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(2021)ThesisThis research critically analyses institutional diversity through the research positioning of Australian universities. In so doing, it makes a contemporaneous contribution to the question of how diverse the institutions within the sector are, and in particular, how we can better understand the determinants or factors that help explain it. Understanding institutional diversity and its determinants is essential, given the concept serves as a bipartisan and enduring principle which underpins Australian higher education policy. Successive governments have sought to configure and resource the university sector in ways which meet varied needs and fit within resource constraints. Their approach to optimizing efficacy and efficiency has been through sector level settings designed to encourage institutions with a diverse range of missions. Exploring these questions through multiple methods and a theoretical framework that contributes to balancing historically polarised approaches, this research concludes that Australian university research positioning, while expressed in terms of uniqueness and difference, converges upon common aims and approaches and demonstrates a clear lack of diversity. The apparent homogeneity of research positioning across the sector is explained in part through the shortcomings and inherent contradictions within the mission-based compact program's design and implementation, and is also a product of the interaction between the sector funding model and isomorphism in institutional approaches to competitive resource seeking. However, and importantly, the observed homogeneity is also explained by selective narrative construction by universities, which serve various purposes and act to obscure intra-institutional complexity and what is argued to be significant internal diversity. This internal diversity has considerable implications for seeking diversity at the level of institutions through policy or programs, and indeed for observing for it in research.
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(2020)ThesisI examine whether and how avant-garde tropes promote the potential of permanent renewal as white America’s (re)birth and transformation. Renewal, in its broadest sense, ties to the capacities to create, progress, transcend, and simply be. From Black critique we know that, within dominant discourse, all these capacities have been stifled and denied to Black bodies ever since colonization. On the one hand, Black creative work and origin/ality have been fetishized, appropriated, stolen, and dismissed in and by dominant culture. On the other hand, Black being has been construed as negativity and barred on the level of ontology (Fanon, Wilderson, Warren). It follows then that racialization operates on multiple levels in the conceptual frame of renewal. I study this conceptualization in the works of and literary criticism on Kathy Acker, Don DeLillo, and Marilynne Robinson. More specifically, I investigate how images of renewal enable the claim on futurity, transformative potential, and movement forward as exclusively white properties. Constructed through oppositions between white subjectivity and Black incapacitation, these images often ‘bury’ the latter by highlighting the former. With this project, I show that, deriving from white ideology, such representations are symbiotic and simultaneous. The “good” story of white renewal is inextricably linked to narrative transgressions towards Black being. I study these transgressions and the ways white literature alibies them out, and instead pushes forward an image of white morality and heroism. In this regard, my project focuses not only on racist production as illustrated by the texts in question but also on the ways whiteness regulates writing and reading practices. I consider how tenets of whiteness – like the programmatic quest towards renewal – function on narrative and discursive level. For instance, I show that an avantgardism embedded in whiteness positions white texts as ground-breaking and transformative despite a lack of formal or conceptual innovation. Similarly, techniques such as textual deferral, omissions, and incorporation bar or defuse the critique which exposes the racist premises and anti-Black workings of white fiction. The project thus examines what kind of images/imagination this literature has promoted with the effect of strengthening the racialized division of American culture.
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(2021)ThesisThe influence of teacher professional development (PD) programs on teacher self-efficacy (TSE) beliefs remains a continuing concern due to a wide range of evidence that shows minimum impact on teacher practices. This concern is more evident in mandatory PD implemented in less privileged contexts, where teachers are not personally motivated, but are mandated to engage government-initiated PD programs. Negative associations between mandatory PD and TSE beliefs are documented, which implicit evidence suggest the lack of explicit incorporation of mediating factors. This study addresses theoretical and methodological issues through contextualising existing instruments and establishing the relationship between teacher perceptions of mandatory PD and TSE beliefs with the mediating effect of sources of efficacy information. The significant difference among those variables based on teacher demographics was also investigated. The survey incorporated three instruments administered to 356 teachers in Bima, Indonesia. Four quantitative analyses were used to study the adaptation of the instruments, association among teacher perception of mandatory PD, TSE beliefs, and sources of efficacy information, and significant differences based on teachers’ demography. Results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the globally-used instruments can be adapted to the context of a less privileged region. The scales exhibited measurement invariance, which the three instruments retained their original factors but with item deletions that did not load significantly to their corresponding factor. The structural equation modelling revealed that teacher perceptions of mandatory PD did not affect TSE beliefs. However, a positive indirect effect between teacher perception of mandatory PD and TSE beliefs was found with sources of efficacy information as a mediating variable. The t-test result showed that teacher perception of mandatory PD was different between genders. The ANOVA results showed that significant differences in TSE beliefs were only found among teachers of different ages, years of teaching experience, employment and certification status. Findings of this study provide significant evidence for the conceptualisation of teacher perception of mandatory PD, sources of efficacy information, and TSE beliefs in the context of a less privileged region. More importantly, it highlights the critical role of sources of efficacy information in the association between mandatory PD and TSE beliefs. These findings have significant implications for the application of mandatory PD in Indonesia that were considered ineffective.
