Faculty of Education - Theses
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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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ItemThe impact of literature circles on student engagement in middle years English( 2013)This project investigated the connection between literature circles and student engagement in middle school English classes. This study shows that literature circles can cause increases in students' behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement in reading, and English. It adds to existing local and international research into effective middle school pedagogies, student voice, and reading strategies.
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Item"Just because I enjoy it doesn't mean I learn": science teachers' perceptions about students' interest in science( 2011)Producing a scientifically literate citizenry and serving those pupils who wish to continue science in future – balancing between these two aims is a dilemma for compulsory science education. Recent studies have shown post-secondary enrolment in science is declining and is a global issue. These studies have indicated that students’ dissatisfaction with school science is also a common phenomenon in most countries. Concerned with such a scenario, the research for this thesis has explored science teachers’ perceptions of their students’ interest in school science. The study assumed that science teachers develop knowledge about their learners through their teaching experience and that this impacts on their science teaching and ultimately on the apparently common global phenomenon of declining enrolment. In particular, this study examined teachers’ perceptions about their students’ likes and dislikes of science topics and about teaching-learning activities that engage their students. A craft knowledge perspective was used to explore the issue given craft knowledge is an important area of research into teacher knowledge concerned with student engagement. Craft knowledge is a form of teachers’ professional knowledge enabling teaching in context specific situations. Craft knowledge also informs the teacher concerning pedagogy that would interest and engage the students. Experience with learners in the classroom and reflecting on classroom teaching experience is considered to contribute to the development of such knowledge in teachers. Hence, learners were considered in this study as source of knowledge for the teacher. To this end, a qualitative multicase study approach was used to portray a general picture of teachers’ perceptions of their students’ likes and dislikes and of engaging pedagogy. The study compared and contrasted teachers’ perceptions with their students’ responses to interview questions concerning their likes and dislikes of their science lessons. Five teachers from secondary schools in metropolitan area of Melbourne and their students voluntarily participated in this study. The present study identified that the teachers had under-informed views of their students’ likes and dislikes regarding science topics and pedagogical approaches. In particular, when teaching in their areas of expertise, teachers’ strong content knowledge background was often insufficient in terms of capturing student interest, thus indicating teachers’ lack of awareness of engaging pedagogy. Interestingly, some beginning teachers displayed a developing sense of awareness of students’ likes and dislikes gained from their classroom teaching experience although they struggled to use this information to develop engaging teaching approaches. The findings from this study suggest that teacher education programmes should emphasise students as important sources of teacher knowledge that can inform the development of engaging pedagogy.