Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Theses
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ItemCan you Hear Their Voices? Young Australians Speak of Their Social Aspirations( 2022)Young people are both the promise and the guarantee of the future. How adults, communities, and institutions engage—or fail to engage—with young people shapes their attitudes and behaviours, and subsequently the character of future society. Yet we rarely ask young people about the kind of future society they want, and their felt capacity to reify that future. To understand young people's aspirations and how capable they feel to help their community, I undertook a series of workshops with young Australians aged 12 to 15. Participants demonstrated deep thinking about matters of social justice and well-being in relation to both close and distant others. The unique contribution to knowledge of this thesis is twofold. First, the findings highlight a correlation between the way students conceptualised equality, and social relations, the length of their participation in the research, and how capable they felt in reifying the social transformation they envisaged. Participants who saw the possibility of mutualism and cooperation, and engaged across multiple days, also expressed greater confidence in their capacity to be a positive influence in their communities; those who saw their world as characterised by selfishness, competition and individualism, and who participated in culture circles for only one day felt capable of influencing only themselves. Second, these findings would not have been possible without the unique conceptual frame drawn upon. Three theories provided insight into the relationship between participants' conception of the world and their conceptions of themselves. This theoretical framework, along with the findings, offers further evidence of the intimate connection between individuals and the world. Ideologies, hope, agency, and purpose contribute to young people's beliefs about the future and themselves. Futures literature considers how people imagine their future selves, with most reflecting positive personal futures and disintegrating social futures. Literature on community engagement, on the other hand, explores the various ways young people are contributing to their communities, and the potential outcomes of this engagement. Ongoing, systematic community engagement by young people, particularly in early adolescence, seems to be effective in building their individual capabilities at the same time they contribute to the wider community. The theoretical framework draws from three traditions. The first is equality as a quintessential aspect of social justice that supports our understanding of differences between individuals and groups, including systems of oppression which perpetuate existing inequalities. The second theory posits that a person's understanding of the world, informed by their interpretive frames, shapes their attitudes and behaviours. Finally, theories of critical pedagogy show how education can nurture more desirable ways of engaging with the world. Using Freirean culture circles as my research praxis, 81 students from three New South Wales (NSW) high schools were engaged in a series of workshops and surveys. The semi-structured workshops explored their ideals for their personal, local, national, and global futures, examining how students saw themselves contributing to its reification. Two key themes emerged: equality and social relations. In their discussions of equality, gender, race, sexuality, and income were matters of concern. Despite equality being a major theme, some students unknowingly exhibited attitudes and behaviours that perpetuate inequalities. In their discussions of social relations, they spoke about the relationship between individuals and groups. Their assumptions about people and society as either innately conflictual or mutualistic appeared to limit, shape, or create opportunities for themselves and their society. Following discussion about their ideal futures, students revealed their felt capabilities to reify these futures. Students shared the lines of action they felt able to follow, including engaging in social discourse, engaging with and building networks, educating themselves and others, creating a supportive environment, and practising virtues. Those who attended across multiple days expressed much stronger felt capabilities than those who attended for only one day. The findings highlight the importance of adolescents critically engaging in dialogue and meaningful social action. Considering adolescence only from age 15 onwards, as some do, may limit possibilities for social action initiatives, as well as the potential development of opportunities in young people. Younger adolescents also think about the world beyond themselves in meaningful and moral ways. Opportunities should be made available to these younger adolescents to nurture their burgeoning capabilities.
