Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemAn investigation of Australian OECD Pisa trend results( 2009)This thesis investigates a range of equating-related issues for the Australian data collected under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The implications for Australia's reported trend results are considered in detail. Following the exploration of differential item functioning (DIE) and dimensionality of the Australian PISA scales, a single scale, over all three PISA cycles (namely 2000, 2003 and 2006) for each major PISA domain (namely Reading, Mathematics and Science) was constructed. Previous published PISA results have employed a common reporting scale across all cycles for Reading, however scales common to all cycles have not been utilised for Mathematics or Science. Two further classes of equating issues are considered in this paper. First four different approaches to equating were used - two different treatments of missing data as well as two different item sets (all items and link items only) were estimated for each scale - and for each approach the implications for trends were discussed. Second, the equating approaches studied here used item parameters which are set at the country level rather than at the international level, thus allowing an examination of the impact of country DIF on the Australian trend results. Australian PISA trends were first explored in terms of means and standard deviations, and then in terms of the overall shape of the estimated performance distribution. This was achieved through the use of Q-Q (Quantile-Quantile) plots. Where applicable, comparisons were made with published trends. While results showed many similarities between models and published results, some differences were found. Australian PISA Reading means were statistically significantly lower when treating all omitted (or missing) responses as not administered at the item calibration stage compared to treating embedded omitted responses as incorrect and trailing omitted responses as not administered in PISA cycles 2003 and 2006. Between 2003 and 2006, published Australian Mathematics means were significantly lower than those found in this study. The published results showed a decline in means between 2003 and 2006, whereas the results reported here showed no change in the Australian means between these two cycles. Published Australian Reading distributions reported a decline from 2000 to 2003 and 2003 to 2006 in the number of Australian students located at the top end of the performance distribution. Between cycles 2000 and 2003 there was a decline from around the 70th percentile onwards and between cycles 2003 and 2006, the decline was even more severe; the higher the ability group the higher the decline from around the 20th percentile onwards. These estimated changes in the distribution shape were not replicated here, where the Australian data is analysed independently of the international data. The reanalysis undertaken here found a decline between the first two PISA cycles, but remarkably in the bottom 15 per cent of the distribution only. Between cycles 2003 and 2006 an almost constant decline across the whole proficiency distribution was found and not a decline that was limited to the top end of the distribution. The reported results highlight some of the potentially important differences that can occur when different analysis methods are used.
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ItemA cross-age comparative investigation of students' attitudes towards computers as a tool to support learning in years 7-12 science classes( 2000)This thesis documents a cross-age comparative investigation of students' attitudes towards computers as a tool to support learning in Years 7 - 12 science classes. The study was set at the secondary school campus of an independent girls' school in Victoria. The secondary school is broken into three relatively autonomous groups, the Junior Secondary School (JSS), the Middle School (MS) and the Senior School (SS). Data was collected by a survey administered to 1215 students in Years 7 -12 science classes. Results of the survey were analysed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and post hoc Bonferonni analyses. This study aimed to investigate the ways computers are used in science classes. Word processing and the internet were the most common computer uses across the school. A comparison of students in JSS, MS and SS's preferred frequency of use of computers in science classes was undertaken. JSS students preferred to use their computers more frequently in science classes when compared to MS and SS students. An investigation of the uses of computers in science classes that students found beneficial to their learning of science concepts was undertaken and compared across the three school groups. Students' attitudes towards computers as tools to support learning in the science classroom was investigated. The majority of students in all school groups felt the computer was a beneficial support for learning when completing assignment work and was a beneficial tool for presentation. However, it depended on the number of years of computer experience in science classes as to whether students felt the computer was of benefit to their learning of theory or practical work. Aspects of computer use at school in general, that students liked or disliked was determined. The stage of the curriculum that students were currently in, was the major determinant for the students' attitudes towards the use of computers as a support for learning.
