Education Commons^™

Using Qualitative Research Methods To Assess The Degree Of Fit Between Teachers’ Reported Self-Efficacy Beliefs And Their Practical Knowledge During Teacher Education, Mark Wyatt

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Abstract: There is a need for qualitative research into teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs so that the relationship between these beliefs and other cognitions possessed by teachers, including their practical knowledge, can be better understood by teacher educators. Teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs may need supporting if they seem too low or challenging if they seem too high. However, clear criteria are needed to facilitate assessment, together with the use of rigorous qualitative methods. This article explores these issues while reporting on research conducted in Oman into the cognitions of two in-service English language teachers. There is a focus on how qualitative case study …

Antecedents Of Teachers’ Educational Beliefs About Mathematics And Mathematical Knowledge For Teaching Among In-Service Teachers In High Poverty Urban Schools, Danya M. Corkin, Adem Ekmekci, Anne Papakonstantinou

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper examines the antecedents of three types of educational beliefs about mathematics among 151 teachers predominantly working in high poverty schools. Studies across various countries have found that teachers in high poverty schools are less likely to enact instructional approaches that align with mathematics reform standards set by national and international organizations. Researchers contend that for instruction to change, educational beliefs about mathematics and teaching must change. Regression analyses indicated that mathematics-teaching experience was associated with teachers’ self-efficacy for teaching mathematics at the onset of professional development and the number of mathematics college courses teachers had taken moderated their …

The Role Of Awareness Of Repetition During The Development Of Automaticity, Emma Shadbolt

Theses : Honours

Investigation into the influence of contextual information on performance of an automatic task has found inconsistent results. The majority of studies have investigated whether changing the context of a simple cognitive task can inhibit an automatic response, but do not review whether context can help the development of automatic responding. The current study examined whether bringing awareness to the context of a simple numerosity task could aid the development of automaticity. It also examined whether participants were aware of when automaticity developed for them via a post-test interview. The numerosity task used in this study was a simple counting task …

Rising To The Challenge: Exploring The Transition From Primary To Secondary Education In A Western Australian School, Elizabeth Joan Wenden

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The ‘Rising to the Challenge: Exploring the transition from Primary to Secondary education in a Western Australian School’ study explored the positive predictors of primary to secondary school transition of a cohort of Year 7 students (n=182) at a school in Western Australia. The transition from primary to secondary school is an important process in the lives of adolescents aged around 11-13 years old. It is a challenging and exciting time that coincides with social, emotional, physical and cognitive changes of the adolescent stage of development. Enabling a positive transition to secondary school can give adolescents the support they need …

Pre-Service Teachers’ Motivation In Using Digital Technology, Alexander S. Yeung, Eng Guan Tay, Chenri Hui, Jane Huiling Lin, Ee-Ling Low

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Digital technology (DT) has a significant role to play in modern education. This study examined motivational goals of student teachers in initial teacher education in Singapore and the influences of goals on their use of DT personally and in the classroom. The participants (N=312) responded to a survey about their motivational goals (learning vs. performance) and DT application (personal vs. classroom application). Results showed that personal use of DT, especially for younger teachers, was clearly more than classroom application. Females were found to have higher performance goal. Structural equation modelling found that learning goals were positively related to …

Relations Between Teachers’ Classroom Goals And Values: A Case Study Of High School Teachers In Far North Queensland, Australia, Claudia E. Pudelko, Helen J. Boon

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

To date, there is an empirical gap in the evidence of the relations between teachers’ classroom goals and values, two key variables linked to students’ achievement motivation. The purpose of this study was to investigate this relationship in an Australian teacher sample. We surveyed 102 high school teachers from seven schools in Cairns, Queensland using items of Wentzel’s Classroom Goals Scales and Schwartz’s Portrait Values Questionnaire. Results showed several positive associations between teachers’ classroom goals and values. Social goals were linked to a wide range of values, while academic goals were linked to specific value dimensions, e.g. mastery approach goals …

Personality Traits In Australian Business Graduates And Implications For Organizational Effectiveness, Denise A. Jackson

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The Five-Factor model is widely accepted as a robust model of personality that influences workplace behaviour and performance. Given evidence of persistent skills gaps in Australia, it is important to explore personality traits in business graduates to understand whether they have the necessary characteristics to enable the country to perform successfully nationally and to compete on a global level, particularly during periods of economic uncertainty. This study examines personality traits in 674 Australian business graduates, using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), and variations in traits across demographic/background characteristics. The results indicate that graduates are relatively high in extroversion, conscientiousness and …

A Cognitive Analysis Of Students' Activity: An Example In Mathematics, Jean-Francois Hérold

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

In this paper, we argue for an engagement of productive connections between research findings and teaching, this since the vocational training of the teachers. We exemplify how analyses of written tests by using a cognitive approach lead to better interpretations and understanding of the learner’s knowledge. We show how a teacher can do it and we discuss the possibility of introducing it to the available scientific knowledge in teacher education, in order to include it in the current practices of teachers’ methods.