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ItemDrama as a Pedagogic Tool for Developing Academic Language Proficiency in the Middle Primary School( 2022)This thesis explores the use of drama as a powerful pedagogic tool for developing primary students’ academic language proficiency in Years Three and Four. By middle primary school, students require a growing bank of academic language to support their interpretation and creation of increasingly complex, discipline-specific texts. In addition, their teachers need a toolkit of evidence-based strategies to support students’ academic language development. Drama is one such tool. Through creating authentic fictional contexts, drama enables students to try out experiences, personas, and registers beyond those that are characteristic of a classroom. Currently, drama as a targeted language development tool is underused by primary teachers. Classroom-based research is needed to examine how drama-rich literacy interventions can develop student academic language and the conditions under which the use of drama-rich pedagogy in this space is most effective. This study examines how embodied, role-based and social/interactive drama experiences can provide supportive contexts for academic language development and recommends the planning and teaching considerations that make them most effective. A collective interventionist case study was undertaken in three Melbourne primary schools to examine how Year Three and Four teachers can use drama-rich pedagogy to support students’ academic language development. The researcher worked with three participant teachers to design three drama-rich literacy interventions. Key findings from the study show that embodied drama experiences can create a contextualised, concrete bridge between students’ initial encounters with abstract academic language and their eventual take-up and ownership of it. The role-based drama experiences created an authentic context for a shift towards an academic register in conversations between teacher and student on the topics being studied, prompting students to speak as experts and teachers to speak to experts, necessitating academic language use. These embodied and role-based drama experiences interacted effectively to provide substantive, concrete experiences on which students could reflect through an expert lens. Findings show that social/interactive drama experiences created space for dialogue and cognitive apprenticeship and, especially when employed in conjunction with role-based conventions and techniques, facilitated a functional approach to language use as students were motivated to mobilise academic language to communicate clearly and precisely. Other key findings contributing to knowledge in the field provide pedagogic recommendations to maximise the effectiveness of the supportive contexts for academic language development created by these drama experiences. These recommendations cover the use of academic language-rich pretexts as catalysts for the drama, supporting student and teacher confidence and competence with drama conventions and the need for explicit teaching of target academic language in the context of the drama conventions.
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ItemFactors Related to Teacher Turnover from Schools and the Profession: A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Survey( 2022)High teacher turnover from schools is a problem in many countries, with consequences including adverse impact on student learning and wastage of school resources. Many studies have investigated various antecedents of turnover in isolation; however, few comparative assessments of the antecedents have ever been conducted. This thesis quantifies the relative significance of individual and contextual antecedents of the retention or turnover of teachers from their schools and the profession. First, a systematic review of the teacher turnover literature identifies antecedents of turnover and retention of teachers in schools and the profession. Second, a meta-analysis of the quantitative studies calculates which are the most powerfully associated antecedents with turnover and retention behaviors and intentions. Third, an empirical survey targeting current and former teachers in Australia generates further evidence for the significance of certain antecedents and seeks to explain why teachers’ career behaviors do not always match their intentions. Thematic analyses of the qualitative data help provide a comprehensive understanding of teachers’ experiences when deciding on whether to stay or to leave schools and teaching; the antecedents affecting their decision; and the strategies and support required for enabling them to stay and flourish. These three studies work together towards the broader goals of classifying and clarifying prior teacher turnover studies; comparing and calculating the strength of previously studied antecedents; and exploring the extent to which such antecedents are reflected in a sample of a contemporary Australian sample of teachers and ex-teachers.
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ItemPositive behaviour support (PBS) in Australian disability services: Social network perspectives on policy and people( 2022)The advent of Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has increased the profile of positive behaviour support (PBS). This increase is not matched with a coherent understanding of what PBS is, nor are methods for its effective promotion to, and adoption by, workforces and systems understood. International scholars interested in PBS have recommended that research turn its attention to systems and focus on the environmental context more than the individual person with disability. These recommendations are taken up in the aim of this research which is to explore who and what is influencing PBS in Australian disability services. This thesis with publication explores how policy and persons influence the understanding and adoption of PBS through the application of methods from network science. Eight studies were undertaken using policy documents from online sources and participants recruited using reputational snowball sampling. Analyses were conducted using network analysis software. The results of the individual studies are presented across four chapters. In Chapter 2, PBS is found to be incoherently defined by state and federal governments. In Chapter 3, political rhetoric is identified in one prominent PBS policy, while non-government policies are underpinned by a set of dominant yet contradictory beliefs. The final study in this chapter finds evidence that PBS policy is influenced by interpersonal relationships. In Chapter 4, a highly clustered network of persons involved in the Australian promotion and use of PBS is identified, revealing two groups of persons important in the effective application of PBS, although these persons do not necessarily have all the required characteristics for these roles. The network shows that communication about PBS is dependent on several factors that are not sufficiently exploited to be effective. The final chapter applies an existing framework for diffusion of innovations to better understand the successful adoption of PBS and presents a new conceptual framework and practice principles for the introduction of PBS into disability services. The results suggest that foundational issues of the definition and scope of PBS in Australian disability services must first be addressed. There is evidence that PBS remains hampered by persons who are poorly networked, risking the communication of inaccurate and non-contemporary information about PBS. This can be addressed with a deliberate approach to the diffusion of PBS using three main strategies: development and implementation of a single, cross-sector national PBS framework, funding for, and establishment of, a lead national agency for PBS, and the provision of technical assistance at the state level. Without such attention, the reputation of PBS is at risk and the NDIS will not deliver meaningful outcomes to people with disability.
