Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Theses
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ItemChallenge, support, and everydayness: Measuring and creating a classroom climate for growth for high capacity students( 2023-07)The learning gains of high achieving (capacity) students may be marred by their embedded classroom climate. Using a psychosocial methodology, a latent construct, classroom climate for growth for high capacity students, was proposed and hypothesised to consist of four dimensions: School Support, Teacher Expertise, Classroom Personality – Teacher and Classroom Personality-Students. A 60-item questionnaire was developed to measure the latent construct, the responses being descriptions of behaviours and scaled using IRT. A 9-level taxonomy of support was developed. The questionnaire was completed by 52 Victorian primary and secondary teachers in Stage 1 and by an additional 63 teachers in Stage 2. An evaluation of the psychometric properties of the questionnaire showed the instrument’s properties to be acceptable. Progressions for each dimension were developed. Multilevel modelling of the responses of 36 of the teachers with student growth (n=504 for numeracy, n = 583 for reading comprehension) showed negligible effects of the model on student achievement, possibly due to the small sample size but also suggesting the model may need to be adjusted. Teacher interviews (n = 7) uncovered a 6-step process implemented by teachers to cater for their high achieving students. It was also found that, with typically six levels of student achievement in each classroom, teacher flexibility around differentiated instruction and creating a classroom environment where multiple learning activities occurring simultaneously is seen as normal were key to challenging and supporting high achieving students.
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ItemGlobal Childhoods in the Asian Century: Connection scholarly habitus, education experiences, and everyday lifeworlds of children in Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore( 2023-08)A majority of countries in East Asia continue to rate highly in their average achievement scores for Year 4 students in the international high-stakes assessments tests; Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). This study explores the notion that while numerous scholars have attempted to isolate systematic variables to determine why East Asian students continue to outperform other nations, no definite conclusions have been determined as to the factors that most impact performance. This research was supported by the Global Childhoods Australian Research Council (ARC) project scholarship as part of the larger research project on children’s lifeworlds in three global cities (Melbourne, Hong Kong, and Singapore). This study was designed to investigate the lifeworlds of 10-year-old children who were in Year 4 of their schooling and to view some aspects of their everyday lives through a scholarly habitus lens (Watkins & Noble, 2013). The research adopted the perspective that children’s academic outcomes in any educational system are influenced by a wide range of factors that occur in children’s lifeworlds; including, but not limited to, schooling experiences, parental influences, extra-curricular activities, interactions with peers, a sense of belonging and community factors. The research was designed so it could be responsive to, and informed by, events and interactions of the children, as they occurred in their lifeworlds. The initial design included opportunities to collect data and to work with children in their schools, homes, and communities, but had to be abandoned due to the pandemic. The new design incorporated alternative data collection methods adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic context. The data included an analysis of TIMSS and PIRLS context questionnaires which provided important insights alongside the students’ achievement scores across the three locations. A range of exhibits were chosen for analysis that linked to children’s lifeworlds experiences including the scholarly habitus. Secondly, learning dialogues, which compromised a series of four questions, two on Monday and another two on Friday, were used to encourage students to reflect on their time at school and were completed by the children in the final month of their Year 4 schooling. The original plan was to do this in the first half of the school year, but the children did not return to school on a regular basis until late 2021, and no researchers were allowed into schools until mid-way in the following year. In analysing the learning dialogues, the research drew on the concept of scholarly habitus (Watkins & Noble, 2013) to explore what children’s attitudes, and dispositions are toward their learning, how they approach school and how they feel they are performing at school. An innovative study of children’s lifeworld reflections was also undertaken with seven children, to delve deeply into their out of school lifeworlds, including extra-curricular activities, and how they spent their leisure time. The lifeworld reflections were an opportunity to talk with students either in person or via Zoom, to discuss their daily routines and what they liked doing. Throughout this study, the data collected enabled an exploration of dimensions of scholarly habitus to consider practices that might help to contribute to students’ academic engagement in school. A consideration of children’s lifeworlds provides further insight into the diversity of lifeworld experiences between and within locations, including making connections with the local contexts, such as early childhood education and care and parent responses to education reform in the locations. In addition to confirming some potential factors in children’s lifeworlds that might influence their academic success, the data further highlights the attitudes, dispositions, success, community, and a sense of belonging that children experience within their educational systems. The results of this study have important implications for gaining deeper insights into and understanding about why students in different locations perform to varying degrees in high-stake assessments, and how these might connect not only with their location, but their extra-curricular activities, school engagement, and scholarly habitus.
