The PGS09 Conference is designed as part of the Research Higher Degree training program offered by the School of Education and is supported by the Educational Futures ASRI.
The conference will provide an opportunity for students at all stages of their RHD candidature to gain experience in presenting their work to a broader audience. In addition, a key component of the design of the conference day will be the opportunity for students to receive feedback on their presentations. Presentation at this conference will constitute an agreed milestone in the progress of each year of PhD candidature.
Presentations
Sam Schulz
Governmentality, whiteness and white teachers in ‘the desert’: a complex relationship.
In this 15 minute presentation, I reflect on the trials of my own journey toward conceptual – which is to say, theoretical, epistemological and methodological – awareness, as I struggle to pull together a post-structural framework for research which ‘makes sense’. The keystones of my conceptual framework are governmentality and whiteness. Drawing on a variety of excerpts from the study’s research materials – including life history interviews, policy and academic literature and other historical materials – I apply a governmentality/whiteness lens to demonstrate the ways that ‘white teachers’ and ‘Indigenous students’ are constructed within the disciplinary site of A nangu Education.
Wendy Stewart
Increasing the vocabulary of young gifted boys in a variety of educational settings.
Evidence indicates that certain populations of gifted students enter school with a greatly reduced vocabulary. Most teachers identify young gifted students by the size of their vocabulary. If vocabulary is reduced due to environmental factors, the child may not be identified as gifted, thus missing out on an appropriate level of curriculum. Gifted students have certain characteristics as learners which impact upon their learning needs. Where these needs are not met, psychological distress follows. It is vital for unidentified gifted students to be identified as early as possible so that educational needs are met. The challenge is to design learning experiences using the "Teaching Head" which will assist in early vocabulary development and extension.
Kate Berniz
Responsibility and Resistance; Analysing Participant and Researcher Voice.
This study investigated the enactment of a critical pedagogical (CP) approach to Spanish language teaching and learning (hereon identified as CSP); a case study project. Motivating the study was:
- a need for current investigations with a grounded pedagogy and learning, and
- an interest in the ways in which a group of Spanish students, their research approach into Spanish language teacher and a researcher, could enact a CSP approach while considering aspects of Spanish students’ motivations and verbal proficiency.
The semi-negotiated CSP features targeted included:
- Teaching as Dialogue (in Spanish),
- Power sharing,
- Self Reflection,
- Empowerment, and
- Critical Inquiry and Interrogation of Cultural Voice and Representation in the local Spanish Curriculum.
Spanish lessons were observed and taped with consent at two pre-determined phases; prior to researcher participation and later, with non-invasive researcher intervention. The transcriptions of lessons were analysed using a critical discourse analysis approach (CDA) (Fairclough, 1989). It was expected that the CDA would provide a framework for the analysis of classroom relations and the content and process counted in Spanish lessons, while enabling opportunities to examine links with the broader social and pedagogical systems (the local, institutional and societal dimensions) (ibid). In CDA studies, the text is considered a main unit of analysis- it’s used to examine links between context, language use and power (Fairclough 1989; Donato & Brooks 2004; Cots 2006; Wagner & Herbel-Eisenmann 2007; Rogers & Mosley 2008). The Spanish classroom’s discourse was thus examined to attempt to understand how aspects of classroom discourse; its culture (via the verbal text), were influence during the enactment of a CSP approach across three terms of the academic year.
The findings of this analysis suggest that more than participant awareness of key features within a CSP is needed in order to reflect on and act on social relations and dynamics in a Spanish classroom. More than positive surface dialogue is needed in order to pursue an in depth negotiation process where participants (teacher, students, researcher) overcome challenges that exist due to complex pedagogical and social gaps that isolate learners, practitioners and researchers. The following presentation focuses on a selection of 'critical incidents' (Tripp, D, 1993) which occurred during Spanish lessons (and in interviews). The incidents show some of the challenges, constraints and ‘insipient’ (Rossetto 2008, pers.comm.) empowering moments (captured by the tapes and transcriptions) which began to emerge in the context of enacting a critical Spanish language/learning pedagogy.
Deb Agnew
Life after football. The construction of masculinity following a career in elite Australian Rules football.
