Faculty of Education

Presenters and topics

1. Catherine Burnheim, University of Melbourne: External engagement and institutional autonomy in higher education
2. Robin Cordin, University of Western Australia: Psychopathic-Like-Traits and Aggression in Suspended Mainstream School Children and Adolescents
3. Helen Ferrara, Murdoch University: Creativity, Time and Trust
4. Umneea Khan, The University of Western Australia: Delinquent and Reputational Orientations: Extending Reputation Enhancement Theory to High School and Incarcerated Adolescent Females
5. Kazumi Kubo, University of Western Australia; Michiko Suwa, niversity of Sacred Heart (Tokyo, Japan): The early use of the past marker of L1 speakers of Japanese - with an account of the past marker
6. Leeann Lewis, University of Western Australia: How identified Deaf or Hard of Hearing Western Australian TAFE students “deal with” their first year of study: make it heard and seen
7. Sally Male, University of Western Australia: Competencies of Established Engineers:
8. Sandy Moran, University of Western Australia: A Paradox in Care:Competing and Conflicting Discourses in Child Welfare
9. Thanh Ngo, University of Western Australia: Translation of temporality in narrative texts from English to Vietnamese: Challenges for translators:
10. Kellie Picker and Libby Renton, University of Western Australia: Student growth and effective literacy teaching in actionDelphine P Shaw, University of Western Australia: The Pedagogic Aspect of Intergenerationalism
11. Karen Soldatic, The University of Western Australia: Time and the Disability Policy Process in the Workfare State
12. Karla Wittkuhn, University of Western Australia: Identity Construction And Investment In Language Learning
13. Angela Yiannakis, University of Western Australia: Idealism, Conflict, Compromise: Seconded Teachers from Greece in Western Australia

Catherine Burnheim, University of Melbourne

External engagement and institutional autonomy in higher education

Universities’ external relations, particularly with industry, have been seen as a contributor to the reduction of institutional autonomy, through both adoption of management models from other sectors and through commercial arrangements (Maton, 2005). On the other hand, a more engaged approach to communities, government and industry has also been seen as a means to revitalise academic life (Boyer, 1996)

Pierre Bourdieu argues that the autonomy of a field (space of social action) depends on the extent to which it can “refract” external pressures into its own logic. This paper offers a typology of higher education external relations based on the degree to which they are refracted into logic of the field. The paper draws on analysis of major models of community and regional engagement, scholarship and service as well as on data collected through interviews at three Group of Eight universities.

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Robin Cordin, University of Western Australia

Psychopathic-Like-Traits and Aggression in Suspended Mainstream School Children and Adolescents

The overall aim of this research was to explore the viability and utility of the construct of psychopathy and aggression in children and adolescents. Specifically, by taking a developmentally informed approach it sought to develop new instrumentation which measured psychopathic-like-traits, and verbal proactive and reactive aggression in non-referred mainstream school children and adolescents. To achieve this, four separate yet interrelated studies were conducted. The instruments currently used to measure psychopathy and aggression were reviewed and items relevant to young persons were selected for inclusion in a draft version of the new psychopathy screening instrument – the Child and Adolescent Psychopathy Screening Instrument (CAPSI) and the Child and Adolescent Scale of Aggression (CASA).

An investigation of possible differences in the psychopathy scores according to gender, with the total sample (n = 137), revealed that males showed slightly higher mean levels of psychopathic-like-traits than females. Males also showed slightly higher levels of aggression than females on the physical and reactive verbal aggression subscales of the CASA. On the proactive verbal subscale, however, the results were reversed.

In the final study, case studies were undertaken with seven male students ranging in age from 8 to 15 years who had been suspended from mainstream schools. All boys scored very highly on the new instruments. All presented with extreme aggression, with some exhibiting proactive or premeditated aggression combined with a superficially engaging personality, insincere charm, lack of remorse, and lack of empathy.

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Helen Ferrara, Murdoch University

Creativity, Time and Trust

The 21^st century is being heralded by many as the creative age. It is an exciting time and it seems that everyone has something to say on creativity as everywhere we turn we can find books or articles on it, or people discussing it. But while this huge concept has captured the attention and imagination of many, among which some very notable people from diverse fields, what does it actually mean to us in education? Is it just another ‘buzz word’ to which it is currently fashionable to pay lip service?

Creativity is seen by neuroscientists to be the latest evolutionary stage of our nervous system. As such, creativity is actually accessible to all of us, but we need to integrate it into our lives for us to reap its benefits, and there are some important factors that can help us to do that.

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Umneea Khan, The University of Western Australia

Delinquent and Reputational Orientations: Extending Reputation Enhancement Theory to High School and Incarcerated Adolescent Females

The study presented here is the first in a series of four inter-related studies which seeks to investigate differences in delinquent activities and reputational orientations of at risk and not at risk adolescent females. Initially, differences in 6 of 7 delinquent activities and 16 of 17 reputational orientations were established between males (N = 712) and females (N = 735 females) using multivariate analyses of variance. In a second analysis the delinquency and reputational variables of a pair wise age matched sample of at-risk and not at risk females (N = 31) were examined in relation to risk status. Again differences were found in 6 of the 7 delinquency variables and four of the 17 reputational variables. Overall, the initial large scale analyses revealed that females commit significantly fewer delinquent activities than males, seek a more conforming reputation and to achieve this communicate positive things to others. However, the more stringent examination using the pair wise matched sample of at risk and not at risk females, revealed that at risk females strive to establish a deviant and nonconforming reputation and commit significantly more delinquent activities than their not at risk female peers to attain their desired reputation.

