Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

Becoming An Inclusive Educator: Applying Deleuze & Guattari To Teacher Education, Loraine M. Mckay, Suzanne Carrington, Radha Iyer

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

New ways of thinking are required in teacher education to promote beginning teachers as change agents in education. Twenty years after the Salamanca Statement (UNESCO, 1994) that called for schools to provide equitable opportunities for all children, teaching practices in many classrooms are informed by the deficit view of learning. Beginning teachers need to be prepared to challenge the ideological influences that operate in schools. Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) model of the rhizome is used to report one beginning teacher’s journey as she learnt to negotiate structural and personal obstacles to create an inclusive learning environment. Data from reflective diaries, …

A Study Of Children’S Musical Preference: A Data Mining Approach, Hoi Yin Bonnie Yim, Yee Ling Boo, Marjory Ebbeck

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Musical preference has long been a research interest in the field of music education, and studies consistently confirm the importance of musical preference in one’s musical learning experiences. However, only a limited number of studies have been focussed on the field of early childhood education (e.g., Hargreaves, North, & Tarrant, 2006; Roulston, 2006). Further, among these limited early childhood studies, few of them discuss children’s musical preference in both the East and the West. There is very limited literature (e.g., Faulkner et al., 2010; Szymanska, 2012) which explores the data by using a data mining approach. This study aims to …

Re-Visiting The Theory And Practice Gap Through The Lens Of Student Teacher Dilemmas, Nese Cabaroglu

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This study concerns the dilemmas student teachers met during their field experiences: what they were and what coping strategies they used. Its purpose is to help staff and students better understand the challenges student teachers face as they move from university-based to school-based learning. Data reveal three main categories of dilemmas: teaching, professional identity and future career plans. When coping with dilemmas, participants turned to various people around them. They felt some of the dilemmas were beyond their control, thus, could not be resolved due to problems in the Turkish education system. Findings are discussed as related to professional learning.

Facebook As An Informal Teacher Professional Development Tool, Charmaine S. Bissessar

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Synchronous and asynchronous communication provide a resource in terms of curriculum, planning and implementation of lessons as well as a source of kinship of like-minded teachers who find in each other sympathetic and empathetic sounding boards. Interviews with four administrators and 22 members of the Trinidadian teachers’ Facebook site A Teacher’s Voice (ATV) revealed that the site is used by its 4,895 members as an informal professional development tool and allows for the nourishing of teachers’ personal development. According to these interviewees, ATV helps to develop teachers professionally through the provision of information on: (a) curriculum; (b) teaching methodologies; (c) …

Understanding The Role Of Social Groups In Radicalisation, Kira Harris, Eyal Gringart, Deirdre Drake

Australian Security and Intelligence Conference

The inability to form psychological profiles of individual members across a variety of extremist groups, as well as the recognition in extremism and terrorism research indicates that no adequate personality profile exists. This requires an analysis of other factors that influence the radicalisation process. By drawing on social identity theory, this paper offers a psycho-social explanation for how people define themselves in relation to their social group, as well as how the intra-group relationships can lead to extreme behaviour and resistance to counter efforts. These groups promote a salient social identity that becomes intrinsic to the self to the extent …

Understanding And Building Resilience With Art: A Socio-Ecological Approach, Meagan Shand

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Resilience is a widely researched phenomenon, it means different things to different people and is perceived and measured according to the theoretical lens being applied. The following thesis reviews the theoretical development of resilience that has led to contemporary understandings, to establish a platform for the research topic - understanding and building resilience with Art. Narrative research methods are combined with art processes to illuminate the stories of eight culturally diverse women participating in a community based mental health art program, in Western Australia. Fifteen resilience themes emerged from the collective experience, and are presented in a socio-ecological framework to …

The Role Of Strangers In Victorian Novels: A Psychoanalytical Study Of Their Repressions, Functions And Aspirations, Mohammad Ahmed Al-Abdulrazaq

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The aim of this study is to examine the stranger characters in three Victorian Novels, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. The exploration of the characters is based on the analysis of their psyche to understand how they are utilized by the Victorian writers. The study highlights how the fictional strangers can assist in the course of the action of the novel and function as a stimulus by which the actions and thoughts develop plausibly and feasibly. Utilizing the views of Freud, Erikson and others the study will allow for …

