Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemImplementation of recommended language teaching methods in Rajabhat primary schools : Thai teachers' perceptions of the new basic curriculum( 2008)This study is concerned with primary education reform at schools attached to Rajabhat Universities. A set of twelve language teaching approaches (methods) is suggested in the Thai Teacher Handbook for Foreign Language Teachers, as part of the reform in language teaching and learning at primary level. The approaches aim to develop the ability of language use for communication. Rajabhat schools are in the ideal position for the change implementation, due to schools' location on university campuses and administrative structures under the universities. The aim of the study was to probe the teachers' understanding and practice of the new approaches. Two research questions guided the study: 1 To what degree the teachers comprehend the suggested language teaching methods? 2 What are the teachers' perceptions of how they implement the suggested language teaching methods in classrooms? A mixed research method was employed to answer these questions. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used for data collection. The two data sets are brought together by comparing and contrasting the findings, providing triangulation to enrich result interpretation. Data analysis reveals that the teachers have incorporated the suggested language teaching approaches and methods into classroom activities. They are willing to learn how the suggested approaches could be transformed into activities. However, activities students engaged in appeared to emphasize coverage of linguistic elements of target language and analysis of grammatical relationships of the elements. The emphasis on linguistics, rather than development of the ability to relate language form for functional use, derives from unclear understanding of the proposed approaches. Study findings provide evidence that knowledge and skill development for the usage of the methodological concepts of the suggested approaches could lead to the sustained change in language teaching and learning.
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ItemFilm as cultural resource for tertiary learners of English in Vietnam( 2009)The goal of English learning in Vietnam today is linguistic proficiency and competence in intercultural communication. Despite the consequent need for access to native-speaker cultural meanings for developing Vietnamese tertiary students of English to this standard, to date the existing instructional conditions have not accommodated this need. The problem lies largely in the use of decontextualised language learning, traditional methodology and, inappropriate textbooks. This study was designed to begin resolving this problem by examining the potential of a target language feature film, "Million Dollar Baby". The aims were to ascertain the affordances of the film for providing access to the designated learners to native-speaker meanings of language, how these might be realised, and at what cost. A theoretical framework of language and culture drawing from the work of Hymes, Halliday, and Bourdieu was established as the basis on which principles and strategies for examining and teaching the fi lm were developed. Firstly, three cultural themes were identified that were significant in the film and of likely continuing value to learners. Secondly, discourse analyses of key scenes manifesting each theme were made using published resources and the opinions of native speaker informants. Thirdly, a set of lessons were trialled with representative volunteer learners in Vietnam, in which the film was shown and the language and cultural aspects of one key scene for each theme taught through an integrated process of informed discussion, embodied experience and personal reflection. The classroom experience was videoed and also documented in teacher and student journals, supported by interviews. Analysis reveals that film can offer a diverse set of language and culture resources for teaching classroom-bound students to access the cultural base of the meanings of language in use. It suggests that a scaffolded process of both guided cognitive exploration and physical experimentation modeled on an actual scene is necessary if students are to perceive and recognise native-speaker meanings as intended. The demands on both teacher and student were not inconsiderable, but were highly rewarding and the results suggest careful exploitation of a suitable film may be a rich seam to follow for developing learners' intercultural competence far from any real social interaction in the target language.
