Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemRefiguring sustainability education: Reckoning with relationships to place and Country on unceded urban Lands( 2021)Sustainability education is a dominant site for the production of ideas about place and Country. At the international level, Education for Sustainability broadly references social justice; however, place-based pedagogical frameworks neither stem from nor centralise Indigenous concerns and futures. Similarly, in the Australian National Curriculum, the Sustainability cross-curriculum priority is represented as commensurable with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures, without the associated foregrounding of sovereign claims. At the same time, First Peoples of the place known as Melbourne have long storied possible futures in which invader/settlers take seriously the protocol of not harming Country. As a white invader/settler researcher, I respond to this tension between sustainability curriculum and sovereignty. This thesis investigates the possibility held in curriculum and its enactment; that of producing in a generation of young people specific ideas about their relationships and responsibilities to place and Country. This thesis is therefore grounded in the question, what relationships to place and Country are produced through the Sustainability cross-curriculum priority in secondary schools on the Country of the Kulin Nations? This thesis is an original contribution to knowledge about the ways white invader/settler logics are produced via sustainability praxis. In doing so, it contributes to a deepened understanding of the relationship between Education for Sustainability and Land education. While the field of Land education identifies place-based education as a site of possibility, this thesis contributes to an understanding of the specific ways these possibilities are delimited by the influence of the priorities and assumptions of Education for Sustainability frameworks on sustainability education practice in Victoria. By employing white possessive logics as a key conceptual framework, this thesis contributes to increasing the theoretical possibilities of Land education. This theoretical contribution enables further analysis of how patriarchal white sovereignty operates through sustainability education to produce incommensurable imaginings of not only the future, but of the past. Curriculum texts alongside secondary school and sustainability hub educators across Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung Country form the sites on which this thesis is located. My research findings emerge from analysis of the material and representational elements of sustainability education on these school grounds, revealed through walking interviews, go-along methods, photovoice, and policy analysis within a critical place inquiry approach. In this context, I find that sustainability education as represented in policy and curriculum reduces the concepts of place and Country to resources, framed by the problematisation of scarce environmental resources between nation states. This policy emphasis on resources is mirrored in classroom settings, whereby students’ relationships to displaced objects, such as single use waste, is framed through a moral lens. The final finding of this thesis is that educators’ impetus for sustainability praxis is for establishing an affective re-connection between students and place. This educational assumption of students’ disconnection amplifies an investment in cultivating an imagined return to love of place. The primary argument of this thesis is that white invader/settler benevolence is produced through sustainability education in secondary schools, while contested relationships to Country are disavowed. Sustainability education at the sites on the Country of the Kulin Nations produces two related affects that stem from the central concept of the environment. First, an investment in displaced objects is cultivated as a way for students to inhabit a moral subject position in relation to unceded Country. This thesis argues that the reduction of place and Country to resource relations enables moral positions to be assigned to consumer choices. As a result, students who choose keep cups and Boomerang Bags are able to inhabit not just an innocent but a moral subject position. Further, invader/settler relationships to place are rendered innocent, framed in terms of a depoliticised love. The depoliticisation of relationships to Country and emphasis on individual relationships to displaced moral objects work in tandem in an attempt to secure patriarchal white sovereignty. This thesis contributes to an understanding of the ways these two affects work in concert to produce benevolent settler subject positions, reinscribing postcolonising processes through sustainability praxis. The implications of this are significant and also Country-specific. In contrast to the language of resources, the affective enactment of Education for Sustainability on Kulin Country reveals the ways that students’ futures and histories are produced to actively deracialise relationships to Country. Such enactments work in an attempt to legitimise white invader/settler replacement of First Peoples across the past, present and future. Despite these attempts, the materiality of Country – such as the extractive histories revealed through landfill – continues to work against this attempted reinscription of relations.