An Exploration Of The Relationship Between Teachers’ Psychological Capital And Their Collective Self-Esteem, Charmaine S. Bissessar

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Teachers who possess high levels of psychological capital and collective self-esteem are better able to cope with the spate of school violence, student/student bullying, and other current issues confronting the education system globally, regionally, and nationally. A teacher psychological capital high in hope, optimism, self-efficacy, resilience, and collective self-esteem translates into educators who possess a more positive outlook and can impart and influence how their students perceive themselves. No known research exists in the Trinidadian context linking both psychological capital and collective self-esteem. This study expands the body of research in these two areas, locally, by reporting the findings of …

Student Motivations For Studying Online: A Qualitative Study, Melanie K. Henry, Julie Ann Pooley, Maryam Omari

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The availability of online courses has continued to grow over recent years with more students now turning to online offerings. The flexibility offered through online learning is attractive to prospective students with some of the benefits including reduced costs, and the potential to increase and diversify the student body. Online courses provide the advantage of reaching those who may be ‘too busy’ for traditional study, and offer flexibility through anywhere, anytime access. While these benefits may attract prospective learners to the online environment there remains little empirical evidence for the reasons students actually make the decision to study online over …

Trainee Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Students With Specific Learning Disabilities, Stuart Woodcock

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Policies on the inclusion of students with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms have focused attention on how general education teachers perceive these students. Furthermore with specific learning disabilities forming a large group of diverse students, and teachers’ attitudes often not changing over the career span, preparing teachers for inclusive education is vitally important. This study aimed to identify the attitudes of trainee¹ teachers towards students with specific learning disabilities and differentiation of the curriculum. Significant differences were found between the attitudes of primary and secondary school trainee teachers, and the influence of training. There were no differences in …

Teachers’ Knowledge Of Anxiety And Identification Of Excessive Anxiety In Children, Clea Headley, Marilyn A. Campbell

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This study examined primary school teachers’ knowledge of anxiety and excessive anxiety symptoms in children. Three hundred and fifteen primary school teachers completed a questionnaire exploring their definitions of anxiety and the indications they associated with excessive anxiety in primary school children. Results showed that teachers had an understanding of what anxiety was in general but did not consistently distinguish normal anxiety from excessive anxiety, often defining all anxiety as a negative experience. Teachers were able to identify symptoms of excessive anxiety in children by recognizing anxiety-specific and general problem indications. The results provided preliminary evidence that teachers’ knowledge of …

Self- Efficacy And Participation In Choosing The Teaching Profession As Predictors Of Academic Motivation Among Arab Student's Girls, Qutaiba Ali Agbaria

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The purpose of this study is to examine the link between learning motivation among teaching trainees and self- efficacy and the rate of participation in choosing the profession of teaching. The main assumptions: There will be a clear positive link between the rate of self-efficacy of students and academic motivation, with its various elements. There will be a clear positive link between the rate of participation in choosing the profession (teaching) and academic motivation.

The sample included 181 female students. The sample was random relative to students of each academic year and specialization.

The findings of the study corroborated most …

Personality Types Of Hong Kong Kindergarten Teachers: Implications For Teacher Education, Yau-Ho Paul Wong, Zhang Li-Fang

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

While an individual’s personality is related to his or her well-being, little research has examined kindergarten teachers’ personality. This research was the first to investigate Hong Kong kindergarten teachers’ personality types using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Three hundred and seventy-one kindergarten teachers voluntarily responded to the MBTI. Findings showed that Hong Kong kindergarten teachers were predominantly of the sensing-feeling-judging personality types, characterized by being realistic, conventional, and considerate to others’ feelings. In addition, principals and head teachers in kindergartens tended to be extraverted. Results also suggested a very low percentage of intuitive kindergarten teachers, indicating that teachers’ personality types …

Preschool Children's Information Processing And Emotional Behavior In Social Conflict Situations, Po Lin B.L. Bailey

