Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Theses

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    The impact of literature circles on student engagement in middle years English
    CLARKE, LOREN ( 2013)
    This project investigated the connection between literature circles and student engagement in middle school English classes. This study shows that literature circles can cause increases in students' behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement in reading, and English. It adds to existing local and international research into effective middle school pedagogies, student voice, and reading strategies.
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    Pedagogical and cognitive usability in online learning
    Karvelas, Voula ( 2013)
    The last decade has seen a sharp – and necessary – increase in attention to the quality of eLearning which has expanded a relatively new area of usability specifically for online learning: pedagogical usability. This research focuses on the usability attributes that contribute to effective eLearning and delineates those pertinent to teaching (pedagogical usability) and those specific to learning (cognitive usability). A multifarious methodology provided the elicitation of data from almost all conceivable and feasible angles of the execution of eLearning in a real-world setting – the main positions being: the pedagogical considerations from the teacher-developers’ planning sessions through to the use of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) by students, as well as an in-depth usability inspection and evaluation of the Learning Management System (LMS) used as the tool for delivery. The project, in essence, put a microscope on the entire process of eLearning. The complementary use of twelve methods of data collection for rigorous triangulation provided a synergic framework that enabled the examination of each stage of eLearning. The analytical framework applied to the data comprised a complex integration of existing models and a specifically devised analytical model that assisted in the deconstruction of all the factors that contribute to pedagogical and cognitive usability. The study introduces the concept of cognitive usability as distinct from pedagogical usability on the grounds that certain features and contributing factors to VLEs are more teacher-driven (pedagogical) while others are more learner-consummated (cognitive). The study found that a VLE’s constitutional design is governed by teachers’ philosophies about teaching and learning and their teaching styles and repertoires which in turn are also governed by curriculum design; the teachers’ lack of techno-pedagogical skills coupled with the limitations of the eLearning platform hold an equally pivotal role in determining the VLE’s pedagogical usability. The study showed a strong relationship between the technical, pedagogical and cognitive usability of a VLE and found that using an LMS to create eLearning is fraught with problems that are rooted in the technical design of the LMS. Since LMSs are a mandatory feature in almost all educational institutions nowadays, the findings of this study are particularly important since so much research focuses on the use of eLearning without specifically addressing the software used to create it. While even a VLE with low techno-pedagogical usability can still facilitate learning outcomes, this study showed that approximately one third of VLE activity is ineffective due to poor LMS design which impacts on the VLE design, leading to low cognitive usability.
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    Introducing instrumental students to improvisation
    Dipnall, Mark Fairlie ( 2012)
    Improvisation has been an integral component of music practice throughout a variety of world musics, such as the Indonesian Gamelan, Japanese Kabuki Theatre, African drumming, Australian Indigenous music, Klezmer music, the Indian Raga, Jazz and Popular music. Instrumental tuition, within the present system of Western Education, on the other hand, tends to emphasise an early and ongoing commitment to the reading of notated music. Some of the literature in the area suggests that the emphasis for instrumental tuition should be concerned with improvisation thus producing opportunities to achieve a more personalised and independent result with music expression. By including improvisation within regular tuition the student instrumentalist could feel more at one with his or her own voice and imagination, rather than attempting to take on the role of reproducing the character and style of another person's notation. This thesis focussed on the development and provision of improvised music activities with high school students from Years 10 and 11. Consideration was given to how these improvised music activities might have impacted not only their improvisational skills but also broader attitudes to music. The study included a specifically designed curriculum emphasising improvisational techniques. It was constructed and implemented over a ten-week period with accompanying interviews, questionnaire and video. The aim of the study was to assess the impact of the implementation of this curriculum and how it could assist the learning and teaching of improvisation. The study's performance-ensemble consisted of rhythm and lead instrumentalists where all participants had the opportunity to engage with specific instrumental techniques that assisted the expression of improvisation. Simultaneously, all participants had the liberty of managing the lesson-content with original extemporised melody and composition. The results showed the participants experienced increased confidence with improvisation. The conclusion suggests that improvisation be viewed as an integral component within the teaching and learning of instrumental music.
