Faculty of Education - Theses
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Item“We need to provide structure, but with open arms": An Exploration of Intent and Practice of Social Learning Design by University Teachers and Learning Designers( 2023-03)The student benefits of social learning in online environments are widely recognised, yet explicit design for social learning is often overlooked during development. This study explored the intent and practice of designing for social learning in online subjects by university teachers and their associated learning designers. The aim was to investigate the relationship between intention and practice to design for social learning. The study also sought to identify factors that influence design participants’ social design practice. For this qualitative study, multiple data collection methods were used to examine four online subjects at a single university in Australia. Semi-structured interviews provided insight into design participants’ perceptions of designing for social learning. Analysis of planning documents and expert review of online subjects allowed comparison between intention and practice. Goodyear’s (2005) framework describing the problem space for educational design was used to guide data analysis. This multi-case analysis suggests three main findings. Firstly, teachers and their associated learning designers have an intentionality to design for social learning, however this is not always implemented in practice in online subjects. Secondly, the influence of the organisational context shaped the design process with institutional pressures identified, which impact efforts to implement social learning designs. Thirdly, the study highlighted the importance of collaboration between teacher and learning designer when designing for social learning. This relationship was influenced by the teacher’s own expectations, experience, and expertise of designing and developing online subjects. Contribution from this study is an enhanced conceptual framework describing the problem space for educational design. This includes greater regard and awareness of the people and technology which impact designing for learning. This study also contributes to the development of a broader typology for social design indicators which were found to be consistently observable. It provides insights on the importance of the learning designer and teacher relationship - to ensure planned and intended activities eventuate through a more positive, collaborative and efficient dynamic. Study findings have significant implications for institutional processes and operational practices that aim to partner teachers with learning designers, and to develop online subjects that meet the intentions of educators in a more collaborative fashion. The resulting outcome of the design process are subjects with potentially greater social outcomes for teachers and students, enriching the learning experience for all.
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ItemExamining Teacher Knowledge, Beliefs and Practice of Geography Inquiry in Australian Secondary Schools( 2022)Despite an international turn towards using inquiry as a core approach for teaching and learning in school geography, there is limited understanding of how jurisdictions represent knowledge and pedagogy in the intended geography curricula, and what teachers what teachers in these jurisdictions know and believe about geography inquiry and how they actually enact it. This study set out to address these research gaps on teaching geography through inquiry and to explore the intersections between inquiry and subject knowledge in the intended and enacted geography curricula. Taking Victoria one of the most populous states of Australia as a case, the central research question was “What are the knowledge, beliefs and practice of geography inquiry amongst secondary teachers in Victoria?” Employing mixed methods research, the study comprised three phases of investigation. The first phase made use of document analysis to compare secondary geography curriculum documents from six international jurisdictions including Australia. This global context provided the backdrop for understanding the secondary geography curriculum documents from Victoria. The second phase surveyed the state’s secondary teachers about their beliefs, knowledge and practice of teaching geography through inquiry. The third phase employed case studies research exploring in-depth the practice of three teachers in three different school settings in metropolitan Melbourne. An extensive literature review led to the development of an original analytical framework which guided the analyses of the data. In the final discussion, the analyses from all three phases are considered together with the goal of refining and extending existing theory. Overall, this study’s findings suggest that the knowledge for teaching geography through inquiry is a dynamic collection of rich and situated knowledge constructed through experiences and social interactions in and with practice. At the same time, teachers’ beliefs are deeply intertwined in these experiences and interactions. Powerful professional knowledge for teaching geography through inquiry therefore is generated in and through teachers’ curriculum-making of high epistemic-quality geography inquiry lessons. As a contribution to the powerful knowledge debate, this study argues that the nature of knowledge in geography is such that geography inquiry is key to experiencing and developing powerful knowledge in geography. Additionally this study argues that everyday knowledge contributes to the construction of new specialised knowledge in geography. Powerful geography inquiry teaching practices that enable students to make epistemic gains during inquiry learning therefore include maintaining a stance that values and builds on students’ everyday knowledge, providing opportunities for all students for epistemic access, activating students’ commitment towards and effort in assuming epistemic agency, and enabling students to make epistemic ascent through purposeful use of dialogue and questions. This study concludes by proposing a model for ‘enacting powerful teaching of geography through inquiry’ which both augments concepts of pedagogical content knowledge and incorporates concepts of powerful knowledge and knowing.
