Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemEvaluation for Evidence-Based Performance Management: Understanding and Measuring Performance Managers’ Perceptions( 2020)A common claim is that high-performing organizations use evidence-based practice to manage staff performance, herein called performance management. The literature showed that the implementation of performance management policies is crucial because even well-designed performance management models fail if they are not implemented as intended (Armstrong, 2015). Given that behavior can be mediated by perception, this thesis focused on the perceptions held by implementers of performance management that might mediate their implementation of performance management policies. This is important because, despite the research on evidence-based performance management, there remains a gap in understanding and measuring the perceptions held by the implementers. Moreover, there is a sizeable gap between performance management research and practice due to a plethora of obstacles like poor access to reliable research. Three sequential research stages were conducted focusing on item generation, scale development and scale refinement and validation, respectively. An initial set of 130 items was developed, based on a thematic analysis in the narrative literature review and a scoping literature review study (Stage 1). These items were reduced to a set of 55, then 41 items in Stages 2 and 3, respectively, using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, Cronbach’s alpha calculations and examination of conceptual importance of data from a combined 589 survey respondents. Furthermore, the effect of several antecedent factors was tested using multivariate analysis of variance. The thesis findings enhanced the extant understanding by presenting perception of performance management as a broad concept encompassing two higher order factors (Perception of Efforts and Perception of Results) and eight lower order factors (perception of Performance Evaluation, Documentation, Organizational Support, Supervisory Support, Climate, Turnover, Critical staff Withdrawal and New staff Withdrawal). The findings also added to the literature on the effect of antecedent factors, particularly age, work role, organizational size, industry sector and workforce experience. Finally, the thesis further narrowed the gap between research and practice by creating a theoretically grounded and empirically validated performance management perceptions scale for organizations to use in in evidence-based performance management.
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ItemInstitutional influences on approaches to teaching within a flexible university : a cultural historical investigation( 2010)This study investigated the teaching approaches of two business academics located within an Australian university developing its flexible teaching and learning practices over the past twenty years. The interview subjects are highly regarded educators with formative backgrounds in on-campus or off-campus distance teaching. Each has had a long professional relationship with the researcher in her centrally situated position's as an educational developer within the institution. A review of the student learning literature pertaining to teaching and learning approaches in the higher education sector over the last thirty years, shows that "teaching approaches" can influence "student learning approaches"(Ramsden, Paul 2003) and outcomes, (Biggs, J. 2003; Lizzio, Alf, Wilson, Keithia & Simons, Roland 2002) however "institutional influences" upon teaching approaches seems to be substantially overlooked. (Kernber & Kwan 2000) The academics were invited to participate in this study agreeing to retrospectively review and discuss their teaching in three progressive phases of their working history. They were invited to consider their teaching approach using the Approach to Teaching Inventory (Trigwell, Prosser et. al. 2005) in order to reflect upon their personal positioning (Harre September 2004), institutional practice and societal rhetoric in relation to an academic life in various periods of their teaching history. Discursive analysis has been undertaken of the resulting conversations guided by Cultural Historical Analysis Theory, (Vygotsky 1978, Engestrom 1987). This investigation reveals profound institutional influences on the approaches of teachers to their work. Influences on academic life have usually been studied independent of the Higher education teaching and learning literature. This study points to an urgent need to integrate these research interests to inform understanding of material transformative activity for policy makers in higher education.