Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Theses
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ItemChallenge, support, and everydayness: Measuring and creating a classroom climate for growth for high capacity students( 2023-07)The learning gains of high achieving (capacity) students may be marred by their embedded classroom climate. Using a psychosocial methodology, a latent construct, classroom climate for growth for high capacity students, was proposed and hypothesised to consist of four dimensions: School Support, Teacher Expertise, Classroom Personality – Teacher and Classroom Personality-Students. A 60-item questionnaire was developed to measure the latent construct, the responses being descriptions of behaviours and scaled using IRT. A 9-level taxonomy of support was developed. The questionnaire was completed by 52 Victorian primary and secondary teachers in Stage 1 and by an additional 63 teachers in Stage 2. An evaluation of the psychometric properties of the questionnaire showed the instrument’s properties to be acceptable. Progressions for each dimension were developed. Multilevel modelling of the responses of 36 of the teachers with student growth (n=504 for numeracy, n = 583 for reading comprehension) showed negligible effects of the model on student achievement, possibly due to the small sample size but also suggesting the model may need to be adjusted. Teacher interviews (n = 7) uncovered a 6-step process implemented by teachers to cater for their high achieving students. It was also found that, with typically six levels of student achievement in each classroom, teacher flexibility around differentiated instruction and creating a classroom environment where multiple learning activities occurring simultaneously is seen as normal were key to challenging and supporting high achieving students.
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ItemGlobal Childhoods in the Asian Century: Connection scholarly habitus, education experiences, and everyday lifeworlds of children in Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore( 2023-08)A majority of countries in East Asia continue to rate highly in their average achievement scores for Year 4 students in the international high-stakes assessments tests; Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). This study explores the notion that while numerous scholars have attempted to isolate systematic variables to determine why East Asian students continue to outperform other nations, no definite conclusions have been determined as to the factors that most impact performance. This research was supported by the Global Childhoods Australian Research Council (ARC) project scholarship as part of the larger research project on children’s lifeworlds in three global cities (Melbourne, Hong Kong, and Singapore). This study was designed to investigate the lifeworlds of 10-year-old children who were in Year 4 of their schooling and to view some aspects of their everyday lives through a scholarly habitus lens (Watkins & Noble, 2013). The research adopted the perspective that children’s academic outcomes in any educational system are influenced by a wide range of factors that occur in children’s lifeworlds; including, but not limited to, schooling experiences, parental influences, extra-curricular activities, interactions with peers, a sense of belonging and community factors. The research was designed so it could be responsive to, and informed by, events and interactions of the children, as they occurred in their lifeworlds. The initial design included opportunities to collect data and to work with children in their schools, homes, and communities, but had to be abandoned due to the pandemic. The new design incorporated alternative data collection methods adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic context. The data included an analysis of TIMSS and PIRLS context questionnaires which provided important insights alongside the students’ achievement scores across the three locations. A range of exhibits were chosen for analysis that linked to children’s lifeworlds experiences including the scholarly habitus. Secondly, learning dialogues, which compromised a series of four questions, two on Monday and another two on Friday, were used to encourage students to reflect on their time at school and were completed by the children in the final month of their Year 4 schooling. The original plan was to do this in the first half of the school year, but the children did not return to school on a regular basis until late 2021, and no researchers were allowed into schools until mid-way in the following year. In analysing the learning dialogues, the research drew on the concept of scholarly habitus (Watkins & Noble, 2013) to explore what children’s attitudes, and dispositions are toward their learning, how they approach school and how they feel they are performing at school. An innovative study of children’s lifeworld reflections was also undertaken with seven children, to delve deeply into their out of school lifeworlds, including extra-curricular activities, and how they spent their leisure time. The lifeworld reflections were an opportunity to talk with students either in person or via Zoom, to discuss their daily routines and what they liked doing. Throughout this study, the data collected enabled an exploration of dimensions of scholarly habitus to consider practices that might help to contribute to students’ academic engagement in school. A consideration of children’s lifeworlds provides further insight into the diversity of lifeworld experiences between and within locations, including making connections with the local contexts, such as early childhood education and care and parent responses to education reform in the locations. In addition to confirming some potential factors in children’s lifeworlds that might influence their academic success, the data further highlights the attitudes, dispositions, success, community, and a sense of belonging that children experience within their educational systems. The results of this study have important implications for gaining deeper insights into and understanding about why students in different locations perform to varying degrees in high-stake assessments, and how these might connect not only with their location, but their extra-curricular activities, school engagement, and scholarly habitus.
