No description available.

<p>This study uses an interdisciplinary approach in the analytical framework combining Systemic Functional Linguuistic theoty (SFL) (Martin 1992 / Halliday 19994) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Wodak 7 meyer 2001 / Fairclough 1989, 1993, 1995, 2001). Further, the study draws on christie's (1997, 2001, 2002, 2005) work on classroom discourse analysis, which in turn builds on Bernstein's (1990, 1996, 2000) model on pedagogic practice and interaction, to examine dominanceand power relationsin the classroom. The interdisciplinary approach enabled this study to evaluate Al-Thadi university students' English language competence, linguistically and textually.</p>

Most teachers want to create classrooms that promote the achievement of learners’ full potential. Learners’ behaviour, however, often disrupts the teaching and learning. Instead, the fact that those teachers have to spend so much time sorting out disruptive behaviour makes the classroom a place filled with tension and unpleasantness. Various studies have shown that children’s troublesome behaviour shows no sign of decreasing and teaching has become more complex and more demanding than ever. Although the teacher brings an enormous amount of expertise to the classroom, this is not enough to ensure that effective teaching and learning will take place. Various, ongoing changes in society and education require teachers to add new understandings about learners’ behaviour and the complexities thereof in the classroom. Teachers are thus required to devise practices and techniques to manage their classrooms to promote teaching and learning. Teachers have to employ methods and techniques to ensure that they create a classroom that is conducive to teaching and learning. Some researchers have suggested that teachers become ‘classroom researchers’ to look at their own practice and then evaluate means and ways to improve on it. Teachers are required to become ‘reflective practitioners’ to improve their classroom management skills through reflection and self evaluation. Teachers are also required to teach with influence and care. The classroom context and the relationship between teachers and learners are cited as particularly important in shaping the way that the teacher manages the classroom to achieve teaching and learning. I have adapted a particular approach to my classroom management that is very specific. This approach focuses on group work, social learning and guided interaction between learners. My method however is not perfect and thus I have set out to review other classroom management approaches with the aim of improving my own practice. To achieve this I have looked at the way in which three of my colleagues manage their classrooms and I have aimed to employ some of their tactics in my personal classroom management. The research was approached using three research questions as a basis. These were as follows: 1. What methods do teachers use to manage their classrooms? 2. What do teachers perceive as effective classroom management? 3. How can the environment be adapted to achieve effective classroom management? To explore these critical questions, the case study approach was adopted. The participants were observed in their classrooms and interviews were conducted to get a holistic picture of the classroom management approaches used by the selected participants. The participants in this study displayed diverse backgrounds, classroom management approaches and personalities. The study revealed that these teachers employed various methods in their classroom management. Group work, reciting of rhymes, arranging the classroom in certain ways, maintaining good human relations and keeping learners gainfully occupied were some of the methods that the participants in the study have employed to achieve effective classroom management. These teachers perceived effective classroom management very differently. Some saw it as a way of getting learners involved in the lesson to minimise distraction, while others had a somewhat idealistic view on this issue. The study also revealed that the teachers involved had reorganised their classrooms, divided their classes into manageable smaller groups and even flooded their learners with work to change the environment to achieve effective classroom management. The findings of this study can be of value in discussion to seek solutions or alternatives to address effective classroom management in schools that experience concerns on this vital issue. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

The push for educational reform in the province of Quebec, Canada has brought to the foreground many ideas about what needs to be done to improve the learning experience of students. While there has been some movement in the primary grade levels, change in the secondary level is still in its infancy. There are some teachers, however, in high schools who have been on the cutting edge of educational reform. The purpose of this study is to look at participation within a secondary classroom where the philosophy of the reform is being acted upon. The study, qualitative in design, is a type of ethnographic investigation of a teacher and students in a Grade VII language arts classroom. The classroom is a part of an exclusive program, namely the Alternative Learning Program, nested in a public high school in the Montreal area. / Using various means of data collection such as field notes and interviews, the researcher examines the various dimensions of participation as it unfolds in this particular classroom. The researcher identifies these dimensions as assigned and shared participation. The data suggests that dynamics beyond assigned and shared participation are also evident. The dynamics, identified as participative tone, contribute to student views of the uniqueness of this particular learning environment. To present a trustworthy description of what is observed, however, the investigator shows situations in which participation is not apparent. These situations are identified as participative resistance. The researcher deduces that participation and participative resistance need to be viewed as context-bound and are, in many respects, points on a continuum. / Attempts have been made in the research to allow the study participants to express their views. Through interviews, students share in their own words what participation means to them. Their words add depth to understanding of what student participation is. The study suggests that notions of the child-centered or student-centered classroom, while commendable, are not necessarily an aspiration to strive for. / The study affirms that the teacher plays a key position in the classroom environment. The study begins by showing the various roles that the teacher assumes in her daily practice. Views of the teacher are presented along with perceptions of the students and the researcher to determine the various roles played out in this site. The study concludes that the teacher conducts her practice by exceeding the boundaries of her roles so identified. / The study shows that the classroom does not stand in isolation, but is subject to various influences from the school, as well as the community at large. The researcher identifies these influences as context and conditions using another site as a point of reference. The secondary sight brings clarity to what the researcher observes. The researcher concludes that in addition to communal influences, learning in the primary site takes place under the banner of what is defined as an arts-oriented curriculum. The arts-oriented curriculum contributes to the sense of community in the classroom. But data also suggest that the classroom does not always function as a community. In spite of the teacher's good intentions, tensions sometimes foster a competitive rather than collaborative spirit among the students.

