Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemFace-to-face : cross-cultural communication with Somali-speaking parents( 2008)This research thesis reports on an investigation of cross-cultural communication at one Victorian primary school, at which the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the staff and a sizeable proportion of the parents differ markedly. This qualitative, case study investigated the perspectives of one group of parents, all from a Somali speaking background, and school staff about the current levels of cross-cultural communication and how these key stakeholders believed home/school links could be improved. Data for this investigation were gathered from parent participants through group and individual interviews, some of which were conducted in Somali with the assistance of a bilingual research assistant. Consideration of these participants' vulnerable social status (Liamputtong, 2007), was an important aspect of this research process thus ensuring these parents, seldom heard within the school environment, had the opportunity to express their opinions and relate their experiences of cross-cultural communication with school staff. The data collection process, therefore, provides a model for excellent cross-cultural communication between an institution, such as a school, and a marginalised parent community. Written questionnaires, comprising open-ended and some ranked questions were used to investigate staff perspectives of cross-cultural communication. This was followed by a group interview with some staff members in which issues were discussed with greater depth. This research project revealed that the low-levels of cross-cultural communication noted at this school are not an indication of the level of goodwill held by Somali-speaking parents and school staff. On the contrary, all participants expressed a strong desire to learn more about the other and for communication levels to improve, recognising the importance of strong home/school links in improving educational outcomes for students. Through the suggestions, opinions and experiences of participants, a series of recommendations are made in this report, so that the momentum of improved communication, initiated by the research project, might be continued at the school, or within similar educational contexts.
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ItemInteractions between first and second language writing skills in Macedonian bilingual children in Australia( 2009)The theoretical belief arising from the interdependence hypothesis suggests that there is a common underlying proficiency in bilingual literacy development, particularly with respect to literacy skills, strategies and knowledge transfer across different languages. According to this view a strong establishment in one language not only develops skills in that language, but also facilitates the development of a second language. The aim of this research was to look at the interactions between literacy in Macedonian and English and to analyse the role of the first language literacy in second language acquisition in two dissimilar languages. Although the research explored the relationships between first language (Macedonian) and second language (English) writing skills, strategies and knowledge, the influence of motivation and the performance in English were also discussed. Namely this research investigated the skills and strategies that Macedonian bilingual children use for writing in Macedonian script and whether these strategies have a positive or negative transfer to English literacy. This research also analysed the writing behaviours, and attitude towards the two languages and how they affect the transfer of literacy skills and strategies. To address the aim of this research and gain an in-depth understanding about bilingual children's language acquisition and development a qualitative case-study method was employed. The subjects for this research were six nine year old children from a Macedonian/ English bilingual school. They were asked to write recounts in both languages, Macedonian and English, in order to investigate the transfer of skills, strategies and knowledge across both languages. The think-aloud protocols were used to look into the writing process and to categorise the types of writing strategies that the children can transfer from Macedonian to English literacy. This method was used to observe children's writing processes while writing and simultaneously discussing what thoughts were going through their mind. The childrens' attitudes towards learning in two languages were discovered by using semistructured interviews. The official results from the literacy assessment conducted at the school were also analysed and compared. The discussion of findings from the six children focussed on the transferable skills and strategies and the relationship between Macedonian and English writing. This research confirms that writing behaviours and strategies that the children displayed were consistent across both languages, even though the languages have different writing systems. In fact this research provided a better understanding of children's biliteracy development from an early age in a bilingual setting. Results of the study indicated that there is an interdependent ability between the first language and the second language writing and that there is a positive transfer of skills, strategies and knowledge from Macedonian to English. Therefore the conclusion is that the development of the stronger language literacy (Macedonian) facilitates literacy development in the second language (English) and that access to two languages from an early age and the possibility of learning those languages can facilitate literacy development.
