Digital Commons Network^™

The Narrative Content Of Preschool Children's Drawing, Wendy Philippa Candy

Theses : Honours

The narrative content of preschool children's drawing is the focus of this study. The purpose of this study was to raise educators, preschool teachers and parents awareness of the narrative content of preschool children’s drawings and to alert them to how children of this age communicate through their drawings. A school with an operational pre-primary class was selected from the Northern Metropolitan education district of Perth. Twelve pre-school children were selected on the basis of their participation in drawing activities. The researcher observed the children at work over a period of eight sessions. A qualitative descriptive research method was used …

Spaces For The Spirit: Christian Spirituality As Represented By Australian Media, Jennifer Anne Jones

Theses : Honours

No abstract provided.

Investigation Into The Compatibility Of The Outcomes Of The Northern Territory Special Category Curriculum For Secondary Aged Indigenous Students And The Western Australian Student Outcome Statements, Matthew Byrne

Theses : Honours

This study is an investigation into the compatibility of the outcomes of the Northern Territory Special Category Curriculum for Secondary Aged Indigenous Students (NTC) and the Western Australian Student Outcome Statements (SOS), in the Learning Area of English, using specified criteria. This document analysis examined the theoretical assumptions underpinning the NTC and SOS, the comparisons that can be made between the two, and then, how suitable the NTC was for achieving the SOS documented by Education Department of Western Australia (EDWA) for Indigenous secondary students in remote comminutes. The outcomes for the NTC and SOS in the Learning Area of …

Experiences Of Mental Health Consumers : An Exploratory Qualitative Study Of Expectations And Perceptions Of Mental Health Services In Western Australia, Dawn Anne Barrett

Theses : Honours

The National Mental Health Strategy was launched in 1992 and endorsed Consumer-provider collaboration as an integral part or mental health service delivery in Australia. Feedback on services is generally elicited through evaluation of existing services. Rather than being than evaluative study or existing services this qualitative project explored the experience of being a mental health consumer within the framework of the consumer’s expectations and perceptions of service delivery in Western Australia. One male and seven females, aged between 22-55 participated in the study. Several themes and sub-themes under the broad headings of expectations. Experiences. Perceptions emerged. The themes highlighted consumers …

Reading The World Of University : What Counts?, Pamela Green, Gloria Latham

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper will address the issues encountered by first year students in reading and reshaping the culture of university. The interim findings of a six year study will be dismantled in order to uncover what counts in the experience of first year university and the ramifications for educational practice and discourse. Feedback from staff continues to indicate that there is growing disparity between their expectations of first year students and student performance in areas such as independent learning, research skills, academic reading and writing, as well as the use of new technologies. There also seems to be a gap between …

Analysis Of The Population Genetics Of The Han And Hui Of Liaoning Province, Peoples Republic Of China, Michael L. Black

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Throughout recorded Chinese history, regions of the country populated by persons of non-Han ancestry often fluctuated significantly in population numbers and in their political and commercial influence. However, at all times they were considered as important contributors to the nation. Many of these peoples had moved from their homelands, settled in China and had intermarried with Han Chinese. Over the generations they became accepted as fully-fledged Chinese citizens although, in many instances, they retained their traditional customs and religious practices, and frequently their own language. The Hui Muslims are a good example of this process of integration, and today they …

Indeterminacy In First And Second Languages: Case Studies Of Narrative Development Of Chinese Children With And Without Language Disorder, Bee Hong Lo

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Bilingual children with specific language impairment (SLI) from non English speaking background (NESB) present a major diagnostic problem to speech pathologist and educationist in an English speaking country. There has been no known study on the simultaneous narrative development involving bilingual Chinese children with and without SLI. This longitudinal case study examined the relationship of Chinese (L1) and English (L2) in narrative development in a child with no language difficulty (Child LN) and a child (Child L1) diagnosed as having SLI. The hypothesis posed for this study was that Child L1 has the same developmental profile for narrative skill in …

Research Problem: What Are The Differences Between Wadjela And Nyungar Criteria When Assessing Organisational Effectiveness Of Non-Government Human Service Organisations?, Keith Truscott

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Wadjela and Nyungar experts (of managerial, administrative, service staff), from the same South-West city location in Western Australia were randomly chosen from the non-government human service field for separate workshops and asked the question “what makes a non-government human service organisation effective?" The purpose was to compare the group consensus answer between the two separate workshop groups. The Nyungars are the Indigenous people in the South-West of Western Australia and the Wadjelas are the Non-Indigenous people living in the same area. The results listed five criteria, in order of priority that made non-government human service organisations effective. For the Wadjela …

