Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemGesture-based approaches to language learning(University of Melbourne, 2012)
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ItemInformed consent for children in Saudi Arabia( 2012)Informed consent is considered an integral part of the ethical dimension of research, especially in educational research undertaken with children. The procedures and details of obtaining informed consent from children’s parents have received much scholarship in the field. This study aims at exploring the issue of obtaining informed consent for children in educational research in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The thesis proposes that that there is a gap in obtaining informed consent from parents of children involved in educational research in KSA. Data was collected through a questionnaire, which was completed by six participants who hold graduate degrees in education research. Results indicated that there were clear administrative processes undertaken by the participants to obtain permission to undertake research in early childhood settings, firstly from the Ministry of Education and then the principal of early childhood settings. There were no formal ethics guidelines, protocols, or processes discussed in relation to obtaining informed consent from children’s parents in KSA. Researchers who discussed informed consent from parents and children when conducting research on children were guided by their experience in the United States or the United Kingdom. This was the major reason behind choosing post-colonialism as a conceptual frame for the study. The point being stressed is that there is no harm in importing academic and research practices from the West as long as they do not contradict major religious and cultural practices— something that goes in line with Islam’s encouragement of gaining knowledge. Post-colonial theory supports a way to navigate western concepts of informed consent with KSA’s social and historical beliefs and practices. The study concludes by stressing the necessity of adopting the informed consent procedure in research conducted on children in KSA. The nature and details of this informed consent can be appropriated to fit the social and cultural realties of KSA. It is also recommended that further research be done in this field.
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ItemThere are many Indias: depictions of Indian-ness, epiphanies and moments of transformative exhilaration in recent literature for young adults published in India( 2012)The study ‘There are many Indias: Depictions of Indian-ness, epiphanies and moments of transformative exhilaration in recent literature for young adults published in India ’ takes its impetus from the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority’s (ACARA) ‘The Australian Curriculum’ for English (2012), which stipulates as one of its aims the emphasis of Australia’s ‘links to Asia’ (p.3). As an experienced and practising teacher of English and Literature within the secondary classroom in Melbourne, Australia with an interest in Indian culture and literature, I wanted to explore beyond the Asian texts booklisted by the Asia Education Foundation (2011) for use in the English classroom. Curiosity, amongst other factors, led me to India. It is in bookshops and schools in India where I discovered that there are many more texts, delightful, powerful often confronting texts, written in English and evoking a deep sense of Indian culture, that we teachers of English in Australia were aware of. This thesis analyses a selection of YAL novels written in English and published in India recently. It explores the depiction of Indian-ness within the experience and realm of childhood, against a distinctively Indian backdrop. In an appropriation of Hollindale's concept of childness, the term Indian-ness is adopted, addressing the multilayered nature of Indian experience whilst exposing attitudinal shifts in both the depiction of the child/youth protagonist and societal perceptions of the child/youth as reader. Furthermore, this thesis examines Hollindale’s concept of epiphanies and moments of transformative exhilaration as they manifest in the selected YAL works. Their subsequent implications from within the text (in terms of the protagonist) and beyond the text (in terms of reader response) are also explored. This study analyses the significance of epiphanies and moments of transformative exhilaration in relation to perceptions of society and the world of the young adult and how literature offers another way of seeing and being in the world. Thus the expansive potential of literature to empower and transform the individual is examined. Finally, this study asserts that these factors act as a unifying element and allow for a richness of interpretation which extends and further embellishes the scope of possibility in one’s perception of life, their vision for the future and their perception of the quality of Indian-ness and its many manifestations. Hollindale’s concept of epiphanies and moments of transformative exhilaration serves to illustrate the common humanity that the selected YAL texts expose the reader to, whilst simultaneously suggesting the universality of the reading experience.
