Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe care of the pre-school child in N.S.W( 1944)THE CARE OF THE PRE-SCHOOL CHILD IN NEW SOUTH WALES. The thesis as presented falls into four definite parts. The first, Section I., is concerned with the history and philosophy of the care of the very young child overseas. As we owe so much, particularly in our educational attitudes, to the "Old Country", an of later years to America also, the relevant developments in these two places have been given. Health, custodial and educational aspects have all been included. The latter part of Section 1 is concerned with philosophical considerations, the modern theories of child care, and their practical applications in that most satisfying and satisfactory environment for the pre-school child, the Nursery School, a development of the twentieth century. Section II, concerned particularly with matters in New South Wales, deals with the two aspects of child-care, Section lIa. with the physical side, Section II b. with the educational provision. Of these, the first emphasises preventive measures, and is concerned with the development of such movements as Maternal and Baby Welfare, the work of the Bush Nursing Association, the Flying Doctor, the Far West Children's Health Scheme and the less romantic but equally essential services of hospitals, clinics, etc.. But in these days other organisations than purely medical ones are being interested in health movements, and so Play Centres too demand a passing word. Section II b. deals with the educational aspect, where more emphasis is placed on the psychological side, though health matters are by no means regarded as unimportant. Here both residential and non-residential facilities available for the pre-school child are reviewed, and the Nursery School is declared to provide the best opportunity for a co-ordinating centre of the interests of the child. The provision made by the State, the Kindergarten Union, the Day Nursery and Nursery Schools Association and the Local Governments surveyed from the point of view of the service each provides for the "whole child"; and conclusions are drawn as to. the value of the provision made for the pre-school child, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Section III. is photographic. Unfortunately, the studies were not taken on my visits, but are due to the generosity of two Nursery School Directors (of the Erskineville Day Nursery and the Free Kindergarten, Maybanke) and my brother, without whose assistance this section would have been very uninspired. Last of all come the appendices containing matters of interest in pre-school work, which from the point of view of perspective could not be included in the main body of the work, yet are of value for reference. Appendix I. shows the educational provision made by the State for. children under the compulsory school age in the more closely settled metropolitan areas. Appendix II. details the provision made by the Kindergarten Union and the Day Nursery and Nursery Schools Association. The long waiting lists emphasise. the inability of voluntary organisations to cope with the problem, even in pre-war days. Appendix III. offers a graded list of toys suitable for pre-school children. Appendix IV. outlines "Emergency" Nursery Courses suggested for the training of staff urgently, needed to supplement the fully trained Kindergarten 'and Nursery School staffs for any further expansion in pre-school care. American and English war-time nursery care is not given in the main part of the thesis as the information was gleaned almost entirely from periodicals and newspaper articles, and one always treats this type of information with reserve, wondering how much of the subject matter is propaganda of some sort, and how much can be accepted as scientific fact. Appendix V. simply contains types of record forms actually in use in the various pre-school institutions.
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ItemThe teaching of French in New South Wales and Victoria 1850-1958( 1958)This thesis is a study of the development of the subject French at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne and in the schools of New South Wales and Victoria. It seeks to show why French was taught in this land so far from France, by what methods it was taught, to whom and by whom it was taught. It was impossible to discover the answers to these questions without studying the growth of the two Universities and in particular the changes of curriculum in their Faculties of Arts, the relationship between the Universities and the schools and the influence of the University Departments of French on French in the schools, the growth of secondary education and the public examination system, and the reforms in the curriculum of the secondary schools in the twentieth century as a result of changes in educational theory and philosophy. Only against this background is it possible to understand the rise and fall of one particular subject.
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ItemApproaching the undiscussable : investigating learning in an educational policy making organisation( 2004)This study investigates the learning culture in the Professional Support & Curriculum Directorate, part of the policy-making section of the New South Wales Department of Education in Australia. It is based on the premise that organisations learn through the collaborative efforts of the staff who work in them. This learning results from an alignment of two theories: the 'espoused' and the 'enacted'. The 'espoused' theory represents the organisation's intent and usually resides in written documents. The 'enacted' theory is demonstrated through the organisation's practice. When these theories fail to align, the organisation's capacity to learn becomes inhibited. The gap between these two theories is 'undiscussable'. It creates tensions that the organisation does not discuss. The participants in this study were staff members located in the Professional Support & Curriculum Directorate. They included administrative and support staff as well educators and the Directorate's leaders. Data were gathered from these staff members using a survey and interviews. By comparing and contrasting their perceptions and experiences of the Directorate's 'espoused' and 'enacted' theories, the study describes the nature of the Directorate's learning culture and its effect on the staff. A model for learning in organisations, derived from the literature, provided the theoretical frame for this investigation. The study identified that the respondents experienced tension in their practice because their 'espoused' theories did not align with the Directorate's 'enacted' theories. This tension represented four 'undiscussables' or processes that hindered its learning: absence of trust, treating knowledge as a product, harmful 'knowledge-power' relationships and a 'failure' to examine critically the educational and socio-political assumptions on which its work was based. The study concludes with a description of the type of learning organisation that the Professional Support & Curriculum Directorate could become if it discussed these undiscussables constructively.