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study investigated various aspects of the Social Information Processing Model, in particular, young children’s emotional behavior regulation and negative emotionality, in Hong Kong. The sample was N=628 from 12 schools. Using Rasch measurement, linear unidimensional scales were constructed for Emotion and Behaviour Regulation (10 items) and for Negative Emotionality (10 items). The well-known Short Temperament Scale was Rasch analyzed too, but a linear scale could not be created – it had initially been designed under the True Score Test theory paradigm. The children were divided into Type A (high on negative emotionality and low on emotion and behavior regulation, …

Does Study Of An Inclusive Education Subject Influence Pre-Service Teachers' Concerns And Self-Efficacy About Inclusion?, Stuart Woodcock, Brian Hemmings, Russell Kay

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Survey data were collected from pre-service teachers studying at a large regional Australian university. These data were examined with the purpose of determining whether pre-service teachers’ views (and concerns) about inclusion and their confidence to teach in inclusive classrooms had changed as a result of studying an inclusive education subject and undertaking a practicum linked to that subject. The results of an analysis based on mean values indicated that the various concerns, namely, resources, acceptance, workplace, and academic standards, did not change markedly as a consequence of the subject and practicum experiences. This analysis also showed a hierarchy of concerns …

Patience Is Not The Only Virtue: The Relationship Between Time Preferences, Class Attendance And Final Marks, Margaret Giles, Y H. Cheung, Jacqui Whale

Research outputs 2012

No abstract provided.

Patience Is A Virtue: The Effect Of Students' Time Preferences On Their Academic Results, Y Cheung, Margaret Giles, Jacqui Whale

Research outputs 2012

No abstract provided.

Cultivating Teachers’ Morality And The Pedagogy Of Emotional Rationality, Minkang Kim

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Teachers are expected to act ethically and provide moral role models in performing their duties, even though teacher education has often relegated the cultivation of teachers’ ethical awareness and moral development to the margins. When it is addressed, the main theoretical assumptions have relied heavily on the cognitivist developmental theories of Piaget and Kohlberg. A major pedagogical problem in adopting these theories of moral reasoning is that they may not help teachers to act as moral agents in real-life classrooms. This paper argues that one underlying difficulty is the insufficient attention given to the role of emotion in moral reasoning, …

High School Dropouts Returning To Study: The Influence Of The Teacher And Family During Secondary School, Robert Whannell, William Allen

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This study investigated the influence of the teacher and family relationships during secondary school for 18 to 22 year old students who had dropped out of secondary school and were attempting to gain access to tertiary study through a tertiary bridging program at a regional university. 144 students from two student cohorts completed a questionnaire intended to facilitate an understanding of how social context influenced secondary school attrition. It was identified that students who had not completed secondary school reported significantly lower levels of emotional engagement with school and poorer relationships with teachers. The study concluded that the residential situation …

Behind Cultural Competence: The Role Of Causal Attribution In Multicultural Teacher Education, Yan Yang, Diane Montgomery

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

In an attempt to bridge the gap between achievement motivation and multicultural teacher education, this study explored the relationship between causal attribution of cultural awareness and cultural competence among preservice teachers. Participants were 793 preservice teachers from two large public universities who reported their causal attributions of cultural awareness and their cultural competence. Canonical correlation analysis results showed two significant relationships between causal attribution and cultural competence. Personal control over the causes of cultural awareness was found to be positively related to praxis, i.e., behavioral outcome; whereas attributions to internal and stable causes were positively associated with knowledge as major …

Goal Motivation, Academic Outcomes, And Psychological Distress Of A Group Of Australian Secondary Students : Scale Refinement And An Extension Of The Ingledew, Wray, Markland, And Hardy (2005) Model, Craig Harms

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Beliefs held about personal goals are termed goal dimensions. When applied to academic goals, goal dimensions represent a form of academic motivation. The purpose of this research was to examine if a model of goal dimensions developed by Ingledew, Wray, Markland, and Hardy (2005) in a business setting with adults could be applied to explain academic outcomes and psychological distress of two hundred and sixteen Australian final-year secondary students who were striving to gain a place at a university. Structural Regression (S-R) Analysis was used to examine the effect of the goal dimensions on psychological distress at Time 1 (April); …

Coping With The Demands Of Mature Age Student Life, Jenny E.M. Cowell

Theses : Honours

In Australia, mature age students are 20 years of age and above in the year that they commence study and comprise approximately 65 per cent of students enrolled in Australian universities (EIM Support, 201 0). There are many reasons why they may choose to commence tertiary education (Hoskins, Newstead, & Dennis, 1997) with their transition into university likely to require them to make changes across many life domains (Gall, Evans, & Bellerose, 2000). There is much evidence to suggest that mature age students are capable of completing their undergraduate degrees, however they have a relatively low retention rate, especially in …