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ItemWhen catch-up education outperforms the mainstream: An ethnographic exploration of the contribution of a catch-up primary school to learning, agency and wellbeing of children living in a Bangladeshi slum( 2023-07)The BRAC NGO in Bangladesh provides catch-up education for the most disadvantaged children who have either never enrolled in or have dropped out of primary school. These schools often outperform mainstream government schools in terms of learning achievement, attendance and completion rates, and cost effectiveness. While a plethora of quantitative research examines school effects on children’s learning and wellbeing, it is less common for children’s perspectives to be included in school effectiveness studies. This is particularly so in the Bangladeshi context. This study employs ethnographic methods to explore how children living in an urban slum in Bangladesh experience the influence of their BRAC primary school on their learning, agency, and wellbeing. It positions the researcher as a ‘sensible hearer’ of children as ‘epistemic agents’ (Fricker, 2007) and employs the Capability Approach of Amartya Sen (2009) as both normative and explanatory theories (Robeyns, 2017) for interpreting the data gathered from children. Guided by the importance placed within the Capability Approach on freedoms of the people themselves, this study used a range of participatory methods to invite children’s contributions, including drawing and storytelling, photovoice, and in-depth interviews. In this research, capability is characterised as children’s ‘freedom’ to gain educational opportunities, and ‘agency’ as their capacity for engaging in actions towards achieving the educational and wellbeing goals of their school. Because the relationship between school and family plays a critical role in children’s learning, actions, and wellbeing, children were invited to give detailed accounts of their daily activities in both home and school spaces. Analysis of the data about children’s use of school opportunities and their actions in both settings can reveal how and to what extent the children perceive that the school influences their capacity for action/agency, their capabilities, and their associated achievements. Analysis of the data identified children’s perceptions that their school did contribute to their capability, agency, and educational wellbeing in four significant ways. First, the agency and capability-facilitating space provided by the school enabled them to exercise their freedom to achieve various cognitive and social skills and to aspire to future goals in ways that enhanced their own wellbeing and that of their families. Second, the agency-unlocking environment of the school empowered children to interrupt negative social (gendered) norms and practices, to imagine alternatives, and to pursue multiple creative and unconventional pathways, with positive effects on their happiness, pride, and self-worth. Third, while damaging gendered norms and practices permeated every aspect of children’s lives at home, in school, and in the slum community, the gender-neutral pathways initiated by the school pedagogy and facilitated by the teacher assisted children to re-assess and re-negotiate gendered norms, and to initiate their own gender justice. Finally, the link between children’s home and school activities and their learning, agency, and wellbeing was not only complex, situated, and dynamic but also very much entangled with sociocultural and gender norms, values, and practices, all embedded in the relationships between family, peers, and community. An understanding of disadvantaged children’s agency, wellbeing, and education therefore requires circumstantial and contextual explanations through which nuances in their lived experiences can be examined, including the reasons behind the many differences in aspects of their lives. This study contributes to fields of knowledge investigating child poverty, alternative education, agency, and wellbeing in three distinct ways. First, in relation to alternative education for children living in poverty, the alternative catch-up school was found to be an active and empowering space which enhanced children’s capabilities, agency, and wellbeing. Second, the use of the explanatory and normative frameworks offered within the Capability Approach helped create a holistic and nuanced evaluative space through which children’s freedoms through capabilities and agency could be explored. Finally, the choice to use multiple participatory methods for positioning children as epistemic agents of knowledge contributed to epistemic justice for them as ‘speakers of knowledge’ while providing access to insights about the multiple ways in which the approaches used in their school contributed to their agency, learning, and wellbeing.
