Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe triple-I model of continuing development in school communities( 1984)The Triple-I Model of Professional Development was first aired in the James Report (England, 1972) and developed by the Research Unit of the School of Education, Bristol University, under the direction of Dr. Ray Bolam. This Pilot Study- is an initiative of the Catholic Education Office of Victoria. The research project is an illuminative study of the Triple-I Model of Continuing Development Programmes of fourteen Catholic Parish Primary Schools, over a period of two years. It is assumed in this model of continuing development that schools are groups of people engaged in an educational enterprise. Positive outcomes have resulted in the development and sharing of personal resources within these school communities. Within this context, the teacher moves more surely through the INITIATION, INDUCTION and IN-SERVICE (Triple-I) phases of personal and professional development. This report concludes with recommendations and suggests further research, particularly in the area of resource processes for school principals.
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ItemThe history of the development of specialist teaching training programmes for teachers of migrant children, 1947-1973( 1983)Information concerning the development of specialist teacher training programmes for teachers of migrant children is fragmentary, being scattered through some 130 published and unpublished documents. The aim of this thesis has been to present, with some degree of order and continuity, that information in a single volume. The resulting compilation is largely descriptive, though some analysis and interpretation could not be avoided. To supplement and to substantiate some of the data collated from the numerous documents, the experiences of a number of teachers who have taught significant proportions of migrant children between 1947 and 1973 have been related. Some of these experiences were gathered by means of a questionnaire which was completed by teachers who had responded to advertisements placed by the writer in The Sun (August 4, 1983) and The Age (August 15, 1983). The advertisements are included as Appendix A.1, and the questionnaire as Appendix A.2. Other experiences were gathered by means of personal interviews with a number of teachers. A full list of all persons from whom information was gathered appears as Appendix A.3. The paper concentrates on the development of specialist teacher training programmes within the Federal and State education systems, with only brief mention of developments within the Catholic education system. Such concentration is not intended to reflect a view that efforts made by the Catholic Church towards the problems of migrant children are insignificant. Indeed, the Catholic schools bore a very substantial share of the influx of migrant children and faced immense educational difficulties as a result, yet they succeeded in making as good a job as possible under the circumstances. Because the history of developments within the Catholic education system is a considerable area on its own, and because much material in that area has already been documented by Carmel O'Dwyer (Responses of Government and Catholic Educational Authorities to the influx of migrants, 1950-1960, with special reference to the experience of a selected group of schools conducted by the Victorian Sisters of Mercy),1 Michael Elliot (Migrant Education in Fitzroy, 1965-1975),2 and Denis Moore (The initial response to the migrant presence in four inner suburban Christian Brothers' schools as revealed in the inspectors' reports and other available sources),3 those developments are not included in this history. The population elements to which the discussion refers to as 'migrants' are those people from 'non-English speaking' origin, excluding Aboriginals. 1. Unpublished Master of Education Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1977. 2. Unpublished Master of Education Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1977. 3. Unpublished Master of Education Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1981. The introductory chapter briefly outlines the Federal Government's immediate steps to provide some training for teachers of adult migrants, and serves to highlight the official indifference outlined by Chapters II, III and IV, to the needs of training for teachers of migrant children until the late sixties when short in-service training courses were introduced. Chapter V traces the history of these short courses. Chapter VI presents the development of in-service teacher training under the Child Migrant Education Programme, the development of some tertiary courses leading to awards, and the development of pre-service courses, all of which take place in the emerging notion of 'multiculturalism'. The initial assumption levelled at teachers of migrant children was that no special training in migrant education was necessary because no special effort was necessary to teach migrant children. If teachers were kindly and understanding, and approached the problem with good sense, migrant children in their care