Determining The Point Of Optimum Transferability Of Skill, Amanda Puchar

Theses : Honours

Cognitive research assumes that practice on a task can lead to improved performance, most often resulting in the attainment of automatic performance and possibly the transfer of this learning to another task. This study examined all of these questions through the use of a computer generated counting task that required participants, consisting of 60 randomly selected university students and friends and family of the researcher, to count stars on a display screen and determine if the number of stars presented was an odd or even number. Coefficient of variation (CV) measures that calculated the variability for a given level of …

Automaticity As A Predictor Of Skill Transfer, Jana Melis

Theses : Honours

Research into the effect of automaticity on skill transfer has resulted in conflicting conclusions about how automatic processes act on the transferability of skill. The research in this study was designed to investigate the existence and nature of the relationship between automaticity in skill acquisition and the ability to transfer that skill to a different task. Using a quantitative research design, a simple counting exercise was used to train participants in a skill, with the amount of training manipulated between groups. Accuracy rates and reaction times were recorded and analysed to determine the variance within and between the groups between …

The Relationship Between Amount Of Training And Performance On A New Task, Jacinta Avril Tan

Theses : Honours

This paper was designed to examine the relationship between training and transfer tasks and performance on these tasks whereby training can be used to predict transfer. Previous research has assumed that performance of an established task should extrapolate the power function of learning. That is, performance of an established skill in a new domain will continue to improve at the same rate with practice as if there was no change in the domain. 60 participants were recruited from the University of Edith Cowan and were randomly assigned to one of three conditions; I 0 block condition, 20 block condition, or …

Experiences Of Mature Age Female Students Studying Psychology: A Phenomenological Account, Ruth Ayres, Andrew Guilfoyle

EDU-COM International Conference

Australian Government policies have increased accessibility of under-represented groups into Universities, and one significant group in this shift is mature aged women (Department of Education, Science and Training 2004). University policy related to provision of support for nontraditional groups of students, through improved academic and support services is beneficial in improving student retention rates among non-traditional student groups (Krause et al. 2005). The present paper reports a phenomenological approach (Moustakas 1994; Smith & Osborn 2003) to understanding how expectations of higher education impacts on adjustment to study within lived experiences of 12 women aged between 40-49 years studying Psychology. Each …

Student Motivation And Attitude Towards Virtual Versus Traditional Learning Based On Cognitive Styles, Wacheerapan Kaewprapan, Surachai Suksakulchai

EDU-COM International Conference

The purpose of this study was to identify differences in student motivation and attitude in relation to cognitive styles between two types of instruction (virtual and traditional). The study‘s participants were 40 first-year students enrolled in the Metal Technology Department at Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon Thailand. All students were doing a virtual reality module within one course and traditional lecture within another. The students completed a cognitive style test (Group Embedded Figures Test) which classified students as either field-dependent (FD) or field-independent (FI). Students also completed a questionnaire designed to measure motivation and attitude. The sample included 20 …

Educating Secondary School Students With Learning Difficulties: The Teacher's Perspective, Christine Potter

Theses : Honours

Educating students with learning difficulties in mainstream classrooms has been a major concern for educators (Elkins, 2007). This paper reviews the research relating to the issues teachers' experience when teaching students with learning difficulties (LD) in secondary schools. The review initially provides an overview of the definition of LD and the academic, social, and behavioural characteristics experienced by students with LD. The review explores student, teacher, and school environment factors that impact on the teachers' role when students with LD are educated in mainstream classrooms. The analysis of the research in this area showed that teacher's attitudes, views, and concerns …

Mathematical Skill Acquisition: Transfer Effects Of A Computer Game Based On The Components Theory Of Skill Acquisition, Jenny Kessell

Theses : Honours

Research within the field of mathematical learning has often focused on the extent to which knowledge of particular mathematical skills can facilitate the learning of new and unpracticed mathematical skills. Additionally, it has examined the influence of context on learning and the amount of practice necessary for complex skill acquisition to result. This paper provides a review of the research examining mathematical learning, skill acquisition and transfer of skills in a mathematical context. Pertinent theories in the field of cognitive skill acquisition are examined for their ability to explain transfer of skill. The review focuses on factors that influence the …