Dissertations / Theses on the topic '330299 Curriculum Studies not elsewhere classified'

This thesis was conducted to examine the adequacy of the skills and preparation of the Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) English language teachers as the poor performance of Nigerian students in external English language examinations has become a source of concern to educational stakeholders (Patrick, Sui, Didam & Ojo, 2014). The NCE is the basic qualification for teaching in Nigeria. The concern for the quality of teachers in Nigeria is crucial as the Nigerian government recognized a problem with the training of teachers at the NCE level in 2010 and proposed to abolish the colleges and phase out the NCE (Idoko, 2010). The Context, Input, Process and Product (CIPP) Evaluation model is used as a theoretical framework in the study. The research questions were: What is the context of the English language programme of the Nigeria Certificate in Education? How does the implementation of the curriculum equip students to develop the four language skills? What are the lecturers and students’ perceptions of the implementation of the curriculum and how have the objectives of the curriculum been achieved? In examining these issues, a mixed methods approach was adopted within the framework of the CIPP model, while utilizing a case study. The study showed the ineffective implementation of the curriculum as a factor for the failure of Nigerian students in external English language examinations. The research established the deficiency of the students in the basic skills of the language. The process and product evaluations noted failures in the procedural design of the curriculum and demonstrated a lack of achievement of the objectives of the curriculum. The recommendations arising from the research emphasized an immediate review of the admission policy and an extensive involvement of the lecturers in the future reform of the curriculum. Future research is concerned with an investigation of the measures that will curb systemic failures in the colleges.

There has been increasing interest in open innovation in academic research as well as industry application since the concept was introduced in 2003. The concept got much attention because of its economic benefits and novel means for facilitating innovation. This thesis aims to adapt the concept of open innovation to the university environment, in order to foster innovation in the development process for intellectual property (IP) derived from academic research activities. It contributes to the literature on open innovation adapted to the university context, i.e. open collaboration on the development of intellectual property towards a commercial ready stage. In order to investigate the potential of open innovation in the university environment, a focus group was conducted. In addition, the business process of Quirky Inc. was analysed as an example to better understand how open innovation works in the business context. The results of the study’s data analyses inform new opportunities for interventions in universities towards fostering different approaches to IP development as research outcomes. Further, it reveals interventions that can promote open innovation approaches in the university’s context more generally.

This study investigates linguistic, perceptual, and pedagogical change (LPPC) in a short-term, study abroad English immersion program. It proposes the LPPC Interactive Model of second language acquisition based on Gardner's 1985 socioeducational model and Woods' 1996 beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge (BAK) structure. The framework is applied in a cross-cultural context, highlighting participants in the 1993 Camosun Osaka Aoyama English Language Institute involving Japanese English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students from Aoyama Junior College in Osaka, Japan, and non-Japanese ESL teachers at Camosun College and Canada's University of Victoria in British Columbia. The study examined the definition of teacher achievement; distinctions between language activation and language acquisition in the short-term, study abroad context; development of the constructs student BAK+, teacher BAK+, and class BAK+ to describe interactions in "class fit"; and the influence of temporal parameters on linguistic, perceptual, and pedagogical change. Data from teacher and student surveys and interviews suggest that change occurs in each of the linguistic, perceptual, and pedagogical dimensions and support constructs proposed for the model.

Active citizenship is an important aspect of global education, assisting students to develop the understanding that they can make a difference in the world, as well as encouraging students to develop empathy, self-confidence and moral thinking. Whilst active citizenship can assist students in their preparation for the future, it is rarely occurring to its full extent in schools. Research shows that students in Australian primary schools generally take a secondary role in active citizenship, participating most frequently in teacher-chosen projects, rudimentary service learning or no projects at all, rather than being a part of the decision-making process. Considerable benefits have been reported for students when they take an active and informed role in meaningful projects, such as a feeling of empowerment, a sense of pride, greater self esteem, and positive effects on schoolwork and mood. This study aimed to uncover perceptions of student-initiated active citizenship, from the viewpoints of students, school staff and volunteers in two Australian primary schools. The study also sought teacher and school staff perceptions of the relevance of student-initiated active citizenship, gaining an indication of how much space teachers feel is in the curriculum for active citizenship opportunities in the upper primary classroom. The research is a partial replication of Hannam’s pilot study into the impact of student participation in secondary schools in England, but on a smaller scale, concentrating only on the impact for schools and school communities. This phenomenological study took a qualitative approach to data collection, focusing on understanding participants’ lived experience of active citizenship through semi-structured interviews. The findings from this study revealed that students perceived the experience of benefits such as enhanced mood, changes in their way of thinking and feeling pride in themselves. Teachers perceived the most beneficial aspects of the students’ active citizenship to be the development of important life skills, and students learning to make decisions and act independently. Teachers perceived the difficulties being that active citizenship is time consuming, and the students observed the organisational aspects of their projects to be the most significant difficulty. Overall, the data revealed that students and school staff perceive great benefits from students participating in informed active citizenship projects.