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    Cultural perspectives, thinking, educators and globalisation: a critical analysis of the Future Problem Solving Program
    Casinader, Niranjan Robert ( 2012)
    Globalisation in its modern phase has inevitably included a strong educational element, in which learning programs that originate in one part of the world have been transported to another. In concordance with economic trends in the contemporary era, this export trade has been primarily one-way. Curricula that have been devised in the industrialised societies of more ‘developed’ States - the so-called ‘West’ – have been introduced into regions that have very different cultural, socio-economic and educational characteristics and traditions. Contemporary models of teaching higher order thinking as a discrete curriculum focus have been part of this movement, particularly since the notion of thinking skills came to be perceived as central to an advanced school education since at least the 1970s. As a result, while a number of thinking skills programs have been developed in educational systems within economically advanced countries, Future Problem Solving (FPS) Program International remains one of the few that has adopted a deliberate line of internationalism, moving into regions beyond its initial base of the USA, Australia and New Zealand, such as Singapore, Malaysia and South Africa, with varying degrees of success. However, as with similar learning programs, the Future Problem Solving Program has been introduced into new territories on the premise that the notion of thinking does not vary across cultures, and that, regardless of the socio-economic and cultural background of the new FPS region, this form of educational transference is both possible and inevitably successful. This research project investigated the validity of transplanting thinking skills programs from one system to another on an international scale by focusing on a trinity of concepts that delineates the centre of this conundrum: culture, thinking and international education. The Future Problem Solving Program, along with the specific thinking skills on which it is instituted, provided the context of the investigation, which employed a comparative analysis of educators in the multicultural societies of Malaysia and South Africa, with a view to establishing the degree to which cultural background determined how thinking skills are conceived and enacted by educators. Using a grounded theory perspective, the findings of the project were threefold: first, that, different cultures do tend to conceptualise elements of thinking in different ways; that a converging spectrum of cultural dispositions towards thinking can be identified; and that those whose cultural dispositions of thinking are more towards the middle of the convergence, where a balance across cultural dispositions is more in evidence, tend to be those who are either more exposed to cultures outside their country of origin, or who are more inclined to support the cultural transformation of a society in the name of social, or national, stability. The implications of these findings for globalisation of thinking skills initiatives such as the Future Problem Solving Program are significant, for they suggest that such thinking skills programs need to be reworked to meet the pattern of cultural dispositions of thinking that exist within a particular region if they are to be successfully instituted in different places as part of a conscious program of international growth.
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    Thinking about historical thinking in the Australian Curriculum: History
    Martin, Gerard Francis ( 2012)
    This study analyses and evaluates the approach to historical thinking in the Australian Curriculum: History. This research study adopts interpretative discipline based pedagogy, with a document content analysis method. The study draws upon the research of Peter Lee (1983) on historical substantive and procedural concepts which have influenced the models of historical thinking by Wineburg (2000), Seixas (2006), Lévesque (2008) and historical reasoning by Van Drie and Van Boxtel (2008). These models provide a theoretical frame to critically evaluate the relationship and application of the disciplinary structures in the Australian Curriculum: History. Historical methods and procedures engage students in the process of historical construction through active historical thinking and reasoning. Research judgments are made on the effectiveness of the curriculum and its design in understanding and communicating the relationship between the substantive and procedural concepts of history as a discipline. The research findings indicate that the curriculum fails to recognize the importance and distinctiveness of substantive concepts as the building blocks of historical knowledge that make historical inquiry meaningful and intelligible. The analysis of substantive concepts in the Australian Curriculum: History using unique, organizational and thematic concepts reflects a curriculum that does not always pay attention to historical context. The study revealed that the curriculum fails to make explicit the interrelationship between substantive and procedural concepts in the Historical Knowledge and Understanding strand and the Historical Skills strand. This has resulted in a curriculum that does not enact the analytical and evaluative nature of procedural concepts such as historical significance, continuity and change, etc. Also, there is limited understanding of the method of application of procedural concepts like historical perspectives, contestability and empathy in the curriculum and as a result this undermines the role of these concepts in facilitating historical thinking. From this analysis a new pedagogical model, “Framework for Historical Reasoning” emerges which relates the historical substantive and procedural concepts and historical skills as a unified pedagogical approach. This model provides a framework which teachers can use to engage with the enacted curriculum and facilitate student historical inquiry and understanding.
