Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemCurated learning: a pedagogical approach to maximise learning environments for students’ deep learning( 2019)Globally, billions of dollars have been allocated in developing highly adaptable, technology-infused, and connected learning spaces, called Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs), capable of accommodating a variety of pedagogical practices intended to equip students with skills and competencies critical for thriving in this rapidly changing world. However, research indicate that teachers are unable to fully maximise the potential of these ILEs. In contrast, many museums appear to have considerable success at intentionally manipulating learning environments and adapting pedagogy to suit intended learning outcomes. Understanding these museum practices may prove valuable in helping school teachers use ILEs better. Two case studies were conducted to draw out strategies of museums in capitalising features of the learning environment to promote students’ deep learning. Twenty-eight individuals from nine purposely selected institutions across Australia and New Zealand participated in this research. Thematic analysis of data from 42 observations and 25 interviews resulted in a proposition of a pedagogical approach, Curated learning, that leverages the interdependence between pedagogy and the built environment. Curated learning has the potential to help teachers use features and elements within their learning environment in ways that support students in developing deep learning competencies that, ultimately, will help them succeed in their academic, professional, and civic lives. This research is embedded within an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project, called Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change (ILETC), that investigates how school teachers across Australia and New Zealand can utilise ILEs to improve pedagogy that leads to students’ deep learning. Specifically, this research contributes to a growing body of international research on the effective use of ILEs and pedagogy. Furthermore, equipping teachers with the capacity to maximise ILEs will magnify the value of the financial investment and help them prepare students to thrive in this highly competitive and rapidly changing world.
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ItemThe pedagogy of engagement: classroom management vs. facilitating learning( 2019)This thesis explored the way upper primary teachers think about student engagement and how they operationalise the concept within their classrooms. Student engagement has been frequently linked to academic success, and improving the engagement of students continues to be a priority for policy makers and practitioners alike. Despite an abundance of research, it remains questionable whether researcher conceptions of student engagement adequately represent the way teachers experience the concept. Teachers' perspectives on student engagement and their engagement-related practices were investigated over two studies using an exploratory sequential mixed methods design. In Study One, in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 teachers to explore their beliefs about student engagement in learning. Teachers described six qualitatively different forms of engagement and disengagement, as well as a complex process for facilitating student engagement within lessons. A typology of engagement and a pedagogical framework for engaging students were proposed based on the findings. Study Two sought to test the validity of the typology as a representation of teachers' descriptions of student engagement and its usefulness in coding teachers' engagement-related interactions within observed lessons. Four teachers were interviewed and four lessons observations for each teacher were conducted. In addition, 72 students within those classrooms were surveyed to explore their perceptions of aspects of the learning environment, including their understanding of teacher expectations for student engagement. Qualitative analysis of interview and observation data revealed that teachers varied in their expectations for student engagement within lessons, their views on the role of peers in student engagement, and in the frequency with which they intervened within lessons to facilitate different forms of student engagement. Quantitative analysis of survey data suggest that students in different classrooms perceive different expectations for how they will engage in learning experiences. A model is proposed for thinking about the pedagogy of student engagement, providing an alternative vantage point from which to explore the concept, one that is grounded in the real-life experiences of teachers facing the ongoing challenge of engaging students in classroom learning experiences.
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ItemCracking open pedagogy: learning 'in' intense environments( 2019)What if a purpose of pedagogy was to create environments where intense experiences of learning can occur? This research is an inquiry into how affect-intense pedagogies work and the work that they do. It focuses on pedagogic affect as produced in the situated, sociomaterial practices of three more-than-human environments that create the conditions for intense learning to occur—an outdoor sculpture event in the Hauraki Gulf (Aotearoa New Zealand), a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Course at a human pathology museum (Sydney, Australia), and a fight squad at a Taekwondo club (Melbourne, Australia). What transpires is a multi-site ethnographic case study of pedagogic affect in which I engage with empirical material through a combination of conventional and experimental approaches, whereby arts-based practices act to enliven research(er) thinking-doing. In this space between convention and invention, a Deleuzian inspired rhizo-cartography unfolds. Pedagogic practices are ‘found’ to occupy in-between spaces or ‘cracks’ that produce affect-intensive learning encounters. These practices and encounters are recast as constituting a minor pedagogy which is, in turn, imbricated in a Spinozist ethics of affirmation as taken up by Deleuze and Braidotti. Pedagogy that enacts an affirmative ethics is conceptualised as being inextricably connected to practices that increase the affective capacity of learner-bodies. In this inquiry, pedagogies that cultivate the capacity to affect and be affected involve stepping into a crack, where tinkering, experimenting, (un)knowing and caring take place through an approach that blends critique and creativity. I propose that creating the conditions for minor pedagogies to flourish in everyday learning encounters can generate affirmative change in all kinds of ordinary, localised contexts – schools, community sites and elsewhere – that create the conditions to learn intensely.
