The aim of this thesis is to undertake a comparative study of contemporary British and German-language playwriting, with an eye specifically towards possible reasons and solutions for the problematic situation of German-language playtexts in Britain. I will first conduct a stylistic analysis of a selection of British and German-language playwrights, focusing on the differences in representation of interiority through dialogue and narration. I will then introduce a phenomenological lens that will expand this literary analysis by looking at specific stagings of these texts, and at the use of gestures in particular. Tracing the performative implications of dialogue and narration in their relationship with gestures, I will suggest that while dialogue mostly requires metonymical gestures, the phenomenology of narration is better served by a more metaphoric use. This is followed by a chapter on translation, which will look at the specific problems and chances posed by narration and so-called ‘postdramatic’ plays in general. After these theoretical considerations, I will scrutinise my findings in a practical environment in two major steps. The first step is a comparative rehearsal observation of one German and one British director and their work with contemporary playtexts. My main question will be in how far the tendency towards dialogue in British plays and towards narration in German-language plays is matched by corresponding trends in the directors’ formal language. Furthermore, I will contextualise the work of these two directors in the larger field of directing in their respective countries. The second and final step of my practical investigation will be an implementation and testing of the previous theses in two directing projects of my own. I will again focus on rehearsal methodologies, attempting to find out which methodologies are particularly useful for the rehearsal of narrative playtexts and thereby hoping to formulate some first ideas for the specific requirements of German-language playtexts in a British context.

The effects from prenatal alcohol exposure have been found to cause a range of congenital physical and cognitive abnormalities (Chasnoff, Wells, Telford, Schmidt, & Messer, 2010; Kable & Coles, 2004a). The neurological impairments associated with the effects from prenatal alcohol exposure often cause learning problems, most notably in mathematics (Kable & Coles, 2004a; Howell et al., 2006). Studies have indicated that when provided instructional interventions in mathematics, children affected by prenatal alcohol exposure made gains in learning. However, the studies did not provide specifics as to how children with FAS construct the understanding of a skill or concept (Kable, Coles, & Taddeo, 2007; Coles, Kable, & Taddeo, 2009). This study contributes to the literature by examining how children affected by prenatal alcohol exposure learn the concept of equivalence through their use of gestures in contrast to their learning outcomes. Previous studies have shown that children’s use of gestures while learning mathematics assist with the integration of verbal and visual stimuli, support concept formation, and facilitate flexible encoding of problems (Goldin-Meadow, Cook, & Mitchell, 2009; McNeil & Alibali, 2004). The results from this study indicated that children in the Alcohol Exposed group showed little to no learning after the intervention as compared to a control group matched by age and IQ. The study showed that children affected by prenatal alcohol exposure used fewer conceptual gestures while learning equivalence as compared to a control group. According to the gesture analysis, the children in the Alcohol Exposed group mentally represented the concept of equivalence as a series of isolated steps or procedures. The procedural representation was not transitioned into a flexible conceptual format and applied to solve different problem types accurately (McNeil & Alibali, 2004). Future studies need to investigate whether teaching children affected by prenatal alcohol exposure to gesture during mathematics instruction would be effective to increase concept formation, accurate encoding, and learning mathematics / Inclusive Education / D. Ed. (Inclusive Education)

The dissertation examines mainly segmental assimilatory processes of Xhosa phonology within the dependency framework. This model is a multi-faceted approach which involves hierarchical organisation of features into larger constituents known as gestures. The analysis includes an elementary historical background to the development of phonological theory with emphasis on the shift from traditional linear approaches to modern non-linear models, as well as a shift from derivational theories to representational frameworks. An exploration of the phonetics/phonology interface through the application of gestures is considered an advantage of using the dependency framework over other theories of phonology. The focus of the dissertation is the description of phonetically-motivated and morphologically-motivated Xhosa phonological processes. A brief exposition of the use of the dependency framework in non-assimilatory Xhosa phonological processes is given as a possible recommendation in the conclusion of the dissertation. / Language Education, Arts and Culture / M.A. (African Languages)

