A particular interest of distance education researchers is the community of inquiry framework, which was developed for the purpose of taking a closer look at computer mediated communication in educational contexts (Garrison, Anderson, Archer, 2000). However, it is somewhat surprising that although the community of inquiry framework has been developed based on distance education contexts, it does not consider the complexities of the community’s global and local contexts, the potential linguistic demands of the teaching and learning contexts, and how power, agency, and identities are negotiated in these contexts. Through six cases of online instructors teaching in international contexts at the tertiary level, I explored the negotiation of teaching presence as viewed through the lens of cultural historical activity theory (Engeström, 1999, 2001). In this view, instructors are engaged in a dynamic process in which teaching presence is shaped through the mediating components of the activity system. This multi-case study employed cross case analysis drawing on data from interviews with students, program coordinators, and instructors, in addition to analyses of discussion forum transcripts, course documents, formative evaluations, student and instructor reflections, and researcher-participant observations. The linguistic challenges faced by both instructor and students for whom the language of instruction was a second or third language and instructors’ sociocultural identities, positioning, and conceptualization of the online interaction spaces were found to be important mediators in the negotiation of teaching presence. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

In this dissertation, I report on the design, implementation, and evaluation of my intervention for the revision of physics in a mainstream public secondary school in Singapore. This intervention was conducted over a one-year period, and involved students who were taking their GCE 'O' level physics examination after immersion in the intervention, which was conducted as part of their regular physics revision curriculum. Based on sociocultural theory, the intervention changed the practice of how physics revision was conducted in a particular secondary physics classroom. The intervention consisted of a computer-mediated collaborative problem-solving (CMCPS) component and a teacher-led prescriptive tutoring (PT) component. The CMCPS portion of the intervention required the students to follow basic 'ground rules' for computer-mediated problem-solving of physics questions with other students, while the PT portion saw the teacher prescriptively addressing students' misconceptions, misunderstandings, and other problem-solving difficulties as captured by the discussion logs during the CMCPS session. The intervention was evaluated in two stages. First, a small-scale (pilot) study which utilised a control group (CG)/alternate intervention group (AG)/experimental group (XG) with pre- and post-test research design was conducted in order to evaluate whether the intervention was effective in promoting improved learning outcomes of a small group of students. Given the success of the pilot study, a main study involving the entire class of students was conducted. This main study was evaluated by comparing the cohort's actual GCE 'O' level physics results with their expected grades (as given by the Singapore Ministry of Education based on the students' primary school's results). Also, the students' 'O' level physics results were compared with the average physics results obtained by previous cohorts. The quantitative data indicated that the intervention for physics revision appears to be effective in helping the entire class of students revise physics concepts, resulting in improved test scores, while the qualitative data indicated that the students' interest in physics had increased over time. The physics teacher also reflected that the intervention had provided her with much deeper insights into her students' mental models.

There is a well-established ‘achievement gap’ in medical education, with ‘ethnic minority’ students achieving less well in examinations than their white counterparts. The processes underlying this difference are currently unknown. Most research to date has taken a student-deficit approach, suggesting that lower performing students lack the cognitive or cultural capacity of their higher achieving peers. These models have so far failed to explain the variation in achievement by ethnicity. In order to address this gap in the literature and further our understanding of ethnic minority students’ underachievement, this thesis takes a sociocultural approach to the problem. It addresses two research questions: firstly, how does ethnicity impact on medical school achievement? Secondly, how do social networks affect achievement? This research uses qualitative interviews (n=33 medical students), quantitative survey methods and social network analysis (n=160 medical students) to explore ethnicity and the achievement gap within medical education. Sociocultural theories of learning, specifically concepts from communities of practice and Pierre Bourdieu are employed in the design and analysis phases. This thesis demonstrates that medical students’ achievement is best conceptualised as part of a wider learning trajectory toward becoming a doctor. Relationships are important channels through which the resources and support can flow, these in turn facilitate learning and achievement. Lower achieving students are less well connected to their PBL peers and have fewer tutors or clinicians in their network. The medical world has a tightly prescribed, yet often hidden, set of legitimate dispositions; students must learn to embody these norms, values and behaviours in order to succeed. This process relies on experiences of participation, facilitated by relationships with peers and seniors. Socialisation is clearly mediated by culture. Ethnic minority students, due to their differing cultural practices and identities, have fewer experiences of participation, often experience the medical domain as outsiders and find it harder to interact with tutors and clinicians. This is reflected in their social networks as some minority students have fewer seniors in their network. These factors interact to cut ethnic minority students off from potential and actual resources that facilitate learning and achievement. If the situation is to be improved, medical schools must do more to acknowledge the extra difficulties many ‘ethnic minority’ students face in becoming an insider. Processes of identification and participation must be supported as these students negotiate the extra distance and tensions between their home world and those of medical education and medicine.