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(2021)ThesisGifted and talented individuals play an important role in the development of their country and the world. The effect of educating high-ability individuals is observed not only in high levels of achievement and competition wins but also in the prosperity of the individual s country. This qualitative case study research aims to provide research based evidence for developing programs to prepare school principals to meet the needs of gifted students in schools. The research data were obtained from eight primary schools that run programs for gifted students in Saudi Arabia. The data were collected from diverse case studies (high-performing [HP] and low-performing [LP] schools) from rural and urban areas in Saudi Arabia. The data were obtained by conducting semi-structured interviews with eight school principals and eight gifted education (GE) teachers and coordinators, conducting focus groups with 51 gifted students, and analysing four policy documents. The findings of the study reveal a lack of essential knowledge and skills among principals related to GE. However, principals of HP cases were more aware of and more concerned with addressing the needs of gifted students compared with principals of LP cases. In addition, principals of HP schools were mostly instructional leaders, whereas LP schools were mostly led by building managers. Rural principals were socially oriented, whereas urban principals were policy and functionally driven. Based on these findings, the study proposes two training models: a principal preparation program (PPP)-fix model for LP schools, and a PPP-prevention model for other schools. The study recommends an urgent revision of GE policy in Saudi Arabia and a clear definition of principals responsibilities towards gifted students. In addition, the study urges ministries of education and universities to consider including GE in PPPs and teacher preparation programs to help meet the needs of gifted students in schools.
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(2020)ThesisPrevious educational research on students’ growth constructs and their academic outcomes has been largely focused on the separate examinations of antecedents and consequences of students’ growth mindset and growth goals. This approach has provided a detailed account of the individual functionality of these growth constructs and their predictive value in relation to a variety of academic outcomes. However, there is also a need to examine potential relationships among these growth constructs in order to better understand how they may work together to promote students’ outcomes. The aim of the current investigation, therefore, was to augment existing literature on the individual associations of three major growth constructs (growth mindset, self-based growth goals, and task-based growth goals) on academic outcomes by way of a potential underlying growth orientation. Across four studies conducted in 18 Australian secondary schools, the appropriateness of this proposed underlying growth orientation and its associations with mathematics outcomes (engagement and achievement) was examined. Study 1 (N = 4699 students) found that students’ growth mindset and growth goals were well represented by an underlying growth orientation and that students’ growth orientation was positively associated with their mathematics outcomes. Using a multilevel model (n = 1414 students from 91 classrooms with 91 teachers), Study 2 found that in addition to student-level associations, there were several notable associations at the classroom-level. With a two-wave longitudinal design, Study 3 (n = 2949 students) found that students’ underlying growth orientation was positively associated with gains in students’ mathematics outcomes across one year of school. Finally, using a longitudinal, multilevel model (n = 898 students from 86 classrooms with 86 teachers), Study 4 found that longitudinal associations at the classroom-level may also be salient. In sum, results from the investigation demonstrate that an underlying growth orientation is meaningfully associated with mathematics outcomes, suggesting there is merit in developing more parsimonious educational interventions that target growth more broadly. Thus, alongside work that continues to investigate distinct growth constructs, the present investigation demonstrates it is also important to better understand how such constructs are inter-related and how this shared variance among constructs may benefit students’ academic outcomes.
