Faculty of Education - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 4 of 4
-
ItemToorak College, 1874-1958 : the survival of a girls' private school in Victorian society( 1986)As one of the oldest of Victoria's privately-owned girls' schools, Toorak College illustrates the influence of the principal in cultivating a clientele whose interests the activities of the school reflected and by whose support its survival was determined. Independent of church or corporation, Toorak College began in 1874 as a boys' school in Douglas Street, Toorak, and was converted to a girls' school in 1897. By 1919, transferred to a gracious building set in expansive formal gardens on the highest point of Glenferrie Road, Malvern, Toorak College presented to the public the appearance of a flourishing school. Ever sensitive to the expectations of a clientele that valued the practices of English education, its principals introduced practical subjects as advocated by Michael Sadler and critically considered the principles of the New Education Fellowship and the Dalton Plan. With the depression, 1929 - 34, and the war, 1939 - 45, the college, whose ownership had been transferred from its principal to a private company in 1927, entered a period of uncertainty. After eighteen months in uncomfortable temporary quarters, the school was transferred to a site on the Mornington Peninsula. The Company's financial resources were strained by the purchase of two properties and the remoteness of Frankston made the attraction and retention of competent staff difficult. By 1932, with its enrolment severely reduced, the college might have closed but for the efforts, little short of heroic, of the Directors and the Misses Hamilton. Gradually the school recovered, supported by a loyal constituency united by appeals to the school's longevity, the product of a fabricated claim of a foundation in 1854. Indeed, the ability of the principal to establish the solid standing of the school in the public esteem has been of greater importance in ensuring Toorak College's continuation than have its fine buildings or a curriculum in which serious scholastic studies were advanced at the expense of a training in the social accomplishments.
-
ItemInitiating formal evaluation practices in Victorian secondary schools: a meta-evaluation of whole-school and part-school evaluation strategies( 1987)The purpose of this meta-evaluation was to investigate the merit of an apparent shift in evaluation policy on the part of the present government from whole-school evaluation with external validation and input to internal part-school evaluation as alternative strategies for initiating formal evaluation practices in Victorian secondary schools. While the study provides an overview of the strategies and outcomes pertaining to both approaches to evaluation, it focuses specifically on the implications of the scope of evaluation for the planning process in schools, the role and impact of the use of external expertise and the significance of staff perceptions on the process of evaluation and its outcomes. Data was collected using qualitative research methods and a retrospective study of eight carefully selected case study schools was carried out. Four of these schools had completed whole-school evaluations and the remaining four had completed part-school evaluations. While informal observation and document collection constituted an important part of the research strategy, heavy reliance was placed on data emerging from one-to-one interviews with individual members of staff across different levels of the school hierarchy. This methodology was adopted because it was believed to be the most effective way of discovering the more sensitive, less tangible outcomes related to evaluations, and because the attitudes and perceptions of staff towards evaluations represented an important outcome of the evaluation in their own right. A basic premise of this research is that the effectiveness of school-based evaluation initiatives in bringing about school improvement will be largely dependent upon the willing support of the staff who are called upon to participate in the evaluation and in any change initiatives which flow from it. While caution should be exercised in generalising from the findings of a limited number of case study schools to all schools, the findings support the general trend towards initiating formal evaluation practices via part-school evaluation strategy. However, they also underline the need for schools to initiate evaluation studies in ways which will ensure that they contribute effectively to, and become an integral part of, school development. In response to this need, an alternative model or approach to evaluation is proposed.
