Where do beginner readers read in the English, mainstream primary school and where could they read? Emma Jane Dyer This thesis explores design for the beginner reader in Year One by evaluating existing spaces in the English primary school and imagining new ones. Three significant gaps identified in the literature of reading, the teaching of reading and school design are addressed: the impact of reading pedagogies, practices and routines on spatial arrangements for beginner readers inside and beyond the classroom; a theoretical understanding of the physical, bodily and sensory experience of the beginner reader; and the design of reading spaces by teaching staff. The study uses a design-oriented research methodology and framework proposed by Fällman. A designed artefact is a required outcome of the research: in this case, a child-sized, semi-enclosed book corner known as a nook. The research was organized in three phases. First, an initial design for the nook was created, based on multi-disciplinary, theoretical research about reading, school design and architecture. Secondly, empirical research using observation, pupil-led tours and interviews was undertaken in seven primary schools to determine the types of spaces where readers read: spaces that were often unsuitable for their needs. Thirdly, as a response to the findings of phases one and two, the nook was reconceived to offer a practical solution to poorly-designed furniture for reading in schools and to provoke further research about the ideal qualities of spaces for the beginner reader. The study demonstrates how the experience of the individual reader is affected by choices made about the national curriculum; by the size of schools and the spaces within them where readers can learn; by the design of classrooms by teachers; and by regulatory standards for teaching and non-teaching spaces. In developing a methodology that can stimulate and facilitate communication between architects, educators, policy-makers and readers, this thesis offers a valuable contribution to the ongoing challenge of improving school design for practitioners and pupils.

Like other countries globally, South Africa has embraced inclusive education as a reform that supports and welcomes diversity among all learners. Inclusive education is a process of addressing the diverse learning needs of all learners by reducing barriers to and within the learning environment, as well as to increase their full participation in the learning process. In every classroom, there are learners who present with a diversity of personal characteristics and experiences attributable to physical, personal health or wellbeing, intellectual, psychological, religious, cultural, socio-economic or life experiences that may impact on their access to and participation in learning. It is important to respect the learners’ diversity in order to respond to the unique strengths and needs of every individual learner. The problem is that the pathological-deficit model seems to play a dominant role in teaching and learning, whereby learners who experience barriers to learning and development are not given opportunity to participate fully in learning. The purpose of this study is to enhance productive pedagogies to shift from pathological-deficit model which approaches learners based upon the perceptions of their weaknesses rather than their strengths and views those learners’ differences as deficits. The theoretical framework of critical pedagogy and social constructivism provided an extensive platform from which to engage with the study. A mixed methods study was conducted in two phases. Both phases were conducted at the Bojanala district in the North West Province. Phase one comprised a qualitative approach where focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with SBSTs and principals. Phase two comprised the quantitative approach where all teachers at the selected schools completed a questionnaire. A sequential mixed methods sampling was used with a multilevel purposive sample for choosing the schools. In both phases data were gathered from mainstream, full-service and special schools’ SBST, principals and all teachers selected by purposive and probability sampling respectively. The findings from the qualitative phase revealed that some schools are fully resourced to address diversity and respond to diverse learning needs of all learners. It is further revealed that inclusive practices are effectively implemented at those schools. It was also revealed that some schools were under-resourced to address barriers to learning and to respond to learners’ diverse needs. The SBST from the mentioned schools were not functional because they were not trained on their roles and responsibilities as support structures at their respective schools. Furthermore, several factors were identified as challenges in implementing inclusive practices and responding to diverse learning needs, and these are: limited teaching and learning time, overcrowding, lack of support from the District-based Support Team (DBST), insufficient knowledge and skills on addressing diversity and barriers to learning, lack of parental involvement and inadequate learner progression policy. The questionnaire findings indicated that some teachers did not have knowledge and skills on inclusive practices, did not attend inclusive education workshops and that there is a need for an extensive continuous professional teacher development programme for such teachers. Based on the findings of the empirical inquiry, recommendations are made to enhance productive pedagogies, improve inclusive practice and a call is made for extensive continuous professional teacher development where teachers can talk and share ideas about different approaches and strategies on how they can adjust their pedagogies, respond to diverse learning needs of all learners and get learners involved in learning. / Inclusive Education / D. Ed. (Inclusive Education)

