Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemSocial area indicators and educational achievement( 1982)This study was concerned with the development and validation of a national indicator of educational disadvantage which would be suitable for guiding resource allocation decisions associated with the Disadvantaged Schools Program in Australia. The national indicator was constructed by using a series of stepwise regression analyses in order to obtain a linear combination of census based descriptions of school neighbourhoods which would be highly correlated with school mean achievement scores. A correlational investigation of the properties of this indicator showed that it was an appropriate tool for the identification of schools in which there were high proportions of students who (1) had not mastered the basic skills of Literacy and Numeracy, (2) displayed behavioural characteristics which formed barriers to effective learning, and (3) lived in neighbourhoods having social profiles which were typical of communities suffering from deprivation and poverty. A theoretical model was developed in order to estimate the optimal level of precision with which indicators of educational disadvantage could be used to deliver resources to those students who were in most need of assistance. This model was used to demonstrate that resource allocation programs which employ schools as the units of identification and funding must take into account the nature of the variation of student characteristics between and within schools. The technique of factor analysis was employed to investigate the dimensions of residential differentiation associated with the neighbourhoods surrounding Australian schools. Three dimensions emerged from these analyses which were congruent with the postulates of the Shevky- Bell Social Area Analysis model. The interrelationships between these dimensions and school scores on the national indicator of educational disadvantage presented a picture of the 'social landscape' surrounding educationally disadvantaged schools in Australia as one in which there were: high concentrations of persons in the economically and socially vulnerable position of having low levels of educational attainment and low levels of occupational skill, low concentrations of persons living according to the popular model of Australian family life characterized by single family households, stable families, and separate dwellings, high concentrations of persons likely to have language communication problems because they were born in non-English speaking countries.
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ItemProblems with power, problems with Foucault : a political analysis of class, knowledge and history( 1985)The primary focus of the thesis is power analysis. The thesis is divided into four parts. The first part is an appraisal and critique of Michel Foucault's theory of power, involving an argument that power (and politics) should be understood only in specific sites. The second part, power and class, involves an argument that the concept of class is of little value for specific power analysis. The third part, power and knowledge, involves an argument that the politics of knowledge should be understood only at the specific points of the production and reproduction of particular knowledges. This part also involves an argument that the category intellectuals is of little value for specific analyses of the politics of knowledges, that those agents often referred to as intellectuals are better understood in their specific form(s) at the specific points of the production or reproduction of particular knowledges. The fourth part, power and history, involves an argument that the politics of history should be understood only at the specific points of the production or reproduction of particular histories. This part also involves an argument that the politics of particular histories can usefully be analysed in a way similar to that some recent literary theory suggests as a productive way of analysing the politics of particular literary texts.
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ItemThe Language Development Project, Phase II : a case study in co-operative curriculum development and the role of formative evaluation( 1985)The Language Development Project was a major initiative in national curriculum development, the first of its kind in language education in Australia. The study focuses on three major themes or constructs underlying Phase II of the project, its developmental phase and explores their implications for national curriculum development in the Australian federal context and for English language education in Australian schools. As such it is essentially an exercise in construct evaluation, a formative approach to the evaluation of outcomes. Central to the conception of Phase II of the Language Development Project was a view of language and learning inherited from Phase I of the project and encapsulated in its tripartite model of language education learning language, learning through language, learning about language. Equally central to the work of the project was a view of curriculum development predicated on the belief that there was a need for a national approach to language education and that this national approach could best be achieved through a co-operative effort involving the centre (CDC) and the States and Territories. Underlying this co-operative model was a commitment to school-based curriculum development and to involving teachers in the development of curriculum materials. The most important feature of these central constructs was that they were developing models, based on the assumption that curriculum development, at least in the language area, is an evolutionary process, moving through exploration and discovery towards definition. This open-ended, emergent quality, together with the co-operative nature of the project, placed particular demands on the design of an evaluation which would be responsive to the changing needs of the project at the national level while respecting the autonomous nature of the component projects. The study analyses the development of these three major constructs - the tripartite model of language education, the cooperative model of curriculum development and the collaborative evaluation model - as they were exemplified in the experience of the project examines their relationship to the wider context of practice, and explores their implications for the development of a practical framework for the English language curriculum the resolution of ambiguities in the co-operative model of curriculum development and the development of a reconstructed model for the formative evaluation of co-operative national programs.
