Abstract not available. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of Natal, Durban, 2000.

This dissertation is a study of the Afro-American oral tradition with special reference to the formal aspects of the poetry of spirituals. In the introduction. an attempt has been made to take a look at the value of oral tradition; the interplay between oral and written tradition; the use made of orality in a society that was denied conventional literacy; the concept and the definition of the term, “spiritual". The organization of the rest of the essay is as follows: The sections are divided into four chapters. The first chapter concerns the origins of Afro-American spirituals and the anthropological foundations of the Afro-American oral style (anthropology of gesture). In addition, an attempt has been made to place the Afro-American oral tradition vis-a-vis the African oral tradition. The second chapter deals with key characteristics in the expressive phase of the Afro-American slave community with special reference to the dynamics of language usage. In the third chapter, there is consideration in some detail on the Afro-American oral composer and the transmission of the spirituals in an oral style milieu. The fourth chapter investigates stylized expression and is devoted to analyses of mnemotechnical devices within the spirituals. In the concluding chapter, an attempt has been made to take an overall look at Afro-American sacred poetic achievement. I must point out that it is not my intention to embark on any technical analysis of the music form and configuration of the spirituals - that is beyond the scope of this essay. In including "representative" samples of spirituals (and portions of spirituals), I do not intend them to be seen as "islands unto themselves" but rather, each spiritual must be seen as part of the whole corpus of Afro-American sacred oral composition. The question may arise: "Why a study of the Afro-American spirituals when there is so much to be studied on the oral traditions of Southern Africa? My response would be that the spirituals fascinate me for I see in them their widespread influence on the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements in South Africa. The Gospel song, so beloved of Pentecostal congregations, is an heir to the Spiritual. An enquiry on the sacred music and performance styles (improvisation, extemporization, dance, handclapping, shouts, etc.) of Pentecostalism will reveal that much of the Afro-American oral style still exists within the fellowship of Black and, venture to say, all Pentecostal churches in South Africa with obvious nuances that vary from denomination to denomination. But, the spirited and lively sacred music is encouraged and preserved. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1991.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.

The oral background, ability in English and academic and social interaction of the non mother-tongue student was the focus of this study. The oral background of the African student is an important consideration as it helps one to contextualise his life and educational experiences. A severe lack of knowledge and interest in each others' cultures and backgrounds among all the players at the tertiary institution was apparent. The focus group interview technique was adapted to elicit students' perceptions of their own problems. This technique proved invaluable in allowing participants to express their views freely, thus offering the researcher an in-depth insight into their life at the tertiary institution and an understanding of the problems they encounter. The focus group discussion was supplemented by questionnaires. The study comprised 40 non mother-tongue students who were divided into 8 groups of 5 students each. On completion of the group discussion, a verbatim transcript of each audio-recording was made. Analyses of the focus group discussion and the questionnaire revealed that non mother-tongue students do in fact experience many problems with academic and social interaction due to their cultural background and ability in English. These students feel isolated and misunderstood. Racism, albeit subtle, seems to be a problem on the campus. It was found that with a few exceptions, there is very little difference between the experiences of the first year students as compared to the second year students. Also, the admissions criteria for the different faculties did not 'eliminate' problems.This illustrates that the problems do not 'disappear' after a whole year at the institution, because the underlying causes are not being addressed. One cannot expect the non mother-tongue student to simply adapt to the new experiences, namely, a different environment and a second language as the medium of instruction and communication. Several recommendations were made for the implementation of the research findings in the tertiary environment. Further research possibilities were also suggested. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1995.

This research study, in its efforts to discuss the consequences of the introduction of literacy among the Zulu people in Umbumbulu, will embody the social and educational aspects of the oral Zulu people before and after the introduction of writing. People have been made to believe that by learning to read and write, they would be empowered: literacy and education would enable them to get decent jobs and earn more money. Western civilization which has been adopted by many African peoples, attaches great value to money economy than subsistence economy, hence there has been a shift from orality to literacy. It is assumed that the acquisition of literacy skills may not change the intelligence quotient of an individual. This work will therefore investigate if the Zulu people did have a form of civilization before they met with the Whites. One will further investigate if the oral life of the Zulu man without the knowledge of reading and writing, was miserable and imbalanced. I shall then look into the method of how literacy was introduced among the Zulu people in Umbumbulu and lastly, check on the impact of literacy and education on the social life of Umbumbulu people. This project falls within the orality-literacy debate and will compare some often conflicting theories. Finally, one would propose suggestions of how school going pupils in Umbumbulu would improve their school performance by applying teaching methods and content that has relevance to their oral culture. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1997.

This thesis investigates how teachers navigate Common Core State Standards, high-stakes testing, and teacher evaluation while creating their own curriculum to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. As a former teacher, I conducted a practitioner research case study of four successful colleagues in a bilingual Pre-K-8 school in Washington, DC. When given flexibility in curriculum, teachers integrated knowledge from their relationships with students to foster a caring environment that supports learning and created their own systems of accountability by deciding what data matters. Teachers centered student engagement as what drives their curriculum and used a variety of differentiation methods based on their own “toolbox” of instructional strategies. Findings suggest a flexible curriculum model allows teachers to be curriculum makers who actively go beyond the standards to integrate knowledge from their practice and relationships with students to create curriculum that successfully supports language learners.

