Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Idaho, March 2006. / Major professor: Russell A. Joki. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-148). Also available online in PDF format.

Thesis (M.Psych.Ed.) - University of Queensland, 2006. / Includes bibliography.

Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-94).

This is an empirical study about factors that motivate pupils to speak English as a foreign language. The aim of this study is to investigate when pupils in the classroom situation, in Grades 4-6 in a school in Sweden, are motivated to speak English as a foreign language, and why they are motivated to speak English in these situations. To implement this study, questionnaires and interviews have been chosen as methods. 51 pupils in Grades 4-6 took part of the study. Since being able to communicate orally in a foreign language is of great advantage for one, and creates opportunities both for work and for study abroad, it is important for pupils to learn how to communicate orally in English. It is important to be able to use the language. In the English curriculum in Swedish schools, speaking English is a skill pupils must possess. Since this is the requirement it is important that teachers in Sweden relate to this. Many pupils do not like to speak in front of the rest of the class and some pupils only like to speak in informal situations. Therefore, teachers must use various strategies to create a willingness to communicate among pupils and various strategies to motivate them to speak English. The results show that pupils are motivated to use the language in class when they have recently been abroad. It also shows that they are motivated when they can decide the topic and speak about something they are interested in. / <p>Engelska</p>

In communicative and task-based classrooms learners spend much of their time in interactions with one another, and it is through the practices of small-group and pair work that many learners experience language education. The present study aims to shed light on what learners do when engaged in these small-group interactions in Japanese university EFL classrooms. In particular, the study aims to shed light on the relationship between identities, interaction practices and potentials for learning. One of the motivations for doing this project is that, while much research has investigated teacher-student interactions, less attention has been paid to peer interactions in the classroom, and our understandings of learners' interactions with one another are arguably less developed than our understandings of their interactions with the teacher. The findings of this study should be of interest to practicing teachers who wish to gain insights into how learners in small groups organize their classroom practices, as well as researchers investigating classroom interaction. Analysing two groups of 15 participants over one university semester, the approach that I adopted was informed by the methodological framework of Multimodal Interaction Analysis, which combines moment-by-moment analysis of interactions with an ethnographic approach to data collection. The interaction analysis also made use of concepts and tools from Conversation Analysis. This allowed me to come to understandings not only about the structure of classrooms interactions, including turn-taking and repair practices, but also about the learners as social beings. The study found that participants often followed predictable turn-taking practices in small-group interactions, which gave the interactions a fairly 'monologic' character. However, it also found that, over the course of the semester, certain participants began to perform off-task personal conversations in English, which more resembled the sort of conversational talk found outside of the classroom. These conversations provided students with opportunities to negotiate meaning in more dialogic interactions in which they performed a wider range of actions, which also included some use of the L1. I argue that this personal talk can play an important role in the language classroom, and suggest that teachers may need to rethink attitudes to off-task talk and also to learners' use of the L1 in the classroom. This was a localized study of just two groups of learners, and further research would thus be needed to confirm how far we can generalize these findings. Furthermore, more research is needed to investigate whether or not the learning opportunities provided in off-task classroom conversations actually do lead to long-term learning.

The current research study examined the formation of derived stimulus relations consisting of course content material in an undergraduate rehabilitation class. Specifically, the study examined the degree to which the stimulus equivalence instructional paradigm could be effectively used to teach the relationships between the names, definitions, causes, and common treatments for disabilities using a paper-and-pencil training format. Twenty-two participants were pre and post-tested on definition-to-name, cause-to-name, and treatment-to-name relations by the experimenter in a flashcard-style fashion. Training was conducted using an instructional package consisting of multiple-choice questionnaires in which name-to-definition, name-to-cause, and cause-to-treatment relations were taught and feedback was delivered from the experimenter until mastery. Results suggest that the stimulus equivalence paradigm can be effectively trained in a paper-and-pencil training format with great ease.

abstract: The purpose of this writing is to explore the relationship students have with popular media as well as the call to implement a Critical Media Skills course at the high school level. The research was interested in finding what images from popular media students were taking into their personal lives and how implementing a Critical Media Skills course could make positive benefits into their lives. From casual observations, informal student interviews, and the creation of an online survey in which 72 high school students participated I was able to collect data about the extent students were consuming popular media and how they believed that skills teaching them to analyze media would be beneficial. From these findings I was able to build upon Patricia Hill Collins (2009) to develop techniques for a classroom in which critical dialogue would be a focus. This exploratory study takes into account student voices, as well research from others in the field of Education and Media Literacy. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education 2012

