Faculty of Education - Theses

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End date: 1999 × Start date: 1990 × Subject: Education × Subject: English language × Subject: Study and teaching ×

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    Human capital : a case study of the AMEP
    McElgunn, Barry ( 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.
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    The emergence of consonants in severe to profoundly hearing impaired pre-school aged children using hearing aids or cochlear implant
    Sanna, Sarina ( 1997)
    The Nucleus 22 Electrode Cochlear Implant is being implanted in young, severe to profound hearing impaired children with the anticipation that spontaneous speech production will develop more in line with what is expected in normal hearing children This study investigated the early emergence of consonantal sounds in the spontaneous speech production of two groups of pre school aged children. The first group consisted of five children implanted with the Nucleus 22 Electrode Cochlear Implant and using the Multipeak Speech Processor (MSP). The second group of five children wore electronic hearing aids and had at least some aided thresholds in the speech spectrum. The consonantal inventories of each subject, collected over a thirteen month period, were compared within the subject groups, between the subject groups and also to literature discussing consonantal emergence in children with normal hearing. All subjects in this study were found to have increased the number of consonants in their consonantal inventories by the end of the thirteen month period. This result indicated that both devices were of some use to the subjects. Neither group showed a consistently larger increase in the number of new consonants that had emerged by the final inventory. The assortment of consonants emerging in the consonantal inventories of the subjects was also investigated and found to vary more on an individual basis rather than a group basis. However, the results did show that more implanted subjects had the consonants /s/, /w/ and / / in their inventories by the end of the study. More aided subjects had / / and /h/ in their consonantal inventories by the end of the study. Although being an average 12 months older than the aided subjects, more implanted subjects had consonants in their inventories that required the perception of high frequency cues. This study also showed two other interesting trends. Firstly, both subject groups had individuals that did not progress as well as expected. Secondly, the implanted subjects produced the unvoiced stops /p,t,k/ and the unvoiced fricative / / more often than the aided subjects.