This thesis explores reasons for New Zealand���s problematic tail of literacy underachievement and suggests one way to address the problem, is for schools to operate as learning organizations. A qualitative research design was used to identify elements of organizational learning in the practices of three very different schools identified as improving the students��� learning outcomes. The research methods included semi-structured interviews, team meeting observations, an anonymous questionnaire and document analysis. An analytical framework identifying five elements of organizational learning, developed from a review of the organizational learning literature, was used to evaluate each school���s ability to learn about their teaching and learning programmes as a result of reviewing students��� achievement information. The research findings identified elements of the organizational learning framework in the practices of all three schools. It was found that whilst the elements of the framework were necessary, the entirety of the framework was most significant in facilitating organizational learning. In order for the schools to learn to improve the learning of their students, they needed to have a well defined infrastructure for the collection, collation, analysis and use of student achievement information. The occurrence of the infrastructure alone did not, however, facilitate organizational learning. The school leaders and teachers needed to apply the appropriate curriculum content, pedagogical and assessment literacy knowledge to the assessment data in order to make sense of it and to use the information to review and refine their teaching and learning programmes. The acquisition of appropriate levels of professional knowledge appeared to be facilitated within a culture where teachers felt safe and confident to challenge and be challenged in their collegial discussions about students��� learning. Rigorous collegial discussions appeared to foster team learning and to be leader driven. When the appropriate professional knowledge was not available within the organization, learning only appeared to occur when the necessary expertise was accessed from the external environment.

