Joseph Schwab claimed that only teachers are capable of translating scholarly theory into curriculum, as only they have knowledge of and are able to co-ordinate its four cornerstones of subject matter, learners, context and the teacher. Organised around Schwab’s heuristic, this thesis explores from an ecological perspective the curriculum making practices of seven experienced, effective teachers of adult ESOL over the trajectory of a course that each one taught. While normative advice in second language teacher education texts encourages a more systems-based approach to curriculum development, there is increasing awareness in research-based literature that the instructional curriculum is in fact an interactive construction played out in a dynamic, non-linear process and particularised to a certain context and group of learners. This evidencebased study aims to illustrate how teachers engage with written curriculum sources, classroom and cultural contexts, their own theories of practice and the developing understandings and wishes of learners as they make the instructional curriculum. Data were collected from guided pre-course and post-course interviews with teachers as well as persistent, debriefing-type interviews throughout the courses, supported by course documentation and teaching materials. Themes emerging from the data and from relevant literature were coded and analysed qualitatively. Findings of this study illuminate significant aspects of teachers’ curriculum making practices, including the weaving of conceptual content onto the timeframe of the courses, teachers’ efforts to achieve coherence, balance and variety in the instructional curriculum, and the importance of time and process. They emphasise the central role of the teacher as synthesiser of a variety of considerations, and provide evidence of the rich and complex understandings of teachers’ professional knowledge in action. They also show the fundamental importance of good cognitive and affective rapport between teacher and learners, and the need for teachers to constantly monitor and adjust the instructional curriculum according to learners’ developmental needs, while at the same time taking into account a unique constellation of influences from its micro- and macro- context. Implications for ESOL teachers and teacher educators of this more detailed understanding of the instructional curriculum and of teachers’ professional knowledge bases are also explored.

Joseph Schwab claimed that only teachers are capable of translating scholarly theory into curriculum, as only they have knowledge of and are able to co-ordinate its four cornerstones of subject matter, learners, context and the teacher. Organised around Schwab’s heuristic, this thesis explores from an ecological perspective the curriculum making practices of seven experienced, effective teachers of adult ESOL over the trajectory of a course that each one taught. While normative advice in second language teacher education texts encourages a more systems-based approach to curriculum development, there is increasing awareness in research-based literature that the instructional curriculum is in fact an interactive construction played out in a dynamic, non-linear process and particularised to a certain context and group of learners. This evidencebased study aims to illustrate how teachers engage with written curriculum sources, classroom and cultural contexts, their own theories of practice and the developing understandings and wishes of learners as they make the instructional curriculum. Data were collected from guided pre-course and post-course interviews with teachers as well as persistent, debriefing-type interviews throughout the courses, supported by course documentation and teaching materials. Themes emerging from the data and from relevant literature were coded and analysed qualitatively. Findings of this study illuminate significant aspects of teachers’ curriculum making practices, including the weaving of conceptual content onto the timeframe of the courses, teachers’ efforts to achieve coherence, balance and variety in the instructional curriculum, and the importance of time and process. They emphasise the central role of the teacher as synthesiser of a variety of considerations, and provide evidence of the rich and complex understandings of teachers’ professional knowledge in action. They also show the fundamental importance of good cognitive and affective rapport between teacher and learners, and the need for teachers to constantly monitor and adjust the instructional curriculum according to learners’ developmental needs, while at the same time taking into account a unique constellation of influences from its micro- and macro- context. Implications for ESOL teachers and teacher educators of this more detailed understanding of the instructional curriculum and of teachers’ professional knowledge bases are also explored.

