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.

No description available.

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.

The object of this research was to investigate young children's mathematical spatial reasoning in a Montessori classroom. Spatial reasoning is an important part of children's mathematical learning and development; however, opportunities for rich spatial reasoning are not readily available in the classroom. Rather, there is a focus on numeracy at the expense of geometry where activities for spatial development are usually found. Montessori designed a sensory curriculum around children's development, yet spatial reasoning in a Montessori classroom has not been fully investigated. This was a qualitative study using some tools of ethnography. The theoretical framework was Radford's sensuous cognition (2013, 2014) which allowed for an understanding of human development as cultural with the body essential to that development. The data, captured by video, were the children's semiotic traces (Bartolini Bussi and Baccaglini-Frank (2015, p. 393) which are the visible productions of the children's spatial reasoning such as their movements, text, drawings, and speech. The analysis found that the children had ample opportunities for engaging in challenging mathematical problems which required their spatial reasoning. These engaging activities resulted in the children using a wide range of spatial skills as they reasoned mathematically. The children's movement, the main semiotic trace generated by the children, was crucial to their spatial reasoning. This investigation concluded the pedagogical practices created a rich and dynamic environment for the children's spatial development. Practices included the use of well-designed mathematical manipulatives, engagement in the manner of guided play, co-operative learning with peers of mixed ages, extensive time for activities, and assessment based on observations of individual children.

The question whether peer feedback can contribute to language development in an English second language (L2) classroom in a Swedish context is investigated through the use of a research synthesis. The syllabus for English 5-7, the document detailing the skills that should be developed and the content of English L2 upper secondary education in Sweden, suggests that peer feedback is an important feature in English L2 learning. Results of the current study indicated that peer feedback could have beneficial effects for pupils’ writing and language development. These results were supported by sociocultural theory. Furthermore, some of the issues regarding peer feedback, for instance that pupils mistrust their peers’ ability to give comments, could be circumvented through training pupils to give and incorporate peer feedback. Despite the fact that results indicated that peer feedback could be a valuable learning tool, results cannot with any certainty be generalized to a Swedish upper secondary context due to the fact that the primary research was conducted mostly at a small scale of approximately twenty to forty pupils, that all research was at university level, and that most of the research pertained to Asian pupils.

No description available.

I dagens samhälle har sociala medier stort inflytande på människor. Studiens syfte var att undersöka hur unga kvinnor upplever att deras mentala hälsa påverkas till följd av användning av sociala medier. Tio semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med unga kvinnor mellan 20–35 år som är aktiva på Facebook och Instagram. Analysen visade på två centrala teman: positiva mentala effekter och negativa mentala effekter med subteman ökad stressnivå och beroendeframkallande. Deltagarna upplever att deras psykiska hälsa påverkas både positivt och negativt. Dock visar resultatet att det var övervägande negativt. Vilket är i linje med tidigare studier. Författarna resonerar att social gemenskap vid användning av sociala medier var en gemensam positiv faktor för deltagarna, medan minskad självkänsla var en gemensam negativ faktor. Vi kommer att diskutera resultat i enlighet med den sociokulturella teorin, då det diskuterades att sociala medier har en viktig roll gällande hur de påverkar unga kvinnors mentala hälsa utifrån samtida kultur.

This study analyzed how six Heritage language learners at the university level gained conscious awareness and control of the concept of modality as revealed in student verbalizations (Vygotsky, 1998) throughout five different written communicative events. This work took place in the only course designed for Heritage language learners at a large public suburban university in the Northeast part of the United States. Grammatical simplification in bilingual speakers is due to incomplete acquisition of Spanish, attrition or loss of an underused linguistic system (Lynch, 1999; Martínez Mira, 2009a, 2009b; Mikulski, 2010b; Montrul, 2007; Ocampo, 1990; Silva-Corvalán, 1990, 1994a, 1994b, 2003; Studerus, 1995). The result of the process of simplification is reduction or loss of forms and/or meanings. In this work, I investigated in which ways Gal’perin’s (1989) systemic-theoretical organized instruction promoted awareness, control and internalization of the concept of modality in three sets of data: definition, discourse and verbalization (Negueruela, 2003). In addition, I examined how the concept of modality emerged and proceeded. By focusing students’ attention in Negueruela’s (2003) Concept of Mood in Spanish orienting chart in a top down fashion, students were able to strengthen their theoretical understanding in practical activity while still accessing empirical knowledge, and eventually generalizing its use in new contexts across nominal, adjectival and adverbial clauses. At the definition level, Gal’perin’s Systemic-theoretical instruction promoted emergence and progress of their conceptual understanding from perceptual to semantic. At the discourse level, students’ theoretically based semantic understanding had a positive impact as revealed in student’s discourse progress throughout tasks. At the verbalization level, semantic, abstract and systematic verbalizations showed students’ emergence of awareness of the interrelated categories of modality. The conceptual category of anticipation was appropriately verbalized and contextualized 68% of the time. The absence of quality verbalizations referring to a specific conceptual category in some students lead me to conclude that students did not fully understand the meaning of some conceptual categories. On the contrary, their presence in any of the tasks showed emergence of conceptual meaning(s) in appropriate contexts, further appropriate recontextualization may provide full awareness and control.