published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Language Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

This thesis presents an investigation into secondary school English teachers’ and students’ conceptualisations of good writing, and how they might use their understandings of quality in writing for the purpose of improving writing. By focusing on the views and classroom practices of twelve-year-old students and their teachers, the research aims to advance understanding of teachers’ and students’ conceptual thinking about writing quality, and the underlying constructs. The research utilises data from an ESRC-funded project titled Grammar for Writing?: The Impact of Contextualised Grammar Teaching on Pupils’ Writing and Pupils’ Metalinguistic Understanding (grant number RES-062-23-0775). This data was gathered from thirty-one teachers and their Year 8 students over three terms. Lesson observations took place once each term, and were followed by interviews with each project teacher and one teacher-chosen student from each class. Interview questions relating to beliefs about good writing were included in the project schedules and were inductively analysed to discern themes in participants’ responses. Interviews with students took the form of ‘writing conversations’ during which students commented on samples of their own and their peers’ writing. A small-scale follow-up study with three Year 8 classes in one secondary school was used to confirm initial findings and to provide additional data on students’ beliefs about good writing. The research found that teachers’ conceptualisations of writing quality were internally consistent but that variation between teachers was marked. Teachers not only valued different qualities in writing but experienced different degrees of conflict and ambiguity when relating their personal construct of quality to the official, public construct, as embodied in national assessment criteria. The findings support earlier views of teacher judgement as richly textured and complex, drawing on different available indexes, including idiosyncratic conceptualisations of writing quality. Whilst students’ criteria for good writing echoed their teachers’ criteria to some extent, there was also evidence of students drawing on their own conceptualisations of quality, especially in relation to the intended impact of writing on the reader. Many students expressed a strong awareness of writing for an audience and clearly valued writing as a social practice. They especially valued peer judgement of their writing. However, students’ strategies for improving writing were often difficult to articulate, formulaic and generalised, or circumscribed by limited linguistic subject knowledge. The study is significant in offering an insight into teachers’ and students’ conceptualisations of writing quality and how these might be brought into play in the writing classroom. The findings may have particular resonance since they are reported at a time of radical change to assessment policy and practice in secondary schools in England.

Thesis (MEd (Educational Psychology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / Schools, parents and learners have certain expectations of teachers, including their expectations regarding the emotional behaviour of teachers in the classroom. This implies that teachers are occasionally required to project emotions that they are not really experiencing, thereby affecting and influencing their own identity and integrity as teachers. It is with this phenomenon in mind that the influence of feeling rules that form part of emotional labour was researched: the experiences of teachers, and the support that schools provide in this regard, as well as the impact of emotional labour on different teachers. The problem studied is the role that emotional labour plays in the high school educator’s classroom. This problem was researched specifically in the context of the teachers’ personal experiences and opinions. The study focused on how teachers experience emotional labour in their classrooms and working environment, and the influence that it has on them. The primary objective of this research was to analyse and describe the teachers’ perceptions and experiences of emotional labour in the teaching environment. On the one hand, teachers must be aware of the role that emotional labour plays in the classroom. On the other hand, it is particularly important that the management of schools should provide teachers with the required recognition, support and development relevant to this important concept. The purpose of this study is therefore, to sensitise awareness of this concept and to contribute to improved insight into it, so that the feelings and perceptions of teachers regarding the effort that emotional labour demands from them can be better understood. This study has a generic qualitative perspective in the use of the research approach and methods that embrace a phenomenological point of view, where reality is based upon the perceptions of teachers –in the field – that participated in the study. The result is of a descriptive nature. A non-probability sampling technique was adopted, specifically the convenience sample, on the basis of which ten participants were selected according to their availability and willingness to participate in this study. Data was generated by means of semi-structured interviews with two focus groups and four individual interviews recorded on tape and transcribed verbatim. Data processing was done by means of the constant comparative method of analysis. The coding of data according to certain selection criteria led to the identification of themes, categories and sub-categories. The relationships between the themes were integrated into a conceptual model. These themes describe the possible elements that influence the role of emotional labour in the classroom of the educator. The results illustrate that teachers identify the elements that play a role in how the teachers in this group experience emotional labour in the classroom: their identity as teachers, their work context, the feeling rules, the support they receive or the lack thereof, the extent of their practical experience in education, the strategies they use in handling emotional labour, and lastly, the consequences of emotional labour. This implies that the ability of teachers to experience emotional labour positively in the education environment is largely dependent on the support, guidance and leadership that they receive from their schools.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

The purposes of this study were (I) to determine the relationship of teacher temperament to effectiveness in the classroom and (2) to determine the relationship of the teacher's temperament to the teacher's sex, to the grade level taught, to the area taught (special education or regular education), and to the subject taught. It was hypothesized that (I) there is no significant relationship between the teacher's temperament and his effectiveness in the classroom, (2) there is no significant relationship between the teacher's temperament and sex, (3) there is no significant relationship between the teacher's temperament and the grade level he teaches (elementary or secondary), (4) there is no significant relationship in the teacher's temperament and the area he teaches (special education or regular education), and (5) there is no significant relationship between the teacher's temperament and the subject he teaches.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 124-131). Also available in print.