Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemEvaluating the Santa Maria College information literacy program( 2007)This is an impact study, which evaluates an Information Literacy Program that has been running in the Santa Maria College Library since February 2000. It investigates the effectiveness of the Program inputs and processes and seeks to identify impacts on learning in student outputs and College wide outcomes. The study builds on previous research that was conducted from 2000 to 2004 and seeks to develop new understandings through new methods. This study draws on literature that examines methods of collecting evidence of learning impact in school libraries. The literature recommends micro-research in secondary schools that examines students' skills before and after they have been involved in integrated information literacy instruction, as well as empirical studies about the impact of the six step research process model on learning. The literature also suggests investigation of the impact of school libraries on the broad aspects of learning, and the development and application of new methods for collecting qualitative data in the library setting. From Terms One to Term Four in 2005, mixed methods were used to capture evidence of student learning in the Santa Maria College Library. Students were observed as they carried out Program research tasks. The assignments that they produced at the end of the research process were assessed. Surveys and focus group interviews explored the perceptions of a sample of the students and teachers who participated in the Program. In exploring the data, changes in learning behaviour and attitudes to the research process were identified and analysed. The effectiveness of various aspects of the Program such as task design, explicit process instruction, cognitive strategies, note taking scaffolds and assessment practices were examined. Two theoretical frameworks synthesised from the literature were used in the research. The first framework is based on criteria for effective libraries such as staffing, funding, collection size and technological infrastructure. The second framework combines the effective approaches to learning in school libraries that are evident in the literature. Those frameworks were applied to assess the pre-conditions for learning in the Santa Maria Library. A third framework based on criteria that identify outcomes and indicators of student learning in school libraries, was used to identify evidence of student learning across the data sets. The key research questions were used to organise the discussion of the findings. The findings demonstrated that student outcomes have improved in a broad range of learning experiences. The study deepened my understanding of the distinctive features of the Program and its strengths and weaknesses. The strengths included: the use of constructivist pedagogy and inquiry learning; the collaborative planning, implementation and review processes; the infusion of the learning activities in real units of work; the learning scaffolds and instructional interventions at the point of need; and the assessment and feedback strategies. All of those inputs and processes are critical success factors in the Program. The note taking grids and the associated skill development in reading for meaning, identifying and recording key points, and combining information for final products are particularly effective aspects of the Program, which were highly regarded by the students. The weaknesses of the Program included: the gradual erosion of collaborative planning, implementation and evaluation processes; a general feeling of Program fatigue; the fact that the assessment of student outputs to track Progress is not standard practice; and the lack of a process for fading scaffolds in the Year 9 and 10 levels to shift control of the learning process from the teachers and teacher librarians to the students as they move through the Program. The study incorporates a series of recommendations for ongoing monitoring, and future Program delivery and implementation.
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ItemFrench LogoWriter language and foreign language learning( 1996)This study examines the possible effect of the French version of LogoWriter programming language on the French language proficiency of students in year seven who are studying French as a foreign language. It adds to the computer assisted language learning (CALL) debate by studying the place of an artificial language (French LogoWriter) in the second/foreign language classroom. It also examines other possible factors which may influence language learning and suggests further areas of study in foreign language learning and computer technology.
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ItemThe public examination of English in Victoria : a study of one external influence on the secondary school English curriculum( 1980)The secondary school English curriculum was determined by groups outside schools during the period 1944-1974. External domination of teaching content and methodology was ensured by a system of Public and Matriculation Examinations which empowered agents of the universities to prescribe courses and to assess students' performance in those courses. The University of Melbourne exercised these functions through its Professorial Board and the Schools Board before relinquishing its powers to the Victorian Universities and Schools Examination Board in 1965. Statute and tradition allowed these bodies to establish themselves as a centre apart from schools, and to legitimise their authority through the institutionalised processes of prescription, examination and review of performance. The effect of these processes was to subordinate schools, teachers and pupils. There was immense inertia in the Victorian system of external prescription and examination. Courses and examination papers remained essentially unmodified for long periods. Significant development in the conception and content of English courses occurred, effectively, only at Year 12 in response to social and educational pressures which had previously led to the withdrawal of Public Intermediate and Leaving Examinations. Broadening the goals of H.S.C. English did not, however, signal diminished control over curriculum from the centre. The fact of competitive examinations at the end of secondary schooling continued to shape content and methodology in the earlier years. Competitive examinations engendered in schools, teachers and pupils a narrow conformity, the results of which can most clearly be seen in the failure of the Class A system to produce school-based curriculum initiatives of any substance. The effect of external prescription and examination of English courses was profound. Relationships between teachers and pupils were strongly mediated by the system, reducing the autonomy of both by subjugating their intentions to the instrumental demands of evaluation. So much of a student's 'life chance' depended upon examination success that teachers and taught were continually constrained to focus their attention on the tasks expected in examinations. Fragmentation, in line with the different sections of examination papers, rather than integration became, therefore, the organising principle for teaching aimed at developing those techniques believed to be essential for success in the examination game. External examinations dictated that the English classroom was a place where pupils met to prepare for their encounters with examinations rather than to explore the nature and richness of experience through literature and their own use of language for real ends. The system of Public and Matriculation Examinations established in 1944 was a potent influence on the secondary school English curriculum. The system rested upon a powerful, conservative centre whose legitimacy was so thoroughly entrenched that it was able to admit reform only on its own terms. Thus, it was possible after twenty-five years of relative stasis to negotiate evolution in the details of the school English curriculum without alteration to the essential power relationships. After thirty years, English teachers were still without autonomy. Year 12 English courses continued to exert the pressures and to exact the dependence which had constrained mother tongue studies throughout secondary schools since 1944.