In this thesis I portray through a history of music and art education in New Zealand the forms knowledge production took in these subject and the discourses within which they were embedded. This enables a more comprehensive understanding of curriculum and unearths connections with what Lyotard (1984) described as 'grand narrative' used to legitimate knowledge claims and practices at certain historical moments. Through such histories we may chart the progress of European civilization within the local context and provide the historical raison d'être for the present state of affairs in music and arts areas of the New Zealand curriculum. Curriculum and its 'reform' representing in part the distribution of public goods and services, has been embroiled in a market project. I seek to expose the politics of knowledge involved in the construction of the notion of The Arts within a neo-liberal policy environment. This environment has involved the deliberate construction of a 'culture of enterprise and competition' (Peters, 1995: 52) and, in the nurturing of conditions for trans-national capital's freedom of movement, a withdrawal from Keynesian economic and social policy, an assault on the welfare state. The thesis delves beyond the public face of policy-making. It follows and scrutinizes critically the birth of The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum to the production of the first draft of the proposed policy presented by the Ministry of Education in 1999. I examine it as a site of the 'accumulation of meaning' (Derrida, 1981: 57) through a discussion of the history of meaning of 'art' and 'art' education. There is much of value in the Draft document. In particular, the arts have been invested with a new intellectual weight and the professionalism, passion and dedication of those involved in its writing shines through in each of the subject areas within the arts. However, through a process of analysis, I will show that there has been, in fact, a fashioning of a new container for the isolation of artistic knowledge. This is despite official sentiments mentioning possibilities within the document for flourishing separate Music, Art, Dance, and Drama education that implies increased curriculum space. The Draft Arts (1999) document both disguises and rehashes the 'master narrative' of universal rationality and artistic canons and is unlikely to work towards revitalising or protecting local cultural identities though not through lack of intention. I use Lyotard's notion of 'performativity' to critique notions of 'skills' and their 'development' which are implicitly and explicitly stated within the 'levels' of development articulated in the Draft Arts (1999) document. It is argued that this conflation works to enforce cultural homogeneity. There are clear dangers that the Draft Arts' (1999) conception of 'Arts Literacies' might operate as mere functional literacy in the service of the dominant culture's discourse of power and knowledge-one which celebrates the art-as-commodity ideal. It is argued that the Education Ministry's theoretical and epistemological construction of The Arts as one area of learning is unsound, and in fact represents a tightening of modernism's hierarchical notion of culture. New Zealand, now post-colonial or post-imperialist, both bi-cultural and multi-cultural, is situated on the south-western edge of the Pacific Rim. Culturally, it now includes Pacific Island, Asian, and new immigrants, as well as Maori and people of European descent. This therefore necessitates aesthetic practices which, far from promoting a set of universal principles for the appreciation of art - one canonical rule or 'standard' - recognise and reflect cultural difference. Merely admitting cultural difference is inadequate. By working away critically at the deeply held ethno-centric assumptions of modernism, its selective traditions concerned with 'practices, meanings, gender, "races", classes' (Pollock, 1999: 10), its universalising aesthetics of beauty, formal relations, individuality, authenticity or originality, and self-expression, of 'negativity and alienation, and abstraction' (Huyssens, 1986: 209), it is possible to begin to understand the theoretical task of articulating difference with regard to aesthetics. The development of the arts curriculum in New Zealand is placed within the modernism/postmodernism and modernity/postmodernity debates. These debates have generated a number of questions which are forcing us to re-examine the assumptions of modernism. The need for the culture of modernism to become self-critical of its own determining assumptions in order to come to understand its cultural practices, is becoming an urgent theoretical task, especially in disciplines and fields concerned with the transmission of acquired learning and the production of new knowledge. The culture of modernism is often taken as the historical succession of twentieth century avant-gardes (B. Smith, 1998) yet the culture of modernity, philosophically speaking, strictly begins with René Descartes several hundred years earlier, with a pre-history in the Florentine renaissance and the re-discovery of Graeco-Roman artistic and literary forms going back to the thirteenth century. Aesthetic modernism identifies with consumer capitalism and its major assumptions are rationalist, individualist and focus upon the autonomy of both the 'work of art' and the artist at the expense of the artwork, its reception and audience within its localised cultural context. The ideological features of humanism/liberalism - its privileging of the individual subject, the moral, epistemological and aesthetic privileging of the author/artist - are examined as forces contributing to modernism's major values (or aesthetic). Such approaches, it is argued, were limited for dealing with difference. The security and reproductive nature of modernistic approaches to curriculum in the arts areas are destabilized by thinking within the postmodern turn, and the effects of the changes questioning the basic epistemological and metaphysical assumptions in disciplinary fields including art/literature, artchitecture, philosophy and political theory, are registered here, within the field of the education in and through the arts. In a seminal description or report on knowledge, Jean-François Lyotard defines postmodernism as 'incredulity towards metanarratives' (1984: xxiv). Postmodernism, he argues, is 'undoubtedly part of the modern', 'not modernism at its end but in its nascent state and that state is constant (1984: 79). After Lyotard, postmodernism might be seen, therefore, not just as a mode or manner or attitude towards the past, but also as a materializing discourse comprising a dynamic reassessment and re-examination of modernism and modernity's culture. The thinking subject (the cogito) seen as the fount of all knowledge, its autonomy, and transparency, its consideration as the centre of artistic and aesthetic virtuosity and moral action, is subjected to intellectual scrutiny and suspicion. The need for an aesthetics of difference is contextualised through an examination of western hierarchies of art and the aesthetics of marginalized groups. I use the theories of poststructuralist, Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard, to examine the concept of difference. These theoretical inspirations are used as methodological tools for offsetting the privileging of the liberal individual and individualism. Rather than the mere consideration of difference in curricula, I seek to insert and establish the principle of an aesthetics of difference into relations of pedagogy and curricula. The implications for professional practice resulting from a recognition of a politics of representation are examined and a politics of difference. I argue that art education in all its manifestations can no longer avoid the deeper implications of involvement with representation, including forms of gender, ethnicity and class representation as well as colonial representation. The Western canon's notion of 'artists' and their 'art', often based upon white bourgeois male representations and used in many primary school classrooms, are part and parcel of 'social and political investments in canonicity', a powerful 'element in the hegemony of dominant social groups and interests' (Pollock, 1999: 9). Difference is not appreciated in this context. School art, music, and drama classrooms can become sites for the postmodern questioning of representation of 'the other'. In this context, an aesthetics of difference insists upon too, the questioning of images supporting hegemonic discourses, images which have filled the spaces in the 'chinks and cracks of the power/knowledge-apparati' (Teresa de Lauretis, 1987 cited in Pollock, 1999: 7-8). What would an 'eccentric rereading', a rediscovery of what the canon's vicarly cloak disguises and reveals, mean for music, and for the individual arts areas of the curriculum? I hope to reveal the entanglements of the cultural dynamics of power through an examination of the traditions of Truth and Beauty in imagery which are to be disrupted by inserting into the canon the principle of the aesthetics of difference. Art education as a politics of representation embraces art's constitutive role in ideology. This is to be exposed as we seek to unravel and acknowledge which kinds of knowledges are legitimised and privileged by which kinds of representations. Which kinds of narratives, historical or otherwise, have resulted in which kinds of depictions through image? A recognition of the increasing specification of the subject demands also the careful investigation of colonial representation, the construction of dubious narratives about our history created through visual imaging and its provision of complex historical references. How have art, music, dance, drama been used in the service of particular political and economic narratives? Through revisioning the curriculum from a postmodern perspective, suggestions are made for an alternative pedagogy, which offsets the ideological features of humanism/liberalism, one in which an aesthetics of difference might pervade cultural practices - 'systems of signification', 'practices of representation' (Rizvi, 1994). I draw upon Lyotard's notion of 'small narratives' (1984), and present an investigation of what the democratic manifestation of 'the differend', and multiple meaning systems, might indicate in terms of 'differencing' music education as a site in which heterogenous value systems and expression may find form. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

