This thesis investigates professional learning in a school-based community of science teachers. Transcripts of science staff meetings were analysed using two frameworks. These frameworks relate to the notions of community and professional learning. The school-based community is interpreted in terms of three metaphors of understanding: meanings, practice and identity. Professional learning is interpreted in terms of how the teachers learn the episteme, techne and phronesis of their science teaching. I propose that professional learning occurs when teachers engage in virtues-based personal reflection and/or public discourse around episteme, techne and phronesis in the spaces 'in-between' the metaphors of community. This proposition raises implications for the accessibility of professional learning and the relationship between community and organisational boundaries.

Australian policy contexts are promoting school transformation through teacher learning and the development of schools as professional learning communities. However, Australian practitioners have very limited contextualised research to guide their efforts in response to these policies. The researcher’s involvement in a school revitalisation process provided the impetus for this research study that investigates the practitioner experience of a developing professional learning community at RI College (pseudonym for a large independent girls’ school in Brisbane). This study endeavours to gain a more informed and sophisticated understanding of developing a professional learning community with the intention of ‘living’ this vision of RI College as a professional learning community. Praxis-oriented research questions focus on the practitioner conceptualisation of their school as a developing professional community and their experience of supporting/hindering strategies and structures. The study gives voice to this practitioner experience through the emerging participatory/co-operative research paradigm, an epistemology of participative inquiry, a research methodology of co-operative inquiry and mixed methods data collection strategies. Incorporating ten practitioner inquiries over two years, recursive cycles of action/reflection engaged practitioners as co-researchers in the collaborative reflective processes of a professional learning community while generating knowledge about the conceptualisation and supporting/hindering influences on its development. The outcomes of these first-person and second-person inquiries, together with a researcher devised online survey of teachers, were both informative and transformative in nature and led to the development of the researcher’s theoretical perspectives in response to the study’s research questions. As outcomes of co-operative inquiry, these theoretical perspectives inform the researcher’s future actions and offer insights into existing propositional knowledge in the field. Engagement in this practitioner inquiry research has had significant transformative outcomes for the co-researchers and has demonstrated the power of collaborative inquiry in promoting collective and individual professional learning and personal growth.

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Online learning appeals to busy professionals and project managers (PMs) since demands from work, family, and personal interests compete with the desire to engage learning and finish courses. The thesis critically analyzes adult learning literature, then develops models, and tests the approaches at a commercial university. The professional learning model overcomes the gap in applied online learning design and delivery theories through a perspective transformation of the fundamental educational psychology principles, to shift the philosophy towards an integrated humanistic-constructivist paradigm. The key principles emphasized in this new approach are andragogical motivation, self-schema, self-efficacy, and self-regulation. A repeated-measures quasi-experiment was designed and conducted in a university online MBA program (n=48), using a scientific research methodology (that controlled confounding factors) to empirically test the professional learning factor model. Paired-treatment tests, factor covariances, coefficient of multiple determinations, and cause/effect multiple regression findings were statistically significant at the 95% confidence level (most tests exceeded 99%). A linear mathematical predictor and systemic model was substantiated from the concept testing, to quantitatively explain 66%(r²) of cause-effect variance between the contextual factors and dependent variables. These findings were compared to, and were in agreement with similar studies. The limitations of the quasi-experiments are small sample size, natural selection (as opposed to pure randomization), and generalizability to other contexts (models not yet replicated). The research makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to four stakeholder domains - Project Management (PM) professionals, adult educators, academic research community, and the PM body of knowledge. The first value claim consists of empirically proven online learning design and delivery guidelines, that can be applied and/or replicated. Secondly, the research multi-methods to decrease time-to-market for these multi-year experiments. Lastly the research evidence might promote the development of more 'soft-skills' content in PM