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka hur musikhögskolestuderande med trummor som huvudinstrument uppfattar hur melodisk koordination påverkar deras lärande. Övningarna är specifikt konstruerade för trumset för att fungera som ett verktyg till att öppna upp den musikaliska lyhördheten och periodkänslan samt vara en effektiv övning för koordination och balans. I denna studie deltog fem informanter under utbildning på Kungl. Musikhögskolan i Stockholm. Metoden som användes var att genom loggböcker från informanterna analysera deras beskrivningar av min frågeställning. För att få fram underlag för analys av undersökningen har informanterna fått fem frågor att besvaras under den 10 veckors period då de arbetade med övningarna. I resultatet beskrev informanterna hur de uppfattade sin progression och hur de verkade förändra sin medvetenhet om denna mellan tillfällena. Resultaten visar att informanterna upplevde att deras rytmiska gehör samt musikaliska periodkänsla förbättrats. De erfor även att övningarna förstärkte deras timing och inspirerade till nytt melodiskt synsätt. I kapitlet diskussion ligger betoningen på den ifrågasättande aspekten: Vad är resultatet av denna studie och har forskningsfrågorna besvarats. / The purpose of this study was to investigate how music students, playing the drums, interpret melodic coordination in aspects of learning. In this study five students from the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm participated. The students were given exercises, specifically designed for drums. These exercises are to be used as keys to unlock and further develop the musical awareness and the awareness of musical periods. Furthermore are these exercises an efficient way to train the coordination and balance. To be able to get material for the analysis of this study, journals have been used. These journals were given to the students who during a 10-week period of time used the exercises and answered the five theses. In the result the students described their progression and their awareness of progression during the ten weeks. The results show that the students experienced an improvement of their rhytmical pitch and their periodicity in musical performance . Further state that the exercises improved their timing and inspired a new melodic point of view. Finally I discuss the purpose of this study, the result and whether or not the theses have been answered.

Social learning has given us insight into how children learn actions from others across different domains (e.g., actions on objects, pretend play, and tool use). However, little research exists to confirm whether young children can generate their own novel actions. Three different settings were chosen to offer a varied investigation of children’s ability to generate novel actions: generating multiple actions with novel objects; generating iconic gestures in order to communicate; and generating pretend actions using object substitution. Generating multiple actions with novel objects: The Unusual Box test was developed to investigate children’s ability to generate multiple actions with novel objects (Chapter 2). The Unusual Box test involves children playing with a wooden box that contains many different features (e.g., rings, stairs, strings), and five novel objects. The number of different actions performed on the box and with the objects (i.e., fluency) was used as a measure of their individual learning. Positive correlations between the fluency scores of 24 3- and 4-year-olds on the Unusual Box test and two existing measures of divergent thinking were found. Divergent thinking relates to the ability to think of multiple answers based on one premise. Furthermore, a large range of fluency scores indicated individual differences in children’s ability to generate multiple actions with novel objects. In addition, 16 2-year-olds were assessed on the Unusual Box test, twice two weeks apart, to investigate test-retest reliability and the possibility that the Unusual Box test could be used with children younger than 3 years. A strong positive correlation between the scores on the two assessments showed high test-retest reliability, while individual differences in fluency scores and the absence of a floor effect indicated that the Unusual Box test was usable in children from 2 years of age. Generating iconic gestures in order to communicate: Children’s ability to generate iconic gestures in order to communicate was assessed using a game to request stickers from an experimenter (N = 20, Chapter 3). In order to get a sticker children had to communicate to the experimenter which out of two objects they wanted (only one object had a sticker attached to it). Children’s use of speech or pointing was ineffective; therefore only generating an iconic gesture was sufficient to retrieve the sticker. Children generated a correct iconic gesture on 71% of the trials. These findings indicate that children generate their own iconic gestures in order to communicate; and that they understand the representational nature of iconic gestures, and use this in their own generation of iconic gestures. Generating pretend actions using object substitution: In order to determine whether children are able to generate their own object substitution actions and understand the representational nature of these actions, 45 3- and 4-year-olds were familiarized with the goal of a task through modelling actions. Children distinguished between the intentions of an experimenter to pretend, or try and perform a correct action. Children mainly imitated the pretend actions, while correcting the trying actions. Next, children were presented with objects for which they had to generate their own object substitution actions without being shown a model. When children had previously been shown pretend actions, children generated their own object substitution actions. This indicates that children generate their own object substitution actions, and that they understand the representational nature of these actions. An additional study with 34 3-year-olds, revealed no significant correlations between divergent thinking, inhibitory control, or children’s object substitution in a free play setting, and children’s ability to generate object substitution actions in the experimental setting.