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Au Québec, particulièrement à Montréal, un nombre important d’enfants bi/plurilingues de maternelle cinq ans sont directement intégrés en classe ordinaire. Pour ces enfants qui poursuivent le développement de leurs compétences langagières dans deux ou plusieurs langues simultanément, il est primordial d’adapter les pratiques enseignantes afin de tenir compte de leurs besoins. La lecture partagée (LP) d’albums de littérature de jeunesse est une activité largement reconnue pour favoriser le développement langagier oral et écrit (Cunningham et Zibulsky, 2011; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Tout en favorisant le plaisir de la lecture (Dupin de St-André et al., 2015), cette activité permet d’amener progressivement l’enfant à établir des liens entre langage oral et écrit. Elle permet également de favoriser, entre autres, le développement des habiletés narratives (ex. : Pesco et Gagné, 2017; Roux-Baron, 2019), dimension discursive du développement langagier qui exerce une incidence sur l’apprentissage de l’écrit et, donc, la réussite scolaire. Dans la présente recherche doctorale, les paramètres d’une intervention de LP tenant compte des besoins des enfants bi/plurilingues en émergence pour favoriser le développement de leurs habiletés narratives ont été définis au moyen d’une recension des écrits. Ces paramètres ciblés ont été mis à l’essai dans le cadre d’une vaste recherche (Armand et al., 2017-2021) dans laquelle a eu lieu une intervention de LP au moyen de l’application Les Albums plurilingues ÉLODiL dans une perspective de collaboration école-famille. L’utilisation d’albums bi/plurilingues faisait partie des modalités identifiées pour favoriser, dans une optique inclusive (Cummins, 2021), le développement langagier d’enfants bi/plurilingues en émergence (Naqvi et al., 2012). Dans le cadre de cette recherche, notre contribution à l’intervention a consisté à concevoir et à mettre à l’essai des activités entourant la lecture des albums qui visaient spécifiquement le développement des habiletés narratives. Afin de documenter les effets de l’intervention sur l’évolution des habiletés narratives des enfants, nous avons recueilli, avant et après l’intervention, les productions d’un groupe d’enfants qui y a pris part (n=78) en recourant à deux types de tests standardisés. Les productions ont été comparées à celles d’enfants qui n’ont pas participé à l’intervention (n=35), mais dont les enseignant·es avaient reçu les mêmes albums en français et en version papier uniquement. Pour compléter le portrait, nous avons également recueilli le rappel du récit d’un des albums exploités dans le cadre de l’intervention auprès des enfants du groupe expérimental (n=70). L’analyse des résultats obtenus au moyen des outils standardisés révèle que l’intervention de LP au moyen d’albums plurilingues intégrant des activités en lien avec les habiletés narratives apporte une contribution positive à l’évolution de ces habiletés chez les enfants. Qui plus est, l’analyse qualitative des productions obtenues au moyen d’un outil conçu à partir d’un des albums de l’intervention, mise en relation avec la description présente dans les écrits scientifiques des habiletés narratives d’enfants monolingues du même groupe d’âge, tend à démontrer que les enfants bi/plurilingues en émergence, ici dans le contexte montréalais pluriethnique et plurilingue de notre étude, ne sont pas « en retard » par rapport aux enfants monolingues. / In Quebec, particularly in Montreal, a significant number of bi/plurilingual children in five-year-old kindergarten are directly integrated into regular classrooms (with or without French learning support services). For these emerging bi/plurilingual children who are continuing to develop their language skills in two or more languages simultaneously, it is essential to adapt educative practices to consider their needs, particularly with regard to language development, which is one of the areas of global development. Shared reading of children’s literature is one of the activities which is widely recognized by the scientific and practical community to promote oral and written language skills (Cunningham & Zibulsky, 2011; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008; Turgeon, 2018). This significant activity promotes the pleasure of reading (Dupin de St-André et al., 2015) and allows children to gradually make connections between oral and written language. Among other things, shared reading and the interactions that surround it promote the development of narrative skills (e.g., Lever & Sénéchal, 2011; Nielsen & Friesen, 2012; Pesco & Gagné, 2017; Roux-Baron, 2019), a discursive dimension of language development that has an impact on literacy development and, by the same token, academic success. In this doctoral research, we identified through a literature review the parameters of a shared reading intervention that would consider emerging bi/plurilingual needs in order to foster the development of their narrative skills. These parameters were tested as part of a broader research (Armand et al. 2017-2021) in which a shared reading intervention took place using a web-based children’s literature application, Les Albums plurilingues ÉLODiL, through a school-family collaboration. The use of bi/plurilingual book was one of the modalities identified to promote, from an additive (Lambert, 1975) and inclusive (Cummins, 2021) point of view, the language development of emerging bi/plurilingual children (Naqvi et al., 2012). As part of this doctoral research, our contribution to the intervention consisted of designing and testing activities surrounding the shared reading of children’s book that were specifically aimed at the development of narrative skills. In order to document the effects of the intervention on the children’s narrative skill evolution, before and after it, we collected narratives from a group of children who took part in the intervention (n=78). To this aim, we used two standardized tests (a narrative production task from a sequence of illustrations and a story recall task). The productions were compared to those of children who did not participate in the intervention (n=35). In this control group, the teachers, who used children’s literature in their classroom, received the same children’s book, but in French and in paper version only. In order to complete the portrait, we also collected from the children in the experimental group (n=70) the recall of the story of one of the books used in the intervention. This allowed us to provide a qualitative overview of the narrative skills of children in a regular five-year-old kindergarten classroom in a plurilingual context. The analysis of the results obtained with the standardized tools reveals that the shared reading intervention, using plurilingual books and integrating the activities we implemented in relation to narrative skills, brings a positive contribution to the evolution of the narrative skills of the children who took part. Moreover, the qualitative analysis of the portrait of the children’s narrative skills, put in relation with the description of the narrative skills of “monolingual” children of the same age group presented in the scientific literature, tends to show that emerging bi/plurilingual children are not “lagging behind”.

