Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemMaking connections from the classroom to professional context : using problem-based learning to enhance engineering education( 2000)Problem-based learning (PBL) is presented as an educational reform that is particularly relevant for professional education programs. This study investigated the use of PBL to enhance the quality of students' learning in Professional Skills, a first year engineering subject at Swinburne University of Technology. The major aims for Professional Skills are to develop students' communication skills and to provide them with an introduction to the engineering profession. PBL was selected because of the use of a professional context to demonstrate the relevance of learning and the approach to developing students' abilities for self-directed and life-long learning. PBL requires different understandings and approaches to teaching and learning than are typical of existing practices in engineering education. An action research method was used to guide the development of curriculum and teaching practices because of the role of action research in providing support for teachers to improve their educational understandings and practices. The study examines two action research cycles of curriculum development, teaching and learning during 1995. Qualitative research methods were used to investigate teachers' and students' experiences of teaching and learning to inform the progressive curriculum improvement and evaluation. The findings from the study provide insight into both the characteristics of PBL that enhance the quality of students' learning and strategies that contribute to an on-going process of supporting change and improvement in curriculum and teaching practices. Students identified four thematic issues that were central to their motivation and engagement in learning. These issues were: being able to see the relevance of their learning to their future careers, collaborative learning in class and their project teams, their opportunities for active involvement and input into learning decisions, and a supportive learning environment in which they received guidance and feedback on their progress. Teaching and learning in the PBL curriculum was a new and challenging experience for both engineering teachers and students. The collaborative action research process assisted teachers to develop the skills and confidence to utilise new approaches to teaching and learning. The relevance of these findings to achieving the cultural change advocated by the 1996 Review of Engineering Education (lEAust 1996) is examined.
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ItemCurriculum policy in the crucible of change: implementing curriculum policy (the Curriculum & Standards Framework) in state schools in Victoria in a time of rapid change, 1995 to 1999( 2001)"When I became Minister for Education, there was no common curriculum for Victorian schools for students in years Prep through 10. In effect, schools taught what they liked." This was Minister Don Hayward's view of what he found when he became Minister for Education in Victoria in 1992. His response was a sweeping reform of Victorian education which included the Curriculum and Standards Framework. This thesis examines the question, "What factors affect the ways in which the Curriculum and Standards Framework (CSF) has been implemented in Victorian state schools since 1995?" It presents findings which indicate that teachers in schools did not wholeheartedly embrace the CSF as a curriculum policy. The perceptions, attitudes and actions of teachers have significant effects upon the Victorian Government's desire to reform education in line with national and international trends towards outcomes-based curricula and as part of a move to centralised control of curriculum which paralleled a movement to the devolution of control of resources within the Schools of the Future initiative. The attitudes, perceptions and actions of the teachers in the schools in the study are seen to have lessened the effectiveness of the implementation of the CSF in those schools. Drawing upon the work of a number of authorities on the implementation of public policy, the study reveals the success of the implementation of the CSF to be mixed. The study further reveals lessons which, if learned from the implementation of the CSF in its first form, will be useful in the implementation of CSFII from 2001 and in the implementation of other curriculum policies in the future.
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ItemLanguage and thinking in action: how one primary teacher supports her students to enact and articulate their thinking( 2007)This study investigated how one teacher facilitates dialogue with and between primary-aged students, to assist their thinking, at a time when the introduction of a new curriculum in Victoria is placing explicit demands on teachers to meet rigorous standards in students' thinking. Its aim was to identify exploratory (Mercer 2002) or dialogic interactions (Wells 1999) in the context of problem-based or inquiry learning, so that educators will better understand how language-based techniques and prompts promote students' thinking and learning. A review of the current and relevant literature revealed that classroom-based research focusing on the relationship between language, thinking and learning as theorised by Lev Vygotsky and Michael Halliday, emphasises the important role of the teacher in challenging and extending students' thinking. A qualitative case study of the language generated by the teacher working mainly with a small group of her students was undertaken and discourse analytic techniques were applied to the data. The main findings of the study relate to (i) the teacher's use of some dialogic techniques that supported students' thinking and learning and (ii) alternatively the teacher's under-exploitation of teachable moments to fully promote students' thinking and learning using exploratory language.
