Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemWorking through tension : a response to the concerns of lesbian, gay and bisexual secondary school students(University of Melbourne, 2001)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe art of intersubjectivity(University of Melbourne, 2004)
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ItemUneasy lies the head : the repositioning of heads of English in independent schools in Victoria in the age of new learning technologies( 2004)This study explores the discursive practice of six Heads of English in Independent Schools in Victoria during a period of major cultural change. This change has been associated with huge public investment in New Learning Technologies and shifting perceptions and expectations of cultural agency in communities of practice such as English Departments in Schools. In this social milieu tensions exist between the societal rhetoric of school management and marketing of the efficacy of NLTs as educational realities and discursive practices at a departmental level, embodying and embedding academic values and attainments. In their conversations with the author, the Heads of English reveal much about themselves and the nature and distribution of their duties and responsibilities within the local moral order of their schools and with their individual communities of practice. A model is developed of the dual praxis of the Heads of the Heads of English, mediated by autobiography and historically available cultural resources in a community of practice. As agents concerned to both maintain and transform their local culture of English teaching, and consequently the whole school culture, the Heads of English account for themselves as responding to their own `sense of place' in their own community of practice, but also the `structure of feeling' of the period by which their achievements and standing are known. This study of the persons of the English co-ordinators draws upon both Positioning Theory and critical realism to reveal the dynamic nature of both their identity and the social organization of English teaching in schools.
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ItemDialogical and collaborative learning in Vietnamese culture: an approach to teaching introductory physics courses( 2001)One of the priorities of the current wide ranging reform in higher education in Vietnam is to enhance the quality of teaching and learning in all subjects. This study describes and investigates the experience afforded by a social interactionist learning model in the author's teaching of a theoretical introductory physics course at a university in Vietnam. This model emphasises the cultural significance of dialogue and collaboration amongst students through group work. The model seeks to reconcile individual and social learning for developing students' physics cognitive and social skills. Students of four introductory physics classes of The University of Fisheries, Vietnam participated in this study. Both quantitative and qualitative techniques were used to collect and analyse the data on the cognitive and situated learning of the students. Aspects of Western and Vietnamese culture were attended to in the interpretation of the students' written responses and the researcher's observations. Findings from the study generally supported the greater attention given to the dialogical and collaborative learning environment in class, through the use of peer-based seminars and demonstrations in physics teaching in Vietnam. Physics seminars and demonstrations were employed in the student-based and highly interactive forms and they were positively accepted by students of the introductory physics classes. Student support and interest in the teaching approaches was attributed to the cultural and social resonance of "collaborative learning" and the relational identity of Vietnamese students. The dialogical and collaborative teaching approach developed in this study and the findings contribute to the teaching of introductory physics courses in Vietnamese universities and a better understanding of Vietnamese learners.
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ItemHow prospective students choose universities: a buyer behaviour perspective( 2001)This thesis examines the decision making and information search process of students choosing university courses in Victoria Australia. The position adopted for this study is that of a buyer or consumer behaviour perspective. This is the first study of its kind undertaken in Australia. Much related research been done in the United States and elsewhere. However, the Australian higher education system has unique characteristics. Consequently, while existing student-choice models drawn from elsewhere provide a useful foundation, they are not sufficient to answer the key question: How do students choose universities in Australia? Implicit in this overarching question are several issues examined by this study: how a student makes a choice is related to what choices there are to be made, and why the student makes a choice about a particular institution. (For complete abstract open document)
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ItemNumeracy assessment: from functional to critical practice( 2004)This study examines the validity of the measures obtained from a performance assessment of students' developing context in a numeracy context. The study was based on three premises: that teachers could make valid and reliable judgments about their students in regular classroom situations; that numeracy competence was developmental and involved higher order thinking; and that using different performance tasks could provide information about changes in students' performances over time. Numeracy was ill-defined and no developmental progression in numeracy was available on which to base assessment tasks. Common elements in descriptions of numerate behaviour and related ideas, suggested that numeracy could be conceptualised as a competence, and addressed through a generalised developmental progression. A competency perspective implied that teachers would be actively involved, and that assessment and teaching would be the same process. Performance assessment met some of these conditions, but the participation of teachers in performance assessment implemented in unstandardised conditions in regular classrooms raised validity issues. In this study, teachers used clearly specified scoring rubrics that