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Effective clinical reasoning and its communication are essential to health professional practice, especially in the current health care climate. Increasing litigation leading to legal requirements for comprehensive, relevant and appropriate information exchange between health professionals and patients (including their caregivers) and the drive for active consumer involvement are two key factors that underline the importance of clear communication and collaborative decision making. Health professionals are accountable for their decisions and service provision to various stakeholders, including patients, health sector managers, policy-makers and colleagues. An important aspect of this accountability is the ability to clearly articulate and justify management decisions. Considerable research across the health disciplines has investigated the nature of clinical reasoning and its relationship with knowledge and expertise. However, physiotherapy research literature to date has not specifically addressed the interaction between communication and clinical reasoning in practice, neither has it explored modes and patterns of learning that facilitate the acquisition of this complex skill. The purpose of this research was to contribute to the profession’s knowledge base a greater understanding of how experienced physiotherapists having learned to reason, then learn to communicate their clinical reasoning with patients and with novice physiotherapists. Informed by the interpretive paradigm, a hermeneutic phenomenological research study was conducted using multiple methods of data collection including observation, written reflective exercises and repeated semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using phenomenological and hermeneutic strategies involving in-depth, iterative reading and interpretation to identify themes in the data. Twelve physiotherapists with clinical and supervisory experience were recruited from the areas of cardiopulmonary, musculoskeletal and neurological physiotherapy to participate in this study. Participants’ learning journeys were diverse, although certain factors and episodes of learning were common or similar. Participation with colleagues, peers and students, where the participants felt supported and guided in their learning, was a powerful way to learn to reason and to communicate reasoning. Experiential learning strategies, such as guidance, observation, discussion and feedback were found to be effective in enhancing learning of clinical reasoning and its communication. The cultural and environmental context created and supported by the practice community (which includes health professionals, patients and caregivers) was found to influence the participants’ learning of clinical reasoning and its communication. Participants reported various incidents that raised their awareness of their reasoning and communication abilities, such as teaching students on clinical placements, and informal discussions with peers about patients; these were linked with periods of steep learning of both abilities. Findings from this research present learning to reason and to communicate reasoning as journeys of professional socialisation that evolve through higher education and in the workplace. A key finding that supports this view is that clinical reasoning and its communication are embedded in the context of professional practice and therefore are best learned in this context of becoming, and developing as, a member of the profession. Communication of clinical reasoning was found to be both an inherent part of reasoning and an essential and complementary skill necessary for sound reasoning, that was embedded in the contextual demands of the task and situation. In this way clinical reasoning and its communication are intertwined and should be learned concurrently. The learning and teaching of clinical reasoning and its communication should be synergistic and integrated; contextual, meaningful and reflexive.

A range of factors, both internal and external, is creating changes in teaching and teachers’ professional lives. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is just one of the major changes impacting on the teaching profession. As teachers face intense pressure to adapt to this tsunami, this study aims to investigate ways in which teachers can be helped. In South Australia, where this study is set, all teachers in Government schools are expected to be "ICT Smart", i.e. able to use appropriate forms of ICT to enhance the teaching and learning environment of their classrooms. From the researcher’s involvement for over a decade in professional development for teachers, and from visits to many schools, it appears that numerous teachers have not reached this standard. The greatest need is in Reception to Year 7 schools where the average age of teachers is nearly 50. Because no state-wide data exists, this study is intended to establish if there is a problem and if there is, to identify specific needs and offer possible solutions. The study is comprised of four parts: Part A, the Introduction gives an overview of the inter-relationships between these parts and the overall Folio. It establishes the setting and provides a rationale for the study and its focus on Professional Development in Information and Communication Technology. Part B, the Elective Research Studies, follows the writer’s involvement in this field since the 1980s. It establishes the theme of "Moving best practice in ICT from the few to the many" which underlies the whole study. Part C, the Dissertation, traces the steps taken to investigate the need for professional development in ICT. This is achieved by analysing and commenting on data collected from a state-wide survey and a series of interviews with leading figures, and by providing a review of the relevant literature and past and existing models of professional development. Part D, Final Comments, provides an overview of the whole Folio and a reflection on the research that has been conducted. The findings are that there is widespread dissatisfaction with existing models and that there is an urgent need for professional development in this area, because nearly 20% of teachers either do not use computers or are considered to be novice users. Another 25% are considered to be below not yet "ICT Smart". Less than 10% of ICT co-ordinators have a formal qualification in the field but more than 85% of them are interested in a Masters program. The study offers solutions in Part B where there is a discussion of a range of strategies to provide on-going professional development for teachers. Chapter 9 provides an outline of a proposed Masters level program and offers suggestions on how it could be best delivered. This program would meet the identified needs of ICT co-ordinators. The study concludes with a series of recommendations and suggestions for further research. The Education Department must address these urgent professional development needs of teachers, particularly those in the more remote country regions. There needs to be a follow-up survey to establish to what extent teachers in South Australia are now "ICT Smart ".

