Doctoral research

The effects of a morphological intervention on poor spellers' literacy skills: Towards a relational approach — Michele Herrington [to be conferred in Oct 2014]

Spelling is a complex fundamental writing process and many children struggle with learning to spell throughout their education. This thesis sought to conceptualize children's spelling performance and understanding as distinct contributors to spelling development through the lens of a cognitive linguistic framework. A multifaceted methodology enabled a thorough investigation of children's reasoning processes as well as the accuracy of their spelling performance. The results draw on empirical evidence from an intervention that involved twelve classrooms, their teachers and their students that included approximately equal numbers of boys and girls from Year 3, Year 4 and Year 5 (n=318). A mixed method approach incorporated quantitative data for baseline and impact information that included: teacher language knowledge surveys, children's standardized spelling tests and a specifically designed morphological spelling test. The qualitative data, collected in the same time frame, included: teacher interviews and reflections, spelling lesson observations and children's individual verbal justification of spelling choices.

The intervention developed a relational approach to teaching spelling that assisted children in synthesizing their knowledge about sounds (phonemes) and meaningful forms (morphemes). Further, this research sought to understand more about the process of conceptual change that accompanies this synthesis and its impact on children's spelling performance and understanding. The findings suggest that understanding the transitional process of children's spelling knowledge as it shifts from implicit to increasingly explicit, or declarative spelling knowledge, is important. The results also offer teachers and teacher educators some details about not just what to know about spelling, but how to use language knowledge to teach spelling more efficiently and effectively.

Supervisors: Mary-Macken Horarik, Susan Feez

A comparison of linguistic resources for evaluation in Vietnamese and English: An exploratory study — Thu Thi Bich Ngo [to be conferred in Oct 2014]

Expressing one's evaluative stance is very common when people communicate orally. This is achieved through the use of certain linguistics and para-linguistics features. The study focuses on the linguistics features which are used to both denote and signal people's affect (feeling), judgement of other people's behaviour and appreciation of entities. Specifically, it will investigate how Vietnamese postgraduate students in Australia use language to communicate their evaluative meanings towards certain issues both in Vietnamese and in English. By exploring the deployment of such resources in spoken Vietnamese, as well as in spoken English, the research will expand the developing theoretical descriptions of appraisal resources. The research will also contribute to a knowledge base for enhancing pedagogies in TESOL to include the development of students' capacities to optimise their use of appraisal resources.

Supervisors:  Len Unsworth, Susan Feez, Eveline Chan

From Dot points to disciplinarity: The theory and practices of disciplinary literacies in secondary schooling — Trish Weekes [to be conferred in Oct 2014]

When a teacher opens the HSC syllabus for Business Studies or Music, on every page they find lists of topics and sub-topics in dot point form, but little that reveals a link between these dot points and composition of an answer to an HSC examination question. In Business Studies, for example, students are required to 'use existing business case studies to investigate and communicate ideas and issues', but there is no guidance on how a case study might be linked to business theory. Most significant of all, it is hard to find any reference to profitability, which is at the heart of successful business practice and discourse. Similarly, in the Music syllabus, concepts of music such as pitch and duration are listed as dot points, without adequate explanation of the relations within or between these concepts that give them meaning.

To help teachers move beyond syllabus dot points, this thesis illuminates the 'true nature' of Business Studies and Music, that is, the distinctive literacy demands that each subject places on students.it draws on analytical frameworks from Systemic Functional Linguistics and Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis to explore the features of successful HSC writing in Business Studies and Music. Analysis reveals that successful writing in Business Studies explains patterns of cause and effect with profit as the main motive, despite this being obscured in the syllabus. In contrast, successful HSC writing in Music describes musical events in terms of concepts of music and principles of musical composition.

The second stage of the research project is centred on an intervention in five classrooms. The intervention aimed to transform theoretical knowledge of language and semiotics into teaching and learning practices in Business Studies and Music classrooms. Analysis of five case studies provides insights into the challenges and opportunities of explicit teaching of disciplinary literacies. To explain why the intervention was embraced by some teachers and resisted by others, a sociological perspective provided by Legitimation Code Theory (Specialisation) is provided. Interpreting teacher orientations to 'knowers' and 'knowledge' reveals a series of 'code clashes' and 'code matches' that may account for teacher behaviour and provide insights into potential pitfalls of literacy research.

Despite challenges of the intervention, explicit teaching of literacy in the participant classrooms also revealed opportunities. Findings provide the basis for the development of an assessment rubric in which the linguistic metalanguage of each discipline is transformed into 'teacher/student-friendly' criteria that make disciplinary literacy demands accessible to teachers and students.