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ItemDevelopment of the Flourishing Classroom System Observation Framework and Rubric( 2022)Mental health issues amongst children and adolescents are harmful and prevalent, with a need for improvements in local, national, and international approaches to mental illness prevention and wellbeing promotion. Schools are optimally placed to not only support the remediation of illbeing in students but also to cultivate their wellbeing. To date however, approaches within many schools to promote wellbeing are primarily content focused, with less focus given to contextual influences. The purpose of this thesis was to explore a context-focused approach to student wellbeing by mapping and characterising observable indicators of a flourishing classroom system. Theoretically, this thesis is grounded in systems informed positive education. As a theoretical starting point, a conceptual model of a flourishing classroom system was developed, with four elements: classroom cohesion, classroom flexibility, classroom communication and classroom wellbeing. This model was developed from the Classroom System Observation Model and the SEARCH Wellbeing Framework. Then, to empirically refine the conceptual model, and inquire about and define the characteristics and observable indicators of a flourishing classroom system, a three round Delphi methodology was employed, with a total of 35 participants included across the rounds. Thematic analysis and categorical analysis were adopted to identify a clear empirical model, along with the characteristics and indicators of a flourishing classroom system through feedback and consensus across participants. Five findings emerged: 1) The importance of contextual flourishing. 2) A conceptual model of a flourishing classroom. 3) Four key elements of a flourishing classroom system (e.g., the teacher). 4) Five dimensions and fifteen sub-dimensions of a flourishing classroom system (e.g., student voice). 5) The development of the Flourishing Classroom System Observation Framework and Rubric. These findings provide key advancements to extant literature on systems informed positive education in classrooms and practically provide a flourishing system roadmap with actionable, observable wellbeing behaviours that can be employed by all in education to remediate student illbeing and promote their wellbeing.
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ItemUnderstanding Teacher and Student Talk for Optimising Teaching, Thinking, and Learning( 2022)Dialogic interactions and promoting student talk through collaboration within the classroom are well documented as harnessing the power of language to stimulate and extend students’ understanding, thinking, and learning. Nevertheless, many teachers do not regularly implement such collaborative interactions in their classes, preferring a more monological approach to their teaching practice. A quantitative design was used to explore fundamental research questions. Classroom talk was analysed with systematic observation methods and tools including the Visible Classroom (Clinton et al., 2014) for Study 1 and the SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 2014), Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom & Anderson, 2001), Teacher-SEDA (T-SEDA), a sub-scheme of SEDA, Cam-UNAM Scheme for Educational Dialogue Analysis (Hennessy et al., 2016) for Study 2A and 2B. This research explored the way that classroom talk impacts teaching and learning for teachers and students. Firstly, the way teachers provide clarity and depth to the students through their talk. The 12 teachers in Study 1 were identified by students from a questionnaire as having “effective discourse.” It was found that these teachers shared specific characteristics (Study 1). These characteristics were then explored in a second study (Study 2A and 2B), designed to explore and analyse the teachers in greater detail, together with the usually “private” student interactions at classroom table groups. The University of Melbourne’s Interaction Laboratory Classroom was used to analyse the teachers’ talk and students’ talk in Study 2A and 2B. The study aims to better understand the development of cognitive complexity and understanding through talk and collaborative interactions. It was found that the teachers in Study 1 provided opportunities for students to engage in collaborative discussions with their peers, demonstrated deep-level connections with regular prompts and cues to guide student thinking, and provided clarity with learning intentions and success criteria that created deeper learning opportunities for discussion and building on ideas. When students had clarity, appropriate design and implementation of collaborative tasks, and the opportunity to build on ideas with their peers, they gained a deeper understanding to construct new understandings with each other. The transcripts and audio recordings from Study 2A and 2B provided a detailed insight into all spoken words within each lesson. The findings illuminate reoccurring elements of both surface and deep-level learning, regardless of the type of lesson being taught. It was found that the way the teachers used their talk, the type of collaborative tasks, and the clarity of the lesson and its structure supported the development of meaning and student talk in each lesson. Cognitive verbs were used as a guide to support students use to talk to move from surface to deeper level understandings within the success criteria. Overall, the findings provided an insight into small collaborative student groups and the type of talk that students and teachers used in lessons that varied in cognitive complexity. The analysis of student and teacher talk demonstrated the patterns of collaborative interactions. The study shared the impact of explicitly outlining surface and deep-level understandings that connect to appropriate tasks and support the development of moving from surface to deep and the transfer of understandings from one concept to another through talk and communicating with one another in the classroom.