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ItemTertiary music education and musicians' careers( 2018)Australian tertiary institutions offer many courses for musicians intent on working in the music industry. There has been, however, limited research into how these courses from different providers contribute to musicians’ careers. The rationale for conducting this research was to provide insights to educators on how they might design courses to meet better the needs of musicians preparing to work in the music industry. A review of the literature highlighted the concerns of educators and academics about the balance in curriculum emphasis between musical expertise and industry practice. This study examined the merits of different pedagogical paradigms through the experiences of graduates from different tertiary music offerings. Using a mixed methods approach and a descriptive, interpretive research design, this study explored the experience of tertiary music graduates and how their learning contributed to establishing their music careers. Data were analysed around three themes, (1) the characteristics of music portfolio careers, (2) tertiary music education experiences and graduate outcomes, and (3) the ongoing professional development needs of musicians for sustaining a music career. The findings demonstrate the formidable challenges of working in a music portfolio career including the self- management of a career in a precarious employment market. Such careers required a mix of work realms such as music practice, teaching and entrepreneurial activities to generate new work. Consequently, career trajectories were found to be necessarily circuitous and “messy” but there is evidence that tertiary music education is a significant intervention in the continuum of learning for a musician’s career. It is argued that there are five broad categories of proficiencies that are required first to establish and then sustain a music career. The pedagogies and course emphases from different tertiary music providers in the Australian state of Victoria contributed in different ways towards musicians’ careers. Furthermore, there were some shortcomings in requisite proficiencies which suggest the potential for further curricular development. This potential lay in both undergraduate courses to better prepare musicians for starting out in their careers, and post-graduate courses to provide further development for the sustainability of musicians’ careers.
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ItemCultural diversity and drama education within an Australian context( 2019)Across Australia and internationally, the number of young people from diverse cultural backgrounds entering schools has increased. This has led to a greater complexity in pedagogy, curriculum and student populations (Banks, 2011). This thesis entitled Cultural diversity and drama education within an Australian context is a qualitative research project that methodologically involved a reflective practitioner study (Schön, 1983). The researcher developed and taught an educational unit of work entitled Cultural diversity and drama. The unit of work comprised eight lessons and was taught to a junior secondary drama class at a coeducational independent school. Central to this study were the experiences of the culturally diverse drama students engaging in the drama curriculum. Through the reflective practitioner’s own culturally diverse perspective, this study was also an examination of the drama teacher. As part of the reflective practitioner research, a combination of data was collected that included observation of drama classes, reflective practitioner journal, student journals, field notes, written documents and interviews with drama staff and students. The key findings of this study revealed that the drama students identified and discussed their own ethnic identities. It was found that trust facilitated the advancement of the unit of work between the reflective practitioner, drama students and drama teacher. The study revealed that embodied learning about cultural diversity enabled the drama students to generate their own contemporary meanings of themselves, others and of Australia. In this study it was found that stories about refugees can effectively engage drama students to understand and enact people from diverse cultural backgrounds.
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Item'Ways of seeing': the positioning of the visual in subject English curricula, 2000 - 2017( 2018)The proliferation of visual texts in the lives of young people since the turn of the twenty-first century has created new opportunities and demands for curriculum developers. Since 2000, subject English curricula in Australia have acknowledged the importance of students’ engagement with visual texts, yet systematic approaches to the positioning of viewing and the visual in curriculum documents are not always evident. With the inclusion of less traditional texts such as graphic novels in the senior English text lists in recent years (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2014), the explicit addressing of the visual from the early to the final years of compulsory schooling has become crucial. This thesis presents analyses of four mandated curriculum iterations in the Australian state of Victoria from 2000 to 2017 focusing on the positioning of the visual in subject English. In revealing these positionings, some of the understandings about what subject English in the twenty-first century is, and should do, are interrogated. Aspects of Gee’s Building Tasks of Language (2010, 2011, 2014) have been drawn on to frame this analysis. Theoretical frameworks linked to subject English and literacy pedagogy have also been used to identify and analyse the positioning of the visual in subject English, and in turn, to posit aspects of what constitutes ‘English’ in the selected curricula.