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ItemWhen catch-up education outperforms the mainstream: An ethnographic exploration of the contribution of a catch-up primary school to learning, agency and wellbeing of children living in a Bangladeshi slum( 2023-07)The BRAC NGO in Bangladesh provides catch-up education for the most disadvantaged children who have either never enrolled in or have dropped out of primary school. These schools often outperform mainstream government schools in terms of learning achievement, attendance and completion rates, and cost effectiveness. While a plethora of quantitative research examines school effects on children’s learning and wellbeing, it is less common for children’s perspectives to be included in school effectiveness studies. This is particularly so in the Bangladeshi context. This study employs ethnographic methods to explore how children living in an urban slum in Bangladesh experience the influence of their BRAC primary school on their learning, agency, and wellbeing. It positions the researcher as a ‘sensible hearer’ of children as ‘epistemic agents’ (Fricker, 2007) and employs the Capability Approach of Amartya Sen (2009) as both normative and explanatory theories (Robeyns, 2017) for interpreting the data gathered from children. Guided by the importance placed within the Capability Approach on freedoms of the people themselves, this study used a range of participatory methods to invite children’s contributions, including drawing and storytelling, photovoice, and in-depth interviews. In this research, capability is characterised as children’s ‘freedom’ to gain educational opportunities, and ‘agency’ as their capacity for engaging in actions towards achieving the educational and wellbeing goals of their school. Because the relationship between school and family plays a critical role in children’s learning, actions, and wellbeing, children were invited to give detailed accounts of their daily activities in both home and school spaces. Analysis of the data about children’s use of school opportunities and their actions in both settings can reveal how and to what extent the children perceive that the school influences their capacity for action/agency, their capabilities, and their associated achievements. Analysis of the data identified children’s perceptions that their school did contribute to their capability, agency, and educational wellbeing in four significant ways. First, the agency and capability-facilitating space provided by the school enabled them to exercise their freedom to achieve various cognitive and social skills and to aspire to future goals in ways that enhanced their own wellbeing and that of their families. Second, the agency-unlocking environment of the school empowered children to interrupt negative social (gendered) norms and practices, to imagine alternatives, and to pursue multiple creative and unconventional pathways, with positive effects on their happiness, pride, and self-worth. Third, while damaging gendered norms and practices permeated every aspect of children’s lives at home, in school, and in the slum community, the gender-neutral pathways initiated by the school pedagogy and facilitated by the teacher assisted children to re-assess and re-negotiate gendered norms, and to initiate their own gender justice. Finally, the link between children’s home and school activities and their learning, agency, and wellbeing was not only complex, situated, and dynamic but also very much entangled with sociocultural and gender norms, values, and practices, all embedded in the relationships between family, peers, and community. An understanding of disadvantaged children’s agency, wellbeing, and education therefore requires circumstantial and contextual explanations through which nuances in their lived experiences can be examined, including the reasons behind the many differences in aspects of their lives. This study contributes to fields of knowledge investigating child poverty, alternative education, agency, and wellbeing in three distinct ways. First, in relation to alternative education for children living in poverty, the alternative catch-up school was found to be an active and empowering space which enhanced children’s capabilities, agency, and wellbeing. Second, the use of the explanatory and normative frameworks offered within the Capability Approach helped create a holistic and nuanced evaluative space through which children’s freedoms through capabilities and agency could be explored. Finally, the choice to use multiple participatory methods for positioning children as epistemic agents of knowledge contributed to epistemic justice for them as ‘speakers of knowledge’ while providing access to insights about the multiple ways in which the approaches used in their school contributed to their agency, learning, and wellbeing.