This essay argues that The Help by Kathryn Stockett highlights black people in a patronising way. In order to analyse the novel a postcolonial perspective has been applied. The novel is an example of narratives of difference and the representation of the characters Miss Skeeter, Minny and Aibileen increases and enhances the differences between people. The coloured people are described as the other, whereas the whites are seen as the norm. Moreover, the essay includes a didactic part, which discusses how to teach a novel like The Help in a multicultural classroom.

Sound-field amplification systems (SFA) have proven effective in overcoming classroom listening difficulties associated with noise, distance and reverberation. However, whether improving the classroom listening environment is sufficient to enhance young children’s learning in areas critical to early reading acquisition, such as awareness of the sound structure of spoken words (phonological awareness: PA), is unclear. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of an enhanced listening environment combined with PA intervention which aimed to specifically increase children’s PA compared to an enhanced listening environment alone. Participants were 38 children aged 5-6 years from two classes at a low-decile primary school. All children were hearing screened at baseline, pre- and post-intervention. PA, letter-sound knowledge, real and non-word decoding were measured three times over 10 weeks (Term 1) prior to SFA installation in both classrooms, as well as pre- and post-intervention. In Term 2, children in class 1 were randomly assigned to receive SFA and an eight-week class-based teacher-administered PA programme. Class 2 received SFA only. A significant learning effect for all children occurred during the first phase of the monitoring period. Yet, a plateau was reached for most children between assessment times two and three prior to intervention. Following intervention, class 1 demonstrated a significant difference compared to class 2 in one PA assessment. Other measures failed to show any differences between classes. Visual data analyses revealed particular (non-significant) improvements for poor readers in class 1. These children outperformed poor readers in class 2 on all measures. Teacher questionnaires indicated that children’s listening skills improved with SFA. The significant difference observed in one measure of PA between classes demonstrated that the combination of enhanced classroom acoustic environment and PA intervention actively improved PA development. The results of this study have implications for: (a) facilitating attention to sound structure, (b) optimal intervention for early PA development, (c) early reading acquisition in New Zealand classrooms, and, (d) the use of typical models of professional teacher development.

This project sought to find a rigorous and manageable method for measuring the difficulty of texts in te reo Māori written for children, beyond junior reading material in Māori-medium educational settings. The project examined a range of readability measures based on semantic and/or syntactic features of text, following the work of Warwick Elley (1969) and Richard Benton et al. (1995). Features such as the difficulty of content words, average sentence length, standardised type:token ratios and the use of function words were used in different combinations to create seven methods to measure text difficulty. Teachers’ and students’ ratings of text difficulty, and students’ scores on reading comprehension tasks related to the texts were used as criteria to examine the validity of the readability methods. The findings revealed that indices of either vocabulary load or lexical density when used in combination with the number of function types in the text, produce statistical significance with the criterion measures. Further research is needed to confirm their validity for use in Māori –medium classroom settings. The Māori word lists developed for this project as the basis of the readability approaches have the potential for more widespread analyses of language proficiency measures for students in Māori-medium settings.

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.

A teacher in a mainstream classroom identified six children with behaviour difficulties or learning difficulties who were not receiving any assistance outside of the classroom. The teacher was to independently complete a functional assessment of each child to reach a hypothesis about the cause of the difficulty, and then choose and implement an appropriate intervention. Treatment integrity was monitored throughout the interventions to ensure correct implementation. It became apparent that the teacher was unable to complete adequate functional assessments or maintain appropriate interventions because of the time constraints associated with being in a classroom and her lack of specialist knowledge.

As Information and Communication Technology (lCT) becomes more commonplace in New Zealand classrooms, the question arises as to what teachers are making of the technology. The present study draws on the responses from some 8000 teachers to a survey repeated over four years. The survey sought information in teachers' ICT usage and skills prior to entry into a professional development programme. The study found few changes for the average teachers' use of lCT in the classroom between 1999 and 2003. Of the changes that occurred, increases in some of the personal ICT skill levels of teachers are among the most marked. This includes an increase in skills in file management, word processing, emailing, and Internet use. For the average teacher, these skills have, however, remained relatively basic. Within the classroom, these basic skills are used mainly for administration as well as planning and preparation, while some increases in skill levels was evident in the areas of Internet use for accessing lesson ideas, assessment, reading official documents, and other professional readings. There have been some increases in the use of lCT for administration, in particular for records/assessment, and writing reports for parents. Integration of lCT into classroom teaching and learning remains unchanged and at a low level during the years studied. Usage of ICT by students of the average teacher have changed little between 1999 and 2003. Important changes can be seen, however, in those teachers with a high degree of skills and usage. Growth in their level of skills is occurring, although the numbers are small. That teachers use ICT mainly for administration purposes as well as for planning and preparation, suggests ICT is currently being 'undersold' as a tool for teaching and learning. Before ICT can be fully integrated by teachers, literature cited in this report points to the need for professional development programmes to focus on pedagogical change.