This doctoral dissertation is an empirical qualitative research study on the emergence of learnables in classrooms of Swedish as a second language. It adopts a dialogical and praxeological approach, and analysis is based on video recorded teacher-student interactivities in classrooms. Learnables are taken to be linguistic items or constructs that are displayed as unknown by students, or problematized by students or teachers, and therefore oriented to as explainable, remediable, or improvable. Learnables are introduced in planned or less planned classroom activities, either in passing, while continuing the current main activity, or in sidesequences. In these activities, teachers and students not only talk, but also use other embodied resources (e.g. pointing) or available artifacts (e.g. worksheets) to highlight linguistic learnables. Teachers and students use these resources for achieving and maintaining intersubjectivity as well as contributing learnables to the interactivities. Through manifest embodied practices, abstract linguistic learnables become objectified, and knowledge about them gets organized in and through joint co-operative activities. / Denna avhandling är en empirisk, kvalitativ studie om uppkomsten av s.k. ”learnables” i svenska som andraspråksutbildning. Studien antar ett dialogiskt och praxeologiskt perspektiv, och analysen baseras på video-inspelade lärare-elevinteraktiviteter i klassrummet. ”Learnables” utgörs av språkliga objekt eller konstruktioner, som hanteras som obekanta av elever, eller som problematiseras av elever eller lärare, och därför orienteras emot som objekt som kan förklaras, korrigeras eller förbättras. ”Learnables” kan uppstå i planerade eller mindre planerade klarssrumsaktiviteter, antingen i förbigående, samtidigt som huvudaktiviteten fortsätter utan avbrott, eller i sidosekvenser. I dessa aktiviteter använder lärare och elever inte bara talspråk, utan även andra kroppsliga resurser (t.ex. pekningar) eller tillgängliga artefakter (t.ex. papper) för att fokusera på språkliga ”learnables”. Lärare och elever använder dessa medel för att uppnå och bibehålla intersubjektivitet, samt för att bidra med ”learnables” till interaktiviteterna. Genom konkreta kroppsliga metoder blir abstrakta, språkliga ”learnables” objektifierade och kunskapen om dem organiseras i och genom deltagarnas koordinerade handlingar.

Cette thèse de doctorat a pour cadre la formation initiale des enseignants des premier et second degrés dans le sud de la France dans les années 2000. Elle vise à étudier la contribution des analyses de pratique mises en œuvre au retour des stages de mise en situation professionnelle au développement professionnel d’enseignants débutants. Une clarification du concept de trace de pratique et une typologie de ces traces sont élaborées. Le cadre théorique des analyses croise les modèles du développement professionnel d’Huberman (1986), des gestes professionnels de Bucheton (2009) et de la compétence de Le Boterf (1994). Cette recherche se fonde sur des observations et verbatims de séances de groupes d’accompagnement professionnel et de formation transversale qui ont été mis en place dans l’académie de Montpellier et elle recourt à des entretiens de professeurs stagiaires et de titulaires première année. Nous montrons que ces dispositifs d’analyse de pratique variés et souvent ajustés aux attentes des enseignants en formation utilisent ou/et font émerger des traces de pratique mises en discussion dans le groupe de formation. Un travail individuel et collectif préalable à la présentation de la situation par l’acteur, réalisé par les pairs sur des traces de pratique, associé à un travail réflexif, augmente les ressources collectives et individuelles du répertoire de l’agir enseignant. Ces dispositifs collectifs en « présentiel » facilitent et accompagnent la poursuite d’un travail effectué individuellement en « distanciel », ce qui se traduit par le développement d’une communauté de pratiques grâce à la mise en œuvre d’une alternance intégrative. / This doctoral thesis is set within the initial training of teachers of primary and secondary education in the South of France in the 2000s. It aims at studying the contribution in the professional development of new teachers of the reflection on practice which is implemented on the trainees’ return from placement. A clarification of the concept of traces of practice and a typology of these traces is elaborated. The theoretical framework for reflection is a cross-reference to the models of Huberman‘s (1986) professional development, of Bucheton’s (2009) professional gestures and of Le Boterf ‘s (1994) skills. This research is based on observations and verbatims from sessions of a tutorial group on practices and cross training which were set up in the Académie of Montpellier and it resorts to interviews of student teachers and of newly qualified teachers. We show that these strategies for reflection on practice varied and often fitted to the expectations of the teacher trainees use or / and bring to the foreground traces of practices discussed in the training group. An individual and collective work done by the peers, prior to the presentation of the situation by the actor, on traces of practice, associated with a reflective work, increases the collective and individual resources of the repertoire of teaching actions. These collective strategies during "on site" sessions help and guide the pursuit of personal work carried out “online ", which results in the development of a community of practice thanks to the implementation of an integrated placement.

