Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemA cartoon chemistry text : the construction and testing of a novel chemistry text incorporating human values( 1990)This study examines current science texts and the concerns and objectives of Science-Technology-Society based courses. It indicates that they present the public image of the practising scientist (with inherent Mertonian values of Universalism, Communism, Disinterestedness, and organized skepticism) which is used to organize scientific concepts into a meaningful whole. Utilizing the notion that a value is anything important to a student, a hypothesis was proposed that meaning and interest generated from a text is dependent on the extent of overlap between text and student values. The implications of the interaction of different value systems with a Mertonian based text were considered. An attempt was made to develop a chemistry text that was meaningful to all students, by organizing concepts into a story form with non-Mertonian organization. This approach evolved into a cartoon format with specific features. Two cartoon text items were tested at two schools. The trial involved a survey item on 103 students and audio taped interviews with 20 students. The trial attempted to evaluate the cartoon as a student text, attitudes to issues content, and styles of resolving issues based conflicts. The results were interpreted by classifying the respondents into four categories of science likingness ( A, B, C, D) on the basis of Year 11 subject choice, and favorite subject. It was assumed that the accommodation of Mertonian values by a group reflected the science likingness of the group. The cartoon text was well received with most students wishing to see more cartoons, and being able to answer questions from the text. The B, C, and D groups expressed a preference for the cartoon text over their current science text. The proposed differential accommodation of values appeared to account for the greater enthusiasm of the B and C groups for the cartoons than the A and D groups. Perceptions of the amount of current social problems/ issues content in science teaching increased markedly with group science likingness. The amount of issues content desired decreased with increasing group science likingness. A belief that scientific solutions could resolve social problems/ issues, showed a marked decrease with decreasing science likingness. A value model of cognitive style was developed from the basic hypothesis and assumptions regarding the extent of accommodation of Mertonian and Humanist norms as personal values. This model seemed to account for variations in meaning generated for the various groups in response to both the standard and cartoon science text format.
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ItemBeyond school science: students and teachers perceptions of the science talent search( 1986)Every year the Science Teachers Association of Victoria (STAV) conducts a Science Talent Search (STS) which they maintain is one of the largest and longest running science fairs in the world. This study aimed to provide some insights into why this activity is so popular with students and teachers and to what extent it complements or provides outcomes different from school science. Information was collected by searching the archives of STAV and by interviews with teachers and students. The findings indicate that over the years STS has adapted to changes in the social and economic contexts of schooling, which have also influenced thinking about but not forced major changes in the secondary school science curriculum. This has contributed to its increased popularity with keen students and teachers as evidenced by increased participation. The students who were interviewed enjoyed and valued their experiences in STS. In particular they commented on the freedom to choose projects according to their abilities, interests and preferred modes of working. Many of their projects arose from every day life problems or recreational pursuits of themselves and their families. STS catered for a wide range of abilities and interests and provided an attractive forum for the involvement of girls in science activities. Girls said that they had gained great satisfaction from confirmation of their ability to meet challenges and solve problems relying mostly on their own resources. Based on students responses some distinctions can be made between school science and the science activities of the STS which indicate ways in which school science may need to change in order to attract and cater for a wider range of students.
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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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ItemAgency and communion in science teaching( 1991)The construction of the concept map assumes that the more closely two concepts are related in a person's cognitive structure, the more closely they will be placed on the concept map. In this research the Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling technique using ALSCAL (Alternating Least Squares Scaling) is used in the analysis of the concept map data, derived by surveying teachers from three different groups. Group 1 consisted of practicing teachers from a non-science background who taught Health and Human Relations. Group 2 consisted of Diploma of Education student teachers whose methods were Science and had completed their course though were not yet practicing teachers. Group 3 consisted of practicing teachers from a science background who taught Health and Human Relations. The results provide a basis for discussing the wisdom of practice, the maxim which provides reflective rationalization for the practices of able teachers. In this study, the wisdom of practice has been described with a focus on the responsibility of care. The findings of this study have confirmed those of earlier studies, in that it is apparent that experienced able teachers use their knowledge of what works in the class to organize their instruction. However, just what works is seen to depend on the subject the topic is taught in, as well as any perception of the subject held by teachers, students and the community. Teachers from each of the three Groups were able to organize their concept maps and provide satisfactory support material from transcribed interviews to indicate that the conceptual relations seen in the tension which exists between the concept of care and the concept of the academic is able to be described quantitatively.
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ItemResearching teacher agency in primary school science: a discursive psychological approach( 2004)This ontological study is concerned with analyses of the problem of the scientific reform of the primary school curriculum. It was conducted at a time when a solution was sought through State mandated curriculum and standards specification and primary teacher accountability. The case study developed as an interactive ethnography (Woods 1996) written from the point of view of the facilitator of a whole school science curriculum project. The focus of the enquiry emerged as an exploration of social episodes in the life of two experienced Early Years teachers engaged in the yearlong project. Discursive psychology became the theoretical framework for the analysis of the primary teachers' professional identity formation in their professional work=place conversations with the author. Pronominal coding has been used to mark the teachers' psychological location in their storylines of the implementation of enquiry-based science education in their classes. In the teachers' accounts they simultaneously position themselves in their acts and actions and in the local moral order of duties and responsibilities. A significant disparity is shown to exist between the ontologies of the primary teachers' and research accounts, which present mental state analyses of teachers' lack of confidence or reluctance to teach science related to limited scientific understanding. The. study offers a schematic model of social action that theorizes human agency as, developing and functioning within the interactional nexus of local community settings. The community operates in the lives of these teachers not as a latent, abstract concept; instead it gives ideological differences and teachers' understandings of themselves significance in everyday educational practices.