Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemBackground, religiosity and expectations of the parents and senior students in a Christian school( 1993)This study inspected the Senior School in a multicultural, multi-denominational school founded on a Christian base, servicing the Western suburbs of Melbourne. A quantitative religiosity measure and an instrument for determining nine expectation factors of schools were developed. Just under half of the school families had all members with high religious commitment, whereas a quarter had little. The mothers were more religious than either the students or the fathers, each of whose levels of religiosity correlated better with each other's, than the students' did with their mothers'. Overall, the parents had higher expectations of the school than did the students. In contrast to parents from higher socio-economic backgrounds, parents from lower backgrounds had higher expectations relating to prestige and job preparation for their children. The expectations of the school studied appeared similar to typical church schools, differing from previously studied Christian Community Schools (in NSW) in that the factor of Religious nature was of lower priority, and Academic standards higher. Higher expectations of the Christian nature of the school were held by non-locals and parents with non-English speaking background, compared with their counterparts. The highly religious students and parents scored higher on the factors relating to the school's Religious nature, Teacher quality, Moral standards, and Friends, but lower on Preparing students for employment, compared with the less religious. Three enrolment options were raised to help contemplate the future of the school in light of the diversity of expectations existent within the student and parent body.