The aim of this study is to explore criteria characterizing music teacher’s strategies when trying to adapt their teaching to individual students. The interaction of three music teachers with their students was explored in case studies in different parts of Sweden (a pre-study, and the main study consisting of two parallel studies). The research interest especially concerns teaching class ensemble addressing teenagers in the tuition provided under the curriculum of Swedish secondary and upper secondary school.  This study adopts the perspective of cultural psychology according to which learning is understood as being relational, taking place in a cultural context, depending on available cultural resources and affected by it. Cultural tools are considered mediators of meaning and crucial for learning. Of special interest to the present study are the ways in which teachers distribute knowledge to their students. Many-sided data were collected in all case studies: series of lessons were observed and video-documented; preliminary results were followed up in semi-structured interviews with the teachers, respectively. The results show similarities in the use of general strategies; e.g. peer-teaching and -learning in the classroom and flexibility in using and developing cultural tools. Results also show three diverging practices; rehearsal-room practice, supervisor-practice and ensemble-leading-practice. The results are discussed from a societal perspective, in light of Swedish School history. Issues concerning the government of the School and equivalence are addressed.  An unexpected result is that the concept “individually adapted ensemble teaching” may be understood very differently among music teachers actively involved in teachers’ education. The need for development of professional concepts is further underlined by the findings that teachers develop new cultural tools within different practices. This is discussed related to the framing of the central curricula.

In this dissertation, I explore a writing center tutor training model based on the theories and practices of Gertrude Buck, a nineteenth-century teacher and scholar. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Buck was among the few offering an alternative to the dominant view of writing as a tool to reflect existing ideas objectively and correctly. She instead held a Deweyan view of language as a practice that allowed students to explore knowledge and come to a better understanding of themselves, others, and their communities.I examine evidence that effects of prescriptive nineteenth century trends linger in our contemporary writing center setting at Ball State University; next, I describe the process of creating a tutor training model over the course of a semester as I introduce Buck's ideas, observing how Buck's principles are discussed and implemented in writing center sessions and staff training situations. Specifically, I ask the following questions for the descriptive study that I conduct: What practices emerge as a result of using the principles of Gertrude Buck in writing center tutor training? What are the relationships among this tutor training process, tutors' perceptions of writing, and their resulting practices and approaches toward tutoring writing?Findings from the descriptive study demonstrate that the use of Gertrude Buck's principles in our writing center enabled tutors to openly, productively discuss the complexities of writing and language and to more confidently meet the needs ofdiverse writers in a range of situations. The use of Gertrude Buck's principles, which emphasize collaboration, an inductive approach to learning, and continuous reflection on the relationship between practice and theory, in fact have a broader application beyond writing centers. Writing center administrators, tutors, and teachers of writing can benefit from Buck's principles as a guide for examining their own practice and theory connections and creating models for teaching and tutoring to fit their specific contexts. / Department of English

This thesis presents a case study of one tutor in two tutoring sessions using electronic drafts in the Ball State Writing Center, focusing on the sessions' power dynamics. Writing centers have developed nondirective tutoring pedagogies in order to help tutors navigate the power dynamics of sessions with paper drafts. While these pedagogies have recently been adapted for tutoring online, attention has not yet been focused on face-to-face sessions using a computer. Using conversational, textual, and user interface analysis, this study provides thick descriptions of the power dynamics of each tutoring session, analyzing the interactions between tutor, student and computer. The descriptions of both sessions show them to be vastly unique and complex, undermining strict dichotomies between directive and nondirective tutoring. The use of the computer reflects the overall dynamics of each tutorial and raises questions about the ways in which tutors and students prefer to use computers in tutoring sessions. / Department of English

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of an intentional, formal peer education program on the performance of psychomotor skills of 22 undergraduate students enrolled in an upper extremity assessment course. Using a randomized pretest-posttest control group design, student performance on a practical exam of psychomotor skills related to the orthopedic assessment of the wrist and hand was evaluated. Both the peer teacher and Approved Clinical Instructor (ACI) groups received an instructor-led introduction and practice of psychomotor skills in the traditional laboratory classroom setting. Participants in the peer teachers groups attended two one-hour review sessions over the course of two weeks that were staffed by upper division peer teachers, while participants in the ACI group attended similar sessions that were staffed by an ACI. There were no differences between the groups on the pretest scores as indicated by a t-test (p>.05). A repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant difference (p<.05) in the scores of participants of both groups on all tasks from the pretest to the posttest. ANOVA measures indicated no significant differences (p>.05) between the groups on any of the posttest tasks related to wrist and hand assessment. The Athletic Training Peer Education Assessment Survey revealed that most (n=8, 66.7%) of the students in the peer teachers group indicated that they felt less anxious when performing laboratory skills in the presence of peer teachers as compared to performing them in front of the classroom instructor, and most (n=7, 58.3%) felt more self-confident when practicing laboratory skills with a peer teacher. Over half (n=8, 66.7%) of the students also responded that being taught laboratory skills by peer teachers increased their interaction and collaboration with other students more than being taught by the classroom instructor. Peer education appears to be a valid teaching-learning method that may be incorporated into an athletic training education program as a means to foster the learning and performing of athletic training psychomotor skills, encourage collaboration among students, and decrease anxiety of novice learners. / Department of Educational Leadership