When a school community decides to implement innovative curricula, the responsibility for leadership of the associated professional learning processes lies with the principal. The onus is on principals to be leader learners. They adapt their leadership style to the context of the school. They encourage learning as a future-oriented, organisation-wide process. They encourage deep learning, and double-loop learning, and they nurture a culture of collaborative learning. They provide practical support for teacher leadership and teacher learning, and they understand that teachers have differing needs for support during a period of significant curriculum change. The research methodology used for this study involved a multiple case study design. Principals and staff from three Queensland state schools who participated in the trial of innovative curricula provided the data for the three case studies. The data collection at three schools related to the processes of professional learning at each site. Interviews conducted with the participants at each school, and observation of meetings and school documentation, provided the researcher with the data to develop a framework for principals who are interested in creating a professional learning community. Data collected from the schools generally supported the findings of the theorists. However, analysis of the data provided more detailed information than is currently available in the literature to inform the establishment of professional learning processes. Analysis of the data indicated that professional learning can be classified according to four themes: personal learning, leadership-related learning, learning related to innovation, and learning related to processes that support a collaborative culture. The findings from the literature review and the findings from the case studies were used to construct a framework for professional learning for principals who wish to create a learning organisation. The framework provides a foundation for professional learning programs for principals, and could be used by a range of people or groups, including district office personnel, professional associations, and networks of principals and aspiring leaders.

This study is a response to shifts in literacy education produced by the new affordances of multimodal texts and changing social dynamics as a consequence of an increasingly digitised, networked communications environment. Acknowledging the powerful influence of the teacher on student outcomes, the study involved intervention in teacher professional learning as a means for influencing print based literacy pedagogy to incorporate multimodality literacy practices. This study is a case study of the professional learning of four teachers of primary school students over the course of eight months in a workplace based research project instigated by the researcher in her role reviewing early years literacy policy, programs and resources within the Department of Education, Victoria. Professional learning interventions deployed within a participatory action research methodology were found to be efficacious in involving case study teachers as researchers of their own practice and in enhancing teachers' professionalism in the operationalisation of multiliteracies. They also had the effect of impacting on professional knowledge, practice and identity. The study indicates that schemas emanating from the New London Group's multiliteracies theory acted as stimuli for expanding teacher repertoires of multimodality pedagogies, thereby addressing disjunctures between digitised multimodal literacy and the existing print based literacy pedagogical knowledge. The deployment of a 'multimodal schema' influenced teachers to expand the modes of meaning taught as literacy meaning-making resources. Deployment of a 'pedagogical knowledge processes schema' influenced teachers' reflective practices resulting in more knowing and purposeful pedagogical practices. Used as an analytical tool, a 'dimensions of meaning schema' also illustrated patterns in teachers' choices, revealing an arbitrary character in the development of a metalanguage for different modes of meaning making. Recommendations arising from the study addressed the areas of educational consultancy; educational filming; literacy policy development; multimodality; pedagogical knowledge processes; and participatory action research methodology. Future research agendas indicated by the findings were presented.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Economics, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

The thesis consists of the critical essay and the creative project. The critical essay is an investigation into the nature of narrative suspense, its operation, and the techniques by which an author can develop it. Narrative suspense requires that readers care for characters and feel uncertain about events. An author can use a number of story-telling techniques to make the most of this emotion and uncertainty. Readers may embark on a variety of activities including imagining outcomes and piecing together clues, and these too can be utilised by the author to build suspense. Following the examination of the subject, I explore the development of the drafts of Frantic with particular emphasis on how my research into suspense changed my approach to characterisation, structure, and the process of writing. The creative project is the manuscript Frantic, a crime thriller set in present-day Sydney. When Paramedic Sophie Phillips’ husband Chris is shot and their baby kidnapped, Detective Ella Marconi struggles to solve the case. Evidence suggests the act may be revenge by a bereaved father for Sophie’s failure to save a mother and her newborn, and equally that senior constable Chris may have been involved in the police corruption that increasingly appears rife. Distraught Sophie knows what she believes, and when the police fail to find her son she takes matters into her own hands.