Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemIdeology critique and the production of meaning : a critical approach to selected urban education material( 1989)Ideology critique, when applied by educational research to the ideational content of curriculum materials, has evoked negative connotations of partiality and bias, mis-representation of social reality, and ultimately, of untruth. This thesis attempts to assert a more positive sense of "meaning production" for curriculum critique and shift emphasis away from representation towards signification. Part 1 reviews the management of questions of ideology and education by the sociology of school knowledge and curriculum research. I argue in Chapter 1 that strategies of ideology critique, along structuralist and culturalist lines of difference, have inadequately addressed issues of critical subjectivity, hegemony, and social transformation that is posed by radical education. Four curriculum studies of text book analysis are discussed in detail, in terms of their attachment to the sociology of school knowledge and in terms of the "bias and balance" discourses that they produce. Meaning production is used to enhance, rather than displace, practices of ideology critique, in ways that the case study analysis seeks to develop. The urbanism kit that is analysed in Part 2 is undertaken as a means to ground these issues, rather than to render a consummate curriculum analysis. Critical reading of the case study materials in Chapter 2 is enabled by the urban theory of Manual Castells. His ideology critique of urbanism and reformulations of urban system, urban planning, and urban social movements, are utilised to the extent that theoretic productions of the case study materials in Chapter 3 are analysed in terms of their constitutive discourses, rather than in terms of determinations about whether they are biased or ideological. Chapter 4 examines this process of signification further. Our inquiry shows that not only are understandings about "the city" produced, but, discourses about knowledge-production and about individual subjects are set up at the same time. Analysis of the case study material also indicates that balance is not necessarily built-in as a result of a commitment to provide diverse expert opinion. This has implications for those practices of curriculum criticism and curriculum construction which attempt to locate and redress bias as well as promote critical thinking. The directions suggested here are disposed towards problematising categories of analysis, especially categories such as "society" and the "individual", and towards opening up questions about what is produced as knowledge.
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ItemThe decentralisation of curriculum decision making in Australia : developments and effects in three states( 1988)The decentralisation of educational decision making and the involvement of a wider range of participants in decision-making processes have been key features of the administration of education in Australia over the past two decades. Among the arguments supporting reforms to the centralised education systems in Australia was the belief that decentralisation would lead to the development of curricula more suited to the needs of students. However, the relationship between changes in the control of curriculum decision making and the nature of the curriculum has not been well researched. This study was designed to address this deficiency. The freedom of teachers to make decisions about the curriculum is constrained by many factors. These can be grouped into a number of 'frames': the system, school, community and individual. The system frame refers to the influence of educational offices and assessment authorities; the school frame is concerned with the role of different school-based personnel such as administrators and faculty coordinators; the community frame refers to the participation of parents or other community members; and the individual frame is concerned with how individual teachers' values or epistemologies might translate into curriculum practices or preferences. These frames relate to different types of decentralisation that have emerged to a lesser or greater extent in Australia: regionalisation, school-based decision making, teacher-based decision making and community participation. This study sought to address the effects on the curriculum of types of decentralisation by examining the relative influence of the four frames. Three States, which had experienced different degrees of decentralisation, were selected for historical and current comparison and within each a number of schools were selected for case study. The schools were grouped according to their administrative and curricular styles, and according to teachers' perceptions of the influence of the community. Within schools, teachers were grouped according to their epistemological views. Data were collected through the administration of questionnaires and through interviews with teachers and administrators. The analyses revealed that in the program in practice there were considerable similarities in teachers' responses. Notwithstanding this, the system, school and individual frame were important influences on the curriculum. There was little evidence that the community was directly affecting curriculum decision making, although this frame did have an indirect influence. In the ideal program, the State differences were reduced and the school differences almost completely disappeared. On the other hand, teachers' epistemological views continued to be associated with the curriculum variables measured and teachers argued that the community should have somewhat greater influence than it had in practice. Among the findings reported, it was found that teachers in the most centralised system, in more tightly coupled schools and with a 'technicist' epistemology were, compared with their counterparts in decentralised systems, in loosely coupled schools and with an 'hermeneutic' epistemology, more likely to favour what might be called traditional curriculum structures and teaching practices.