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / 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. / South Africa

Este trabalho descreve a experiência realizada em turmas de graduação em Administração da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul e em um projeto de extensão que surgiu a partir da análise da primeira fase da experiência, com as turmas de graduação. Motivados pela necessidade de mudanças no atual formato das aulas que temos em nossas universidades, propusemos uma pesquisa ação participante, realizando as aulas em um formato diferenciado, onde seguimos os princípios do construtivismo de Piaget e Paulo Freire, tendo os alunos como protagonistas de seu aprendizado e promovendo a construção de conhecimento em sala de aula. Também desenvolvemos um projeto de extensão onde propusemos um formato diferenciado, transformando as relações entre professor e aluno e entre alunos de modo a possibilitar a construção conjunta do conhecimento em administração. Como resultado, acreditamos que nossa pesquisa possa inspirar novas ações em diversas salas de aula e em diversas universidades, contribuindo para uma mudança positiva na educação universitária em nosso país. / This thesis describes an experience within groups of undergraduate students in the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Business Administration course. It also describes the experience of an extension program that emerged from the analysis of the first phase of the experience. Inspired by the need of change in the current format of classes that we see in our universities, we proposed a participatory action research, having classes in a different format. We have followed the principles of Piaget and Paulo Freire’s constructivism, having the students as protagonists of their learning and promoting the knowledge construction in the classroom. We have also developed an extension project at the university, proposing a differentiated format which transformed the interactions between students and students-professors in a way that made it possible to construct knowledge together. As a result, we believe that our study can inspire new similar actions in several classrooms and universities, contributing to a positive change in the tertiary education in our country.

O presente estudo apresenta indícios de um aprender como ato a partir de um trajetar da pesquisadora nos ambientes escolares e, em especial, em turmas do segundo ano do Ensino Fundamental, numa escola municipal localizada no Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. Com uma proposta vinculada ao projeto Civitas – LELIC/PPGEDU/UFRGS, as tessituras do escrito dialogam com a produção do filósofo russo Mikhail Bakhtin, tendo como objeto de análise os enunciados produzidos pelos sujeitos atuantes na pesquisa (alunos/as; professorapesquisadora). Nessa perspectiva, a metodologia utilizada, singularmente, se apresenta como um ato ético-estético que se entrelaça, acolhe e enuncia modos singulares de ver, conceber e sentir o processo de aprendizagem e, mais precisamente, ao ato de aprender, revelando o inusitado de novas vizinhanças: e, neste sentido, aponta para as possibilidades da invenção fugindo do hábito para leituras originais do que se dá “às vistas” e “às escutas”, aos acabamentos estéticos provisórios possibilitados pelos excedentes de visão, também, como plano de produção de si numa arquitetônica coletiva de produção do conhecimento. Uma tessitura ao mesmo tempo ética (pelo encontro com o outro) e estética (na busca de lhe dar, à experiência, um acabamento) pelos quais os sujeitos situados se relacionam e produzem a sala de aula como lugar coletivo. / This study presents evidence of learning as an act from the researcher's transit in school environments and in particular in the second year classes of an elementary school, a public school located in the Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. With a proposal linked to the Civitas project - LELIC / PPGEDU / UFRGS, the interwoven of the written dialogues with the production of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, which has as object of analysis the utterances produced by the acting subjects in this research (students; the teacher-researcher). From this perspective, the methodology used is uniquely presented as an ethic-aesthetic act that intertwines, welcomes and sets unique ways of seeing, and feeling the learning process development, and more specifically the act of revealing the unusual learning of new neighborhoods. And in this sense it points to possibilities of the invention escaping from the current, original readings of what gives "the sights" and "the listenings" the provisional aesthetic completion made possible by the exceding vision as well as a production plan in itself, an architectural collective production of knowledge. A fabric that is at the same time ethic (in the meeting with the other) and aesthetic (in the quest of giving the other the experience, a completion) in which situated subjects relate and produce a classroom as a collective place.