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ItemThe dilemmas of junior school science at Caby High School: societal expectations, school structures, student experiences and teacher accounts( 2012)Public claims about the “failure” of science teaching have a 100 year history, which is almost as long as science has existed as a subject in schools. These claims which have evolved to proclamations of a social “crisis” in the post war period have been based in various iterative assertions about the failure of school science to meet its assumed social function to induct young people into a modern scientific structural-economic or functional world view and hence to reproduce a technical class in society. Public discussions of the broader cultural value of science education and scientific humanism, in the education of the person and citizen have been rare. This may be interpreted as a response to the essentially subversive nature of scientific knowledge or the significance of the technical training function that secondary science education is required to perform. Science teaching has been institutionalised as value free, and the skills of science teaching defined in terms of practical epistemologies in various scientific domains. Studies of teachers’ habits of action, of interpretation, of belief and validatory belief have been rare, particularly juxtaposed to the experiences of their students in their classes. Studies of life in science classrooms have attended to teachers or students, rarely both and more rarely even the school as the unit of analysis. Such studies have been small in scale and very poorly funded compared to the numerous formal enquiries into declining enrolments in senior pre-professional subjects in secondary schools. It is a history of social enquiry that seems to be reproduced in each period at the point where the imperfection of the writers’ memory of their experiences in science classrooms meets the past inadequacies of documentation of practice. The current small investigation takes its rise not from an interest in the so called facts about falling enrolments in senior science subjects or to establish a new theory of cause and effect, but from an urge to put together in a new way what everyone knows is there in science classes in the accounts of students and teachers, but not noticed. At Caby High School, an urban, multicultural secondary school, seeking to improve student participation and achievement in secondary education, my three collaborating science teachers and I were not looking for new facts but to better understand what is in plain view to them and their students in their everyday experience in junior science education. In that sense my considerations in this study were not scientific or hypothetical ones, to advance a kind of theory. I have not sought explanations of the supposed “failure” of science teaching in terms of what students fail to accomplish, expect or experience but rather to document what the students’ experiences and expectations are of science classes and how the teachers responded, not directly to the students’ expectations, but in terms of balancing both the social order to which the teachers are retrospectively accountable and the constitutive order in the classroom which requires mutual attention and cooperation. Through the teachers’ dramaturgical interpretation of their day to day practice my brief analyses are aimed at improved understanding of teacher agency in relation to the dilemmas of general science teaching.
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ItemMulticultural and diversity education in the globalised classroom in Australia( 2012)Australia is no longer an “isolated backwater” island floating around the Asia-Pacific region. It has become a country of great importance as a multicultural hub that continues to flourish in a time of social, cultural, and population growth. With this changing environment the needs of its people, in particular its children, have also changed. As multicultural awareness begins to expand and borders cease to define the cultural differences of those around us, the needs of the learners in school are also in a state of flux. This paper tracks the evolution of multicultural and diversity education policies in Australia through seven key documents: these are The National Policy on Languages (Lo Bianco, 1987), the Asian Studies Council Report – Asian Studies Council (1988), National Agenda for Multicultural Australia (Commonwealth of Australia, 1989), Adelaide Declaration (1999), Melbourne Declaration (2008), Blueprint for Education and Early Childhood Development (2008) and Education for Global and Multicultural Citizenship: A Strategy for Victorian Government Schools 2009-2013 (DEECD, 2009). It concludes with implications and impacts of this history and these documents and addresses the need for continued teacher preparation and instruction through recommendation new initiatives.
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ItemTuning in to teens: a qualitative study of a program targeting parents' emotional awareness and relationship skills( 2012)This qualitative study explored the impact of the Tuning in to Teens group parenting program; an intervention targeting emotion socialisation and teaching Emotion Coaching with the aim of improving relationships between parents and their pre‐adolescent children. The six‐session program was delivered in a community setting to parents of grade six children to assist with their transition to adolescence. Twelve parents were interviewed before and after attending the Tuning in to Teens program about their Meta-Emotion Philosophy or their attitudes and beliefs about emotions, and their relationship with their teen. The impact of the skills taught in the program, as well as parents’ views on the group experience and the structure and delivery of sessions, were also investigated in the 2nd interview. Findings from the study suggested that the parents had gained an increased awareness, acceptance and understanding of emotion in themselves and their adolescents and a greater capacity to empathize and discuss emotional issues with them. The parents reported being more able to sit with and manage strong emotions. They were less likely to hide their feelings and more able to model positive emotion regulation skills. They reported less conflict between themselves and their teens and households that were calmer. All parents described improvements in their relationships with their teens, feeling closer and more connected to them. Parents also identified that specific activities and information offered in the program had been instrumental in facilitating positive changes for them and their families. Activities that assisted in developing emotional awareness, empathy, management of strong emotions and Mindfulness or an ability to relax and respond in the moment, were considered particularly useful. Group processes such as being involved in a safe and accepting learning environment, having their experience validated and normalised and having access to experienced and empathic facilitators were nominated as important factors in enhancing their parenting skills.