would be rapidly assimilated. Requests for specialist help were made as early as 1954, but a general lack of appreciation of the problem by administrators ensured that these requests were unheeded. The contents of the Haines Report and the Dovey Report in the late fifties vindicated the belief that teachers of migrants did not require special training. The Dovey Report in particular lulled disquiet about the problems of migrant school children, for the four years immediately following its release witnessed only a few ad hoc and unco-ordinated attempts to draw attention to the need for teacher training. By the mid-sixties, however, a number of changes in educational thought were responsible for some new developments in migrant education. It became a public issue, and a number of surveys highlighted its needs. The result was the introduction in Victoria in 1968 of some short in-service teacher training courses. The inadequacies of these courses were soon felt. A survey conducted in New South Wales in 1969 prompted the Commonwealth Government to assume responsibility for the development, management and financial control of child migrant education. Financial assistance was provided to cover the cost of special training courses for teachers, in the method of teaching English as a foreign language. These four-week courses were introduced in 1970. At the same time, and in the setting of a developing notion of multicultural education, the first specialized teacher training course in migrant education to be offered by an Australian tertiary institution was developed. This course led to the award of the Diploma of Migrant Teaching, and commenced at Armidale Teachers' College in 1973. By the end of 1973, some other tertiary institutions were developing graduate and pre-service courses. The history of the development of specialist teacher training programmes obviously does not end in 1973. That year was chosen as the cut-off date for this history for two reasons. Firstly it was, as stated previously, the year in which the first specialized course was offered by an Australian tertiary institution. Secondly, by 1973 the stage was set, in terms of an awareness of the urgent need for pre-service and in-service teacher training,, for the developments that were to take place from 1973 to the present time.4 4. Cf. L. Sislov, Conceptions of Bilingual Education; the contexts in which conceptions emerge and certain practical pedagogical initiations emerging therefrom in Australia and other countries. Unpublished Master of Education Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1982, Chapters 9 and 10.
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ItemAn ethnographic analysis and survey of specific attitudes of physical education teachers( 1984)Stage One utilizes an ethnographic approach by researching four teachers of physical education who graduated from Melbourne University in 1960, 1965, 1970 and 1975. Case studies were written on the four subjects. The teachers differed in their attitudes towards students with the more experienced teachers who were married and had children displaying a more caring and concerned disposition towards their pupils. It was evident that throughout his career a physical education teacher will display varying degrees of enthusiasm for his work, with the experienced teachers in this study being more enthusiastic. In addition they did not rely on strong disciplinary methods and had gradually moved away from a basic survival and control tendency which was a characteristic of the less experienced teacher. Generally, the more experienced teacher had greater job satisfaction than his less experienced counterpart. Ideas, principles, and hypotheses were generated from the ethnographic work in stage one and were used to formulate the traditional research attempted in stage two of this study. Thirty-six teachers of physical education from Education Department Secondary Schools within Victoria responded to the survey (85 percent response vote) which sought information concerning teacher attitudes, teacher enthusiasm and teacher reactions to particular issues central to their function as teachers of physical education. Data from the questionnaires was computed by the use of the Statistical Package for Social Science (Nie et al 1975). Analysis of the questionnaires involved the following statistics; mean, standard deviation, percentage, t-test and Pearson r correlation coefficients. The results revealed that the experienced physical education teacher who is married and has children will display a different set of attitudes towards the children whom he teaches than the less experienced, unmarried teacher of physical education. The enthusiasm level of teachers of physical education for their work varied greatly throughout their career. However, all teachers of physical education appear to follow the same pattern of changes in levels of enthusiasm, with subjects showing increased enthusiasm in early and late years of teaching and a drop in the level off enthusiasm in mid-career. This drop in the level of enthusiasm in mid-career seems due mainly to an increased emphasis by the teacher to his personal and family commitments.