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ItemThe things that remain : reflections on science education at Scots School Albury( 2008)This science curriculum study is sited on Scots School Albury and its predecessor, Albury Grammar School. This study began as a reprise to a curriculum study written by the author in 1948 and a survey in 2005-6 of Scots Alumni memories of their junior general science over fifty years. The survey analysed their perceptions of its purpose and impact relative to other subjects and to the overall education provided by the School. Because early in its history the school insistently saw itself as heir to the English Public School tradition the origins of the Scots tradition of science teaching were sought in 19'11 century English education when 'the Tradition' developed. This wider quest led to an enquiry about the place of science in 19th century English education which found points in common between the classical, liberal teaching of Thomas Arnold and the science-oriented teaching of headmasters at two notable schools, Queenwood College in the middle of the century and Oundle School at the end of the 19th century. The enquiry found that an early hunger for science knowledge manifested in the almost spontaneous rise of mechanics' institutes was later met by municipal technical institutes, and the adventure of the new subject of science in schools, despite a few brilliant exceptions, settled into the pre-professional training that has come to characterise school science. Early in the 20'h century in England, and later in Australia, a General Science movement emerged in protest at uninspired teaching and irrelevant programs for general education. In Australia, from the early writings of George Browne and Roy Stanhope, researchers and educators have pointed ways to get that early sense of adventure back into science teaching. The early science educators such as George Edmondson and Frederick Sanderson stressed methods of practice and application taking precedence before theory to maintain that sense of personal engagement. The things that remain are what reformers urged: strongly felt images that are of powerful but not remote abstractions. At the same time there is an impression of repeated waves of attempted reforms beating against but failing to breach the barriers of academic gloss.
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ItemWhat it means to be a volunteer with the Baptist Community Services of New South Wales( 2001)Stimulated by the recent public and scholarly interest surrounding the International Year of the Volunteer, and a corresponding recognition of limitation in academic explanations of the meaning or significance of volunteerism, this project examines the phenomenon of what it means to be a volunteer with Baptist Community Services of New South Wales (BCS). Using case study methodology, qualitative data was obtained through individual in-depth interviews and focus groups consisting of a representative selection of volunteers, managers and clients of BCS. The project found that whilst academics and research participants alike contribute many relevant and helpful insights in answer to the research question of what it means to be a volunteer with BCS, their perceptions of the issue are noticeably different. Among academics, on the one hand, there is a prevailing big picture or macro conceptualisation of volunteering. Their concepts embrace the whole world of volunteering and are expressed theoretically in the form of paradigms such as the educative one of Lave and Wenger who view the meaning of volunteering in terms of situated learning within communities of practice. On the other hand, the participants deal with the question of meaning at the micro level of everyday lived-experience. They encapsulate the. essence of the meaning with word pictures or motifs, expressed in narrative form, that make their perceptions of meaning more accessible to non-academic people. The macro versus micro view of volunteering is a crucial finding of this investigation. The data shows some key factors in both the role of volunteer and the distinctive features of BCS that contribute to the meaning and identity of being a volunteer with BCS. The role of volunteer with BCS is essentially one of enriching the lives of clients. Volunteers are recognised as experts and are consulted in the areas of their expertise. BCS provides a supportive, encouraging environment with a Christian ethos that recognises an added spiritual dimension to the wellbeing it seeks to promote among clients, staff and volunteers. In this environment there is an emphasis on . functional relationships - and flexible leadership styles. Whilst affirming a balance between the drivers of motivation, namely altruistic service and self-actualisation, BCS pro-actively nurtures the exploration and expression of core values, such as sharing, loving and giving, as significant for the meaning of being a volunteer.