Does A Rising Intonation At The End Of A Spoken Statement Affect A Witness's Credibility?, Genevieve L. Willis

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Past research has shown that the speech style employed by 11 witness in a jury trial may affect their credibility (Erikson, Lind, Johnson, & ()'Barr, 1978). One common linguistic device used by witnesses is a rising intonation, which is defined as the inflection of a speaker’s tone that occurs at the end of a spoken passage. Past research has shown that the use of a rising intonation in speech can add a questioning tone to a passage or signify that the speaker is unsure of what they are saying (Smith and Clark. 1993). If a witness uses a rising intonation …

Professional And Continuing Education In Hong Kong: An Analysis Of The Characteristics And Job Satisfaction Of Part-Time Teachers Of English Language Courses, Joe Wai-Kin Ching

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

In order to have a better understanding or the Professional and Continuing Education in Hong Kong, the purpose of this research is to assess the job satisfaction or part-time English language teachers with respect to their work, pay, opportunities for promotion, supervision, and colleagues. The PCE departments in a total of six institutions with diversified characteristics, namely, Hong Kong University, Hong Kong Chinese University, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, City University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education were involved in the present study. The first part is a quantitative study adopting a cross-sectional …

Teachers As Language Learners: A Study Of The Relationship Between Their Beliefs About Language Learning And Their Learning Strategy Use, Rita Tognini

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Abstract not available

Regular Teachers' Attitudes To The Need For Additional Classroom Support For Integrated Students With Intellectual Disabilities, Rory Mcnally

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The purpose of this study was to examine regular classroom teachers' attitudes to additional classroom support, both physical and personnel, for students with mild and severe intellectual disabilities who may be integrated into regular classrooms. The concerns of the regular classroom teachers with regard to the successful inclusion of students with intellectual disabilities are certainly merit addressing. As the regular classroom teachers are largely responsible for the education of these integrated students, it is worthwhile to examine their perceived support levels in relation to integrated students with intellectual disabilities. It is anticipated that the results of this study will prove …

Target Language Avoidance By Thai Teachers Of English: Thai Teachers' Beliefs, Sasithorn Vacharaskunee

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Interactionist theories of second language acquisition (SLA) claim that both comprehensible input and modified interaction in the target language are necessary for language learning. In the foreign language context, little opportunity exists for such input simply through exposure to the target language outside the classroom. Therefore, the quantity as well as quality of input within classrooms is especially important. However in spite of this fact many non-native teachers of second language, including English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers, tend to avoid using the target language in their classrooms. This has serious pedagogic implications. Thai teachers are typical of many …

Dead Mothers, Lonely Daughters : Negotiating Intersubjective Space In Young Adult Fiction, Anna-Claire Walsh

Theses : Honours

This thesis examines the effect of maternal absence on the ability of three central female characters to develop intersubjective relationships in three novels for young adults. The theoretical framework is Jessica Benjamin's psychoanalytic theory of 'intersubjectivity' which seeks to transcend split complementarities such as active-passive creating a model that synthesises traditionally opposed terms. Benjamin situates maternal subjectivity as the foundation from which a baby's identity is constructed and attributes women with both active and passive qualities. The relationship between mother and infant consequently acts as a paradigm for understanding the interaction between adult subjects in later life. Chapter One introduces …

Jack Maggs : A Differend Convict(Ion) By Peter Carey, Timothy D. Langley

Theses : Honours

This thesis is an analysis of Peter Carey's novel Jack Maggs and its attempt at writing back to Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. I will analyse the (de)construction of language games between Jack Maggs and Great Expectations; show how Carey as a post-colonial settler writer writes back to the centre, to Dickens' text as a canonical Victorian novel, through intergrating the very notion of the Victorian novel, and in his own terms giving the convict a "history". I will explore how Carey writes competing language games of "science" and "narrative" (as identified by Lyotard) within Jack Maggs and how they produce …

Representations Of Class, Social Realism And Region In "Eleven Months In Bunbury" By James Ricks, Joshua J. K. Ledger

Theses : Honours

The aim of this thesis is to explore representations of class, social realism and region in Eleven months in Bunbury by James Ricks. This novel stands outside dominant literary theory in its representations of class, realism and regionalism. It also presents opportunities to consider ideology and class through the eyes of a working class person, in the language of the class that it depicts. Thus it speaks to a class which rarely has its point of view and lives represented in conventional literature. It is therefore a useful literary and social document.