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Kazumi Kubo, University of Western Australia

The early use of the past marker of L1 speakers of Japanese - with an account of the past marker

Shirai & Miyata (2006) investigated whether the use of the past form does reflect the acquisition of the concept of the past tense. They examined how the past forms are used in Children’s utterances. The result shows that the use of the past form does not appear to represent the meanings of the past tense, rather of “perfect”.

My first question here is whether there is a clear line between the past and perfect meanings. The distinction between “perfect” and “past” is very subtle especially when there are no distinctive markers which mark either “perfect” or “past”. My second question partially arises from the first, that is, how do children expand their uses of the past markers?

I will argue that all uses of the past marker can be represented as THE PAST PERFECTIVE. Then, all uses of the past marker can be explained by this representation supplemented by a pragmatic explanation. Then L1 learners will expand their use of the past marker from referring to a point of situation in the past to referring to a post phase of situation at the time of utterance.

Two factors can be responsible for the development of L1 children’s use of the past marker. One is the development of the knowledge of aspectual phases of situation and the other is the development of skills which can take into account the hearers’ pragmatic knowledge in the use of the past marker.

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Leeann Lewis, University of Western Australia

How identified Deaf or Hard of Hearing Western Australian TAFE students “deal with” their first year of study: make it heard and seen.

Access to classroom communication is a unique challenge for deaf students Currently in Western Australia the W.A. Institute of Deaf Education and Telethon Speech and Hearing; support approximately 1,350 children from the point of hearing loss diagnosis to the completion of secondary school. The proposed study will attempt to make several original contributions to knowledge:

• Develop substantive theory in this area where no such theory presently exists.
• Lead to an understanding of the situation faced by Deaf or Hard of Hearing students who are undertaking their first year of TAFE study and provide an understanding of how and why these students react to this situation.
• Prompt other studies into this under-researched area.
• Lead to the development of specific policies concerning the Deaf or Hard of Hearing students, where no policies or guidelines currently exist in the TAFE tertiary system.
• The following questions will guide the study:
• What level of educational support does the participant believe they will be offered at TAFE?
• What level of prior contact and support strategies, from TAFE does the participant expect to receive?
• Why does the participant expect this level of assistance?
• What actions will the participant take to ensure an equitable access to their curriculum?
• What support strategies, successful or unsuccessful, are repeated or not delivered through out their first year of TAFE study?

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Sally Male, University of Western Australia

Competencies of Established Engineers

Which competencies do established engineers consider to be most important?  Results of an early phase of the Competencies of Engineering Graduates Project (CEG) will be presented. The CEG Project will develop a survey instrument to profile the competencies of engineering graduates using ratings made by workplace supervisors of recent graduates. The Project’s approach to identifying the competencies required by engineering graduates is unusual in its initial focus on the competencies required by established engineers. The final instrument to be developed by the CEG Project will measure graduates’ competencies that indicate aptitude to develop the competencies required by established engineers.

Competencies were identified in a broad range of literature and refined to a list of 63 competencies. These were rated by 300 engineers with 5 to 20 years of experience since graduation, for importance to doing their current jobs well. Survey results will be presented. Competencies related to communication, teamwork, self –management, honesty and problem solving were given the highest ratings of importance. However, contrary to expectations based on the literature, competencies related to spatial visualisation, citizenship, diversity, sustainability, and social and environmental concerns received relatively low ratings.

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Sandy Moran, University of Western Australia

A Paradox in Care:Competing and Conflicting Discourses in Child Welfare

In Australia a contest for professional dominance between discourses in medicine and child welfare is set against a legislative backdrop of state and federal disagreement about who should provide which public sector services for families who have members with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). Medical discourse maintains this developmental disorder is highly heritable with between 25-50% of individuals with AD/HD also having learning disabilities. As a child protection issue, the AD/HD construct has not been incorporated into a cohesive child welfare format within the institutional context. Within the social welfare and wider social sciences there is scepticism about the validity of the diagnosis. This combined legislative and professional inconsistency has increased the risk of children with AD/HD being removed from their families and placed into out-of-home care. The nature of the conflicting discourses will be examined to ascertain whether professional and ! legislative discord increases the risk for children with AD/HD being placed in out-of-home care as opposed to engaging family preservation practices. The thesis will examine a specific case of a family of a mother, step-father and four children, all whom have been professionally diagnosed with AD/HD. The four children were placed in long term out-of-home-care subsequent to a Court ruling rejection of a defence of a diagnosis of AD/HD preferring a case of child abuse and neglect. Although discourse analysis will be employed to examine this case study from a political/institutional bio-power perspective as it relates in legal, medical and welfare organizations, it is done within a critical realist framework which requires grounding in evidence.