Masculinity is a social construction and is influenced by culture, ethnicity, family and history (Connell 2000). Sport has been argued as being one of the crucial factors in the construction of masculinity as it provides the opportunity to display core characteristics such as physical strength, competitiveness, discipline and toughness (Burgess, Edwards & Skinner 2003; Fitzclarence, Hickey and Matthews 1998). Sport is a vital part of Australian Culture (Connell 1998; Drummond 2002; Pettigrew 2009). Socially and culturally many Australians place great importance on sport in their lives. This is particularly so for Australian males as sport has long been regarded as a masculinised domain. However, an inevitable part of elite competition is retirement. Whether retirement is voluntary or involuntary, a sense of loss is common to many athletes. Depending on the circumstances surrounding retirement from elite competition, identity can become vulnerable but can also lead to a period of self-exploration in which some athletes flourish.
This research will be an investigation into the meaning of masculinity in the lives of retired Australian Rules footballers. It will attempt to understand the ways in which masculinity changes throughout the life course of an AFL career. This research will be qualitative research using a life history and social constructionist perspective. Semi-structured one-on-one interviews will be used to gain an understanding of the experiences of footballers throughout their careers from the beginning of their career, into retirement and life after football. Participants will be retired Australian Rules footballers who have retired from the AFL after 1990 as this was the beginning of the national Australian Rules Football League. This research will add to the current body of literature on retired athletes, while also providing specific insights into the Australian Rules football league. It will also explore the ways in which masculinity is socially constructed through sport and specifically the Australian Rules football league which is an under-researched area.
Grace Skryzpiec
Adolescent Offending behaviour: An analysis to inform a school based intervention using the Theory of Planned Behavior.
Schools play a crucial role in protecting children from offending and they are ideally placed to act as primary crime prevention agents. Suitably developed intervention programs can have an impact on diverting offenders from a criminal pathway and the aim of this research is to provide an evidence-base for the development of such interventions. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB, Ajzen, 1991) posits that only a few psycho-social variables act as antecedents of behaviour and these should be the focus of any intervention which has as an objective the modification of that behaviour (Fishbein, 2008). Based on this supposition, the research seeks to identify the cognitive antecedents of adolescent offending by developing a model which can be tested using Structural Equation Modelling Techniques.
This presentation will describe the antecedents of adolescent offending, which have been identified through an analysis of criminological theories, studies involving TPB in a criminal context and interviews with offending and non-offending youth, and which will be tested in the last phase of this research. The results will help to determine what cognitive psycho-social elements would need to be addressed in the design and development of a school based crime prevention program.
Lesley Henderson
Fired up! Stories reflecting on the aspirations and experiences of graduates from the Ignite program for gifted students.
This presentation will provide an outline of a proposed narrative research into the related experiences of a group of graduate students from a selective entry high school program for gifted students.
Machdalena Vianty
Being a Leader: A Narrative Study on An Indonesian Woman on Leadership Positions.
This study aims to investigate the experiences of an Indonesian woman who have been on some leadership positions through a narrative study. This study is significance in a sense that her experiences can serve as lessons for other women who aspire to become a leader.
Shaileigh Page
Using Activity Theory to Understand the Affective Domain in Mathematics Education.
This presentation utilises activity theory to analyse and understand teachers’ use of the affective domain within their pedagogical approaches to mathematics.
Activity theory is a lens that highlights numerous aspects of human action. This lens enables us to analyse and understand the complexities of various actions such as those occurring within the teaching of mathematics. The affective domain is a broad term encompassing the feelings, attitudes, beliefs, values and emotions that are attached to an idea, subject or object. Educationally, it is important to focus on these aspects, particularly within mathematics education. This presentation investigates the actions of a mathematics teacher in a primary school to explore how the affective domain is incorporated within their teaching.
Wilma Reyes
A Collaborative-Participatory Process Model of Curriculum Development to Infuse Multicultural Concepts in the Philippines Teacher Education Program.
