Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemMaking connections from the classroom to professional context : using problem-based learning to enhance engineering education( 2000)Problem-based learning (PBL) is presented as an educational reform that is particularly relevant for professional education programs. This study investigated the use of PBL to enhance the quality of students' learning in Professional Skills, a first year engineering subject at Swinburne University of Technology. The major aims for Professional Skills are to develop students' communication skills and to provide them with an introduction to the engineering profession. PBL was selected because of the use of a professional context to demonstrate the relevance of learning and the approach to developing students' abilities for self-directed and life-long learning. PBL requires different understandings and approaches to teaching and learning than are typical of existing practices in engineering education. An action research method was used to guide the development of curriculum and teaching practices because of the role of action research in providing support for teachers to improve their educational understandings and practices. The study examines two action research cycles of curriculum development, teaching and learning during 1995. Qualitative research methods were used to investigate teachers' and students' experiences of teaching and learning to inform the progressive curriculum improvement and evaluation. The findings from the study provide insight into both the characteristics of PBL that enhance the quality of students' learning and strategies that contribute to an on-going process of supporting change and improvement in curriculum and teaching practices. Students identified four thematic issues that were central to their motivation and engagement in learning. These issues were: being able to see the relevance of their learning to their future careers, collaborative learning in class and their project teams, their opportunities for active involvement and input into learning decisions, and a supportive learning environment in which they received guidance and feedback on their progress. Teaching and learning in the PBL curriculum was a new and challenging experience for both engineering teachers and students. The collaborative action research process assisted teachers to develop the skills and confidence to utilise new approaches to teaching and learning. The relevance of these findings to achieving the cultural change advocated by the 1996 Review of Engineering Education (lEAust 1996) is examined.
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ItemOf secrets, sorrows, and shame: undergraduate nurses' experiences of death and dying( 2007)This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of undergraduate nursing students who cared for the dying and deceased whilst on clinical placement. To this point, studies on this phenomenon have focused on the experienced, qualified nurse. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the impacts of caring for the dying and deceased, on the student-nurse, and the implications for nursing education. The ten study participants were undergraduates enrolled in the Bachelor of Nursing program at a metropolitan-based university in Melbourne. The study of their experiences, from the perspectives of the student-nurses, was conducted using a semi-structured interview for data collection. Analysis of the data, using a Miles and Huberman (1994) style matrix, revealed four emergent themes: intensity of emotion; perceptions, growth and awareness; and opportunities. These themes were explored to yield results which established there were often profound, and sometimes disturbing, impacts of grief for both the student-nurse, the patient, and others. This study contributes to the This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of undergraduate nursing students who cared for the dying and deceased whilst on clinical placement. To this point, studies on this phenomenon have focused on the experienced, qualified nurse. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the impacts of caring for the dying and deceased, on the student-nurse, and the implications for nursing education.
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ItemSuccessful school leadership in Victoria: a case study of the principal of a government secondary school( 2005)This thesis reports the findings from a case study of a successful principal in a Victorian government secondary school. The subject of this case study is VF, the Principal of BW Secondary College a school that has demonstrated success on many fronts, with most attributed to the principal's leadership and vision. She was described as making a significant difference to the learning outcomes of students in her school and also increasing the student numbers at the school. The Principal was seen to have provided a vision of `BW's Personal Best'. There were high expectations of academic rigour being part of the culture. The principal's leadership was viewed as a central part of the school, important for school survival and curriculum development. Parents acknowledged the principal's strong, energetic, collaborative leadership style and her decision making process. This assisted the principal to implement and share her vision as she had gained the community's trust. Overall, there was consensus that the school was successful for the following reasons: the high VCE (Year 12) results; the fact that staff and students felt it was a safe school; that it was well run, with an `infrastructure like a well oiled machine'; that students had a strong work ethic; that there was strong leadership from the top; that the Principal had a clear vision which was consistently reinforced; that there were high expectations of both staff and students and that all staff understood what needed to be done; and finally, that there was an agreed philosophy of where the school was going.
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ItemCritical thinking, culture and context: an investigation of teaching and learning in introductory macroeconomics( 2001)This study is an investigation of a critical thinking task, Critical and Analytical Learning in Macroeconomics (CALM), in its educational setting. CALM is an assessment task in a first year subject in an Australian university. The study takes into account the context of student learning, situated as it is within the discourses of Western tertiary education and the academic discipline of economics. Into the teaching environment, students bring with them their own previous learning experiences and cultural understandings. The study explores the relationship between the teaching context and the students' own background and the effect that this relationship has on learning. In particular, this study explores critical thinking as described by the students of Introductory Macroeconomics, the designers of the CALM project and the tutors. Two groups of students are considered in this study, local English speaking students and international Chinese speaking students. These two groups are significant in the student population in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce in which this study took place. Interviews were used to collect data from the designers of the CALM project and the students. A focus group and an interview were used to collect data from the tutors. From the data a three level model of critical thinking emerged. This model was informed by the three conceptualisations of critical thinking found the literature. The CALM designers' understandings of critical thinking had a profound influence on the ways in which critical thinking was perceived by the students, both local and international. Students' notions of critical thinking were shaped by the guidelines on critical thinking given to them by their lecturer. Although international students reported that they found the critical thinking task unfamiliar and that this difficulty was compounded by learning in a second language, they still described critical thinking in similar ways to their local counterparts. This similarity can be explained largely by the effort that the international students put into adapting to their new learning environment. Although the tutors had some divergent notions of critical thinking, their ideas had little influence on the students' understandings of critical thinking owing to the constraints of the subject and its assessment practices. This study signals the need for clear conceptualisation of complex notions such as critical thinking and for explicit teaching, modelling and scaffolding of what critical thinking involves. It also points to the need for an unpacking of the assumptions surrounding academic tasks, in this case critical thinking. In addition the study points to the limitations of critical thinking presented to students.
