Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemA case study in identifying institutional influences on why female students at a private co-educational school do not elect to study Information Technology at senior secondary level( 2000)This thesis is a study of the patterns of female enrolment in Information Technology in a co-educational private school in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. What makes this school so interesting is that few girls elect to take any of the Information Technology subjects in Years 11 and 12. This study set out to explore the reasons for these striking statistics in the light of the research which has already been undertaken as well as indicating areas for future research. The first chapter provides a basic introduction to the study outlining the context in which the research took place. Chapter Two sums up the theoretical writings and research findings conducted by others in the field of females not studying Information Technology. What emerges is that the literature is categorized into the seven factors and each factor is discussed in turn. Chapter Three outlines the method of evaluation of the history of the introduction of Computer Science at Wrixon Grammar. The method of evaluation was by case study. The case study which is Chapter Four reconstructs the history and development of Computer Science at Wrixon Grammar. Chapter Five analyses the case study in Chapter Four and compares it to the current literature in Chapter Two. The seven factors which became apparent in Chapter Two form the basis for the analysis. The findings suggest that rather than identifying only sociological factors in the reasons why females do not elect to study Information Technology, more research needs to be conducted on school based/institutional factors which have an impact on Information Technology enrolments. In the final chapter, the conclusions and recommendations for further research and practice are presented.
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ItemThe influence of information and communication technology (ICT) on secondary school students' development in Japanese handwriting skills( 2008)For twenty years, researchers have suggested that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) facilitates language learning by motivating students (e.g. Rodrigues and Rodrigues, 1986; Phinney, 1989; Pennington and Brock, 1992; Felix 2001). In particular, research concludes that ICT positively changes students' attitudes towards writing, because it reduces the fear of making mistakes. Despite considerable research on the value of ICT in the learning of European languages and ESL, few studies have been conducted on its use in Japanese classes (Chikamatsu, 2003), especially at the early secondary level. Yet it is often said that Japanese is one of the most difficult languages for English native speakers to learn (Chikamatsu, 2003), and its writing system is regarded as the most complex in the world (Sproat, 2000). Hence ICT might be expected to facilitate learning the three different sets of symbols used in combination to write Japanese, but it is not commonly used by secondary students for this. In this study, the aim was to document and analyse the achievements of beginner level school learners of Japanese when ICT was introduced for learning basic Japanese using mainly the phonetic Hiragana syllabary. Following methods created by Chikamatsu (2003), the effectiveness of using ICT was determined by comparing the speed and accuracy of students' answers in vocabulary tests, and interviewing them about their learning processes using ICT. The results show that, while the use of ICT motivated students' learning and assisted the weaker students to speed up their writing and to write more correctly, the excessive use of ICT had a negative influence on students' handwriting skills, an ability required in final year examinations as well as in real life. Thus students in the experimental group who used only the computer produced more errors when transferring to writing Japanese by hand. Findings therefore suggest that computers should only be used as a supplementary tool in class to stimulate students' learning.