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ItemInvolvement and influence in decision-making as factors affecting job-satisfaction: a case-study involving selected secondary school teachers( 1983)This thesis, using a case-study approach, aimed to investigate a number of questions concerned with the relationship between participation in decision-making and job-satisfaction of secondary school teachers. Decisional influence and involvement were seen as two important dimensions of participation: (i) involvement, which may be perceived through frequency of consultation and/or attendance at meetings, and (ii) influence, which requires an appraisal by the teacher of his role in affecting the decisional outcome. Job-satisfaction was viewed both as a global concept and as a multidimensional concept. Particular aspects of a teacher's job, which were capable of measurement in terms of job-satisfaction and participation in decision-making, were selected and correlated with perceived overall job-satisfaction. These aspects were then grouped under the following criteria: Curriculum Planning and Adaptation; Classroom Management; Arrangement of the School Instructional Program; and General School Organisation. Some key questions emerged and were applied over each of the above criteria. (i) Are teachers who are more involved in decision-making likely to display higher levels of satisfaction? (ii) Are teachers who are able to exert higher levels of decisional influence likely to display higher degrees of satisfaction? Further through considering that the desire to participate in decisions may not be uniform, an approach based on the decisional discrepancy model of Belasco and Alutto enabled these additional questions to be investigated over each particular criterion: (i) Are teachers who are satisfied with their perceived level of decisional involvement likely to display a higher degree of satisfaction? (ii) How does a teacher's satisfaction with his perceived level of decisional influence relate to his degree of satisfaction with a particular criterion? From these questions developed a series of hypotheses which were subsequently tested for statistical significance. Although using a sample size of only thirty teachers did restrict the possibility of making any definite statements, results seemed to indicate that merely increasing the level of involvement or the level of influence in decisions is not a panacea for enhancing satisfaction for all criteria. Further the degree of satisfaction perceived with the levels of decisional involvement and/or influence did not seem to affect the level of criterion satisfaction in all cases. The results of this thesis are discussed in Chapter 6 in terms of their implications for administrators regarding models of organisational structure which may facilitate and increase the effectiveness of decision-making processes. Through taking into account (i) the levels of decisional involvement and influence, and (ii) the degree of satisfaction perceived with those levels of participation, possible outcomes resulting from adjusting teachers' levels of participation may be predicted and viewed in terms of their effects on the satisfaction levels of teachers.
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ItemUses made of students' writing: implications in terms of language and learning( 1980)Students in our schools do a great deal of writing - writing has always been regarded highly in our educational system. We, as teachers, are responsible for giving our students most of the writing that they do and, because of this, we need to answer some pertinent questions: e.g. Do we know why we give our students the writing? Are we aware of where writing fits in the overall learning process of our students? Is what we are actually doing in the classroom with respect to our students' writing the same as what we think we are doing? This study is concerned with questions such as these in order to determine what is current practice, and to critically discuss such practice in terms of its impact on the learning success of students. The relationship between thought and language is intricate, but there is evidence that these have different genetic roots and develop differently; at certain stages, their curves of development meet. Word meanings may be. viewed as the overlap of thought and speech, and it is through word meanings that there is transition from thought to words. Written language requires a higher level of abstraction than spoken language. There is a reliance on formal meanings of words, and more words are needed than with speech, due to the absence of a communicating partner whose knowledge of the current subject can be pre-supposed. The communication is meant for a person who is not present or who may even be imaginary; motives for written language differ from those for spoken language. Different types of language can be discerned. James Britton categorized language as being transactional, expressive or poetic, where the purpose of the language differs in each case. Language closest to the students' everyday speech is expressive, yet there is evidence the predominant language demanded of secondary school students is transactional, and this demand increases as the student moves up the school. If language plays, a central role in students' learning, what are the consequences of this? There is also evidence that, as the student moves through the secondary school, the teacher is seen increasingly as almost the sole audience for the writing. What impact does this have? What then, are the uses made of students' writing? Why do teachers set it? How do they mark it? What uses are made of it by teachers after they have marked it and handed it back? Two research reports are considered in detail which focus on such issues in order to determine what is happening across the curriculum at about middle secondary school level. The first, by Douglas Barnes and Denis Shemilt, made use of an open questionnaire. Factor analysis was employed to establish patterns. Replies were seen as falling on a dimension which was called the Transmission-Interpretation dimension. The researchers further hypothesized by extrapolating from teachers' attitudes to writing in order to reconstruct their attitudes to knowledge and learning. The second research report resulted from a survey conducted by the present writer. A closed questionnaire was circulated to teachers of middle secondary level in twelve schools and the replies were factor analyzed. Two factors were discussed in detail; for both factors, there was evidence that patterns in responses closely matched the pattern obtained by the Barnes-Shemilt study. Having obtained some knowledge of language types expected or demanded, audiences provided for students' writing and the uses made of the written work, the implications in terms of language and learning are discussed.