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ItemWhat do 'at risk' boys say about their schooling experiences ? : creating agency for boys' views and feelings about school( 2008)The following discussion outlines the theory and operational methods that inform a general ethnographical study, designed to understand the views and perceptions of three 'at risk' boys relegated to a specialised Victorian state school. The methodology hopes to empower the male students taking part in the study by giving emphasis to the didactic importance of their views, opinions and experiences expressed during a series of interviews in which they participate. It is hoped that the boys will be able to identify areas of education that need improvement, and define real life problems within their own learning experiences, so genuine male learning dilemmas and insights are generated and debated in the research. However, Connell (1989, 1995) characterises boys as `inheritors of an all conquering hegemonic masculinity' and this classic feminist perspective seems to be preventing the evolution of a boys' paradigm in education by diverting attention away from boys' educational issues by asking `which girls' and 'which boys' are specifically disadvantaged. This generic ethnographical study attempts a pro-male research project which holds boy's views, opinions and experiences paramount in the research logic processes, and makes use of key foci descriptors conceptualised in recent government research and programmes to discover how young males experience and dialogue about their schooling lives.
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ItemParent professional partnerships in IEP development : a case study of a MAPS process( 2007)The practices, language and behaviours which professionals adopt when they meet with parents prior to Individual Education Program (IEP) planning may have a significant effect on the attitudes and capabilities families bring to the educational setting. During this case study the adult family members of a child with additional needs were observed as they addressed the developmental and programming needs of their child by participating in the McGill Action Planning System (MAPS) and a subsequent Program Support Group (PSG) meeting. Themes indicating attitudes or perceptions that empowered the family towards continued participation in collaborative teams for IEP development emerged in the observational data and were defined through the methods of informant diaries and semi-structured interviews. Less dominant quantitative methods were used to verify that the participant's ongoing attitudes towards parent professional collaboration corroborated with the final themes of flexibility, unification, satisfaction and function.
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ItemThe academic achievements of language centre students at a secondary college( 2001)What are the academic achievements of adolescent new-arrival English as a Second Language (ESL) students at secondary schools in Victoria, Australia? Research on Non-English Speaking Background (NESB) students in Australia has tended to neglect new arrival ESL students. To examine the academic achievements of this important subgroup of NESB students, the current study will highlight the academic achievements of a cohort of Victorian Language Centre students at a Secondary College over six years with interruption to schooling in their first language (L1) as the key variable linked to academic achievement in their second language (L2). Victorian Language Centres provide new-arrival ESL students with the English skills they need to start their secondary educations in L2. The current study examined the academic achievement of two groups of Language Centre students, those who completed their Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) and those who left the Secondary College prior to completing VCE. Their academic results were summarised into spreadsheets for quantitative analysis. Subsequent to the quantitative analysis interviews were conducted with four ESL students from the Language Centre currently completing their VCE studies to provide further insight into the factors that enabled them to do their VCE. Results indicate that the academic achievements of this cohort of ESL Language Centre students are poor and that interruption to education in Ll had a major impact on the students' ability to achieve academically at the Secondary College. The study suggests that L1 education is the key variable influencing the student's ability to acquire the academic language skills necessary to meet the academic demands of secondary education, particularly the VCE. Other factors such as support for learning and strong motivation were found to help students overcome difficulties encountered in their secondary education. However, students who were unable to overcome these difficulties left the College prior to completing VCE. It was concluded that the majority of Language Centre students faced uncertain economic futures once they left the Secondary College. The results of the study suggest that Language Centre students need more support and assistance to enable them to complete VCE or to access educational alternatives to the VCE. This study also suggests that more research into the effect of L1 education on L2 education be conducted as this was found to be the key variable in the students' ability to acquire the academic language skills necessary to meet the academic demands of VCE.