Muslims have the starring role in the mass media’s curriculum on otherness, which circulates in-between local and global contexts to powerfully constitute subjectivities. This study inquires into what it is like to be a female, Muslim student in Ontario, in this post 9/11 discursive context. Seven young Muslim women share stories of their high schooling experiences and their sense of identity in interviews and focus group sessions. They also respond to images of Muslim females in the print media, offering perspectives on the intersections of visual media discourses with their lived experience. This interdisciplinary project draws from cultural studies, postcolonial feminist theory, and post-reconceptualist curriculum theorizing. Working with auto/ethno/graphy, my own subjectivity is also brought into the study to trouble researcher-as-knower and acknowledge that personal histories are implicated in larger social, cultural, and historical processes. Using bricolage, I compose a hybrid text with multiple layers of meaning by juxtapositing theory, image, and narrative, leaving spaces for the reader’s own biography to become entangled with what is emerging in the text. Issues raised include veiling obsession, Islamophobia, absences in the school curriculum, and mass media as curriculum. Muslim females navigate a complex discursive terrain and their identity negotiations are varied. These include creating Muslim spaces in their schools, wearing hijab to assert their Muslim identity, and downplaying their religious identity at school. I argue for the need to engage students and teacher candidates in complicated conversations on difference via auto/ethno/graphy, pedagogies of tension, and epistemologies of doubt. Educators and researchers might also consider the possibilities of linking visual media literacy with social justice issues.