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ItemProblem based learning in a traditional curriculum: the case of dental materials science( 2002)Curricula in Medical Schools worldwide have seen a large change in the way student learning is approached. There has been a change in philosophy away from the traditional lecture-practical format to small groups that encourage students to work more independently. This has been commonly referred to as Problem-based Learning (PBL). In most cases whole curricula have been changed to this style of learning. In the case of Dental education, the concept of PBL is still new, with only a few Schools embracing the ideals and philosophies of PBL. This may in part be due to the different nature of Dental education or even a reflection of the conservative nature of dental educators. To bring about change in dental education, we need more information demonstrating how best to use PBL as well as determining if this style of learning can be applied universally to all the subject areas of dental education. There is almost no information in current education literature to determine whether a single PBL subject can work in an essentially traditional lecture-practical curriculum. This thesis investigates the implementation of the Dental Materials Science course into the first year of the dental curriculum at the School of Dental Science at the University of Melbourne using PBL as the method of learning. The curriculum at the School of Dental Science uses a traditional learning method for all other components in the first year curriculum. The project investigated student satisfaction of PBL using a series of questionnaires given to students in their first year of the BDSc curriculum in 1997 and 1998. Part of the investigation also looked at demography and how this may effect the success and acceptance of PBL. The convener of the subject also prepared a journal in the first year of implementation reflecting on the day to day experiences of implementing and modifying a PBL subject. The findings did not support the use of PBL for a single subject in a traditional curriculum. There were no differences observed in the ability to learn in a PBL environment with respect to ethnic heritage. Although a small group of students enjoyed learning in small groups, in general the outcomes showed most students did not like PBL and did not show appreciable benefits in their exam performance or self-reported learning strategies. It was concluded that other styles of learning such as Co-operative Learning in association with lectures is a better choice for students learning a subject where they have little or no prior experience.
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ItemEducational accountability and organisational capacity in school science departments: a material critique of management models of mandated curriculum reforms( 2007)In Sociology, Bourdieu (1977), Giddens (1984) and Schatzki (2001) have developed theories of practice to offer an alternative to rational and normative concepts of action and to solve the problem of the relationship between agency and structure. They argue that cultural, political and economic processes are mutually constitutive of social agency, as agency can be productively read as a historically specific confluence of discursive and material processes. In applied disciplines such as organizational and management studies (Niccolini, 2001) as well as in education (Southerland, Smith, Sowell and Kittleson, 2007), practice has been adopted to redefine the concepts of knowledge and learning and to understand change in working life. In these contexts, practice-based research has become part of new research areas, such as organizational learning, knowledge management, innovation and workplace studies and this research is in this modern tradition. This is a study of the praxis of two groups of science teachers, in different countries under different policy regimes of state mandated curriculum management. It is a study towards an understanding of the pedagogy of resistance and transformation. The significance of the resistance of material entities for the objectivity of knowledge is an important theme in the sociology of knowledge. The practice theorists in science and technology studies (for example Pickering 1993,1995, Latour 2000, Miettinen, 2006) have taken this resistance manifesting itself in experimental activity as a constitutive factor in accounting for the emergence of facts and scientific concepts. Pickering (1955: 560) talks about the temporal emergence of experimental activity in research as a "real-time dialectic of resistance and accommodation". Resistance refers to the blockage in reaching a goal or realization of a hypothesis. Fleck (1981) proposes that a fact is understood as a resistance expressed in experimental work and interpreted by the practice community. The widespread notion of "constraint" is usually understood as some kind of external condition that objectively limits scientific activities and epistemologies of transformative material activity more generally. "Resistance" is to be preferred, Pickering argues, because resistances are genuinely emergent in time, as a block arising in practice to a passage of goal-oriented practice" For Latour (200) objectivity refers to the presence of things that "object to what is told about them". This study uses surveys of whole school and science department staff as well as interviews conducted over a year in each of two schools, one in England and one in Melbourne Australia. It looks at the agency of science teachers as a transformative material activity, its relationship with policies of State mandated standards, and the objectivisation of teacher knowledge. Whereas subjective identity operates here in terms of types of experience that are available, agency of these teachers has to do more with a distribution of acts. Bhaskar's (1993) Transformational Model of Social Action has been applied to the analysis of staffroom praxis and offers an informing under-theory to the study of teacher agency and practice.
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ItemAn action research approach to introducing problem-based learning in a higher education setting: a study in a School of Dental Science( 2001)This study employed an action research approach to curriculum change in the School of Dental Science at The University of Melbourne. The curriculum change involved the implementation of problem-based learning (PBL) in a number of subjects in the Bachelor of Dental Science (BDSc) degree course. The impetus for this change arose from a 1997 curriculum review as well as wider changes in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences of which the School is a part. Action research provided a means of involving academic staff in the planning and implementation of curriculum change. The appropriateness and effectiveness of action research as an approach in this context is fully discussed. Key issues in the study were the nature of the educational change in this particular situation; the manner in which change was implemented; the reactions of both staff and students to change and the way in which the PBL curriculum evolved. The process of educational change is rarely a straightforward one and this study reinforces this view. A complex and powerful mix of individual beliefs about teaching and learning, organisational structures, tradition, professional values and a diverse student body all combined to make the change process in this setting demanding and challenging. It is the response to this challenge by this group of educators that this study illustrates.