Description of the development and application of a code to describe and analyse the overt teacher initiated literacy messages being conveyed to students within a classroom context

This thesis reports the development and application of an observation/analytic code which describes and interprets overt teacher initiated literacy messages conveyed to students within a classroom context. The relevant areas of literature relate to observation/documentation procedures, teacher effectiveness, and messages and meaning. Aspects of various methodologies from naturalistic inquiry were used: namely, educational ethnography, grounded theory and case study. From experiences of observing three teachers during classroom literacy sessions as well as examining concepts and issues arising from the literature, a code was developed and refined. The processes involved in the development of the code through naturalistic inquiry are described in the documentation of the emergent design. The code consists of indentification of up to twenty five messages within various subthemes and themes from observational data. A case study which describes and interprets overt teacher initiated literacy messages conveyed in a classroom literacy session, demonstrates the description and interpretation possible with the three levels of the code. Future directions in the refinement of the code are explored.