Abstract Ongoing tension surrounding values education in both the wider community and among politicians and academics, as well as the plethora of values education programs on the commercial market, all contribute to a number of competing values education discourses that can make it difficult for individual classroom teachers to make choices regarding what and how to teach values. The aim of the current study was to contribute to an understanding of discourses of values education in Australia and investigate the way in which the Discourse models of government policy documents and classroom teacher Discourse models of values education intersect in terms of both alignment and fragmentation. In addressing the problem of how teachers choose to bring clarity to competing values education discourses, this research comprises two parts. The first part is an analysis of a key policy text, the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (2005). The second part focuses on fourteen interviews with seven primary school classroom teachers conducted at different times during one school term. Each teacher was interviewed twice. The interviews were treated as objects of analysis and not just as an information source. The informal theories that underpin the policy and interview texts are analysed through James Paul Gee’s (2005) lens of “Discourse models”. This is a critical discourse approach to analysing a social phenomenon, with analytic focus placed on the language in the texts, as well as the localised and broader social context in which the language is situated. The way in which the policy and interview texts functioned strategically was analysed. The Discourse models evident in the texts were then identified through the use of ‘storylines’ as an analytic tool. In identifying Discourse models, insight was gained into how the official policy and the teacher participants in the study conceptualised values education. Analysis of the policy document showed how the text acted strategically to build legitimacy and the appearance of consensus surrounding the approach to values education advocated in the document. The storyline that emerged was one of the Australian Federal Government as a ‘hero’ intervening in values education to save young people who are at moral risk in the 21st century. Analysis of the interview transcripts showed how these texts also acted strategically to build legitimacy and the appearance that each participant’s approach to values education was right, normal and needed. A similar storyline emerged in the interview texts, where young people were in need of rescuing due to the moral peril of current times but it was the teacher participants who were now in the role of ‘hero’. The teacher participants in the study showed that they called upon a multiplicity of social roles, everything they were as moral beings, in their efforts to rescue students. The results indicate that there is both alignment and fragmentation in the Discourse models identified in both the policy and interview texts. Values education was conceived of in largely behavioural terms, where values were fixed, and change towards these value norms was focused on the individual behaviour of the student. Alignment centred on a dominant ‘salvation’ story in the texts that regarded values education as a way to rescue students from moral peril. This master model of the salvation story was fractured, however, by the experiences of the classroom teachers in the study. Most poignant was that not all students were able to be rescued despite the best of professed intentions. There are several implications emerging from these findings. First, the explicit move towards fixed values norms has exclusionary effects. Second, the focus on changing the behaviour of students as individuals ignores systemic levels of oppression. Third, and overall, the didactic teaching of values creates tensions over the perceived interference of the state in the lives of young people. Recommendations emerging from the study include that teachers be given increased opportunities to become more aware of their own values systems, the impact of these in the classroom; and develop their understanding of the broader social structures in which values education in classrooms is situated. This awareness is a necessary complement to the official discourses of values education in Australia in order to mitigate the potential exclusionary effects of policy. 130105 Primary Education 35%, 160506 Education policy 35%, 1399 Other Education 30%

This study investigated teachers' professional learning and pedagogy as they grappled with the challenges and implications of using new information and communications technologies (ICT) in their classrooms. It contributes to knowledge about the way teachers learn and change, their pedagogical interventions, the impact of different professional learning strategies, and identification of issues connected with the transition from personal learning to collegial and organizational learning. It also informs educational practice in terms of four major uses of ICT in classrooms: i)Digital information resources and new literacy demands; ii)Collaborative online projects; iii)Animation and multiliteracies development; iv)ICT and early numeracy development.

This study investigates the experiences of first year engineering students to a newly implemented engineering problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum at Victoria University; its effects on their approaches to learning and their learning outcomes. This qualitative study, which uses ethnographic approaches for data collection and analysis, focuses on the learning cultures that emerge in multicultural PBL teams by interpreting the responses of students to the new emphasis on autonomous learning. In the first year of the curriculum change in this PBL setting, this research captures and theorises student approaches to learning as a team and their learning outcomes by analysing the ways in which these students approach and direct their learning as individuals and as a team.

This study is concerned with the development of entrepreneurship in young Thais, studying at high school level through an entrepreneurship encouragement program undertaken during the recent period of Thailand's economic recovery. This program is considered new to the country since it focuses on high school participants, a target-group untapped by most existing business incubation programs. In addition, it also takes significant account of the experiential learning method for entrepreneurship development. The research shows that the program had substantial, yet limited impact in encouraging its participants to become future entrepreneurs. This was due to the individual background, parental influence, and differences in their own beliefs that played an essential role in supporting or hindering young Thais towards entrepreneurship. Quantitative and qualitative research methods, used in conjunction, were used to portray the overall effectiveness of this program; such a mixed method is not commonly practiced in most entrepreneurship program evaluations. Quantitative research was used primarily to give representative results on how well the specific program objectives had been achieved by the participants as well as to select representatives of the program for the qualitative data gathering. Qualitative research was utilised to capture testimonials of program impacts and to obtain a comprehensive interpretation of participants’ perceptions, evaluation of program effectiveness, and the factors that support or hinder their development towards entrepreneurship. The study suggests that this short-term entrepreneurship encouragement program had limited success; success was dependent on both personal and external factors relating to each participant. It showed that one’s prior condition was a significant determinant of the varying level of success. The program was able to encourage the participants with relatively limited business experience towards entrepreneurship, specifically in stimulating more awareness and knowledge in developing entrepreneurial competencies. For those participants with an established background in business, the program provided a period of incubation that encouraged them to become entrepreneurs; it provided them with an opportunity of real business implementation that increased their prospects of success in future entrepreneurship. The concrete success levels revealed by the study suggests that this short-term entrepreneurship encouragement program might best position itself by providing an initial selection process to separate the ‘entrepreneurto- be’ from the ‘will not be’. The selected ‘entrepreneur-to-be’ could then be further groomed to be one of the successful entrepreneurs to play an important role in driving the long-term economic growth of Thailand.