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ItemUnveiling Country and Improving Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: A Traditional Owner Approach( 2023-06)In Australia, teacher education—and the current teaching profession—is underprepared to adequately teach Indigenous knowledge. Additionally, The National Curriculum and the Australian Professional Teaching Standards offer little guidance and assurance into how this knowledge should be embedded in schools, curriculum and pedagogical practice. This research seeks to increase our understanding of how cultural responsiveness and the embedding of Indigenous knowledges of non-Indigenous educators can be improved through participation in Learning on Country professional development sessions in an urban setting. The professional development sessions were developed with the assistance of Wurundjeri Traditional Owners, who shared their insights into what Country means to them and how teachers can embed these understandings in their classrooms. As teachers progressed through the project, they shared where they believe the opportunities lie to embed Indigenous knowledge in their classrooms and teaching practices despite limited opportunities and mandates from school leadership. Data collection occurred by forming a Traditional Owners focus group, compiling field notes from professional development sites, and asking teachers to participate in three separate interviews. Using a critical lens of land-based and culturally responsive pedagogy shows that professional development guided by Traditional Owners can improve the way non-Indigenous teachers embed Indigenous knowledge into their work. I argue that respectfully embedding Indigenous knowledge and increasing cultural responsiveness in classrooms is reliant on teachers’ willingness to regularly reflect on how they contribute to the maintenance of settler colonialism. The research makes an original contribution to Indigenous education in secondary schools by focusing on professional development being delivered by Traditional Owners on Country, which deepens teachers’ understanding of the relationship between Eurocentric interpretations of land and its contributions to colonialism. The research demonstrates that Learning on Country initiatives are possible in urbanised areas and that they can disrupt settler colonialism’s ‘logic of elimination’; such initiatives facilitate teacher participation in opportunities that increase the visibility of Indigenous histories, languages and cultures.
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ItemComputer Algebra Systems in a Year 11 Mathematics Class: Students’ Use, Attitudes, and Factors Perceived to Influence Use( 2021-06)A computer algebra system (CAS) has the potential to automate many mathematical routines. The use of CAS in mathematics has been shown to support the development of understanding (e.g., Bawatneh, 2012; Heid, 1988). However, students need to be supported to develop a positive attitude towards CAS and learn how and when it can be used before they can benefit from the opportunities presented by CAS (Pierce & Stacey, 2002). While existing research has examined students’ attitudes and CAS use, little research has explored how these aspects change as students gain experience. Given that the students in this study were expected to use CAS for learning mathematics and in assessments, there is a motivation to understand how their CAS use can be supported. This thesis reports the investigation of one class of Year 11 mathematics students’ (n=13) CAS use, attitudes towards CAS, and factors perceived to influence CAS use and how these changed over approximately one school year. The context for this study was a Year 11 Mathematical Methods class in Victoria, Australia. Technology is to be incorporated into the teaching, learning, and assessment of Mathematical Methods, and there are several reasons why CAS was the predominant technology in this subject. The study aims to provide a new understanding that will support teachers who are working to support student CAS use in the mathematics classroom. When learning mathematics with CAS, students need to develop the capacity to make informed choices about when and how to use CAS so that they can benefit from the affordances presented by CAS. Understanding when students choose to use CAS, and the factors influencing students’ use, will provide new understanding to support teachers in developing targeted teaching interventions that may support students to use CAS. This study investigated CAS use in four topics studied over 8 months in one school year. Actual CAS use was determined by analysing student worksheets and CAS screenshots. Further uses of CAS were identified from thematic analysis of interviews that were conducted with nine students four times throughout the study. The findings of this study show that students made different choices about the use of CAS or pen-and-paper (P&P) based on whether problems were within or outside their anticipated P&P facility and the mathematical features of problems. Thematic analysis of interview data found that students used CAS to complete problems quickly, to supplement their P&P skills, and to check their answers. Negative attitudes towards CAS can form a barrier to the development of CAS use. However, few studies have used a cohort study methodology to determine how students’ attitudes change as they gain experience with CAS. This study contributes by comparing students’ attitudes towards CAS approximately one year apart to identify changes resulting from learning mathematics with CAS. This study defined attitudes towards CAS as consisting of beliefs about CAS and emotions when working with CAS. Data were collected via a questionnaire at the start and the end of the year. Students had a range of attitudes towards CAS at the start and the end of the study, but more students had a positive attitude towards CAS at the end than at the start. Students held (and experienced) a range of beliefs (and emotions); some contributed to a positive attitude, while others contributed to a negative one. Understanding why students do or do not use CAS may support teachers in developing targeted interventions to support CAS use. While existing studies have identified factors that influence CAS use, none have explored how these change as students gain experience with CAS. Analysis of questionnaire data showed that students perceived a range of beliefs and emotions to influence their CAS use and that their perceptions were unlikely to change. Additional factors were identified from the analysis of interview data. Overall, students perceived a greater range of factors to influence their CAS use at the end of the study than at the start. This study aimed to provide insights to assist teachers in supporting students learning mathematics with CAS. The findings presented in this study provide a detailed understanding of how and why students use CAS and students’ attitudes towards CAS. These understandings will be beneficial in informing teaching interventions to support CAS use and thus, student learning.