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ItemShame and Stigma: Investigating Teacher Awareness, Understanding and Response( 2023-07)This research has taken an interdisciplinary approach to exploring teachers’ awareness, understanding and response to shame and stigma occurring in the classroom. Shame is an affective experience of failure by comparison, where the research suggests stigma causes shame (Lewis, 1998). A review of the research literature showed that teacher perspectives of students’ shame and stigma was an under researched phenomenon. Situated within Social Constructivism, and making use of qualitative methods, specifically semi-structured interviews, this research has made four contributions to knowledge on shame and stigma in schools. First, that teacher understanding of shame can be narrow, and that sometimes teachers unknowingly use language that can minimise their students' experience of shame and stigma. Second, while possessing limitations, the Compass of Shame could be used as a tool to ameliorate this issue by helping teachers to identify and name their students’ affective experience through their behaviour. Third, the data showed that teachers were blocked from acting in support of their students due to performativity pressures related to neoliberal education. Finally, drawing on the Positioning Theory framework, this study revealed that students’ experience can be analysed to understand how shame and stigma were circulated and reproduced to the detriment of equity of access to the classroom environment.
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ItemAn exploration of the organisational sustainability of commercial for-profit VET providers (CVPs) in Australia’s vocational education and training (VET) market( 2023-07)The vocational, education, and training (VET) industry in Australia is made up of approximately 4,000 registered training organisations (RTO) (Australian Skills Quality Authority, 2022). These providers are accredited to deliver Nationally Recognised Training (NRT) qualifications ranging from Certificate I to Advanced Diploma, within the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF). The VET sector consists of a number of different entities that are responsible for the delivery of VET with the most prolific being the commercial for-profit VET provider (CVP) (NCVER, 2022). Recently, a significant number of CVPs have ceased operations either voluntarily or involuntarily through cancellation by the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) or insolvency. The impact of these closures has resulted in dramatic consequences including thousands of students being unable to finish their training and substantial losses of private and public funds. To understand the underlying causes of these events, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eighteen individuals. Nine were from a Commercial for-profit VET Providers Not Trading (CVPNT), that were forced to close between 2016 and 2018, and nine from a Commercial for-profit VET Providers Trading (CVPT), that were accredited between 1996 to 2015 and are still operating. This research was conducted using an interpretivist epistemology by analysing the interviews through three lenses: business sustainability, corporate governance sustainability, and pedagogy sustainability. The study focused on what had shaped and influenced these providers and why certain CVPs failed while others succeeded. The outcomes from this study show that successful CVPs do not rely on only one element of business, corporate governance, or pedagogy for success but a combination of all three in fairly equal parts. The organisational sustainability of commercial for-profit VET providers requires leaders to embrace business knowledge, strong and transparent corporate governance, and relevant pedagogical strategies in their day-to-day operations to ensure success and viability, into the future
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ItemUnveiling Country and Improving Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: A Traditional Owner Approach( 2023-06)In Australia, teacher education—and the current teaching profession—is underprepared to adequately teach Indigenous knowledge. Additionally, The National Curriculum and the Australian Professional Teaching Standards offer little guidance and assurance into how this knowledge should be embedded in schools, curriculum and pedagogical practice. This research seeks to increase our understanding of how cultural responsiveness and the embedding of Indigenous knowledges of non-Indigenous educators can be improved through participation in Learning on Country professional development sessions in an urban setting. The professional development sessions were developed with the assistance of Wurundjeri Traditional Owners, who shared their insights into what Country means to them and how teachers can embed these understandings in their classrooms. As teachers progressed through the project, they shared where they believe the opportunities lie to embed Indigenous knowledge in their classrooms and teaching practices despite limited opportunities and mandates from school leadership. Data collection occurred by forming a Traditional Owners focus group, compiling field notes from professional development sites, and asking teachers to participate in three separate interviews. Using a critical lens of land-based and culturally responsive pedagogy shows that professional development guided by Traditional Owners can improve the way non-Indigenous teachers embed Indigenous knowledge into their work. I argue that respectfully embedding Indigenous knowledge and increasing cultural responsiveness in classrooms is reliant on teachers’ willingness to regularly reflect on how they contribute to the maintenance of settler colonialism. The research makes an original contribution to Indigenous education in secondary schools by focusing on professional development being delivered by Traditional Owners on Country, which deepens teachers’ understanding of the relationship between Eurocentric interpretations of land and its contributions to colonialism. The research demonstrates that Learning on Country initiatives are possible in urbanised areas and that they can disrupt settler colonialism’s ‘logic of elimination’; such initiatives facilitate teacher participation in opportunities that increase the visibility of Indigenous histories, languages and cultures.
