Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Theses

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    From court to college: the institutionalisation of judicial education during its first decade in Victoria, 2005–2015
    Mann, Trischa ( 2018)
    The direction of movement in legal education generally has been away from the apprenticeship model and informal, practice-based learning. The jury, case-based reasoning with room for judicial discretion, and the apprenticeship system have been three great strengths of the common law system. But judicial discretion in general has been steadily reduced by legislation, and control of judicial discretion in sentencing was strongly linked to the perceived need for judicial education. And while the virtues of apprenticeship and mentoring are being rediscovered in academia, both law and legal education have become increasingly standardised and institutionalized. Opportunities for informal, observational and supervised learning, the cornerstones of the apprenticeship model, are correspondingly diminished. The change began with the profession’s handing over of its gatekeeper role to universities (degrees in place of articles), and continued in the transition from voluntary to mandatory continuing education in the profession in 2004, with quantitative measures, record-keeping and attendance requirements, and domination of the process by the Law Institute and the Leo Cussen Institute, the chief providers of continuing legal education. Pre-admission Articles gave way to practical training courses, which then became graduate diplomas in legal practice. Bar mentorship at first included, then became increasingly reliant on, a formal Bar Readers’ course and increasingly complex Reading Regulations, and finally a Bar entrance exam. The impetus towards formalised education continued with the introduction of programmed education for judges, again with a published curriculum and quantitative attendance benchmarks for ‘education’ that is in reality ‘training’ on a corporate model consisting largely of programmed events. This case study covers the first decade of judicial education in Victoria. It focuses on judicial education for Supreme Court judges in the context of the broader field of legal education, tracing its progress between 2005 and 2015. A snapshot of the situation not long after its introduction is provided by original research data gathered in 2008, when members of the Bar were relatively unaware of the program for judges and the offerings were meagre. The evolution of judicial education since that point provides additional background and foundation for research which should now be undertaken: assessment of judicial education the curriculum and the program of judicial education after ten years.
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    Young adults and post-school training opportunities in the Frankston-Mornington Peninsula region of Victoria, Australia
    Brown, Justin Patrick ( 2017)
    Youth unemployment in Australia has been described as a source of ‘capability deprivation’ (Henry, 2014). Since the late 1980s, a recurring set of policies and programs have been implemented in Australia to tackle youth unemployment by lifting rates of participation in school-based and post-school vocational education and training (VET). More recently, the introduction of policy reforms to marketise the Victorian training system has transformed the composition of VET providers in the training system and, by extension, the types and quality of courses being offered. The impact of these reforms has been documented in the media and through government reviews (e.g. Mackenzie & Coulson, 2015; Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, 2015; Mitchell, 2012). However, very little is understood about the impact of these reforms on VET ‘opportunities’ for small populations of young learners at the local level. Even less is understood from the perspective of the learners themselves. To address this gap, my research contributes a critical examination of post-school training opportunities available to young adults in the small local area of the Frankston-Mornington Peninsula region in Victoria, Australia. This particular region has a youth unemployment rate that is five percentage points higher than the greater Melbourne and Victorian state averages (ABS, 2015a). Drawing on the conceptual framework of the capabilities approach (CA) pioneered by economist Amartya Sen (1980/1984/1985/1987/1992/1993) and extended by philosopher Martha Nussbaum (1992/1995/2000/2002/2003), my study conducts a sequential explanatory mixed-method design (Creswell et al., 2003) set within critical realist (CR) ontology (Bhaskar, 1979/1975). I bring together the philosophical approach of CR and the conceptual framework of the CA to better understand how the problem is constructed. By applying these alternative lenses, I propose approaches to understanding the problem in a more meaningful way. The capabilities approach is structured around three core concepts: capabilities (what people are able to be or to do); functionings (what people, having capabilities, are doing); and agency (the ability to choose the functionings). My research builds on this framework to identify the extent of alignment between available opportunities (as espoused in policy) and accessible opportunities (as stated by young people). Through an assessment of administrative, survey and primary qualitative data, my research produces new insights into the misalignment between (1) loosely-defined policy rhetoric advocating ‘choice’ and ‘opportunity’ in training ‘markets’ and (2) the real training opportunities accessible to young adults in a disadvantaged location. It is envisaged that the findings will have application for policy makers and practitioners in similarly disadvantaged contexts, particularly where there are limited post-school opportunities available to young people. For researchers, there are lessons arising for applying the capabilities approach to the context of young people and VET in disadvantaged locations.