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ItemActing with care: how actor practice is shaped by creating theatre with and for children( 2017)Research has investigated the backgrounds, dispositions and skills of artists working with children in both school and in out-of-school contexts (Ascenso, 2016; Brown, 2014; Galton, 2008; Jeanneret & Brown, 2013; Pringle, 2002; Pringle, 2009; Rabkin, Reynolds, Hedberg, & Shelby, 2008; Waldorf, 2002). Actors make a significant contribution to this work but few studies focus in depth on how they create theatre with and for children. Incorporating constructivist, phenomenological (Van Manen, 1990) and case study methodologies, this research investigates the practice of nine actors who create theatre with and for children in diverse contexts. Drawing on document analysis, surveys, semi-structured interviews and performance observations, the research explores two key questions: What characterises the practice of actors who create theatre with and for children? and How is actor practice shaped by working with children? This thesis explores actor practice in relation to being, doing, knowing and becoming (Ewing & Smith, 2001). Shaped to be outward facing and ‘pedagogically tactful’ (Van Manen, 2015), actor practice gives emphasis to four key qualities: listening, reciprocating, imagining and empathising. When creating theatre with and for children, pedagogically tactful actors are guided by a sense of care and respect. This thesis adds to the discourse about artists working with children, making actor practice visible and drawing attention to their beliefs, goals, motivations and acting techniques.
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ItemEngaging young writers in self-regulated learning: an examination of teaching practices and learning processes( 2017)One approach currently promoted to support substantial increases in student learning is the development of self-regulated learning SRL (Hadwin & Oshige, 2011; Winnie, 2014a; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2011). However there is limited research into SRL as an event that happens in real time, particularly examining how co-regulated learning leads to SRL or how young writers acquire SRL skills (Perry & Rahim, 2011). This study investigates how Year 1 writers can be supported to SRL. This study employed a case study methodology and focused on three teachers and nine students during writing lessons over thirty-five weeks. Microanalytic observations involved a brief questioning prior to, during and after writing, and occurred on four occasions throughout the study period to examine how students set goals, planned strategies, used strategies, and self-evaluated what they had achieved (Cleary, Callan, & Zimmerman, 2012; DiBenedetto & Zimmerman, 2013; Hadwin & Oshige, 2011; Zimmerman, 2008). Following the observations, an interview was conducted with each teacher. These interviews operated as directed conversations that enabled an in-depth exploration of particular issues arising from the observations and the analysis of data. Directly following observations, writing samples from the students were collected (nine samples per term, thirty-six in total). A Year 1 writing analysis tool developed by Mackenzie, Scull, and Bowles (2015) was used to analyse these samples. Constructivist grounded theory method was used to structure the collection and analysis of interview, observation and work sample data (Bryant & Charmaz, 2007; Charmaz, 2000, 2014). The analysis of findings revealed that the teacher participants used specific processes and practices to support their students to engage in SRL. It is proposed that the supporting practices observed could be suitably defined as three core learning processes that supported Year 1 writers to engage in SRL. The core processes identified were: • An intentional learning process • Socially structured regulation of learning • Metacognitive regulation of learning These three processes were theoretically positioned to explore how they impacted on students’ engagement in SRL. The overall conclusion was that each process operated differently with specific functions. The findings illustrated that teachers implemented an intentional learning process to focus and clarify student understanding and to guide students to engage in self-assessment and use of their own feedback loop. This process functioned to support intentional learning by providing opportunities for purposeful learning, conceptually focused learning, self-assessment and connection making. There was also evidence of socially structured regulation of learning implemented by teachers to systemise the students’ learning, to engage them in peer-supported learning and to scaffold learning. This process functioned to provide opportunities for challenging but manageable learning, co-regulated learning and scaffolded learning. Metacognitive regulation of learning identified as the third process, was used to prompt students to use metalanguage strategies such as goal setting, strategy planning/use and reflecting upon learning. To begin the construction of a substantive theory, a synthesis and conceptualisation of the above findings was conducted. It was proposed that the three core learning processes identified during the study could be interrelated to support Year 1 writers to engage in SRL, and when suitably aligned, could function to provide a transparent learning process resulting in a synergy of learning. To conclude findings, a guiding principle for designing instruction was presented. This serves to illustrate how key learning processes can be aligned to support Year 1 writers to SRL.