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ItemEstablishing a multi-sited disposition for ethnographic research in the field of education( 2008)This thesis responds to the challenge of how educational research might be practised in a contemporary world that is no longer necessarily organised by nearness and unity. Focusing on ethnography, it argues for what a multi-sited disposition contributes to research in the field of education. By giving prominence to the notion of multi-sited ethnography. as it has been developed by the anthropologist George Marcus this thesis shows how ethnography conceived this way is now necessary in educational research. The study brings together recent concepts from anthropology with Australian educational ethnography, providing an analysis and reconstruction of how to go about doing ethnography in a world that is characterised by partial connections. To highlight the contributions to education of this research disposition, the final part of the thesis provides an exploratory account as an example of how to approach a specific research topic in this field. In sum, this thesis makes a unique contribution' to educational research by providing an ethnographic approach for the study of contemporary educational lives.
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ItemChinese/Anglo-Celtic bicultural children's education experiences in Australia( 2001)This study explores, through three case studies, how home, school and community factors have influenced the education and development experiences of Chinese/Anglo-Celtic bicultural children attending Australian schools. The worldwide lack of previous research on the education of bicultural children and the high outmarriage rate of Chinese-Australian women make it important to understand whether Chinese/Anglo-Celtic children experience similar or different education problems to those experienced by monocultural minority and mainstream children The data was collected from parents and children through questionnaires and individual interviews conducted at each family home. All the participant families were referred to the researcher by colleagues and were previously unknown to the researcher. The findings indicate that the children's home environments have influenced the varying levels of their Chinese and Australian cultural values and language skills. However, they all generally appear psychologically stable and have successfully integrated into their respective schools and mainstream society.
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ItemA case study approach to the student at risk of leaving school early( 2005)There are two components in this research. The first comprises identification of what characterises an at risk student using risk factors identified from the literature. The second comprises identification of the prevalence of these risk factors in one school and how this school identified and assisted these students in the context of the early school leaver literature. Fifty-two students from a Melbourne government high school and seven of their teachers participated in the research. Students were divided into three groups; at risk students who participated in an intervention program, at risk students who did not participate in an intervention program, and a low risk group. Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered and analysed to investigate prevalence of risk factors and usefulness and relevance of the intervention programs. All students completed a 30-page survey consisting of a demographics page, the Academic Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, the Classroom Environment Scale (Real and Ideal Forms) and the Family Environment Scale (Real and Ideal Forms). The teachers completed the Teacher Report Form of the Child Behaviour Checklist. The at risk students participated in interviews and completed six monthly questionnaires. From these data, a profile of the at risk student was developed. At risk students are characterised as performing academically lower than low risk students, exhibiting more problem behaviours, are more likely to be male, to value friendships made at school, to find the work at school and the teacher relationships difficult, to hold aspirations to achieve year 12 and believe they are in control of their school experience. The students participating in an intervention felt it was valuable. The quantitative data revealed non-significant changes in these students' academic self-efficacy and trivial differences in their academic grades. It is clear that school aptitude results from as early as year 7, and student behaviours can help to identify students at risk. It is also clear that friendships formed at school serve as a buffer for these students. Significant events occurring in the nominated at risk students lives do not appear to influence their decision to leave school early. The results imply that schools have the necessary information to identify students at risk, but that intervention programs need to be designed specifically to target problem issues. Recommendations for the school are made in the hope that they can be communicated to educators and the broader community.