Les surfaces tactiles ayant connu un grand essor ces dernières années, le grand public les utilise quotidiennement pour de multiples tâches, telles que la consultation d'e-mail, la manipulation de photos, etc. En revanche, très peu d'applications 3D existent sur ces dispositifs, alors que de telles applications pourraient avoir un grand potentiel dans des domaines variés, telles que la culture, l'architecture, ou encore l'archéologie. La difficulté majeure pour ce type d'applications est d'interagir avec un espace défini en trois dimensions à partir d'une modalité d'interaction définie en deux dimensions. Les travaux effectués dans cette thèse explorent l'association entre surfaces tactiles et manipulation de contenu 3D pour le grand public. Les premières études ont été réalisées afin de comprendre comment l'utilisateur réagit pour manipuler un objet virtuel 3D avec une surface tactile sans lui imposer de techniques d'interaction particulières. De par les connaissances acquises sur les utilisateurs, les travaux suivants présentent l'élaboration de nouvelles techniques d'interaction ainsi que leur évaluation. / Since the emergence of tactile surfaces in recent years, the general public uses them every day for multiple tasks, such as checking email, photo manipulation, and so on. However, very few 3D applications on these devices exist, although such applications may have great potential in various fields, such as culture, architecture, or archeology. The major difficulty for such applications is to interact with a defined space in three dimensions from an interaction modality defined in two dimensions. Work in this thesis explores the association between tactile surfaces and manipulation of 3D content for the general public. The first studies were conducted to understand how the user tends to manipulate a 3D virtual object with a touch surface without imposing specific interaction techniques. Throughout knowledge gained by users, the following works are developing new interaction techniques and their evaluation.

