Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemRetheorising equity in everyday routines in early childhood : a poststructuralist action research story(University of Melbourne, 2010)
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ItemParent-professional relationships in early intervention for children with hearing impairment : the Malaysian experience(University of Melbourne, 2010)Establishing collaborative parent-professional relationships is one of the central values of the family-centred approach to early intervention (Blue-Banning, Summers, Frankland, Nelson, & Beegle, 2004; Dunst, 2002; Park & Turnbull, 2002). The shift from a professionally-centred to a family-centred approach in early intervention has been documented in western countries over the last three decades (Brader, 2000; Espe-Sherwindt, 2008). However, there is a dearth of similar reports based on studies conducted in Asian countries, such as Malaysia. This study describes parent-professional relationships in the context of early intervention for children with hearing impairment in Malaysia. Twenty-two parents of children with hearing impairment and ten professionals who provided early intervention services to the parents were recruited from four programs in Kuala Lumpur and surrounds. The majority of parents were mothers, and all the professionals were speech-language pathologists who had been consistently working with the family for at least one year prior to this study. There were two stages of data collection. During Stage 1, all the parent and professional participants individually completed questionnaires. The questionnaires investigated the beliefs, interaction behaviours, and quality of relationships of the parents and professionals involved in this study. The parent participants also responded to two additional domains of investigation: family functioning and service satisfaction. Five parent-professional pairs who reported highly positive relationships in their questionnaires participated in Stage 2. They were firstly videotaped during an intervention session, and then interviewed separately about their parent-professional interactions. The videotapes were used to study the pairs� interaction behaviours. The interviews provided insights from these participants on their roles and interactions in their parent-professional relationships. The questionnaire, video, and interview data were firstly analysed separately, and then were triangulated to generate case studies. Results yielded from all sources of data have been reframed according to the relational and participatory helpgiving practices (Dunst, Johanson, Trivette, & Hamby, 1991; Dunst & Trivette, 1996). Relational helpgiving practices were strongly evident in this study, such as professionals displaying positive interpersonal skills, and establishing positive relationships with parents. Furthermore, positive attitudes towards parent capabilities were also found, where the parents� knowledge about their child, and the parents� roles as their child�s teachers at home, were highly valued by the professionals. The participants in this study not only believed in equal relationships, they also ranked their parent-professional relationships as equal. However, the participatory helpgiving practices were markedly absent from this study�s findings. The professionals� specialized knowledge and skills, decisions, and behaviours, were the driving factors in the intervention. The professionals also assumed many leading roles in intervention, such as the decision maker, planner, controller, and instructor to parent. Parent involvement, although deemed as important, was defined by the professionals as parent compliance to professionals� instructions. Other less empowering roles assumed by the parents, such as the non-participating observer in intervention session, indicate inequality in the parent-professional relationships. Being trained in a professionally-centred model, the professionals focussed their intervention on the child, rather than on the family. A generic program for all families was also implemented by the professionals. This may help to explain the family�s report that their own strengths and resources being under-utilized, and their specific family needs not addressed by the professionals. The presence of relational helpgiving and the absence of participatory help giving identify the parent-professional relationships in this study as characteristic of a family-allied model of intervention rather than family-centred.
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ItemProactive aggression in children : self-preservation or cruelty(University of Melbourne, 2009)
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ItemCircumscription and compromise theory : its impact on occupational preferences and outcomes(University of Melbourne, 2009)
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ItemSocial justice and rural education in Australia( 2009)This thesis is an exploratory study of what social justice means to rural school participants within their school contexts. While social justice is usually invoked as an explicit concept, research has rarely looked at how rural school participants construct and make meaning of it. Without this understanding, policy makers, educators and researchers alike risk continuing to adopt an insufficient or limited model of social justice, a one-size fits all approach to issues of social inequality. Moreover, exploring the subjective element of social justice can make an important contribution to understanding how social injustices are experienced, tolerated and perpetuated in disadvantaged settings. This is a qualitative study based on focus group and semi-structured interviews with rural school participants - students, teachers, principals and parents - in two government schools in rural Victoria, and documents (mostly school reports and community newsletters). In this thesis I apply three dimensions of social justice to rural education. The dimensions in which I am interested are distributive justice (e.g. the distribution of resources), associational justice (e.g. participation in policy-making and decision-making), and recognitional justice (e.g. recognition of different social groups and individuals in schools). My theoretical framework draws on the work of political theorist Iris Marion Young. Like Young, I search for a position that offers a plural model of social justice — one that overcomes the shortfalls of the liberal-egalitarian model that equates social justice solely with distributive justice. The concepts of space and time play an important role in this thesis. I argue that structuring social justice in space and time provides a more nuanced understanding of the context for rural school participants' responses. In the institutionalised space and time of rural schooling –the present– the participants favoured the dimension