Tracing Image And Bodily Displacement In Modern And Postmodern Dance, Carolyn Margaret Griffiths

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Through time the dancer has been both celebrated and disadvantaged by antithetical ideas: the division of soul and body, form and matter, life and death, artist and audience. For the romantics, the dancing body stood in a relationship to poetic thought in much the same way as the dancer stood to the body. Notions of the body in early modernism arose from cultural and political constructs through which poets and writers examined the nature of truth. These poets, Yeats in particular, hinted at a premise that a whole history of culture may be necessary to explain why women and art …

Constructivism And Reconstructionism: Educating Teachers For World Citizenship, Mary Lou Breithorde, Louise Swiniarski

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Public education is characterized by tension between the goals of enlightening individuals and improving society. In the United States, the emphasis has been on individual needs. We design lessons which respect for child as a maker of meaning. We teach to individual learning styles and are concerned that the curriculum "make sense." Given an ideology which sees the individual as the source of economic and political welfare, we comfortably focus on their intellectual and personal growth and call it “constructivism”. At other times, education for social responsibility took priority. During economic depressions, wars and civic strife, we taught children to …

Multiple Data Sources: Converging And Diverging Conceptualizations Of Lote Teaching, Kazuyoshi Sato, Robert Kleinsasser

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The study, uncovered Japanese Language Other Than English (LOTE) teachers' understandings of communicative language teaching (CLT). Using the idea of multiple data sources, the project relied on open ended interviews, classroom observations, and LOTE teacher survey responses. The data provided answers to two research questions: 1) What are LOTE teachers' beliefs and knowledge about (communicative) language teaching? and 2) How do LOTE teachers implement CLT in their classrooms. The multiple data sources provided information that both converged and diverged, providing insights not only into communicative language teaching, but also teachers' views of language teaching in general. The various sources allowed …

Decreasing Inappropriate Classroom Behaviours Through A Videotape Self-Modelling And Self-Monitoring Treatment Package, Catherine Ann Coyle

Theses : Honours

Children with autism frequently display an inability to function independently. This has led researchers to develop treatments that are aimed at overcoming the dependency of these children on parents and teachers and which teach them to manage their own behaviour. A self-management treatment package consisting of videotaped self-modelling, self-monitoring, and self-reinforcement was investigated in the present study. The focus was the effect of the treatment package on the inappropriate classroom behaviours of three children with autism. The behaviours that were chosen were those that were most likely to interfere with the participants' ability to work independently in the classroom. The …

The Sacrifice Of Les Murray, Jill Reading

Theses : Honours

Les Murray's vivid and evocative poetry has made him a major Australian literary figure. Critics routinely note the sophisticated, often highly wrought nature of Murray's poetic language and acclaim his technical virtuosity, including gifts for pun, paradox, aphorism, idiom and metaphor. The themes of both Murray's poetry and his non-fiction prose often revolve around the divisions he sees in Australia between cultures, between society and people, and within individuals themselves. Despite his efforts to bring healing to these schisms, however, the poet is criticised for his frequent dogmatism and didacticism, which mark his work as divisive. Although Murray professes to …

Imagining Machines: Time & Image In The Shorter Poems Of William Carlos Williams, Stuart Campbell

Theses : Honours

A discussion of time and image in the shorter poems of William Carlos Williams. The particular focus is Williams' short poems published between the Great War and World War II. The relationship between the form of the poems, and Williams' theories on poetry, as expressed in Spring and All, and The Wedge is examined. In turn, Williams' theories are viewed in the context of Imagism, Objectivist poetics, and the modernist machine aesthetic. Williams' application of these theories is seen to create a poetic form that generates images in the reader's imagination in synchrony with the moment.