The research focuses on the entire process of curriculum development using collaborative participatory process model to infuse multicultural concepts in the teacher education curriculum. Its participatory and collaborative nature makes it democratic in the process and expected to bring about individual empowerment among the target participants. In this research, voices of stakeholders in the curriculum development: teachers, students, administrators of Philippine Normal University Agusan campus, and the researcher as facilitator were all considered... Only in this model that students were directly involved in the process of curriculum development. The participants in this research worked together to develop a multicultural curriculum that would be relevant and responsive to the problems and needs of the local community in Agusan, southern part of the Philippines. These participants formed part of the curriculum development team. They were involved in identifying multicultural curriculum focus through the series of curriculum development meetings and focus groups. The team processed multicultural infusion leading to the development of the course syllabi in the three components of the teacher education program: general education, professional education and specialization. The researcher was involved in the process mainly as facilitator or mediator. Collaborative participatory model is expected to be an effective approach in curriculum planning in the context of multicultural infusion in the teacher education curriculum.
This model to curriculum development used the bottom up or the inverted pyramid approach. This approach is an innovation to curriculum development in teacher education. The usual process of curriculum development in the Philippines follows the top-down approach. Curriculum decisions come from the central government (Commission on Higher Education or Department of Education) as to what courses should be placed in the curriculum. The Commission sets the national framework and the minimum standards for all teacher education institutions in the country. The top down approach to curriculum development could be one of the reasons for the weaknesses of the teacher education curriculum. This research hopes to provide an alternative model for curriculum development involving the active participation of the teachers and the students in the process of curriculum making.
Calvin Wilkinson
Freedom of Expression in the Learning and Teaching of Mathematics.
Most secondary school mathematics students and teachers are significantly constrained and inhibited in terms of meaningful learning and teaching respectively. The reasons for this state of affairs are complex, but it is probable that the major reason is twofold in nature. On the one hand, it is likely that many teachers lack a comprehensive knowledge of those principles (and how they interrelate) which underpin best practice in the learning and teaching of mathematics at the secondary school level – principles that have evolved on the basis of almost a century of serious scholarly work in the field of mathematics education. On the other hand and perhaps more importantly, the mathematics teaching community does not appear to have a global-synthetic and analytic-combinatoric framework, model, or exemplar that describes theoretically as well as practically, simply, comprehensively, and sequentially the ‘how and why’ of teaching mathematics for the purpose of optimizing meaningful learning. In this presentation, a framework designed to encourage and advance meaningful learning and teaching of mathematics at the high school level is introduced. This framework lays the foundation for the future development of a working model and exemplars of mathematics learning and teaching that are underpinned by Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of Flow, Sternberg’s Triarchic Model of Intelligence, Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development, Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, Valsiner’s Zone of Free Movement and Zone of Promoted Action, and Csikszentmihalyi’s Locus of Creativity. The framework comprises four broad phases of learning and teaching, namely, learning with the body in mind, the intuitive phase, formalizing the intuitive, and a problem solving continuum.
Deanne Gannaway
Towards a Curriculum Taxonomy for Liberal Arts Degrees.
The Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree is arguably one of the longest established and largest degree programs in the Australian higher education system (Pascoe, McIntyre, Ainley, & Williamson, 2003). Society and culture related programs, of which BA and related programs constitute a large majority, attracted 216,200 students in 2006 - the second highest area of study in the country (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). Traditionally, the BA program is a liberal arts degree considered the first step in the lifelong journey of learning and is frequently marketed as such. Yet the relevance and the value of the degree are frequently called into question by students, prospective employers and by university administration to the extent that one university, the Queensland University of Technology, recently announced the closure of the BA and Bachelor of Social Sciences degree programs in 2007 (The Australian, May 2007). Falling student demand, and high costs and attrition rates were cited as reasons for the closure, in contrast to vocations based studies into which humanities and social science subjects are embedded.
This paper reports the findings from PhD research focusing on the Australian BA degree program. The research seeks to identify the nature and roles of the modern Australian degree in contemporary society. The study examines BA and related programs on offer at 40 Australian universities between 2001 and 2009. The phase of the research described in this paper describes the pilot study: a detailed examination of course structures, institutional curriculum reviews, marketing and study guide materials; analysis of quantitative data collected by government agencies; interviews with program directors and coordinators, faculty administrators and teaching academics; and online surveys of academic staff.
