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. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

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. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

In this study the mixed methods research design was used to determine the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of secondary school science teachers in the implementation of the new Swaziland Junior Secondary Science Curriculum (SJSSC). The interactions between the teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and classroom practices were also investigated. A total of 37 Form-1 Science teachers from 20 purposively selected schools in the Manzini region of Swaziland participated in the study. The 20 schools were located in urban, peri-urban and rural settings. The teachers responded to a survey questionnaire and a few selected teachers were interviewed and then observed teaching the new curriculum in their classrooms. The data for the study were analysed using both quantitative and qualitative techniques. The findings for the study showed that teachers generally have good basic knowledge of the curriculum. A majority hold positive attitudes towards it. However, the classroom practices for almost all the teachers are inconsistent with the requirements and demands of the curriculum. Generally, the teachers’ knowledge was not transferred to their classroom practices largely because factors such as inadequate school physical resources, large class sizes, and traditional teaching methods appeared to still influence the classroom practices and mediate the relationship between the teachers’ knowledge and their classroom practices. / Dissertation (MEd (Curriculum and Instructional Design and Development))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

While researchers have identified student incivility as a problem in higher education in the United States, little is known about how students and faculty perceive the issue within the classroom environment at a private university in the northeast. Uncivil behavior can negatively impact the learning environment. The purpose of this mixed-methods case study was to compare students' and faculty's perceptions of civility in the classrooms and explore how civility is addressed in course syllabi and artifacts. The theoretical base was Clark's continuum of incivility, and the conceptual framework was Bandura's social cognitive theory. Types and frequency of uncivil behaviors were measured using Bjorklund and Rehling's survey tool. Sixty-one faculty members and first-year students selected using purposeful sampling participated in an electronic survey and data was analyzed statistically. Findings showed students and faculty perceive the severity and frequency of behaviors in a similar manner. A document analysis was conducted using coding and thematic analysis of key words related to civility. Results showed that syllabus documents and classroom artifacts were not being used to communicate expectations about the behaviors faculty and students found most severe. A professional development project was created to share results with faculty, discuss student perspectives of civility, and create civility statements for inclusion in future syllabus documents. Methods regarding how to address uncivil behavior in the classroom can continue to be developed with both faculty and student perspectives taken into account. An increase of civil behaviors will result in positive social change at this institution.

Syftet med denna uppsats var att ta reda på hur olika typer av inspelade videoföreläsningar uppskattas av eleverna på gymnasiet. Vem som har gjort videon, hur är den presenterad och spelar språket någon roll är de huvudsakliga frågorna.   Det var totalt åtta videoföreläsningar, jag spelade in fyra egna videor och fyra var tagna från internet som eleverna fick möjlighet att titta på innan lektionerna. Resultatet samlades in genom två omgångar av enkäter som handlade om fyra videor var. Videorna som var gjorda av mig som undervisande lärare var rankad högre i enkäten och om språket spelade någon roll berodde på elevens kunskap till engelska där den kan vara en extra barriär till kunskapen. Det ger en viss anknytning att ha sin lärare till skillnad mot en annan lärare i lektionsvideorna. Eleverna föredrog att videon var inspelad mot en whiteboard hellre än på papper eller digital skärm. För att flipped classroom ska lyckas så krävs det att eleverna har motivation till att göra skolarbeten och att lära sig utanför klassrummet.

The following study investigates using fiction to create gender awareness and understanding in the ESL classroom. As stated by Skolverket (2013), all teaching is to embody a gender perspective. However, for many educators, this is a multifaceted and difficult subject to grasp. Even more intricate is how to implement gender awareness into teaching, and the demanded knowledge level on the subject is challenging. Therefore, most L2 teachers do not take advantage of the possibilities offered by using fiction to address gender consciousness and question norms. Consequently, this study proposes investigating how fiction creates gender awareness and understanding in the L2 classroom and what strategies teachers might use to better facilitate learning about gender using fiction. This paper presents a literature review and analysis of contemporary research implicating why teaching gender through fiction is important. Moreover, the research suggests how this can be taught in the classroom and in teacher training to enforce didactic confidence on sensitive subjects. The different findings for teaching gender through fiction in an ESL classroom expand students' metacognitive thinking and help develop an understanding of the power of social constructs. Fiction may be a significant tool for learning both language and cultural necessities in a global context. We conclude with a discussion of the studies' implications for the Swedish educational context, including what pedagogical considerations must be taken into account when implementing gender awareness teaching using fiction in the L2 classroom. Finally, the findings are discussed in relation to Butlers' theory on gender, Flavells' metacognitive strategies on reading, and Ruddell and Unraus' motivated meaning-constructions process theory.

No description available.

No description available.

"The beginning of this study took place in the classroom of a retarded pupil group. When the teacher arranged the roll, she noticed an unusual distribution of names according to the alphabet. There were so few names in the upper letter brackets, compared with rolls of other classes she had taught, that she began to note the recurrence of this situation in later experience. With a somewhat biased and unscientific attitude she continued to look for evidence that there might be a relation between success in school and the place of a pupil's name on the class roll. When the subject was chosen for research study, however, it became apparent that such guesswork was pitiably weak framework on which to build statistical inference. Attempts to find an example of a normal distribution of names by alphabetical listings met with repeated failure until near the end of the research period. That approach failing, a questionnaire was devised"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August 7, 1951." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: H. L. Waskom, Professor Directing Study. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 37-38).

I denna kunskapsöversikt har vi kartlagt och exemplifierat olika pedagogiska tillvägagångssätt, eller “verktyg”, som används för att uppnå historisk empati hos elever. Vi har huvudsakligen använt forskning som fokuserar på observationer av pedagogiska moment. Underlaget är hämtat från flera geografiska områden, samt de svenska förutsättningarna, dvs, skrivelser som utgör lärarprofessionens uppdrag under LGR11. I resultatdelen har vi sammanställt centrala punkter som identifierats för utvecklandet av historisk empati hos elever. Vi har även kort beaktat hur historisk empati har överförts från ett teoretiskt begrepp, till klassrumspraktiken. Detta då begreppet har flera olika etablerade tolkningar inom det akademiska fältet.  Vårt material har vi funnit genom databaserna SwePub och ERC, samt relevanta ämnesdidaktiska verk och dokumentation från skolverket.