Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemParent professional partnerships in IEP development : a case study of a MAPS process( 2007)The practices, language and behaviours which professionals adopt when they meet with parents prior to Individual Education Program (IEP) planning may have a significant effect on the attitudes and capabilities families bring to the educational setting. During this case study the adult family members of a child with additional needs were observed as they addressed the developmental and programming needs of their child by participating in the McGill Action Planning System (MAPS) and a subsequent Program Support Group (PSG) meeting. Themes indicating attitudes or perceptions that empowered the family towards continued participation in collaborative teams for IEP development emerged in the observational data and were defined through the methods of informant diaries and semi-structured interviews. Less dominant quantitative methods were used to verify that the participant's ongoing attitudes towards parent professional collaboration corroborated with the final themes of flexibility, unification, satisfaction and function.
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ItemMarket orientation case study( 2001)The importance of this research is reflected in the changing face of education. There is increasing pressure for accountability of schools in the private and public sector, for their programs, their financial viability and ultimately their capacity to survive in the marketplace. While the education industry is rapidly becoming a competitiveness business, the legitimacy of marketing as a means of recruitment, the marketing concept and embracing market orientation sits uneasily with many educational administrators. School X provides an illustrative case study of a well-established school in the international education sector. It has a strong business focus and is part of a global educational network. The management structure is similar to that in private sector industry. As a successful enterprise operational practices and marketing strategies are worthy of study. Qualitative and quantitative research methodologies will be applied. The researcher will discover how School X has embraced the concept of market orientation and whether the organisations growth is related to its approach to the marketing concept.
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ItemThe use of program clarification to support policy development and implementation( 2000)Program development through program clarification is an emerging field for evaluators committed to developing responsive and clear program designs. In this study, the use of program clarification approaches, designed to assist implementation of a major policy change, was explored at a policy and service level of an organisation. A new service delivery program (SDP) was the focus of program clarification, which was conducted in two phases. In Phase I (policy level), the main aim was to make the essential features of the SDP explicit to those responsible for system level change. This was achieved through evaluability assessment, during which document analyses, 12 semi-structured interviews with senior managers, and a group interview with service site managers were conducted. This resulted in the development of a clear, policy level, program logic model. Phase I revealed a need for the policy level program to be translated at the service sites. Phase II (service level) was conducted to assist managers at one service site in the development of a SDP implementation and monitoring plan, through the use of program logic and participatory approaches. Reflective practice and a small-scale study conducted by the researcher revealed that the program clarification approaches were useful, especially at the service site level where a high degree of stakeholder participation was achieved. This study focused on one organisation and one service site, thus, its findings cannot be generalised. Nonetheless, this study is one of very few which has attempted to apply program clarification techniques at both system and delivery levels, and to link the findings at these levels.