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ItemLeadership for Recontextualisation - Leading the Implementation and Development of a Recontextualising Dialogue School: A Case Study of a 21st-Century Catholic Primary School( 2023-07)Inspired by the Enhancing Catholic School Identity (ECSI) research, a joint project between the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria, Australia, this study explored the key factors that influence leading the implementation and development of a recontextualising dialogue school (RDS) in a Catholic primary school in Melbourne, Australia. An RDS is a school that promotes dialogue with contemporary culture and the Catholic faith tradition, cognisant of and embracing diversity. Learners are invited to critically reflect on their personal worldviews and their religious or philosophical positions in dialogue with the Catholic faith tradition as the key dialogue partner. This dialogue seeks to enhance the understandings of all. In this research, learners identified a depth of understanding of their own faith through the dialogue, recognising new layers of meaning and understandings of faith today. The school studied is a Catholic primary school in Melbourne’s outer-northern growth corridor. Reflecting the religious and cultural diversity of the municipality, the school comprises Roman and Eastern Rite Catholic, Orthodox and other Christian, and non-Christian families. This research was shaped by an interpretive research paradigm. The single-site case study was undertaken by the principal, as researcher, and as such employed the methods of ethnography, auto ethnography, and transpersonal research. Data were collected from 17 individual interviews comprising teachers, teacher leaders, the parish priest, and the principal, as well as four group interviews comprising two student groups and two parent groups. A thematic analysis was employed to gain insights into the participants’ experiences. Data were also gleaned from school ECSI data, school review reports, annual reports, school newsletters, and the principal’s presentation notes from internal and external presentations. Research data analysis resulted in the generation of four major themes reflecting the key contributing factors for the implementation and development of the RDS. These themes are Learning Community Culture, Transformation and Transformative Practices, Discovering and Nurturing the Hermeneutical Space, and Hospitality and Dialogue—A View Through Multiple Lenses. Each theme is explored, providing insights into the experiences of participants in this RDS. For teachers, teacher leaders, and the principal, this revealed both personal and professional growth. Personal growth reflected renewed understandings of faith and, for some, changes in life views and relationships. Professional growth saw greater capacity to facilitate dialogue through enacting a number of pedagogical approaches seen holistically in the school context and viewed through a hermeneutical lens. For students, it reflected a desire to engage in dialogue with others at a deeper level, seeking meaning and understanding of the thinking of the other. An understanding of religious traditions and beliefs in dialogue with the Catholic faith was enhanced.
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ItemExploring Primary School Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Developing Multiplicative Thinking in Students( 2023-05)The importance of multiplicative thinking in supporting students’ learning of key topics and success in further mathematics is widely and clearly stated in mathematics education literature. It forms the basis for understanding key topics such as proportions, patterns, fractions, measurement, rates, percentages, statistical thinking, the development of algebraic thinking, and understanding complex issues in society. However, there is empirical evidence of low student performance in this area. It is emphasised in mathematics education literature that teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is critical in determining students’ learning attainment. Our knowledge about primary school teachers’ PCK for developing students’ multiplicative thinking is limited. This study employed an embedded mixed methods approach to investigate primary school teachers’ PCK for developing multiplicative thinking in students. The study participants (n = 62) were primary school teachers in Australia at different levels of teaching experience from preservice teachers to novice, experienced, and expert teachers. A single questionnaire was used to yield quantitative and qualitative data for this study, with qualitative data playing a supportive secondary role to the quantitative data. The investigation in this research study focused on the following three key teaching stages for developing multiplicative thinking: transitional stage (from additive to multiplicative thinking), multiplicative stage (multiplication and division word problems), and proportional reasoning stage. This research used Zhang and Stephens’s (2013) model of teacher capacity as the framework for instrument design and data analysis. Data analysis based on this model showed that mathematical knowledge, knowledge of students’ thinking, curriculum knowledge, and design of instruction are essential components of teachers’ PCK for multiplicative thinking. However, while all four components of the teacher capacity model are important contributors to teachers’ PCK for multiplicative thinking, design of instruction was the most important factor contributing to variability in teachers’ scores, followed by knowledge of students’ thinking, then curriculum knowledge. Mathematical knowledge was the least powerful predictor of teachers’ PCK for multiplicative thinking. This study also found that teaching experience influenced teachers’ PCK for multiplicative thinking across the three key teaching stages. For instance, both experienced and expert teachers demonstrated a higher PCK for multiplicative thinking at the transitional teaching stage compared to preservice and novice teachers. Higher PCK was evident among the novice and preservice teachers at the multiplicative and proportional reasoning stages compared to expert and experienced teachers. The results, however, did show limited knowledge among teachers about the connection between multiplicative thinking and other key important topics in mathematics such as fractions, probability, statistics, and measurement. There was no evidence of any association between the location of schools (either regional or metropolitan) and teachers’ PCK for multiplicative thinking. This study complements the current efforts to enhance teachers’ capacity to support students’ learning around multiplicative thinking and highlights specific areas requiring attention in teacher professional development and teacher preparation programs. These are, for instance, an emphasis on classroom pedagogies to help facilitate students’ transition from additive to multiplicative thinking, a focus on making the connections between multiplicative thinking and other key topics in mathematics more explicit to teachers, and ways to enhance teachers’ knowledge of students’ thinking and design of instruction around multiplicative thinking.