Muslims have the starring role in the mass media’s curriculum on otherness, which circulates in-between local and global contexts to powerfully constitute subjectivities. This study inquires into what it is like to be a female, Muslim student in Ontario, in this post 9/11 discursive context. Seven young Muslim women share stories of their high schooling experiences and their sense of identity in interviews and focus group sessions. They also respond to images of Muslim females in the print media, offering perspectives on the intersections of visual media discourses with their lived experience. This interdisciplinary project draws from cultural studies, postcolonial feminist theory, and post-reconceptualist curriculum theorizing. Working with auto/ethno/graphy, my own subjectivity is also brought into the study to trouble researcher-as-knower and acknowledge that personal histories are implicated in larger social, cultural, and historical processes. Using bricolage, I compose a hybrid text with multiple layers of meaning by juxtapositing theory, image, and narrative, leaving spaces for the reader’s own biography to become entangled with what is emerging in the text. Issues raised include veiling obsession, Islamophobia, absences in the school curriculum, and mass media as curriculum. Muslim females navigate a complex discursive terrain and their identity negotiations are varied. These include creating Muslim spaces in their schools, wearing hijab to assert their Muslim identity, and downplaying their religious identity at school. I argue for the need to engage students and teacher candidates in complicated conversations on difference via auto/ethno/graphy, pedagogies of tension, and epistemologies of doubt. Educators and researchers might also consider the possibilities of linking visual media literacy with social justice issues.

Muslims have the starring role in the mass media’s curriculum on otherness, which circulates in-between local and global contexts to powerfully constitute subjectivities. This study inquires into what it is like to be a female, Muslim student in Ontario, in this post 9/11 discursive context. Seven young Muslim women share stories of their high schooling experiences and their sense of identity in interviews and focus group sessions. They also respond to images of Muslim females in the print media, offering perspectives on the intersections of visual media discourses with their lived experience. This interdisciplinary project draws from cultural studies, postcolonial feminist theory, and post-reconceptualist curriculum theorizing. Working with auto/ethno/graphy, my own subjectivity is also brought into the study to trouble researcher-as-knower and acknowledge that personal histories are implicated in larger social, cultural, and historical processes. Using bricolage, I compose a hybrid text with multiple layers of meaning by juxtapositing theory, image, and narrative, leaving spaces for the reader’s own biography to become entangled with what is emerging in the text. Issues raised include veiling obsession, Islamophobia, absences in the school curriculum, and mass media as curriculum. Muslim females navigate a complex discursive terrain and their identity negotiations are varied. These include creating Muslim spaces in their schools, wearing hijab to assert their Muslim identity, and downplaying their religious identity at school. I argue for the need to engage students and teacher candidates in complicated conversations on difference via auto/ethno/graphy, pedagogies of tension, and epistemologies of doubt. Educators and researchers might also consider the possibilities of linking visual media literacy with social justice issues.

Muslims have the starring role in the mass media’s curriculum on otherness, which circulates in-between local and global contexts to powerfully constitute subjectivities. This study inquires into what it is like to be a female, Muslim student in Ontario, in this post 9/11 discursive context. Seven young Muslim women share stories of their high schooling experiences and their sense of identity in interviews and focus group sessions. They also respond to images of Muslim females in the print media, offering perspectives on the intersections of visual media discourses with their lived experience. This interdisciplinary project draws from cultural studies, postcolonial feminist theory, and post-reconceptualist curriculum theorizing. Working with auto/ethno/graphy, my own subjectivity is also brought into the study to trouble researcher-as-knower and acknowledge that personal histories are implicated in larger social, cultural, and historical processes. Using bricolage, I compose a hybrid text with multiple layers of meaning by juxtapositing theory, image, and narrative, leaving spaces for the reader’s own biography to become entangled with what is emerging in the text. Issues raised include veiling obsession, Islamophobia, absences in the school curriculum, and mass media as curriculum. Muslim females navigate a complex discursive terrain and their identity negotiations are varied. These include creating Muslim spaces in their schools, wearing hijab to assert their Muslim identity, and downplaying their religious identity at school. I argue for the need to engage students and teacher candidates in complicated conversations on difference via auto/ethno/graphy, pedagogies of tension, and epistemologies of doubt. Educators and researchers might also consider the possibilities of linking visual media literacy with social justice issues.

No description available.