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ItemComputer Algebra Systems in a Year 11 Mathematics Class: Students’ Use, Attitudes, and Factors Perceived to Influence Use( 2021-06)A computer algebra system (CAS) has the potential to automate many mathematical routines. The use of CAS in mathematics has been shown to support the development of understanding (e.g., Bawatneh, 2012; Heid, 1988). However, students need to be supported to develop a positive attitude towards CAS and learn how and when it can be used before they can benefit from the opportunities presented by CAS (Pierce & Stacey, 2002). While existing research has examined students’ attitudes and CAS use, little research has explored how these aspects change as students gain experience. Given that the students in this study were expected to use CAS for learning mathematics and in assessments, there is a motivation to understand how their CAS use can be supported. This thesis reports the investigation of one class of Year 11 mathematics students’ (n=13) CAS use, attitudes towards CAS, and factors perceived to influence CAS use and how these changed over approximately one school year. The context for this study was a Year 11 Mathematical Methods class in Victoria, Australia. Technology is to be incorporated into the teaching, learning, and assessment of Mathematical Methods, and there are several reasons why CAS was the predominant technology in this subject. The study aims to provide a new understanding that will support teachers who are working to support student CAS use in the mathematics classroom. When learning mathematics with CAS, students need to develop the capacity to make informed choices about when and how to use CAS so that they can benefit from the affordances presented by CAS. Understanding when students choose to use CAS, and the factors influencing students’ use, will provide new understanding to support teachers in developing targeted teaching interventions that may support students to use CAS. This study investigated CAS use in four topics studied over 8 months in one school year. Actual CAS use was determined by analysing student worksheets and CAS screenshots. Further uses of CAS were identified from thematic analysis of interviews that were conducted with nine students four times throughout the study. The findings of this study show that students made different choices about the use of CAS or pen-and-paper (P&P) based on whether problems were within or outside their anticipated P&P facility and the mathematical features of problems. Thematic analysis of interview data found that students used CAS to complete problems quickly, to supplement their P&P skills, and to check their answers. Negative attitudes towards CAS can form a barrier to the development of CAS use. However, few studies have used a cohort study methodology to determine how students’ attitudes change as they gain experience with CAS. This study contributes by comparing students’ attitudes towards CAS approximately one year apart to identify changes resulting from learning mathematics with CAS. This study defined attitudes towards CAS as consisting of beliefs about CAS and emotions when working with CAS. Data were collected via a questionnaire at the start and the end of the year. Students had a range of attitudes towards CAS at the start and the end of the study, but more students had a positive attitude towards CAS at the end than at the start. Students held (and experienced) a range of beliefs (and emotions); some contributed to a positive attitude, while others contributed to a negative one. Understanding why students do or do not use CAS may support teachers in developing targeted interventions to support CAS use. While existing studies have identified factors that influence CAS use, none have explored how these change as students gain experience with CAS. Analysis of questionnaire data showed that students perceived a range of beliefs and emotions to influence their CAS use and that their perceptions were unlikely to change. Additional factors were identified from the analysis of interview data. Overall, students perceived a greater range of factors to influence their CAS use at the end of the study than at the start. This study aimed to provide insights to assist teachers in supporting students learning mathematics with CAS. The findings presented in this study provide a detailed understanding of how and why students use CAS and students’ attitudes towards CAS. These understandings will be beneficial in informing teaching interventions to support CAS use and thus, student learning.