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ItemComputerised accounting systems, curriculum and business needs( 2007)Globalisation, information technology, and in particular the development of sophisticated Computerised Accounting Systems (CAS) software, have become driving forces that continue to enhance and transform business needs and practices. A review of the literature suggests that the design of current accounting curricula does not sufficiently expose students to the concepts of globalisation and technology. This study aimed to discover the extent to which existing Australian CAS curriculum models did reflect business needs. Guidance was sought from the literature and from academics' accounts of how they develop the CAS curriculum, and the perceptions of business needs of business professionals, (key knowledgeables and young gun managers), and current students with business experience were explored. The study also considered the match between the CAS curriculum offered at the university where the researcher is employed as a lecturer and business needs, through an exploration of what the cohort of current students with business experience perceived the subject to offer. A mixed-method research strategy of enquiry, using two separate methods of data collection, was used, to better understand the relationship between curricula and business needs. This approach provided numeric trends from the quantitative research and detail from the qualitative research. The study was conducted in three phases: a survey gathered data relevant to the current students with business experience and the young guns, an Internet search for appropriate subject descriptions was made and an analysis was undertaken, and interviews provided rich data as the perceptions of academics, key knowledgeables, young guns and current students with business experience were explored.. Rogers' (2003) adoption-diffusion study influenced the analysis of data gathered from the Internet search for Australian relevant subject descriptions. Academics were classified into adopter categories on the basis of innovativeness of curriculum content, and thus provided a basis for understanding the aims of their CAS curriculum, their perceived importance of business needs to the curriculum, and why a particular software became a feature of the curriculum. The data was analysed thematically and the key findings were drawn from the participants' experiences in business and at university. All participants were aware of the increasingly dominant role of CAS in business but a variety of different opinions and beliefs were presented as to the value of CAS as a part of university curricula. However, the overall view was that the academic's response must prepare students to participate in the business world, by ensuring curriculum content included learning processes, teaching practices and software offerings that would provide appropriate business solutions. The findings showed a number of impediments to future curriculum design that need to be addressed. These include academic inadequacies, pedagogical beliefs and practices related to the place of software applications in curriculum design, the need for different software solutions for different business problems, and cost factors related to the decision to introduce new technologies. Recommendations were made as to appropriate topics to include in future curriculum design. All cohorts agreed that enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions will be the future business software solution of choice to both large and small to medium enterprise (SME) businesses, and a solution was proposed for innovative curriculum design in order to master the complexity of such applications.
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ItemEducational accountability and organisational capacity in school science departments: a material critique of management models of mandated curriculum reforms( 2007)In Sociology, Bourdieu (1977), Giddens (1984) and Schatzki (2001) have developed theories of practice to offer an alternative to rational and normative concepts of action and to solve the problem of the relationship between agency and structure. They argue that cultural, political and economic processes are mutually constitutive of social agency, as agency can be productively read as a historically specific confluence of discursive and material processes. In applied disciplines such as organizational and management studies (Niccolini, 2001) as well as in education (Southerland, Smith, Sowell and Kittleson, 2007), practice has been adopted to redefine the concepts of knowledge and learning and to understand change in working life. In these contexts, practice-based research has become part of new research areas, such as organizational learning, knowledge management, innovation and workplace studies and this research is in this modern tradition. This is a study of the praxis of two groups of science teachers, in different countries under different policy regimes of state mandated curriculum management. It is a study towards an understanding of the pedagogy of resistance and transformation. The significance of the resistance of material entities for the objectivity of knowledge is an important theme in the sociology of knowledge. The practice theorists in science and technology studies (for example Pickering 1993,1995, Latour 2000, Miettinen, 2006) have taken this resistance manifesting itself in experimental activity as a constitutive factor in accounting for the emergence of facts and scientific concepts. Pickering (1955: 560) talks about the temporal emergence of experimental activity in research as a "real-time dialectic of resistance and accommodation". Resistance refers to the blockage in reaching a goal or realization of a hypothesis. Fleck (1981) proposes that a fact is understood as a resistance expressed in experimental work and interpreted by the practice community. The widespread notion of "constraint" is usually understood as some kind of external condition that objectively limits scientific activities and epistemologies of transformative material activity more generally. "Resistance" is to be preferred, Pickering argues, because resistances are genuinely emergent in time, as a block arising in practice to a passage of goal-oriented practice" For Latour (200) objectivity refers to the presence of things that "object to what is told about them". This study uses surveys of whole school and science department staff as well as interviews conducted over a year in each of two schools, one in England and one in Melbourne Australia. It looks at the agency of science teachers as a transformative material activity, its relationship with policies of State mandated standards, and the objectivisation of teacher knowledge. Whereas subjective identity operates here in terms of types of experience that are available, agency of these teachers has to do more with a distribution of acts. Bhaskar's (1993) Transformational Model of Social Action has been applied to the analysis of staffroom praxis and offers an informing under-theory to the study of teacher agency and practice.