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ItemEvaluating the Santa Maria College information literacy program( 2007)This is an impact study, which evaluates an Information Literacy Program that has been running in the Santa Maria College Library since February 2000. It investigates the effectiveness of the Program inputs and processes and seeks to identify impacts on learning in student outputs and College wide outcomes. The study builds on previous research that was conducted from 2000 to 2004 and seeks to develop new understandings through new methods. This study draws on literature that examines methods of collecting evidence of learning impact in school libraries. The literature recommends micro-research in secondary schools that examines students' skills before and after they have been involved in integrated information literacy instruction, as well as empirical studies about the impact of the six step research process model on learning. The literature also suggests investigation of the impact of school libraries on the broad aspects of learning, and the development and application of new methods for collecting qualitative data in the library setting. From Terms One to Term Four in 2005, mixed methods were used to capture evidence of student learning in the Santa Maria College Library. Students were observed as they carried out Program research tasks. The assignments that they produced at the end of the research process were assessed. Surveys and focus group interviews explored the perceptions of a sample of the students and teachers who participated in the Program. In exploring the data, changes in learning behaviour and attitudes to the research process were identified and analysed. The effectiveness of various aspects of the Program such as task design, explicit process instruction, cognitive strategies, note taking scaffolds and assessment practices were examined. Two theoretical frameworks synthesised from the literature were used in the research. The first framework is based on criteria for effective libraries such as staffing, funding, collection size and technological infrastructure. The second framework combines the effective approaches to learning in school libraries that are evident in the literature. Those frameworks were applied to assess the pre-conditions for learning in the Santa Maria Library. A third framework based on criteria that identify outcomes and indicators of student learning in school libraries, was used to identify evidence of student learning across the data sets. The key research questions were used to organise the discussion of the findings. The findings demonstrated that student outcomes have improved in a broad range of learning experiences. The study deepened my understanding of the distinctive features of the Program and its strengths and weaknesses. The strengths included: the use of constructivist pedagogy and inquiry learning; the collaborative planning, implementation and review processes; the infusion of the learning activities in real units of work; the learning scaffolds and instructional interventions at the point of need; and the assessment and feedback strategies. All of those inputs and processes are critical success factors in the Program. The note taking grids and the associated skill development in reading for meaning, identifying and recording key points, and combining information for final products are particularly effective aspects of the Program, which were highly regarded by the students. The weaknesses of the Program included: the gradual erosion of collaborative planning, implementation and evaluation processes; a general feeling of Program fatigue; the fact that the assessment of student outputs to track Progress is not standard practice; and the lack of a process for fading scaffolds in the Year 9 and 10 levels to shift control of the learning process from the teachers and teacher librarians to the students as they move through the Program. The study incorporates a series of recommendations for ongoing monitoring, and future Program delivery and implementation.
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ItemPerceptions of educational change: a case study of LOTE teachers in Catholic schools( 2000)Change permeates every aspect of education. The objective of this study has been to investigate the multidimensional nature of educational change as perceived, experienced and managed by teachers of Languages Other Than English (LOTE) within the context of global school change. It was designed to gain insights into effective change processes and bring to the fore characteristics that challenge schools to become even better schools. The research undertaken is innovative as it targets teachers of Languages Other Than English (LOTE). Whilst the educational change literature has expanded over the last twenty years, LOTE teachers have been given little attention by researchers of educational change. This and the tentative nature of LOTE programs in schools acted as inspiration. The literature review focused on three dimensions of educational change relating to the individual, the curriculum and the organisation. These dimensions form the basis of the study and are discussed in relation to individual professional and personal experiences and reactions to change initiatives and to the impact of structural organizational changes on curriculum renewal. Particular emphasis has been given to curriculum development as an eclectic process. However, through the interaction of the three dimensions the process of change recultures, renews and transforms the learning community. This study draws on historical ethnography in a case study of a critical event. Through oral history, hindsight provided a more considered appraisal of results. It was evident in this case study that subjective and objective realities gave meaning to change. Participants shared their perceptions of educational change, and in particular how these influenced their professional lives and consequently how their personal lives influenced their work. The amalgamation of three schools was used as the vehicle of the research. It challenged teachers to rethink the way they went about teaching and learning. Values and beliefs were questioned imposing strain on self-confidence. New beliefs and values were embraced out of loss, grief and anxiety. Whether or not desired, real change brought with it uncertainty, ambivalence and contradiction. Yet, these very factors spurred growth and encouraged shared meanings in a myriad of change factors.
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ItemOf secrets, sorrows, and shame: undergraduate nurses' experiences of death and dying( 2007)This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of undergraduate nursing students who cared for the dying and deceased whilst on clinical placement. To this point, studies on this phenomenon have focused on the experienced, qualified nurse. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the impacts of caring for the dying and deceased, on the student-nurse, and the implications for nursing education. The ten study participants were undergraduates enrolled in the Bachelor of Nursing program at a metropolitan-based university in Melbourne. The study of their experiences, from the perspectives of the student-nurses, was conducted using a semi-structured interview for data collection. Analysis of the data, using a Miles and Huberman (1994) style matrix, revealed four emergent themes: intensity of emotion; perceptions, growth and awareness; and opportunities. These themes were explored to yield results which established there were often profound, and sometimes disturbing, impacts of grief for both the student-nurse, the patient, and others. This study contributes to the This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of undergraduate nursing students who cared for the dying and deceased whilst on clinical placement. To this point, studies on this phenomenon have focused on the experienced, qualified nurse. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the impacts of caring for the dying and deceased, on the student-nurse, and the implications for nursing education.