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ItemLeadership for Recontextualisation - Leading the Implementation and Development of a Recontextualising Dialogue School: A Case Study of a 21st-Century Catholic Primary School( 2023-07)Inspired by the Enhancing Catholic School Identity (ECSI) research, a joint project between the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria, Australia, this study explored the key factors that influence leading the implementation and development of a recontextualising dialogue school (RDS) in a Catholic primary school in Melbourne, Australia. An RDS is a school that promotes dialogue with contemporary culture and the Catholic faith tradition, cognisant of and embracing diversity. Learners are invited to critically reflect on their personal worldviews and their religious or philosophical positions in dialogue with the Catholic faith tradition as the key dialogue partner. This dialogue seeks to enhance the understandings of all. In this research, learners identified a depth of understanding of their own faith through the dialogue, recognising new layers of meaning and understandings of faith today. The school studied is a Catholic primary school in Melbourne’s outer-northern growth corridor. Reflecting the religious and cultural diversity of the municipality, the school comprises Roman and Eastern Rite Catholic, Orthodox and other Christian, and non-Christian families. This research was shaped by an interpretive research paradigm. The single-site case study was undertaken by the principal, as researcher, and as such employed the methods of ethnography, auto ethnography, and transpersonal research. Data were collected from 17 individual interviews comprising teachers, teacher leaders, the parish priest, and the principal, as well as four group interviews comprising two student groups and two parent groups. A thematic analysis was employed to gain insights into the participants’ experiences. Data were also gleaned from school ECSI data, school review reports, annual reports, school newsletters, and the principal’s presentation notes from internal and external presentations. Research data analysis resulted in the generation of four major themes reflecting the key contributing factors for the implementation and development of the RDS. These themes are Learning Community Culture, Transformation and Transformative Practices, Discovering and Nurturing the Hermeneutical Space, and Hospitality and Dialogue—A View Through Multiple Lenses. Each theme is explored, providing insights into the experiences of participants in this RDS. For teachers, teacher leaders, and the principal, this revealed both personal and professional growth. Personal growth reflected renewed understandings of faith and, for some, changes in life views and relationships. Professional growth saw greater capacity to facilitate dialogue through enacting a number of pedagogical approaches seen holistically in the school context and viewed through a hermeneutical lens. For students, it reflected a desire to engage in dialogue with others at a deeper level, seeking meaning and understanding of the thinking of the other. An understanding of religious traditions and beliefs in dialogue with the Catholic faith was enhanced.