The portfolio explores the construction, representation and interpretation of internationalisation at the University of South Australia (UniSA) within the broader concept of internationalisation in higher education. The research is situated within a postmodern, postcolonial world and is influenced significantly by the work of Foucault ([1972] 2003), Fairclough (1989; 1992), Said (1995 [1978]) and Cherryholmes (1988). The portfolio consists of three related research reports and a meta-analysis which both connects these individual reports and conducts further analysis of the issues and themes arising from the research. The literature reviewed in Research Report 1 describes a range of approaches to internationalisation and issues associated with its definition and implementation in universities. It is concluded that internationalisation in higher education is part of a network of constantly developing and changing discourses all of which both influence and are influenced by political, social and economic contexts and agendas. The nature of the discourse of internationalisation at UniSA and the power/knowledge relations which are embedded within and support it are the focus of the second research report which consists of a critical discourse analysis of a corpus of documents related to internationalisation and Graduate Quality #7 at UniSA. Five discourses of internationalisation at UniSA are identified and the roles associated with the primary subjects of the discourse (academic staff, Australian students and international students) are described. Significant shifts in the discursive construction of internationalisation at UniSA over time are also identified, including the tendency for the economic discourse to be viewed as dominant and the associated ideology to be naturalised. The third research report consists of ‘snapshots’ of the experience of internationalisation in different places and from different perspectives. It strives for a deeper understanding of the complexity of internationalisation at UniSA through exploration of the construction of Graduate Quality #7 (that students of UniSA will develop international perspectives as professionals and citizens) in two different cultural and educational contexts ���������������� Adelaide and Hong Kong. The research highlights the need to embed and integrate intercultural learning into the culture of UniSA – to assist all staff and all students to move into uncomfortable intercultural spaces; to learn from and with each other within those spaces; to challenge their stereotypes and prejudices and to move on from them. The three reports are drawn together in the meta-analysis which concludes that although there are signs of ideological struggle within the discourse of internationalisation, the constructions of internationalisation and its subjects and actors at UniSA and beyond are consistent with a construction of internationalisation as a neo-colonialist activity. It suggests a modified approach to internationalisation – one that challenges the stereotypes and hegemonies currently associated with it. This has implications for the focus of professional development and student services to support internationalisation at UniSA and other Australian universities.

This dissertation is based on a project which sought to use a community consultation process as a school development medium.lt was adapted from a similar process used in the Ministerial Consultative Council on Curriculum's 1991 project, New World New Mind: A curriculum for the future.The process was to focus on active consultation, collaboration and cooperation, and future visioning in identifying issues and implications for future curriculum and in framing action plans for implementation. Although the community consultation process proper did not eventuate, the planning phase of its vehicle, the New Mind New School project, emerged as an important consultation in itself, with personal and interpersonal dynamics highlighting a range of issues pertinent to the planning of future curriculum consultations.

This is a thesis about curriculum change, focusing on Studies of Indonesia in Australian schools generally, Languages Other Than English (LOTE) - Indonesian - specifically'. It explores the possibilities for a socially critical approach to curriculum negotiation informed by research on critical pedagogies, immersion and postcolonialism and it applies a critical discourse analysis methodology to inform its proposed version of school programs in this field. Readings from Indonesian language sources are presented as sample contributors to an ongoing mediation and negotiation of Australian studies of Indonesia.

