Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe struggle to achieve : the Vietnamese experience of secondary schools in working class neighbourhoods of Melbourne, 1986( 1990)Within the vast scope and complexity of the refugee experience this study deals with a simply defined, yet central issue to the settlement of young immigrants from Viet Nam in Australia. That is, the differing impact of personal factors preconditioning attitudes and values towards education, and school ecology on their educational trajectories and social destinations. To answer this question, the location occupied by this immigrant group within the school system was initially determined, and subsequently the influence of school organizational structure and classroom practice on educational performance in these settings was described and explained. Vietnamese pupils, their teachers and peers in 16 randomly selected government high schools in Victoria, and those persons responsible for the child's welfare in Australia provided rich and varied information for analysis. Detailed interpretation of this comprehensive data-base focused on one school representative of the wider sample. The study found that while educational trajectories and social destinations are largely controlled by the working class location Vietnamese youth occupy in the secondary school system, the impact of this setting is mediated by an exceptional determination, on their part, to escape the influence of multiple social factors which influence the outlooks and achievements of children, whoever they may be, who occupy these sites. Despite an heroic commitment by teachers in these schools and the determination of the Vietnamese to exploit, to the maximum, the limited opportunities available to them, the dependence of these young immigrants and their families on education for social advancement renders them vulnerable to failure. The study demonstrates, that despite the illusion of democratized educational theory and practice that these educational settings suggest, the reality is that educational conservative structures mitigate against social advancement. These institutional barriers, it is shown, operate on two levels. Firstly, the comprehensive curriculum plays a central role by disproportionately directing these young immigrants into the theoretical mathematics and physical sciences, a process consecrating them as an academic elite, while at the same time confirming the lowly position they occupy in the social hierarchy of their school and neighbourhood peers. Secondly, the study demonstrates how academic streaming is an aggravating circumstance coming on top of the other inequalities suffered by all children in these settings. Not only do the out-of-school activities of these young immigrants not support their curriculum placement, but teachers tend to misjudge Vietnamese classroom conformity as scholasticism, not passivity. Thus, rather than viewing this exceptional behaviour in working class settings as an indication of the struggle with which these young people have to cope, teacher definition of their school experience sees it as proof of an effective classroom process and of learning taking place. The study concludes that while the actual relationship that exists between the teachers and Vietnamese youth, and the schools they attend and the neighbourhoods these schools serve, remains unchanged, the price the Vietnamese have to pay for perceived scholasticism is loss of control of their immediate school experience and authorship of their own lives.
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ItemHenry Lowther Clarke and educational policy in the Anglican diocese of Melbourne 1903-1920( 1990)The episcopate of Henry Lowther Clarke as fourth Anglican Bishop and first Archbishop of Melbourne in the years 1903 to 1920 saw the most explicit and comprehensive formulation and application of educational policy in the Melbourne Diocese prior to or since that period. In the tertiary sector, there were moves made to establish a Faculty of Divinity at the University of Melbourne, the foundation of the Melbourne College of Divinity and provisions for the theological training of non-matriculated ordination candidates. In the secondary sector of education, thirteen schools were established, acquired or, in some manner, brought under the aegis of the Anglican Church. There was a particular emphasis on the founding of schools for girls. Attempts were made to establish a bureaucratic structure to monitor the acquisition of schools and religious instruction within them. The movement for the introduction of Bible reading integrated into the programme of the State's primary schools continued, having been strongly active during the episcopates of James Moorhouse (1876-1886) and Field Flowers Goe (1887-1901). In the parishes of the diocese, Archbishop Clarke initiated a review of the Sunday School system with teacher training and a common syllabus receiving particular attention. Clarke was also central in the encouragement of the foundation of Anglican free kindergartens in the inner-city region of the diocese. Yet these achievements were not entirely consistent with Clarke's stated objectives. Major influences affecting the partial success of the achievement of objectives are seen in: - the experiences, assumptions and personality of an expatriate bishop elected at the age of fifty; - the nature of Anglicanism in Victoria: its demography, divisions within on issues of churchmanship, its concept of a constitutional rather than absolutist episcopacy, the widespread acceptance of voluntarism and limited financial resources; - the extent of a secularist approach in Australian thought, both in an ideological sense and in the pragmatic sense congruent with the experience of ecclesiastical divisions and antipathy; overt sectarianism, in particular the lack of unanimity or harmony in and between Roman Catholic, Anglican and Protestant faith and order. The widespread sectarianism during the First World War which centred upon Archbishop Daniel Mannix highlights this influential factor. Thus, while describing and recognising the achievements in Anglican educational activity in the years 1903 to 1920, the failure to achieve explicit objectives has to be evaluated and recognised as part of a complexity of factors, not all of which were appreciated by Henry Lowther Clarke.