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    Uneasy lies the head : the repositioning of heads of English in independent schools in Victoria in the age of new learning technologies
    Watkinson, Alan Redmayne ( 2004)
    This study explores the discursive practice of six Heads of English in Independent Schools in Victoria during a period of major cultural change. This change has been associated with huge public investment in New Learning Technologies and shifting perceptions and expectations of cultural agency in communities of practice such as English Departments in Schools. In this social milieu tensions exist between the societal rhetoric of school management and marketing of the efficacy of NLTs as educational realities and discursive practices at a departmental level, embodying and embedding academic values and attainments. In their conversations with the author, the Heads of English reveal much about themselves and the nature and distribution of their duties and responsibilities within the local moral order of their schools and with their individual communities of practice. A model is developed of the dual praxis of the Heads of the Heads of English, mediated by autobiography and historically available cultural resources in a community of practice. As agents concerned to both maintain and transform their local culture of English teaching, and consequently the whole school culture, the Heads of English account for themselves as responding to their own `sense of place' in their own community of practice, but also the `structure of feeling' of the period by which their achievements and standing are known. This study of the persons of the English co-ordinators draws upon both Positioning Theory and critical realism to reveal the dynamic nature of both their identity and the social organization of English teaching in schools.
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    Cultural mission of the sisters of St Joseph
    Farquer, Aileen M. ( 2004)
    This research study examines the history of Sacred Heart Catholic School, Newport, Victoria, established within the tradition and application of the educational philosophy of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, founded by Mary MacKillop in 1866. The work includes three distinct areas of research which are: 1. The MacKillop System of Education in its early stages. 2. The growth of multicultural theory and practice in Australia and in Catholicism. 3. The story of one school, Sacred Heart Catholic School, Newport, situated in the western suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria. These areas connect up and illuminate one another throughout the thesis, evoking a sense of school life as it was experienced by members of the school community at different stages of the school's development and within a variety of social and educational contexts. The research appreciates the integral vitality of the founding spirit manifest in Mary MacKillop, especially as it was reflected in the Sisters appointed to the school at Newport as administrators and as teachers. The study examines the long-term adaptation of the mission of the Church, namely the evangelisation of cultures in the local community of Newport throughout its hundred years history. Focus is brought to bear on the interpretation of Mary MacKillop's philosophy of education in its first fifty years and the changes perceived during the later period of massive and fundamental transformation in the ethnic composition of the local community as well as the broader Church and State. By reconstructing the past this study provides a reference point for those involved in education by shedding light on the present and raising questions for the future.
