published_or_final_version / Public Health / Master / Master of Public Health

The engaged classroom is a space where teacher and students come together to share in the acts of teaching and learning. They embark on a collaborative journey of empowerment and through the process reciprocally influence each other's growth and emancipation. / Through an autobiographical exploration of my experiences as a student and as a teacher, I present an exploration of the concept of empowerment. I explore its significance not only on the level of literacy development in my kindergarten classroom, where I teach French in an Armenian heritage language setting, but also on a more personal and professional level. Working in the theoretical framework of teacher self-study, I present an epistemological exploration of postmodern feminist research paradigms and discuss the various aspects of autobiographical research. I build my thesis on the context of the heritage language school and the critical analysis of my past experiences. I present an account of the reflexive process I have engaged in during the past five years, which, coupled with the theories of critical and feminist pedagogy, has brought forth the main thesis of my dissertation: the interconnectivity of teacher and student empowerment. In the hope of providing some practical material, I include an appendix where I describe a collection of literacy activities from my kindergarten classroom. / My work provides insight into a teacher's journey of meaning-making and empowerment, which will, I hope, be useful as part of a larger exploration of teachers' work and students' experiences in classrooms.

BABES (Beginning Alcohol and Addictions Basic Education Studies) is a drug and alcohol prevention program designed to provide children with un-biased, non-judgemental information concerning alcohol and drug use. The program includes elements of social skills training and empowers children to make informed decisions.The purpose of this study was three-fold: to study the reliability of the BABES instrument, to investigate the effectiveness of the BABES program by administering the BABES instrument and to determine how children's knowledge levels were affected by the program.One hundred and five children were randomly selected from two local day care centers and from Head Start of Delaware County, Indiana. Consents were obtained for 61 children. Preschoolers from Head Start children and from one of the day care centers completed the Pre-Attitude Assessment Inventory and the BABES test. The Pre-AAI was administered prior to BABES and immediately following the prevention program, whereas the BABES test was given at both of those times and also during a two-week follow-up assessment. Children from the other day care center were utilized to check the reliability of the BABES instrument. They received the BABES test two times.A MANOVA was used to analyze the pre, post-test, and follow-up scores on the BABES test. In addition, difference scores were calculated for the Pre-AAI to determine if a knowledge gain was present, and finally, a Pearson R correlation was conducted to determine the test-retest reliability of the BABES instrument.The results showed that the BABES instrument appears to be a fairly reliable instrument and that the children participating in BABES learned more AOD related concepts as presented in BABES than those children who were not exposed to the prevention program. However, children in the experimental group also experienced a negative knowledge gain of different types and/or behaviors associated with AODs. / Institute for Wellness

The first purpose of the present study was to determine whether the duration of preschool children's drawing and writing activity could be increased by introducing the process of dictation and dramatization of children's own stories. The second purpose of this study was to determine whether taking dictation from preschool children and facilitating the dramatization of children's dictations had an impact on print awareness. Samples of convenience were selected from a child care center in a small midwestern city. Results were based on the participation of 16 3- to 5-year-old children in the intervention group and 21 3- to 5-year-old children in the control group.Each participant's print awareness level was measured at the beginning and end of the study using the Print Awareness Test (Huba & Kontos, 1986). Videorecordings were made of the activity that occurred at a designated writing table. The duration of each child's writing and drawing activity was recorded (in seconds). For three hours a week during the eight weeks of the treatment period, children in the treatment group were encouraged to dictate their own individual stories to an adult who wrote their stories and read the stories back to the children. During the last four weeks of the treatment period, children in the treatment group also were encouraged to dramatize their own stories.The findings of the study were:1. A significant difference in children's print awareness was found in both the treatment and control groups (p<.05). There was no difference in print awareness change scores between the treatment and control groups.2. There was a moderate positive correlation (.471) between the number of stories dictated during the first four weeks of intervention and changes in print awareness scores within the treatment group.3. There was no significant difference between the control and treatment groups in the duration of writing and drawing at the end of the study. However, within the treatment group, during the time children were dictating and dramatizing their own stories, the duration of writing and drawing was significantly greater than either before or after intervention. / Department of Elementary Education