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(2020)ThesisResidential buildings with single-sided ventilated (SSV) facade require greater energy consumption of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to achieve a comfortable indoor environment and to maintain the health and productivity of the occupants. SSV facade has been reported to increase the likelihood of a poor indoor environment and high energy consumption. Hence, optimizing SSV facade design to create an energy-efficient and comfortable indoor environment is a challenging task. Existing studies have employed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods to analyze natural ventilation of buildings with SSV facade or passive design strategies to reduce energy consumption. However, most existing studies have focused on addressing individual performance issues of SSV facade such as natural ventilation or energy consumption. There has been a lack of dealing with the integrated performance of SSV facade especially the integrated optimal performance across ventilation efficiency, energy efficiency and visual comfort. There has been also a lack of understanding which design variables and relationships may drive optimal performance of SSV facade design. This research aims to fill the research gap by developing an innovative self-adaptive evolutionary model to optimize SSV facade design, targeted at the integrated optimal performance across ventilation efficiency, energy efficiency and visual comfort. The model includes a self-adaptation and learning mechanism which integrates unsupervised machine learning with evolutionary algorithms. The self-adaptation and learning mechanism has the ability to discover emergent patterns named evolved genes which represent key design variables and relationships that lead to high-performance of ventilation efficiency, energy efficiency and visual comfort of SSV facade design. The discovered key design variables and relationships are then evolved from simple to complex in the self-adaptive evolutionary process until a set of optimal SSV facade design is obtained. The utility of the self-adaptive evolutionary model is demonstrated using multi-story residential buildings with SSV facade in Sydney. A set of optimal SSV facade design is obtained in the prototype implementation, which shows on average 20% improvement in ventilation efficiency, 40% energy saving on heating and cooling loads and improvement in daylight visual comfort compared to the baseline performance of a building with SSV facade v design. The evolved genes in different complexities are discovered and evolved over time, demonstrating the dynamic mapping between key SSV facade design variables and high-performance outcomes of ventilation efficiency, energy efficiency and visual comfort. The analysis results also prove the effectiveness of the self-adaptation and learning mechanism, which accelerates the process to enable high-performance of SSV facade design to be achieved at earlier generations and increases the integrated optimal performance of SSV facade design by 6 - 8% compared to a conventional evolutionary process. This research develops an innovative interdisciplinary approach which is built upon artificial intelligence, facade optimization and building sustainability to tackling the challenge faced in SSV facade design. Research outcomes will advance the interdisciplinary knowledge of utilizing artificial intelligence technologies to improve the indoor environment and reduce energy consumption of SSV facade design.
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(2020)ThesisThis thesis investigates Deleuze’s genetic account of real experience in Difference and Repetition (hereafter DR) as a systematic form of metaphysics. While there is broad agreement on the aims of DR as a thesis in metaphysics, there is significant disparity in accounts of how this is accomplished. The overall goal of this thesis is to examine and clarify the processes involved in Deleuze’s metaphysical account of genesis in DR (the three syntheses of time and space, differentiation, individuation, differenciation, and dramatisation), how these processes involve a metaphysics of difference (intensive quantity), how they form a system (the relationship between the virtual, the actual, and the intensive), and how this has been understood in the secondary scholarship. Chapter 1 examines Deleuze’s reading of Kantian critique for two reasons. Firstly, it outlines Kant’s account of the conditioning of possible experience in order to provide a framework from which to understand how Deleuze radically transforms transcendental philosophy. Secondly, it critically examines Deleuze’s reading of Kant’s genetic account of real experience in order to outline its philosophical limitations. Chapter 2 explores Deleuze’s reconstructive reading of Nietzsche’s metaphysics of becoming as a rewrite of Kantian critique in order to show, on the one hand, that a metaphysical account of transcendental genesis necessitates a theory of time that attempts to grasp the perpetual emergence of the absolutely new, and on the other, that it provides a preliminary sketch of Deleuze’s own metaphysical system in DR. Chapter 3 aims to illuminate the three syntheses of time in Chapter 2 of DR by examining both how they form an interdependent unity and how they have been interpreted in the secondary scholarship. Chapter 4 analyses the secondary scholarship on DR and puts forward a novel interpretation of Deleuze’s metaphysics by arguing, on the one hand, that individuation signifies a process of intensive quantity split between differentiation (the virtual) and differenciation (the actual), such that, intensities comprise both the virtual and the actual, and on the other, that this entails a metaphysical (or panpsychist) conception of thought that involves a parallelism between Ideas and sensibility.
