Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Theses

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    Identity, integration, adult migrant English as a Second Language (ESL) programmes and Melbourne Institute Language Centre
    LEITH, MEAGHAN ( 2012)
    This case study used a qualitative dominant mixed methods research (MMR) design to examine the integration of adult migrants in Australia. In adopting a socio-cultural theory (SCT) framework, it examines wider policies, such as immigration and citizenship, but it particularly focuses on government-funded English as a second language (ESL) policy and programmes. In so doing, it seeks to describe the context in which this ESL delivery occurred – a multi-campus language centre in a large and entrepreneurial Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institute in the State of Victoria – and the ways in which migrant students and language centre personnel perceived and experienced ESL programmes delivered at this centre. It also seeks to locate this study within its historical and socio-political context and, as a result, discourses regarding issues related to integration, such as national identity, social cohesion, ‘Australian values’ and multiculturalism, are considered. In recognising that integration is a process that takes time, this study is longitudinal in design, and a core group of migrants (N=14) was researched over a two-and-a-half-year period. The views of some of the language centre’s staff members were also examined over time. The findings from this study suggest that English was perceived by stakeholders – and experienced by migrants – as a significant facilitator of integration, and the language centre’s ESL programmes were seen to provide both psycho-social and economic integrative benefits for migrants and Australian society. Suggestions and recommendations are made regarding possible avenues for future research into integration and adult host language programming, as well as broader, related policy.
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    Journeys to university and arrival experiences: a study of non-traditional students transitions at a new Australian university
    Funston, J. Andrew ( 2011)
    The broad context for this study is the rapid shift in recent decades from elite to mass Higher Education in Australia, and new government policies and institutional strategies which are geared to building university graduate numbers and increasing successful participation by working-class and other non-traditional students in degree courses. This study of a cohort of commencing humanities students at a new university aimed to produce a more in-depth and holistic account of non-traditional students’ transitions in Higher Education in Australia than is available through large-scale survey-driven reports or available through studies focused on curriculum matters; notwithstanding the valuable contribution to knowledge made by many of these studies and reports. This is a mixed-method study weighted towards the analysis of 33 students’ biographical stories produced through in-depth interviews and contextualised by survey results and other data. The study investigated the students’ social and family backgrounds, their educational experiences prior to coming to university, their aspirations and career goals, their dispositions towards Higher Education and their preparedness for degree level studies on arrival. It also investigated the daily lives of these students in the early weeks and months of their time at university, and investigated on-campus and off-campus matters impacting or intruding on their first-year studies including financial worries, paid-work commitments and household duties. And it explored how students were dealing with the difficulties they faced, and the resources they were bringing to meet various challenges. In seeking to understand the wider context or backdrop to these students’ experiences and perspectives the study drew on strands of youth sociology concerned with persistent inequalities amidst rapid social change, non-linear life-course transitions, and pressures on young people to produce their own biographies. In seeking to understand the nature of people’s class-based relationships with educational institutions and practices, and education’s role in social reproduction, the study drew on work by Pierre Bourdieu and some scholars who draw on and critique his ideas. The thesis foregrounds a framework which draws on theories and concepts from critical social psychology – including the work of academic Margaret Wetherell and therapist Michael White – concerned with the transformative potential of biographical reflexivity and narrative practice. This framework aligns to the narrative research method of using in-depth interviews to produce biographical stories about people’s lives in education.The study found that the majority of these non-traditional students at a new university had strong educational aspirations and clear career goals, were socially and intellectually engaged and satisfied with their courses, felt well supported by families and by the institution, and were generally enjoying successful Higher Education transitions, despite various difficulties and challenges most faced on-campus and off-campus. The study also argued that students’ reflexive capacities and their use of ‘narrative as a discursive resource’ (Taylor 2006) seemed to be contributing to their production of learner identities, including a strong sense of belonging in Higher Education. Several interviewees described ‘finding themselves’ through participation in Higher Education. Overall, conceptually, this study brings some new questions to analyse the contemporary relevance of arguments about working-class people ‘losing themselves’ in Higher Education. The study’s analysis and presentation of non-traditional students’ successful first-year university transitions at a new university supports the view that there is in Australia a changing relationship of working-class people to Higher Education; a field which remains beset by inequalities but one which has become literally and culturally more accessible. This accessibility is evidenced in the collective stories produced here and more generally in the take up by working-class people of the new places and opportunities which have become available in the current political climate.