Syftet med studien är att undersöka och analysera pedagogers arbete med matematik på förskolans utegård. Studien genomfördes i form av intervjuer och observationer. Resultatet visar att pedagogers arbete med matematik på förkolans utegård främst sker genom att de benämner vad barnen gör med matematiska begrepp och utmanar dem genom att ställa frågor och på så sätt utveckla aktiviteterna. Vissa pedagoger nämner att de arbetar på ett undersökande sätt med problemlösning. Vissa pedagoger skapar även lärtillfällen inom matematik genom att förse barnen med material eller genom att arbeta med planerade aktiviteter på utegården som berör matematik. Pedagogerna ser bara fördelar med att arbeta med matematik på utegården och att det främst är deras eget förhållningssätt som påverkar hur detta arbete ser ut. Slutsatsen är att pedagoger har en viktig roll när det gäller hur arbetet med matematik på utegården ser ut. Detta gör att det är intressant att se att resultatet ändå visade att arbetet med matematik på utegården främst sker på barnens initiativ. / The aim of this study was to investigate and analyze how preschool teachers use preschool yard in their work with mathematics. The method that was selected to collect data was qualitative interviews and observations. The result shows that preschool teachers work with mathematics mainly occurs through use of mathematics concept to term what the children are doing and by challenging them by asking questions that can develop thechildren´s activities. Some preschool teachers mention that they work in an exploratory manner with problem solving.Some preschool teachers also create learning opportunities by providing the children with materials or by working with planned activities on the preschool yard involving mathematics. The result shows that the preschool teachers only see benefits with working with mathematics on the preschool yard and that their attitudes affect how this work is done. The conclusion is that preschool teachers have an important role in how work with mathematics on the preschool yard appears. This makes it interesting that the result still shows that the work with mathematics on the preschool yard occurs primarily on initiatives from the children.

Thesis (Ph.D.) in Psychology--University of Maine, 2008. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-164).

Thesis -- Departmental honors in Psychology. / Bibliography: ℓ. 25-27.

In order for the individual's chances of good health to increase, health promotion should beintroduced to the youngest children. A recent report shows that Sweden is falling in ranking in termsof equal health where Sweden ended up in 23 out of 35 countries. The socioeconomic gaps inSweden's society mean that children's health becomes a geographical issue. The preschool's rolebecomes extremely important in this context, as statistics show that 84% of children living inSweden are enrolled in preschool. The purpose is to investigate how preschool teachers feel thatthey work with children's health and well-being at preschool. The study consists of six qualitativeinterviews with preschool teachers spread across two preschools. A qualitative content analysis ofthe data was conducted to find prominent categories. Preschool teachers in the study agree thathealth in preschool needs more attention. They agree that physical activity is restricted to theoutdoor environment due to large children's groups and small premises. The result emphasizes thatpreschool should be a positive and safe environment in which the children feel good.

The aim of the study is to increase knowledge about how preschool teachers' different ways of communicating about scientific phenomena provide different conditions for children to create meaning from the content of the experiment. The study is part of a theoretical framework based on phenomenography and the sociocultural perspective. The data collection was carried out through qualitative observation, three observation sessions were carried out. On each occasion, a preschool teacher and three children aged 4-5 years participated. Altogether, nine children and three preschool teachers participated in the study. The data collection was carried out on a planned experiment focusing on the learningobject, gas and how it is formed. The results showed that the use of science and everyday concepts varied between preschool teachers, it also emerged that children's previous everyday experiences played an important role in their meaning-making of the science phenomenon. The results showed that the children experienced the material as well as the activity with their senses, linked to previous experiences. The results of the study also showed a change in the learningobject during the activity, the original learningobject branched out from all the experiments to new learningobjects based on the children's curiosity and interest. The conclusion from the study conducted is that the preschool teacher's choice of language use can affect children's ability to create the intended learning object. Another conclusion is that children's past experiences play a major and important role in their sense-making of new chemical phenomena.

Throughout the world, children's contributions to the preschool education are key for respecting children's rights and establishing the environment of democratic relationships between teachers and children. However, it is unclear how, internationally, given the various cultural contexts and steering documents, teachers conceptualize a child and therefore engage children in their everyday practices at preschools. The aim of this study was to examine early career in-service Polish preschool teachers’ reflections on the Swedish curriculum’s view of the child and children's contributions to their own education, as well as to identify obstacles for incorporating these contributions in the Polish preschool teachers’ practices. Furthermore, the study aimed to document Polish preschool teachers’ conceptualizations of potential implementations in their own practices of the Swedish curriculum's principles and guidelines representing pre-schoolers as competent contributors. Four focus groups interviews were conducted with 11 early career in-service Polish preschool teachers. Results indicate that Polish preschool teachers do not generally support children's contributions and conceive of a child as incompetent and in the need of control. Nevertheless, when discussing Pedagogical Documentation as a tool to develop their work practices, the preschool teachers presented an altered view of a child and could identify possible implementations of the Swedish practices based on children's contributions. It might suggest that the way in which teachers conceptualize children vary according to the context and hence, Pedagogical Documentation could be a promising tool for promoting genuine contributions by children in Poland. Given the complexity of the phenomenon and the potential for changes in the Polish preschool provision, future large-scale research on how exactly the pedagogical tools, steering documents and the work environment can influence on the teachers’ practices, is recommended.