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.

The articles in this portfolio provide an account of research, which for the purposes of this thesis is divided into two broad categories: teacher professional development, and the support of teacher education in literary and performing arts pedagogy. Within this context three issues are addressed. The study can be categorised under research into teacher professional education.Action research and reflective practitioner research methodology were adopted, as this schema is recognised as being highly appropriate to preservice and inservice development of teachers, and to the improvement of teaching approaches and skills especially in the development of new methods of learning.The research has its theoretical foundations in interactive, child-centred theories of education, performance semiotics and psycholinguistic theories of reading. It is also committed to enabling teachers and students to engage creatively and interpretively in the comprehension of artistic texts and the performing arts. / Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Behavioural difficulty is probably the least understood area of special education as it is very problematic to identify a specific cause. Behavioural difficulties are those behaviours that students sometimes exhibit that are inappropriate and unacceptable in the classrooms or schools, as they disrupt the smooth process of teaching and learning. This study investigated primary school teachers' perspectives of the causal factors of students' behavioural problems and what can be done to minimise this problem. The study was carried out in the Madang Province involving two primary schools. From the two schools, twelve teachers (six from each school) participated in the study. The same participants were involved in both the questionnaire and the semi structured interview. The data gathered for the questionnaire and interview were analysed and transcribed respectively. The findings discovered that the family and school factors contributed substantially towards students' inappropriate behaviours. Family factors include parental problems, abuse in the families, and the constant struggle to provide the basic necessities due to the high living cost. School factors, on the other hand, include negative teacher attitudes, teacher lack of knowledge and skills to adapt the curriculum to include social skills, lack of teacher support and encouragement, and peer influences. The findings also discovered that teachers were more bothered about externalising behaviours such as disruption and aggression than internalising behavioural problems like withdrawal and depression displayed by students. Further, teachers' limited pre-service and in-service training and lack of experience in teaching students with behavioural problems contributed significantly for teachers not attending to students who behave inappropriately. Based on the findings identified in the study, several recommendations were made on how to intervene to alleviate this problem. Of particular importance is teacher training at both the pre-service and in-service level. Also government support is needed in terms of funding for training, involving specialists and other resources to respond to student behavioural problems effectively and efficiently. The findings may have particular relevance to future studies in this area and provide teachers with effective and workable intervention strategies for students' behavioural problems in the classrooms.

How important is the social experience of learning in the postgraduate classroom? This thesis explores what eight postgraduate students judged to be their ‘best’ classroom experiences within one New Zealand university. The researcher started from the assumption that the students’ ‘best’ classroom experiences would correspond with what the literature characterises as ‘communities of learners’ in which the students felt that their past experiences were valued and personal relationships were respectful and relatively equal. This assumption was, for the most part, accurate. Problematic areas, such as assessment, were also identified. International students’ experiences were a key part of the research. Six of the students were studying in their second language yet that alone was not the main indicator of classroom participation as personality (such as shyness)also affected how students engaged with the course content, the lecturers, and with each other. The case study approach raises possibilities and questions as well as recognising trends that suggest that postgraduate students value interactive learning within meaningful classroom contexts.

This research is an exploratory study into gender dynamics in an engineering classroom in a Faculty of Engineering at an Australian University. It has concentrated on understanding and presenting students perceptions of their learning environment in an engineering classroom and their experiences within it to determine the extent to which gender affects different classroom experiences. A first year engineering subject ‘Introduction to Engineering Computing’ was the environment used for this study. The research employed an ethnographic research methodology drawing on semi-structured interviews and observations. It also used surveys to triangulate the data for improved reliability and validity. Gender has clearly been highlighted as a determinant of students’ experiences from a students’ perspective in an engineering classroom. The most noticeable differences between female and male student experiences found in this study stemmed from four factors: their previous experiences; their learning approaches; the language used within the classroom and the lack of role models. In these areas there were found to be various levels of advantage and disadvantage experienced by women and men. These are presented in Chapter 5 & 6 of this thesis. The resulting understanding begins the process of providing a framework in which strategies can be developed to more effectively engage female and male students in engineering education. / Masters Thesis

Talk is the vehicle of exchange in language classrooms when communicative competence is being developed. Turns of talk then facilitate the meaning-making process as students and teachers collaboratively come to understand the discourse of knowledge they are co-constructing. During the pivotal third turn in the essential teaching exchange, there is potential for teachers to realise productive pedagogies as they facilitate their students' organisational and pragmatic skills in the foreign language. This study brings a lens to Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) triadic dialogue, which has been criticised for its monological overuse and limitation of students' language production. Analysis of the third turn shows the uptake to be an implicit move in the exchange. Teachers appear not to be aware of the potential benefit it offers them for co-constructed language use at that point in teacher-student interactions. Teachers draw on students' background knowledge and experiential learning in the four domains of productive pedagogies (intellectual quality, supportive classroom environment, recognition of difference and connectedness) when they engage them through an authentic use of language. For this study, potential for productive pedagogy was investigated in the classroom talk of two teachers of Japanese at year 10 level. In a case study, six transcribed and translated lessons were subjected to conversational and membership categorisation analyses using Bachman's (1990) communicative language ability framework to describe language production around the third turn and to hypothesise its effectiveness in providing opportunities for students to generate output in the target language.

