Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemA preliminary investigation of language function and educational success in primary school children( 1980)This study is an attempt to establish if there exist differences in pupil performance at the level of language function which will support teachers' intuitive judgements of pupil ability in the context of the primary school classroom. The type of study was naturalistic and descriptive and involved children in grades two and six of a regional city State Primary School. The 12 subjects were selected by the respective grade teachers on perceived performance, and allocated by them to either an upper or lower ability grouping. Each group consisted of three pupils and the same teacher conducted each lesson in the same classroom situation. The task was concerned with the developing concept of floating and sinking and involved pupils having to initially classify 82 items as either float or sink objects. After this task was completed the pupils tested each object to establish if their initial hypothesis was correct. Results were analysed using an interaction based functional model of language and subjected to statistical analyses to establish which functions reached a level of significance. Results indicate that significant differences do exist at the level of function between ability groups at each grade level and between respective grades. The lower ability pupils at grade two appear to interpret the demands of the educational task differently from their upper ability counterparts. At the level of cognitive discourse function the lower ability group interpreted the task as requiring the use of the hypothesis discourse function which was linguistically realised principally by use of the one term/single response strategy and by general statement. The upper group however interpreted the task as requiring the use of evidence in support of any hypothesis made in an initial response and this function was linguistically expressed by using the causal statement strategies. The lower ability group also used the procedural function as a continuous commentary on their ongoing actions but the upper group employed this function significantly less. There was no significant difference in the choice of cognitive discourse function between groups at grade six, and both groups interpreted the task as demanding a different approach than that adopted by grade two. Both groups employed the 'use evidence' function as an initial response and the procedural function virtually disappeared. Differences did emerge in the selection of linguistic strategies to realise the cognitive discourse functions and three of these reached a level of significant difference. These were the one word/single term, single attribute, and no response strategies which were consistently employed by the lower ability group. The upper ability group employed more anecdote and affirm/ deny strategies than the lower group. The use of the social discourse function also changed between grades. At grade two both ability groups interposed their own social discourse between educational exchanges with the teacher. By grade six this function was almost exclusively used by both groups to support peer statements and acted as a cohesive element in the discourse. At the level of teacher reaction the teacher used significantly more of those reaction types which extended discourse with upper ability groups at both grade levels. The teacher also employed 'request for extension' significantly more at the grade six level than with the grade two groups. In this study, because only two groups of three subjects each have been compared, individual differences could influence the results obtained and therefore any interpretation and generalisation from the results found in this study will have to be limited and tentative in nature.
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ItemThe Language Development Project, Phase II : a case study in co-operative curriculum development and the role of formative evaluation( 1985)The Language Development Project was a major initiative in national curriculum development, the first of its kind in language education in Australia. The study focuses on three major themes or constructs underlying Phase II of the project, its developmental phase and explores their implications for national curriculum development in the Australian federal context and for English language education in Australian schools. As such it is essentially an exercise in construct evaluation, a formative approach to the evaluation of outcomes. Central to the conception of Phase II of the Language Development Project was a view of language and learning inherited from Phase I of the project and encapsulated in its tripartite model of language education learning language, learning through language, learning about language. Equally central to the work of the project was a view of curriculum development predicated on the belief that there was a need for a national approach to language education and that this national approach could best be achieved through a co-operative effort involving the centre (CDC) and the States and Territories. Underlying this co-operative model was a commitment to school-based curriculum development and to involving teachers in the development of curriculum materials. The most important feature of these central constructs was that they were developing models, based on the assumption that curriculum development, at least in the language area, is an evolutionary process, moving through exploration and discovery towards definition. This open-ended, emergent quality, together with the co-operative nature of the project, placed particular demands on the design of an evaluation which would be responsive to the changing needs of the project at the national level while respecting the autonomous nature of the component projects. The study analyses the development of these three major constructs - the tripartite model of language education, the cooperative model of curriculum development and the collaborative evaluation model - as they were exemplified in the experience of the project examines their relationship to the wider context of practice, and explores their implications for the development of a practical framework for the English language curriculum the resolution of ambiguities in the co-operative model of curriculum development and the development of a reconstructed model for the formative evaluation of co-operative national programs.