abstract: The purposes of this dissertation are two-fold. First, it aims to re-examine the new generation of Chinese students in the United States (U.S.) in light of the changing international and educational contexts. Second, the dissertation seeks to understand the new generation of Chinese students’ experience in First-year Composition (FYC) classes in a public U.S. university. A model of dynamic sociocultural approach is developed and applied to explore this new generation of Chinese students. Compared to previous generations of overseas students, the new generation is substantially different in their backgrounds and shares their own unique characteristics. Taking a sociocultural approach, this dissertation undertakes a systematic examination to delineate Chinese overseas students’ demographic trends over time, the backgrounds and characteristics of the new generation, the motivations for them studying in the United States, and the pathways these students take to come to the U.S. universities. Furthermore, this dissertation explores the experiences of 23 Chinese undergraduate student participants in FYC classes at a U.S. university. In the past decade, with a soaring number of Chinese undergraduate students, there is a dramatic rise in the number of Chinese students in FYC classes. Compared with their previous English education and learning experience in China, what these Chinese undergraduates are experiencing and how them adapting to in their FYC classes will shed light to better understanding of this new generation, as well as how their previous educational experience in China overlap, facilitate, or collide with their current studying in the United States. This dissertation enriches the literature on understanding the new generation of Chinese students, their background, and their adjustments to foreign countries and new educational environments. Using the dynamic sociocultural approach, the study provides teachers and administrators an approach for viewing Chinese and other second language (L2) students in a more holistic way. To a greater extent, the study has implications on how to meet the challenges of diversity in our universities and how to help students with different home cultural backgrounds to succeed in class. The results can also be used to improve the services and programs in the U.S. higher education institutions. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2020

Många elever i dagens svenska skolor har matematiksvårigheter. Det leder till att de inte klarar kunskapskraven i ämnet. En av de största anledningarna till elevers matematiksvårigheter i ämnet matematik är att eleverna har matematikängslan. Syftet med denna studie är därför att få kunskaper om lärares och rektorers syn på hur skolan arbetar med elever som har matematikängslan. För att uppnå studiens syfte genomfördes semistrukturerade intervjuer med lärare och rektorer på två olika skolor. Resultatet av studien visar att lärare och rektorers syn på arbetet med elevers matematikängslan skiljer sig i vissa avseenden. Det kan leda till att synen på hur skolan ska arbeta för att motverka matematikängslan hos elever skiljer sig mellan lärare och rektorer. Resultatet i studien visar att lärarnas arbetssätt för att motverka matematikängslan hos elever är att de arbetar med positiv respons och hur de kommunicerar matematik. Rektorernas syn på hur lärarna ska nå elever med matematikängslan är att öka lärarnas kompetens med exempelvis kompetensutbildningar. Samtidigt är lärarnas uppfattning att de vill få mer stöd i form av ökade resurser, som exempelvis en extra vuxen i klassrummet. Studiens slutsats är att det finns indikationer på att lärare och rektorer inte är överens om hur ett arbete med elevers matematikängslan borde se ut och gå till. / There are many pupils in Swedish schools who have mathematical difficulties, which means that they don’t meet the knowledge requirements. One of the biggest reasons for pupils' mathematical difficulties in mathematics is that the students have mathematic anxiety. The purpose with this study is therefore to gain knowledge about teachers’ and principals’ views on how the school work with pupils who have mathematics anxiety. To find out how schools work with this we have conducted semi-structured interviews with teachers and principals at two different schools. The result of this study shows that teachers and principals don’t agree in their views on how to work with pupils’ mathematics anxiety. Because of this there are different views on how to counteract pupils’ mathematics anxiety. The result of this study shows that the way teachers are teaching today to counteract the pupils’ mathematic anxiety is that they work with positive response and how they communicate mathematics with the pupils. The principals’ view of how teachers should approach pupils with mathematic anxiety is to increase teachers’ competence. At the same time, the teachers’ view is that they want to be given more support by increased resources, such as an extra adult in the classroom for example. The conclusion of this study is that we see indications that teachers and principals don’t agree about how they should approach pupils with mathematics anxiety and how to work with them.