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ItemThe academic profession from the perspectives of aspiring academics( 2022)Doctoral candidates in Australia who aspire for an academic career, or aspiring academics, are at the interface of change: a changing academic profession on the one hand and a changing doctoral education on the other. This situation raises questions about the motivation and readiness of aspiring academics, many of whom would constitute the future academic workforce. By examining their perspectives, the thesis aims to provide insights into academic training and the attractiveness of the academic profession in Australia. This qualitative study draws on the literature on the sociology of professions, higher education, and disciplinary cultures to explore the academic profession from the perspectives of aspiring academics in terms of activities, values, and career prospects. It also examines disciplinary similarities and differences regarding these aspects. Data were collected through interviews with doctoral candidates from four disciplinary clusters (biomedical engineering, economics and business, history, and physics) at a research-intensive university in Australia. In terms of activities, the thesis shows that aspiring academics share the motivation for intellectual inquiry. However, they differ in terms of how the outcome of intellectual inquiry should be communicated, whether through academic publishing, teaching, or engagement. In terms of values, the thesis reports different value orientations that aspiring academics associated with academic work. Disciplinary and individual elements appear to influence these differences. In terms of career prospects, the thesis demonstrates that aspiring academics’ prospects are entangled in hopes and worries; their career drives are hampered by the element of chance and uncertainty, and propelled towards by a sense of hope and agency. The thesis contributes to knowledge on two fronts. On the conceptual front, it sheds new light on Boyer’s scholarship typology by conceptualising academic work based on how intellectual inquiry is communicated. The thesis argues that this conceptualisation provides a language to speak of and recognise the diversity of academic work. In addition, the academic work value framework proposed in this thesis has the potential to examine academic values, thus contributing to theoretical work in higher education research. On the practical front, the thesis offers insights into future academic training by highlighting the importance and relevance of engagement in academic work. The academic profession emerging from this study is one whose members are interested in engaging and connecting with society through academic work. To harness this intellectual enthusiasm, it is imperative to support aspiring academics with sufficient training for academic work and, more importantly, to provide them with a sustainable academic career path.
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ItemDigital translanguaging practices: A study of multilingual learners in an online higher education environment( 2022)In response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, the growth in online learning has been exponential. This research investigated the learning experiences of multilingual students with varying English language proficiencies pursuing online higher education courses in English. It focused on an academic writing experience in English during which students deployed digital tools of their choice (e.g., online dictionaries, digital translators, and search engines) and other resources such as their mother tongue to mitigate their linguistic issues. The study draws on literature on digital translanguaging (Vogel, Ascenzi-Moreno, & Garcia, 2018), which is centrally about the use of multilingual and digital resources for text comprehension and production. Research highlights that these resources provide affordances to students to self-resolve lexical and grammatical challenges. However, these affordances have been examined mainly in school and out-of-school contexts (social networking sites such as Facebook) (Schreiber, 2015; Kim, 2017; Vogel et al., 2018). Not much is yet known about how they impact writers in higher education contexts. This study contributes by developing new understandings about the extent to which digital translanguaging practices influence writers in an online higher education context by exploring the affordances that facilitate and constraints that might inhibit their academic text production in English. Drawing on multiple-case study design features and a critical methodological perspective, data were collected from a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) environment. Since the participants were from different parts of the world, data were gathered using online research methodologies such as synchronous videoconferencing technology and screen sharing techniques to trace moment-to-moment online search practices and navigation paths during the writing process to identify linguistic and digital resources students used and how they deployed them to support their writing in English. Data were analysed using a digital translanguaging lens to examine the affordances and constraints their online literacy practices provided for multilingual writers. The findings revealed that digital translanguaging both extended and accelerated students’ capacity to produce texts in English beyond their existing repertoire of knowledge. The findings also uncovered that despite the affordances of digital technology and multilingual resources, challenges arose when students did not have grammatical, pragmatic, and strategic aspects of communicative competence, which continued to constrain their ability to communicate intended ideas competently to the level they perceived was expected and acceptable for the target academic audience. The study argues for creating more inclusive higher education spaces through strategy-based approaches that better mobilise students’ multilingual resources to provide greater opportunities for improved academic outcomes and equity in online higher education environments. Implications include strategies to better tap into multilingual strengths and mobilise digital resources to promote online learning.