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    Policy, theory and practice in early childhood curriculum design and implementation: a study of one Australian state: Victoria
    REYNOLDS, BRONWYN ( 2003)
    This thesis seeks to identify how and who informs the state-funded preschool curriculum program for four-year-old children in Victoria, Australia. The study took place over a one year period, and involved interviewing nine officials, eight academics and twenty seven preschool teachers regarding their beliefs and espoused theories about the preschool curriculum in relation to policy, theory and practice. Twelve of the teachers interviewed were invited to participate further in the study, so that the relationship between their espoused theories and practices could be determined. This part of the study involved field visits and this provided a means of collecting data through direct observation using the Framework of Perspectives and Descriptions of Practice (Raban et aI., 2003a, 2003b), a tool designed by the Early Childhood Consortium at The University of Melbourne. Other means of data collection included informal discussions with teachers, and collecting and analysing different documents. The paradigm for this research study was predominantly qualitative but combined some quantitative data. This approach was incorporated into the design of the study because the nature of the investigation demanded a holistic and naturalistic approach. Multiple sources of data collection also helped to improve the reliability and validity of the findings, by converging lines of enquiry. This comprehensive approach meant that appropriate comparisons and contrasts could be made using numerical data, and this required the inclusion of some quantitative techniques. The findings of this study reveal a strong need for curriculum guidelines to be reconceptualised to reflect current understandings about young children's learning and development. The need for greater depth in a curriculum framework was evident, not only in relation to how children learn but regarding content and guidelines for appropriate goals for children. These views were also consistent with beliefs and understandings about the two existing curriculum documents for four-year-old children in funded preschool programs, in the year before compulsory schooling. These two documents are the Early Childhood Curriculum Guidelines 3 - 5 Year Olds (Department of Health and Community Services, 1991), and the Preschool Quality Assessment Checklist (Department of Human Services, 1996b). The overwhelming consensus was that both documents had little or no influence on preschool practices in Victoria. This study also found that stakeholders held similar views and understandings about the importance for preschool teachers to know about curriculum theories and pedagogical practices. However, the findings revealed that 83% of preschool teachers' practices were not congruent with their espoused theories. This study concludes by addressing further research issues and recommendations for policy-makers, academics and preschool teachers, in order to foster high quality preschool programs for children in Victoria.
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    The married woman, the teaching profession and the state in Victoria, 1872-1956
    Dwyer, Donna ( 2002)
    This thesis is a study of married women's teaching labour in the Victorian Education Department. It looks at the rise to power of married women teachers, the teaching matriarchs, in the 1850s and 1860s in early colonial Victoria when married women teachers were valued for the moral propriety their presence brought to the teaching of female pupils. In 1872 the newly created Victorian Education Department would herald a new regime and the findings of the Rogers Templeton Commission spell doom for married women teachers. The thesis traces their expulsion from the service under the 1889 Public Service Act implementing the marriage bar. The labyrinthine legislation that followed the passing of the Public Service Act 1889 defies adequate explanation but the outcome was clear. For the next sixty-seven years the bar would remain in place, condemning the 'needy' married woman teacher to life as an itinerant temporary teacher at the mercy of the Department. The irony was that this sometimes took place under' liberal' administrators renowned for their reformist policies. When married women teachers returned in considerable numbers during the Second World War, they were supported in their claim for reinstatement by women unionists in the Victorian Teachers' Union (VTU). In the 1950s married women temporary teachers, members of the VTU, took up the fight, forming the Temporary Teachers' Club (TTC) to press home their claims. The TTC's 'cooperative campaign' would eventually force the Department to pass the Teaching Service (Married Women) Act, repealing the marriage bar in 1956. The thesis takes gender as a central category of analysis and draws on recent perspectives in feminist history on women teachers' lives. Through case studies and interviews it explores the educational bureaucracy's reshaping of the teaching service in the Victorian Education Department.
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    Pathways to work: a micro-study of young people through post-compulsory education to work
    Trembath, Frances Antoinette ( 2009)
    Social background and gender have long been recognised as factors which shape the quality of post-school outcomes. The children of professional families and girls have stayed longer in school and achieved better than the children of non-professional families and boys. Governments, both in Australia and around the world, use policy to counter this persistent problem. The focus of these policies on preventing school dropout presumes that the longer a young person is engaged in school the better the post-school outcome. This is still not always the case. One such policy was the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) which, amongst other things, increased the breadth of post-compulsory school curriculum to address the needs of an increasingly diverse student body and act as a conductor of relevant learning through these years. The aim of this work is threefold - A better understanding of both the pathways, including curriculum, taken through school taken by each of the members of the Class of ’95 and the work outcomes of the school experience, including academic achievement, of each of them. - A better understanding of the connection, if any, of these pathways and outcome with individual family background and gender. - An appraisal of the contribution of the school in neutralising social origin as a factor determining the quality of post-school outcomes. In order to explore the quality of post-school outcomes this research follows the pathways through secondary school to work of one hundred and sixty-three young people who commenced their secondary school journey in Year 7 together at the same college. A longitudinal case study, this work explores the journey of these students for thirteen years by which time all were established in work. The secondary education of this cohort was provided by a non-selective co-educational Catholic Regional College located in the outer urban fringe of Melbourne. The cohort was socially diverse and dominated by children from the families of non-professional white-collar workers. This dominance increased over time since students from this social background were the least likely to drop-out of school for work. It was found that social background permeated all aspects of school experience from Year 7 to Year 12 academic achievement to the decision to stay on in school and choice of subjects in the post-compulsory secondary school years. The latter influenced competitiveness for university and TAFE course places. All in the cohort who stayed in school passed the VCE. But competitiveness for university and TAFE course places was again aligned on social and gender grounds which favoured the traditional users of education who studied the traditional VCE. This meant that school policy of providing a broad based curriculum aimed at meeting needs of the very diverse student population was in tension with the limiting policy of university course selectors.