"Studying leading as a way of changing meaning, this research documents a journey of inner exploration amongst five self-nominated leaders in education. In contrast to change limited by outer dimensional structure, changing meaning in an inner dimension was seen as the necessary complement in creating real difference in educators and in educating. Over a period of almost a year, the leaders participated in an online project, travelling together through email dialogue focused around leading, changing and meaning. In this, they experimented with a changing way of researching, developing a personalised space of changing in which they could truth-test their thoughts and feelings about the multiple facets of leading and meaning. Such a space - interstitial to their outer working and inner personal lives, but deeply connective of both - was found useful in supporting coherent change processes in the participant leaders." - abstract

Mediation, as defined in this study, is a dispute resolution process for dealing with disagreements between community members and differs from other forms of conflict resolution such as arbitration, conciliation and adjudication. Mediation is a relatively new field of professional endeavour, consequently, community mediators are few and no current accredited course exists in the vocational education and training sector.

This study aimed to develop a curriculum for training community mediators which individuals of various professions could undertake through the vocational education and training sector in order to become accredited mediators.

An initial review of the literature identified existing mediator competencies. Following this review, the first phase of the study was to survey practising community mediators to obtain their views on which additional competencies mediators should possess.

In the second phase of the study, various curriculum models were reviewed and one model selected which fitted the contextual constraints of the vocational education and training sector. The Competency Based Training model for curriculum development was selected to develop a curriculum which incorporated the list of competencies elucidated in the first phase of the study.

A curriculum suitable for teaching community mediation skills to trainee mediators through a course offered through the vocational education and training sector is presented in the fifth chapter.

This study is significant in that it attempts to objectify what it is that mediators do by way of establishing a collection of mediator competencies pertinent to community mediation. The challenge was to undertake this task in an environment in which mediation as a skill, was considered malleable; a skill which requires fine adjustment to fit the various contexts in which mediation is practised.

Finally, this study also highlighted the need for further research into mediation. Issues such as 'hard' versus 'sot mediation and the development of specific competencies related to the practice of mediation within specific contexts, for example, divorce mediation and land right mediation, are discussed.

The thesis topic seeks to address to what extent early childhood practitioners have adopted teaching methodology and pedagogical practices to embrace the SACSA Framework in the Communication and Language Learning Area.

In 1998, early childhood teachers throughout Queensland were required to attend a professional development program to familiarise them with the new Preschool Curriculum Guidelines. While this 'top down' or mandated professional development activity was characteristic of the type of professional development usually accessed by early childhood teachers, it provided no guarantees that any changes to teaching or learning would be subsequently incorporated into early childhood classrooms. The professional development activity also demonstrated the continued use of the 'expert' model as a means of bringing about changes to teaching practices.

This report explores the shortcomings of this 'expert' model. Using the outcomes from a teacher initiated professional development activity that used action research strategies as its' framework, the report demonstrates the explicit links between professional development and change, and highlights the advantages of using action research as a framework for effective professional development activities. The report concludes with a series of recommendations for future professional development activities in the field of early childhood.

This thesis is a qualitative case study of curriculum change within a contemporary Australian university. The curriculum change involved a repositioning of early childhood teacher education into a course structure that would qualify teachers to work across both the early childhood and primary years. The study explores the ways some of the institutional social practices of a university at a particular socio historic moment constructed ways of 'being' for the people involved in the change process. In particular, the research investigates language as a social practice within the university and focuses on the ways university curriculum texts privileged some discourses over others, legitimating particular versions of teaching and excluding others.

Online higher education courses are often designed using a one-size-fits-all model that treats students as instructional users rather than participants who contribute according to their learning needs and interests. Although many scholars have discussed personalized learning as a means to customize instruction over the past three decades, few have investigated the impact of personalized learning interventions. In particular, there is a gap in the literature on interventions using customized instructional content in online courses to provide individuals with opportunities to address their own learning needs and choices. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of this instructional approach on students’ self-determination, intrinsic motivation, learning engagement, and online learning experiences.

