Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe evolution of concepts of decimals in primary and secondary students( 1994)This thesis studies children's conceptions about ordering decimals. It builds upon previous work which established three commonly used systematic errors in children's understanding as they encounter decimal notation. Students were categorised according to erroneous rule usage. This work includes a small longitudinal study which showed little change over twelve months in rule usage by an Australian sample of 50 secondary students. The categorising tests were redeveloped to make them suitable for primary students and to have increased reliability. The main study traced the use of rules from Year Four to Year Ten in a sample of 379 students and showed how students with different rules performed on other decimal tasks. It was found that one of the rules, called the whole number rule (in comparing two decimals that with more decimal places is chosen as the larger) was important in earlier years but disappeared with time. The second rule, called the fraction rule (the decimal with fewer decimal places is chosen as the larger), persisted in worrying proportions well into the secondary years and it was shown that significant gaps in knowledge of decimal notation existed which had not corrected themselves with time. The third rule was shown to be not important. Further investigation of a longitudinal nature to examine how individuals actually make the transition to mastery of decimal notation is encouraged by this study.
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ItemA comparative study of primary school social studies in three Australian states : Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia, 1952-1975( 1976)This study is concerned with the way in which Primary school Social Studies curricula have been revised, organized and developed from 1952 to 1975 in three Australian States - Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia. As few commercially produced Social Studies courses, or indeed Social Studies units, have been forthcoming in these States, coverage in this thesis concentrates on those syllabus revisions which have been produced by Revision Committees organized by the respective Education Departments in these States. Underlying factors which have been instrumental in Social Studies revisions and their final outcome - a Social Studies Syllabus - have been analyzed by considering those constraints which form a part of the Curriculum Materials Analysis System (1967). The constituent six part cluster questions have been used in horizontal analysis to highlight features of Social Studies courses in the 1950's as compared to those of the 1960's, and the most significant changes which have occurred in the most current revisions. From courses which presented a high degree of uniformity in their emphasis on facts, social living and citizenship, have emerged State revisions which, though differing in format and degree of inclusiveness, reflect attributes commonly associated with 'new' Social Studies.
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ItemUsing action methods in health education / Anna Shadbolt( 1995)This study examines the usefulness of action methods for the teaching of health education to children. A model for the training of teachers in the use of these methods was developed, implemented and evaluated. The literature on the philosophy and methodology of psychodrama, a creation of J.L. Moreno, is reviewed highlighting some reported uses of the psychodramatic method with children. The application of action methods to the school environment is considered with a particular emphasis on its usefulness for the teaching of personal development and human relations. Limitations of its use in the classroom are also considered. A survey of local primary schools found that the health education taught is missing areas of the curriculum that tend to be sensitive and emotionally charged, mostly in the area of human relations. Lack of specialised training and resources are put forward as factors contributing to the omission of major portions of the health education curriculum in the schools. Appropriate professional training and support networks in these specialised areas of teaching are needed. Training in the use of action methods is one intervention that will help teachers in health education delivery. A two-part training program in action methods was delivered to teachers in the local area. It included a series of experiential workshops and individualised follow-up in the classrooms of workshop participants. The teachers and children found action methods to be useful classroom strategies for learning about health and human relations. The training structure was useful for assessing the individual training needs of teachers and children. The training program was found to be too short and hence lacked the necessary intensity for adequate skill acquisition. The follow-up component was highly effective. The indications of these findings for teacher training are discussed emphasising the importance of maintaining a balanced view of the place of action methods as only one teaching strategy, albeit a very effective and powerful one. Health education teaching is complex. Action methods were found to be useful for helping teachers with the many challenges that this curriculum area presents when delivered in the primary school classroom.