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ItemToorak College, 1874-1958 : the survival of a girls' private school in Victorian society( 1986)As one of the oldest of Victoria's privately-owned girls' schools, Toorak College illustrates the influence of the principal in cultivating a clientele whose interests the activities of the school reflected and by whose support its survival was determined. Independent of church or corporation, Toorak College began in 1874 as a boys' school in Douglas Street, Toorak, and was converted to a girls' school in 1897. By 1919, transferred to a gracious building set in expansive formal gardens on the highest point of Glenferrie Road, Malvern, Toorak College presented to the public the appearance of a flourishing school. Ever sensitive to the expectations of a clientele that valued the practices of English education, its principals introduced practical subjects as advocated by Michael Sadler and critically considered the principles of the New Education Fellowship and the Dalton Plan. With the depression, 1929 - 34, and the war, 1939 - 45, the college, whose ownership had been transferred from its principal to a private company in 1927, entered a period of uncertainty. After eighteen months in uncomfortable temporary quarters, the school was transferred to a site on the Mornington Peninsula. The Company's financial resources were strained by the purchase of two properties and the remoteness of Frankston made the attraction and retention of competent staff difficult. By 1932, with its enrolment severely reduced, the college might have closed but for the efforts, little short of heroic, of the Directors and the Misses Hamilton. Gradually the school recovered, supported by a loyal constituency united by appeals to the school's longevity, the product of a fabricated claim of a foundation in 1854. Indeed, the ability of the principal to establish the solid standing of the school in the public esteem has been of greater importance in ensuring Toorak College's continuation than have its fine buildings or a curriculum in which serious scholastic studies were advanced at the expense of a training in the social accomplishments.
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ItemPhilosophy, society, education: a theory developed from the work of John Dewey( 1986)A theory of Language. use, the Minimum) L(inguistic) S(ituation)-theory, is stated, and located within the naturalistic problematique in a broad interpretation of the history of Western philosophy. From the MS-theory is derived - an apparatus of inquiry which includes definitions of the main concepts of the traditional apparatus, inference, laws, etcetera; the "meaning"/ "truth" distinction is shown to be vacuous in the MS-theory, - a theory of social reproduction : to wish or need to join a Language-community is to have no alternative but to conform rigidly.- Hence a theory of the reproduction and stability of an isolated Language-community is formulated and used to explain how - the fundamental means of reproduction of _ societies being the reproduction of Language-communities - unique individuals may nevertheless be produced. The two obvious possible deficiencies which can occur in the acquisition of competency to participate in full Linguistic interactions are identified. It is shown how these deficiencies could explain the reproduction of an essential prerequisite of the differentiation of pluralistic societies into classes; - a means by which disputes between Language-communities (which under the MLS-theory are incommensurable) can be pursued. Some of the traditional problems of social change, formulated as disputes between Language communities, are briefly discussed, - a definition of scientific, aesthetic, methodological, mathematical and logical, and historical inquiries. Some other inquiries, ethical and literary discourse, which cannot be sharply characterized are briefly analysed in terms of the MLS-theory, and the "fact"/"value" distinction is shown to be vacuous in the MS-theory. All of the above are drawn on in the formulation of a theory of pedagogy which is rather like Dewey's as it would be if augmented by Freire's. However, when this pedagogy is rigorously formulated in terms of the MLS-theory, it becomes gently critical of the work of both writers. It is shown that the conditions necessary for the reproduction of criticism (the essential characteristic of Western culture) are rather fragile. Some specific requirements for the reproduction of criticism in the types of inquiry defined earlier are formulated.
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ItemThe theory of educational inequality in Australia, 1900-1950( 1985)This thesis investigates the terms in which the problem of educational differences was posed by Australian intellectuals during the first half of the twentieth century. The investigation seeks to understand the social and historical limits of research into social differences in education, and makes problematic the degree of relative autonomy of this inquiry from the prevailing social and political arrangements which it sought to address. It attempts to demonstrate how the historically evolved. social norms of a particular class, in respect of participation in school and the acquisition of a positive disposition to school, became enshrined in official and scientific discourses on education as the natural and normal attributes of childhood and youth. The thesis examines the texts of leading figures in education and others who became interested in educational problems in their role as social commentators and critics. As a rule, these intellectuals advocated more schooling for greater national productivity and a more informed citizenry, adjustments to the curriculum in accordance with the 'needs' and expected life trajectories of different social groups of children, and finally, a more efficient alignment of school selection and ability. Along these lines, education was to play a major role in achieving the 'democratic ideal'. While there were arguments about the methods and criteria for achieving these goals, there existed in parallel an almost complete unanimity and consensus among these writers as to the questions to be raised. Whether as academics, educational researchers, bureaucrats,. politicians or scientists, they believed Australia had been inadequately served by its education system and that substantial reassessment and adjustment was required, in anticipation of a 'new order' to come. At the same time as the resources of the State were being mobilized to create a system of schools based on this vision, a science of education was emerging which permitted the school population to be ranked and allocated, along apparently scientific lines. Psychology became concerned with the problem of individual differences in the State school population, and developed in such a way that State schooling, and the posing of the problem of school differences, played a mutually ratifying role. The system of private grammar schools largely remained immune to psychological inquiry. Psychological reasoning pre-figured a solution to social differences in virtue of its overall affirmation of the particular form of State schooling offered (specific practices of school organization in line with 'normal' performance, divisions of knowledge into yearly packages), but also by the material and cultural demand to regulate the length and type of schooling in the post-primary stages. The science of natural differences among individual pupils served the administrative problem of selection into a differentiated school system, and ultimately permitted the social distribution of participation and achievement to be represented as the product of individual differences.
