Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe vertical curriculum meeting the needs of students of high intellectual potential( 2000)This pilot project investigated one Victorian Independent School's implementation of the vertical curriculum in Grades Five and Six in over a one-year period in 1998. The study sought to evaluate the effectiveness of the vertical curriculum model for students identified as intellectually Gifted, High (Gifted and Bright) and Mainstream (Average, Low Average and Low) students by reviewing the students' progress in mathematics. Using Progressive Achievement Tests in Mathematics at the beginning and end of the year the identified Gifted, Bright and Mainstream students' progress was monitored to track their mathematical development, consisting of - achievement or progress made. The cohort reviewed consisted of eighty eight students incorporating eleven identified intellectually Gifted students, thirty three Bright students and forty four Mainstream students, as identified by the Raven's Progressive Matrices. The findings indicated firstly that an advanced level of mathematical achievement was found for the identified Gifted students. Secondly, it was found that the vertical curriculum assisted the Mainstream students as they showed significant mathematical progress. The findings indicated that the vertical curriculum provided an equitable educational option for the identified intellectually Gifted, Bright and Mainstream students.
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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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ItemThe Public understanding of techno-science in a rural community: culture & agency( 2003)This is an ontological inquiry into the public understanding of techno-science, held by adult members of a local school community. In this light, it seeks to establish a platform from which to reassess conventional assumptions about the curriculum and cultural agency of science teaching. The inquiry is rooted in dissatisfaction with a current transformational model of science teaching, which is defined solely in terms of the transfer of ideational possessions to the students in science classes. Both teachers and students are agents in their own and others' symbolic life worlds. Their identities are constructed in a dual praxis, a dialogue between self as product and self as process in every day conversation in established communities. The study draws on the work of Coulter on Dialogical Research, Harre on the analysis of social episodes, Latour, Rechwitz & Schatzki on the place of the material in theories of culture, of Harvey, Ratner on Agency and Community . Through dialogues with persons in a rural community served by the author's school, the thesis explores the public understanding of techno-science within the community and considers whose interests the school education in science best serves. The centrality of "community" is claimed in characterising a model of embodied cultural change over centrally imposed change. It is proposed that change is a "two-way" interaction where the individual "agent" both socialises & is socialised by the cultural structures that exist, and where the "artefact" is the "knot of reasoning" at the centre of personal identity formation "actor-networks" (ANT - Latour). It suggests that society empowers or does not empower - through the processes of recognising, and allocating control of empowering artefacts to persons as agents working within a social & cultural framework of responsibilities and duties. The thesis offers a new transformational model of social action, which suggests renewed attention in research & practice should be given to ontologies of the mind and person of the agent and the mediating function of "community" in the future restructuring of the public education of science if it is to serve its broader function in cultural transformation within the small rural community of Erehwyna, or anywhere.
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ItemA comparison of the educational set of students in two introductory physics courses( 1972)The P.S.S.C. physics course and a traditional physics course taught in Tasmania were examined for differences in aims that might lead to differences in the educational set developed in students taking the two courses. A six-category model of educational set in physics involving recall of specifics, practical applications, mathematical generalizations, verbal generalizations, constructive criticism and destructive criticism was developed and a 24 item test instrument (Test E.S. (Physics)) constructed, subsequent to two different trials. Test E.S. (Physics), the Educational Set Scale of Siegal and Siegal and tests AL and AQ were administered to a sample of 389 students made up as follows:- Form IV - 97 in Tasmania and 58 in Victoria Form V - 49 in Tasmania and 82 in Victoria Form VI - 51 in Tasmania and 50 in Victoria Classes from two schools were included in each sub-sample. AL plus AQ was used as the covariate and the appropriate corrections were made before the technique of planned comparisons was used in a variety of within-state and between-state comparisons. The only significant between-state difference detected was in the categories of mathematical generalization. Within each state the comparison between Form IV students and students in later years resulted in significant differences in all comparison except for category 1 (specific facts). A number of correlations were investigated without any clear pattern emerging although category 3 (mathematical generalizations) was involved in several significant correlations. An off-shoot of the major study lead to the development of an Education Set Test based on Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. The administration of the test gave results consistent with the order between categories suggested by the Bloom model. The major finding of the study was that both physics courses probably produced significant changes in students' educational set but these changes did not seem to be consistent with the differences between their aims.
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ItemEducational curriculum policy-making and implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa: an international view on issues and concerns( 1992)This study is an international survey of issues and concerns in curriculum policy-making and implementation in Sub-Saharan African countries. The paper begins with a conceptual and theoretical framework that forms a network within which the various curricular concerns find bearing. Thereafter, there is a focus on what has been happening in the area of curriculum in these countries in the past twenty years. Recommendations arising from the review are included. Issues that relate to equity, relevance and distribution of curriculum which need to be given more attention are also considered. To address curricular problems in part of the region, the Pan-African Curriculum Policy Project was launched in 1991. A survey in the form of five questions formed the preliminary stage of the project. An analysis of responses is provided. The study concludes that African countries face similar problems in formulating and implementing curricular issues. There is a need to study these issues systematically and to establish and co-ordinate organisations that will devise means of addressing these issues. In the absence of continued input from without the continent, African countries need to look for solutions from within and to help each other in addressing these issues.