Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Theses

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    The teaching of history in state-supported elementary schools in Victoria, 1852-1954
    Trethewey, Alan Robert ( 1965)
    The major concern of this thesis, then, is to trace and account for the introduction of History as a subject in 1886, to show its development in an initial period of transition as the implications of the new subject were explored, to follow it through the years of the "New Education" to the time when it became an established and accepted subject, changing little, to examine a period of exciting rediscovery and revision in the early 1930's, and finally, after another twenty years of relative but deceptive calm,to describe the changes which led to the introduction of Social Studies at the expense of History, Geography and Civics in 1954.
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    The effect of evolutionary thought upon selected English and American philosophers who influenced educational thought, 1850-1916
    Phillips, D. C (1938-) ( 1963)
    This thesis has a twofold aim. First, I wish to show that the theory of evolution, especially in its Darwinian form, influenced the development of the philosophies of Herbert Spencer in England, and C.S.Peirce, William James and John Dewey in America. Secondly, I wish to examine critically those portions of these particular philosophies that have been of importance to education. It will be seen that one of these aims is essentially historical, while the other is philosophical. As these two aspects of the task are apt to become confused, they have been treated in separate chapters. The basic chapter is the first, for in it the connection between science and other disciplines is investigated. In some of the later chapters it will be shown that thinkers such as Spencer and Dewey pre-supposed that such connections exist. Chapter one is thus devoted to the discussion of key terms such as "scientific laws", "theory of evolution" and "mechanism", whilst Chapter two deals with Herbert Spencer and his place in the history of education, and Chapter three contains a critical examination of Spencer's ideas in the light of points raised in the first chapter. There is a similar arrangement in the chapters on the pragmatists. The period 1850 to 1916 was chosen for investigation because these two dates mark the years of publication of Herbert Spencer's "Social Statics" and John Dewey's "Democracy and Education" respectively. During the intervening years the theory of evolution had remarkable influence on many facets of intellectual life, and it would be surprising to find that education remained unaffected.
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    What arithmetical calculations do people perform?
    Schoenheimer, H. P (1918-1976) ( 1960)
    This study was undertaken in an attempt to discover (a) which skills of calculation are so widely used in the community as to justify teaching for mastery by all pupils, and (b) which skills are used by comparatively few people. The findings are broadly indicative only and are true for only one electoral district; but they are in general accord with previous findings in Australia and abroad: that the variety and complexity of calculation skills demanded by the normal school arithmetic curriculum are very much in excess of those generally required in adult life situations. More specifically, except for people engaged in highly specialized and,/ or clerical work, simple operations involving the four rules in numbers and money, together with some ability - for salespeople - to apply simple percentages to money calculations, made up the great bulk of the arithmetic used. It further appeared that people generally estimate the utility value of the normal arithmetic curriculum much more highly than their own current practice seems to warrant. The whole project is best regarded as a pilot study, the main findings of which are given in the suggestions for further research. Generally speaking, the area covered proves to be very broad, so that the coverage by one person was necessarily thin; the need for further research of a more intensive nature and in more limited areas is very evident.
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    The development of tests for the measurement of cognitive objectives in social studies at the upper primary level
    Allen, Graham J ( 1966)
    The evolution of the school subject Social Studies in Victoria and in the United States of America is traced briefly, and an examination is made of educational objectives which are appropriate to such a subject. Tests are developed to measure achievement of cognitive objectives, encompassing areas named as Knowledge of Terminology in Social Studies, Knowledge of Generalizations in Social Studies, Comprehension in Social Studies, and Reasoning in Social Studies. The final forms of the tests are administered to 287 upper primary school children and descriptive statistics are computed from the results. Factor analysis is applied to the intercorrelations among scores on selected groups of items from the Social Studies tests and a number of marker variables. The sources of variance contributing to scores on the Social Studies tests are examined and some implications are drawn for measurement of cognitive objectives in Social Studies.