of distributive justice, expressed as equality of opportunity or access to resources. In considering postschool options, the scenario and expression of social justice changes within a context of greater uncertainty. Young people and adult members of the communities are aware of the need for youth to migrate to gain further and higher qualifications to gain access to meaningful employment opportunities. In the scenario of youth out-migration to metropolitan and regional centres, my participants hold closely to notions of self-reliance, hard-work and seizing opportunities to confront a future of uncertainty. I argue that these individualised notions over-determine their agency to dictate their own future overlooking structural barriers, inadvertently making participants themselves solely responsible for their successes and failures. Moreover, the prevalent principle of social justice is desert, where the concept of merit justifies unequal outcomes, creating a danger of a normalisation of inequalities in society. Further to these limited conceptualisations of social justice, I look for discourses and experiences of plural social justice and social change in the rural schools. That is, I look for possibilities of hope and social change. Some teachers mediate it through the relational process of teaching and learning; focusing on social inclusion by recognising and giving a voice to all students, including those that did not fit within the mainstream school and community population. These examples demonstrated how rural school participants can be agents of social change. This possibility of becoming agents of social change, I claim, can only be sustained if we adopt a plural framework of social justice, one that gives the actor resources, recognition of his/her condition and spaces of participation. This thesis argues that a good quality of education that contributes to redress issues of social injustice in society needs a better and greater distribution of resources but it also fundamentally requires an understanding of issues of recognition and participation in areas of schooling, such as policy-making, curriculum issues and teachers' professional needs.
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ItemAssessment of student problem-solving processes with interactive computer-based tasks( 2009)Problem solving is recognised as an important intellectual activity in schooling and beyond. In particular, generic problem-solving skills which transfer across learning areas are valued educational outcomes. The objective of this study was the design and evaluation of an online assessment system that provided diagnostic information on students' development of problem-solving competencies at upper primary and lower secondary school level. This resulted in the development of a methodology for collecting and interpreting problem-solving process data to assess important procedural aspects of problem solving. In this research study, existing assessment design and analysis methodologies were extended and applied to produce descriptions of problem-solving behaviour useful for both students and educators. The assessment system utilised recent advances in technology, assessment design and analysis, and problem-solving theory to guide the development of interactive computer-based tasks and to facilitate the interpretation of complex process data from student solution processes. Rules for interpreting computer-captured process data were empirically validated using qualitative verbal protocol analysis techniques. This study introduced a novel contribution to assessment design methodology called a temporal evidence map. This data transcription tool was designed for displaying and analysing concurrent sources of process data collected throughout task piloting exercises. Use of this tool culminated in the refinement of tasks and scoring rules, and informed development of additional tasks for the main data collection phase of the study. Following large-scale online data collection, the data were probabilistically modelled using Bayesian Inference Networks. A range of model evaluations were carried out to gauge aspects of assessment validity and reliability. Finally, the inferences generated via Bayesian modelling were used to produce diagnostic student profile reports suitable for informing instruction. Educators have much to gain from technology-based assessment systems underpinned by cognitively diagnostic models of cognition. In particular, supporting assessment inferences about procedural quality is well-aligned with 21st century skills in information-rich educational and vocational settings. This study provides diagnostic information to educators about how, and not just if, students solve problems.
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ItemMusical composition and ICT: children, computers and new musical ideas( 2010)An investigation into children composing music with computers demonstrated complex and unconventional uses of rhythm, harmony and melodic structure, as well as approaches to the compositional process that indicated that the children’s musical perceptions and understandings were very different to those of adults and to those represented in the literature. Using qualitative methodological approaches with roots firmly attached to the ideas of post positivist paradigms the study presents a narrative account of events and actions. It makes strong connections to the Ecological Approach to Visual Perception as present by James Gibson by investigating the all-important relationship that exists between the child and the computer. The human/computer relationship is also significantly important in the actual analysis of the children’s works; the compositions were analysed using the same software with which they were composed. This allowed for a deep investigation of compositional processes that went beyond analysis of music as an expression of sound. The seven participants, aged between ten and twelve years, produced 261 compositions over the period of a school year. Analysis of these compositions produced a typology of compositional approaches based on play; which is examined in detail. In addition to this typology, significant compositional features that include extreme rhythmic, harmonic and tonal dissonances were identified, these features are also presented. The process of data collection and analysis revealed an inexorable link between the children’s actions and the act of play. The centrality of play is identified as significantly important to the compositions and the compositional approaches. Through the consideration of the role of play, the notion of metaphor (in language, music and play itself) and the importance of the electronic environment, the thesis asks educators and researchers to consider alternatives to the application of adult western cultural perspectives to what is an expression of childhood.