representations into action. Student teachers' concept map drawings and reflections about their teaching challenges provided insight into how they represented their challenges. The results verified previous research conclusions (Newman, 1992, 1993, 1994) that student teachers' level of problem representation and description of the problem increases in complexity over the course of the practicum experience. Student teachers' level of problem representation is more complex for their own teaching problems than for hypothetical case scenarios. Also, the findings supported that Case's neo-Piagetian conceptual framework does provide a useful theoretical tool for describing the development of student teachers' ability to represent classroom/ behaviour management and individual differences teaching problems. Concept maps and structured interviews provided very interesting insights into student teachers' representation of teaching challenges associated with classroom management, instructional planning, teaching, and assessment, and student needs. Implications for teacher education and future studies of teacher thinking are discussed.

The principal contribution of the study is a conceptual account of classroom activities in school science, which incorporates both ethical and conventional science understandings within a single conceptual framework. In order to illustrate and explore the strengths and limitations of the conceptual framework developed, an exploratory case study involving 7 science classes was conducted at 2 schools. The 'classroom practices and understandings' conceptual framework presents a novel approach for understanding activities of students and teachers in the science classroom. According to this framework 'understanding' is a grasp of inferential connections as part of either practical or cognitive types of activity, whereas a 'practice' is a set of activities organized by understandings, rules and characteristic aims, emotions, and projects. On this basis the grounds for a given understanding are described in terms of a unifying structure for both ethical and science understandings. In both cases 'authority in understanding' refers to the specific sources of authority for a given understanding, which may include authoritative individuals in addition to more conventional grounds such as reasons or evidence. Finally, 'richness' of understanding refers to the quality of such connections to sources of authority in understanding, and is thus is a measure of the strength of understanding generally. Classroom lessons developed for the exploratory case study focused on ethical questions of sustainability. These were implemented in the science classroom at two research sites, with the researcher acting as guest teacher. One site focused on study of ecology in grade 11; the other site focused on study of genetics in grade 10. At both sites student interviews were conducted to supplement the findings of the classroom-teaching component. The findings support the integrity of the conceptual framework, while highlighting significant challenges for seeking to make explicit the sources of authority in science students' ethical understandings. Building from the conceptual framework and cases studies, a number of further directions for empirical and theoretical research are suggested.

My thesis is about educating through play. I have been playing, experimenting, thinking, and living my thesis for eight teaching years. At times insight has come with certainty and passion; more often, insight has not come, or it has been diluted or made problematic. I have read educational philosophy, and history, and psychology; I have experimented with evaluative models; I have tried product and process approaches. No matter how fancy the language that I use, no matter how simple and direct the models I create, no matter how intricate and accountable my evaluative strategies are, teaching and learning work best when the heart is at the centre of the enterprise. Becoming educated is learning how to love: to wonder, to question, to quest. Educating is about loving, about finding ways to bring people confidence, and hope, and openness. Play bridges the opposition between order/chaos. It helps me locate the generative, constructive forces in our schools. As a reader of this thesis, I invite you to become a play director. The stories told here do not live on the pages. They do not even really live in the spaces between text and active reader. The only way for these stories to live is if they're played to life through performance. I invite you to read these stories about writing, and community, and culture in the classroom as a producer would read a playscript. To that end, this thesis is presented in the form of a performance kit which contains theory on acting and directing, specific production strategies, the scripts themselves, and background information on the generation of these scripts. I believe that this extended metaphor—teacher as director, students as players, community as audience—can serve as a useful aid to bring play back to the multi-vocal theoretical literature of our discipline and to the stories enacted daily in our classrooms.

How do children and youth in the classroom impact on the development of student teachers’ classroom management skills during the teaching practicum? This study approached the problem through the sociology of childhood/youth, using a human development framework, and asked children and youth what role they believe they play in the formation of classroom management skills for teaching candidates. Utilizing a phenomenological method, this study sought to discover the perspectives of children and youth, and student teachers themselves, as classroom management developed. Until now, the role that children and youth play in the development of classroom management for student teachers has largely been ignored. Through a series of observations, focus groups, student teacher questionnaires, and narratives, a portrait emerged of children and youth as active agents in the development of student teachers’ classroom management skills. The key findings indicate that children and youth utilize their agentic status to communicate their needs to student teachers verbally, physically, and through behaviour. A new model of student teaching emerged, suggesting a teaching quadrad where children and youth in the classroom are recognized as playing a role equal to or more significant than that of associate teachers or faculty in the development of classroom management for student teachers.

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<p>South Africa has undergone major transformation after the election of the first democratic government in 1994. The acceptance of a humane constitution as well as equal rights for all its citizens necessitated the banning of corporal punishment in all schools under the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996. Accordingly, this change in the education policy as well as a change in society regarding equal rights for all citizens required teachers to adjust and improve their practices related to classroom management and discipline. The abolition of corporal punishment in 1996 (South African Schools Act 84 of 1996) can thus be regarded as such a changed aspect which required teachers to find alternative ways of keeping discipline in schools. It is expected from teachers to manage learning in classrooms, while at the same time practise and promote a critical, committed and ethical attitude towards the development of a sense of respect and responsibility amongst learners. It is with this in mind that one should remember that classroom locations and environments are complex as well as dynamic. Learners can now use their rights in a court of law while at the same time become more unruly, disruptive and at times even violent. Teachers on the other hand are left with limited alternative procedures or guidelines to manage unruly learners. As such, teachers now rely on their own informal learning in order to deal with such learners since alternatives to manage ill-disciplined learners are not included in formative teacher training courses. This study therefore concerns itself with the way teachers acquire classroom management skills in the absence of corporal punishment and learn how to deal with behavioural problems in order to carry on with day-to-day classroom activities. This is essentially viewed as informal learning. Because of the absence of much-needed training and support from educational authorities, teachers adjust and improve their practice, relying on hands-on experience in classrooms since they only incidentally receive opportunities to engage in ongoing formal professional development. This study explores the nature and content of informal/incidental as well as nonformal (courses not leading to formal accreditation) teachers&rsquo / learning related to managing classroom discipline in the absence of corporal punishment and investigates how skills, to manage classroom discipline, impact on the learning and teaching enterprise. A qualitative approach within the interpretive paradigm was followed throughout this study. Unstructured interviews were used to gather data which resulted in the gaining of rich detailed descriptions of participants&rsquo / responses to acquiring classroom management skills. This qualitative investigation included a literature review that explored and analysed different perspectives on the learning process. This study confirms that teachers acquire classroom management and discipline skills through workplace learning, initiated by themselves as well as collaboratively through interaction with colleagues and learners. Learning within the workplace was possible due to the opportunities they were afforded within the working context they found themselves in.</p>

This report presents the initaitvies made by teachers in form of questions during four lessons in a highschool class. A class in senior highschool was filmed during six hours with four different teachers. The number of questions and other initiatives were counted. The dialogue was transcribed with CA regarding examples from questioning and dialogue. The study examined how many closed(open and rhetorical questions the teacher initiate. The initiatives from pupils in form of questions where also examined. The aim was to see whether or not there were any gender differences. The result show that the teacher dominate the classroom dialogue with more than 68% of the speech acts and that the closed questions still dominate the classroom. There were no gender differences in the total amount of classroomtime, but in the math session the boys dominated. Regarding initiatives from pupils there were no gender differences, but there were many comments and answers who were spoken out loud in the classroom without any order. The conclusion from this report is that the old patterns with the tacher domination in the classroom communication remains and that there are very few open questions which could benfit dialogue and democatic values.