This study focuses on the development of the English for Architecture Program for architecture students at Chulalongkorn University. The research is set in the context of significant of change being made to the English for Architecture Program at Chulalongkorn University, 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 two phases: a research review and a needs assessment. Following an analysis of these phases, a policy for revised English for Architecture Program was developed. A research review was undertaken to determine current best practice in self-directed English language programs. The needs assessment, involving questionnaire surveys, consisted of three steps, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The first involved determining the perceived needs of students prior to undertaking the English for Architecture Program; the second involved determining the desired needs of students following their exposure to an introductory English for Architecture Program; the third involved identifying the desired needs of teachers who teach the English for Architecture Program. A comparison of the quantitative outcomes of the surveys, using descriptive statistics, was undertaken in order to make a comparison between the three sets of responses. The issues that emerged – the role of students, learning style, materials, and assessment – were further investigated, using qualitative methods, by a series of semi-structured interviews undertaken with representative samples of students, and with experienced staff teaching the English for Architecture Program. The three sets of responses to the questionnaire, together with the issues that were discussed in the interviews, were used to determine the needs of a revised program. Finally, the needs were matched with the outcomes of the research review in order to provide the basis for a complete course revision. The findings of this study were validated by means of triangulation of the outcomes of the research: the needs assessment and semi-structured interviews undertaken with architecture students and teachers; the outcomes of the research review. The findings in the study indicate that teachers and students agreed that self-directed learning is an appropriate alternative way of teaching that can change the teaching and learning situation in the Thai context, and that such a change might help improve the efficiency in learning. The research has three significant outcomes: the development of a policy for revised English for Architecture Program for architecture students; a demonstration of the effectiveness of Proactive Evaluation in developing such policy; identification of key elements that are required for change in organisations.

This research was concerned with an Interactive Evaluation, using an Action Research approach, of the effectiveness of using a Student-Centred Cooperative Approach – as opposed to the more traditional teacher-centred method – in the teaching of a Third Year Architecture subject, ‘Studio Project Design’. The four steps of Action Research – plan, act, observe and reflect – were used to make judgements and recommendations about this new approach. The respondents of this study were forty-six students – of whom twelve were also volunteer participant-interviewees – enrolled in Studio Design, together with three teachers, at the Faculty of Architecture, Sriburapha University, Bangkok, Thailand. A qualitative approach was used to collect and analyse student and staff opinion. The concepts of cooperative learning – including co-operative learning approaches, cooperative instruction, teaching cooperative learning skills, and responses to cooperative learning – were all shown to be relevant in student-centred learning. My Studio Design students and I, jointly, engaged in this research – improving students’ abilities in all components of Studio Design, as well as developing a positive attitude towards design, in general. Most significantly, all students ‘switched on’ to study as a result of the cooperative learning approach used in Studio Project Design. The research was concerned with determining whether or not a Student-Centred Cooperative Approach – which used cooperative and problem-based learning methods – resulted in improved student outcomes. Positive affective outcomes included development of a positive attitude towards design, and an increase in students’ technical and academic competencies that helped them to meet design demands. The outcome was positive. Students increased their learning competencies, enhanced their social skills, were more motivated to study, developed a higher level of interdependence, enjoyed the freedom to think ‘outside the square’, and increased their creativity when exposed to a Student-Centred Approach. To make a Student-Centred Cooperative Approach work more effectively, teachers and administrators within the School of Architecture need to embrace two key elements: first, by seeking to adapt themselves to change by engaging in lifelong learning; second, by undertaking special professional training courses in architecture.