A key finding from this project has been that there is a lack of a framework to facilitate a common understanding of the purpose and intentions of the BA degrees. The scoping study found that many academics cited administrative or market-based reasons for the development of the structure of the degree program rather clear pedagogical intention. Academics reported a desire to support students in acquiring the skills and confidence to navigate through the"supercomplexity" (Ron Barnett, 2004) of their chosen career paths and their studies, but there was little evidence of a curriculum designed to support this desire. In fact, in some instances the BA curricula appears to be adding to the complexity to the point of turning away the very students they aim to attract. An outcome of the scoping study has been the development of curriculum taxonomy that describes the curricula currently used in Australian BA degree programs. This taxonomy can be used to develop a common curriculum framework on a program level to facilitate discussions regarding program relevance, value, purpose and intention. This framework can then be used as a basis of discussion within institutions and when engaging with students, administration and industry.
Carol Le Lant
Alternating Treatments Design (ATD): Single-Subject Design Methodology.
Single-subject design methodology allows the researcher to study the effect of a treatment or intervention on a single participant or a small number of participants. This enables the researcher to measure the effects of an intervention over time, and identify any changes that may or may not have occurred over the intervention period. An Alternating Treatments Design (ATD) allows more than one treatment condition to be implemented during the same intervention period. This presentation will introduce the ATD and the benefits it offers to this particular research project, with reference to how the data will be collected and ultimately analysed.
Ardi Marwan
Teachers' Perceptions of a Computer Technology Integration Program in an Indonesian Polytechnic.
Computer technology is becoming more pervasive in Indonesian vocational higher institutions today and yet very little is understood of teachers’ perceptions of this innovation. This research study sets out to address this by reporting the perceptions of teachers concerning the implementation of a computer technology integration program at an Indonesian Polytechnic. In particular, the study seeks to examine the factors which support and constrain computer technology integration and identify the relationships between the factors as part of a complex activity system.
Data were gathered from ten teachers working full time at the polytechnic using semi-structured interviews and were analyzed using thematic analysis strategy and third generation activity theory.
The findings suggested that several factors including beliefs, attitude, organizational culture and external influences had a positive influence on technology integration. The study also identified factors (i.e. skills, workload, strategic planning, ownership, resources, professional development and leadership) that require implementers’ specific attention as they indicated a negative influence. These results were further confirmed by the findings obtained through the analysis of relationships using activity theory, suggesting that both positive and negative relationships (between the factors) were present in the activity system (i.e. the computer technology integration program).
Pauline Hill
Diabetes Education as a Teaching and Learning Event.
Type 2 diabetes is a significant health issue which relies upon effective education to enable the individual to problem solve and self mange their condition. Thus the effectiveness of the teaching and learning interaction in the process of diabetes education is of interest for the wider health system. Diabetes education that is not effective usually results in demands being made for further medical treatment or hospitalisation. Although the nature of diabetes education has been widely researched and document there has been limited attention given to the process of education.
This doctoral study is a qualitative investigation into the Diabetes Educator-Patient interaction as a teaching-learning event. Specifically I have investigated the knowledge and conceptions about teaching and learning held by Diabetes Educators and patients, their conceptions of their roles and the degree of match between these conceptions.
This research involved data collection via three different methods: interviews of diabetes educators and patients prior to and following a one-to-one education session; Interviews of a diabetes educator and a patient prior to and after a group education session; and email interviews of credentialled diabetes educators about their teaching and learning in their education sessions.
This presentation will focus on the third set of data collected and I will discuss the teaching and learning knowledge and conceptions of the Credentialled Diabetes Educators.
Li Hui Wang
Imagery Training for Facilitating Reading Comprehension in EFL Learning: Effects of Individual Differences.
Imagery training has been shown to improve reading comprehension. A review of literature shows that our current knowledge in this field largely centers around examining the efficiency of applying the technique and little is known about the mediating effects of individual differences, especially differences in visual mental imagery ability. Research about whether the training of imagery technique can facilitate reading comprehension when applied with EFL learners is also sparse.
This study was conducted to assess effect of visual mental imagery use in EFL reading comprehension learning practice and explore the mediating effects of individual’s ability to make images, to make constrained images, working memory capacity and motivation on reading comprehension.
Ninety-four participants were randomly assigned to control, imagery training and constrained-imagery training groups. Quantitative data on individual ability to make images, working memory capacity for integrated information, and motivation were collected during designed experimental procedures with tests of reading comprehension given on three occasions.
