Honours

Uncle Arthur’s bedtime stories stands as the principal and archetypal Seventh-day Adventist children’s literature text. It is heavily inscribed with distinct ideologies, which are specifically referential to Seventh-day Adventist dogma and faith. As children read these texts, they are exposed to, and affected by, these ideologies. This thesis seeks to expose the overt and covert ideologies of the text so that their power can be recognised and their value evaluated. This is accomplished through a brief investigation of the author and the publishing institution that conceived the texts, then through an explanation of the development and aims of critical literacy reading processes. These reading processes are then applied to the text in order to render explicit the belief structures constructed into the text which sustain the stories’ proposed ‘truths’ and ‘meanings’.
This investigation has revealed that Uncle Arthur’s bedtime stories assumes levels of authority over truth, interpretation and the reader, which it does not intrinsically command. This assumption of authority allows the text to propose and defend one-sided ‘truths’, spurious arguments and potentially unethical behaviour.

Movement-based activities can have benefits for children from informal early childhood settings to more formal education contexts in primary schools. Integrated movement-based activities (IMBAs) are activities involving physical movement that are used to teach subjects other than physical education in the primary school curriculum. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact that IMBAs have on primary school aged students. The study was conducted in lower and upper primary classrooms. The data was collected from the perspectives of students, teachers and a researcher using self-reflection journals, numeracy tests, self-rating scales of concentration levels, teacher interviews and researcher observations and reflections. The data was then analysed using open-coding methods. The study found that, when a supporting and structured classroom environment is established, IMBAs impact positively on students’ concentration, enjoyment of learning, engagement in learning and interpersonal relationships.