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    "Just because I enjoy it doesn't mean I learn": science teachers' perceptions about students' interest in science
    Gomes, Jui Judith ( 2011)
    Producing a scientifically literate citizenry and serving those pupils who wish to continue science in future – balancing between these two aims is a dilemma for compulsory science education. Recent studies have shown post-secondary enrolment in science is declining and is a global issue. These studies have indicated that students’ dissatisfaction with school science is also a common phenomenon in most countries. Concerned with such a scenario, the research for this thesis has explored science teachers’ perceptions of their students’ interest in school science. The study assumed that science teachers develop knowledge about their learners through their teaching experience and that this impacts on their science teaching and ultimately on the apparently common global phenomenon of declining enrolment. In particular, this study examined teachers’ perceptions about their students’ likes and dislikes of science topics and about teaching-learning activities that engage their students. A craft knowledge perspective was used to explore the issue given craft knowledge is an important area of research into teacher knowledge concerned with student engagement. Craft knowledge is a form of teachers’ professional knowledge enabling teaching in context specific situations. Craft knowledge also informs the teacher concerning pedagogy that would interest and engage the students. Experience with learners in the classroom and reflecting on classroom teaching experience is considered to contribute to the development of such knowledge in teachers. Hence, learners were considered in this study as source of knowledge for the teacher. To this end, a qualitative multicase study approach was used to portray a general picture of teachers’ perceptions of their students’ likes and dislikes and of engaging pedagogy. The study compared and contrasted teachers’ perceptions with their students’ responses to interview questions concerning their likes and dislikes of their science lessons. Five teachers from secondary schools in metropolitan area of Melbourne and their students voluntarily participated in this study. The present study identified that the teachers had under-informed views of their students’ likes and dislikes regarding science topics and pedagogical approaches. In particular, when teaching in their areas of expertise, teachers’ strong content knowledge background was often insufficient in terms of capturing student interest, thus indicating teachers’ lack of awareness of engaging pedagogy. Interestingly, some beginning teachers displayed a developing sense of awareness of students’ likes and dislikes gained from their classroom teaching experience although they struggled to use this information to develop engaging teaching approaches. The findings from this study suggest that teacher education programmes should emphasise students as important sources of teacher knowledge that can inform the development of engaging pedagogy.
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    Learning through simulation: powerful, purposeful and personal
    Huggins, Christopher Thomas ( 2011)
    Simulation has been in use for many years in the education of health professionals. The value of this as an educational pedagogy is under-researched. While there have been some valuable studies, these mostly focus on the technical aspects of simulation. The aim of this research was to examine simulation beyond the development of technical skills, to determine the validity of simulation in the development of higher-order thinking and clinical judgement. Simulation has been in use in one form or another in the development of health care professionals for many years. Until recently simulation was generally seen as an adjunct to the education and training process, and not part of the overall development of the professional. However in more recent times with the reduction in the availability of clinical practicums and the increased demand for these placements, simulation has become a more important part of the educational process. Yet the research into the effectiveness of simulation in the development of the health care professional is currently under researched as discussed above. For this reason it is an area requiring further research. This is a qualitative study involving educators and students from nursing, medicine, paramedicine and the fire brigade. Eighteen educators and eighteen students were interviewed through semistructured interviews. The observations were restricted to the pseudo-authentic workplace and consisted of seven educators, forty-six students from paramedicine and the non-emergency patient transport sectors. A review of curriculum documents was also undertaken to locate and assess the espoused views of the teaching organisation on simulation in the education of their students. The findings were triangulated to provide reliability to the results. This research has shown that simulation is a pedagogy that can assist in the development of higher-order thinking and judgement-making during “hot action”. This study has identified that the development of higher-order thinking and judgement-making through public reflection occurs best in the third phase of a simulation. In conclusion, simulation is a powerful learning and teaching pedagogy, and can be considered as one of the active learning pedagogies. Furthermore, if the simulation is well constructed and executed, it can provide valid experiences for the participants. These experiences can provide for the development of an epistemology of practice with highly developed higher-order thinking and clinical judgement capabilities.