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ItemClassroom management of cooperative learning : a research study of two teaching strategies( 1996)This study sought to contribute to an understanding of the social context of instruction in science classes particularly to group organisation and dialogical processes. This study investigated how two role management strategies (Strategy 1 and Strategy 2) affected communication particularly Conceptualisation in all female, all-male and mixed gender groups in three parallel Year 8 science classes from one school. It also investigated the attitudes of the female and male students towards group work, the two role management strategies and gender. There were two treatment classes and one control class. Each treatment class was observed over an eight week period under each role management treatment. For the eight week period, the control class was managed in a way considered more typical of a traditional science class (No Role Strategy). A randomly selected all-female, all-male and mixed gender group from each class was tested after each treatment phase. The test problem was a practical problem requiring each group to devise and carry out a solution for the test problem. During the testing sessions each group was audio and video taped. The level of Conceptualisation was measured by coded transcriptions of group utterances during the problem solving task. At a time after the final testing session, students in the two treatment classes were administered a Student Group Work Questionnaire to determine their attitudes towards group work, the role management strategies and gender, and, to determine their behaviour in relation to each role management strategy. A statistically significant difference was found between Strategies (No Role Strategy, Strategy 1 and Strategy 2) for the frequency of Conceptualisation utterances. Further analysis revealed a statistically significant difference between No Role Strategy and Strategy 1, and, a significant difference between No Role Strategy and Strategy 2. No statistically significant difference was found between Strategy 1 and Strategy 2. No statistically significant difference was found between Gender groups (All-female, all-male and mixed gender groups) and Phases (Phase 1 and Phase 2) for the frequency of Conceptualisation utterances. Students who received instruction with the role management strategies tended to work better as a team than students who received instruction with only No Role Strategy.
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ItemThe things that remain : reflections on science education at Scots School Albury( 2008)This science curriculum study is sited on Scots School Albury and its predecessor, Albury Grammar School. This study began as a reprise to a curriculum study written by the author in 1948 and a survey in 2005-6 of Scots Alumni memories of their junior general science over fifty years. The survey analysed their perceptions of its purpose and impact relative to other subjects and to the overall education provided by the School. Because early in its history the school insistently saw itself as heir to the English Public School tradition the origins of the Scots tradition of science teaching were sought in 19'11 century English education when 'the Tradition' developed. This wider quest led to an enquiry about the place of science in 19th century English education which found points in common between the classical, liberal teaching of Thomas Arnold and the science-oriented teaching of headmasters at two notable schools, Queenwood College in the middle of the century and Oundle School at the end of the 19th century. The enquiry found that an early hunger for science knowledge manifested in the almost spontaneous rise of mechanics' institutes was later met by municipal technical institutes, and the adventure of the new subject of science in schools, despite a few brilliant exceptions, settled into the pre-professional training that has come to characterise school science. Early in the 20'h century in England, and later in Australia, a General Science movement emerged in protest at uninspired teaching and irrelevant programs for general education. In Australia, from the early writings of George Browne and Roy Stanhope, researchers and educators have pointed ways to get that early sense of adventure back into science teaching. The early science educators such as George Edmondson and Frederick Sanderson stressed methods of practice and application taking precedence before theory to maintain that sense of personal engagement. The things that remain are what reformers urged: strongly felt images that are of powerful but not remote abstractions. At the same time there is an impression of repeated waves of attempted reforms beating against but failing to breach the barriers of academic gloss.
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ItemTIMSS : a question of validity( 2000)The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the largest comparative study of its kind, was administered to approximately 500,000 students worldwide. In Australia, the results of this study are being used to compare our students and schools to other students and schools around the world. The results may also influence decisions about curriculum reform and allocation of educational funding within Australia. This thesis sets out to investigate the TIMSS test items for Population 2, with the objective of determining the degree of validity of these test items to Australian mathematics teachers and their students. By eliciting feedback from a sample of Australian mathematics teachers, their thoughts on the validity of the TIMSS test items were documented. This was achieved through a mail out questionnaire that included a representative sample of 32 TIMSS test items from population 2. Four review questions were developed to target teacher beliefs as to whether enough content had been taught to Australian students by the time TIMSS was administered, the validity of including such items in the TIMSS study, the usefulness of the TIMSS test items for ascertaining student competence, and student familiarity with the item styles used in TIMSS. The results from the questionnaire were used to establish the overall validity of the TIMSS test items to Australian Mathematics teachers and the students they teach. In total, 154 teachers, representing Government, Catholic and Independent schools, from around Australia replied to the questionnaire. The study found widespread variability in the type and amount of content taught by teachers to their Australian students. Consequently, differences in content validity of the TIMSS study were found to exist across Australia. These differences appeared to be more apparent between states and territories than between school sectors. Respondents also expressed concern about the general appearance and layout of the TIMSS test items. In particular, some of the language used in test items relating to Proportionality, appeared not to be used in Australian classrooms. In addition to this, teachers reported that the TIMSS test items were not particularly useful for ascertaining student competence. This casts doubt over the value of any inferences made from the results of TIMSS. Furthermore, this research found significant variability in student familiarity with the item formats used in the TIMSS study. Overall, students were found to be most familiar with the short answer format and least familiar with extended response and performance assessment formats. This is a particularly important result as the TIMSS designers placed great emphasis on the use of extended response and performance assessment formats.
