Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe impact of the zone based professional development program, "Skill review and professional development", on knowledge, understanding and practice within selected school communities( 1995)While engaged in documenting a retrospective account of a zone based professional development program, Skill Review and Professional Development, which aimed to support school communities in the implementation of skill review and professional development according to the Tripartite Agreement on School Development Planning, I reflected on a statement by Harwayne (1992): 'We take courses. We attend workshops. We read books, We get lots of information. But the really important information comes later on. It comes when we take that seed information back to our classrooms, when we experiment and innovate and invent, when we make it our own. The story really is 'to be continued' (p.337 ). This reflection led to the following questions which drove my investigation: # has the 'seed information' collected during the program been taken back to the school level?; # have school communities been able to 'experiment', 'innovate' and 'invent' in order to make skill review and professional development their own?; and, # in what areas has the zone based professional development program, Skill Review and Professional Development, impacted at the school level? The information gathered to discover the answers to these questions was qualitative in nature and comes from those involved directly with the delivery and implementation of the program. The information draws on what happened at the zone level and what is now happening at the school level. The gathered data took the form of words: written and anecdotal; record and document observations; and transcripts of discussions and interviews, as words captured the spirit of the happenings. The writings of Joyce and Showers (1987), Joyce and Weil (1992), Fullan and Stiegelbauer (1991), Hargreaves (1992), Fullan (1993), Johnson (1993), Guskey (1994) and others have helped make sense of the impact of this program at the school level.
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ItemThe Sisters of Charity: education, independence, church and state( 1993)This thesis establishes the independence of the Sisters of Charity in Australia and examines the implications this had for their work amongst the Catholic community and their relations with the Catholic Church hierarchy. It is a history of the Sisters' response to the needs of the Catholic community, these needs often being determined by governmental action beyond the control of the Catholic Church and its servants. As the first community of Religious Sisters to arrive in the colonies the Sisters ministered to the women convicts of the Female Factory at Parramatta. With the abolition of transportation they moved to Sydney where they enlisted the support of influential citizens in the establishment of St. Vincent's Hospital. Their service to education in Victoria commenced with the Education Act of 1872 and the abolition of State aid. Such conditions led Archbishop Carr of Melbourne to invite the Sisters of Charity to found a community in the city. A consequence of this and other factors was the establishment of St. Columba's College, Essendon. Finally, this thesis considers the Registration of Teachers and Schools Act of 1905 and its influence on the Sisters of Charity in formalising already existing teacher training practices. This was also the case for other Religious Congregations involved in teacher training and education.
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ItemThe pedagogy of St Thomas Aquinas and its significance for contemporary catechetical methodology( 1991)This thesis sets out to achieve two related tasks. First, it aims to extract from the massive corpus of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) a coherent pedagogical theory. The Introduction gives a brief overview of the man in history, sets out the confines of the investigation and establishes a working definition of pedagogy. Chapter One argues that for pedagogy to be effective it must cooperate with the operation of the intellect. It then proceeds to examine St. Thomas's understanding of the operation of the intellect. It also considers the role of the senses in intellection and the notion of the perfection of the intellect. Chapters Two and Three work systematically through St. Thomas's basic epistemology. They analyse his principles of cognition, abstraction, the use of reason, the purpose of knowledge, the divine truth and Catholic doctrine. Secondly, this thesis draws specific (Thomisitic) catechetical principles from this pedagogy. Chapter Four examines St. Thomas's explicit pedagogy. It considers the teacher, potency to knowledge, discovery and instruction. It reviews the notion of pre-existent knowledge, derived and perfected by St. Thomas from the Greek philosophers. It also deals with the letter written by St. Thomas to Brother John on "How to Study". Chapter Five draws thirteen catechetical principles from St. Thomas's pedagogy. It considers the use of intellect, will and reason, teaching and instruction within this catechetical framework. In the process of completing this second task Chapter Six examines a contemporary Catholic catechetical document and evaluates its methodological precepts in the light of Thomisitic catechesis derived in Chapter Five.