This thesis explores the effectiveness of a professional education model that was specifically developed for on-the-job training to assist seven child care trainees in six Child Care Centres in Queensland, Australia, to develop the competencies, motives, strategies and processes required to become expert educarers of pre-school age children. The intervention, which took place over 65 days, was implemented by six expert educarers who had previously been trained in using the Zone of Proximal Development (socio-cultural theory) to extend both the adult and the child learners development. The educarers were asked to assist the trainees demonstration of motives, strategies, and processes during daily activities, and the educarers and trainees were asked to assist the childrens demonstration of competencies in daily activities through the Zone of Proximal Development. As mass training for child care workers in group child care is still a relatively new phenomenon in Australia, and as little research has addressed both an adult and child learners demonstration of competencies in the workplace with a permanent work-based instructor interacting through the Zone of Proximal Development, qualitative and quantitative approaches to analysing the data were chosen. These approaches present both a descriptive and a measured analysis of the day-to-day operations in which the training occurred. The study aimed to generate substantive theoretical ideas by extending socio-cultural theory (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988) with Activity Theory (Leontev, 1979), Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and Cognitive Apprenticeship (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989). Data collection occurred through questionnaires at three periods of the study, through pre- and post-training Semantic Differentials, through the trainees daily journals and the professional tutors comments, and the educarers weekly and monthly reports. The study provides a triangulated perspective of two foci. The primary focus was on the changing relationship of the trainees with the educarers during the training programme, and whether this led to a converging understanding and the development of an evolving, mutual meaning structure. The perspectives are the trainees, the educarers, and their joint interactions. The personal experiences of the trainees as observers and participants in the day to day activities of the centre are interwoven with the modelling and assistance of the educarers and demonstration of the children. The results revealed that some of the trainees relationships with some of the educarers changed over three phases. These changes demonstrated that, in Phase I, the trainees observed and practiced activities under the supervision of the educarers who instructed them what to do and why, and discussed parents, as they started to develop a mutual meaning structure. Their relationship reflected that of a novice-expert. In Phase II the seven trainees acted independently, planning and implementing minor activities, still under the educarers supervision however. In this phase the educarers modelled, observed, and commented on the trainees performance, as an evolving mutual meaning structure that reflected an aspiring expert-expert relationship developed. Three trainees attained only Phase II, while the other four continued into Phase III. In Phase III, the four trainees planned and implemented major activities independently while the educarers observed and commented on their performance and engaged jointly in tasks. Their relationships, which evidenced a developing and evolving mutual meaning structure reflecting a converging understanding, became collaborative for one dyad, one educarer perceived the relationship was collaborative and the trainee perceived it to be an aspiring expert-expert, while the other two dyads demonstrated an expert-expert relationship. It appears that the trainees, who experienced education motives with various strategies and processes implemented by the educarers through the ZPD in the training programme, demonstrated the greatest change in the relationships. For these trainees the peripherality of participation changed from Phase I, operating at the outer peripherality of the child care practice to operating closer to the centre of the practice in Phase II. The four trainees who transitioned to the centre of the practice in Phase III experienced educarers who exhibited consistent motives with flexible strategies and processes combining a wide variety of interactions through the ZPD. Emerging from the data, a dominant authentic activity, and a secondary aspect of this study was classroom management in general and morally acceptable behaviour (MAB) in particular. The dominance of this activity reinforces Tharp and Gallimores (1988) finding that classroom management was the most stressful activity for first year teachers. The trainees appropriation of the motives, strategies and processes in episodes of morally acceptable behaviour as modelled by the educarers, showed, over the study, a convergence of understanding and the development of an evolving mutual meaning structure between the dyads. The second focus of the study provides a triangulated perspective on the changes in the relationship between the trainees and children during the training programme. The trainees and childrens demonstration of competencies in morally acceptable behaviour is also addressed in this section: the perspectives are the trainees, the educarers and joint trainee-child interactions. The results reveal that the trainees relationship with children changed over the three Phases of the training programme. With a minor focus on children in Phase I, the trainees observed and practiced implementing activities demonstrating a novice-novice relationship. In Phase II, increasing their focus on children, the trainees took responsibility in minor activities demonstrating an aspiring expert-novice relationship. However in Phase III, with a dominant focus on children, expert-novice relationships were apparent. The four competencies developed for trainees to facilitate the childrens demonstration of competencies in morally acceptable behaviour, discussing feelings and discussing actions, and showing verbal and non-verbal empathy, were acquired and used by the trainees who experienced education motives in the training programme, in Phases II and III. Concurrently, the children developed and increased their competencies in verbal and non-verbal acceptance of the interventions, and showed increased understanding of cause and effect and the ability to formulate hypotheses. Changes were also evidenced in the trainees conceptual understanding of educaring children as they integrated the concepts of discipline and control with three other essentials of educaring (caring, teaching and learning), into their conceptual understanding of educaring over the study. The development of an evolving, mutual meaning structure of the authentic activities that were practiced in the child care centres, showed a converging understanding was being established between educarers, trainees and children. There was also evidence of reciprocal assistance. Influence, assistance and teaching were not a one-way process. They did not flow in one direction only, from professional tutor to educarer to trainee to child. The child in turn influenced the trainee who influenced the educarer who influenced the professional tutor.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/253794 |
| Creators | Shore, Margaret Ellen |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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