In the current research project the functions of self-initiated self-repairs in an advanced Japanese language classroom were investigated. From the reviewed literature it was found that repairing is possible through monitoring, which includes error detection, and involves attention and memory. Therefore, data was collected on the abilities of the participants in the current research project to repair, monitor and their attention levels and memory. There were seven methods used to collect data; participant observation, classroom interaction tape recordings, a questionnaire, stimulated recall interviews, attention test, memory and attention test and proficiency level assessments. From the participant observation, classroom interaction tape recordings and stimulated recall interviews data was collected on the repairs that the participants made and the way in which they monitored was explored. The questionnaire revealed relevant background information, such as, number of years the participants had studied Japanese, which supplemented other information collected. The attention test and memory and attention tests were used to obtain information on the participants’ perceptions of their levels of attention and their actual levels of attention and memory respectively. The final data collected was on the participants’ own perceptions of their speaking proficiency levels in Japanese and an independent judge’s evaluation of their levels. The results of the data collected on the way in which the participants repaired and monitored showed that overall the participants repaired and monitored in ways that had been discussed in previous research on repairing and monitoring. However, for the first known time, phenomena related to repairing and monitoring, which the researcher terms as communication strategies, are used frequently by the participants and also, that these communication strategies used and repairs made by the participants were not needed to be made. In other words, the participants in the current research project were often repairing errors that had not been made. As for the data collected on the participants’ attention levels and memory, no significant differences were found between the participants and neither did any differences reflect on the ways in which the participants repaired. From the proficiency level assessments, further evidence was found that supported previous research done on repairing and monitoring as well. Also, it was found that the participants under-estimated their levels of proficiency in comparison to the independent judge’s evaluations. Therefore, the participants both over repair and under estimate their Japanese speaking abilities. This is seen as detrimental to the participants’ performances in Japanese. Recommendations are made to use this data provided by Japanese language learners when repairing to guide instruction and to encourage learners to gain fluency by repairing less often than is thought necessary.

The literacy experiences of a small group of culturally-diverse children were examined in this study. The experiences, too, were diverse – and influential. The children, five girls aged four – five years, attended the same Preschool, in an inner suburb of a large city in Australia. Data were gathered at home, during the last two months of the preschool year and, for three of the children, during writing sessions in the first six months of Year One. Vygotskian ideas on meaning-making were integrated with other perspectives on development, literacy learning and teaching from a sociocultural, theoretical framework. The purpose was to identify dimensions of children’s literacy experiences and provide insight into ways in which children negotiate culture, literacy, and schooling, challenge current perspectives, contribute to research knowledge and determine how teachers might take account of cultural diversity in classrooms to better support children in literacy learning. A grounded theory method was employed using multiple data collection tools and techniques in both home and school contexts. Data were coded using a process of constant comparison to identify features, characteristics and dimensions of children’s literacy experiences. Independent inter-rater agreement on the coding of features at home, Preschool and school was 98.4%. Findings included a variety of values, beliefs and perspectives amongst parents and between teachers in relation to literacy learning, roles and relationships, and home-school connections. Children’s literacy experiences at home differed in terms of nature, frequency and resources and experiences in each of the settings were very different. A major finding was that children acted as agents of their own learning: mixing, transferring, trying out, adapting, and experimenting to determine appropriate practices and make decisions including when to exercise choice to enact agency. These assimilation and accommodation adaptations were identified as akin to code-switching, labelled as culture-switching, and identified as areas requiring further research.

Accountability has become a key issue in the delivery of human services, and counsellors have been challenged to demonstrate that what they do makes a difference and that what they do meets the needs of the system in which they work. Thus proponents of the consultancy model such as Dinkmeyer (1973) have urged counsellors to move from the crisis-oriented approach in which only a few benefit from counsellor services to a consultative role which involves the counsellor with the total system. In 1979 the author was appointed to the Metropolitan West District of Sydney. This is an area with many social problems such as high unemployment, single parent families and families receiving social welfare benefits. Many students attending school are adversely affected by their home environment. To compound the problem a difference in value systems exists between home and school, which is a source of frustration to both teachers and students. As a result many children were referred for counselling because they were behaviour problems in the classroom. It was not possible for the counsellor to see all the students referred so other strategies needed to be employed. From discussions with teachers concerning the management of students who were behaviour problems it became apparent that teacher training had left them ill-equipped to deal with the student behaviours they were facing. A Classroom Management and Interpersonal Skills programme was designed and presented to a group of Primary school teachers in one of the schools to which the author was appointed. Evaluation of the effectiveness of the programme was based on the statistical analysis of pretest and post-test measures of teachers and students of those teachers participating in the programme. In addition to reporting on outcomes of the programme this study provides a theoretical rationale for its development. The statistical evidence does not strongly support the effectiveness of the programme. However there are some trends, particularly in the teacher data, which suggest that the programme was effective in bringing about teacher attitude change towards students. Teachers' written evaluations of the programme, together with informal feedback, indicate the programme was successful in providing some of the answers to behaviour problems which occur in the classroom. A corollary to the presentation of the programme has been a reduction in the number of children referred to the author as "behaviour problems". This has provided more time to work with infant children and parents, both counsellor functions which the administrative staff see as significant, and to continue in the role as a consultant to teachers.

In NSW during the last decade there has been strong interest in promoting theories that espoused a naturalistic and wholistic approach to the teaching of reading and writing. One such theory is the Whole Language Approach to teaching reading and writing. The work of Brian Cambourne is integral to this approach and his theory is that the principles of how young children learn to become successful talkers can be applied to how children best learn to become successful readers and writers. This study was concerned with the teachers' perceptions of their classroom practice and whether these perceptions - relating to the teaching and evaluation/assessment of reading and writing - reflected a whole language approach or a non-whole language approach. The results of this study indicate that although teachers perceive that they predominantly favour classroom practices that are considered as whole language, they still employ some practices that are not considered to be whole language. Also, some perceptions of classroom practice indicate that not all whole language strategies are popular with teachers.