Post-School Adult Life For Young People With Down Syndrome, Kitty Rose Foley

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Down syndrome is a chromosomal birth disorder affecting one in 650 to 1000 live births in Western Australia. The life expectancy for people with Down syndrome has increased dramatically over the past two generations leading to these young people having changing needs in terms of social, economic and personal life. Encompassed within this, is the successful transition from school to post-school, a time of upheaval, stress and important decisions for young people with intellectual disabilities. The International classification of functioning, disability and health (ICF) is a world renowned framework which provides a scientific basis and standardised language for describing and …

Acute Physiological Effects And Perceived Enjoyment Of A Single Bout Of Aerobic Interval And Continuous Moderate-Intensity Cycling In Overweight And Obese Individuals, Fujie Koh

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Aerobic interval training, a form of high intensity interval training, is commonly prescribed to both the general and clinical populations. However, the acute physiological effects from a single bout of aerobic interval session are not fully understood. In training studies, these acute physiological effects may confound actual training adaptations when they occur following the final training session [1]. Furthermore, while recreationally active men perceived aerobic interval training to be more enjoyable than continuous moderate-intensity exercise [2], the preference of overweight and obese individuals has not been extensively researched. Since overweight and obese individuals tend to have lower exercise tolerance, it …

Understanding And Improving Pacing Strategies During Standard Distance Triathlons In Age Group Athletes, Sam Shi Xuan Wu

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Pacing is an integral aspect of performance during all exercise, including multi-sport events such as triathlon. However, to date, the optimal pacing strategies to adopt over an entire triathlon, as well as during each specific discipline (i.e. swim, cycle and run), is not well understood. Therefore, the primary purpose of this thesis was to identify and understand current pacing strategies adopted by highly performing triathletes across different triathlon distances. This research aids in identifying pacing strategies that may improve overall performance during triathlon.

In the first study, the influence of sex and race distance on the age-related declines in the …

Religion, Heritage, And Power： Everyday Life In Contemporary China, Asan Xue

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Based on an ethnographic study of the religious life of ordinary people in the town of Dongpu, this research explores the relationships between: religion and state power; Chinese ritual (li, 礼/禮) tradition and Christian culture; and religion and intangible cultural heritage in contemporary China.

This research found that both the practitioners of Chinese rituals and the Christian community deploy tactics to resist and negotiate with the hegemonic official culture through spatial and religious practices in their everyday life. Chinese ritual practices dedicated to deities and ancestors are defined as idol worship in the doctrine of Christianity and denigrated …

Sighting Circus: Perceptions Of Circus Phenomena Investigated Through Diverse Bodies, Katrina Lavers

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis is an investigation into modern circus from its beginnings in 1768 through to present day contemporary circus arts. Eight diverse bodies in modern and contemporary circus are explored. These eight bodies act as different lenses to focus enquiry into gaps or ruptures in the grand narratives of circus, to reveal previously missing voices and histories and to set in place new approaches to perceiving circus phenomena.

In The Political Body, the phenomenon of embodied protest is identified and explored in relation to contemporary circus works. The importance of the engaged spectator is identified in determining political, poetic …

The Role Of Resilience In Individual Innovation, Muhammad T. Amir

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Organisations in today‘s changing environment face significant challenges, requiring continual innovation. A critical factor in their response may be employees‘ resilience, the ability to apply high levels of effort and persistence while initiating, promoting and applying new ideas. However, despite growing evidence of the value of many positive psychological characteristics in organisational behaviour, the role of resilience in individual innovation has received little attention in the literature.

This thesis describes two studies of this issue. First, current perspectives and definitions of resilience were reviewed, revealing a need for an improved definition, a re-examination of its dimensions and a new measure. …

Teaching For Students' Confident Transition From Number To Algebra, Christina Lang Lee

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The adoption by all states and territories of the national curriculum by 2013 saw students in schools across the country taught introductory algebraic concepts from Year Five. In the twenty first century the need to be algebraically competent has become a necessity much as computation was in the previous centuries.