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ItemYoga Pathways to Wellbeing: Exploring Conceptualisations, Profiles and Mechanisms in Regular Ashtanga Yoga Practitioners( 2023-05)Yoga is an embodied practice founded in philosophical frameworks intended for the evolution of different dimensions of human existence and optimal functioning. With a solid body of research demonstrating its positive impact on health and wellbeing, recent studies mostly using quantitative methods have shifted their focus to understand practitioners’ characteristics and the mechanisms yielding positive benefits. This thesis adds to these studies by exploring the pathways of yoga towards wellbeing by understanding how an international sample of regular practitioners within the Ashtanga Yoga (AY) tradition conceptualise wellbeing and yoga, examining differences and similarities in their wellbeing and yoga profiles, and understanding the mechanisms of yoga from their lived experience of a developing a long-term practice. Guided by a social constructivist epistemology and interweaving Reflexive Thematic Analysis and Cluster Analysis, this predominately qualitative mixed-methods research comprises five studies using data from an online survey and semi-structured interviews to gain in-depth analysis of yoga, wellbeing, and their inter-relationships. While the first three studies were designed to understand how regular AY practitioners conceptualised wellbeing and yoga, the two subsequent studies focused on understanding the characteristics of practitioners and the pathways that their yoga practice paved towards wellbeing. Wellbeing was conceptualised as embodied, multidimensional, integrated, holistic, and dynamic, being experienced and perceived by the self as a whole. Wellbeing outcomes experienced in one dimension of the individual (i.e., physical, emotional, psychological, social, spiritual) were seen as permeating into other dimensions and in dynamic interaction with one another. Yoga was conceptualised as an evolving system interweaving philosophical and practical components, and in close relation to health and wellbeing. Yoga was represented as a formal practice, as a lifestyle and a way of seeing the world, which could be further used as a path for self-inquiry and for spiritual development. The pathways of yoga towards wellbeing were varied across regular AY practitioners. While practitioners shared some common characteristics, including high levels of perceived health and wellbeing, mindfulness, compassion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness, they also varied in their engagement with the AY practice. The pathways towards wellbeing involved different levels of engagement with different components of the AY system (e.g., breathing, philosophical framework), in addition to experiencing increased autonomy and awareness through the AY method (i.e., way of teaching/learning), and the integration of mechanisms across neurophysiological, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal domains. These findings suggest that AY can cater to different individuals, providing autonomy in ways of engaging with the practice over time, activating various pathways leading to wellbeing outcomes involving neurophysiological, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal elements and processes. Two conceptual models emerged from this thesis: a conceptual model of human functioning and wellbeing, and a conceptual model of the pathways of AY towards wellbeing. Together, these models articulate how a regular yoga practice can permeate into every dimension of human existence, yielding wellbeing benefits within the self and in relation to others. The ability to navigate through different levels of individual functioning, (i.e., from coping, to personal growth, to transcendence) in an embodied and regulated manner can ultimately translate into a sense of integrated self, which is attuned to oneself, to others, and to the world around them. Overall, the thesis underscores the relevance of incorporating an embodied, holistic, transdisciplinary, and systems lens into wellbeing research, theory, and practice, as well as moving from purely cognitive wellbeing interventions to embodied and holistic ongoing practices and lifestyles that can lead to sustained intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal wellbeing outcomes.
