Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe evolution of concepts of decimals in primary and secondary students( 1994)This thesis studies children's conceptions about ordering decimals. It builds upon previous work which established three commonly used systematic errors in children's understanding as they encounter decimal notation. Students were categorised according to erroneous rule usage. This work includes a small longitudinal study which showed little change over twelve months in rule usage by an Australian sample of 50 secondary students. The categorising tests were redeveloped to make them suitable for primary students and to have increased reliability. The main study traced the use of rules from Year Four to Year Ten in a sample of 379 students and showed how students with different rules performed on other decimal tasks. It was found that one of the rules, called the whole number rule (in comparing two decimals that with more decimal places is chosen as the larger) was important in earlier years but disappeared with time. The second rule, called the fraction rule (the decimal with fewer decimal places is chosen as the larger), persisted in worrying proportions well into the secondary years and it was shown that significant gaps in knowledge of decimal notation existed which had not corrected themselves with time. The third rule was shown to be not important. Further investigation of a longitudinal nature to examine how individuals actually make the transition to mastery of decimal notation is encouraged by this study.
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ItemThe Wesley College technology enriched graphing project( 1994)Graphics calculators are rapidly becoming more affordable to students of mathematics. In time, it can be expected these calculators will become as essential a tool for mathematics students as scientific calculators are now. This thesis investigates how best to use graphics calculators to improve student achievement and understanding of senior secondary graph-sketching topics. The Wesley College Technology Enriched Graphing Project was an experimental study which involved 180 Year 11 students (8 intact classes) over 15 lessons at two campuses of this large co-educational independent school. Two teaching programs were devised, which differed in the degree of teaching emphasis on issues of scaling and obtaining a complete picture of a graph. The effect of frequency of calculator use was also investigated with a 2 x 2 experimental design. Daily use of the calculator was found to lead to significantly more improvement on general graphing questions than less frequent use. The teaching emphasis on scaling led to significantly more improvement in students' ability to deal with potentially misleading questions where the finite view of a function provided by the calculator omitted important features. Students' attitudes to calculator use were very positive. In the light of these results it is recommended that schools move as quickly as possible to personal ownership of graphics calculators by students and that teaching programs emphasise scaling issues. This approach takes no more time than traditional teaching methods, but confronts student difficulties and leads to better understanding of functions.
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ItemStanding strong or standing weak? Equal opportunity, violence against women and the school curriculum : a case study( 1994)Despite violence against women becoming a very public issue in recent years, remarkably little material on this subject has so far found its way into the school curriculum. This thesis examines a set of curriculum materials called Standing Strong, which specifically aims to help students make sense of violent and sexually abusive relationships. The thesis outlines and evaluates the materials in light of their ability to achieve one of the major objectives of recent equal opportunity policy, namely, to help achieve "equality between the sexes, and...improv(e) the conditions of life for girls and women...taking account of their cultural, language, and socio-economic diversity...". (Commonwealth Schools Commission, 1987: Recommendation 2, p. 25). The evaluation takes two main forms, one theoretical, the other empirical. The theoretical evaluation draws upon recent post structuralist and constructionist feminist writings. The empirical evaluation is undertaken by drawing upon the research findings derived from in-depth interviews with 24 young women who had used the Standing Strong materials during their secondary school education. The thesis argues that Standing Strong is flawed theoretically, and that this is likely to hamper its usefulness in practice. The research data confirm this pessimistic conclusion. The thesis concludes by reflecting on whether a focus on education might be more of a hindrance than a help to the development of a meaningful and effective solutions to violence against women.
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ItemA study into the effectiveness of a genre-based approach to teaching writing( 1994)An exploratory study was undertaken to assess the effectiveness of an approach to teaching writing based on genre theory, with particular reference to the impact of individual differences in cognitive style on that effectiveness. The writing performance of 31 secondary school students was assessed under a variety of conditions prior to and after genre-based teaching. The position of the students on one of two fundamental cognitive style dimensions was assessed using the Cognitive Style Assessment Task. A comparison of writing performance under different conditions indicated that genre-based teaching did benefit all students, but this improvement was not maintained over time and was not transferable to unfamiliar situations unless models and support were available. A comparison of cognitive style and writing performance showed a significant interaction under some writing conditions. This indicated that genre-based teaching may be more effective for some cognitive style groups than others.
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ItemStudent interpretation of graphs at the secondary level( 1994)Students at the secondary school level have misconceptions about, and difficulties with, interpreting the graphs used in such mathematics topics as calculus, statistics and variation. This thesis establishes what many of these misconceptions and difficulties are and trials teaching programs for years 8, 9, 10 and 11, that allow students and teachers to confront and deal with them. The teaching programs are designed to require a minimum of student time and teacher preparation. A study of the literature revealed most but not all of the misconceptions and difficulties and enabled the setting up of a list of those to be confronted by the teaching programs. An important student error, not in the literature, was found. The study was extended to include students' understanding of three dimensional graphs, a topic not previously in the literature. The teaching programs were based on sets of pre-drawn graphs with five questions each and were constructed for years 8, 9, 10 and 11. There were approximately 20 graphs for each year level to address these misconceptions and difficulties. Tests were administered to two classes at each year level and were followed by the teaching programs to only one of these classes at each year level. The same test was used immediately afterwards with all the classes as a posttest and then five months later as a delayed posttest. The effect of the teaching program was statistically significant for all year levels on the posttests. The delayed posttests showed that the gains were mostly maintained. The conclusion reached is that most of the misconceptions and difficulties that secondary school students have with interpreting graphs, can be dealt with in a short, focused teaching program at each year level. The teaching programs developed here go a considerable way towards doing this.