Postgraduate Studies

A Selection of Completed Theses

Dr Lawrence Gormley (1997) was the first candidate to successfully complete the Doctor of Teaching. He employed stimulated recall using video (which cannot be made available to students), to provide access to the thoughts of facilitators and students during interactive teaching events involving the use of simulations in a clinical nursing program. This was a multiperspectival study using a number of related approaches including mediating processes, clinical ecology, constructivism, and hermeneutic phenomenology.

Dr Christianne Bostock (1999) investigated the use of Global Simulation in overcoming anxiety in adult learners of French during a two-day workshop. A Global Simulation is a language learning technique based on a scenario which allows the participants to create a referential universe, in this case a train journey complete with all the hazards of travelling on French trains such as the inevitable strike, a bomb scare and food poisoning. Global simulation brings the "real" into the universe of the classroom, the real which is often left at the door of the classroom. Bostock's video submitted for the Practical Thesis, which is available through the CDU Library, demonstrates the possibilities of the approach for improved language learning, and reveals the techniques devised to overcome anxiety and its effects on communication.

Dr Bob Smith's (2000) research into Indigenous Australian Music and Dance in West-centrically Oriented Primary Classrooms evaluated the application and appropriateness of a series of customised teaching and learning strategies designed to communicate intercultural musical and related understandings. The study offers teachers a series of contextualised strategies and an education framework for scaffolding the development of their own music education programs. In rejecting an approach based on ethnomusicology in favour of pedagogical or experiential applications, Smith's work is essentially practical whilst at the same time, it does not neglect the theoretical aspects as his discussion of the values of music - formalism, praxialism, referentialism and contextualism - amply demonstrates. Using a selection of photographs, Smith documents the emergence of the children involved as reflective artistic practitioners and 'increasingly discerning critics'.

Dr Wang Li was awarded her Doctor of Teaching for a study in the area of cultural understanding, particularly for those who are interested in visiting, studying, working or doing business in China, using the workshops she has been running in Darwin as the basis for her Practical Thesis.

Dr Peter Merrotsy . Employing narrative methodology, Dr Merrotsy looked at appropriate tertiary provision for accelerated students and produced a handbook for NSW schools for the practical component of the thesis.

Dr Lorraine Connell . Having returned to the classroom to study her own teaching , Lorraine is particularly interested in assisting teachers to examine their own workplace practice, bel ie fs and values. She lectures in the Arts and in the Practicum. She has been engaged in web-mediated teaching for some while and has recently returned from a visit to the USA where she looked at the application of the theory of Multiple Intelligences to schools.

Jon Carnegie was awarded his thesis his work in developing a innovative program of Personal Development and self-awareness training with 14-16 year old boys at Trinity Grammar School, Kew. The title of his thesis was 'Learning journeys: Where middle school boys become autonomous learners'.

Pauline Jurkijevic teaches in the Northern Territory and was awarded her Doctorate of Teaching for her investigations into 'The construction of 'Good': Disparities between ideals of schooling' in which she challenges some common classroom practices which are considered to be 'good'.

Graeme Salter is a senior lecturer at The University of Western Sydney and used a constructivist approach to online learning that seeks to encourage pedagogical re-engineering using a Concerns-Based Adoption model for staff development. His thesis was submitted on CD-Rom.