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ItemAn exclusive school and an inclusive rule: an Indian elite school's mediations of an equity mandate( 2023-06)This study investigated the ways in which social justice is understood and enacted at an elite school in India subsequent to the implementation of national legislation intended to increase equity and social reform through education. It focuses on Ripon College, a historically elite, independent school, and Section 12(1)(c) of India’s Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE). This provision requires private schools to allocate 25% of their entry-level enrolment places to disadvantaged children and educate them, fee-free, until they are 14 years old. As an elite school is likely to be profoundly affected by such an equity agenda, a rich research opportunity presented. The research literature revealed considerable debate over the efficacy of the provision and its impact on the education system. But it also showed a scarcity of scholarly work on the reception of this legislation at elite schools. Hence, I embarked on a study of the ways in which Ripon College received and rearticulated this equity provision. The research design incorporated two waves of immersive fieldwork, two years apart, analysis of select historical documents relating to education in India and an archived data set drawn from an earlier study of Ripon during the RTE’s initial years (but which focused on other matters) on which I worked. Insights from the fieldwork, and the provision itself, pointed me toward Jacques Derrida’s conceptualisation of hospitality and Iris Marion Young’s theories of responsibility for social in/justice. Young’s and Derrida’s concepts assisted me in understanding the meaning and minutiae of enactments of in/hospitality at this elite school and in seeing how they manifested in various ways and for various purposes. Overall, I argue there is a stubborn asynchrony between the provision’s social reform agenda and this elite school’s enduring commitment to maintaining injustice. In support of this argument, the study showed: how constructions of equity and social justice strategies in education in India have changed with changing historical times; that Section 12(1)(c) can be understood as a mechanism aimed towards social justice at both individual and structural levels; that Ripon’s patterns of exclusivity are so ingrained in the school’s culture that they effectively obstruct the provision’s social justice aims; that the responsibility to address social in/justice was, repeatedly, overtly and covertly rejected at Ripon College; and that the concepts of hospitality and responsibility, together, offer powerful conceptual resources for investigating elite schooling and equity agendas. This study contributes new insights and perspectives to the fields of both elite schooling, and equity policy studies. In particular,it extends scholarship on elite schools and equity, and on elite schools in the Global South. It offers a close examination of how policy processes are enacted, managed and mediated in a specific schooling context, in interaction with the weight of their historical and contemporary circumstances. Finally, the study provides new analytic resources which can facilitate social justice analyses in these and other fields, and it outlines some implications of its contributions for future research in the sociology of education.
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ItemEvolution and resilience of academics in Higher Education ecosystems in Australia( 2023-05)For several decades, higher education has been facing rapid change and successive challenges. This is in part due to global and Australian economic trends which are also experiencing accelerating change and challenges from social-cultural, technological, geopolitical tensions and aggression, climate and environmental factors and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. Higher education is seen as key in finding solutions to this diverse array of challenges. First, through creating employable, adaptable, and entrepreneurial graduates who become a key part of the future workforce with the promise to create a more equitable society. Second, through research which produces knowledge to provide the basis for improvements and even solutions to global and Australian challenges. Questions, however, have been raised this century about the extent to which higher education can continue to deliver on the promise of quality outcomes from education and research in the current strained environment and inflexible academic workforce. Many posit for higher education to succeed alternative academic workforce models and changes to the academic role will need to be made. Such alternative workforce models include increased diversity of professional staff to better match activities and differentiation of academic roles which are better fit for purpose in either education or research, the former with an emphasis on teaching and the latter including greater emphasis on academics with entrepreneurial and commercialisation skills. In many higher education institutions, it is now common to have academic roles differentiating into three distinct categories; teaching or education-focused, teaching and research integration (also known as the 40:40:20 traditional academic role) and research focused with education-focused roles growing most rapidly. This growth has not necessarily happened in a systematic and coherent manner. Instead change to academic roles can be seen as largely unplanned local decisions caused by institutional pressures and system wide drivers. Expectations are that these roles will deliver on the promise of educational quality and the student experience and enable higher education to serve communities more ably, but this is not necessarily a given. There are many unknowns about the long-term impact of differentiated academic roles, especially those teaching and education-focused academic roles where disciplinary research has been removed. The theoretical framework of resilience, adaptive capacity and cycles and psychological development and self-determination were powerful heuristics to investigate the responses of academics to these roles. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data collected through analysis and interviews with academics mostly in science, three main findings emerged. First, teaching and education-focused roles have been increasing most rapidly. Second, academics in these roles experienced a range of consequences as a result of moving from disciplinary research to teaching. Third, while all academics undergo adaptive cycles in response to stress, education-focused academics and women were perhaps most vulnerable to stress and loss from the ecosystem, even after their heroic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While theory predicts greater academic role diversity will increase resilience and adaptive capacity, this is not necessarily a given without changes to the higher education ecosystem in Australia in which academics operate.