Faculty of Education - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 4 of 4
-
ItemChildren's adjustment to the first year of school( 1994)The aim of this study was to determine whether children's adjustment to the first year of school was influenced by the number of transition activities conducted by schools. The study was undertaken in a number of state-run primary schools in the Melbourne Metropolitan Region and comprised two stages of inquiry. Stage 1 of the study involved 100 randomly selected schools in a telephone survey to identify the type and number of transition activities conducted by schools. This stage provided essential background information for the selection of schools for the second stage of the study since no documented accounts of the type and number of transition programs conducted by Melbourne or Victorian schools could be located. Results of this preliminary study revealed considerable variety in the type and number of transition activities reported by schools prior to, and following, the commencement of school, involving children, parents, families, and collaboration between staff at the school and preschool levels. Stage 2 of the study involved 203 children from four metropolitan schools. The schools were selected on the basis of the number of transition activities they conducted. Children's adjustment to school was measured after eight weeks of schooling using the Social Skills Rating System. Forms were completed by teachers and parents, and children's adjustment was rated in the domains of social skills, behaviour, and academic competence. Additional background information was sought from parents regarding the child's family, previous preschool experience and whether or not the child commenced school with a familiar playmate. The results indicate statistically significant associations between children's adjustment to the first year of school and numbers of transition activities conducted by schools. In addition, there were significant associations between adjustment and children's preschool experiences, as well as the presence of a familiar playmate in the same class.
-
ItemCountry Access: a contemporary history: the investigation of an arts education programme at the Victorian Arts Centre( 1994)This study offers a history of the Victorian Arts Centre Country Access programme. The study explores the relationship that exists between education and the performing arts, as experienced by participants in the Victorian Arts Centre Country Access programme: teachers, students and artists. Data related to the programme have been collected over a twelve year period from 1982 to 1994. To describe and analyse the programme within its broadest contexts, the study first considers historical and other contextual data (the "grand tour") before specifically focussing on particular aspects of the programme (the "mini tours"). The study identifies and explores factors such as the role of teachers, artists, workshops, performances and community involvement in the development of learning and appreciation in an art education programme. It explores the relationships that exist between "creation", "appreciation" and "re-creation"; with particular emphasis on a consideration of the contributions, roles and perspectives of teachers and artists. The study attempts to identify and consider the relationships that exist between factors which contribute to long-term learning and appreciation in the performing arts i.e. to consider the relationship that exists between education and the performing arts.
-
ItemThe implementation of the English language framework P-10: a case study( 1994)The following case study examined and evaluated a teacher's perception of the influence of the implementation of an externally mandated innovation, the English Language Framework P-10, in a Victorian outer metropolitan primary school in order to determine the factors that fostered/hindered implementation within that particular context. To assist in this analysis and to verify its results, a comparison was made between this innovation's implementation and the successful implementation of Integrated Curriculum. The purposes of the study were to 1. evaluate the implementation of the Framework by the teacher in the study; 2. analyse the factors which affected this implementation; and 3. determine the subsequent implications for the implementation of future innovations in the same context. Because the findings of the study were context dependent, large generalisations about aspects of the change process were not expected to emerge from the study's conclusions. Rather, the study sought to provide an understanding of change within this particular context. For such reasons, a case study approach based on the axioms of the 'naturalistic paradigm' were employed. This mode required that the design 'emerge' as the study progressed. Each subsequent phase of data collection was therefore based on the salient elements which emerged through interviews, observations and/or document analysis. The study's conclusions find that the largest hindrances to the implementation of the Framework arose from its failure to address the teacher's specific needs; its lack of clarity due to diffuse goals and vague means of implementation; and a lack of external support in the form of materials, consultants and professional development courses. The implications of the study question the feasibility of externally mandated innovations which fail to address a particular school's situation and suggest that a combination of individual and institutional development which supports change initiated and enacted at the local level would be the most beneficial for this study's site and others like it.
-
ItemActive participation in the emergence of musical phenomena: a commentary and guide( 1994)It is intended that this work be used by students of music, and specifically, by students of conducting. For that reason, it is both epistemological commentary and developmental guide. Part A of the study identifies a perceived deficiency of artistic feeling in contemporary musical life. It argues that human consciousness is a continuum which, as it evolves, develops modes of thinking which it believes to be appropriate for human existence in the world at this time, and further, that the history of humankind is, at the same time, a contraction of consciousness rather than, as is commonly thought to be the case, an expansion. The commentary argues, correlatively, that in seeking freedom from dependence, consciousness has not only developed thinking which it believes to be applicable to all human endeavour, but has unwittingly accommodated modes of thinking which are singularly inappropriate for the creation of artistic as distinct from acoustic phenomena. The discussion centres around the cognitive confusion in formal education and in musical life generally, a situation which, it is contended, has grown out of failure firstly, to recognise the abovementioned cognitive distinction, and secondly, to formulate epistemological questions in a manner which might lead to the explication of musical knowing, or that which enables us to be musical prior to any speculation about what music is. Part B of the study, which grew out of a period of phenomenological research, takes the form of a corrective to the hidden presupposition that musical artistry is an expression of self dependent on unconscious inspiration rather than a liberation of potentially perfect, and therefore, objective tone-forms, whose actualization in sound is reliant on conscious acts of imagination leading to intuition. For musical purposes, the retrieval of this lost but essential mode of thinking is possible only through the acknowledgment of a more capacious, qualitative concept of knowing, and in the systematic education of previously neglected inner faculties. As a method, Part B of the study is an experiential response to the questions, 'How does a musician know a musical tone?' and, 'Can this knowledge be drawn on to enhance performance?'