Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemGesture-based approaches to language learning(University of Melbourne, 2012)
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ItemAims and experience in outdoor education(University of Melbourne, 2010)
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ItemPre-service education of the Australian Visual Communication Design teacher: Perceptions and practices of teacher educators( 2019)Each year in the Australian state of Victoria, approximately 12,000 senior secondary school students enrol in the subject of Visual Communication Design, its curriculum unique to Victorian schools and liberating design from its popular pairings with Visual Arts or Technology studies. However, as a learning area offered under the umbrella of The Arts, Visual Communication Design is predominantly delivered by Visual Arts specialists, who may or may not have been exposed to understandings of design in their previous studies or teacher training. In fact, only one Victorian tertiary institution specifically prepares teachers of Visual Communication Design, with all others embedding design pedagogical training alongside Visual Arts in pre-service teacher education programs. Of interest then, is the nature and extent of Victorian design teacher training when merged with art teacher education, and most significantly, the role of the teacher educator in shaping conceptions of best practice design pedagogy. This thesis, therefore, investigates how teacher educators’ perceptions of design, design pedagogy and the subject of Visual Communication Design have shaped Visual Arts and Design teacher education programs, and the extent to which teacher candidates are prepared for the enactment of Visual Communication Design curriculum. As a qualitative, cross-case analysis, it examines the lived experiences and personal ideologies of three teacher educators working in Victorian institutions, their insights gathered during hour-long semi-structured interviews, and illuminating the teacher educator’s significant influence on the nature of pre-service design teacher training. Despite sharing an appreciation for design as a distinct formal language, each of the teacher educators interviewed for this study reject the notion of explicitly cultivating design pedagogical content knowledge amongst teacher candidates, choosing instead to facilitate student-led inquiry into perceived areas of need, and nurture general teaching attributes of benefit across Arts domains. Their stories also reveal multifarious understandings of design and Visual Communication Design curriculum, problematic assumptions of subject content knowledge pre-existing amongst student cohorts, and a tendency to downplay rather than deconstruct art and design’s distinct methodologies. In response, I argue that limited exposure to design pedagogical content knowledge in Visual Arts and Design teacher education compromises teacher candidates’ capacity to evolve ‘classroom ready’ understandings of Visual Communication Design pedagogy and curriculum. I also call for recognition in teacher education of art and design’s discrete methodologies, for debate about both their fusion and division in secondary education, and for teacher educators to model informed notions of design and design pedagogy whilst building a culture of practice for future teachers of Visual Communication Design. This study draws from ideas of effective design instruction in higher education, cognitive apprenticeship theory, Shulman’s concepts of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) and signature pedagogies, Dewey’s laboratory model of teacher training and Schon’s theory of reflective practice. The adoption of complexity theory as its framework acknowledges not only the dynamic conditions that govern how and what teacher educators teach, but also the complexity characterising design’s exchange with art both in and beyond Victorian teacher education.
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ItemSimple rules for place-based approaches addressing disadvantage( 2019)The nature of many social, economic and environmental problems facing Australia and the world are increasingly described as ‘wicked’ or complex in that they are difficult to grasp, unclear how to tackle and often seem insurmountable. Disadvantage is one such problem; there is disagreement about how to define it, it has innumerable and tangled causes, and it refuses to go away. Despite many and varied efforts to address disadvantage in Australia’s most vulnerable communities, the size and significance of the issue has barely shifted during the past 15 years or so (Vinson & Rawsthorne, 2015). Disadvantage can profoundly affect individuals, families, communities and society, and is unacceptable in a country with such sustained economic prosperity as Australia. There is a need to find more effective ways to overcome disadvantage and address this injustice. Place-based approaches are broadly understood to be collaborative, flexible and multi-faceted responses employed within a particular ‘place’ or geographic location to tackle wide-ranging complex issues. They exist in many different forms and show promise as a response to disadvantage and other complex problems. However, the abundance of place-based frameworks, theories and terminology has created a lack of clarity about the core pieces of evidence and central characteristics of place-based approaches for practice, policy and research. This thesis sought to leverage from the diversity of place-based approaches and explore evidence associated with the different forms. The study aimed to distil the key characteristics of promising place-based approaches and generate actionable and evidence-informed guidelines or ‘simple rules’ that can guide the design, development and evaluation of place- based approaches addressing disadvantage in Australia. The study’s literature review found wide-ranging definitions, conceptual frameworks and terminology associated with place-based approaches. The study also identified several points of convergence, including characteristics commonly associated with promising place-based approaches. The results indicate four central and interconnected practices underpin a promising place-based design: collaboration—relate, connect and collaborate across sectors; community engagement—engage and empower community; holistic thinking—think and act holistically; and adaptation—take an adaptive and responsive approach. The study generated a set of evidence-informed simple rules to support the implementation of each of these practices. While the study’s results should be interpreted with caution, this research reiterates the overwhelming need for a consensus framework for place-based approaches that helps to accelerate and advance actionable knowledge.