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ItemInitiating formal evaluation practices in Victorian secondary schools: a meta-evaluation of whole-school and part-school evaluation strategies( 1987)The purpose of this meta-evaluation was to investigate the merit of an apparent shift in evaluation policy on the part of the present government from whole-school evaluation with external validation and input to internal part-school evaluation as alternative strategies for initiating formal evaluation practices in Victorian secondary schools. While the study provides an overview of the strategies and outcomes pertaining to both approaches to evaluation, it focuses specifically on the implications of the scope of evaluation for the planning process in schools, the role and impact of the use of external expertise and the significance of staff perceptions on the process of evaluation and its outcomes. Data was collected using qualitative research methods and a retrospective study of eight carefully selected case study schools was carried out. Four of these schools had completed whole-school evaluations and the remaining four had completed part-school evaluations. While informal observation and document collection constituted an important part of the research strategy, heavy reliance was placed on data emerging from one-to-one interviews with individual members of staff across different levels of the school hierarchy. This methodology was adopted because it was believed to be the most effective way of discovering the more sensitive, less tangible outcomes related to evaluations, and because the attitudes and perceptions of staff towards evaluations represented an important outcome of the evaluation in their own right. A basic premise of this research is that the effectiveness of school-based evaluation initiatives in bringing about school improvement will be largely dependent upon the willing support of the staff who are called upon to participate in the evaluation and in any change initiatives which flow from it. While caution should be exercised in generalising from the findings of a limited number of case study schools to all schools, the findings support the general trend towards initiating formal evaluation practices via part-school evaluation strategy. However, they also underline the need for schools to initiate evaluation studies in ways which will ensure that they contribute effectively to, and become an integral part of, school development. In response to this need, an alternative model or approach to evaluation is proposed.
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ItemParents in the classroom( 1987)The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the presence of parents in the classroom on children, parents, and teachers. The study took the form of a sequenced set of action research style interventions in an outer-suburban secondary school and an inner-city primary school. Attitudes of parents of students in year 7 to creativity, frustration, control, play, and teaching/learning were measured with Strom's Parent as a Teacher inventory, P A A T. Achievements of the children in word knowledge, comprehension, spelling, and maths were measured with tests of ACER. There were some significant correlations between attitudes of parents and achievements of their children. For example, attitudes of mothers to control and the achievement of their children in maths were very highly correlated (N=105, p=.001). After one year of secondary schooling, there was no significant difference between the entering and final achievements of the year 7 students in this study in comprehension and maths (N=123). End-of-year scores of students for word knowledge and spelling were below the scores that would have been expected of students one year younger (N=175, 174). The numbers in these comparisons differ because of absences from school. Classroom experiments were conducted with parents in classrooms in a junior secondary and a primary school. "Parents" means adults who may be parents, other relatives or friends of the students, or friends of the school. In year 7, three different treatments for six weeks were compared, namely, two parents for two classroom periods a week (T), two parents for four periods a week (F), and no parents (Z). There was a significant interaction between mathematical aptitude and treatment (p=.021) such that at the low level of aptitude, achievements in maths with treatments F and T were superior to treatment Z. Also, with the low and medium levels of aptitude combined, treatment T was superior to treatment F (p=.038). With respect to attitude to learning maths, treatment T was superior to treatment F at both the low and medium levels of mathematical aptitude. However the effect on post attitudes was not significant. The attitudes of students in one grade 2 and two composite grades 3/4 were measured to sixteen items that were related to their school and TV. Coincident with the presence of parents in the classrooms of grade 2 and two composite grades 3/4 , there was an increase in positive attitudes of students to eight items in which there was a high level of teacher/parent involvement (HTPI) compared with eight low TPI items (grade 2, N=26; grades 3/4, N=50). In grades 3/4, the presence of parents in the classroom over a period of eight weeks had useful cumulative effects on time on task, teacher stress, and inappropriate class behaviour. Parents, students, and teachers in this study recommended that experience with parents in the classroom should be expanded.