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ItemThe role of the teacher education officer in a country regional office( 1982)Policy statements on decentralization of the Education Department of Victoria preceded the establishment of educational regions, initially on a trial basis, in 1972. The establishment of the Australian Schools Commission and the granting of autonomy to teachers' colleges led to changes in the administration of pre-service and in-service training for teachers. In recognizing these changes the Education Department established positions for teacher education officers in the regions . Few of the duties proposed for teacher education officers had been made the direct responsibility of the regional director. The practice of regionalization was new to Victorian education, and an opportunity was provided to investigate a group of persons across the state located in decentralized units. As a divisional representative in a regional office the teacher education officer had a dual responsibility to the division and to the region. The administration of in-service development programs and the performance of other duties of teacher education officers provided a focus for this study. This study concentrated on country teacher education officers and looked at the task requirements, job specification and perception of performance for these officers. A number of possibilities were suggested for the study. Because of the small number of individuals in the group a field study was chosen. The group of teacher education officers was scattered across the state and operated from regional offices. Material was collected using a questionnaire and a telephone interview. Because of the small number of subjects in the study, it was not possible to use statistical analysis on the findings. The information provided in the study is of a descriptive nature.
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ItemThe media campaign on oversupply of teachers, Victoria 1979-1981( 1985)This thesis examines some print media reporting of the issue of teacher surplus in Victorian Schools over a three year period (1979-1981). The three Melbourne daily newspapers (The Sun, The Age and The Herald) have been the source of most of the material on which this thesis is based, the material being drawn chiefly from special feature articles, news reports and editorials. The Australian, The National Times and Women's Weekly have also been considered because they have helped to place media reporting of Victorian educational issues into a national context. An examination of this material shows that State education has received a very bad press. Indeed there is evidence of a well-planned and carefully orchestrated campaign to create a crisis of confidence in the State System. There are two phases that can be identified in the media campaign. In the first phase (1979) emphasis was given to the problem of oversupply of teachers, and there were frequent reports on issues such as funding cuts; the teacher glut; the re-introduction of tertiary fees; and drastic cuts in teacher training programs. In the second phase of the campaign (1980-1981) the emphasis shifted from the issue of over-supply to the issue of the quality of State school education. In the print media, teachers came under attack and were constantly portrayed as militant, striking, unprofessional people whose incompetence and insubordination had caused a general breakdown of authority. This thesis seeks to establish that print media reporting of State education in the period (1979-1981) can be read as a campaign to discredit the teachers in the State System. A case is made that deliberate strategies to distort meaning were used by the media and these are examined. The media reports on oversupply are compared with the information given in official publications, and there are significant differences that have been noted. The influence of media reporting on the formation of public opinion is considered and it is concluded that the media has a significant influence. The thesis seeks to explain the purpose of this sustained anti-State education campaign by considering the relationship between the expansion of the private school system and the crisis of confidence in State education. The campaign on oversupply softened public opinion to accept a steady shift in funding from the public to the private sector, the termination of the studentship system, and drastic cuts to intake levels for teacher training. This thesis argues that the aim of the campaign on oversupply was to achieve acquiescence in the phasing down of opportunities for social mobility in a time of economic recession.