Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemSpeech-language pathology intervention for young offenders( 2017)Young offenders are a vulnerable and marginalised group with critical speech, language, and communication needs. Fifty to sixty percent of male young offenders have a clinically significant developmental language disorder. Despite this, little research has focussed on the efficacy and feasibility of speech-language pathology (SLP) intervention in youth justice settings. A year-long study in a youth justice facility in Victoria, Australia was undertaken. Following an assessment study (n = 27), a language intervention trial was conducted using a series of four empirical single case studies. The study evaluated the extent to which one-to-one speech-language pathology intervention improved the language skills of male young offenders. The feasibility of delivering SLP services was also investigated using quantitative service efficiency data, and qualitative data gathered from a staff focus group, and researcher field notes. Half of the sample in the assessment study qualified for a diagnosis of language disorder (> 1 standard deviation below mean on standardised measures), one third had social cognition deficits, and deficits in subskills of executive functioning ranged from one to three quarters of participants. Social cognition and executive functioning measures contributed significantly to variability in oral language skills. Individualised intervention programs were delivered for each of the four single case studies. There were medium-large improvements in the targeted communication skills, many of which were statistically significant. The data indicated evidence of the feasibility of SLP services, in spite of considerable barriers, including a high frequency of disruptions and cancellations. This research makes a substantial contribution to the evidence supporting the efficacy of one-to-one SLP intervention for young offenders. This research indicates that, despite substantial barriers, there are opportunities for effective and responsive SLP services with young offenders, as part of wider efforts to change the risk trajectories of these young people.
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ItemAdolescent literacy journeys( 2017)Utilizing qualitative research methods, this multiple case study investigates factors influencing adolescents’ perceptions of their literacy capacities. These factors are identified as either personal or institutional, depending on whether they stem from the students’ personal or academic contexts. Green's Literacy in 3D Model is used extensively as an analytical lens to identify and categorize factors impacting students' perceptions at a pivotal time of their high school education. Identification of factors influencing students’ perceptions about their literacy capacities is relevant to educators and educational institutions alike, because it can assist optimal use of instructional approaches and provide learning opportunities and environments that facilitate student constructions of positive perceptions. This qualitative study is based on the assumption that a resilient sense of self-efficacy in the context of literacy is an essential component of academic success. The research provides a glimpse into the students’ literacy journeys and gives their voices a forum so they could influence instructional approaches and school programs.
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ItemVideogames, distinction and subject-English: new paradigms for pedagogy( 2017)At a time when the proliferation of videogame ownership and practice has led to greater attention on the consequences of increased engagement with these texts, schools and educators are engaged in active debate regarding their potential value and use. The distinctive nature of these texts, especially in contrast to those texts which have traditionally dominated school environments, has raised questions about their possible affordances, as well as the pedagogies most appropriate for supporting teaching with and through these texts in the classroom. While much has been written about the learning benefits of videogames, especially in terms of opportunities for the negotiation of self (Gee, 2003), there has been less research addressing the impact of applying existing English subject-specific pedagogies to their study. In particular, there are few case-study investigations into the suitability of subject-English classrooms for the play and study of videogames. The project utilised a naturalistic case-study intervention involving eight 15-year-old students at a co-educational school in the outer-Northern suburbs of Melbourne. Data was collected during a five-week intervention in an English classroom context at the participants’ home-school. This involved the teacher-researcher leading a series of learning and teaching activities informed by dominant models of subject-English (Cox, 1989), Cultural Heritage, Skills, Personal Growth, and Critical Literacy, that focussed on several popular videogames. Data was analysed using Bourdieu’s theory of practice (1977) to reveal a social reality at the centre of this intervention co-created by a dialectical relationship between the habitus of students (especially in terms of their videogame, school and gendered identities) and the field of the classroom, with its own historically constituted and legitimised/authorised ways of being and doing textual study, as realised by the teacher. Mediating this relationship were the intrinsic features of videogames. The findings are presented through a Framework for Videogame Literacies in Subject-English which synthesises the relationship concerning past and present approaches to textual study in the subject, and the need to embrace what Locke terms, an “informed and critical eclecticism” (2015, p. 25). Firstly, the study found that the inclusion of videogames in subject-English provided the material for rich, rigorous and authentic learning experiences. Much of this can be achieved through the appropriation of existing paradigms of subject-English and their associated pedagogical practices, resisting the privileging of any single component of the framework and instead encouraging an awareness of the different purposes which each part serves. Secondly, analysis demonstrated the ways in which dominant approaches to the subject must evolve in response to the unique design features and intrinsic textual practices associated with these texts. Lastly, the study revealed that attempts to bring these texts into English classrooms will need to negotiate the disciplinary forces which organise these spaces, in terms of both the habitus of students, and the historically constituted structures which establish what is possible in such places. This work contributes to the field of research examining videogame literacies in classrooms, especially in terms of the impact of bringing technologies typically engaged for entertainment into subject-English learning contexts. The study suggests that future research is needed to test the efficacy of the Framework, and to identify ways for teachers to respond to inevitable developments in the design features of videogames so that current and future iterations of videogames can be incorporated into schools for rigorous learning and teaching.