This thesis presents a case study from an authentic school practice, where seven students, in their second year of a social sciences program in an upper sec­on­dary school, use internet texts in various learning situations. The aim of the study is to map the reading practices of students encountering internet texts. The main data con­sists of obser­vations, audio and screen recordings, writ­ten instruc­tions, and screen ­shots of the sites visited. Reading practices are ana­lysed, draw­ing on concepts from New Literacy Studies and Systemic Func­tional Grammar, inclu­ding literacy events, literacy in terms of text cul­ture, text­ual norms, abstraction, auth­o­rity and mod­ality as a scale of reliability. The results reveal that meaning making resources such as colours, amount of writing and images and choice of fonts all seem to be parts of students’ con­ceptions of reliability. These textual norms result in learning situations in which students search for texts with pre­dominantly dense writing promoting ency­clopaedic know­ledge. These highly auth­orit­ative texts can be hard to under­stand for the students, something that the text analyses indicate. In com­parison to text books, the internet texts used show, a higher level of auth­ority and abs­trac­tion, rein­forced by gram­matical meta­phors. Most situ­ations in the study include peer interaction, but the most obvious learning poten­­tial resides in situations with a clear reading goal, where stu­dents work in groups and where negotiation is part of the meaning mak­ing pro­cess. The pedagogical implications of the study suggest the potential for students to achieve a higher degree of understanding of the encountered inter­net texts, through group work, and discussions concerning the impact of different layouts and the demands of verbal language. Another potential con­cerns methods for avoiding critical literacy being reduced to trivial visual scanning, via dis­cussions focusing on criteria for reliability evaluations. It is suggested that increased teacher awareness concerning the types of internet texts the students will encounter in authentic situations may contribute to students’ field and genre insight.

Recent international surveys reveal a decline in reading performance among Swedish students during the past decade. In the light of these results, this thesis describes the reading literacy of a class of high-performing students in the Swedish upper secondary school, in order to discern characteristics of successful readers. More specifically, the aim is to describe these students’ reading literacy in terms of their reading habits, approaches to texts, reading strategies, as well as reading positions. The study is framed within a socio-cultural perspective and is based on qualitative methods such as case studies, classroom observations and a group discussion, in combination with a partly quantitative survey. A methodological contribution to the research field is the attempt to develop a method for analyzing students’ reading positions, mainly based on the concept of text movability, as used by af Geijerstam, Liberg et al. The results reveal a deep reading position towards non-fiction texts among a majority of these high-performing students. In comparison with students who adopt a surface-oriented position, these students tend to show greater textual awareness and interactive text movability, and seem to use a wider repertoire of reading strategies in order to attain reading success. This study identifies the most prominent features of high-performing students as their textual awareness, i.e. an ability to comment on content, form, function and potential readers of texts, genre awareness, i.e. an ability to identify various text genres, and metacognitive awareness, i.e. knowing what strategies to use and when to use them. These features can be related to the students’ descriptions of their reading habits which imply that they read a great variety of texts, including both fiction and non-fiction. Most of these students report that they read daily and of their own accord. Having broad textual experience helps when it comes to reading texts in specialized domains that require inferencing and/or field knowledge. There also appears to be a match between the literacy supported in school and the literacy sustained in the students’ home environment. The pedagogical implications are the need for continuous work with students’ reading development and reading strategies, making students aware of different text genres and their specific features, and the importance for students to be challenged in their reading, but naturally in combination with appropriate scaffolding methods.

No description available.

I dagens medielandskap lever många människor en stor del av sitt liv genom digitala medier, något som även påverkar skolvärlden. Denna studie undersöker den digitala utvecklingen i relation till lärarrollen och svenskämnet. Det empiriska materialet består av kvalitativa intervjuer med lärare som arbetar med medie- och informationskunnighet (MIK) inom svenskundervisning och skolutveckling samt en kompletterande intervju med Statens medieråd. Syftet med studien är att genom svensklärarnas upplevelse av att arbeta med MIK försöka förstå den digitala utvecklingens betydelse i relation till svenskämnet. Min hypotes är att dagens lärare behöver öka sin medie- och informationskunnighet för att kunna möta elevernas behov och kunna utföra sitt allt mer komplexa demokratiuppdrag. Genom teorierna New Literacy Studies, Critical literacy, begreppet multimodalitet och aktuell tidigare forskning har jag försökte förstå vad den digitala utvecklingen innebär för lärandet och språket.Studien visar att osäkerhet, okunskap, tidsbrist och vaga direktiv är några skäl till att utvecklingen går långsamt framåt. Tydligare nationella direktiv, ett större kollegialt samarbete och kompetensutveckling är några av de faktorer som nämns skulle kunna påskynda progressionen. I den avslutande reflektionen diskuteras MIKs öppningar för att arbeta med normkritisk pedagogik och möjlighet till fortsatt forskning inom detta.