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    Sex work and study: students, identities and work in the 21st century
    Lantz, Sarah ( 2003)
    In order to secure a well-paid position in the Australian labour force there has been increasing pressure on young people to extend their educational qualifications. As a result, the last decade has witnessed a 66% increase in the number of students attending Higher Education institutions (ABS, 2000:3). This rise in participation has however not been matched by an increase to public funding. Instead, the government has bound the education sector more closely to the economy, and to principles of economic rationalism and free market liberalism. Students (and their families) now bear the brunt of increased fees; a lowering of the income threshold for the repayment of HECS; and a significant decrease in government income support. In order to ease this burden, a number of studies have found that students are supplementing their low incomes through the informal economy and illegal sources of income (White, 1995; White, Amuir, Harris & McDonnell, 1997; Wilson & Lincoln, 1992, Williamson, 1996; MacDonald, 1998; Finnegan, 1998). This includes donating blood in return for lunch and bone marrow for cash (Steene, 1998:25); working in medical experiments (Cummins, 1998); cash-in-hand work; and illegal sources such as drug dealing, shoplifting, and organised stealing rings (White, Anuir, Harris & McDonnell, 1997:57). A number of studies have also found that students are working in the sex industry, ‘... to support themselves, their children and their own post-secondary studies' (Pyett, Haste, & Snow, 1995:3; Weiner, 1996; Perkins, 1991; Snow, 1999). This thesis explores the findings of a participatory action research project conducted into the lives of forty young women, all post-secondary education students, working in the Melbourne sex industry. Twenty of these students, are from Melbourne University, and have participated in a three-year longitudinal study spanning from 1999 to 2002. The other twenty participants all attend a range of higher education institutions in Melbourne. The research examines the factors influencing participants to enter the sex industry; how they are mediated by social, educational, economic, and environmental factors; and how they are responding, as agentic subjects, to this rapidly changing environment. By focusing on the ‘lived experiences’ of these young women, the research seeks to actively disrupt conventional thinking that shape our understanding of contemporary youth. It suggests that traditional frameworks that mark and measure youth 'success' are not particularly useful in discussing young people’s lives today. The notion of the ‘mainstream’ is, in particular, called into question. The paradox that emerges in this research is that participants engage in practices which seem to deviate from the 'mainstream' in order to, in effect, fit into the 'mainstream', It is also clear that a false distinction between the ‘mainstream’ and those ‘outside the mainstream’ creates an arbitrary division which glosses over the social and personal problems that all young people face in common. Similarly, the research calls into question traditional linear models of youth, where youth is viewed as a structured transition from dependence to independence, school to work and from adolescence to adulthood (defined in terms of marriage, family and lifetime career) similar to that of their parents generation (Wyn & Dwyer, 2001:87). Instead the research suggests that participants lives are characterised by mixed life patterns (Wyn and Dwyer, 2001), divergent biographies, contingent and pragmatic plans. These are young women who live their lives in terms of an ongoing production of self (Davies & Harre, 1990), marked by fragmented and multiple identities. This multidimensionality is constructed as participants’ inhabit numerous sites, take on different responsibilities and are involved in a range of different relationships. The taking up of multiple identities however, often results in tensions which surface in participants’ everyday lives. These tensions are explored in detail in this research. In practice, this has meant examining the discursive tension between human agency and social structure. Participants are understood to be constrained by the resources (material, symbolic and cultural) they have at their disposal, and determinants of social processes within their own lives (Short, 1992:181).
