Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemDefining the characteristics of a good middle school teacher in an Australian setting( 1995)The purpose of this study is to. identify the characteristics of a middle school teacher that define that teacher as a good teacher in the eyes of their Australian colleagues. A model of the good middle school teacher was developed from the North American literature. This formed the basis for interviews with Australian teachers who have been identified as good middle school teachers by their school community. This has led to the establishment of a model based on the responses from the Australian teachers. The focus centred on the characteristics of the teacher but at times has included reference to curriculum and other structures within the school. The report's results reflect the Australian teacher's approval for child centred teaching but with a subject focus. The teachers feel a need for teachers to retain a passion for a subject area in order to inspire and enthuse their students, but doing this within a context of a curriculum focussed on young people and their needs. This study clearly suggests the strong link between teaching philosophy and curriculum and the need to cater towards the needs of both the staff and students in order to educate successfully.
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ItemMuseum exhibitions : the development and application of a cyclic evaluation model( 1995)This thesis makes a contribution to exhibition evaluation by providing a cyclic model designed to encourage museum professionals to adopt museum exhibition evaluation within an Australian context. The rationale for the thesis is that museums rarely, if ever, undertake systematic evaluations of exhibitions or attempt to understand the nature of the visitor experience. This, it is argued, is firstly because of the lack of appropriate methodological tools and models which can be applied to the museum setting and secondly because of the poor culture of evaluation currently existing within museums. The model incorporates both front-end, formative and summative evaluation within the various stages of the process of developing an exhibition. It proposes the formulation of hypothesis about visitor behaviour and exhibition design issues which can be tested out in future exhibitions, and encourages the sharing of findings within the museum profession. It suggests that Australia should develop, through evaluation studies, its own body of knowledge about visitor behaviour as the visitor experience within an Australian context may be quite different to that in other countries. The Cyclic Evaluation Model was developed by the writer of the thesis both through her role as a facilitator of exhibitions and her study of evaluation taking place in the museum environment in western countries. One stage of the model (Summative Study) has been used to evaluate a specific museum exhibition. Only time will tell if it will be adopted by the museum professsion, and only if and when it is adopted can any assessment be made as to its effectiveness in encouraging the profession in Australia to embrace evaluation techniques.
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ItemHuman capital : a case study of the AMEP( 1995)This study is an investigation of the Human Capital Approach to education in Australia. It examines whether or not the Commonwealth Government is steering education towards the incorporation of policies that invest greater emphasis and resources into human beings as contributors to economic productivity than it invests in their cultural and aesthetic value. The study incorporates the philosophies of the Human Capitalists and how successive Commonwealth and State Governments apply these philosophies in education policy formulation - particularly the provision of English language to adult migrants through the Adult Migrant Education Program in Victoria. The methodology used is a questionnaire of closed and open-ended questions distributed to AMEP teachers. The researcher duly followed up the questionnaire with interviews of four AMEP teachers in an endeavour to shed more light on the reasons behind the responses given by teachers in the questionnaire. The researcher undertook an analysis of the responses in order to investigate whether or not the Commonwealth Government gives primacy to economic objectives of the migration program over its social, cultural and linguistic objectives. The findings are that the AMEP teachers surveyed believe that the Commonwealth Government does emphasize economic objectives over all other objectives of the migration program. A Human Capital approach to education, reflected in the application of Economic Rationalism, is apparent in Australia's education system according to AMEP teachers surveyed and that such has been the case since the late 1970s. The literary works of Schultz, Smith, Dawkins, Piore, Crittenden, Benovat, Green, Pusey, Kennedy, Marginson and Grubb are included in this study. These works form the literature review of the Human Capital approach. As well, the Reports chaired by Karmel, Williams, Kirby, Fitzgerald and Campbell, and a variety of Commonwealth Reports and Working Party Papers into various aspects of education in Australia are represented in an investigation of the application of the Human Capital approach to education in Australia's main education policies. The findings of this research are that the Human Capital approach to education is influencing the AMEP and that this has wider implications for the national education system in Australia. Almost all AMEP teachers surveyed believe the AMEP no longer follows its own National Plan, in which it spells out its aims and objectives, but pursues the Commonwealth Government's primary objective of pursuing the economic aims and benefits of the migration program.