This study describes the attributes of a highly accomplished mathematics teacher as reported by the students in their class, and also determines whether high school students can differentiate between highly accomplished mathematics teachers and others. The 51-item instrument, Students Evaluating Accomplished Teaching – Mathematics, was developed to map the construct of highly accomplished teaching as articulated by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in their Adolescent and Young Adulthood Mathematics Standards. Two focus groups of New Zealand high school mathematics teachers reviewed these Standards, and found that there were more similarities than differences between the Standards and what they would expect of a highly accomplished teacher in New Zealand. Questionnaire items were drafted relating to each of 470 statements in the Standards. These items were trialled in New Zealand high schools, and analysed using factor analysis and item response theory, to select items that completely mapped the Standards. The questionnaire was then administered to 1611 students in the classes of thirty-two National Board Certified Teachers and twenty-six non-Board colleagues in 13 states of the USA. Multivariate analysis of variance and discriminant function analysis were used to establish that students can record and report the difference between NBCTs and their non-Board certified colleagues, and describe what students believe are the attributes of a good teacher. Highly accomplished teachers build a relationship between their students and the mathematics curriculum, as well as with the language and processes of mathematics, by engaging their minds with challenging material and rich tasks. These results provide further validation of the NBPTS certification process, and indicate that students provide dependable evaluations of their teachers. The student evaluation questionnaire could be used with confidence in both the USA and New Zealand to identify highly accomplished mathematics teachers.

This thesis represents the results of a three-year intervention study of a group of Māori language teachers, their pupils and Māori parent communities in the Northland region of New Zealand. The study was motivated by the problem of continuing low academic achievement for Māori students in state mainstream schools. The assumption that existing teaching outputs of Māori language were quite strong and so could be used to model improvements for other school subjects and teachers to follow for Māori students was examined. In fact this was found to be a mistaken assumption as serious problems were located for the teaching of the Māori language. Two school policy areas were examined to locate possible solutions: Treaty of Waitangi policies in school charters and the operation of Māori Language Resourcing. It was found that the operation by school managements tended to exclude any active role for the Māori parent community. An action research model of intervention was designed and implemented to offer teachers in-service assistance in the provision of practice examinations to help better prepare students in their school certificate written examinations. Teachers were also encouraged to work directly with their Māori parent communities in order to improve teaching, student learning and outcomes. A case-study demonstrates that a dramatic rise in pupil performance occurred when parents worked along side the teacher in the classroom. The thesis argues that the nature of the Treaty of Waitangi provides a rationale for Māori parent participation, for direct involvement into school management (teaching issues) both for Māori students and the Māori language. It is concluded that a successful school for Māori students depends both the strength and shape of the tripartite relationship between the school, the home and the students.

