Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemSchool organization as an internal teaching context : case studies of two Hong Kong aided secondary schools( 1996)In this study, school organization is investigated as a teaching context from the teachers' perspective. The study investigates the theoretical position that characteristics of the school organization affect teachers' job-related attitudes which, in turn, affect educational outcomes. A review of the literature shows that various characteristics of school organization are related to teachers' attitudes and performance and educational outcomes of schools. In this study, the case study approach is adopted and both qualitative and quantitative research methods are used. The teachers' job-related attitudes of two aided secondary schools in Hong Kong are analyzed. The internal teaching contexts of the schools are then described in terms of structural, cultural and social relations perspectives. Factors of school organization which may affect teachers' attitudes are identified. The findings from this study provide support for previous research into the influence of teachers' working environments or the internal context of teaching on school effectiveness. Implications for efforts directed at improving workplace conditions in Hong Kong secondary schools and an agenda for further research are discussed.
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ItemDisability, education and ethnic families: the changing Greek-Australian experience( 1996)This study set out to examine whether there would be a difference in the attitudes held towards people with disabilities by two different generations of Greek Australians. The first group were those who had spent their formative years in the mother country whilst the second had been born in Australia. It was assumed that the attitudes held would be shaped by both the experience and the communal value system. The working hypothesis was that the attitudes held by the Anglo oriented group of young Greeks would be more akin to the general community than to the Traditional Group. The literature indicates that children raised in a multicultural environment will begin to absorb the values of the dominant society even when their own ethnic group maintains a cohesive set of values and provides a context in which to live a fulfilling life. The literature suggests there are six areas where the Greek tradition might significantly vary from the dominant group. These can be illustrated by the specific questions:- causes attributed to disability, responsibility for care, access to social services, access and participation in mainstream education, access to employment, and the rights to personal development. A survey was undertaken to evaluate the attitudes system of the groups, two of Greek background and one of Anglo-Australians. The results, with two small exceptions confirmed the hypothesis and provided conformation of the proposition that attitudes towards disability are shaped by the cultural context in which one lives and schools need to take into account the structure of ethnic families of Greek background. To maximise the levels of cooperation and communication the family values must be understood and respected. For the schools to assist those with disabilities to achieve meaningful and satisfying lives it is necessary to ensure that the whole family unit benefits.
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ItemSexual harassment and the interplay of masculinities in a secondary school( 1996)This thesis is a qualitative study which draws on elements of feminist post-structuralist theory to research why some boys sexually harass girls in school. In particular, this research explores the interplay of sexual harassment and masculinities. The literature reviewed focuses on the complex and contradictory nature of students' gendered identities and supports the feminist post-structuralist belief that boys are active agents in establishing their identities and that these are organised hierarchically. This study involves the teacher as researcher and the use of ethnographic research methods. It presents the perspectives of five teenage boys who attend the same co-educational school in the Western suburbs of Melbourne and provides as direct evidence to the reader the boys' opinions and beliefs about the sexual harassment of girls by boys at school. The major findings of this research suggest that some boys use sexual harassment in school as a key signifier to position themselves as 'masculine' and that the culture and institutional structure of the school can reinforce this phenomenon.
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ItemTeachers & curriculum: personal mythopoesis and the practical in pedagogy( 1996)This study explores the dynamic between the person of the teacher and work with curriculum. The person is taken to be constituted in narratives. I have, accordingly, utilised a language of myth in order to speak of personhood. Myth is the collective or individual operation of imagination whereby experience is able to be intensely owned. It is this operation of mind that I relate to the ways in which curriculum might be experienced. At issue in this process is the capacity of the person of the teacher to illuminate curriculum material, or to make curriculum a living experience for students. Though my focus is imaginational and mythic, I seek to show - through an intimate study of the inner worlds of six teachers at one school site - that it is at this impalpable level that 'the practical' in pedagogy becomes most significant as a curriculum consideration. By linking the subtle work of imagination to the 'practical intelligence' access is gained to the significance and meaning of personal agency and, in particular, the nature of critique in teacher work with curriculum. This introduces to the familiar theory/practice dichotomy that pervades curriculum thinking, and which tends to disempower the teacher voice, a new and incommensurable perspective. The practical emphasis, by being linked to the personal imaginational work of teachers, breaks out of an encapsulation within the classroom and the profession. Knowledge, represented in microcosm in the curriculum, is shown, via this reconceptualisation of the practical, in its living dimensionality. The imperatives of this living aspect of curriculum experience, identified in source, process, operation, and direction, stand against the different imperatives of instrumental conceptions of curriculum.
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ItemStudent learning with Internet: is it emancipatory?( 1996)Learning is regarded by some educators to be of great value only when it contributes to an enlightened, empowered and emancipated view of the student's role in their own education (Barthes, 1977, Brunner, 1994, Freire, 1972, Grundy and Henry, 1995). Internet is a relatively inexpensive computer technology which some have seen to offer a practical vision of such 'new age' learning (Goodman, 1995). The study took place at a 1500 student K-12 co-educational single campus independent school, south-east of Melbourne, at which the author is a teacher of English and Economics. Since 1994 the school has attempted to integrate Internet computing across the curriculum. One entrepreneurial curriculum investment has been the establishment of a small group of senior students whose interest and technical competence in computer based electronic communication has led the school to license it to take on a key role, with privileges, across the school's computer resources. The challenge was not to perceive the information technology as extending individual instruction, but to examine instructional reform in methods by which students learn in the context of group problem solving and how the computer would be used in this regard (Koschmann, 1994). Largely autonomous and self-evaluating, this School Internet Group (known as the SIG) provided the data for this study. Utilizing an interview based case study methodology (Scheurich, 1995) the study sought to elicit responses from five of the group members relating to their emergent understanding of their own 'SIG-thinking' and its personal significance. The subjects were asked first to characterise SIG-thinking in a metaphor which were treated as complex semantically creative 'signs' that represent a blending of imaginal and symbolic thinking. This metaphoric projection provided a narrative structuring device to each student's story. These subjects' self-defining metaphors became their psuedonyms in their stories. The study was concerned both with the public realm of social interaction and with the private realm of autonomous cognition. The students' stories were incorporated within a narrative analysis in which the concepts derived from theoretical sources and empirical possibilities were applied to the data to determine whether instances of these concepts of emancipation and empowerment were to be found (Polkinghorne, 1995). The narrative style findings of the study may inform school policy at the research site, where a number of associated staff were able to read or sense implications for a loosening of the 'straight jacket of academic success' that restricts resonant, adaptive curriculum reform. The study may be useful for schools considering different principled policies or their own action research in the educational use of computers. For the reader beyond there are four criteria for judging the emancipatory quality of the educational experience.