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    Experiential learning programs in Australian secondary schools
    Pritchard, Malcolm Ronald ( 2010)
    Experiential programs in special environments are common in Australian education, notably in independent secondary schools. Without overt reference to research, they claim the special features of their program lead to personal development. The study sought to discover the underlying theoretical elements common to experiential learning programs, and by extension, sought to identify the elements of the experiential learning that might be incorporated into mainstream learning. Adopting a constructivist interpretive framework drawn from the work of Dewey, Vygotsky, and Bruner, the study examined six Australian independent school experiential learning programs offered to Year 9 students at dedicated, discrete settings ranging from wilderness to the inner city. The methodology employed in the research design was qualitative, drawing on Argyris and Schon’s notion of theory of action as an overarching framework in the documentation of six case-study programs. A preliminary probe into a single experiential program and an Australia-wide survey of school-based experiential learning provided a base of reference for the main study, which focused on 41 teaching practitioners as the primary informants on the programs. Data sources consisted of public documentation on programs, ethnographic interviews, questionnaire responses and researcher observations. Charmazian grounded theory method and Argyris and Schon’s ladder of interference were used as the primary tools for data analysis. The study found challenging setting, constructed social interaction, tolerance of risk, and reflection to be the essential design components that enable personal learning, and these thus form the model of experiential learning that emerges from analysis of the data. Together with the learner and cognitive dissonance, the spatiotemporal setting of the experience is identified as the defining characteristic and third component of experiential learning transactions. Specific properties of each learning setting interact with learners in ways that afford specific learning opportunities. Individual student status and collective social structures in remote experiential settings that rupture contact with the home community are profoundly altered through the experience. Risk emerges as an indispensible property of novel learning experiences. Reflection, both facilitated and unfacilitated, is the mechanism by which experiential learning is stored in episodic memory and informs the process of knowledge creation. The theoretical model of experiential learning derived from the programs studied describes the essential differences between experiential and mainstream learning. This model offers a basic design template for the development of experiential learning programs in other settings to meet the particular learning needs of Year 9 students in mainstream schools. Finally, these programs provided evidence of close parallels with traditional initiation rites, suggesting that they serve an important socialisation function for adolescents.
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    Primary teachers and the Information and Communications Technology domain: figuring worlds, identities, knowledge and practices
    Vacirca, Elvira Maria ( 2010)
    This study investigates the development of teacher professional practice in the context of government education policy in Victoria (Australia) that aims, through the education of its youth, to shape a successful economy that capitalises on information and communications technology (ICT). Specifically, the study examines how selected primary teachers from an ICT network conceptualise, articulate and develop a body of knowledge to teach and implement the Information and Communications Technology domain of the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (Victorian Government, 2005) curriculum framework. Through a constructivist grounded theory approach, the study investigates the practices of six female teachers in three government primary schools as they implement changes to curriculum in response to government reforms and local expectations. The three primary schools are within close proximity of each other in a residential growth corridor on the fringes of metropolitan Melbourne, and serve a diverse and multicultural community. Innovation with ICT is seen as necessary for addressing the challenges that arise from the social and economic context of the research sites, and is integral to improvement plans in each of these schools. The participating teachers are regarded as leaders with ICT within their schools and their efforts are deemed intrinsic to their school’s plan. Rich descriptive data of these six teachers and how they construct their worlds is utilised to develop a theory of how teachers learn to teach with ICT, with a view to understanding how they continue to learn in the context of these changes. Change efforts often focus on the importance of knowledge building to empower professionals for new directions, however while a critical component, knowledge is not the only factor in increasing capability. The study highlights that learning to teach the ICT domain is more complex than developing content knowledge, pedagogical repertoire and skills in the use of ICT. It involves networked learning where values, beliefs, vision, practice and identities are made and remade. In making changes, teachers consider new ideas in light of the old, and through the lens of their core values and beliefs, they figure a technologically rich world of vast imaginings that they can embody. They author identities to assert themselves in relation to imposed positioning and prior conceptualisations. Through changed activity related to ICT, they redefine their conception of teaching and inhabit it with their activity and energy.