The Researcher has found from experience that students who have struggled with number and number operations will then most probably make poor progress in their study of algebra. The transition from number to algebra requires a robust understanding of number and number operations

This study investigated the balance of instructional …

Messages That Increase Women's Intentions To Abstain From Alcohol During Pregnancy: Results From Quantitative Testing Of Advertising Concepts, Kathryn E. France, Robert J. Donovan, Carol Bower, Elizabeth J. Elliott, Janet M. Payne, Heather D'Antoine, Anne E. Bartu

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background: Public awareness-raising campaigns targeting alcohol use during pregnancy are an important part of preventing prenatal alcohol exposure and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. Despite this, there is little evidence on what specific elements contribute to campaign message effectiveness. This research evaluated three different advertising concepts addressing alcohol and pregnancy: a threat appeal, a positive appeal promoting a self-efficacy message, and a concept that combined the two appeals. The primary aim was to determine the effectiveness of these concepts in increasing women's intentions to abstain from alcohol during pregnancy. Methods. Women of childbearing age and pregnant women residing in Perth, Western …

Mental Models For The Negation Of Conjunctions And Disjunctions, Guillermo Macbeth, Eugenia Razumiejczyk, María C. Crivello, Claudia Bolzán, Carolina I. Pereyra Girardi, Guillermo Campitelli

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This study investigates why reasoning that involves negation is extremely difficult. We presented participants with reasoning problems containing sentences with negation of conjunctions and disjunctions in order to test predictions derived from the Mental Models Theory of human thought. According to this theory, reasoning consists of representing and comparing possibilities. Different sentential forms would require different cognitive demands. In particular, responses to a sentential negation task would be modulated by working memory load. This prediction would hold for correct responses but also for the general pattern of responses that includes incorrect responses when the task offers different response options. A …

Students’ Perspectives On The Use Of Peer Feedback In An English As A Second Language Writing Class, Kavitha Sukumaran, Rozita Dass

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Peer assessment and peer feedback are considered alternatives to teacher-based feedback and their effects on writing have been substantially researched. This study aims to examine the perspectives of a group of university students, who are mainly second language learners, on peer feedback in an English writing class. Many of the studies conducted on the perspectives of students regarding peer feedback provided conflicting findings. While some found that peer feedback was viewed with doubt and encouraged little revision, others found it helped learners to recognise their strengths and flaws in writing. This study aims to better understand students’ perspectives regarding peer …

Freedom In Surrender, Vahri G. Mckenzie

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background: The work is an artists’ profile of Claudia Alessi published in dancewest, the WA edition of the Australian Dance Council magazine. Alessi is a leading independent dancer and choreographer. It draws on my case study of Alessi to show how embodied knowledge and physical sensation inform her current choreographic process, and the transmission of this knowledge. As a dancer and researcher I use archival, field research and self-reflection to ask: how do we make creative processes explicit when they’re experienced as sudden insight?

Contribution: I was invited to contribute a series of artists’ profiles to dancewest. The research draws …

Language Skills In Incarcerated Young Offenders: Links With Offending Severity, Pamela Snow

Language as a Social Justice Issue Conference

Oral language competence (i.e. skills with verbal expression and auditory comprehension) underpins and emerges out of, early social-emotional relationships, and forms the basis of the transition to literacy in early childhood. Some outcomes of suboptimal language development in the early years include difficulties forming and maintaining interpersonal relationships, and identifying and understanding affective states of others. This paper presents findings from a study of 100 incarcerated young male offenders in Victoria, Australia. We sought to determine the prevalence of language impairment in this very high-risk group, and also examined correlates of language impairment that could act as early intervention levers, …

Mother's Experience Of Social Media: Its Impact On Children And The Home, Abe Van Hatch

Theses : Honours

With the prevalence and accessibility of social media within the last 15 years it has become possible for children to have constant access to their friends and social networks. It is relatively unknown what impact adopting social media has on children and how mothers interpret this. There are gaps in the literature investigating the pervasive effects of modern technology and what meaning mothers ascribe to their children using social media as a method of connecting with the world. The present research aims to explore this phenomenon by investigating the experiences of mothers who have children that have recently adopted social …

A Tool That Can Be Effective In The Self-Regulated Learning Of Pre-Service Teachers: The Mind Map, Isil Tanriseven

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The aim of this study is to analyse the effect of task planning with mind maps on the self-regulation strategies and motivational beliefs of pre-service teachers. A quasi-experimental design, with a pre-test and post-test control group, was applied in the research. The research group comprised of 60 pre-service teachers taking “Teaching Principle and Methods”, in the second year at the Faculty of Education Elementary School Department at Mersin University, Turkey. Students in the experimental group planned their tasks individually by means of a mind map, whereas students in the control group directly realized their task. Before and after the experiment, …