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ItemWilliam Grant Broughton and Anglican Schools in Colonial New South Wales: 1829-1880( 2019)In this thesis it will be demonstrated that the first Anglican bishop in Australia, William Grant Broughton, developed and maintained a distinctive system of Anglican parochial schools. These schools were successful in providing an education that differed to the other schools in operation in colonial New South Wales at that time in that they that were exclusively Anglican in religious outlook. Broughton’s time in Australia (1829-1853) was a period when liberal ideas about education and the relationship between religion and the state came to the fore. Broughton will be shown to be a defender of the old order these areas. The old order consisted of a single established church that was alone responsible for educating the young. It will be argued that he resisted these new liberal ideas while at the same time developing a distinct set of schools that promoted his Anglican and conservative vision. After his death, the schools lived on for three decades but were unable to survive the arrival of free and secular public education. The thesis explores an aspect of Australian educational history that has not been thoroughly researched. Much work has been done on the conflict of religion and secularism in the history of Australian education, but there has been little attention on what was distinctive about denominational schools in colonial Australia. Additionally, the extent to which they succeeded in providing an education that was different to what was proposed by those in favour of secular and non-denominational systems of education has not been thoroughly explored. This thesis fills this gap by seeking to understand Broughton’s ideas on education (through study of his speeches) and by examining the materials and methods in Anglican schools of the period. In order to understand the demise of the schools in question, a range of publications from the decades after Broughton’s death have been drawn upon to ascertain why the schools did not prove to be an enduring feature of the Australian educational landscape.
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ItemDescribing teacher and school engagement with a professional learning intervention: A mixed-methods study( 2019)The use of school-based randomised controlled trials (RCTs) testing the effectiveness of learning/educational interventions has increased significantly over the last ten years. It is well recognised that implementation and process evaluations (IPE) alongside RCTs play a crucial complementary role by enhancing contextual understanding of trial outcomes and capturing educator experiences otherwise absent from RCT results. This explanatory sequential mixed-methods study describes how teachers and schools in the Classroom Promotion of Oral Language (CPOL) RCT engaged with a two-year professional learning (PL) intervention. Drawing on Berkel and colleagues’ (2011) integrated theoretical model of program implementation, teacher and school engagement was investigated and described using measures of participant responsiveness previously shown to be associated with positive program outcomes. These included attendance at face-to-face PL days, utilisation of opportunities for active participation including follow-up support and the online component, completion of between-unit-activities and program satisfaction. Mixed-methods findings demonstrated great variability in engagement with each intervention component. Leadership co-participation was found to significantly facilitate teacher engagement with all intervention components, and conversely a major barrier when absent. Additionally, teachers from schools that were participating in multiple projects/interventions at once found it difficult to give CPOL the time and effort required for sustained engagement. The use of multiple measures and time points showed that despite satisfaction increasing over time, participants found continued engagement into the second year challenging without strong leadership support.
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ItemToward a land-based curriculum: An Australian Indigenous discourse analysis( 2019)Since its conception, Australia’s national education curriculum has heeded little progress toward embedding Indigenous cultures and experiences as an essential foundation of learning for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students and educators. Historically, Australia’s education curriculum and its associated policy writers continue to promote biases of low expectations by primarily locating Indigenous students within a deficit framework. This thesis shares the findings of a research project focused on understanding how Indigenous cultures and perspectives are embedded in curriculum. The use of critical discourse analysis to explore historical and current curriculum literature reveals that the use and positionality of language have privileged ‘settler thought’ which marginalises and silences the perceived other (i.e. Indigenous). The research also examines Australian and Alaska approaches, using a critical discourse analysis to highlight the way in which Native Alaskan people are practicing their educational sovereignty. This examination includes understanding the way the Alaskan context has strengthened the quality of Native Alaskan education and the Indigenous content being taught in schools by embedding a Culturally responsive standards framework. In Australia, the accountability and quality of teaching Indigenous knowledges relies on teacher’s discretion of using the cross-curricula priorities. The findings of this research are presented within a sovereignty lens relating to article 14 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2008) which calls for local Indigenous control of education and pedagogy. Additionally, Foucault’s power/knowledge theory has been used to demonstrate how ‘settler colonial mandates’ remain a core tenet of Australia’s education system which promotes biases of low expectations by primarily locating Indigenous students within a deficit framework.