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ItemExamining the relationship between teacher reading content knowledge, pedagogy and children’s learning experiences( 2022)Teacher reading content knowledge research spans decades and covers an array of issues from perceptions about knowledge to student achievement. Teacher reading content knowledge is developed during initial teacher education and extended through professional development, as it has been identified as an integral component of quality teaching and national teacher standards. However, despite this recognition, to date there is limited understanding about how teacher reading content knowledge is operationalized in early years classrooms for teaching children how to read. Since children’s proficiency in reading is developed during the first three years of schooling and teachers have the biggest influence on their learning, it seems logical that research would provide evidence about what reading content is taught in the early years of formal schooling, and how it is taught. The aim of this thesis is to examine the teaching of reading by teachers classified as having different levels of teacher reading content knowledge. The analysis was undertaken with three separate but related studies. The first involved measuring teachers’ reading content knowledge and validating the measure, to identify teachers with varying levels of reading content knowledge. The second and third studies used a mixed-methods approach to analyze the differences in what and how reading was taught in the classrooms of teachers identified as having high and low levels of teacher reading content knowledge. Findings from these studies provide quantitative and qualitative insights into the different ways teachers with high and low levels of teacher reading content knowledge teach reading. Teachers with high levels of reading content knowledge taught all aspects of the science of reading supported with pedagogical interactions that encouraged children to take risks by thinking beyond facts, as learning was based on need and moved from a surface to deep level. Whereas teachers with low levels of reading content knowledge taught all aspects of the science of reading apart from morphology. This teaching reinforced pedagogical interactions that developed child dependency and elicited factual and literal understanding to allow the teacher to move through the lesson. Results from these studies were outlined in terms of their practical implications, which suggest the need to establish minimum levels of teacher reading content knowledge and the development of preservice and in-services courses that helps teachers achieve these levels.
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ItemTeaching together, working together, and being together: Teacher collaboration in Innovative Learning Environments( 2020)For New Zealand primary school teachers, the spatial transition from traditional to Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs) also contains an underlying assumption that increased pedagogical and professional collaboration will be commensurate. However, for many teachers, collaboration has previously constituted a ‘visited activity’, conducted away from the interface with students and the act of teaching, providing little experience upon which to draw. Working through theoretical perspectives on both teacher collaboration and educational space, and within the case study context of early-adopter primary schools, this thesis contributes to educational research by investigating and analysing the theoretical background, conceptual underpinnings, and enacted experiences, of teachers collaborating in ILEs. The study uses data collected from qualitative semi-structured interviews with individuals and groups, practice observations, and documentation to produce four major findings. Firstly, insights into the nature of teacher collaboration in ILEs, according to how they have been envisioned, rationalised and realised. Secondly, insights into enacted approaches to teaching and learning in ILEs, highlighting four factors: pedagogical intention, collaborative practices, joint teaching strategies, and structural components e.g. shared language. Thirdly, demonstrated links between teacher collaboration and space, found to be a profoundly spatial phenomenon that is experienced via multiple proximities, relationalities, and visibilities. Fourth and finally, a model through which to support the theorisation of teacher collaboration in ILEs: Terrains of teacher collaboration in primary school ILEs. This model theorises that teacher activities are the product of working together, teaching together, and being together. It highlights the nature of the terrain between rhetoric, rationale, and implications, and the everyday realities of enactment. Here the imperative is one of explication – and the need to make explicit the implicit. The study provides important implications for educational theory and practice. Practically, the findings assist school leaders and teachers to recognise, reflect on, and respond to aspects of teacher collaboration in ILEs. The study provides language and a model through which to assist this professional learning. Theoretically it draws attention to the centrality of space and spatiality in teacher collaboration and forms a starting point from which to begin further theoretical work.