Few classroom measures of English language proficiency have been evaluated for reliability and validity. Researchers have examined the concurrent and predictive validity of an oral language test, titled A Developmental English Language Proficiency Test (ADEPT), and the relationship to the California English Language Development Test (CELDT) in the receptive/listening and expressive/speaking domains. Four years of retroactive data representing 392 student records were obtained from a local urban school district in Los Angeles County with a significant proportion of English language learners. After preparing the data file for analysis, data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) system. Cronbach’s alpha was used to analyze the internal consistency of ADEPT. Pearson r analysis was performed to examine concurrent validity and predictive validity. Findings indicated moderate to high correlation coefficients of internal consistency in the first three levels of ADEPT. Concurrent validity results varied depending on the school year. In the most recent school year, 2012–2013, positive moderate to strong correlations were found. This relationship was weaker in each previous year. Overall, correlations increased and remained positive as sample size increased but predictive validity was weak for all three sets of comparative years. These findings support the use of ADEPT as a multiple measure, as a monitoring tool and to inform instruction.

Today’s globalized world is characterized by an immense linguistic and cultural diversity and this reflects on the education. Multilingualism is a reality in the school and Sweden is one of the countries that try to promote it from the early stage of preschool. Multilingualism in the Swedish preschool mainly refers to the development of the Swedish language and the mother tongue of the student which is therefore connected with the development of cultural identity. The present study is a qualitative empirical research that aims to explore the beliefs of preschool educators (principals, teachers and childminders) on early multilingualism in Sweden through a comparative case study in two Swedish and one International preschool in Stockholm. The focus of the beliefs is on the support, views and practices on multilingualism, as well as the link between the mother tongue and the cultural identity. The study was conducted in April 2019, it includes three preschool principals, two preschool teachers and two childminders and investigates their beliefs on early multilingualism as they emerge from semi-structured interviews. The contextual background is outlined according to international, European and national documents, while the sociocultural theory is the main theoretical background that contributes to the analysis of the data. After the critical analysis of the findings, various themes and sub-themes occurred and in general, the three preschools had more similarities than differences. Overall, the preschool educators have a positive attitude towards multilingualism and try to cultivate that to the preschool children. They believe that each language expresses the culture and that multilingualism can enhance the cognitive development, linguistic and intercultural awareness. Nevertheless, support for this task is required. The study concludes with some policy recommendations and suggestions for further studies that might help to upgrade the early multilingual reality.

This thesis focuses on reading in a second language (L2) classroom and specifically on Sociocultural strategies for reading texts in the elementary French classroom. This pedagogical report first outlines the theoretical basis of the two pedagogical experiences presented which include Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory of learning and development (SCT), specifically Cole’s (2003) Question-Asking-Reading (QAR) approach, traditional reading approaches and a literacy approach to teaching reading. The key concepts of SCT that influenced these pedagogical experiences include the zone of proximal development (ZPD), mediation, the shift from interpersonal to intrapersonal, prolepsis, and shared activities based on a specific division of labor. Cole’s QAR approach focused on teaching reading to students who struggled with reading in their first language (L1) and included a clear structure, specific roles, an interesting text, goal talk, and a scaffolding plan. Traditional reading approaches focus on the integration of bottom-up and top-down processing. A literacy approach focuses on meaning, the integration of language, context and content and the use of authentic texts. For the two pedagogical experiences outlined in this thesis, Cole’s QAR approach was adapted for university students in a second semester French class, who were learning to read in an L2. These experiences also included a clear structure, specific roles, an interesting text and a scaffolding plan. The structure included four main steps: (1) read one section aloud – alternating readers, (2) silent reading/preparing role, (3) talk as a group – fulfill roles, (4) change roles and return to step (1). The roles included the person who leads the discussion on: (1) hard-to-pronounce words, (2) hard-to-understand words or expressions, (3) main idea, (4) what will happen next, and (5) hard-to-understand grammatical structures. The text was a French fairy tale, “Roman d’amour d’une patate” by Pierre Gripari. The roles represent the different steps in the reading process and by dividing this process into roles, the group shares in the process of reading. As students learn the tools needed in this group process and internalize the tools needed for reading, they should be able to take on more of the responsibility themselves.

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The study, designed as a case study, aimed to explore an EFL teacher’s process of producing individualised written formative feedback to further the English language development of the diverse student body of one eighth-grade class in southern Sweden. The research questions were approached from a teacher’s perspective. (1) What are the characteristics of written formative feedback on the written performance of individual students in a diverse ELT classroom? (2) How does the teacher reason when adapting formative written feedback to the needs of individual students? The Quadrant model, applying aspects of sociocultural theory, helped interpret the data collected from the think-aloud protocol, follow-up interview, and the written feedback provided to the students. Two main characteristics were identified for the teacher’s written feedback comment. First, the teacher aspired to provide feedback within each student’s engagement zone, which was also found to be a vital part of the teacher’s reasoning when adapting his feedback to students. Secondly, the written comment consisted mainly of motivating and explanatory comments to encourage further development, which also mirrored the teacher’s reasoning when adapting feedback to each student’s needs. The reasoning reflected the teacher’s aspiration of balancing the amount of support and challenge each student needed to support their development within their Zone of Proximal Development.