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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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ItemAn evaluation of the effectiveness of a rational emotive parent education programme( 1988)The effects of a rational-emotive parent education programme were studied on forty eight parents from a nonclinical population. The study employed a pre-test post-test control group design to investigate the effects of the Rational Parenting Programme which had four main goals with a dual emphasis on the mental health of the parent and the mental health of the child - helping parents develop emotional responsibility, rational discipline, rational thinking traits in their child, and rational problem solving. Four groups of dependent variables were studied: parent irrationality, parent emotionality, parent perceptions of child problems and the perception of participants' parenting by their spouses. Parent emotions studied were trait anxiety, state anxiety, self downing, anger, guilt, discomfort and wellbeing. Parent irrationality was measured by the Belief Scale which was further validated in the study. Validation evidence for the Belief Scale included findings that (a) the total scale correlated significantly with all emotional measures, (b) the Low Frustration Tolerance subscale with perceived child anxiety, and (c) the Low Frustration Tolerance and Self Worth subscales correlated with the spouse dissatisfaction measure. Results of the study showed that the Rational Parenting Programme was effective in reducing parent irrationality on the overall irrationality measure. Significant effects were found for each subscale of irrationality, with changes in Low Frustration Tolerance showing the strongest effect followed by changes in Self Worth and Demandingness. The results also showed that the Rational Parenting Programme was effective in reducing guilt in experimental group subjects and, for those parents with moderate to high entering levels of anger and state anxiety, the programme was effective in reducing levels of those two negative emotions. No group intervention effects were found for trait anxiety, self downing and wellbeing. No significant group intervention effects were found for the child or spouse variables, and no interaction effects were found between treatment effectiveness and the variables of gender, educational level and participation/nonparticipation of spouse in the programme. There were no differences in intervention effects between two experienced leaders. In experimental group subjects, changes in parent irrationality were found to be correlated with changes in emotions, namely guilt, self downing and trait anxiety, which were associated with changes in Self Worth and Low Frustration Tolerance. Exploratory findings from a ten month follow-up showed that both the changes in parent irrationality and the changes in guilt, self downing, trait anxiety were maintained. Additional changes found at follow-up in association with changes in parent irrationality were changes in discomfort and changes in the number of perceived child problems. This study adds to our understanding of the role of irrationality and emotional stress and in particular demonstrates that RET is a useful intervention in modifying parental negative emotions. Implications of these findings for future research are presented.
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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 adaptation of the Irish Christian Brothers' education system to Australian conditions in the nineteenth century( 1988)This thesis argues that the Irish Christian Brothers successfully adapted their denominational system of education to Australian conditions in the nineteenth century. Initially, the Brothers brought an elementary system which they extended to superior or advanced education to provide the lower middle-class Catholics with opportunities for upward social mobility. The commitment of the Christian Brothers to denominational education suited the Catholic bishops in Australia, so the adaptation to the needs of the Church required little or no change in the policies of the religious order. By the end of the century, the Catholic Church in the colonies had taken a course of action to set up a denominational system completely separate from the State; the Irish Christian Brothers and other religious orders presented the bishops with the means of pursuing such a course. The first small contingent of Brothers arrived in Sydney in 1843 but remained only four years, mainly because of a difference of opinion between the Irish order and the English Benedictines. When the second mission of Christian Brothers arrived in Melbourne in 1868, they brought with them a system of education which was thoroughly religious and which had been already adapted to meet the needs of the poor in Ireland since 1810. Their system was mainly derived from the French de la Salle Brothers' educational system (as set out in Conduite des Ecoles, 1733). As most of the Melbourne Catholics were of Irish descent and were poor, both Goold and the Irish Christian Brothers believed that the system would readily adapt to Australian conditions. In this sense, the process of adaptation was relatively uncomplicated. In Ireland, the system had evolved from being in direct opposition to the national system to being an independent system based on specially prepared textbooks and on pedagogical methods developed by the order. In the colonies, the system in a constant state of evolution. (From Introduction)
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ItemResource and support of educational leaders( 1989)Concern about the absence of an integrated approach to the provision of resource and support for educational leaders, is a recent phenomenon in the Australian educational scene. This concern is reflected in an emerging awareness of the need to emphasize recruitment, selection, induction, and continuing development processes for all key leaders in schools, especially for principals. The purpose of this research was to identify and critically appraise current theories and practices related to the effectiveness of educational leaders, and within this context to investigate leadership training through the examination of a range of interventions which aimed to assist leaders to perform maximally. Specifically, the ethnographic investigation reported here, began with a critical assessment of relevant overseas initiatives, as well as of Australian leadership training programs, and included a six-year longitudinal study, based on insights gleaned from recent research and from personal, practical experience. Evaluation of the outcomes of this project provided a measure of the effectiveness of this uniquely structured provision of resource and support for a number of school principals in this State of Victoria. Thus, this report presents an overview of the current literature on leadership, addresses current issues about the exercise of leadership in organisations generally, focuses on the personal and professional development of educational leaders, and highlights the importance of training resource providers. Finally, this document includes a strategic plan for a sequential, staged-process which introduces teachers to leadership understandings, identifies potential leaders, exposes new leaders to basic theory and practice, and provides an on-going, personal and professional development continuum for practising educational leaders.