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Thanh Ngo, University of Western Australia

Translation of temporality in narrative texts from English to Vietnamese: Challenges for translators.

One of the most difficult tasks for translators is to find linguistic and cultural equivalents for elements that are common in one language, but absent in another language. In Vietnamese/English translation, as practicing translators, point out, the most obvious example of disparity between the two languages comes in the use of verb tenses. It is so because Vietnamese is a tenseless language while English has a rich aspectuo-temporal system. English narrative texts are coherently structured temporally and the sequencing of events is pervasively expressed grammatically by tense and aspect (both viewpoint (grammatical) and situation (lexical)). Since Vietnamese verbs are not morphologically marked for tense and aspect, the interpretation of temporality is heavily reliant on pragmatics or world knowledge.
Given the great disparity in the temporal systems between the two languages, how do translators convey the temporal relations between situations in English narrative texts? This paper attempts to find answer to this question by analysing selected passages of an original English novel and its Vietnamese translation version.

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Kellie Picker and Libby Renton, University of Western Australia

Student growth and effective literacy teaching in action

In this session we introduce the literacy component of the three year UWA Student Growth Study commissioned by DET. The study aims to examine the relationship between student growth and literacy teaching in Pre-primary and Year One classes in WA schools by identifying teaching practices that could contribute to literacy growth. Through video analysis we will explore the idea that some teachers are more effective than others and examine what they are doing in their classrooms to promote literacy growth in their students. Using a ground breaking, WA developed computer program, Artichoke Pairwise (Fetherston, 2007), we make use of both qualitative and quantitative frameworks to analyse the data. This will enable us to “add insights and understandings that might be missed when only a single method is used” as well as “providing stronger evidence for a conclusion through convergence and corroboration of findings” (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004 p. 21).

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Delphine P Shaw, University of Western Australia

The Pedagogic Aspect of Intergenerationalism:

The pedagogical praxis of ‘intergenerational studies’ has been extensively researched and documented by the administrative and medical teams of Il Melo Residential Aged Care at Gallarate- Varese, Italy. This was recorded for the European Union, by Doctor Marco Predazzi of Italy, Doctor Richard Vercauteren of France, and Doctor Michel Loriaux of Belgium, (2000). The second volume of their series “Towards a Society for all Ages” analyses the symbiotic benefits of the ‘intergenerational studies’ achieved in this University De Gallarete – Il Melo initiative.

The ‘intergenerational project,’ works in collaboration with “Don Lorenzo” government primary school –Gallarate, and my research analysed and identified a number of the social, emotional, intellectual and communication benefits experienced by both the school-children and the “social-grandparents”, most of whom were in fact chronologically more ‘great grandparent’ age of the children involved.

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Karen Soldatic, The University of Western Australia

Time and the Disability Policy Process in the Workfare State

This paper will provide an overview of main theme emerging from a current doctoral research project. The methodological framework was grounded in critical realism and drew on educational policy theory, particularly the policy trajectory model, to formulate the research questions. Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 85 participants from across Australia. The main theme to emerge from the data thus far is the role of time in the policy making process. The conceptualisation of 'time' in the policy making process has a number of implications for disabled people and policy outcomes.

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Karla Wittkuhn, University of Western Australia

Identity Construction And Investment In Language Learning

A number of factors make Hong Kong a fascinating context for the study of identity construction and investment in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research, including the change in sovereignty one decade ago, shifting demographics, evolving roles for the languages used in the territory, increasing globalization and other social changes.

In addition, processes of significant educational reform have been under way for some years in Hong Kong, including the enforcement of Chinese Medium of Instruction (CMI) in most schools, a tri-lingual biliterate policy, and a Native English Teacher (NET) Scheme.

The focus of my study has been upon issues such as:

(1) How have individual secondary students negotiated their historical, social, cultural and political identities in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom, as they experience the changes in sovereignty, education and economic developments in China over the last ten years?

(2) How have these negotiations implicated their investment in ESL?

(3) How have their particular historical selves impacted on the way they assume their identities in society or in the classroom today and how does that affect their overall vision for their future identities?

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Angela Yiannakis, University of Western Australia

Idealism, Conflict, Compromise: Seconded Teachers from Greece in Western Australia

This research focuses on the perspectives of the key stakeholders on the curriculum for teaching Greek as a second language under the Seconded Teachers from Greece Scheme (STGS) in Western Australia. It is a qualitative study that is set within the interpretivist paradigm. The research methods include semi-structured interviews, document analysis and participant observation techniques.

The STGS is a scheme that sends teachers from Greece to all parts of the world to teach the Greek language and culture for a period of three to five years. It began in Australia in 1977 and Western Australia received its first seconded teacher in 1983. Since that time, Perth has established its own Greek Orthodox Day School, the main recipient of the services of the STGS. Despite merit, some maladjustment to the Western Australian educational setting has resulted in situations of conflict in the workplace.

The study aims to assist the seconded teachers in the process of acclimatization in the host school and community, to embellish a small but growing body of literature on the STGS, and to assist the key stakeholders in maximizing the potential of this invaluable human resource.

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