In this thesis, it is argued that the fundamental goal of education is one of equipping individuals to partake of the good life as members of a just democratic society. It is argued further that a necessary condition for the realisation of this goal is that individuals are equipped to think well; more precisely, to make decisions on the basis of arguments that are both logically cogent (that is, which have true premises and which are either inductively strong or deductively valid) and ethically grounded (that is, with premises which express appropriate regard for the welfare of others). The concern of the thesis is the role education might play in fostering both the capability and the readiness to engage widely in such thinking. Although this concern has a long and complex history within the Western tradition, insufficient educational progress has been made. It is suggested that progress has been hampered on the one hand by the stark disciplinary divide between the descriptive approach of psychology and the normative stance of philosophy; and on the other, by a failure on the part of educational programme developers to take into account the constraints of prevailing educational structures. It is argued that what is needed is a new model of interdisciplinary research.

External representations (ERs) used in science education are multimodal ensembles consisting of design elements to convey educational meanings to the audience. As an example of a dynamic ER, an animation presenting its content features (i.e., scientific concepts) via varying the feature’s depiction over time. A production team invited the dissertation author to inspect their creation of a biochemistry animation about the role of the actin cytoskeleton in cell motility and the animation’s implication on learning. To address this, the author developed a four-step methodology entitled the Multimodal Variation Analysis of Dynamic External Representations (MVADER) that deconstructs the animation’s content and design to inspect how each content feature is conveyed via the animation’s design elements.

This dissertation research investigated the actin animation’s educational value and the MVADER’s utility in animation evaluation. The research design was guided by descriptive case study methodology and an integrated framework consisting of the variation theory, multimodal analysis, and visual analytics. As stated above, the animation was analyzed using MVADER. The development of the actin animation and the content features the production team members intended to convey via the animation were studied by analyzing the communication records between the members, observing the team meetings, and interviewing the members individually. Furthermore, students’ learning experiences from watching the animation were examined via semi-structured interviews coupled with post- storyboarding. Moreover, the instructions of MVADER and its applications in studying the actin animation were reviewed to determine the MVADER’s usefulness as an animation evaluation tool.

Findings of this research indicate that the three educators in the production team intended the actin animation to convey forty-three content features to the undergraduate biology students. At least 50% of the student who participated in this thesis learned thirty-five of these forty-three (> 80%) features. Evidence suggests that the animation’s effectiveness to convey its features was associated with the features’ depiction time, the number of identified design elements applied to depict the features, and the features’ variation of depiction over time.

Additionally, one-third of the student participants made similar mistakes regarding two content features after watching the actin animation: the F-actin elongation and the F-actin crosslink structure in lamellipodia. The analysis reveals the animation’s potential design flaws that might have contributed to these common misconceptions. Furthermore, two disruptors to the creation process and the educational value of the actin animation were identified: the vagueness of the learning goals and the designer’s placement of the animation’s beauty over its reach to the learning goals. The vagueness of the learning goals hampered the narration scripting process. On the other hand, the designer’s prioritization of the animation’s aesthetic led to the inclusion of a “beauty shot” in the animation that caused students’ confusion.

MVADER was used to examine the content, design, and their relationships in the actin animation at multiple aspects and granularities. The result of MVADER was compared with the students’ learning outcomes from watching the animation to identify the characteristics of content’s depiction that were constructive and disruptive to learning. These findings led to several practical recommendations to teach using the actin animation and create educational ERs.

To conclude, this dissertation discloses the connections between the creation process, the content and design, and the educational implication of a biochemistry animation. It also introduces MVADER as a novel ER analysis tool to the education research and visualization communities. MVADER can be applied in various formats of static and dynamic ERs and beyond the disciplines of biology and chemistry.

The facilitator model for dual credit offers a way for student to earn directly transcripted credit to colleges and universities, overcoming many barriers faced by other dual credit models. Successful implementation of this model requires high degree of involvement from the cooperating institution. This IRB approved qualitative case study explored the needs of five teacher facilitators in both summer professional development and on-going support throughout the school year when implementing a facilitator model for dual credit with open-ended design coursework. Code-recode and axial coding techniques were applied to over 90 hours of transcribed data, artifacts, and observations from a seven month period to find emerging themes and offer recommendations for implementation.