The purpose of this study was to describe and analyse teachers’ experiences of the transition from year 3 to year 4 in the Swedish compulsory school regarding the subject English. The study also concerned collaboration between teachers of English both within the same unit of the school system and between different units. Both questionnaires and interviews were used to collect the data and a total amount of 32 teachers from all over the country answered the questionnaires, 12 lower primary school teachers (years 1-3) and 20 upper primary school teachers (years 4-6). Three of the lower primary school teachers and eight of the upper primary school teachers also participated in a follow-up interview. The study revealed that the information passed on from lower primary school teachers to upper primary school teachers regarding the subject English differed greatly between different schools. The teachers’ experience of how well functioning the routines regarding meetings before the transition are also differed as well as how much attention the subject received during those meetings. Collaboration between teachers within the subject was found to be close to non-existent. This study shows the importance of functional and adequate routines and guidelines concerning the transmission of information about the pupils’ knowledge development to future teachers. The transition for and the continuous teaching of the pupils ease if sufficient information is passed on.

Thesis advisor: C. Patrick Proctor / Traditionally strict language separation policies in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs reflect parallel monolingualism and have been criticized as failing to recognize the sociolinguistic realities of bilingual students (García & Lin, 2017). To leverage bilingual learners’ full linguistic repertoires as resources, this study explored how Sánchez, García, and Solorza’s (2018) translanguaging allocation policy could be strategically and purposefully designed in a third grade Mandarin/English DLBE classroom where the majority of the students were English-dominant speakers. Taking the form of participatory design research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016), I (as a researcher) and a Mandarin teacher worked together to co-design translanguaging documentation, translanguaging rings, and translanguaging transformation spaces across different content areas – Chinese Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. During the process, we also engaged in equitable forms of dialogue and listening to openly discuss, negotiate, and develop our translanguaging co-stance in iterative ways. Data collection included classroom and design meeting recordings, observational field notes, and teacher and students’ artifacts and interviews throughout the school year of 2018-19. Inductive and deductive coding were adopted for data analysis. Findings revealed that translanguaging pedagogies took many shapes based on contextual factors, such as the different pedagogical purposes and curricular demands across content areas. Students were able to develop deeper content understandings, build cross-linguistic connections, and develop their bi/multilingual identities and critical consciousness in those flexible bilingual spaces. Findings also demonstrated that the ideological (re)negotiation between the researcher and the teacher was a bumpy and discursive journey, replete with tensions, confusions, and difficult conversations. Overall, it was a balancing act to create translanguaging spaces while maintaining the language-minoritized (Mandarin) space and privileging students’ use of Mandarin given the societal dominance of English. This study provides implications for new theoretical and pedagogical understandings of translanguaging, and suggests that researcher-teacher collaboration provides a promising way to generate evidence-based, practitioner-informed, and context-appropriate knowledge for DLBE curricular and pedagogical improvements. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

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Syftet med studien är att utifrån några utvalda lärares perspektiv undersöka vilka arbetssätt som används i den tidiga läsundervisningen i förskoleklass och årskurs 1 samt hur samarbetet mellan dessa två årskurser ser ut. Kvalitativa intervjuer genomfördes med åtta lärare som arbetar eller har arbetat i förskoleklass och/eller årskurs 1. Resultatet visar att den läsundervisning som sker i förskoleklass och årskurs 1 liknar varandra innehållsmässigt och delvis även kring val av arbetssätt. Skillnaden mellan läsundervisningen i förskoleklass och årskurs 1 är främst att förskoleklassen tydligare belyser lekens roll i undervisningen. Resultatet visar även att det inte finns något tydligt samarbete kring undervisningen. Däremot finns ett samarbete i form av överlämningsmöten vid övergången mellan årskurserna där elevernas kunskaper diskuteras för att lärarna i årskurs 1 ska kunna planera en undervisning utifrån elevens proximala utvecklingszon. / The purpose of this study is to investigate which teaching methods are used in the early reading education in preschool class and first grade and how the teachers experience the collaboration between these two grades. Qualitative interviews were conducted with eight teachers who work, or have worked, in preschool class and/or year 1. The result from the study shows that the reading education that takes place in preschool class and first grade has similar content and is also partly similar in terms of choice of working methods. The main difference between reading instructions in preschool class in contrast to first grade is that the preschool class teachers more clearly highlight the role of play in teaching. The results also show that there is no evident collaboration around how to organize the reading education. On the other hand, there is a collaboration in the form of handover meetings during transitioning from preschool class to first grade. In these meetings students' knowledge is discussed so that the teachers in year 1 can plan a reading education based on the student's proximal development zone.