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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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ItemHearing their stories : students' experiences of harassment prior to and after the implementation of a revised anti-harassment policy at their school( 2003)In 2000 the researcher in this current study facilitated a working group that revised and redeveloped the existing anti-harassment policy at her school. Surveys conducted across the school community at the time indicated that bullying was prevalent at the school, fixing it firmly on the school's educational agenda. Two years later, the researcher was interested in exploring if and how this redeveloped policy had impacted on students who had previously experienced bullying in the school. The study focuses on six students' stories about their experiences of harassment prior to and after the implementation of the revised anti-harassment policy. A qualitative research methodology was chosen for this study given that the researcher was interested in exploring personal experience. In order to uncover the in-depth reflections sought, semi-structured interviews were chosen as the primary source of data collection. Each student was interviewed twice over a period of three months. A theme that emerged from the study was that although most of the participants are still experiencing harassment, their experiences of harassment have changed in terms of the frequency of the harassment, the intensity of the harassment and the number of students perpetrating the harassment. In describing their current experiences of harassment, the participants spoke more positively about school and their ability to take action. Questions were raised in this study about the wisdom of commonly used strategies for dealing with harassment such as ignoring the harassment and asking a perpetrator to stop, strategies which the participants found to be unsuccessful. Can students be taught specific skills to implement these strategies successfully? Do these strategies actually stop harassment? Is the promotion of such strategies inconsistent with a view that combating bullying is the school community's responsibility not the individual's? An area perceived as important by the participants was the role of teachers in supporting students and resolving bullying incidents. The participants' stories indicate great variation in how staff perceive their role in dealing with harassment, and how staff interpret and enact the policy. The participants reported that counsellors and other staff members in positions of responsibility are proactive but that some other staff displayed poor attitudes, did not take verbal harassment seriously and treated it as a joke. The study also highlighted that the anti-harassment policy cannot necessarily change the culture of the school on its own and that the school needs to approach harassment on a variety of levels including the professional development of all staff, the skilling of victims with a focus on improving self-esteem and empowering them to tell someone about harassment, and the inclusion of curriculum-based resources which all students can access. Constantly promoting the policy, making it more accessible and displaying it in more prominent places was also thought to be important. As well as indicating issues that require further attention, these insights shape the direction for the future refinement and development of the school's approach to bullying.
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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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ItemWhat are the perceptions of changes in teacher and student use of information and communication technologies during the implementation of the Learning Technology Strategy Plan at a Victorian Catholic secondary college?( 2001)This research used an interactive evaluation methodology, to evaluate the impact of the Learning Technology Strategy Plan at a Victorian Catholic Secondary College on the classroom use of learning technologies by teachers and the extent to which learning technologies are used within all key learning areas. It gathers the perceptions of changes in teacher and student use of information and communication technologies through a teacher survey and a series of group and individual interviews of teachers, students and school leaders. The research found that the Learning Technology Strategy Plan had a significant impact on the use of learning technologies within the College. Students were openly accepting of the use of learning technologies in all key learning areas and wanted to use technology when it was available. There was a range of perceptions presented by staff members about the implementation of learning technologies in the classroom, with the majority extremely willing and capable to some staff reluctant and unsure. The research found that access to reliable and appropriate learning technologies needs to be improved. That teachers and students believe that they use learning technologies well when it is provided appropriately and is in working order. Schools are in the cusp of significant change and need to embrace learning technologies as part of the future schools agenda.
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ItemSuccessful leaders in successful schools: a case study of a government primary school principal in Victoria, Australia( 2006)The research examined the leadership behaviour exhibited by a principal of a successful school. It used a single case study of a successful primary school based in Victoria, Australia, using qualitative analysis involving structured open-ended interviews from the multiple perspectives of the principal, teachers, non-teaching staff, parents and students. This research ensured that teachers, other school staff, parents and students were able to comment and thus verify and add to the statements the principal made. The research continued work carried out by Day, Harris and Hadfield. It has contributed an Australian perspective to an international research project on this issue, the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP). The research found it was the principal who made a major contribution to the improvement of the school. Over his tenure as principal, and through his vision, dedication and passion, the principal improved the learning outcomes for all students at his school. He not only improved the academic nature of the school but created a safe and nurturing environment that encouraged the children to want to go to school and to succeed. The research reinforced a lot of what past research has suggested is required for a leader to make an impact or improve the situation in a school. He shared and articulated a clear vision that the staff made their own. The principal, being the main leader, and through empowering others, had made important contributions to student learning. He had mastered a core set of basic leadership practices, was and made everyone accountable for their results and performance, and sought and provided constant feedback. He was a spokesman and role model and defender of social equity and fairness. The research found that most of these qualities the principal displayed appeared to stem from the character of the man - his moral and ethical stance and his commitment to the principles of equity and social justice. His leadership style had extended beyond just transformational leadership to be better described as a highly political, value-led contingency model of transformational leadership. This research contributes to identifying the characteristics and skills that are necessary to create and maintain a successful school and to informing professional development programs for current and future principals.