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ItemAspects of metalinguistic awareness and the use of algebraic notation( 1996)This study critically examined the paper "Metalinguistics and Algebra Learning" by M. MacGregor and K. Stacey (1994). It showed that the striking results obtained by MacGregor and Stacey could be accounted for by methodological flaws. An attempt was made to repeat the MacGregor and Stacey study in a way which eliminated the identified flaws. This attempt was not completely successful. The reasons for the lack of success were examined. A second test was developed to investigate whether the ability to detect synonymy and ambiguity, later developing aspects of metalinguistic awareness not explored by MacGregor and Stacey, is related to students' success in learning to use algebraic notation. It was shown that this aspect of metalinguistic awareness was not related to success in learning to use algebraic notation. This study has confirmed the existence of the relationship found by MacGregor and Stacey between certain aspects of the metalinguistic awareness of students and their success in learning to use algebraic notation, but has raised doubts about the nature of that relationship.
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ItemTeaching genres in the primary school : what teachers know and do( 2000)In recent times in Australia much has been written and debated about what literacy is, what schools should teach in regards to literacy and how teachers should teach it. Teachers vary in their approaches to teaching literacy in the primary school, depending on many factors. One important factor is the quality of teacher knowledge of language and the associated capacity to use it to guide student literacy learning. This study focuses on teacher knowledge of genres and its relevance to the teaching of literacy in a Victorian Catholic primary school classroom with students from diverse language backgrounds. The concept of genres is clearly embedded in current curriculum documents, namely. the Curriculum and Standards Framework Il- English (Board of Studies, 2000). The explicitly stated outcomes consistently refer to students being able to use, analyse and control different genres and their related' structures and features. This implies that teachers need to have knowledge of genres as well as a range of strategies for teaching genres. In order to explore what knowledge teachers have about language and genres and how teachers teach this knowledge, this research involves a qualitative case study of an individual teacher in a Catholic primary school. The findings. suggest that the kinds of knowledge the teacher has about language and how to teach literacy is related to the practices adopted in the classroom and to the outcomes of student learning.
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ItemThe effects of trait anxiety, mathematical ability, method of testing, task difficulty, and their interactions, on state anxiety and performance in mathematics at primary school( 1979)A review was made of the theoretical and research literature related to the trait-state concept of anxiety, the relationship of anxiety to academic performance; and some factors confounding the anxiety, performance relationship. A study investigating the differential effect of anxiety on performance under two different methods of testing was reviewed. A study to replicate the findings related to anxiety, performance and varying test precedures was proposed. Data collected in the study made possible an investigation of Spielberger's Trait-State concept of anxiety and Spence's Drive Theory. One hundred and seventy six male, State primary school children drawn from sixteen grade five and six classes took part in the study. All testing was carried out in term I of 1978. As hypothesized the formal method of testing proved to be more anxiety arousing than the informal method of testing and students performed better under the latter testing procedure. Low anxious students performed better than high anxious students under both testing conditions. The study provided further support for Spielberger's Trait-State anxiety theory with high trait anxious students displaying higher levels of state anxiety than law trait anxious students, confirming that the State-A scale is a sensitive device for measuring differential anxiety arousal. The hypotheses related to Spence's Drive Theory were only partially supported by the results. Explanations as to why the interaction between task difficulty, ability and anxiety might not have been significant in this study were discussed. In general this study found evidence confirming the notion that high anxiety hinders performance, particularly for low ability students.