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ItemStudents' attitudes concerning mathematics: a study of the opinions and views concerning mathematics and mathematics teaching held by students in the upper primary and lower secondary schools of New South Wales and Victoria( 1966)From an examination of the relevant courses of study in mathematics and the associated published writings hypotheses were proposed to examine the influence of an emphasis on an inquiry and discovery approach to the teaching of mathematics on the attitudes concerning mathematics of students in the upper primary and lower secondary schools of New South Wales and Victoria (each N = 1000). Emphasis on the use of inquiry methods at the lower secondary school level was found to be associated with students' views that mathematics teaching involved more inquiry and discovery, with students' opinions that mathematics was an open and creative process and with the students' greater interest in mathematics. At the upper primary school level a strong influence of curricular factors was not detected, however, the evidence suggested that the classroom teacher played an important part in the development of attitudes concerning mathematics. The data collected was examined for the influence of several non-curricular factors including the sex of the pupil, and the occupation and the place of residence of the students' father. The sex of the student and differences in the scientific nature and the socio-economic status of the father's occupation were found to be linked with some differences in the opinions expressed by the students concerning mathematics.
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ItemThe development of state-controlled education in New South Wales, 1900-1922: with special reference to the work of Mr. Peter Board( [1950?])On 16th April 1880 the Public Instruction Act was passed by the New South Wales Parliament. This Act, which was sponsored by Sir Henry Parkes, is still today the keystone of the structure of public education in New South Wales. Under this Act a ministry of Public Instruction was established for the first time. State financial aid was withdrawn from denominational schools, and the teachers in the public schools became civil servants. All children between the ages of six and fourteen years were to be compelled to attend school for at least seventy days each half year, and to pay fees of threepence per week. Schools were to be established wherever twenty children could be collected; "provisional" schools were to be set up for an attendance of twelve, "half-time" schools for two groups of ten, and "house-to-house" schools where there were less than ten. Superior Public Schools and High Schools for both boys and girls were to be established for the first time under State control. In the schools, secular instruction was to be given for four hours per day. Included in this "secular instruction" was "general religious teaching as distinguished from dogmatical or polemical theology, and lessons in the history of England and in the history of Australia." (1) Clergymen from all denominations were allowed to teach sectarian religion to their adherents for one hour per week. These are some of the important provisions of the Act, which has had a profound effect on the development of education in New South Wales. On the passing of the Act, sectarian jealousies and bitterness died down after a vociferous but losing battle which had been waged from the beginning of the century. (From Introduction)
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ItemJohn Lawrence Tierney: his contribution to education in Australia( 1985)When John Lawrence Tierney retired from the service of the New South Wales Department of Education in June 1952, few outside his immediate circle knew his name. His forty-odd years of teaching had brought him none of the rewards which come to the most successful of that profession. He had, however, made a noteworthy contribution. For John Tierney was also "Brian James", whose short stories, marked by comic invention and acute observation (especially of idiosyncratic behaviour), had been widely acclaimed since first they began to appear in the Bulletin ten years earlier. In his fifties before he began to take his writing seriously, his earliest themes were of the land. Born and raised on a farm, he had always hankered after a return to the life he knew before teaching. From the very beginning his short stories were compared with those of Henry Lawson, and some eminent critics thought Tierney's surpassed them. A year before his retirement, his first novel, The Advancement of Spencer Button, was published. Two features made it remarkable: its construction (Norman Lindsay referred to it as "one of the few major novels in the country"), and its themes. It was the first Australian novel to take schoolteaching as its subject. Not only was it a full account of the growth and development of public education in New South Wales, from the Public Instruction Act of 1880 until the Second World War, but also it contained much detail on daily life in our schools. Moreover, it was unique in its presentation of the account from the teacher's point of view rather than from the student's. It explained, for the first time, the frustrations and tensions of "the system" of education that had evolved. It was a comic novel, but its purpose was serious. For Tierney, education was central to the health of society, and it was important that it should be properly examined and then made well. Most of his writing after this novel dealt with similar issues. Unfortunately, none of it ever reached its heights. His retirement did not bring him the peace and leisure he had hoped for. He found that much of the desire to write had evaporated. Other circumstances, too, had changed. Those who had advised and encouraged him earlier were less able to do so. The last ten years of his life produced little. In all, the output during his writing career had been comparatively meagre. For this and similar reasons, an accurate assessment of his contribution is not easy - and, in fact, will not be possible until history makes its final judgement on the literary merits of his writing. In the meantime, there are two aspects of his contribution which even the passing of time cannot deny: four decades of dedicated service to the youth of the nation, and a unique novel. These make him worthy of special attention.