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ItemPerceptions of how year 8 boys in an ethno-centric inner suburban Australian school configure their masculine identities within their school setting( 2008)The purpose for this study is to explore how Year 8 boys in an ethno-centric community school located in suburban Melbourne are `configuring' (Connell, 2000) their ideas about masculinity and to consider the evolving processes and influences informing these gendered identity configurations. A qualitative case study approach was deemed appropriate for addressing the aim of the study and a feminist, poststructuralist perspective was used to frame the research process. Consistent with this perspective was the need to honor the boys' voices. The data collection methods included focus-group discussions over a six-week period with two groups of Year 8 boys. A questionnaire survey was conducted prior to the focus-groups to inform and shape the discussion questions. In the third focus-group, the boys were asked to bring in a personal artifact or totem with which they identified their ideals of being a man. The finding of the study revealed that masculine identity is a highly socialized construct (Davies, 1993) transmitted through male Discourses (Gee, 2004) and resonated with Martins' claim that boys negotiate their masculine configurations (1999) within themselves and between themselves in endless processes of becoming (Walkerdine, 1990). Boys were often fluid in their configurations, with their positionings changing over the focus-group discussions. The configuring of the boys' ideas about their masculinity was mediated by a strong connection to their ethnic heritage that was linked with the past rather than with the present. The boys were strongly opposed towards any signs of effeminacy which they associated with a loss of power and prestige among their peer group - any association with homosexuality being perceived as a threat to their masculinity. The artifacts chosen by the boys as representative of being a male were guarded fiercely and generally it was agreed that these were not to be touched or exposed in a casual manner. Totems such as computer-action programmes, guns and For Him Magazines (FMHs) were forwarded as a means for talking their masculinity into existence - essentialising it. Recommendations that emerged from the study include: the need for more opportunities for boys to talk more openly amongst themselves; to access the thinking and experiences about what it means to be a male in their wider community, and to embed in the curriculum opportunities for boys to challenge stereotypes and to acknowledge that gender identity matters.
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ItemAssemblages and representations: boys' interactions and displays in a Year 8 coeducational classroom( 2005)This thesis draws on themes from postmodern philosophy (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, Grosz, 2004) and gender (Connell, 2002) to render boys' behaviours in a coeducational classroom and depict diversities in classroom cultures. The study engages one site, a Year 8 coeducational classroom, in an outer suburban Catholic secondary college of Melbourne, gathering moments and capturing shifts and responses to a range of representations during timetabled lessons. This ethnographic study of classroom behaviours of boys recognises the powerful influence of metanarratives on identities and agendas in schools. It employs a lens that views the metanarrative discourse as a field, where interplays between individuals and assembled cultures take place, as shifting, becoming, transiting bodies (Grosz, 2004). The research rejects deceptive simplifications that some totalising perspectives can bring to a study about gender, preferring stances that recognise multiple, unstable representations (Connell, 2002, p. 89). There is a recognition that particular challenges apply to ethnographic research of classes, including influences of histories and stances of the observer. It contests objective epistemological models and utilises conceptions of knowledge that reject objective accounts of reality to view cultures as `happenings' and multitudes of differential relations (Edgar & Sedgwick, 1999, Semetsky, 2003). Assemblages and representations observed in this study may not be reproduced in other settings, but lessons can be drawn from an understanding of representations, relationships and interplays between boys, their teachers and their peers. The study contributes to the debate about boys' education by providing connections between the observations and analysis of classroom interactions and boys' education literature. It shows how representations by participants in an educational setting can influence assemblages. It offers advice for educators about approaches that can effectively influence learning events.
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ItemAn action research approach to introducing problem-based learning in a higher education setting: a study in a School of Dental Science( 2001)This study employed an action research approach to curriculum change in the School of Dental Science at The University of Melbourne. The curriculum change involved the implementation of problem-based learning (PBL) in a number of subjects in the Bachelor of Dental Science (BDSc) degree course. The impetus for this change arose from a 1997 curriculum review as well as wider changes in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences of which the School is a part. Action research provided a means of involving academic staff in the planning and implementation of curriculum change. The appropriateness and effectiveness of action research as an approach in this context is fully discussed. Key issues in the study were the nature of the educational change in this particular situation; the manner in which change was implemented; the reactions of both staff and students to change and the way in which the PBL curriculum evolved. The process of educational change is rarely a straightforward one and this study reinforces this view. A complex and powerful mix of individual beliefs about teaching and learning, organisational structures, tradition, professional values and a diverse student body all combined to make the change process in this setting demanding and challenging. It is the response to this challenge by this group of educators that this study illustrates.