The phenomenon of teenage pregnancy among school-going youth is on the increase in South Africa, despite the existence of a number of intervention programmes. Although both curricular and co-curricular awareness programmes targeting this phenomenon are currently employed within South African schools, these programmes have patently not met with much success, since the problem remains acute. It was the question why these programmes are not succeeding in alleviating the problem that prompted my interest in undertaking this study. Based on literature that suggests that those programmes that are successful in reaching the youth are designed through participatory processes, rather than being designed by outside experts, my thesis proposes that prevention programmes that are designed and implemented by the youth for the youth may be more successful in helping them to make healthy decisions in terms of their sexual behaviour. This study attempted to engage youth in a participatory way in identifying and exploring their perceptions of teenage pregnancy and using the knowledge thus gained to design, implement and evaluate prevention strategies in their school. The study is informed by social learning theory and adopted a participatory action research (PAR) design, which is located in a critical paradigm. I purposefully recruited twenty-four youths (14 females and 10 males) to participate. The primary research question that guided this study was: “How can peer educators be engaged to create prevention strategies to reduce teenage pregnancy and its impacts?” The following sub-questions were identified from the primary research question: What do learners themselves know feel and experience with regard to the causes and effects of teenage pregnancy How might a participatory methodology help learners to create relevant and contextualised strategies for addressing teenage pregnancy? How can such strategies be implemented in a school system? What recommendations could be made for addressing teenage pregnancy in a contextualised way? The research was conducted in two cycles. In Cycle One, data was generated through two focus group discussions, led by a young researcher from the community to encourage openness and honesty. In addition through snowball sampling, six teenage mothers and two teenage fathers agreed to be interviewed individually. The same questions were asked in the two discussions and the individual interviews, namely: “What do you know, feel and think about teenage pregnancy?” In the first cycle, I responded to my first sub-research question. Interviews, drawings and focus group discussions were used to generate data. Three themes emerged from the data to provide insight into how the youth at the school perceived the phenomenon of teenage pregnancy. The findings from this cycle revealed certain tensions between what youth said they needed and what adults, such as teachers and parents, thought they needed to know. The participating teenagers regarded themselves as sexual beings, while the adults in their sphere of influence preached abstinence, moralised or merely cited the facts, without entering into any discussion of how young people could deal with social pressures and better protect themselves against unplanned pregnancy. The participating youth were clearly aware of how to prevent pregnancy, but the social barriers to using condoms or contraceptive pills were a stumbling block. They possessed knowledge of the potential consequences of risky behaviour, but this did not stop them from engaging in such behaviour. In the second cycle of the research, the participants used the findings of the first cycle to develop prevention messages and strategies to convey these messages to their peers. They used participatory visual methods to accomplish this. The findings from this cycle revealed that a peer education approach helped participants to increase maturity in sexual decision-making, had a positive effect on the learning and acquisition of new skills, and improved critical thinking relating to sexuality. The study also had a positive impact on other learners’ knowledge and the attitudes displayed by both learners and teachers, and also led to improvements in school policies related to sexuality education. It is contended that the study contributed important theoretical and methodological insights. Knowledge generated from the study could make a contribution to the field of sexuality education and how it should be approached in schools, particularly in communities facing social and economic adversity. The methodological contribution of this study provided guidelines and theory on how participatory action research and participatory methods can be implemented in schools to enable youth to influence change in their schools, not only regarding teenage pregnancy, but also other social issues.

Numerous studies since the 1960s have demonstrated that peer tutoring between two students is an effective teaching practice across populations and academic content areas. However, there has been limited research on peer tutoring beyond the traditional dyad format. We analyze variations of peer tutoring in a series of studies in a 3rd grade general education classroom. During the first study, we compared dyad and group peer tutoring structures for spelling acquisition with 14 participants across 2 experiments. We found that the majority of the students mastered novel words with fewer learn units during peer tutoring in dyads (i.e., lower learn units-to-criterion). However, scores on spelling post-assessments were higher following group peer tutoring conditions. Findings suggest that peer tutoring in a group may be more effective when considering post-assessment accuracy. In the second study we analyzed the effects of peer tutoring with Equivalence Based Instruction (EBI) on inference making, specifically, the emergence of eight 3-member fraction-percentage classes with 8 participants across 2 experiments. We found that participants acquired both baseline training relations during peer tutoring EBI: one directly as a tutee and one indirectly as a tutor. Following peer tutoring EBI, all participants derived the remaining 4 relations. Once participants had formed equivalence classes, they could also sort fraction stimuli, which demonstrated transfer of function. Additionally, we noted that it may be important for instructors to consider response effort for training relations when designing instruction for peer tutoring EBI due to possible adverse effects on student behaviors. Our findings suggest novel and effective means in designing pedagogy to increase learn units, select effective tutoring formats, and plan for inference making in general education classrooms.