Problematising The Role Of Personal And Professional Relationships In Early Career Teacher Resilience, Lisa H. Papatraianou, Rosie Le Cornu

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Formal processes such as ongoing induction, mentoring and professional development are commonly recorded as factors that can enhance early career teacher resilience. Yet, informal processes, including the support provided by personal and professional networks are not often acknowledged nor made explicit. Drawing on two qualitative studies, we examine teachers’ informal significant relationships as these appeared to play a particularly key role for their resilience. We argue that it is problematic to represent early career teachers’ support providers in two distinct categories – personal and professional, as has often been perpetuated in the literature. The article explores the various types of …

The Long Journey: Developing A Model Of Pld For The Future, Hazel Owen, Merryn Dunmill

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper presents the longitudinal learning journey of two educators who participated in the Virtual Professional Learning and Development programme (VPLD) between 2010 and 2013. Each participant’s story of change describes the process and outcomes of their involvement in a future-focused environment of virtual mentorship supported by a tailored online community of practice.

The paper discusses and conceptualises (via an inclusive framework for professional development) key findings. Evidence is shown of shifts in the educators’ beliefs about learning and teaching, corresponding changes in professional practice, and the impact on student learning experiences.

The three interconnecting dimensions of the Inclusive Framework …

Mindfulness And The Beginning Teacher, Ross S. Bernay

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This article reviews a hermeneutic phenomenological study of five beginning teachers who were introduced to mindfulness during their initial teacher education programme. The participants kept fortnightly journals and engaged in three interviews with the researcher to assess the benefits of using mindfulness during the first year of teaching. The participants in this study discovered through their lived experiences of using mindfulness in their first year of teaching that their personal wellbeing was enhanced, stress was reduced, and they could focus greater attention on their lesson planning and their students. They responded rather than reacted emotionally to student needs. The results …

Planting The Seed Of Teacher Identity: Nurturing Early Growth Through A Collaborative Learning Community, Ann Harlow, Donella J. Cobb

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Abstract: This paper reports on the findings of a reconceptualised Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programme where a collaborative relationship between the university and partner schools saw the shared responsibility for the first year ITE programme. Findings from this study suggests that ongoing, authentic teaching experiences in collaboration with school-based university tutorials provided a strong foundation for the early development of teacher identity. Wenger’s (1998) social theory of learning provides a theoretical framework for understanding why this community of practice has been particularly effective in planting the seed of teacher identity at such an early stage of the ITE programme.

Standards In Literacy And Numeracy: Contributing Factors, Linda Meeks, Coral Kemp, Jennifer Stephenson

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The establishment of international testing regimes such as the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has provided one way for individual countries to monitor the effectiveness of their educational systems. Not only do such programs allow for overall student achievement to be compared across member, and partner, countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and to those countries choosing to participate in PIRLS and TIMSS, but comparisons can also be made in relation to the percentage of students achieving …

“Initially, We Were Just Names On A Computer Screen”: Designing Engagement In Online Teacher Education, Sharon M. Pittaway, Timothy Moss

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper describes a research project that investigated the process of redesigning a fully-online unit, in order to enhance undergraduate Education students’ engagement in their learning. This redesign was guided by the development of an Engagement Framework, which presents five elements of engagement that are distinct yet interrelated. The results of this redesigned unit indicate that this Engagement Framework has the potential to offer unit developers and instructors a strong pedagogical and theoretical foundation for enhancing engagement in online learning. This paper provides a description of the Engagement Framework, the processes undertaken in redesigning a fully-online unit, the findings, and …

Exploring Pre-Service Teachers’ Knowledge Of And Ability To Use Text Messaging, Gretchen Geng, Leigh Disney

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This study aimed to assess the pre-service teachers’ knowledge of and ability to use text messaging, and assist their use of this technology in the classroom teaching context. Data were gathered by means of a questionnaire and text message exercises. Fifty-three pre-service teachers participated in the study. It was found that although different tasks required different contributions of word numbers to complete the text messages, the percentages of text abbreviations were the same in all text messages. It was also found that participants who used more text abbreviations in their text messages had more correct scores in translating text abbreviations …

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 …