Terry Lovat

Consistency and Inconsistency in PhD Thesis Examination.

This is a mixed methods investigation of consistency in PhD examination. At its core is the quantification of the content and conceptual analysis of examiner reports for 804 Australian theses. First, the level of consistency between what examiners say in their reports and the recommendation they provide for a thesis is explored, followed by an examination of the degree of discrepancy between examiner recommendations and university committee decisions on the theses. Two groups of discrepant recommendations are identified and analysed in depth. Finally the main sources of inconsistency are identified. It was found that the comments of a small minority of examiners were inconsistent with each other or with the committee decision in a significant way. Much more commonly the texts of examiner reports were highly consistent and were closely reflected in the final committee decision.

Examiner comment on the literature review in Ph.D. theses

The review of literature, so central to scholarly work and disciplined inquiry, is expected of the Ph.D. student, but how far along the road are they expected to travel? This article investigates the expectations of ‘the literature’ in research and scholarship at Ph.D. level from the examiner and assessment perspective. The analysis draws on the examiner report data for 501 candidates (1310 reports) across five Australian universities. On average about one‐tenth of an examiner report is devoted to the literature and examiners provide detail about coverage, types of errors and the nature of use of the literature. It was the latter type of comment about coherent and substantive use of the literature that provided the most information about ‘expectation’. Examiners identified ‘working understanding’, ‘critical appraisal’ of the body of literature, ‘connection of the literature to findings’, and ‘disciplinary perspective’ as key indicators of performance in the candidate’s use of the literature. While examiners appeared to anticipate that all these elements should be present in scholarly work (and identified them in the best theses), they were prepared to accept less for a barely passable thesis, but pressed for at least some demonstration of critical appraisal.

Values Education and Quality Teaching: Two Sides of the Learning Coin

Educational research of recent times has uncovered some flaws in earlier thinking about the limited role that teachers and schools could play in effecting change in student achievement. Earlier research seemed to condemn teaching and schooling to a marginal role compared to the overwhelming role played by the home and student background. Researchers like Talcott Parsons suggested that families were “... factories which produce human personality” (Parsons & Bales, 1955:16), to the point that little else counted. In similar fashion, Christopher Jencks concluded that “... the character of a school’s output depends largely on a single input, namely the characteristics of the entering children” (1972: 256). Perhaps one of the most powerful forces in confirming this belief was the famous Plowden Report (Central Advisory Council 1967) in the United Kingdom that demonstrated how difficult it was for any child coming from a disadvantaged home to succeed in school. Anyone who has taught in school would resonate with these findings. They tell us little that we do not know or have not experienced. The questions that Parsons, Jencks and Plowden failed to ask, however, include: “Does it have to be this way?” “Could there be teaching regimes that do genuinely make a difference?” “Is there some way in which pedagogy can even things up?” Without these questions being even attempted, what we were left with was a de facto pessimism about the capacity of the social agency of teaching and schooling. While often couched in the sentiments of compassion and social justice, the effect was that generations of teachers came to believe that there was little use in trying to ‘make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’, and that, in effect, the role of schooling was limited to enhancing the chances of those who already had plenty while minimizing the damage to those who had few chances. Furthermore, if schools could have such limited impact even on the easily measurable learning Chapter 1 Values Education and Quality Teaching: Two Sides of the Learning Coin

Fully Professionalised Teacher Education: An Australian study in persistence

The article proposes that the proper status for teacher education, both historically and in terms of its research‐demonstrated importance, is one of full professionalism alongside other professional training regimes in universities. It proposes furthermore that the many reviews and reports of the past quarter‐century have been attempting to move the field in this direction. It has been the failure of governments, policy makers and other stakeholders to grasp this agenda that has left teacher education exposed to ongoing criticism for its perceived status and lack of effect. The article argues that, in spite of this failure professionalism has been achieved, evidenced by the demand for university places in teacher education and the international demand for its graduates. The article concludes with a case study that illustrates the long‐term benefits of a fully‐professionalized, university‐based program over and against the populism around notions of apprenticeship.