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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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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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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ItemSustaining pedagogic innovation in vocational education settings: an actor-network theory account( 2014)Market based approaches to education reform have gained ‘grip’ in the vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia. In VET policy discourse, innovation is taken to be the main means of achieving this reform. Accordingly, innovation holds pride of place in the neoliberal reform program currently reshaping the VET system, and what VET educators do. However, neoliberal ideologies do not always ‘fit’ with local pedagogic practices and may serve to constrain rather than foster innovation. Given the pre-eminence of innovation in VET policy and management discourse, this ‘lack of fit’ is a policy problem. Drawing on key concepts from the practice-based approach of actor-network theory, this study sets out to critically examine how pedagogic innovation is understood and practiced in VET. An investigation of four cases of pedagogic innovation attends chiefly to what makes pedagogic practices innovative, and how they might be fostered and sustained in VET settings. These are critical questions for a sector in the midst of tumultuous reform and under scrutiny for its capacity to innovate and produce innovative workers. In contrast with innovation as diffusion (Rogers, 2005), innovation as translation (Latour, 1987, Callon, 1986) is tendered as a productive way to think and practice innovation. In the empirical analyses, pedagogic innovation presents as improvised, tenuous and emergent enactments in which spatiality, affectivity and distant policies play a constitutive part. Innovative pedagogies are not packages of learning transactions, or the diffusion of knowledge and skills, as current policy framings have it. Rather, they are co-constitutive knowledge creating practices which are entangled in pedagogic networks consisting of surprisingly complex and powerful actors. What matters most to their ‘innovativeness’ is ‘who and what’ are enrolled in the networks. Care emerges as the dominant practice the four educators use to make sense of the complex forces impacting on their pedagogic work and to ensure the best outcomes they can for learners. This study concludes that neoliberal framings of pedagogic innovation, with their predilection for competitive markets, quality regimes and control ‘from above’ (Bathmaker and Avis, 2013), run counter to the relational, material and caring practices that predominate in everyday pedagogic work. Opportunities for pedagogic innovation emerge in the tensions and when innovative learning and practices of inquiry are embedded in the professional being of educators. They are also possible when the responsibility for innovation is shared beyond the immediate domain of pedagogic work.
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ItemLearning through simulation: powerful, purposeful and personal( 2011)Simulation has been in use for many years in the education of health professionals. The value of this as an educational pedagogy is under-researched. While there have been some valuable studies, these mostly focus on the technical aspects of simulation. The aim of this research was to examine simulation beyond the development of technical skills, to determine the validity of simulation in the development of higher-order thinking and clinical judgement. Simulation has been in use in one form or another in the development of health care professionals for many years. Until recently simulation was generally seen as an adjunct to the education and training process, and not part of the overall development of the professional. However in more recent times with the reduction in the availability of clinical practicums and the increased demand for these placements, simulation has become a more important part of the educational process. Yet the research into the effectiveness of simulation in the development of the health care professional is currently under researched as discussed above. For this reason it is an area requiring further research. This is a qualitative study involving educators and students from nursing, medicine, paramedicine and the fire brigade. Eighteen educators and eighteen students were interviewed through semistructured interviews. The observations were restricted to the pseudo-authentic workplace and consisted of seven educators, forty-six students from paramedicine and the non-emergency patient transport sectors. A review of curriculum documents was also undertaken to locate and assess the espoused views of the teaching organisation on simulation in the education of their students. The findings were triangulated to provide reliability to the results. This research has shown that simulation is a pedagogy that can assist in the development of higher-order thinking and judgement-making during “hot action”. This study has identified that the development of higher-order thinking and judgement-making through public reflection occurs best in the third phase of a simulation. In conclusion, simulation is a powerful learning and teaching pedagogy, and can be considered as one of the active learning pedagogies. Furthermore, if the simulation is well constructed and executed, it can provide valid experiences for the participants. These experiences can provide for the development of an epistemology of practice with highly developed higher-order thinking and clinical judgement capabilities.