Each year, teen pregnancy occurs in 750,000 15-to-19 year-old women in the United States (U.S.). Utah has the youngest population and the lowest teen abortion rates in the U.S. Approximately 73% of teen pregnancies in Utah result in live births. The prevalence of teen pregnancy and the nutritional risk to mother and child result in a much greater need for social support, such as nutrition education. Current literature shows that the paraprofessional model is effective in increasing positive behavior change through nutrition education. Presently, there is a lack of evidence that paraprofessional teens are capable of accurately and effectively teaching their peers nutrition information. This pilot study aims to measure the effectiveness of the peer-teaching-peer paraprofessional model in teen parenting nutrition education, and to demonstrate that peer educators ages 18-22 are capable of teaching their peers accurate nutrition information as effectively as adult paraprofessionals. In this pilot study, two females were trained to become paraprofessional peer educators. To supplement the training of peer educators, this pilot study developed and recorded a nutrition presentation for all six lessons of the paper version Missouri Extension Teen Parenting curriculum. Each trained peer educator taught 10 to 13 clients (ages 14 to 19) over three weeks. For evaluation, the study used pre/post comparisons. Assessment tools include teaching evaluations, pre-post test on nutrition knowledge, 24-hour dietary and physical activity recalls, and behavioral checklist. There was a significant difference in pre-post tests in knowledge, behavior, and exit survey among participants, indicating that peer educators are able to teach their peers effectively. Although not significant, peer educators' teaching accuracy score was high and improved consistently. Eighty-three of participants like or very much liked to be taught by their peers. Findings from this study showed great potential in having adolescents teach their peers as effectively as older educators.

No description available.

