Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemA comparison of levels of job satisfaction among Victorian high school teachers in declared disadvantaged and undeclared schools( 1981)This study involved an investigation of job satisfaction among Victorian high school teachers in three declared disadvantaged and three undeclared schools in the Northern Metropolitan Region. The feasibility of the topic was determined by a pilot study undertaken at Upfield high school in 1978. The Region was selected because it had the most declared schools in the state. Pairs of declared and undeclared schools were selected primarily on the basis of their geographical proximity to one another. They were not statistically matched in any way. Questionnaires were distributed to all teaching staff in these six schools. A total of 164 usable questionnaires were returned. Questions were designed firstly, to describe the sample population and secondly, to gauge levels of teacher job satisfaction. The perceived relationship between job satisfaction and Supplementary Grants funding provided under the Disadvantaged Schools Program was investigated by non-parametric testing using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). No statistically significant difference was identified in levels of job satisfaction between teachers in declared and undeclared schools. It is likely that individual teachers will have varying levels of job satisfaction and this was confirmed by the research. The argument that teachers can be categorised into groups who are satisfied and dissatisfied tended to be refuted.
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ItemSchool teacher in Victoria: the biography of Arthur John Hicks( 1981)Arthur John Hicks was born in 1893 and died in 1970. He was a full-time teacher in the service of the Education Department of Victoria for fifty years, from 1908 until 1958. He started his service as a Junior Teacher, but by 1958 had been training student teachers himself for a number of years. In the course of his fifty years' teaching, Arthur Hicks developed a positive response to the major events of the time, and to the ideas of the educational reformers. Both he and his wife became deeply involved in the activities of the rural communities in which they lived. Such a relationship was more difficult to achieve in the suburbs of Melbourne and Geelong. In the course of his career in country schools Hicks also attempted to increase community awareness of Victoria's education system. He also proved, as early as the 1920's, that it was possible to implement the new "child-centred activity" methods in rural schools. The school at which he had most success in this regard was Bright Higher Elementary School. It is reasonable to suggest that Arthur Hicks, despite the outbreak of the Second World War, never lost his optimistic belief that education could do much to improve human nature. It is equally reasonable to suggest that that optimism was under pressure by the mid-50's, when, for the first time, he was administering a large inner-city school, which had specific problems because of its migrant intake. While Hicks. was ageing, Australian society was undergoing quite radical change. Nevertheless, he had reached the top of his profession, whereas fifty years before he had been labelled as not showing "much promise". Although he was a very ordinary person in many ways, his life demonstrates what can be achieved through commitment to a task.