Les systèmes interactifs étant utilisés pour réaliser des tâches toujours plus complexes et variées, les utilisateurs ont besoin de systèmes qui soient à la fois expressifs, efficaces et utilisables. Si des systèmes simples peuvent être instantanément utilisables, l’expressivité accessible avec des systèmes complexes est souvent considérée comme réservée aux experts. Cependant, notre approche, inspirée par la recherche en phénoménologie et en psychologie, souligne que certaines activités expertes ayant une portée sociale, comme les activités artistiques, permettent aussi aux non-experts d’acquérir des compétences et une connaissance considérables de façon implicite. Dans ce manuscrit, nous évoquerons notamment la connaissance et les compétences avancées développées par les non-musiciens lors de l’écoute de la musique et de l’observation du jeu instrumental. Nous défendons deux idées. Premièrement, les concepteurs de systèmes interactifs peuvent profiter de ces compétences et de cette connaissance implicites pour créer des systèmes expressifs qui soient utilisables. Deuxièmement, les méthodes d'apprentissage expertes et les outils experts, qui ont été perfectionnés à travers le temps et ont fait leurs preuves dans des situations complexes, peuvent servir de sources d'inspiration pour améliorer l’utilisabilité des systèmes complexes pour les utilisateurs novices. Nous proposons un cadre de conception pour étudier l'utilisabilité et l'expressivité des techniques d'interaction, comme deux nouvelles mesures de la qualité de l'interaction, et présentons les trois projets de cette thèse. Dans le premier, nous étudions l'utilisation de motifs rythmiques pour l'interaction, et nous montrons que des utilisateurs novices sont capables de reproduire et de mémoriser efficacement de grands vocabulaires de motifs rythmiques. Une telle interaction tire parti des capacités naturelles des non-musiciens pour percevoir et reproduire des structures rythmiques. Nous définissons des règles pour créer des motifs rythmiques adaptés à l’interaction, et montrons qu’ils peuvent être utilisés efficacement pour déclencher des commandes. Dans le deuxième projet, nous étudions la conception et l’apprentissage de postures multi-doigt sur des écrans multi-tactiles. Nous prenons en compte les contraintes mécaniques et les degrés de liberté de la main pour créer des vocabulaires expressifs de postures multi-doigt, dont nous évaluons l’utilisabilité lors d’une expérimentation. Nous présentons une méthode d’apprentissage adaptée aux postures les plus complexes, inspirée par l’apprentissage des accords en musique, et nous montrons qu’elle peut améliorer la compréhension et la mémorisation. Dans le dernier projet, nous nous intéressons aux applications de création musicale en temps réel, et tentons de les faire profiter des qualités instrumentales des instruments acoustiques. Nous voulons créer des applications qui permettent un jeu virtuose et expressif, et dont les fonctionnalités élémentaires sont accessibles aux novices (comme on peut jouer quelques accords au piano sans apprentissage). Nous proposons un cadre de conception et une architecture logicielle qui aident à considérer la conception d’applications musicales comme une lutherie à part entière. Avec ces projets, nous montrons que, dans ces cas : (i) la connaissance et les compétences implicites des non-experts peuvent être réutilisées en interaction ; (ii) les méthodes d’apprentissage expertes peuvent permettre de rendre les systèmes expressifs plus utilisables ; (iii) s’inspirer des outils experts peut aider à concevoir des systèmes interactifs expressifs et utilisables. Nous proposons l’étude de l’utilisabilité comme une alternative à l’immédiateté prônée par les entreprises d’informatique, et nous présentons des méthodes pour tirer parti de la richesse des activités expertes et de la connaissance implicite des non-experts pour créer des systèmes interactifs expressifs et utilisables par les novices. / As interactive systems are now used to perform a variety of complex tasks, users need systems that are at the same time expressive, efficient and usable. Although simple interactive systems can be easily usable, interaction designers often consider that only expert practitioners can benefit from the expressiveness of more complex systems. Our approach, inspired by studies in phenomenology and psychology, underscores that non-experts have sizeable knowledge and advanced skills related to various expert activities having a social dimension –such as artistic activities–, which they gain implicitly through their engagement as perceivers. For example, we identify various music-related skills mastered by non-musicians, which they gain when listening to music or attending performances. We have two main arguments. First, interaction designers can reuse such implicit knowledge and skills to design interaction techniques that are both expressive and usable by novice users. Second, as expert artifacts and expert learning methods have evolved over time and have shown efficient to overcome the complexity of expert activities, they can be used as a source of inspiration to make expressive systems more easily usable by novice users. We provide a design framework for studying the usability and expressiveness of interaction techniques as two new aspects of the user experience, and explore this framework with three projects. In the first project we study the use of rhythmic patterns as an input method, and show that novice users are able to reproduce and memorize large vocabularies of patterns. This is made possible by the natural abilities of non-musicians to perceive, reproduce and make sense of rhythmic structures. We define a method to create expressive vocabularies of patterns, and show that novice users are able to efficiently use them as command triggers. In the second project, we study the design and learning of chording gestures on multitouch screens. We introduce design guidelines to create expressive chord vocabularies taking the mechanical constraints and the degrees of freedom of the human hand into account. We evaluate the usability of such gestures in an experiment and we present an adapted learning method inspired by the teaching of chords in music. We show that novice users are able to reproduce and memorize our vocabularies of chording gestures, while our learning method can improve long-term memorization. The final project focuses on music software used for live performances and proposes a framework for designing “instrumental” software allowing expert musical playing and having its elementary functionalities accessible to novices, as it is the case with acoustic instruments (for example, one can easily play a few chords on a piano without practice). We define a design framework inspired by a functional decomposition of acoustic instruments and present an adapted software architecture, both aiming to ease the design of such software and to make it match with instrument-making. These projects show that, in these cases: (i) the implicit knowledge novices have about some expert activities can be reused for interaction; (ii) expert learning methods can inspire ways to make expressive systems more usable novices; (iii) taking expert artifacts as a source of inspiration can help creating usable and expressive interactive systems. In this dissertation, we propose the study of usability as an alternative to the focus on immediacy that characterizes current commercial interactive systems. We also propose methods to benefit from the richness of expert activities and from the implicit knowledge of non-experts to design interactive systems that are at the same time expressive and usable by novice users.

Cette thèse se veut une contribution à la recherche en éducation musicale en France. Elle est ancrée dans le domaine de l’enseignement spécialisé de la direction de chœur et aborde les pratiques de l’élève et de l’enseignant dans leur interdépendance, à travers l’analyse d’une situation réelle d’enseignement-apprentissage du geste de direction musicale. La recherche traite spécifiquement le travail de l’enseignant et tente de mettre en lumière le rôle de ce dernier dans la construction des savoir-faire liés à un élément technique particulier :« la levée ». Il s’agit de mettre en évidence la manière dont l’enseignant structure le cours, et les aménagements qu’il opère, en termes de « milieu » pour accompagner l’élève vers les connaissances visées. / This thesis has the purpose investing in the research of musical education in France. It isfocused on specialised teaching for choir conductors and hence studies the practicesundertaken by both the student and the teacher interdependently, by analysing the conductinggestures in a real teaching-learning situation. The research specifically takes an interest in theteacher's work, and seeks to highlight the role of the latter in the building of knowledge linkedto a particular technical element: « the upbeat ». Of particular importance is the way in whichthe teacher structures the lessons, organises the layout, in terms of “the environment” in orderto direct the students towards targeted learning.