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ItemOral language in the 'everyday life' of young rural children( 2014)Rural children have been underperforming in national Australian assessments of education, such as the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2010) and are also under-represented at higher levels of education. Literacy, which is underpinned by oral language, is needed to access many areas of the curriculum for successful learning. This research examined the context and development of rural children’s oral language over the first year of school using a constructivist approach and predominantly qualitative methods. The participants were nine rural Australian children (representing 90% of their class), their parents, class teacher, and preschool teacher. Their language use outside school was examined through interviews at the beginning and end of the school year. The children’s developing control over language for retelling stories and recounting their experiences was also compared and contrasted using a range of linguistic measures to gain insight into their lexical choices, cohesion, fluency, and their ability to convey meaning with accuracy and precision. The children’s oral language was also examined through language-assessment tasks, including the Record of Oral Language (Clay et al., 2007), SEA Tell Me (Curriculum Corporation, 1999), and the CombiList (Damhuis, de Blauw, & Brandenbarg, 2004). The results indicated that the children’s interactions were often limited to those within the community, which impacts on their need to use new words. Further, the analysis indicated their developing control over language was nonlinear and context dependent. However, key indicators of competency, measures of mean length of utterance, and number of within-utterance pauses increased. Though varied, all children reached acceptable outcomes after one year at school in English learning areas. The study’s findings contribute an understanding of how a teacher’s awareness of the children’s lived experiences and language use may facilitate the implementation of shared frameworks. This could strengthen connections between home and school, and provide a basis of continuity of learning. Targeted teaching may then move these non-mainstream children towards the use of the more complex language essential for early literacy learning and school performance more generally.
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ItemEnglish language development in remote Indigenous Australian children: song making, music software, text production and community( 2012)In a remote Australian Homeland Learning Centre for Indigenous children the lone teacher conducted a qualitative investigation of how music authoring software can be used to generate student interest in writing texts for songs. Working against odds that included limited or no electricity, no internet connection, fluctuating student attendance rates and lack of equipment, the teacher used his own MacBook computer and GarageBand software to encourage students to sing the texts/lyrics they had written and ultimately mix them down with pre-recorded music samples. This qualitative study presents an ethnographical investigation of the school and its children, and an auto-ethnographical narrative of the researcher’s experiences. In doing so it documents teaching and literacy learning sessions during one school term. Data were collected as samples of written text, my own annotated notes and journal entries, and mp3 files of student songs amongst other items. The study showed two key things: First, apparently disengaged students can produce meaningful and sustained written text as long as the curriculum is structured around teaching and learning strategies that cultivate student collaboration. Second, multimedia has the power to promote student engagement, improve attendance and foster a sense of student wellbeing if used in culturally appropriate ways. Taking a broader view, purposeful, expressive and culturally appropriate writing activities combined with multimodal text production were shown, in this case, to affect a positive change in student attitude and literacy development.
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ItemNew technologies and literacy pedagogy: a case study of two Victorian government schools( 2005)This study investigates the ways in which a sample group of state secondary school teachers are adapting literacy pedagogy to incorporate new technologies. Research in the area of literacy education indicates that the literacy requirements of citizens in the new century will, and in fact already do, differ remarkably from those of ten or twenty years ago. The traditional perception of literacy as a print-orientated, alphabetically coded skill base has been variously problematised and challenged in recent years, to the extent that literacy is now generally regarded as a highly individualized, reflexive, meaning-making response to an authored stimulus (a text) which can be authored and read in a number of different modalities - some of them electronic in nature. In effect, literacy skills are now perceived to be those tools and stratagems developed by an individual in order to make sense, and put within a social context, the multiple sourced print, audio, visual, spatial and inter-related cultural products that are so prolific in the media-saturated socio-cultural environment of our contemporary Western civilisation: (see for example the work of educational theorists such as Cope & Kalantzis 2000; Luke et al, 2003; Snyder 1996; and Gee 2000. It stands to reason that if the literacy demands upon citizens of the 21st century are significantly different from those of the past, then the educational priorities for literacy educators may well be profoundly different as well. This study therefore examines how a select group of literacy educators perceive their role in providing and developing a meaningful literacy curriculum that addresses the effect these new technologies are having upon the practice of reading and writing amongst their students. Such a shift in pedagogical paradigm will inevitably be reflected in the ways in which teachers desire to, or do already successfully embed new technologies into the daily machinations of their classroom practice. Ultimately, this study is intended to provide a snapshot of the beliefs and practices of a small group of literacy educators regarding the embedding of new technologies into their curriculum development and implementation. While such a narrowly centred study cannot c1aim to be indicative of the beliefs and practices of all teachers operating in all schools of the state, nonetheless it does provide a complex and multifaceted perspective of the situation at a micro-sociological level.
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ItemExploring the challenges of developing literacies in a remote indigenous community context( 2005)This study describes an evolving process undertaken by a small Aboriginal Independent Community School to develop a unique teaching and learning environment. This environment catered to the specific needs of this remote Kimberley community. It looks at the challenges facing these Indigenous children to develop appropriate literacy skills in such an isolated environment. The narrative that unfolds explains the features that distinguished this community school and accounted for the success of the programs. The projects, the resources, the stories, the journal entries, the approach and the active community engagement form the basis of the study. An eclectic approach drawing on case study, reflective practice, action research and ethnographic techniques, were utilized to paint a complex picture of the evolving pedagogy.