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ItemInvestigations of informal learning in science using postage stamps with some Victorian ten-year-old children( 1986)Primary school children learn matters of a scientific nature through many sources of informal learning. These include radio, television, newspapers, comics, books, mother, father, films, travel, museums, zoos, animal parks, gardens, youth groups and other sources. This thesis concerns three investigations of informal learning in science using observations of postage stamps having 'science' themes with 21 10 year-old children attending Victorian Independent schools. In the first, each child was asked what the word 'science' meant to him or her. Then, a number of Australian and Malaysian postage stamps depicting animals were handed to each. The participant was asked to sort them into any arrangement that appealed, but such that all the stamps could be viewed at once by an observer. Each child was asked the basis for his or her arrangement. Each arrangement was photographed and examined for signs consistent with any informal knowledge of the hierarchical classification of the animals depicted. In the second, Malaysian stamps were used to enhance the children's observation of postage stamps and, through this guided observation, they learned previously unknown features of Malaysia. In the third, seven cards, all but one displaying a postage stamp or a set of postage stamps having a 'science' theme, were observed and discussed one at a time with each child. The form of discussion was such that ideas of a scientific nature, probably learned through previous informal learning, were identified. Some of their sources were identified by the children. From these interviews some evidence was obtained which supported the hypotheses: 1. That 'Science' has a variety of connotations in the minds of the 10 year-olds, most suggesting experimental activity. 2. That the children showed little evidence of informal learning associated with a hierarchical classification of the animals depicted, other than in terms of 'air, land and water' in some cases. 3. That the 10 year-olds learned previously unknown facts about Malaysia through guided observation of Malaysian postage stamps. 4. That the stamps in the third investigation acted as stimuli to memory-recall of matters related to the subjects depicted on the stamps. Many of the children's responses provided comments which reflected the children's ideas on some scientific matters. The thesis supports the idea that the use of selected postage stamps as described is one means of investigating the nature, extent and sources of informal learning in science in some Victorian 10 year-old children. It also illustrates the use of postage stamps in the design of science instruction for possible use in primary schooling.
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ItemSpoken, signed and written language of three deaf children engaged in a signed English program( 1992)Against a background which proposes significant change in the education of deaf students, it is significant that the Australasian Signed English system has had little investigation, either in terms of teacher accuracy in using Signed English, or in studies to examine the development of English competency among the students engaged in such programs. This study has sought to investigate the development of English structures in a group of children whose education is taking place through the medium of Signed English combined with speech and audition. Language samples were collected as a matter of routine during the course of a school year from three children who commenced the year aged 6.7, 6.8 and 6.9 years. Activities which typically occur in classrooms over the course of a year were used rather than contexts which are not authentic and are unrelated to the normal communicative environment of the classroom. Three codes of English have been examined: spoken English, signed English and written English, and eleven aspects of English grammatical structure: negation, copula, possessives, plurals, pronouns, relativisation, conjunctions, third person singular, question forms, past tense and auxiliaries. The data from the three children indicate the presence of developing English structures. These may occur in the mature form, in a non-mature form, or as yet unmarked or marked inconsistently. There is also evidence of approximations which mirror the overgeneralisations to be found in young hearing learners of English. The data reveal differences between the three children and differences between the three modes, as well as the degree to which the children accurately use the three forms of English. The results of this study present a possible interpretation as to the English development which is occurring in many children engaged in Signed English programs. Further examination, particularly on a longitudinal basis, is recommended.
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ItemThe provision of English as a second language programs in Victorian Catholic primary schools, 1970-1988( 1989)This thesis examines the programs in English as a second language provided by the Catholic Education Office of Victoria to its primary schools between 1970 to 1988. The CEOV response to Government policies and funding for English as a second language programs for immigrant children is described and analysed. Data concerning these programs is analysed for ten selected Catholic primary schools, who submitted proposals in 1985, and for twenty selected Catholic primary schools who submitted proposals in 1988. The results show that despite good intentions and committed efforts, the teaching of English as a second language in Victorian Catholic primary schools remains a poor relation.
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ItemTrainee-teachers: can attitudes and achievement in mathematics be improved?( 1988)The aim of the investigation was to compare the effects of different class-groupings upon the Attitude to, and Achievement in, Mathematics of Primary Teacher Trainees. The experiment was of the pre-test, post-test design, with students randomly assigned to Experimental or Control classes. Lecturers taking part were assigned one Experimental and one Control group each. The treatment comprised the First Year Mathematics Education Course at Phillip Institute of Technology, with students assigned to classes which were either homogeneous (Experimental) or heterogeneous (Control) with respect to school Mathematics background. The sample was drawn from an entire entry cohort (with depletions), to give a sub-population of about one-third. The experimental conditions extended over ten months (the time between dependent variable measurings) and subjects were not treated as special in other than those (grouping) ways mentioned above. Simple graphical analyses showed results of the treatment to be quite varied. Predicted outcomes were supported in few instances (measured by Effect Sizes) but in the main, hypotheses remain unsupported by this investigation - which matches the results of the majority of studies in this field.