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ItemInternational Mindedness and the International Baccalaureate’s Theory of Knowledge( 2022)International mindedness is a core objective of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP). This thesis aims to investigate how Theory of Knowledge (TOK) teachers interpret the meaning and significance of TOK in relation to its potential to develop international mindedness in their students. Employing a multimethod approach, it is based on data collected through a survey across a range of school types followed by semistructured in-depth interviews aimed at finding out how TOK teachers attempt to develop international mindedness among the IBDP students. The research shows TOK teachers come from a wide variety of backgrounds, with differing levels of understanding of international mindedness and the ways TOK might contribute to its development. This leads to a diversity of practices, with no generalised pattern evident. Some teachers view TOK and international mindedness as two separate aspects of the IBDP, with an inadequate appreciation of the subject’s potential in developing international mindedness. Other teachers, however, are fully cognisant of TOK’s potential to develop international mindedness if it is taught well through real-world case studies used to foster an understanding of the globalising world through multiple ethical and epistemic perspectives. This suggests the need to articulate a clearer account of the complex relationship between TOK and international mindedness and the ways it might be aligned to the various other elements of the IBDP, including the Learner Profile and the Core. Also important is the need to develop better procedures by which teachers are assigned, trained, and supported to teach TOK.
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ItemExamining the relationship between teacher reading content knowledge, pedagogy and children’s learning experiences( 2022)Teacher reading content knowledge research spans decades and covers an array of issues from perceptions about knowledge to student achievement. Teacher reading content knowledge is developed during initial teacher education and extended through professional development, as it has been identified as an integral component of quality teaching and national teacher standards. However, despite this recognition, to date there is limited understanding about how teacher reading content knowledge is operationalized in early years classrooms for teaching children how to read. Since children’s proficiency in reading is developed during the first three years of schooling and teachers have the biggest influence on their learning, it seems logical that research would provide evidence about what reading content is taught in the early years of formal schooling, and how it is taught. The aim of this thesis is to examine the teaching of reading by teachers classified as having different levels of teacher reading content knowledge. The analysis was undertaken with three separate but related studies. The first involved measuring teachers’ reading content knowledge and validating the measure, to identify teachers with varying levels of reading content knowledge. The second and third studies used a mixed-methods approach to analyze the differences in what and how reading was taught in the classrooms of teachers identified as having high and low levels of teacher reading content knowledge. Findings from these studies provide quantitative and qualitative insights into the different ways teachers with high and low levels of teacher reading content knowledge teach reading. Teachers with high levels of reading content knowledge taught all aspects of the science of reading supported with pedagogical interactions that encouraged children to take risks by thinking beyond facts, as learning was based on need and moved from a surface to deep level. Whereas teachers with low levels of reading content knowledge taught all aspects of the science of reading apart from morphology. This teaching reinforced pedagogical interactions that developed child dependency and elicited factual and literal understanding to allow the teacher to move through the lesson. Results from these studies were outlined in terms of their practical implications, which suggest the need to establish minimum levels of teacher reading content knowledge and the development of preservice and in-services courses that helps teachers achieve these levels.