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    Second class theatre: theatre for young people in Victoria 1966-2000
    Butler, John Patrick ( 2003)
    The thesis examines the formation of theatre companies servicing schools and the community in Victoria. It traces the evolution of amateur children's theatre to the formation of full-time professional theatre companies. Many of these were called Theatre In Education (TIE) or Theatre For Young People (TYP) companies. The lack of historical research in this field contrasts with the number of journals and research articles on the growth and development of Drama In Education. There exists no comprehensive history of these theatre companies and their contribution to the development of Australian Theatre for Young People. The research in this thesis involves the use of primary research using audio recordings of oral histories, archival materials, company reports and supporting secondary research materials. The thesis sees the parallel growth of theatre and drama in education as integral to the operations and survival of these companies. Drama and Theatre Studies arc now part of the Victorian Certificate of Education for students in Years 11 and 12. Subsidy provided by State and Federal arts bodies has fostered and maintained a small number of companies in Victoria over a thirty two year period. Self sufficient, unfunded companies co-exist with subsidised companies by focusing on the Curriculum Standards Framework. Subsidised and non subsidised companies vary in the range and quality of theatre presented in schools and other venues. The research findings support the thesis that Theatre for Young People in Victoria has been undervalued in terms of its contribution to Victoria's theatre history. It has been treated as second class or less important than adult theatre. Funding bodies and theatre companies have placed an over emphasis on cultivating young people as the audiences of the future. Victorian Education policies have failed to regulate standards for artists and adequately support them in schools. This has resulted in a high turnover of artists and companies servicing schools.
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    Primary teachers and the Information and Communications Technology domain: figuring worlds, identities, knowledge and practices
    Vacirca, Elvira Maria ( 2010)
    This study investigates the development of teacher professional practice in the context of government education policy in Victoria (Australia) that aims, through the education of its youth, to shape a successful economy that capitalises on information and communications technology (ICT). Specifically, the study examines how selected primary teachers from an ICT network conceptualise, articulate and develop a body of knowledge to teach and implement the Information and Communications Technology domain of the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (Victorian Government, 2005) curriculum framework. Through a constructivist grounded theory approach, the study investigates the practices of six female teachers in three government primary schools as they implement changes to curriculum in response to government reforms and local expectations. The three primary schools are within close proximity of each other in a residential growth corridor on the fringes of metropolitan Melbourne, and serve a diverse and multicultural community. Innovation with ICT is seen as necessary for addressing the challenges that arise from the social and economic context of the research sites, and is integral to improvement plans in each of these schools. The participating teachers are regarded as leaders with ICT within their schools and their efforts are deemed intrinsic to their school’s plan. Rich descriptive data of these six teachers and how they construct their worlds is utilised to develop a theory of how teachers learn to teach with ICT, with a view to understanding how they continue to learn in the context of these changes. Change efforts often focus on the importance of knowledge building to empower professionals for new directions, however while a critical component, knowledge is not the only factor in increasing capability. The study highlights that learning to teach the ICT domain is more complex than developing content knowledge, pedagogical repertoire and skills in the use of ICT. It involves networked learning where values, beliefs, vision, practice and identities are made and remade. In making changes, teachers consider new ideas in light of the old, and through the lens of their core values and beliefs, they figure a technologically rich world of vast imaginings that they can embody. They author identities to assert themselves in relation to imposed positioning and prior conceptualisations. Through changed activity related to ICT, they redefine their conception of teaching and inhabit it with their activity and energy.