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Item20 Days of 2020: Moving through the institutional body language of Melbourne museums in lockdown( 2023-07)This visual digital a/r/tographic inquiry uses trace and the in-between as method to speculate upon posthuman visual languages and future museum education pedagogies in a combined visual and written exegesis. This research harnesses the remote disruptions of pandemic conditions for responsive research creation while critically analysing the digital traces of five Melbourne museum Instagram archives from 2020. The study seeks to unfold and reimagine with the visual languages, codes, architectures and frames that contribute to a museum’s institutional body language in a time of forced physical closure, it asks; What can we learn about the changing nature of museum education from exploring Melbourne museums through Instagram posts in 2020? Underpinned by a/r/tography and connectivist concepts this exegesis applies feminist new materialist methods in data-led, iterative, generative visual cycles to speculate with social networks, virtual encounters and the influence of new technologies upon visual digital a/r/tographic praxis. Emergent visual questions arising from the archived data, were fed through an embedded Instagram feedback loop to the museum industry. These dialogic visual questions between digital collaborators, museum industry and a/r/tographic ‘selves’ formed provocations about what feeds and shapes our ways of visually knowing the world. A triggering event led to rethinking trained research methods and the development of an alternative museum narrative set, instigating new lines of inquiry. Readers move between text and image to experience the entangled meaning making processes of this inquiry and are invited into the virtual visual exegesis as avatar for a disembodied encounter with/in the metaverse research ‘world’. Working as architect, curator, artist, participant and builder in the metaverse of Spoke Mozilla, opened pedagogic imaginings and sensorial wonderment for the possible multiple narratives that future museum’s might welcome. A recorded walk through and still screen shots are also provided. All (d)a/r/ta work is stored in figshare depository and is accessible from chapter links within the text.
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ItemExploring Primary School Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Developing Multiplicative Thinking in Students( 2023-05)The importance of multiplicative thinking in supporting students’ learning of key topics and success in further mathematics is widely and clearly stated in mathematics education literature. It forms the basis for understanding key topics such as proportions, patterns, fractions, measurement, rates, percentages, statistical thinking, the development of algebraic thinking, and understanding complex issues in society. However, there is empirical evidence of low student performance in this area. It is emphasised in mathematics education literature that teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is critical in determining students’ learning attainment. Our knowledge about primary school teachers’ PCK for developing students’ multiplicative thinking is limited. This study employed an embedded mixed methods approach to investigate primary school teachers’ PCK for developing multiplicative thinking in students. The study participants (n = 62) were primary school teachers in Australia at different levels of teaching experience from preservice teachers to novice, experienced, and expert teachers. A single questionnaire was used to yield quantitative and qualitative data for this study, with qualitative data playing a supportive secondary role to the quantitative data. The investigation in this research study focused on the following three key teaching stages for developing multiplicative thinking: transitional stage (from additive to multiplicative thinking), multiplicative stage (multiplication and division word problems), and proportional reasoning stage. This research used Zhang and Stephens’s (2013) model of teacher capacity as the framework for instrument design and data analysis. Data analysis based on this model showed that mathematical knowledge, knowledge of students’ thinking, curriculum knowledge, and design of instruction are essential components of teachers’ PCK for multiplicative thinking. However, while all four components of the teacher capacity model are important contributors to teachers’ PCK for multiplicative thinking, design of instruction was the most important factor contributing to variability in teachers’ scores, followed by knowledge of students’ thinking, then curriculum knowledge. Mathematical knowledge was the least powerful predictor of teachers’ PCK for multiplicative thinking. This study also found that teaching experience influenced teachers’ PCK for multiplicative thinking across the three key teaching stages. For instance, both experienced and expert teachers demonstrated a higher PCK for multiplicative thinking at the transitional teaching stage compared to preservice and novice teachers. Higher PCK was evident among the novice and preservice teachers at the multiplicative and proportional reasoning stages compared to expert and experienced teachers. The results, however, did show limited knowledge among teachers about the connection between multiplicative thinking and other key important topics in mathematics such as fractions, probability, statistics, and measurement. There was no evidence of any association between the location of schools (either regional or metropolitan) and teachers’ PCK for multiplicative thinking. This study complements the current efforts to enhance teachers’ capacity to support students’ learning around multiplicative thinking and highlights specific areas requiring attention in teacher professional development and teacher preparation programs. These are, for instance, an emphasis on classroom pedagogies to help facilitate students’ transition from additive to multiplicative thinking, a focus on making the connections between multiplicative thinking and other key topics in mathematics more explicit to teachers, and ways to enhance teachers’ knowledge of students’ thinking and design of instruction around multiplicative thinking.