The purpose of this study is to explore the different ways parents experience meetings with the preschool and the relationships between themselves and the preschool staff. The purpose is also to explore parents’ views of the shared responsibilities of the children’s formation at home and in preschool. To research this, a qualitative approach with interviews and an interpretative phenomenological analysis method, is applied in order to arrive at a more profound understanding of how the shared responsibility in formation is experienced by the parents. This approach is chosen to get an in-depth understanding of the parents’ understandings and experiences. The theoretical framework applied is Urie Bronfenbrenner’s theory of ecological development, chosen for its’s ability to explore different levels of a person’s encounters with a particular environment. The results highlight the complexity of parents’ interactions with the preschool as an organization. Parents have concerns with what happens at an organizational level, which reflects on the staff, and ultimately on the everyday environment of the children. Furthermore, the study shows that a good relationship between parents and preschool staff, and how this relationship is experienced by parents, are affected by aspects such as stability and an understanding of each other.  In the area of child development, parents regard children’s formation as their responsibility, while the formation and socialization that occurs in preschools are group oriented and focused on learning. From the parent’s perspective, the formation that teachers contribute to and work with in a preschool environment are focused on democratic values such as being a good friend, not fighting with each other, help each other and show empathy towards one another. In considering the organizational aspects of preschools, the communication levels between staff and parents have been limited due to the current pandemic, which has had an effect on parent-teacher relationships. The study highlights a need for further understanding and a more developed communication approach between parents, teachers, and management, as well as organizational transparency in an effort to increase parents’ understanding of the aims and works of preschool.

Student Number : 9407325P - PhD thesis - Faculty of Human and Social Sciences / This thesis focuses on the challenges a particular group of rural primary school teachers experienced as they implemented a national outcomes-based curriculum through the support of an external agent. It uses Fairclough’s (1991) model of critical discourse analysis and his theory of critical language study as a framework to explore the discourses and practices of this group of South African teachers. Methodologically, this thesis is located in the qualitative paradigm, and uses interviews and observations to systematically probe teachers’ understandings of curriculum and change. Three themes are developed in this thesis. First, the theme of teacher collaboration is presented as a new social practice that the teachers creatively took up during a school development project. It shows that while social and institutional process determined the nature of the project as a social practice, at a situational level, the teachers played a much more determinative role as they shaped the project and its practices in several intriguing ways. Second, the curriculum roles that were discursively produced by the teachers as they struggled to transform their practice from isolation to collaboration are revealed. This demonstrates that while many of these roles were common to all schools, the role of the teacher as leader emerged in only two of the schools. And third, through analysing the lessons taught by this group of teachers in their classrooms, the tacit knowledge of pedagogy and content on which their practice was based is made explicit. These themes provide opportunities for certain common sense assumptions about teacher collaboration, leadership, learning and practice to be interrogated in terms of their applicability to the schools in the project. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the possibilities that still exist for teacher educators to enhance understanding of what happens inside traditional rural schools.

The challenges of implementing the Common Core State Standards at the classroom level resulted in political pushback to the reform initiative after the local media covered poor implementation decisions. This study explored how elementary school teachers and instructional leaders described teachers' progress along the implementation continuum for the standards. The concerns-based adoption model served as the conceptual framework for this study. This multicase study design consisted of 16 interviews of teachers and instructional leaders from 4 schools. Data were analyzed through a process that began with open coding followed by axial coding to identify themes. Teacher collaboration driving implementation progress emerged as a theme. The following needs also emerged: (a) training to make the required instructional shifts, (b) common processes to monitor implementation progress, and (c) aligned resources. The results led to a semester-long professional development project pairing a quality improvement process popular in other fields with the existing professional learning community structure to address the problem. This project built on the implementation progress made through working collaboratively to meet the training needs of the teachers; the project also included mechanisms for monitoring teachers' progress in implementing the standards. The project study provides insight and specific steps for teachers and leaders working to implement the standards. Students will be the ultimate beneficiaries of this project study through improvements in their teachers' instructional practice.

This qualitative case study explored the nature of the relationships between Local (English) Teachers (LTs) and Foreign (English) Teachers (FTs) who worked at the same English institute of a foreign studies university in south-eastern China. Employing the community of practice framework, this research drew insights from a questionnaire, interviews, and observations. The findings revealed that the teachers seldom interacted and, furthermore, were influenced by broader social structures that were not considered in the framework. Accordingly, the theory was extended to include other perspectives, such as native and non-native English speaking teacher issues and the Chinese concept of face, in order to determine the underlying reasons that inhibited their interaction. Notwithstanding these challenges, three cases of FT-LT collaboration were discovered, and the factors that enhanced their collaboration were analysed. The LT and FT participants provided suggestions to each other and the administrators on how collaboration could be improved in their institute.

This qualitative case study explored the nature of the relationships between Local (English) Teachers (LTs) and Foreign (English) Teachers (FTs) who worked at the same English institute of a foreign studies university in south-eastern China. Employing the community of practice framework, this research drew insights from a questionnaire, interviews, and observations. The findings revealed that the teachers seldom interacted and, furthermore, were influenced by broader social structures that were not considered in the framework. Accordingly, the theory was extended to include other perspectives, such as native and non-native English speaking teacher issues and the Chinese concept of face, in order to determine the underlying reasons that inhibited their interaction. Notwithstanding these challenges, three cases of FT-LT collaboration were discovered, and the factors that enhanced their collaboration were analysed. The LT and FT participants provided suggestions to each other and the administrators on how collaboration could be improved in their institute.