Thesis (MA) -- Stellenbosch University, 2003. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Health and social problems associated with the high-risk sexual behaviour of young people worldwide gave rise to the priority status accorded to sex education in the past decade. Despite the attention focused on and the goals set for sexual health education, surveys indicate that the AIDS epidemic is still spreading, STD infections are increasing and a growing number of unwanted pregnancies are reported every year. It seems therefore that many young people are not yet able to manage their sexual health effectively and sex educators are confronted with the challenge to provide more effective sexl education interventions. This study attempted to address the need for effective sexuality education for young people by designing, implementing and evaluating a peer group sexuality psycho-education programme targeted at university students. The process of programme development was guided by the phases proposed by the Psycho-education model: Phase 1: Problem-identification. This phase entailed becoming aware of the problem through media attention, social awareness, discussions with members of the community and exploring problems around young people's sexual health through an extensive literature review. Phase 2: Situation Analysis. During this phase the researcher clarified the identified problem by conceptualizing and defining relevant concepts and identifying theoretical frameworks and principles that could be used to address the problem. as well as the Action Research model were identified as useful theories. Phase 3: Development of the programme. The Information-Motivation-Behavioural skills (1MB) model and the Guerney model were used to guide the design of the programme. Phases 4, 5 and 6: Implementation, evaluation and re-evaluation. These interdependent phases entailed three consecutive implementations of the sexuality psycho-education programme. The principles of Action Research were used to guide the implementation and evaluation processes. Evaluation of qualitative data obtained through participatory research after each implementation allowed for continuous adaptation and improvement of the programme. At the end of the third implementation quantitative data was supplemented by quantitative data obtained with a pen-and-paper test-retest method. Quantitative results indicated that the sexuality education programme significantly increased subjects' knowledge regarding sex en sexuality, but did not have a significant impact on attitudes and perceived behavioural skills. There was an indication that clarification of attitudes had been promoted, and that attitudes relating to the use of contraception had positively changed. Furthermore, a significant change in perceived behavioural skills regarding communication about and behaviour for the prevention of HIV/STDs had been achieved. Qualitative evaluation indicated that subjects felt more positive about using condoms and about communicating with their partners about the use of contraceptives. Step 6 and full circle back to step 1: Final Re-evaluation and problem-identification. During this phase the researcher reviewed the outcomes of the intervention. New problems were identified and recommendations made for future continuation. The researcher concluded that the deficits in research methodology, such as a lack of structured qualitative evaluation, hampered effective evaluation of the programme. Further research needs to be conducted to develop appropriate theoretical frameworks and measuringinstruments with which to inform and evaluate the effectiveness of sex education programmes. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die gesondheids- en maatskaplike probleme wat verband hou met die hoë-risiko seksuele gedrag van jongmense wêreldwyd het daartoe gelei dat seksonderrig gedurende die afgelope dekade voorrang geniet het. Ondanks die toespitsing op seksuele gesondheid, en die doelwitte daarvoor gestel, toon peilings dat die VIGS-epidemie steeds versprei, seksueel-oordraagbare siektes (STDs) toeneem, en 'n groeiende aantalongewenste swangerskappe jaarliks aangemeld word. Dit blyk dus dat 'n groot aantal jongmense nie in staat is om hulle seksuele gesondheid effektief te bestuur nie en seksopvoeders word gekonfronteer met die uitdaging om meer effektiewe seksopvoedingsintervensies te verskaf. Met hierdie studie is onderneem om die behoefte aan doeltreffende seksualiteitsopvoeding vir jongmense aan te spreek, deur die samestelling, toepassing en evaluering van 'n portuurgroep seksualiteit psigo-opleidingsprogram gemik op universiteitstudente. Die proses van programontwikkeling is gelei deur die fases wat voorgestel is deur die Psigo-onderrigmodel: Fase 1: Probleemidentifikasie: Dié fase het kennisname van die probleem behels as gevolg van die aandag daaraan gewy in die media en as gevolg van maatskaplike bewustheid, asook deur bespreking met lede van die gemeenskap en deur ondersoek van probleme in verband met die seksuele welstand van jongmense deur middel van 'n uitgebreide literatuurstudie. Fase 2: Situasieanalise: Gedurende hierdie fase het die navorser die geïdentifiseerde probleem duideliker omskryf deur die relevante konsepte te konseptualiseer en omskryf, en teoretiese raamwerke en beginsels te identifiseer wat gebruik kon word om die probleem aan te pak. Fase 3: Ontwikkeling van die program: Die Informasie-Motivering-Gedragsvaardigheidsmodel (IMG) en die Guernymodel is gebruik as raamwerke vir die ontwerp van die program. Fases 4, 5 en 6: Implementering, evaluasie en her-evaluasie. Hierdie interafhanklike fases het drie opeenvolgende implementerings van die seksualiteit-psigo-opleidingsprogram behels. Die beginsels van Aksienavorsing is toegepas in die implementering- en evaluasieprosesse. Evaluasie van kwalitatiewe data, verkry deur deelnemende navorsing na elke implementering, het deurlopende aanpassing en verbetering van die program moontlik gemaak. Aan die einde van die derde implementering is kwantitatiewe data aangevul deur data wat verkry is deur 'n pen-en-papier toets-hertoets-metode. Stap 6 en terug tot by stap 1: Finale re-evaluasie en probleemidentifikasie. Gedurende hierdie fase het die navorser die resultate van die intervensie ontleed. Nuwe probleme is geïdentifiseer en aanbeveliings vir toekomstige voortsetting is gemaak. Die navorser het tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat die tekortkominge in die navorsingsmetodologie - byvoorbeeld, 'n gebrek aan gestruktureerde kwalitatiewe evaluering - verhinder het dat effektiewe evaluering van die program kon plaasvind. Verdere navorsing word benodig om toepaslike teoretiese raamwerke en meetinstrumente te ontwikkel wat aangewend kan word om die ontwerp van seksopvoedingsprogramme te rig en die effektief van programme te evalueer.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a peer-taught freshman seminar course on the grade point averages and retention rates of freshman students. Freshman students who entered the University of Texas at Arlington in the fall 1989 and fall 1990 semesters and enrolled in the voluntary 1 credit hour course "College Adjustment" were matched with freshman students who did not enroll in the course. Matched pairs were formed based on orientation attendance, college major, gender, and Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores. For both years, the Freshman Seminar Group was similar to the group of All Other Freshman Students regarding the following characteristics: college major, age, gender, ethnicity, SAT scores, and number of first semester hours completed. Analysis of variance was used to determine if statistically significant (p < .05) differences existed between the first semester and first year grade point averages for the Freshman Seminar Group and Freshman Seminar Matches. Chi-square analysis was employed to determine if statistically significant (p < .05) differences existed between the second semester and sophomore year retention rates for the Freshman Seminar Group and Freshman Seminar Matches. The freshman seminar course was more beneficial to African American students, as evidenced by statistically significant first year grade point averages and sophomore year retention rates. Males who enrolled in the freshman seminar course appeared to benefit more than males who did not enroll in the course, as shown by statistically significant sophomore year retention rates. Students with low SAT scores appeared to benefit from the freshman seminar course, as evidenced by statistically significant second semester and sophomore year retention rates.