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ItemNarratives of the Intercultural Teacher: How teachers make meaning of an Intercultural Capabilities curriculum( 2019)UNESCO (2019) argues that in the current, turbulent and globalised landscape, intercultural dialogue has become more crucial than ever to promote and disseminate values, attitudes and behaviours among school students that are conducive to improved co-operation and dialogue among diverse peoples. In 2018, Victorian teachers were tasked for the first time with reporting on Intercultural Capability (ICC) within the curriculum, with many having little to no formal training in ICC curriculum or pedagogy. This study investigated how three teachers and early ICC innovators made meaning of the curriculum when teaching a middle year’s (7 – 10) secondary unit at schools in differing geographical locations in the state of Victoria. A narrative inquiry approach was engaged to analyse teachers’ interpretation of the ICC curriculum, the pedagogical decisions they made in the midst of teaching their respective units, and the perceived challenges they confronted in the intercultural (IC) classroom. Working with narrative data drawn from two semi-structured interviews with each teacher, undertaken before and after the teaching of a curriculum unit, I adopted the sequential planning theories of Clandinin and Connelly (1990) as an initial framework. This was supplemented with Aoki’s (2005) Deleuzian-inspired ‘curriculum-as-lived’ frame, to build an account of events and relational episodes in the IC classroom, and their impact on understandings of what it means to be an IC teacher. A strong theme in the teacher narratives was the development of professional and personal self-knowledge through a process of teachers reflecting upon their own cultural background and considering this as part of classroom activities with students. In addition, both the cultural composition of the classroom and associated views and values held by students impacted on how the teachers’ pedagogical approach evolved. The thesis contributed fresh perspectives on how the challenges of a new curriculum area are negotiated by teachers, including the processes involved in building their own professional knowledge as well as contextually appropriate pedagogical practices. It revealed a need for the provision of clearer and more detailed guidance to support IC pedagogy, specifically in reference to addressing the ethically dynamic and often contested nature of ICC curriculum in classrooms. Further, the issue of how teachers create safe spaces in which to challenge opinions brings into question the extent to which a teacher should or can insert their own beliefs into the classroom. Overall, this study of the teaching of the ICC curriculum revealed the need for a flexible, patient and reflexive approach in order to address the unpredictable ethical and pedagogical challenges that can emerge in the intercultural classroom.
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ItemStaff knowledge, experience and beliefs about mechanical restraint use on people with an intellectual disability: an investigation into the potential facilitators and barriers to implementation of mechanical restraint reduction in disability services( 2019)Introduction Mechanical restraint is used on people with an intellectual disability, commonly in response to behaviours of concern involving harm to self or others. These types of restraint not only have limited effect in changing behaviour, they can prevent a person’s engagement in activities and opportunities to build skills, adversely affect their health and well-being, and the well-being of staff using restrictive interventions. They can represent a breach of a person’s human rights and, in some jurisdictions, a breach of criminal law. Methods A systematic review of the literature regarding disability support staff views on the use of mechanical restraint unveiled two previous papers. Broadly, the papers suggested that staff feel negative emotions such as guilt and sadness towards the use of mechanical restraint. Subsequent to these limited findings, a two-phase study was undertaken. First, an on-line survey was used to establish an understanding of the knowledge and values of disability support staff in respect of the use of mechanical restraint on people with intellectual disabilities across Australian disability services. Secondly, a focus group consisting of experienced disability support staff discussed the main findings of the on-line survey and their perception of the barriers and facilitators to reducing the use of mechanical restraints. Results The survey highlighted, unexpectedly, there may be a positive emotional association for staff who use mechanical restraint. Moreover, the data showed that staff have mixed beliefs in whether restraint use could be eliminated. The focus group discussed topics regarding the practical implications of staff’s emotional responses and their understanding of behaviour theories. Conclusions Disability staffs’ views on the use on mechanical restraint may be both a barrier and facilitator to the reduction and elimination of its use. The positive emotional association to mechanical restraint may be a barrier for staff to initiate change in practice. However, the notion that staff may merely be following the guidance of families or professionals could be a facilitator to mechanical restraint reduction as staff may follow positive behaviour support plans confidently when developed by professionals. Regulation and staff development might provide some solutions for reducing the use of mechanical restraints in disability services. However, organisational culture and operational expectations expressed in agencies local policies and procedures are also factors that need to be addressed. Working with, and importantly, listening to front-line staff could be an important source of information when developing strategies to address issues of organisational culture, policy and procedure. It was also evident that family members and professionals can be persons of influence in the use of mechanical restraint, and strategies to work with these groups appear important.