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ItemLiteracy, thinking and engagement in a middle years classroom community of philosophical inquiry: a reflection on practice( 2006)I present the introduction and concluding chapter in the first person in an ontological acknowledgement of self as one who practised my profession and reformed my practice, and who has reflected on my practice as a teacher, as a researcher, and as teacher-researcher. I wrote the other chapters in the formal language of the third person to assist me in developing some degree of objectivity about my practice; it served as a constant reminder to me that I was writing about something that could be considered, to some degree, as other than myself. I was investigating a teacher's practice, my past practice, and as such I strove for a non-egocentric assessment, yet acknowledge that it was my practice at a unique time in my career, a period through which my practice has now grown. This reflection on- practice was not easy, either intellectually or emotionally, and I needed to constantly remind myself that I could be simultaneously a merciless critic, and an empathic one. I moved from the role of teacher to researcher and into teacher-researcher as the moment required and used the third person to present my experience from these perspectives as seemed most appropriate and for presenting the narrative elements of the lived moment. I concluded by uniting those three perspectives into the one, whole self and so wrote the conclusion in the first person.
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ItemThe Public understanding of techno-science in a rural community: culture & agency( 2003)This is an ontological inquiry into the public understanding of techno-science, held by adult members of a local school community. In this light, it seeks to establish a platform from which to reassess conventional assumptions about the curriculum and cultural agency of science teaching. The inquiry is rooted in dissatisfaction with a current transformational model of science teaching, which is defined solely in terms of the transfer of ideational possessions to the students in science classes. Both teachers and students are agents in their own and others' symbolic life worlds. Their identities are constructed in a dual praxis, a dialogue between self as product and self as process in every day conversation in established communities. The study draws on the work of Coulter on Dialogical Research, Harre on the analysis of social episodes, Latour, Rechwitz & Schatzki on the place of the material in theories of culture, of Harvey, Ratner on Agency and Community . Through dialogues with persons in a rural community served by the author's school, the thesis explores the public understanding of techno-science within the community and considers whose interests the school education in science best serves. The centrality of "community" is claimed in characterising a model of embodied cultural change over centrally imposed change. It is proposed that change is a "two-way" interaction where the individual "agent" both socialises & is socialised by the cultural structures that exist, and where the "artefact" is the "knot of reasoning" at the centre of personal identity formation "actor-networks" (ANT - Latour). It suggests that society empowers or does not empower - through the processes of recognising, and allocating control of empowering artefacts to persons as agents working within a social & cultural framework of responsibilities and duties. The thesis offers a new transformational model of social action, which suggests renewed attention in research & practice should be given to ontologies of the mind and person of the agent and the mediating function of "community" in the future restructuring of the public education of science if it is to serve its broader function in cultural transformation within the small rural community of Erehwyna, or anywhere.
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ItemResearching teacher agency in primary school science: a discursive psychological approach( 2004)This ontological study is concerned with analyses of the problem of the scientific reform of the primary school curriculum. It was conducted at a time when a solution was sought through State mandated curriculum and standards specification and primary teacher accountability. The case study developed as an interactive ethnography (Woods 1996) written from the point of view of the facilitator of a whole school science curriculum project. The focus of the enquiry emerged as an exploration of social episodes in the life of two experienced Early Years teachers engaged in the yearlong project. Discursive psychology became the theoretical framework for the analysis of the primary teachers' professional identity formation in their professional work=place conversations with the author. Pronominal coding has been used to mark the teachers' psychological location in their storylines of the implementation of enquiry-based science education in their classes. In the teachers' accounts they simultaneously position themselves in their acts and actions and in the local moral order of duties and responsibilities. A significant disparity is shown to exist between the ontologies of the primary teachers' and research accounts, which present mental state analyses of teachers' lack of confidence or reluctance to teach science related to limited scientific understanding. The. study offers a schematic model of social action that theorizes human agency as, developing and functioning within the interactional nexus of local community settings. The community operates in the lives of these teachers not as a latent, abstract concept; instead it gives ideological differences and teachers' understandings of themselves significance in everyday educational practices.