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ItemThe historiography of Australian education: the production and reception of four major texts, 1951-1978( 1985)This study is an inquiry into how historical knowledge is produced, socially defined and legitimated. The inquiry is conducted through the medium of four major history of Australian education texts initially produced at Melbourne University and used as texts in the first History of Australian Education course in the Faculty of Education at Melbourne University. The texts are J.S. Gregory 'Church and State and Education in Victoria to 1872', R. Fogarty 'Catholic Education in Australia 1806-1950', A.G. Austin 'Australian Education 1788-1900' and G.M. Dow George 'Higinbotham: Church and State'. The thesis is divided into two parts: Part I is a critical reading of each of the four texts uncovering the organizing theoretical pre-suppositions which these historical works share in common, namely theories of the liberal state. In demonstrating how theory organizes these historical works some of the processes of the production of history are revealed; in particular the selection and interpretation of sources. Part II is a history of the reception of each of the texts and reveals the processes by which the texts are made available for consumption and are socially defined and legitimated. The processes of production and reception are not separate and distinct; however, it is more convenient to consider the two processes more or less separately and hence the division of the thesis into two parts. Part I is a formal/theoretical analysis of the texts which draws selectively on the structuralist criticism of Althusser and the early Macherey to develop a mode of critical reading appropriate to understanding the processes of production of historical texts. Part II, the historical analysis of the texts' reception during the period 1951 to 1978, demonstrates how the various contexts in which the texts have been inscribed activate definitions of the texts' value, truth and significance and place them in a hierarchy of other historical works. Bourdieu's notion of an intellectual field provides a framework for understanding these processes by which a field of the history of Australian education is constructed and seeks legitimacy as 'good' history. However, the methodology for such an analysis is drawn from the work of the later Macherey, Renee Balibar and their English counterpart, Tony Bennett. (From Chapter 1)
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ItemExplorations in curiosity: breadth and depth of interest curiosity styles( 1985)Educational writers have often extolled the "natural curiosity" of the young child and then lamented its demise as the child has proceeded through formal schooling. Some writers have suggested programmes whereby that natural curiosity can be nurtured and ripened rather than allowed to die. This thesis explores the construct of curiosity isolating those elements which both provide a fruitful synthesis of current knowledge, and also generate further understanding of human curiosity. Examination of the ways in which the term curiosity has been used in the research literature indicates that a construct of curiosity subsuming two distinct styles has the potential to integrate what is currently known and also to provide direction for further research. The two styles suggested by review of the literature are breadth of interest curiosity, an orientation towards seeking varied and changing experience, and, depth of interest curiosity, an orientation towards investigating new ideas, events and puzzling phenomena. Prominent among theories which have attempted to explain the processes which occur when curiosity is aroused, are the "optimal arousal" and "cognitive" theories. One representative of each is examined in detail with particular attention given to isolating the essential differences between them. A third theory considered, and one not usually linked with theories of curiosity, is "differential emotions" theory. With its emphasis on emotion processes as key motivational variables, and its notion of affective-cognitive structures, this theory provides a comprehensive framework which when applied to an analysis of curiosity, offers important insights into the processes operating when curiosity is aroused. Within this framework the two curiosity styles represent the operation of different affective-cognitive structures. In order to establish the validity of these proposals as to the nature of curiosity a number of empirical studies was undertaken. The factorial structure of current measures of curiosity for adults was examined, and using the results of that examination a new scale, the Two Factor Curiosity Scale, was constructed specifically designed to measure the two factors of breadth of interest and depth of interest curiosity. A number of validation studies for this scale are reported. The internal structure of the Two Factor Curiosity Scale was examined through the application of factor analytic techniques and the factor structure of the scale was found to match the predicted structure. In a further study the scale's construct validity was assessed by investigating the relationships between scores on the breadth and depth components, and scores on a widely used occupational interest inventory. The Two Factor Curiosity Scale was shown to have construct validity. The nature of the two curiosity styles as affective-cognitive structures was also investigated through examining the pattern of basic emotions reported in situations representing both breadth and depth of interest curiosity. Important similarities and differences in the pattern of emotions associated with each curiosity style further confirmed the validity of this two factor formulation of curiosity.