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ItemBiliteracy development through early and mid-primary years: a longitudinal case study of bilingual writing( 1999)This thesis reports a five-year study of bilingual literacy development. Utilising Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday 1994) and genre and register theory (Martin 1992; Martin & Christie 1997), the study analyses daily literate production of a simultaneously bilingual child in the majority (English) and minority (Russian) languages, from pre-school through the first four years of schooling. The longitudinal case study is complemented with comparative analysis of texts written by the child's class peers. Until recently, bilingual studies have focussed on children's developing oral fluency, whereas emergent biliteracy has received marginal attention, being largely limited to learning to read. This study examines the patterns of early biliteracy development, including the influences of minority literate practices on the majority language writing. The study demonstrates that the child's control of writing developed significantly in both her tongues, showing a movement from early scribbles, to typically congruent choices, to emergence of abstraction and metaphor. The scope of fields explored included fictional and non-fictional (both personal and "researched") topics. The choice of themes was influenced by the school curriculum expectations, as well as by the child's interests and reading experiences in both her languages. Majority writing revealed considerable development of English genres promoted at school, whereas minority writing was more advanced in types of texts linked to family values and interests. The study thus establishes a taxonomy of the child's emergent written text types in English, and reveals her successful development of control over the genres characteristic of the English-speaking literate culture. In her minority language, the child constructed texts drawing on personal experiences, such as personal letters, as a means of maintaining personal communication with relatives and Russian-speaking friends. Also, the minority literacy came to be used as a tool for academic learning in familial contexts. It is argued that minority literacy learning has influenced the child's learning to write in English. Thus, the patterns of the child's familial language uses on some occasions stimulated the emergence and development of some English written text types. In addition, the topics explored in reading and talking in the minority language were sometimes drawn upon in English fictional and factual writing. The study also provides examples of direct scaffolding of English written genres in the process of child-parent conversation, by largely using the child's family language. It is argued that scaffolding resulted in more mature text construction, via the joint negotiation of meaning. The study shows that the child's English writing performance was comparable to, and on many occasions superior to, that of the better-achieving monolingual students in her class. It is therefore suggested that development in literacy in the child's minority tongue enhanced her English competency. Overall, it is argued that learning to read and write in both her tongues allowed the bilingual child to participate effectively in the literate practices of the majority and minority communities. Her progress in developing biliteracy was to a considerable extent a result of the cognitive and linguistic stimulation which the child had available in the home.
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ItemWhy do some learn more easily than others? What physical factors influence effective learning?( 2010)Many children are identified as having a problem with literacy. This study was designed to look for possible links between learning difficulties and neuro-physiological development, particularly in the areas of basic neurological development, sensory motor integration skills, retention of primitive reflexes and the development of postural reflexes. Forty grade 1 and grade 2 students between the ages of 6:01 and 8:03 years (M = 7:01), their teachers and their parents participated in the study. Of these 40 students, 20 had been identified by the school as needing literacy support (Group 1) and 20 were achieving typically for their age (Group 2). Group 2 students were matched with Group 1 students for gender, age, class and school. Children with English as a second language or those who had been identified as having any intellectual or physical disability or any diagnosed condition were not included in the study. The groups’ neuro-physiological development was tested by using the Quick Neurological Screening Test (QNST), a series of sensory motor integration activities and Goddard Blythe’s reflex tests. Further data was collected from teacher and parent questionnaires and from an interview with the child. This study found that the children in need of literacy support did not perform as well as their ‘typically achieving’ peers in many areas. They did not perform as well in basic neurological testing, they experienced a higher degree of difficulty with sensory motor activities, they had a significantly higher level of retained primitive reflexes and under developed postural reflexes and their teachers also indicated that they had more difficulties in many physical areas. The study provides further evidence that there is a link between learning and neuro-physiological development, and that children struggling with literacy are also often struggling with underlying physical/developmental difficulties. The results suggest that when educating children with learning difficulties, teachers should have a good knowledge of the physiological mechanics of the way a child learns and to be able to identify and address such things as retained reflexes and sensory motor integration issues so that both cognitive and neuro-physiological factors can be addressed. The implications of the study and suggestions for further research are discussed.
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Item"If your body's not really moving, your brain's not really going": process drama, literacy and the middle years( 2010)Much research and writing has occurred over the last decade into the education of boys, with particular attention paid to the discrepancy in literacy levels when compared with girls. Research shows that the Middle Years of schooling are a major transitional time of adjustment; when literacy levels, particularly of boys, tend to plateau. The difference in literacy and engagement levels in English classes of boys and girls also tends to become wider, with more boys being at a lower percentile. This action research project, in a Year 7 English class, implemented Process drama strategies to engage students in their literacy learning. Analysis of a range of data, including writing samples demonstrated increased engagement during English classes and some improvement in literacy skills.