The current study assessed children’s ideas on light and optics using a cross-sectional design. Given current literature and theory within cognitive psychology, history of science and science education, it was expected that (i) older children would be more likely than younger children to have a modern scientific understanding of light concepts; (ii) for many of the light concepts, there would be a parallel between the pattern of progression and change in children’s conceptions of light and scientists’ conceptions of light throughout history, and, finally; (iii) employing a historical lens would allow for a better understanding of not only the age-related patterns in children’s ideas of light but also children’s age specific alternative conceptions of light. A Light Core Concepts Questionnaire (LCCQ) was administered to participants (N=757) from across a wide age group (6 to 12 years). The participants were representative of ethnic groups attending a range of primary schools situated in a large New Zealand city. None of the participants had received classroom instruction in light and optics. The verbally delivered LCCQ was used to elicit children’s responses about prerequisite concepts necessary for a scientific understanding of the physics of light and employed two-choice, multi-choice and open-ended questions. Some questions were specifically designed to compare children’s conceptual understanding on light and optics with ideas adopted throughout the history of science. The results of the current research found that with increasing age (6 to 12 years old) children’s modern scientific understanding for many concepts on the physics of light increases. In comparison with other research, a higher proportion of children participating in the current study held correct views at younger ages. On easily observable phenomena, children as young as 7 years could identify common light sources and knew that some objects are reflectors of light. By age 12, the majority of children could correctly identify more abstract concepts such as what causes colours in rainbows. Results of the present research indicate there is a parallel between the age-related patterns of children’s ideas on light and the historical progression of scientific knowledge of the physics of light. With regard to light and vision, both early scientists and children held a similar range of alternative beliefs, that is, extramission, intromission or Eastern Islamic theories. Similar beliefs were shared about other concepts that were accepted as true theories in the history of science. For example, colour is the property of the object and when an object is placed in water it becomes distorted because water is less perfect than air. The results indicate that the pattern of alternative conceptions held by children as they relate to history provides further understanding of why there are differences in children’s beliefs about light and optics across age groups. For more difficult concepts, children and early scientists initially formulate similar theories based on their observations and what appears to be commonsense. As they reconceptualise their ideas, children and scientists formulate similar more abstract theories. In addition to discussing the value of the history of science as a lens to better understand children’s conceptions, the implications of these results are discussed as they relate to specific kinds of interventions or instructional approaches to elicit successful conceptual change in the classroom.

The present investigation aimed to apply Wenger’s (1998) conceptualisation of the ‘communities of practice’ concept (being one concept within the broader framework of social learning theory) to video gaming, based on Gee’s (2003) suggestion that video gaming could be viewed as a ‘community of practice’. In addition, Paechter’s (2003a) recommendation that masculinities (after Connell, 1995, and inclusive of a Foucaultian notion of knowledge/power relations), could be additionally conceptualised as ‘communities of masculinities practice’ was explored in relation to video gaming. The choice of ‘communities of practice’ as the unifying concept for this study was favoured due to the application of the concept to a number of New Zealand, Ministry of Education initiatives. The research project aimed to evaluate the usefulness of the ‘communities of practice’ concept for application to boys (and) video gaming as a model for how the concept might be applied to a range of education-related social learning environments. A total of 284 Year 9 boys (13-14 years old), from five New Zealand schools were surveyed about their video gaming behaviours and understandings, and further 42 boys from a selection of these same schools took part in ‘lessons’ to discuss in detail aspects of their video gaming. Evidence supported that; video gaming in itself cannot be conceptualised as a ‘community of practice’ because there is no sense of mutual engagement in a joint enterprise in the playing of video games, (that was, there is no evidence to support the conceptual understanding of ‘community’ or ‘practice’); and in addition, that while masculinities can be convincingly conceptualised as ‘communities of practice’, it is only when the activity of video gaming is seen as a resource within the shared repertoire of the ‘communities of masculinities practice’, in which masculinities, both hegemonic and less hegemonic are performed and reproduced, that video gaming can be linked with the ‘communities of practice’ concept. The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to where the conceptual and analytical lens offered by the ‘communities of practice’ concept, appear to be more applicable to the world of boys and video gaming. Also reiterated is that romanticised notions of ‘community’, applied to the likes of an educational environment but devoid of conceptual foundation, can be little more than rhetoric when not carefully considered and supported by empirical evidence.