emphasised the quality of students' performances to assist their observations of their students' behaviour when undertaking assessment tasks in numeracy contexts. The teachers' assessment took a developmental perspective that included higher order thinking, such as generalisation, justification and conjecture. Performance assessment tasks were designed using a set of design rules developed after initial trialling of pilot tasks. The different performance assessment tasks were underpinned by a generalised continuum of competence and set in diverse numeracy contexts. One cohort of 1243 Year 10 students undertook a single performance assessment task, and tests of mathematics skills, mathematical problem solving, and English ability, to provide convergent and discriminant evidence of construct validity. These students were in classes taught by 32 teachers in 14 different schools. Groups of students in Years 8 to 10 also undertook five different performance assessment tasks to provide additional validity evidence and longitudinal data. The total number of students' responses involved was 3412. All assessments were scaled using Rasch measurement techniques. Consideration of fit to the Rasch model indicated that all activities on the performance tasks, based on teachers' judgments of their students' performances, worked together in a predictable fashion to address a unidimensional underlying construct. Interpretation of this variable indicated that the demands of the activities closely matched the levels or the generalised continuum of competence. Convergent and discriminant evidence from a Multitrait Multimethod matrix, confirmed by Structural Equation Modelling approaches, indicated that there was no undue method effect from the use of teacher-judged tasks. Further findings showed that the teacher-judged performance task produced consistent information across all classes, within all schools involved. This was interpretable from a single perspective provided by the underlying generalised continuum of competence. This continuum addressed a wide range of ability levels, and included higher order thinking at the upper levels. Changes in students' performances over time could be monitored by reference to levels of development within the continuum of competence. The assessment approach, based on tasks planned specifically to link the task activities to an underlying continuum of competence through the use of carefully designed rubrics, allowed higher order thinking in numeracy contexts to be demonstrated by the students, and provided evidence of changes in students' performances over time. The findings suggested that assessment practice based on a competence approach to developmental assessment in numeracy contexts could provide valid outcome measures when implemented by teachers within regular classrooms. In addition, the process has the potential to provide teachers with information about the point at which teaching intervention could be maximally effective.
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ItemThe domains of vocational assessment decision-making( 2003)This study investigated the latent structure of vocational assessment decision-making. It also sought to examine how the background characteristics of the assessor (such as age, gender, assessment experience and location) affected the relationship between the constructs proposed as underpinning assessment decision-making. For each of the eight constructs explored, a set of rating scale items were developed to measure the intensity of the assessors’ attitudes and beliefs.
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ItemQuestions of identity: the researcher's quest for the beginning teacher( 2004-07)In this study, the discourse about beginning teachers is a central focus. I attempt to unravel the strands of this discourse and juxtapose the voices of beginning teachers with scholarly and authoritative voices which speak about or on behalf of beginning teachers. This thesis attempts to link narrative and narrative theory with critical and cultural theory in order to highlight the nature of this discourse about teachers at career entry. Issues of identity and the ‘process of becoming’ (Britzman, 2003) remain central throughout this work.
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ItemThe experience of depression: women's perspectives( 2002-12)Reports from epidemiological survey data identify that twice as many women than men suffer with depression over the life cycle. From reviewing the broad research literature, it appears that many studies focus on only one aspect of a bio-psychosocial model and, do not consider how these aspects interact. (For complete abstract open document)
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ItemLanguage maintenance shift of a three generation Italian family in three migration countries : an international comparative study( 2004-03)This thesis is a comparative investigation into the use of Italian of an extended Italian family in language contact situation in three countries: the United States, Australia and France. This study is undertaken and described in the context of the different policies on migrant integration and minority languages in the three migration countries. The investigation uses the ‘Case Study’ methodology in the format of an embedded multiple case-study project. The third generation was made the focus of the study to investigate Fishman’s “intergroup social dependency” theory. According to this theory, when the immigrant experience is viewed from a perspective of three or more generation time depth, the immigrant group generally loses its language due to its dependency on the host society for its survival. Fishman contends that only an effective and strict ‘compartmentalisation of language functions’ between the minority language and the host language can help the minority group maintain its language. The findings indicate that for people of Italian background living as a minority group in language contact situation compartmentalisation is not a viable alternative. Nor do they consider the ‘maintenance’ of their community language important. When in the migration country bilingualism is valued, it is the standard variety of the heritage language that is chosen for maintenance and further learning. The study presents recommendations towards the achievability of bilingualism beyond the limitations of compartmentalisation.
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