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(2021)ThesisWithin the planning profession, the public interest is enshrined as a core rationale for practice even as academic literature continues to question the existence and function of this rationale. Concrete outcomes of the public interest are rarely considered in planning structures and processes, resulting in the perception that the term is a tangential, or lip-service, consideration within the profession. A lack of explicit acknowledgement can be contrasted with consideration of the concept of ‘civicness’ – arguably a more tangible indicator of public interest concerns within the profession. This research focuses on how the planning system approaches ‘civicness’, exploring how this can be read discursively as representative of a contextualised public interest. Drawing on the paradigmatic framework of Habermas and Foucault, both utopian and cynical representations of the public interest are challenged. Discourse analysis techniques, particularly a dialectic Critical Discourse Analysis framework, are used to critically explore key civic concepts as they relate to planning, considering broader contextual themes and rendering conceptions of ‘the public interest’ as legible and interpretable. Australian urban civic conceptions are explored, with the city of Newcastle (New South Wales) as context owing to its scale and history within the state, its contemporary reinvention following decades of ‘Steel City’ neglect and economic malaise, and its unmistakable manifestations of ‘civicness’ in institutions, processes and designed/material outcomes. Applying the Critical Discourse Analysis framework to three case studies – Newcastle City Council, the preparation of the Greater Newcastle Metropolitan Plan 2036, and Newcastle’s ‘Civic Precinct’ – the research is then utilised to explore a specific representation of action toward and manifestations of ‘civicness’. This in turn contributes to the legibility of public interest manifestations in differing scales of planning practice and within broader, more theoretical, paradigms. While more exploratory than definitive, this thesis proposes that considering ‘civicness’ within the urban environment is a means by which to contextualise and ground the public interest within planning, ensuring this key professional and theoretical rationale retains its relevance and richness in an increasingly complex and challenging planning environment.
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(2021)ThesisCan a visual arts-Gurindji-specific culturally based, creative-led framework comprising collaborative exhibition and performative thesis, develop and present a Gurindji-specific storying of dispossession, cultural reclamation, transmission and exchange through dislocated kinship connections; and if so, how? What does a Gurindji-specific framework look like conceptually, creatively, critically? What does it do to and for history, to theory, to cultural analysis? Is this framework relevant and if so, for whom? This exegesis is a practice-led analysis drawing upon key cultural events and sites, and the involvement and displacement associated with singular and shared Gurindji ‘experience, location and visuality’. As a critical exploration, it radically inverts the limited recognition of what it is to be, do and enact as a Gurindji community member.My research takes shape from the diverse standpoints of descendants living on/in traditional homelands, and from members of the significant Gurindji displaced community. It is conducted through methodologies of critical First Nations Performative Autoethnography, First Nations Storying/Storywork (creative narratives), and what I call “cultural archaeology”. My mode of analysis engages with experimental, intra- and intercultural First Nations aesthetics and embodied action.
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(2021)ThesisProblem-solving or invention as preparation for instruction has been gaining steady attention in the literature as a viable alternative to the traditional explicit instruction. Nevertheless, the efficacy with its use with non-typical populations has not yet been investigated. This thesis investigated the effectiveness of invention tasks and worked examples as preparation for future explicit instruction. It also investigated the impact of structure via contrasting cases in a full-factorial design for non-gifted and gifted adolescents. The effects of instruction on the non-academic outcomes of self-efficacy, extraneous load, perceived knowledge gaps, curiosity and interest were also assessed. Three experiments were conducted with a total of 682 seventh-grade students in independent, academically selective and non-selective public schools. The first two experiments featured a 2 (invention-first vs example-first) x 2 (contrasting cases vs non-contrasting cases) x 2 (gifted vs non-gifted) research design. No significant differences between conditions were found on any learning outcomes. It may have been that the non-contrasting cases condition in Experiment 1 was suboptimal, leading to increased extraneous load and decreased deep feature recall in contrasting cases conditions. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 with re-designed materials for the non-contrasting conditions. Invention-first conditions performed better on transfer outcomes, and gifted students benefited from invention-first conditions more so than example-first conditions. Experiment 3 was conducted with only gifted students. It found that being aware of the structure in the first task outweighed instruction in importance when assessed on learning outcomes. These findings challenge the traditional method of explicit instruction and provides support for the viability of invention-first instruction for use with gifted students.