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.
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ItemThe attitudes of teaching college students to the role of primary teacher( 1978)The particular problem chosen here was one of 'normative consensus': to what extent were 150 second year students in the State College of Victoria at Geelong in agreement as to the forms of behaviour which could be regarded as appropriate when acting the role of primary teacher? More specifically in this case how much consensus was there regarding the role of the primary teacher in given situations as seen through the students' eyes, and as they perceived the college lecturers and the practising teachers to view this role? The students were asked to complete a set of four role-norm inventories developed by Foskett (1969). Each inventory contained 45 identical questions which examined four main areas of teaching, attitude to pupils (15 items) attitude to colleagues (10 items), attitude to parents (10 items) and 10 items concerning the teacher's attitude to the community. The students answered the inventories from four points of view: - R.N.I. 1 as they thought they ought to behave; R.N.I. 2 as they intended to behave when they began teaching; R.N.I. 3 as they thought the college lecturers would like them to behave and R.N.I. 4 as they thought practising teachers would behave. The norms and expectations were measured on a 5 point Likert-type scale. The data from the inventories were used to obtain the mean and standard deviation for each item. The means were then compared, item by item, to see if significant differences existed between the various role-setting at .01 level of significance. There was one item of significant difference between R.N.I 1 and R.N.I. 2, 12 between R.N.I. 1 and R.N.I. 3 and 21 between R.N.I. 1 and R.N.I. 4. The results indicated that students tended to identify with their college lecturers and to be opposed to the way they perceived teachers to behave, especially in the area of classroom interaction. Various weaknesses of the research methods employed were examined but nonetheless the evidence that the process of teacher training might serve to produce conflict between the novitiate teacher and the school was considered strong enough to warrant further investigation.
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ItemAn exploratory study of the questions asked by student teachers in a junior science lesson( 1976)The science curricula of the severities stress the importance of teaching science as scientists might practise it. This has been well illustrated in the enquiry oriented curricula marketed in the last decade in Australia. A significant attempt has been made to apply learning theories in their development. The Australian Science Education Project has attempted to integrate Piaget's theory of cognitive development into the. units. However, for all the emphasis in the units placed upon the active, initiating role of the learner and the careful sequencing of direct experience with objects of knowledge, they need their agent of understanding, the committed teacher, who is able to encourage her pupils to talk and write about their own transactions and discoveries. It is more than possible that many teachers who use the materials will fail. to use to the full the methods implicit in the underlying theories. There is a need to prepare young teachers for effective work in these contexts appropriate to the new materials. In this study, the nature, distribution and patterning of student teacher questions were investigated in two of these contexts. Both contexts, the demonstration-discussion and the small group activity and discussion, have in coryey'1n the purpose of generating primary data and the provision of experience in observation, inference and validation. An attempt was made to develop a study which combined appropriate elements of the approaches of the "naturalistic" and "experimental" schools of research into classroom processes. The design was broadly of the post-test only control group form with repeated measures on teaching context. Randomization was handled in large part by the distribution of mixed ordered teaching plans. A total of twelve student teachers were observed near the end of their training year, teaching the sane lesson based on two pages of the Stage 1 A.S.E.P. Unit, "Forces", to grade eight classes. Both direct . coding and transcript coding procedures were employed in the analysis of the student teacher questioning, using high and low inference categorizing systems. In the main study, the Smith and Meux (The Logic of the Classroom) and the Withall (The Social-Emotional Climate Index) systems were applied to the student teachers' questions to describe the levels of "enquiry" and "learner supportiveness" promoted in the lesson. Considering the small sample size, the results must be cautiously interpreted. However, a fairly consistent picture emerged suggesting that young teachers maintain a higher level of enquiry through asking a greater proportion of logically complex and hypothetical questions in the demonstration-discussion context than in the small group and discussion context. In the former, the students appeared to be involved in fewer administrative interactions. No differences were found between the social-emotional elements of the two environments in terms of "learner supportiveness" and "teacher centmedriess". Some limited comparisons were possible with Tisher's Brisbane data collected in traditional science classrooms using the saine instruments. An analysis of the pupil responses to questions intended to elicit logical explanations indicated that considerable discrepancy existed between the student's intent and the nature and logic of the responses. Implications for research into teacher questioning, teacher education and curriculum.development are discussed.