Qualitative data in the form of interviews were also collected. The interviews being discussed here were undertaken after the third occasion. The interview transcripts were coded under several categories related to a manipulation check on use of the trained strategies, knowledge of the strategies, transfer and motivation. Preliminary findings relating to differences between the groups on these measures will be discussed.
Vennessa James
Longitudinal Relationships between Undergraduates' Personal Achievement Goals, Classroom Goal Structures, and Achievement.
Despite the widespread adoption of tutorial classes as learning forums in higher education, few studies have investigated students' experiences of the motivational emphasis of tutorials and the relationships between students’ perceptions of these goal structures, their self-reported personal achievement goals and their course achievement. Achievement goal theory is an important motivational construct as it provides explanations for students’ approaches to the mastery of knowledge, skills and understandings and to performance in the academic domain. In the present study 176 university undergraduate students’ personal achievement goals were measured at the beginning of a course of study (Time 1) (T1) and their perceptions of tutorial goal structures measured at the end of the final tutorial (Time 2) (T2) for the same course. Students’ prior and concurrent course achievements were also collected for the same academic domain. Partial least squares (PLS) path modelling analyses using SmartPLS revealed students’ self-reported mastery-approach and performance-approach goals at T1 positively and significantly influenced their perceptions of the corresponding mastery and performance tutorial goal structures at T2. Significant direct relationships were also demonstrated between prior achievement and personal mastery-approach and performance-approach goals at T1. The study highlights the role played by university students’ prior achievement in predicting their personal achievement goals and their personal achievement goal orientations in predicting their perceptions of achievement goal structures in tutorials. These findings have important implications for tutorial based learning.
Mirella Wyra
My PhD explorations in a capsule.
This paper presents an overview of my research journey from the inception of research questions through the design of studies and implementation, to the conclusions drawn from results of quantitative analyses. The focus of the experimental research at the centre of this overview is the keyword method as a foreign language vocabulary learning strategy with special interest in the effect of retrieval training on vocabulary recall success in two directions of recall. Student ability to imagine and student knowledge are also in the centre of investigation.
Debra Dickinson
From Nature Studies and Environmental Education to Ecological Sustainability Education: 1960s–today.
This presentation tracks the shifts and changes in Australian curriculum and educational philosophical underpinnings relating to environmental issues from the 1960s til today.
Global government and non-government initiatives and reports have influenced and informed educational policy and practice. This presentation will look at past and present educational decisions made in Australia in relation to environmental issues. The effectiveness of how these decisions have translated into practices and dispositions will be discussed, and the current South Australian educational guidelines with regard to environmental issues will be outlined.
Nanang Bagus Subekti
The quality of Indonesian teachers’ knowledge bases for teaching English.
I argue that the quality of a teacher’s actions flows from the quality of the teacher’s teaching intentions, which in turn flows from the quality of the teacher’s knowledge about teaching. Shulman (1986a, 1986b, 1987) proposed seven categories of teachers’ knowledge which have been very influential and stimulated researchers and theorists to conduct research on the investigation of the quality of teachers’ knowledge bases for teaching particular disciplines. Among the seven teachers’ knowledge categories proposed by Shulman, ‘Pedagogical Content Knowledge’ (PCK) has distinctive characteristics as it combines two types of knowledge categories: ‘Content Knowledge’ and ‘General Pedagogical Knowledge’. The paper offers a conceptual framework for the implementation of PCK in assessing the quality of Indonesian teachers' knowledge bases for teaching reading comprehension in English as a foreign language (EFL) courses.
Adi Suryani
Leaders' Perception on their Conflict Management In Handling their Vertical Dyadic Conflict.
Good and active followers may not silent followers. They may disagree, challenge, debate, criticize or dissatisfy with their leaders’ work behaviour or decision. Leaders may also disagree or dissatisfy with their followers’ work behaviour or work performance. This may lead to conflict between leaders and followers.
This conflict can bring about constructive or destructive impacts. Which impacts will be felt by the organization is depending on how leaders handle this conflict. This study will be focused on how leaders perceive, manage, and learn from their conflict with their followers.
