This number of the newsletter features five doctoral thesis abstracts: two EdDs and three PhDs by Michael Aulsebrook (Monash), Greg Murphy (Monash), Paul de Lange (Monash), Gail FitzSimons (Monash) and Sue Shore (University of Newcastle).
Please send details of doctoral theses (completed within the last six months) from your institution via email to t.gale@cqu.edu.au.
The thesis examines the impact of change over the last thirty years on the culture of Australian Catholic schools administered by the Society of St. Francis de Sales, commonly referred to as Salesians of Don Bosco. The Salesians claim that Salesian schools have a particular character or culture which reflects the Salesian congregation's traditions and the religious charism of their founder, Saint John Bosco. The thesis investigates how and to what extent a Salesian charism and tradition is reflected in the culture of contemporary Australian Salesian schools.
The thesis argues that Salesian charism is a relational and dynamic concept that is shared and continually reconstructed by all members of Salesian schools. In the cultural construction process, the Salesians can draw on the resources of their Salesian deep story and traditions to foster an inclusive, dynamic charism that is respectful of and influenced by a contemporary dynamic or reinterpreted tradition.
The suffering of a traumatic spinal cord injury is, for most people, a devastating event affecting not only their health and well-being but also their economic independence and vocational options. Two related studies the relationship of psychological, demographic and injury factors to post-injury vocational achievement in a sample of more than 450 persons with a quadriplegia or paraplegia. Discriminant function analysis and multiple regression identified two psychological constructs (along with one demographic variable) which were consistent independent predictors of post-injury vocational achievement. Vocational achievement was measured in two ways, encompassing both a measure of the participants labour force status at the time of survey follow up as well as measure of the durability of any post-injury vocational achievement. The twin aims of the research were (a) to increase understanding of psychological variables to post-injury vocational achievement, and (b) to identify potential new influential predictors of spinal cord injury.
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among student background characteristics and degree of academic fit with student progress. To examine the relationship between student characteristics and student success an exploratory measurement model was developed. Responses from 245 open learning students provided by qualitative and quantitative data for the model. The model identified that students are most likely to succeed in their studies if they received support and encouragement from family and peers.
This thesis is an institutional study, attempting to account for the current situation of mathematics within the Australian vocational education and training (VET) sector. Technology emerges as a unifying construct for the complex relationships between mathematics and industry, in both production and management discourses, and between mathematics and vocational education. From the meta-analytic stance of this thesis, vocational education itself has become an industry and its political and social structures are explored to elucidate the apparently ambiguous position of the discipline of mathematics within the sector. A recurring theme is public image + firstly of mathematics, secondly of vocational education and training in an increasingly deregulated sector which relies on segments of public opinion for its continuing survival, and thirdly in relation to the discourses of lifelong learning. However, it is argued that even public image has become technologised. The question arises as to whose interests are being served.
This study maps the connections between policy making and scholarly practice and the discursive constitution of the 'effective' citizen in community education (ACE) in Australia. It positions ACE as a racial project in terms of its policy making processes, and the scholarly practices guiding pedagogy. The research uses the notion of a 'writing subject' to explore how discursive features of Whiteness can be used to read the assemblages between colonialism and contemporary adult education practices. The study achieves two things: first, it develops an argument to show how the writing subject is implicated in producing disguised discourses about Whiteness in ACE, and, second, it provides a set of supplementary narratives about ACE. These narratives offer a way of thinking otherwise about static categories of identity and linear notions of social change.