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ItemPrimary teachers' practices in a demonstration school : the pedagogical uses of websites( 2007)The new communications technologies are the latest technological revolution to impact on education. Karl Marx pointed out it is not technology that shapes a social world, but the social arrangements that are required or adopted to implement it. But contrary to what I will argue, Marx and many others since have thought that there are an indeterminate number of social arrangements by which technology, defined in physical terms, can be implemented as an industrial or educational process by human beings with a history and traditions. The discussion points to the following principle: a website is transformed from a piece of stuff into a social object by its embodiment in staffroom narrative. In education the pattern of Internet use has the potential to change the professional identity formation, individually and collectively, of teachers who use it, so researching how the Internet is used helps in understanding the individual rationales that underpin some of the day to day choices teachers make that will shape the future of schooling. This study of the teachers' discursive practices, in an ICT demonstration school, seeks to understand their site practices in the context of this social responsibility. Each of the teachers has a pedagogical past or 'historical self' that acts as an agent on all they say and do in the community of practice. The differences in how teachers interpret and utilize Internet websites may reflect to what degree institutional practices and social rhetoric play an 'active' role in determining a teacher's classroom agency. Teaching with the new information technology should afford children not only access to new knowledge but the executive intelligence to form their own educational investigations. However, Wittgenstein has warned us against taking superficial models of where we are or what there is. In this study, everyday social talk, including social theory is full of grammatical substantives, but only those which refer to discursive acts are what they seem. The discursive exploration of specific social episodes that occur within a new socially constructed technological world of the primary school (Schatzki, 2002) enable us to understand the patterns of practice of the Purcell Primary School community and identify meanings that are constructed within. The data presented demonstrates how the six members of this teaching community make sense of their world; not only as individuals, but as members of both the broader team and a school community directly determines how they acquire 'shared meaning' within that community. The research identifies the self, of the teachers, as agents or patients (Harre, 1995) in the real world context of Purcell. For the teachers, collectively and individually, at Purcell, and teachers in the broader educational community, alike, understanding their psychological location in their own storylines in a complex local moral order that publicly embraces the new informational technology in the face of new institutional practices, has the potential to enhance their capacity and lead to a more technical and comprehensive fulfilment.
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ItemThe parent-child mother goose program : a case study of a family-centred early intervention literacy initiative( 2006)Research related to early childhood education and development indicates the importance of the quality of social services provided to children in the early years. The Parent-Child Mother Goose study looks at the effectiveness of an early childhood program as a preventative intervention for children with additional needs through action research. The study was conducted over two cycles during 2005. It uncovers the characteristics of the Mother Goose Program; the role of the professional; and the effects of the intervention on parents and children. The study also introduces some of the most important concepts in early childhood education which include: Parent-Focused Programs, Family-Centred Practice, Inclusive Practice, and Retention in Early Intervention. Last the research examines the gaps in the Parent-Child Mother Goose Program and discusses issues such as: Concept Clarity, Cultural Competence, Access and Participation, Follow ups and Feedback, Fathers in the Early Years and Evaluation in Early Childhood Programs. The research addresses each issue separately and provides future recommendations for early childhood professionals in the context of a small scale study. The research concludes that the Parent-Child Mother Goose Program is an affective preventative intervention for parents and children who are committed to consistent participation.
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ItemThe cognitive styles, learning strategies and vocational interests of South-East Asian and Australian students( 2003)Many factors are involved in the way an individual gains an understanding of Mathematics. Their cognitive style, i.e. way they code information for further processing in the brain, is one of these. The learning strategies that they use when a mismatch exists between their preferred style and the material presented to them is another. Riding and Rayner (1998) have developed a model for the whole learning process which contains two dimensions of cognitive style, the Wholist/Analytic and the Verbaliser/Imager dimensions. In the same way as individuals have different preferred cognitive styles, they also express different vocational interests. Holland (1985) developed a model for describing and assessing these vocational interests, the RIASEC model. Cultural factors may influence both an individual's preferred cognitive style and their vocational interests. This study investigates the effect of cultural factors in both these areas, looking particularly at the cultures of South-East Asia and Australia and the cognitive styles and vocational interests of students undertaking a first year university Mathematics course. Cultural differences were found in both areas. Students from South-East Asia (27 males and 17 females) tended to have a more visual cognitive style than Australian students (27 makes and 16 females), particularly when they learnt to read first in a character-based language. In accordance with the values of their Confucian-heritage background, the students from South-East Asia scored more highly on Holland's Conventional scale than did Australian students. In this study, support was also found for several aspects of Riding's Cognitive Control Model. One of these was the use of a Complementary cognitive style as a learning strategy when a mismatch occurred between an individual's preferred learning style and the material presented to them.