Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2004. / Includes bibliography.

The aim of this study was to examine how preschool teachers use music in their everyday work with children and their view of music as a way to enhance specific skills. Data was collected from two different preschools. The material was analyzed from a sociocultural perspective with focus on scaffolding. The results of this study points out that music is seen as a tool that can support and help children develop academic and social skills. The results also shows that preschool teachers thinks that music can be seen as communication which stimulates to interaction.

Thesis advisor: Kian L. Tan / General and efficient methods for the selective hydroformylation of allylic alcohols and amines utilizing a directing group approach. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Chemistry.

Developing explanations is a key inquiry practice in national science standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) and essential for learning science content (McNeill & Krajcik, 2011) and is conceptualized as consisting of three aspects: claims, evidence, and reasoning (Toulmin, 1958). However, students often have difficulty with these tasks (McNeill & Krajcik, 2011; Schunn & Anderson, 1999). Prior work by our group (Sao Pedro et al., 2014) has shown that auto-scaffolding in Inq-ITS (Inquiry Intelligent Tutoring System; Gobert et al., 2013) can help students acquire inquiry skills and transfer them to a new science topic. These data provide a rationale for the work presented, namely, designing, developing, and evaluating a real-time scaffolding approach for the development of the inquiry practices specifically for data interpretation and warranting claims, which, to us, underlie the explanation practices necessary for communicating science findings. Unpacking these practices can help us better understand, assess, and, in turn, scaffold them. Specifically, this work addresses the: (1) design of scaffolds for data interpretation practices; (2) efficacy of scaffolds for supporting these practices using a modified Bayesian Knowledge Tracing framework that captures the complexities of science inquiry, and (3) transfer of these practices within one science topic to another. Results from this work show that the developed scaffolds were effective in aiding students’ acquisition and transfer of the assessed practices. As such, this research builds on prior work on the nature of explanation (McNeill & Krajcik, 2011) as well as prior work on the assessment and scaffolding of science inquiry skills (Gobert et al, 2013; Sao Pedro et al., 2014).

El objetivo principal de esta investigación fue analizar el resultado de tres técnicas muy utilizadas en la estrategia del scaffolding. Para llevarla a cabo, se trabajó durante un semestre con el curso de Inglés 4 del Centro de Idiomas de la URP, nivel intermedio. Para lograr esto, se desarrollaron lecciones y actividades planificadas a través de la enseñanza de las técnicas del skimming, scanning y subrayado, cuyo propósito fue el de mejorar las habilidades de comprensión lectora de los estudiantes de dicho curso. El enfoque de la investigación fue cuantitativo, de nivel explicativo y de tipo aplicada, seleccionándose el diseño experimental de clase cuasiexperimental. Se utilizó como técnica de recojo de información la encuesta y como instrumento se aplicó una prueba al grupo de control, antes y después de la aplicación de las técnicas. Luego se analizaron las puntuaciones para ver los logros de la aplicación. Los resultados confirmaron la hipótesis general al encontrarse diferencias significativas en el grupo de control debido a la aplicación de las técnicas; es decir, se logró desarrollar una mejor comprensión de los textos leídos.

Research into the teaching of science has suggested that student learning resulted from personal and social processes promoting communication and construction of knowledge. The teacher has an interventionist role. The current research project aims to investigate the process of student involvement during instruction by dialogue and if such involvement has an effect on learning outcomes. Videotapes were made of thirteen biology lessons for year 10 students in a girls independent selective school. Individual student behaviour profiles in relation to answering and asking questions, the psychological cognitive demands made of the students in answering questions, and the teacher's questions and immediate help provided for the students to answer them, added to the picture of the interactions. The evidence suggested that the teacher made the students a resource to learning. Qualitative analysis showed how the teacher's strategies helped students locate and link topic information. Socratic questioning and scaffolding techniques were identified but scaffolding did not involve fading. The students utilised prior and new information, and scaffolded one another. Concept maps were used to represent how teacher and student interaction lead to expanded networks of information. A theoretical analysis of the dialogue illustrated parallel and reciprocal teacher and student activities. This allowed the construction of a model of learning within an integration theory framework. Individual student profiles showed that low participation was associated with low success in answering questions in lessons. Greater participation in the dialogue was linked to greater success. There was not a direct relationship between participation and success. A comparison of students' behaviour during lessons and examinations results showed that the lower rates of participation in the dialogue led to the least successful examination performance. Higher level participation in the lessons led to more successful examination performance, but there was not a simple relationship between the two.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 1997. / Title from PDF t.p.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Drexel University, 2005. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-170).

Master of Music / Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance / Ruth Gurgel / In the lesson clip shown, students are learning to count rhythms containing rests using the Eastman counting method. The learning target is to prepare students to "count sing" during rehearsals in their advanced choir next school year. During my time at Kansas State University, I have learned several things that have greatly changed the way I conduct a classroom rehearsal. I have begun to pre-teach more, make corrections immediately, and design lessons with more accountability and differentiation.

This dissertation, a qualitative case study conducted from a constructivist perspective, focuses on the construction and implementation of strategies of emotional scaffolding by two early childhood educators in a public elementary school. This study finds that emotional scaffolding is an excellent example of a tool that could help teachers reach developmentally appropriate practices for early childhood education in an age of accountability. The primary data consist of participant observations, participant interviews and key documents. The study has two primary interests. The first aims at understanding how young children’s learning experiences are enhanced when early childhood educators integrate emotions into their decision-making and practices. The second aims at enhancing the emerging picture of what emotional scaffolding means in early childhood education contexts. My analysis highlights three major themes that contribute to these participants’ decision-making for emotional scaffolding. The first is the participants’ beliefs about their self-perceived teaching identities. The second is their deep understanding of children. The third involves their assessments and reactions to their school climates. The findings focus on four areas of divergence from the literature. First is the important role that teachers’ personal beliefs about the most pedagogically important emotion play in constructing and implementing strategies for emotional scaffolding. Second, emotional scaffolding is an important part of teachers’ mediated agency in a time of increasing accountability. Third, teachers’ capacity to balance student excitement and engagement through their emotional scaffolding is the key to establishing and maintaining children’s engagement in academic activities. Fourth is that emotional scaffolding carried out in the early childhood classroom involves emotion work, not emotional labor. The study provides several implications. The first is that our perception of the emotional scaffolding process in the early childhood education context can be expanded. The second is the importance of sufficient preservice training. The third is that a principal who respects a teacher’s decision-making and practices can help a teacher provide effective emotional scaffolding. The final and perhaps most important implication is that an awareness of self is the most important element contributing to better decision-making in creating a meaningful and engaging environment for their students. / text