-
ItemParents in the classroom( 1987)The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the presence of parents in the classroom on children, parents, and teachers. The study took the form of a sequenced set of action research style interventions in an outer-suburban secondary school and an inner-city primary school. Attitudes of parents of students in year 7 to creativity, frustration, control, play, and teaching/learning were measured with Strom's Parent as a Teacher inventory, P A A T. Achievements of the children in word knowledge, comprehension, spelling, and maths were measured with tests of ACER. There were some significant correlations between attitudes of parents and achievements of their children. For example, attitudes of mothers to control and the achievement of their children in maths were very highly correlated (N=105, p=.001). After one year of secondary schooling, there was no significant difference between the entering and final achievements of the year 7 students in this study in comprehension and maths (N=123). End-of-year scores of students for word knowledge and spelling were below the scores that would have been expected of students one year younger (N=175, 174). The numbers in these comparisons differ because of absences from school. Classroom experiments were conducted with parents in classrooms in a junior secondary and a primary school. "Parents" means adults who may be parents, other relatives or friends of the students, or friends of the school. In year 7, three different treatments for six weeks were compared, namely, two parents for two classroom periods a week (T), two parents for four periods a week (F), and no parents (Z). There was a significant interaction between mathematical aptitude and treatment (p=.021) such that at the low level of aptitude, achievements in maths with treatments F and T were superior to treatment Z. Also, with the low and medium levels of aptitude combined, treatment T was superior to treatment F (p=.038). With respect to attitude to learning maths, treatment T was superior to treatment F at both the low and medium levels of mathematical aptitude. However the effect on post attitudes was not significant. The attitudes of students in one grade 2 and two composite grades 3/4 were measured to sixteen items that were related to their school and TV. Coincident with the presence of parents in the classrooms of grade 2 and two composite grades 3/4 , there was an increase in positive attitudes of students to eight items in which there was a high level of teacher/parent involvement (HTPI) compared with eight low TPI items (grade 2, N=26; grades 3/4, N=50). In grades 3/4, the presence of parents in the classroom over a period of eight weeks had useful cumulative effects on time on task, teacher stress, and inappropriate class behaviour. Parents, students, and teachers in this study recommended that experience with parents in the classroom should be expanded.
-
ItemTeacher burnout and its relationship to social support( 1989)The purposes of this study were to examine the nature of burnout and social support among Victorian Government high school teachers, and to describe the extent to which sources and types of social support were statistically significant predictors of teacher burnout. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected by a 52-item questionnaire which was mailed through school principals to a random sample of 550 Victorian Government high school teachers. The 491 usable returns represented an 89 percent response rate from teachers, and 229 or 82 percent of government high schools. The questionnaire developed for this study and entitled, Job Survey for Victorian Government High School Teachers contained four sections: Section A, Background Information; Section B, Social Support; Section C, Human Services Survey; and Section D, Personal Comments. The study was descriptive and used statistical techniques such as means, standard deviations and frequencies in the analysis of data. The study was also exploratory and used step-wise multiple linear regression analysis, analysis of variance, .t-tests and factor analysis in data analysis. Victorian Government high school teachers recorded low to moderate mean scores for Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization burnout compared with the established norms, but a higher than average level of Personal Accomplishment burnout. Male teachers reported higher levels of Depersonalization burnout compared with female teachers. Higher levels of burnout across all sub-scales were recorded by teachers who stated a preference to leave education, who indicated their work was not at all or seldom interesting, and who perceived their work to be considerably to extremely stressful. The youngest teachers recorded the highest levels of Emotional Exhaustion burnout, and the most experienced teachers recorded the lowest on this sub-scale and on Depersonalization burnout. Higher levels of Personal Accomplishment burnout were recorded by teachers who had been in their current position for more than six years, who reported a fifty percent consistency between teacher .training and task, and who desired to leave education. Teachers considered types of social support were more helpful in coping with burnout than sources of support. Listening/concern/trust was identified as the most helpful type and peer group teachers the most supportive source. The youngest teachers reported the principal provided the least support: and female teachers provided more support and considered social support more helpful to them than did male teachers. The principal as a source of support was the statistically significant predictor of each of the burnout sub-scales. Emotional Depersonalization burnout were Exhaustion best predicted and by listen.ing/concern/trust and time as types of support, while Personal Accomplishment was best predicted by advice/information, listening/concern/trust and feedback. Sources and types of social support identified by teachers as the most helpful to them in coping with burnout were peer group teachers, listening/concern/trust, and feedback. It was concluded that the high level of Personal Accomplishment burnout in Victorian Government high school teachers was related to insufficient recognition and rewards, and inadequate administrative support.