This study will combine both process and structural approach of conflict management. How leaders process their conflict is heavily affected by internal and external pressures. Those factors affect leaders to frame the potential conflict and conflict conceptualization before actual handling and resulted in leaders’ dominant and preferred styles for handling conflict. However, as leaders come to the actual handling, they may change their dominant and preferred styles and adopt emergent handling modes. This is because conflict is dynamic and involving a negotiation process in which leaders continuously have to scan their environment.
Leaders may use different conflict handling modes. They may use avoiding, accommodating, forcing, compromising, or collaborating. They may use them collaboratively or shift from one mode to other mode. This tends to be affected by various factors. Those factors will be classified into behavioural predisposition, social-cultural, incentive structure, and rules/procedures.
Prasert Chanudom
Developing an English Mastery Test.
This research is an attempt t o evaluate the existing English mastery test which has been used at Nakhon S awan Rajabhat University ( NSRU ) in Thailand . The purposes are to analyse the test items to find out th eir content validity , level s of difficulty, level s of discrimination , Differential Item Functioning (or bias) . Also, a computerised item bank together with its manual will be developed. The data w ere obtained from the NSRU's database which comprised test results of 392 undergraduate students who took the test in semester 1/2003.
The data analyses w ill be conducted as follows: The content validity analyses will employ a human judgment technique (or expert review) as well as a statistical technique (confirmatory factor analyses), using the computer programme, Amos 16. Besides, the levels of item difficulty and item discrimination will be analysed based on the two underlying theories: Classical Test Theory, and Item Response Theory. Under the Classical Test Theory, the analyses will be undertaken using the computer programme called B Index. On the other hand, the Item Response Theory-based analyses will employ the programme called Parscale. The Differential Item Functioning analyses will also use Parscale. In addition, the item bank development will use the programme, Test Maestro.
The findings of this study will contribute to NSRU's educational programmes , especially in the field of test development , by providing feedback to teachers and administrators . This will encourage them to improve the test so that it functions properly as an instrument of language test.
Carolyn Gregoric
Towards development of a model of school-community interactions.
Increasingly across a broad spectrum of activities schools are partnering with their communities to support students. These school – community interactions are part of a broader strategy for improving students learning and wellbeing. Using a case study approach this PhD study is exploring the nature of school - community connections within two Adelaide metropolitan secondary schools. This presentation will report on preliminary findings from an analysis of interviews with two principals, twenty teachers, forty students and thirty individuals working with schools. Initial analysis suggests the degree of involvement between schools and the community to be on a continuum, ranging from unwelcome interactions to strong ongoing connections. Whilst each partnership is unique, ongoing tensions were found in the relationships between schools, students and organisations/individuals they work with. These tensions appear to be dynamic, constantly changing over time. By examining what is working well and the challenges encountered, a model of school-community interactions is proposed. The model provides a useful framework for thinking about the effectiveness of existing and future relationships and activities between schools and the community.
Ratna Rintaningrum
Exploring Campus Policy Effect on Reading Comprehension Achievement.
It is widely acknowledged that reading is fundamental to all forms of personal learning, and intellectual growth both in school and out of school. Reading is one of the most fundamental skills that students acquire as it is the foundation for learning across all subjects. Expository text, the opposite of narrative text, is a text that is designed to interpret, explain, or appraise. Some students have good reading performance, while others do not. Some students are able to comprehend a text easily, while others need to struggle to understand it. This indicates that there are some factors that affect reading comprehension achievement. Some research findings have shown that reading performance is influenced by factors both at the student level and school level. Some factors, such as students’ background knowledge, motivation, gender, home background, and some teacher level factors such as teacher educational background, teacher experience, gender of the teacher, may affect reading comprehension achievement. This present study is designed to investigate reading comprehension achievement by exploring some variables that relate to the campus policy of the Institute of Technology Sepuluh November (ITS) Surabaya, Indonesia. The variables include the way students are selected for entry into the university, the monetary costs incurred due to varying entry fees, and other variables relating to the student and teacher level factors. The purpose of the study is to examine and measure the effect of campus policy on student achievement, particularly in reading, in order for the institution (ITS) to better prepare both its policies and practices with greater confidence. By so doing it is hoped that the level of student achievement in reading comprehension among a range of communities can be raised. The data will be analyzed using the population of students enrolled in advanced English at ITS during the period 2006-2009. There are about 4000 students participated in the study.
