Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemAn analysis of the recent reform movement in education, with special reference to Victorian secondary schools in the late nineteen sixties( 1977)The school reform movement in the nineteen sixties accompanied unprecedented change in culture and society. Curriculum reform was attempted throughout much of the developed world; in Victoria, the Curriculum Advisory Board was formed, and the Education Department initiated the Curriculum Reform Project for secondary schools. But the reform movement was complex; there were several distinct groups within it (deschoolers, educational technologists, and liberal humanists) whose aims and methods were often contradictory. The major reform philosophy in Victoria was liberal humanist and expressed most notably in the writings of the Director of Secondary Education, R.A. Reed, whose Curriculum Reform Project was not necessarily successful in its own terms, but nevertheless had a significant effect on secondary schooling in Victoria. The reform movement demonstrated how complex is the phenomenon of educational change; it is obviously more complicated than is suggested by the ideas of circular change or pendulum swing, and is perhaps best seen as resulting from the disturbance of equilibrium in a strong field of forces. Attempted liberal reform in Australia has led to the formation in 1973 of the Australian Council for Educational Standards, a group dedicated to the resistance of reform. There is presently a crisis in education, a crisis marked by uncertainty. The crisis should be resolved by encouraging alternatives in education, and by reorganizing educational institutions so that they can become more flexible and adaptable.
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ItemSchool-based curriculum development : its introduction and implementation in Victorian state high schools 1968-1978( 1979)Curriculum reform in the nineteen-sixties was in part a response to economic and technological change. In examining the antecedents to secondary curriculum reform in Victoria, however, I have discussed educational as well as economic factors. Secondary curriculum reform was closely associated with the Director of Secondary Education, Ron Reed, the Curriculum Advisory Board he established, and the introduction of a policy of school-based curriculum development. The scope of the review, the strategy and the implementation policy adopted by Reed and the C.A.B. were unusual and are examined in detail in this study. The devolution of responsibility to schools for continuing development of the new curriculum was fundamental to Reed's policy. But while its basis was pedagogical, it involved a redistribution of control over education and thus was inherently political. The conflict between secondary teachers and secondary inspectors of which curriculum control was a part was therefore probably unavoidable. It was exacerbated, however, by an incomplete understanding of the limited nature of the policy, and of the curriculum theory on which it rested. By 1973 the reform movement had reached its peak. Many schools abandoned the reforms because they had failed to produce the anticipated results. Some schools persisted in developing the new curriculum, however, and the experiences of one such school, Ferntree Gully High School, are examined in detail here. It is my hypothesis that without the power within the school to revise the curriculum in the light of experience, continued development could not have taken place. It is clear, however, that this was not a sufficient condition, and I have examined the school experience in order to reveal some of the other conditions necessary. The impact of the reform policy, although primarily concerned with curriculum content and organization, was on the practices and organization of the school as a whole. In order to understand this it is necessary to see the relationship between curriculum content and classroom interaction and between curriculum organization and school organization. These relationships, implicit in the work of the C.A.B., are only now beginning to emerge in curriculum theory. ii
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ItemThe sixth-form college in England and Tasmania( 1974)The sixth-form college is an experiment in the organisation of education for the sixteen to nineteen year old student. An examination of the historical context of its evolution reveals its origins in the demands for expansion of upper secondary education and in the concern for a more equitable and broader-based provision for the expanded student body. Further examination exposes the social and political factors promoting and retarding its development. What began in most cases as a practical expedient became an institution providing a wide range of courses and study options to students, the academic or vocational emphasis depending on local conditions. The separate college idea attracted some idealists who saw an opportunity of establishing in the public sector of education an institution capable of rivalling the sixth-form of the better independent school. It had at the same time a strong appeal in its apparent economy and efficiency. It could offer a centralisation and concentration of specialist teachers and resources to provide for perhaps eight hundred students. Establishment of actual colleges has been cautious, few authorities being prepared, like the Tasmanian Education Department or the Teesside Education Committee to give the scheme unqualified approval. Earlier ideas of academic exclusiveness have been modified by the emergence of the "new sixth-former", the fifteen-plus student whose staying-on in full-time secondary education is as much a matter of law as of inclination. For the most part the purely academic college enjoyed a limited period of existence before the change in political or educational philosophy ordered its modification. The colleges of 1974 may differ rather significantly from those intended by their founders. However, what was enthusiastically regarded as a panacea for the problems of upper secondary organisation must now be soberly accepted as one of a number of possible ways of organising sixth-form education.