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ItemPhenomenal robotics! : so what are students' perceptions about the robotics experience?( 2006)Robotics as a learning experience is becoming very popular in Australian schools and is being offered to students at primary and secondary level. It is considered to be a valuable integrated unit particularly in the areas of science and mathematics but also provides an ideal environment for students to engage and learn via constructionist principles. But what do young students perceive to gain from participating in a robotics experience? This investigation looks at the lived experience of doing robotics through the eyes of a group of students who were of mixed ages but had participated in the robotics' experience when they were in grade six as 12 year olds. The students were interviewed regarding the effect of the robotics experience on their learning during and after the experience ended. Students reflected on the phenomenon and made strong connections with the social value of the program. Their emphasis was not so much on academic skills gained but on the sense of self and its relationship to the group. The robotics experience provided an environment that allowed the students to feel valued and motivated to strive for goals, without realising they were gaining valuable information and skills as well as enjoying themselves.
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ItemThe Public understanding of techno-science in a rural community: culture & agency( 2003)This is an ontological inquiry into the public understanding of techno-science, held by adult members of a local school community. In this light, it seeks to establish a platform from which to reassess conventional assumptions about the curriculum and cultural agency of science teaching. The inquiry is rooted in dissatisfaction with a current transformational model of science teaching, which is defined solely in terms of the transfer of ideational possessions to the students in science classes. Both teachers and students are agents in their own and others' symbolic life worlds. Their identities are constructed in a dual praxis, a dialogue between self as product and self as process in every day conversation in established communities. The study draws on the work of Coulter on Dialogical Research, Harre on the analysis of social episodes, Latour, Rechwitz & Schatzki on the place of the material in theories of culture, of Harvey, Ratner on Agency and Community . Through dialogues with persons in a rural community served by the author's school, the thesis explores the public understanding of techno-science within the community and considers whose interests the school education in science best serves. The centrality of "community" is claimed in characterising a model of embodied cultural change over centrally imposed change. It is proposed that change is a "two-way" interaction where the individual "agent" both socialises & is socialised by the cultural structures that exist, and where the "artefact" is the "knot of reasoning" at the centre of personal identity formation "actor-networks" (ANT - Latour). It suggests that society empowers or does not empower - through the processes of recognising, and allocating control of empowering artefacts to persons as agents working within a social & cultural framework of responsibilities and duties. The thesis offers a new transformational model of social action, which suggests renewed attention in research & practice should be given to ontologies of the mind and person of the agent and the mediating function of "community" in the future restructuring of the public education of science if it is to serve its broader function in cultural transformation within the small rural community of Erehwyna, or anywhere.
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ItemResearching teacher agency in primary school science: a discursive psychological approach( 2004)This ontological study is concerned with analyses of the problem of the scientific reform of the primary school curriculum. It was conducted at a time when a solution was sought through State mandated curriculum and standards specification and primary teacher accountability. The case study developed as an interactive ethnography (Woods 1996) written from the point of view of the facilitator of a whole school science curriculum project. The focus of the enquiry emerged as an exploration of social episodes in the life of two experienced Early Years teachers engaged in the yearlong project. Discursive psychology became the theoretical framework for the analysis of the primary teachers' professional identity formation in their professional work=place conversations with the author. Pronominal coding has been used to mark the teachers' psychological location in their storylines of the implementation of enquiry-based science education in their classes. In the teachers' accounts they simultaneously position themselves in their acts and actions and in the local moral order of duties and responsibilities. A significant disparity is shown to exist between the ontologies of the primary teachers' and research accounts, which present mental state analyses of teachers' lack of confidence or reluctance to teach science related to limited scientific understanding. The. study offers a schematic model of social action that theorizes human agency as, developing and functioning within the interactional nexus of local community settings. The community operates in the lives of these teachers not as a latent, abstract concept; instead it gives ideological differences and teachers' understandings of themselves significance in everyday educational practices.