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ItemA community-led bilingual school in action: the Deutsche Schule Melbourne (DSM)( 2012)This research is a case study of the Deutsche Schule Melbourne – A German English Bilingual School (DSM). Located five kilometres from the Melbourne CBD in North Fitzroy, the DSM was established as an independent school in 2008. A unique feature of the DSM is that the school has not yet appointed a principal. This study investigated the founding of this school and asked, “What led to the creation of the DSM and how has the school been developed and sustained since then?” The scope of this research also included two minor questions involving the success of the school to date and the future needs and directions of the school. It describes the creation of this new bilingual school and examines the key factors in its formation and development. Data were gathered through documents and semi-structured, one-to-one and group interviews which comprised a selection of teachers and parents, as well as current and former Board members of the DSM. The case study revealed that the idea for the DSM came from within the German-Australian community who wanted to establish a German-speaking school in Melbourne which would also become a focal point for their community. By drawing and building on support from within that same community, the school was formed. Two distinct phases in the school’s creation were identified and described: The Founding Phase and The Established Phase. Each phase contained a number of clearly defined developmental milestones. In both phases, members from the school community and the wider German-Australian community led the creation and development of the school, making it a community-led school. Key factors found to be essential to the formation of the DSM were: a clear vision; a distributed leadership model; a distinctive marketing orientation; high levels of community support; a collaborative, democratic decision-making process; bilingual/bicultural focus; and, high levels of commitment and persistence. Further analysis revealed strong similarities to Kotter’s theory of change management process in the way the school was created and developed. A comparison of the leadership demonstrated by the DSM community and the Victorian model of Successful Principalship which was part of the International Successful School Principalship Project also showed that the DSM was successfully led by its community. This case study provides insight into new school formation, school leadership, bilingual education and community involvement in schools, and will be of interest to policy makers, researchers and those involved in schools.
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ItemA learning community in teacher education: from behaviour management to cultural work( 2012)This study explores understandings of pre-service teachers who participated in an informal learning community. The learning community formed the basis of this case study. As the professional practice component of their teacher education program progressed, the learning community became an intervention in the development of the participants’ professional understandings about what it means to be a teacher who is also a cultural worker (Freire, 1998). Although the capacity to cater to the needs of diverse learners is promoted in the Australian education system, monocultural, exclusionary teaching practices persist (Churchill & Keddie, 2011). The current study highlights the essential role of democratic learning communities in teacher education to provide sustained, collaborative opportunities for pre-service teachers to construct understandings of how to foster productive and inclusive classroom cultures that meet the needs of Australia’s increasingly diverse and global student populations. Data in this qualitative case study were thematically analysed. Analysis revealed the importance of re-examining the cultural work of teachers through a cosmopolitan lens and for the integration of learning communities linked to professional practice as essential, non-assessable components in teacher education. The contribution of this study is that despite moves by teacher education programs to respond to the needs of contemporary classrooms, diversity remains poorly understood and enacted.
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ItemStudents learn best when assessed for learning( 2012)Perceptions related to student learning have altered. Independent learning has become the focus, encouraging today’s learners to think critically, laterally and creatively. The change is inevitable, but how do we monitor and record such changes? Crucial to the advancement in education and its pedagogy, is the understanding that all learning is dependent on a number of factors, the most important being the willingness of the student to learn and the practices of the classroom teacher. An important element of any research conducted in an attempt to understand the phenomenon of classroom practice and learning is observation. For this research, a two-month study was undertaken, using a case study class from an inner city private boy’s school. Lessons were observed and videotaped in order to provide the researcher with an authentic view of what went on in the classroom. The key research questions were: 1. How do the students and the teacher perceive and act out their roles within a classroom, attempting to develop learner awareness? 2. How does assessment feedback manifest within the classroom learning dynamic and contribute to student learning? 3. Can an extended ethnographic observation of a one semester-length class contribute to knowledge about teaching, learning and formative assessment? Assessment for learning is a recommended element in teaching, given that the intention of any practitioner is to enhance student learning. It is difficult to know if the intended learning is taking place in any given classroom. We can assume that students are learning if the output of information meets the expectation of the teacher in concurrence with the teaching (input). The assessment undertaken should identify the level of student understanding and learning however; this depends on the individual teacher and their objectives as an educator. Some learning cannot be seen. The ability to think critically or understand concepts is not easily measured or monitored. In order to identify such ambiguous learning, various forms of analysis must take place. Participatory observation although passive, provides an opportunity to evaluate the relationship and dynamics, which exist between teacher and student. Different strategies were used to enhance student learning by the subject teacher, imparting his own philosophies on teaching and placing importance on the use of criteria sheets and note taking. Whilst the information gathered in the classroom was used to meet curriculum and reporting requirements, the ultimate intention of this teacher in his lessons was to ensure that the students took responsibility for their own learning, hence assisting them in meeting their own goals. The results of this study were reported as interpretations of the data, which emerged from the classroom lessons observed. The findings focused on the relationship between the teacher, students and learning. The value in videotaping classes was established and is recommended for use in the reflection process. The opportunity to discuss and share ideas, emanating from the classroom with colleagues in a casual and supportive manner is encouraged. Feedback is an essential component of learning. The purpose of this study is to build on current research in the area of formative assessment, improve classroom practice and revisit the intended purpose of formative assessment.