Faculty of Education - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 4 of 4
-
ItemA Case study of retention policy strategies and their impact on Weixi Lisu ethnic minority students, Yunnan Province, the PRC( 2003)The overall aim of this research is to explore the current national and provincial ethnic minority education policies related to retention rates and their implementation strategies, together with their impact on the ethnic minority groups in Yunnan Province in the 1990s. As Yunnan Province has strong representation of 25 ethnic minority groups in the People's Republic of China within its population, the problems associated with ethnic minority education is particularly relevant and complex. One of the most serious issues to emerge in the education of ethnic minority groups is the high dropout rate resulting in low school retention rates. This thesis, in particular, focuses on the Weixi Lisu schooling retention rates in Weixi Lisu Autonomous County of Yunnan Province, the People's Republic of China in order to explore the specific factors that affected retention rates, and the ways in which the implementation strategies impacted on Weixi Lisu. As a result, policies and strategies to improve the Weixi Lisu schooling retention rates are recommended to assist the provincial government to design policies to increase the retention rates of ethnic minority students in Yunnan Province. A contextual analysis includes a discussion of Yunnan's geographical location, its socio-economic development and the factors associated with ethnic minority groups' education. The literature, then, provides an insight into ethnic students' education and retention issues. It focuses on the low retention rates in Weixi Lisu Autonomous County. From the literature review questions emerging included: What are the factors that affect retention rates? What policy strategies have been effective in increasing the retention rates? How do low school retention rates impact on the Weixi Lisu community? Within the qualitative paradigm, the research questions, methodology and interview schedule are discussed. Five themes emerged from the analysis of the data. It was found that a basic cause of low retention rates is the lack of economic development, which expresses itself in a high level of poverty. The main fording is explored and examined within the context of the literature research. It is a key recommendation that overcoming poverty and developing self-management of schools at the local level would improve the enrolment rate and retention rate. This research provides valuable information for those involved in education planning, education policymaking within the Yunnan Education Commission and Ethnic Minority Affairs of Yunnan Province, and for other governments interested in these policy issues. Researchers in the areas of education and culture who would ford this valuable resource.
-
ItemMandated improvement: an examination of the impact of the school accountability framework in Victoria, Australia( 2002)This research set out to examine the impact of the Victorian Government's Accountability Framework, on three primary schools. Located within a naturalistic paradigm, this case study research focused on the understandings and experiences of principals, other school leaders and teachers, as they completed the first three-year cycle of implementation. Using the Hargreaves, Shaw and Fink (1997) Change Frames as the basis for interviews with participants, it was revealed that participants across the three schools faced many personal and professional challenges, as they engaged in processes of charter development, charter implementation and review. A mix of administrative, leadership, socio-cultural and educational factors impacted both positively and negatively on the implementation. A number of these factors were found to relate directly to political challenges of the period. The study reveals a key weakness in the Accountability Framework's capacity to translate findings arising from the self-evaluative components (Annual and Triennial Review) into teaching and learning practices. The findings suggest that there is a risk that some schools may `institutionalise' the practices of charter development, implementation and review, to meet Education Department of Education and Training expectations, but without significantly addressing the real needs of students within the Framework's processes, strategies and outcomes. A number of recommendations are offered to help strengthen the impact of the Framework on school improvement practices, and especially teaching and learning outcomes.
-
ItemThe cognitive styles, learning strategies and vocational interests of South-East Asian and Australian students( 2003)Many factors are involved in the way an individual gains an understanding of Mathematics. Their cognitive style, i.e. way they code information for further processing in the brain, is one of these. The learning strategies that they use when a mismatch exists between their preferred style and the material presented to them is another. Riding and Rayner (1998) have developed a model for the whole learning process which contains two dimensions of cognitive style, the Wholist/Analytic and the Verbaliser/Imager dimensions. In the same way as individuals have different preferred cognitive styles, they also express different vocational interests. Holland (1985) developed a model for describing and assessing these vocational interests, the RIASEC model. Cultural factors may influence both an individual's preferred cognitive style and their vocational interests. This study investigates the effect of cultural factors in both these areas, looking particularly at the cultures of South-East Asia and Australia and the cognitive styles and vocational interests of students undertaking a first year university Mathematics course. Cultural differences were found in both areas. Students from South-East Asia (27 males and 17 females) tended to have a more visual cognitive style than Australian students (27 makes and 16 females), particularly when they learnt to read first in a character-based language. In accordance with the values of their Confucian-heritage background, the students from South-East Asia scored more highly on Holland's Conventional scale than did Australian students. In this study, support was also found for several aspects of Riding's Cognitive Control Model. One of these was the use of a Complementary cognitive style as a learning strategy when a mismatch occurred between an individual's preferred learning style and the material presented to them.
-
ItemMusic education in day care and pre-school( 2002)When I started out on this research I had two concerns. The first of these related to the general neglect of musical development in early childhood and its broader social and cultural significance. The second related to the special challenge associated with being an itinerant music specialist concerned with teacher education in the performing arts in day care centres and kindergartens. A window of opportunity opened up for my research in 1998 with the Federal Government's adoption of a National Framework for Accreditation of Child Care Centres that specified amongst its criteria the fostering of creative development and aesthetic awareness in early learning centres. My career background as a performing musician and music specialist in schools had provided me with essential knowledge of classroom music teaching and provided some awareness of the need at a practical level to conform to the social logic and community storylines of new settings. I had also been a proprietor of an early education centre in which I had taught music so was aware of the rules, regulations, procedures and protocol that operated in these settings as well as public interest in improved educational services in the day care centres. It was never my intention to measure the level of musical attainment or basic skills of the children. I sought initially to research and represent existing provision and practices of music education in the early childhood centres through a collaborative research agreement with directors and proprietors of the centres and to appraise the potential influence of a peripatetic music specialist in encouraging or empowering the generalist preschool teachers in this area. My initial view was that this was an issue of making staff more comfortable and confident in delivering a form of participatory community music programs in early learning centres. The research was re-defined after a pilot study showed that the poor employment practice and the regulatory regime in the centres meant staff had little or no time for personal-professional involvement in my sessions with the children and a lack of experience or training among staff mitigated against discussion. The redefined collaborative research agreement was a more conventional autoethnography in which I would represent my experiences as a provider over extended periods as a visiting music specialist in each of 5 centres. The research is still a social representation of the dilemma of early childhood music in the sense that arts education was understood at a number of symbolic levels, corporate and educational, to be worthwhile but neglected, but the representations do not quote staff in the centres to the same degree that I had anticipated. To understand this change in research direction is to understand in large measure the problem of music education in the centres. These social representations of music education in each centre are constructed at the intersection of my purposes and social reality in each centre where I was trying to understand the prospects and the conditions for Arts Education. The social representations are primarily theories of lay knowledge in early music education in Australia. The focus of the research has been on a form of thought and its products of which the staff seemed largely unaware. I was seeking to anchor and objectivize music education in these representations. These are globalizing processes. In the representations I sought to anchor my music teaching in each centre by a globalizing process that shows how I made the world of each centre simpler and more manageable. I was showing myself and attempting to show others how one copes with the complexity of music education at this level by grouping musical events and instruments or equipment used together with the children and showing them as similar or equivalent in my accounts. Similarly, I sought to objectify or reconstruct events for the reader that were technical and complex, into something that was less differentiated, similar to something already known and into something conventional. My hope is that these representations can be incorporated into the symbolic social environment and become ontologized in the artistic work of staff and others in early childhood centres.