The ubiquitousness of the Internet and communication technologies is having a significant influence on teaching and learning practices both in terms of what is learnt and how it is learnt. Mathematics teaching and learning in vocational education is also facing new challenges due to the enormous influence of new technologies on workplace practices. This study makes an attempt to design and implement a web-based learning environment to facilitate and enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics in a TAFE setting. The design and development of the web-based learning environment aimed at providing opportunities for more engaging and authentic learning activities and promoting the use of new learning technologies in mathematics teaching and learning. The study included a practical orientation of action to bring about a change in the practice of teaching of mathematics in vocational education. Using a design-based research approach the study comprised two cycles. In the first cycle three mathematics teachers were involved in exploring Internet based mathematics resources and participated in the design of a website that consisted of twelve units of basic mathematical topics with facilities for both synchronous and asynchronous communication. This web-based learning environment known as Maths Concurrent Assistance (MCA) Online was then trialled with a number of mathematics teachers and students in mainly workshop mode. In the second cycle, the web-based learning environment was customised for a business mathematics module in a diploma course and trialled with a semester long course taught on campus in a blended learning format. Data obtained through classroom observation, WebCT logs, discussion board postings, test results and nterviews were used to explore and analyse issues concerned with students’ participation, access and use and the role of teacher in facilitating mathematics learning. The study also included a quasi-experimental research design to compare achievement and attitude of students who participated in this experiment with another group of students taught the same content by the same teacher in a traditional face-to-face mode with no Internet activities. Results from the study indicate that students’ successful participation in web-based mathematics learning in vocational education is contingent upon factors including learner readiness, interface design and course design. Students’ attitude towards mathematics appeared to influence their participation in web-based mathematical activities. Although computer skills and confidence are necessary for successful participation in web-based activities, students’ attitude towards mathematics played a more important role in determining their participation.

This study is an action research investigation to develop a work-based learning programme for vocational students at Aksorn School of Technology Pattaya, Thailand. Historically, vocational education has been primarily school-based with the emphasis on teacher-led instruction and scant workplace experience. This resulted in major weaknesses in student preparation and readiness for the work environment. The aim of this study was to install a work-based learning programme to give students better preparation for the workplace, and give them contextual experience of work practice through work placements, and then evaluate the outcomes of the experience. By providing students with greater practical exposure to the workplace culture and conditions, the study endeavoured to foster skills, competencies, and a mindset suitable for the world of work. The project was overseen by a committee of stakeholders, and facilitated by the researcher. The study followed two cohorts of ten students over two action research cycles of three months each. Data were collected via student focus groups, observation, field notes, interviews, and analysis of documents, including student journals, and employer and teacher assessments. The outcomes from the study have indicated that a work-based learning programme has the potential to address many of the problems facing our students in their career development. Furthermore, the disciplines imposed in conducting the enquiry made all the participants involved examine their own work practices and, has been a contributory factor towards the stakeholders' professional development..

This study investigated the workplace learning of faculty staff at Sripatum University, Chonburi campus, Thailand. It is set in the context of significant change in Thai education and government legislation to improve the quality and standards of education at all levels. The aim was to improve teaching performance and to develop a model for workplace learning and the improvement of teaching quality in the university. The study was conducted in two phases: the first involved a survey of all campus staff asking what aspects of teaching have improved, what sources of help contributed to their teaching improvement and what they would like to improve in future and how this might be achieved. The second phase represented both an action phase and the trial of a change strategy. It involved the selection of 6 staffs from those willing to participate, covering the range of teaching disciplines, and ranges of teaching experience. Staff met regularly once or twice per month as an action learning set, to examine each individual's learning experience and to offer support and critique. Data were collected through observation, field notes, individual journals, and through faculty documents. Three cycles were completed following which an evaluation was conducted based on group and individual interviews. The data are presented through narrative and through interpretation of the development of learning and the effectiveness of the process. Data were also used to construct a model of workplace learning for Sripatum University. Survey and action learning results indicated that effective lecturers' workplace learning encompass both formal an informal approaches for supporting ongoing lecturer learning. Participation in on the job learning and reflection and discussion with colleagues were most valued as an effective contribution to learning in the workplace. The workplace learning model of lecturers' development to improve teaching is a mediated process of learning focusing on the integration of practical and theoretical knowledge, classroom practice and professional dialogue with colleagues. In the current Thai higher education context and context of Sripatum University, the workplace learning model can also be described as a process of professional socialization wherein lecturers and their colleagues share understanding, purposes and values as well as build interdependencies that complement or supplement the formal learning of university.

