Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemSome approaches to differences in entrants to pre-school, primary, and secondary teaching( 1972)In Australia, because of differences in training, qualifications, salary, unions, and prestige, teachers see themselves primarily as teachers at particular levels in the, educational structure, rather than members of a united "teaching profession". But whether these institutional and prestige differences are based on more fundamental differences has rarely been investigated. The present study considered 900 recent entrants to pre-school, primary, and secondary teaching, with the aim of identifying the strongest bases of inter-group differentiation among them, according to level of teaching entered and sex of student. Community stereotypes have concentrated on differences in academic ability as most fundamental; certainly selection processes based on academic achievement ensure that these exist. This investigation has compared academic ability measures with derived scales in a number of other areas, basically in two dimensions: the choice of teaching as an occupation, and the background (social and school) of teaching entrants. In the first area, both a factor analysis of expressed reasons for entry to teaching and a derived measure of commitment to teaching revealed marked differences in response patterns, according to sex and to level of teaching entered. In the second area, social background was measured on a socio-economic status index, based on six variables, and by a status discrepancy score. With these, identification of sex and level differences was confounded by inter-college differences, resulting from the private or state nature of the institution, and the impact of residential allocation to state primary teachers' colleges. The investigation of background also included school background of students, in terms of academic achievement at final school year level, and students' recollections of their own school experience. Again marked level and sex differences emerged. Thus real differences in many areas exist; which most strongly differentiated entering groups by level or sex? Not academic achievement, despite the community stereotype. Only when reasons for entry to teaching were excluded from analysis was this the strongest discriminator, dividing students according to a hierarchy of institutions attended and scholarships awarded (university, then state colleges, then private colleges). But to understand differences among pre-school, primary, and secondary entrants, or male and female recruits, analysis had to include the reasons for becoming a teacher; these and commitment to teaching were the most powerful sources of differentiation by level or sex.
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ItemRelation of anxiety and adjustment to educational environment( 1975)This investigation was concerned with the effect of different educational environments on factors associated with personality development, particularly adjustment and anxiety. The report was divided into two parts. The first part was concerned with a critical analysis of certain contemporary theories of education and with the empirical evidence relevant to these theories. The second part used the major beliefs of the theories as grounds for hypotheses which were tested with one hundred and seven tertiary students doing the Diploma of Education at the Melbourne State College in 1973. The theories in question all assume the intrinsic goodness of man and his urge for "self-actualization" when he is operating in a free and unconstrained manner. These theories derived from the writings of humanistic psychology and particularly from the work of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow and are expressed in the writings of educators including John Holt, Everett Reimer, and George Dennison. In the first part of the investigation the theories were scrutinized both from the point of view of logical consistency and from that of empirical evidence relating to such concepts as self esteem, persuasibility, adjustment and anxiety in educational and non-educational contexts. In the second part, Rogers' own non-normative definition of adjustment was used to ascertain whether there were any changes during the course of the year in the adjustment of students in three different types of educational environment. Rogers (1954) believed that good adjustment was characterized by a small discrepancy between self and ideal self concept. He argued that good adjustment occurred when people were allowed to act freely and make their own decisions without interference from others. It was therefore hypothesized that students in an unstructured group, given maximum opportunity to decide their own educational activities, would exhibit superior adjustment to students in either a semi-structured or highly structured group. The adjustment of students in the semi-structured group was hypothesized to be next best to that of students in the unstructured group, while the adjustment of students in the highly structured group was hypothesized to be the worst of students in any of the three groups. Adjustment in this study was taken to be the distance between the concepts "Myself" and "The Person I'd Like To Be". These concepts and eight others judged to be of importance to either self esteem or education, were rated on a seven point semantic differential scale in relation to eighteen bi-polar adjectival scales (Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum, 1957). It was also hypothesized that both the trait anxiety measured on the first testing occasion, and state anxiety measured on three occasions over the year, would be lowest in the unstructured group, higher in the semi-structured group and highest in the most highly structured group. The measures of anxiety used were devised by Spielberger, Gorsuch and Lushene (1970). Pre-test analyses of variance, repeated measures analyses and covariance analyses in which scores on the third testing were covaried for scores on the first testing, all failed to support the two main experimental hypotheses. A hierarchical grouping analysis, which is a purely descriptive technique for examining data, lent tentative support to the hypothesis regarding the superior adjustment of the unstructured group. On the pre-test analyses there were significant interactions between group membership and anxiety level. There were also significant results obtained from group differences alone and from differences in the level of trait anxiety. However, none of these differences revealed superior adjustment or significantly lower trait anxiety for the unstructured group. Further, when covariance analyses were carried out only one significant difference between groups remained. This concerned School Principals and Unpleasant and Bad Things. The structured group judged these concepts to be significantly further apart than did the unstructured group. This suggested different attitudes towards authority figures by students in the two groups. While the unstructured group failed to show the superior adjustment expected by the Rogerian hypotheses, or a significantly lower level of either trait or state anxiety, there were significant group differences on initial trait anxiety as revealed by an analysis of variance. There were also significant differences in state anxiety as revealed by a repeated measures analysis over three occasions. For both measures of anxiety, it was the semi-structured or core-elective group which exhibited significantly lower levels of anxiety than either the unstructured or highly structured groups. Contrary to the hypotheses the unstructured group and the highly structured group had anxiety levels (both trait and state) of a markedly similar kind. It was concluded that membership of the group allowing most freedom, did not have the hypothesized effect of producing superior adjustment or lower levels of either trait or state anxiety. Further, the lack of significant results after the covariance analyses suggested that educational environment, regardless of whether it was unstructured, semi-structured or highly structured, did not radically alter the adjustment or anxiety levels of the tertiary students who were the subjects of this investigation. Implications for education were discussed.