Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemGraduate teachers and ICT: the prospect of transformative integration( 2013)This study is concerned with the enactment at the school level of policies that promote the transformation of learning and teaching through the integration of information and communications technologies (ICT) into schools. The study has a particular focus on how graduate teachers, drawn from a highly digital generation, enact their practices. In an ethnographic study, the ICT-based pedagogical practices of five graduate teachers in their first or second year of teaching were examined during one school year, to identify what factors influenced their pedagogical choices related to integrating ICT and the extent to which their practices were transformative. The study was set in a school ‘in the middle’ - an Australian metropolitan secondary school that was neither technology-rich nor technology-poor, that scored good, but not outstanding academic results, and that did not experience any particular measure of disadvantage. This study reconceptualises the integration of ICT by graduate teachers as a ‘wicked’ problem – one that is messy and complex and for which there is no single, easy solution. The study identifies three intertwined domains of factors – external, individual and socio-material domains – that mediate the pedagogical choices made by teachers when integrating ICT. Within the individual domain, the study shows that teachers’ beliefs and dispositions towards ICT integration are influenced by their folk pedagogies or experiences as learners themselves; the pedagogies they were explicitly taught in their teacher preparation; the signature pedagogies and culture of the disciplines into which they teach; and the built pedagogy, the physical spaces in which they teach. A socio-material perspective is shown to be essential when integrating ICT into school classrooms. The practices of the more experienced teachers have a significant influence on the pedagogical choices made by the graduate teachers, particularly when teaching out-of-field, and reveal a tendency towards reproduction rather than transformation of practice. However, the material world of the school and the local translation of policies, the little things, also have a significant influence on the pedagogical choices made by graduate teachers when integrating ICT. With so many factors shaping graduate teachers’ practices, the study discusses the prospects for transformative integration of ICT by graduate teachers, revealing that, although the socio-material world of the school tends towards reproduction rather than transformation of practice, graduate teachers exert agency in their pedagogical choices. The study identified three categories of agency among the study participants – those who deliberately adopted the dominant practices of their more experienced colleagues, those who reluctantly adopted such practices, and those who actively resisted the dominant practices. A fourth category is also suggested – the active transformer.
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ItemPedagogical and cognitive usability in online learning( 2013)The last decade has seen a sharp – and necessary – increase in attention to the quality of eLearning which has expanded a relatively new area of usability specifically for online learning: pedagogical usability. This research focuses on the usability attributes that contribute to effective eLearning and delineates those pertinent to teaching (pedagogical usability) and those specific to learning (cognitive usability). A multifarious methodology provided the elicitation of data from almost all conceivable and feasible angles of the execution of eLearning in a real-world setting – the main positions being: the pedagogical considerations from the teacher-developers’ planning sessions through to the use of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) by students, as well as an in-depth usability inspection and evaluation of the Learning Management System (LMS) used as the tool for delivery. The project, in essence, put a microscope on the entire process of eLearning. The complementary use of twelve methods of data collection for rigorous triangulation provided a synergic framework that enabled the examination of each stage of eLearning. The analytical framework applied to the data comprised a complex integration of existing models and a specifically devised analytical model that assisted in the deconstruction of all the factors that contribute to pedagogical and cognitive usability. The study introduces the concept of cognitive usability as distinct from pedagogical usability on the grounds that certain features and contributing factors to VLEs are more teacher-driven (pedagogical) while others are more learner-consummated (cognitive). The study found that a VLE’s constitutional design is governed by teachers’ philosophies about teaching and learning and their teaching styles and repertoires which in turn are also governed by curriculum design; the teachers’ lack of techno-pedagogical skills coupled with the limitations of the eLearning platform hold an equally pivotal role in determining the VLE’s pedagogical usability. The study showed a strong relationship between the technical, pedagogical and cognitive usability of a VLE and found that using an LMS to create eLearning is fraught with problems that are rooted in the technical design of the LMS. Since LMSs are a mandatory feature in almost all educational institutions nowadays, the findings of this study are particularly important since so much research focuses on the use of eLearning without specifically addressing the software used to create it. While even a VLE with low techno-pedagogical usability can still facilitate learning outcomes, this study showed that approximately one third of VLE activity is ineffective due to poor LMS design which impacts on the VLE design, leading to low cognitive usability.