Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemStudent stress : a preliminary investigation into the school-related stress experience of year 8 students, using a hassles and uplifts approach( 1991)This study sought to develop a hassles and uplifts scale as a measure of the school-related stress experienced by year 8 students in post-primary schools. A draft set of 167 items was developed after reviewing other scales that purport to measure stress, reviewing the broader popular literature on stress in young people and the authors informal discussions with year eight students over a number of years. The 167 items were then subjected to a simple consensual validation procedure using a small group of year 8 male and female students. A draft scale of 87 items emerged from this process. The draft scale was administered to 875 year 8 students in ten varying types of schools, including coeducational, single sex girls, single sex boys, urban, nonurban, government and nongovernment. The instrument was administered by suitably briefed classroom teachers. The responses of students were subjected to factor analysis. Preliminary whole-scale analysis indicated a high level of reliability. As a further indicator of the reliability of factors 14 factors were found to replicate across analyses (orthogonal rotation c.f. oblique rotation) of the whole group. The group was randomly split into two subgroups and the the analysis conducted on each subgroup. Eight factors appeared to replicate or substantially replicate across groups when an varimax solution was computed for each subgroup. Similarly, eight factors were found to replicate across subgroups. Key factors emerged from the analysis. It was concluded that, while further work was necessary in followup to this minor trial, a reliable and valid hassles and uplifts scale can be satisfactorily developed for the specific age group of students. Suggestions for the followup work and further research are outlined in the conclusion of this study.
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ItemLiterature and English teaching : a study of literature in the teaching of English at Scotch College, Melbourne( 1991)The first chapter of this thesis provides a personal memoir of my teaching career, and places it in the wider historical context of developments within English teaching in England and Australia. It establishes my own position at the key points of these developments in 1966, 1975, 1980 and 1985 and introduces the main area of interest - the place of literature in the teaching of English. The second chapter concerns the vast amount of writing on the nature and teaching of literature in English. It provides an historical review of the main body of this writing and derives some of its focus from the seminal work of John Dixon in 1966, as well as the Bullock Report of 1975. The vigorous yet sometimes slightly artificial debate on the issue of literature teaching is also examined in the review of the important journal, The Use of English. Chapter Three develops the ideas propounded in some of the writings examined in the previous chapter and provides an analysis of my own experience at Melbourne Grammar School. Chapter Four shows the similarities and differences existing between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar School and details a more critical view of the state of English teaching from 1980 - 1990 at Scotch College. It reviews some of the specific examples of literature teaching and shows the slow progress which has been experienced over a decade within the College. The final chapter brings together the case of Scotch College and reviews possible future progress in the light of perceived difficulties inherent in the structure of the College. The general outlook for English at the College is seen in positive terms and suggestions are provided for further research into both the reading habits of students and the processes involved in the teaching of literature within the current restraints.
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ItemYoung single factory women in 1927 : a study of issues of women and work( 1990)In 1927, a Department of Labour inquiry focussed upon a group of young female metalworkers employed in a Melbourne factory. A range of contemporaries, including the female workers, gave evidence to the inquiry, resulting in recommendations regarding female work conditions. This thesis aims to investigate the process of deliberation which took place at the inquiry. Issues of women and work contained within the resulting report raise questions concerning working women's experiences which have relevance not only to contemporary labour legislation but also to subsequent feminist historical analysis
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ItemAn education to prayer: the establishment and development of a parochial school in the Catholic parish of St. Brendan's Flemington, Melbourne. 1887 -1947( 1990)�� the present system of Catholic Education in Australia developed not from any predetermined plan but as a result of the conflicting forces in educational development in the nineteenth century and the circumstances of the times." In the latter half of the nineteenth century �conflicting forces� and �the circumstances of the times� resulted in the establishing, in 1887, of a Catholic primary school in the inner Melbourne suburb of Flemington. (From Introduction)
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ItemIndependent schools and children of high intellectual potential( 1990)Independent Schools and Children of High Intellectual Potential In the current, rather volatile, educational climate, the community in Victoria is engaged in considerable debate about the putative merits and demerits of the proposed changes to post-compulsory schooling, the consequent flowback to curriculum and methodology in the P-10 years, and the consequences for the nature of our society. It is in this context, on the eve of the implementation of these changes, that this minor thesis proposes that teachers in non-systemic, independent schools continue to need to be made aware of the ways in which students of high intellectual potential might be identified and have their particular needs met within the constraints of the present system, so that the opportunities for the achievement of excellence might be explicitly realized. A survey has been conducted in order to establish, in a broad way, what is being done for children of high intellectual potential in non-systemic, independent schools within a 25-kilometre radius of the GPO, Melbourne. These schools have been surveyed by questionnaire. This questionnaire was designed to enquire about schools' entry policies, preliminary testing of students, the ways in which these tests are employed to group students and in which curriculum areas, at what levels any differential programs operate, the theory and research which informs the schools' policies, the oversight and implementation of these provisions or programs, and the nature of the schools' commitment to recognizing and meeting the needs of the highly able. The results of the questionnaire suggest that the single sex girls schools are more aware of and sensitive to the needs of able students and the ways in which the curriculum might be differentiated to meet those needs than either the single sex boys schools or the coeducational schools. While there is a general awareness of the issue of able students in many schools, there is, with a few notable exceptions, a lack of the firm knowledge and understanding of the ways in which those needs might be met by adopting specific identification measures, by modifying the traditional group structures employed in schools, and by systematically differentiating the curriculum for able students within and across particular learning domains. There is clearly a continuing need for the provision of further professional inservicing of all teachers to assist them in recognizing the needs and fostering the capacities of the intellectually able young in schools, that these students might be afforded the opportunities to realize their maximum potential.
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ItemSucceeding academically at a working-class school: some case studies( 1990)In this pilot study, I chose to interview only academically successful students because I wanted to identify as many as possible of the factors that might be unique to this group. In a larger study it would be necessary to interview the unsuccessful as well to establish whether the characteristics identified were in fact unique to the successful students. (From chapter 1)