Short-Term Memory For Nonsense Strings In Children With Reading Disabilities, Linda K. Lane

Theses : Honours

A large body of evidence exists that demonstrates strong correlations between reading ability, phonological awareness and memory. The current study was designed to compare the performance of 24 10-year-old students with reading disabilities and a group of 24 8-year-old average readers, who were matched according to reading age. These students were given a decoding task requiring the recall of nonsense strings. This task was designed to measure working memory for phonological elements. An ANOVA yielded a significant main effect for group in favour of the older students, and a main effect for total errors and vowel and space location. Participants …

The Effects Of Nationality And Educational Background On World Music Preference Of A Sample Of Expatriate Students In Singapore, Karen Ann Niedermeyer

Theses : Honours

The purpose of this study was to examine expatriate students' World music preferences and investigate the relationship between the number of years students have spent in international school education and their preferences for World music, and their ability to identify its origins. The researcher was of the view that two prime determinants probably influence World music preferences: a) the length of stay in an international school. b) positive cultural exposure in a harmonious, multi-cultural society. The research methodology used in examining the above determinants on World music preferences involved two separate tests, taken consecutively. Firstly, The World Music Preference Inventory …

Towards More User-Friendly Education For Speakers Of Aboriginal English, Ian G. Malcolm, Yvonne Haig, Patricia Konsignberg, Judith Rochecouste, Glenys Collard, Alison Hill, Rosemary Cahill

Research outputs pre 2011

The project reported on here set out, on a basis of cooperation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal investigators working in university, educational system and classroom contexts, to lead to understandings which would enable a more accessible ("userfriendly") education to be provided for students in primary and secondary schools who are speakers of Aboriginal English.

Specifically, in the context of schools of the Education Department of Western Australia, the project sought to:

1. extend knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal English and its areas of contrast with standard Australian English;

2. provide clarification in the following under-researched areas of Aboriginal English:

a) semantic …

Crosslinguistic Influence In The Speech Of Hungarian-English Bilinguals, Valerie Kollmann

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The study is written in an attempt to report on factors that affect language transfer between Hungarian and English and on the extent 1.1 and 1.2 lexical elements are integrated into the speech in either language. An attempt is made to classify the functions of the integrated lexical elements. Furthermore, it is hypothesised that transfer could be interpreted as a production strategy. Data collection included a questionnaire and audio recording of interviews and observations of eleven bilingual participants involved in problem solving tasks.

An Adaptive Hierarchical Fuzzy Logic System For Modelling And Prediction Of Financial Systems, Mark Kingham

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

In this thesis, an intelligent fuzzy logic system using genetic algorithms for the prediction and modelling of interest rates is developed. The proposed system uses a Hierarchical Fuzzy Logic system in which a genetic algorithm is used as a training method for learning the fuzzy rules knowledge bases. A fuzzy logic system is developed to model and predict three month quarterly interest rate fluctuations. The system is further trained to model and predict interest rates for six month and one year periods. The proposed system is developed with first two, three, then four and finally five hierarchical knowledge bases to …

Barbadian Teachers' Personal Practical Knowledge About Advocated Pedagogic Practices Used In The Education Of The Under-Fives, Sonja M. Anderson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study investigated the personal practical knowledge of twenty-one Barbadian teachers in relation to a range of pedagogic practices advocated for use in the education of children under five years of age. The investigation of this knowledge was based on an interpretative perspective. The conceptual underpinning was framed by Personal Construct Psychology (Kelly, 1995), and its methodology, the repertory grid technique. The grid was formulated and used in a sample of schools with under-fives. Findings were clarified, confirmed and elaborated by the use of in-depth interviews conducted with teachers in their classroom settings. The findings revealed that teachers construed pedagogic …

Film Dialogue Translation And The Intonation Unit : Towards Equivalent Effect In English And Chinese, Jian Li

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis proposes a new approach to film dialogue translation (FDT) with special reference to the translation process and quality of English-to-Chinese dubbing. In response to the persistent translation failures that led to widespread criticism of dubbed films and TV plays in China for their artificial 'translation talk', this study provides a pragmatic methodology derived from the integration of the theories and analytical systems of information flow in the tradition of the functionalist approach to speech and writing with the relevant theoretical and empirical findings from TS and other related branches of linguistics. It has developed and validated a translation …

The Meaning Of God Today: A Phenomenographic Study Of The Art And Language Of A Group Of Senior Secondary Students, Anne P. Devenish

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Relationship with the Divine is the core of Christianity and the professional concern of a number of ministries, including that of religious education. Knowledge about what God means to children and adolescents would be beneficial to teachers. However, research has provided little useful information in this area. Most research conducted so far has been quantitative in nature and does not uncover the lived experience or the participants' personal understandings of this phenomenon. The qualitative research that has been done focuses mainly on the range of concepts of God held by participants. It is concerned with uncovering some of the elements …