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ItemVideogames, distinction and subject-English: new paradigms for pedagogy( 2017)At a time when the proliferation of videogame ownership and practice has led to greater attention on the consequences of increased engagement with these texts, schools and educators are engaged in active debate regarding their potential value and use. The distinctive nature of these texts, especially in contrast to those texts which have traditionally dominated school environments, has raised questions about their possible affordances, as well as the pedagogies most appropriate for supporting teaching with and through these texts in the classroom. While much has been written about the learning benefits of videogames, especially in terms of opportunities for the negotiation of self (Gee, 2003), there has been less research addressing the impact of applying existing English subject-specific pedagogies to their study. In particular, there are few case-study investigations into the suitability of subject-English classrooms for the play and study of videogames. The project utilised a naturalistic case-study intervention involving eight 15-year-old students at a co-educational school in the outer-Northern suburbs of Melbourne. Data was collected during a five-week intervention in an English classroom context at the participants’ home-school. This involved the teacher-researcher leading a series of learning and teaching activities informed by dominant models of subject-English (Cox, 1989), Cultural Heritage, Skills, Personal Growth, and Critical Literacy, that focussed on several popular videogames. Data was analysed using Bourdieu’s theory of practice (1977) to reveal a social reality at the centre of this intervention co-created by a dialectical relationship between the habitus of students (especially in terms of their videogame, school and gendered identities) and the field of the classroom, with its own historically constituted and legitimised/authorised ways of being and doing textual study, as realised by the teacher. Mediating this relationship were the intrinsic features of videogames. The findings are presented through a Framework for Videogame Literacies in Subject-English which synthesises the relationship concerning past and present approaches to textual study in the subject, and the need to embrace what Locke terms, an “informed and critical eclecticism” (2015, p. 25). Firstly, the study found that the inclusion of videogames in subject-English provided the material for rich, rigorous and authentic learning experiences. Much of this can be achieved through the appropriation of existing paradigms of subject-English and their associated pedagogical practices, resisting the privileging of any single component of the framework and instead encouraging an awareness of the different purposes which each part serves. Secondly, analysis demonstrated the ways in which dominant approaches to the subject must evolve in response to the unique design features and intrinsic textual practices associated with these texts. Lastly, the study revealed that attempts to bring these texts into English classrooms will need to negotiate the disciplinary forces which organise these spaces, in terms of both the habitus of students, and the historically constituted structures which establish what is possible in such places. This work contributes to the field of research examining videogame literacies in classrooms, especially in terms of the impact of bringing technologies typically engaged for entertainment into subject-English learning contexts. The study suggests that future research is needed to test the efficacy of the Framework, and to identify ways for teachers to respond to inevitable developments in the design features of videogames so that current and future iterations of videogames can be incorporated into schools for rigorous learning and teaching.
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ItemTeaching the live: the pedagogies of performance analysis( 2016)Theatre as an artform is ephemeral in nature and offers a lived, aesthetic experience. Attending theatre and analysing theatre performance is a key component of the study of drama in senior secondary education systems in Australia, and in many international education systems. The senior secondary drama curriculum in Victoria offers a unique context for analysing live theatre performances. Lists of performances are prescribed for teachers and students to select from and attend. The year prior to the lists being created, theatre companies are invited to submit productions for consideration. The written curriculum determines that students write a written analysis of one production. This task assesses students’ knowledge, skills and understanding of what they experience at school level, and they are assessed again in an end-of-year‘ high-stakes’ examination, the results of which contributes to students’ overall graduating academic score. Methodologically, this study used case study methods to investigate the pedagogies of performance analysis, selecting four cases as a collective case study approach. Over a period of fourteen months the study investigated how the lists of performances were generated, how teachers and students selected a performance to attend, how teachers taught the analysis of live theatre performance to senior drama students in a high-stakes assessment environment, and critically examined the role of theatre companies within these processes. The data comprised document analysis, participant observation, field notes, semi-structured individual and focus group interviews, and researcher reflective journal. Specifically the study examined pedagogy and how teachers’ pedagogical choices moved the written curriculum towards enacted and experienced curriculum. It explored what influenced and impacted these pedagogies in order to consider what constitutes effective pedagogies for teaching the analysis of live theatre performance within the research context and, more broadly, wherever the analysis of theatre performance is included in senior drama curricula. The findings indicate that while the teachers who participated in the study sought to create rich educational experiences for their senior drama students, they needed to take a reductive approach and employ teaching strategies that reinforced capacities relevant to the exam rather than those that engaged with the live arts experience or recognised and incorporated the embodied practices of drama education. Consequently, the study questions the purpose of examining performance analysis. The study also revealed how theatre company practices impact the teaching of performance analysis. As a way to structure an effective pedagogy for teaching performance analysis the study recommends that a purposeful, structured and sustained community of practice be established between curriculum authorities, theatre companies and schools. It is one that acknowledges the four stages of pedagogy identified and is a model that has potential application in curriculum where performance analysis is part of studying drama and theatre.