Over the past decade, information and communication technology (ICT) has become increasingly prevalent in our schools. With the emergence of new technologies in the classrooms, there is a pressing need to study how teachers experience and feel about the integration of new technology in their teaching practice. This study investigated seven teachers' perceptions and experiences in adopting 'Blackboard' computer program into their teaching. This research contributes to our understanding of how teachers adapt to the introduction and integration of new technology in their classrooms. The study combined theory and practice, identifying connections between the experiences of teachers and existing literature and research. One Catholic secondary school was the focus of the study. This school was selected because of its adoption of cutting-edge Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Data were drawn from four sources: individual teacher interviews; direct observation; email dialogues and school documents during the 2004 academic year. Teachers were interviewed three times; the transcripts of 21 semi-structured, open-ended interviews and observation data were analysed using the system of content analysis that involved identifying, coding, and categorising the main themes in the data. To expedite the research, I identified seven constructs to structure the data analysis: (a) change; (b) teachers' workload/time management; (c) student management; (d) enhancing student learning; (e) skill development; (f) access; (g) online pedagogy. Case profiles were created for each teacher and then compared across the seven teachers to discern both common and unique patterns of perceptions and experiences related to 'Blackboard' integration and implementation processes. Results of the study identified the importance of access to computers, ongoing professional development and leadership support for the integration of 'Blackboard' and other related technologies into teaching. The results also indicated that teachers need sufficient time to practise and plan their lessons with the new technology. The importance of a planned change process, created by all stakeholders, concerning integration of new technologies in the school emerged as an important outcome of this study. The results indicated teachers were most receptive to learning from and with their colleagues about the integration of the 'Blackboard' program into their classroom practice. Based on these research outcomes, a set of recommended strategies to support the integration of 'Blackboard' into teacher pedagogy and school curricula is included in the final chapter. Information gained from this study will provide some insights for the case study school and those schools that are interested in pursuing a similar path in the future.

The aims of this study were to gain a more highly defined understanding of academic achievement by examining possible demographic differences in students' achievement-related cognitions; and provide information that may allow future researchers to design programs aimed at improving students' academic achievement within specified demographic strata. More specifically, the aims of the present study were two-fold, (a) to investigate sociodemographic differences in students' achievement-related cognitions and (b) to examine the role of identity status in students' achievement-related cognitions. The participants were 325 students (122 males and 203 females) recruited from five large secondary schools from across Metropolitan Melbourne. The results showed that most of the significant differences in students' achievement-related cognitions were grade and identity status related. This suggests that much of the variability in achievement-related cognitions measured in this study may be environmental (i.e., grade differences) and/ or developmental (i.e., age differences and maturation) in nature. These results are important in order to identify at-risk groups (i.e., at-risk of achievement problems) and to better structure learning environments and support systems for these students, in an effort to enhance or facilitate their achievement prospects. Continued research in the area will help provide evidence-based practices in Australian schools.

This study focuses on the development of effective Staff Training Programs to meet ISO Food Factory standards. It is set in the context of significant changes required to meet these standards in order to improve international business opportunities in the food industry in Thailand. The study is based on a needs assessment within the proactive form of evaluation as categorised by Owen, with Rogers (1999) and Owen (2006). The research was conducted in four phases: a needs assessment, an expert review, a determination of best practice, and the formulation of a staff training policy. The purely qualitative methodology involved focus group and semi-structured interviews, a SWOT analysis, inductive data reduction, and policy development using Dror’s (1973) Optimal Method of policymaking. The findings of this study were validated by means of triangulation involving the outcomes of the needs assessment, the semistructured interviews with the QMRs of two registered ISO certificated food factories, and the testing of the draft policy against the perceptions of the Chief Executive Officers of two registered ISO certificated food factories.