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ItemQuintilian: education, language and virtue( 1988)The thesis places Quintilian's pedagogical theories as detailed in his twelve books of "The Institutio Oratoria" in their historical and social contexts. It is argued that Greek literature and ideas greatly influenced Rome and, in turn, Quintilian's concept of the ideal orator and his role within Roman society. A case is argued that Quintilian believed the education of the Roman orators should encourage a return to the homeric virtues portrayed in the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is shown that the orators of Rome, from Quintilian's point of view, had developed Greek sophistic attitudes while the Roman philosophers were basically corrupt and immoral. Quintilian's educational programme was designed to reinstate the fostering of virtue as paramount in the orator's activity. An explanation and critical examination of Quintilian's views on the intimate connection between language, virtue and knowledge is carried out. The nexus, in Quintilian's thought, between virtue and rhetoric is discussed. The point is made that Quintilian offers no definition of virtue, but that he believes that morality is learnt through observing a multitude of moral acts within society, and reading and studying moral acts portrayed in literature; only then will the budding orator be equipped to study the presuppositions behind his judgements, when his true belief will be transformed into knowledge of virtue. A particular emphasis is placed on Quintilian's theories on early childhood education and the need for a proper environment for the child over the formative first years of life. It is this stage of a child's life which is critical in his moral and linguistic development. Quintilian's view that bad habits formed in childhood are nearly impossible to erase in later life, retarding the child's moral development, is discussed.
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ItemVictorian school books: a study of the changing social content and use of school books in Victoria, 1848-1948, with particular reference to school readers( 1987-03)The books from which Victorian children learned to read last century held a variety of implicit social and moral values. To many children in isolated, pioneering districts of Victoria, the secular Reader was the principal source of information and ideas. The more advanced of the Irish and British Readers contained a huge variety of factual knowledge in combination with extracts from the best of English literature. Although these imported Readers underwent exclusions, adaptations and revisions, the content remained essentially foreign to colonial Australia, with a pervading moral stance originating in the high-minded intellectual and cultural traditions of Europe. Throughout the nineteenth century, there was undue emphasis on the mechanical aspects of grammar in the elementary school curriculum. In the minds of Victorian educators, the study of grammar was firmly linked with the cultivation of high ideals and an intellectual understanding of life. In reality, the grammar books were sensible and straightforward, but badly used by the poorly-educated teachers. The popularity and cheapness of the Irish and British grammar books prevented the adoption of a number of locally-produced texts. In 1896 Charles Long produced the monthly School papers which were eminently Australian and less literary than the Readers, but which continued to support conservative social values and the concepts of British imperialism. Long’s Victorian readers from 1928 were set in the same mould of Victorian morality, but with an Australian theme: a rural romantic dream of the Australian bush. This series was to dominate Victorian schools for another thirty years. During this period many successful and impressive Australian text-books were written and adopted by the Education Department to meet the needs of a changing curriculum. Centralised control of the school curriculum, from the formation of a Board of Examiners, coincided with a period of enormous colonial expansion and major administrative changes in colonial education. A ‘uniform supply’ of text-books gave some stability to the school curriculum, establishing set standards of work and a range of graded reading material. The scantily-educated teachers depended on the books, and teaching involved excessive drill and learning by rote. The aim was not to entertain, but to develop skills in reading and writing. Inspectors’ reports suggest that much depended on the manner in which the books were used, and there is evidence of successful teaching. The books were comprehensive and cheap but there were problems of supply and distribution which went unresolved, despite brisk local trading and the establishment of book depositories. Isolated rural schools suffered most from inadequate resources and support. The gradual Australianisation of texts and inclusion of items of quality Australian literature gave a sounder basis for learning and stronger cultural identity for young Australians. But even the best of the Australian texts maintained conservative assumptions on class, race, religion, work and morals. The selections from all the principal nineteenth-century British and American writers suggest that the "cultural cringe” in Australia was alive and well throughout the period and that the curriculum was set to maintain the conservative social order, within the structure of a liberal education.
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ItemProvision for the education of Catholic women in Australia since 1840( 1988)An historical perspective of the Religious Orders of women which entered the Catholic education scene in nineteenth-century Australia, and an appraisal of their adaptation to the forces within Australian society which influenced their provision for the education of Catholic women in this country as they operated under the powerful direction of the bishops.