Supervisors Mary-Macken Horarik, Susan Feez

Teaching and learning functional grammar in junior primary classrooms — Ruth French [conferred October 2013]

The teaching and learning of grammatics ('knowledge about grammar') with young school children is the focus of this study.

Historical literature on the teaching of grammar is widely believed to show that a knowledge of grammar is not effective for improving students' literacy outcomes, usually specified in terms of writing. Under-scrutinised in this research are two issues which bear strongly on questions of effectiveness: the affordances of the kind of grammatical description taught, and the quality of pedagogy deployed in the teaching of grammatics. The thesis explores both these issues. Specifically, it investigates the teaching and learning of aspects of systemic functional grammar (developed by M.A.K. Halliday) within a pedagogic framework based on socio-cultural constructivist theory (L.S. Vygotsky).

The data for the project are drawn from two case studies conducted in Year 2 classrooms. 'Slices' of the case study data are used to analyse and interpret: ways in which to begin the study of a functional grammatics with young novices; benefits from knowledge about verbal Processes for children's improvement in expressive oral reading and punctuation of direct speech; the application of grammatical and genre knowledge in developing a critical reading of a narrative; and early moves in using the grammatics of Theme in one specific aspect of writing. A significant contribution is the project's incorporation of transcribed classroom talk, which is used to illuminate situated practices in teaching and learning grammatics, including the ways in which teacher talk and class discussion mediate the learning of grammatical concepts. Evidence is provided for the accessibility and utility of a grammatics drawn from systemic functional grammar, with the grammar's orientation to meaning in language being central to its potential.

Attention to pedagogic design is also argued to be integral to the development of a productive grammatics for schools. The thesis recommends the principled design of forms of semiotic mediation used to teach grammatical concepts (including teacher talk), and the thoughtful and meaningful integration of grammatics with other dimensions of the English/literacy curriculum so that grammatics is taught 'in context' but also with a view to longer term development of a flexible, systematic understanding.

Supervisors:  Len Unsworth, Susan Feez, Mutuota Kigotho

Multimodal literacy assessment: Reading strategies, comprehension and spoken language (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students in metropolitan, provincial and remote schools) — Ann Daly [Conferred March 2012]

This investigation into the complexities and comprehension of image-language relations in primary reading assessments involves quantitative and qualitative analysis of four main aspects. The first aspect concerns the image, language and intermodal complexities in multimodal texts that are reflected in the difficulty of assessment items. The other aspects are students' reading strategies and their inferences and spoken language when talking about the images and language in the texts. The latter three aspects involve correlations between the aspects and students' reading scores and a comparison of student groups according to Aboriginal status, geographic location, gender and reading ability groupings.

Supervisors:  Len Unsworth, Eveline Chan, Susan Feez

Young children's online authoring: Traditional and new literacies in online text construction — Rachael Adlington

This research explores the online authoring habits of young children. In particular, it examines the construction of blogs by five- to eight-year-old children both in school and out of school. It will explore the use of traditional and new literacies by young children when constructing meaning in multimodal online texts. Ultimately, it aims to reconceptualise early writing pedagogy so that it acknowledges and incorporates the affordances and demands of new forms of texts.

Supervisor:  Len Unsworth

Multimodal semiotic design: 'Point of view' in multimodal 3–D animation narrative authoring by middle years students — Annmaree O'Brien

The aim of this thesis is to investigate one specific aspect of multimodal composition: how students can strategically use the available multimodal affordances to construct variation of points of view (POV) in their 3-D animated narratives to create engaging interpretive possibilities and improve the quality and appeal of their compositions; and how the use of a multimodal semiotic design metalanguage facilitates this process. The context is the construction of 3-D animation narratives by middle years students using an Australian 3-D animation software program. A qualitative, broadly interpretive, constructivist methodology provides a conceptual framework for the development of the multiple-case study research method. The data is being collected from four classes in two urban primary schools.

Supervisors:  Len Unsworth, Eveline Chan

Listening to the library: Action research into the effects of downloadable audiobooks on preadolescent student literacy — Sue Toms (EdD)

The objective of this critical action research study, based on a critical realism research paradigm, is to determine which, if any, student literacy practices improve with extensive listening to audiobooks outside of class time.  The optimum role of the teacher librarian in promoting and providing downloadable audiobooks to students will also be explored. Six students from one international school in South Korea will be selected to participate in case studies from those students willing to spend their leisure time listening to audiobooks of their choosing. Action research will introduce audiobook listening to interested students and appealing titles will be primarily sourced by the teacher librarian researcher. As part of the action research, data from qualitative collective case studies will be gathered during the school year and then analyzed according to recurrent themes. Implications for the teacher librarian profession and suggestions for further research will then be presented.

Supervisors: Eveline Chan, Mary-Macken Horarik, Susan Feez