Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemSpiritual health: its nature and place in the school curriculum( 1998-04)As spirituality first appeared in Australian curriculum documents in 1994, it was important to establish how educators thought it related to student well- being. In this research a description and four accounts of spirituality - spiritual rationalism, monism, dualism, and multidimensional unity - were developed from available literature. The literature also revealed four sets of relationships important to spiritual well-being. These were the relationships of a person with themself, others, environment, and Transcendent Other. The model of spiritual health proposed here claims that these four sets of relationships can be developed in corresponding Personal, Communal, Environmental and Global domains of human existence, each of which has two aspects - knowledge and inspiration. Progressive synergism describes the inter-relationship between the four domains. The quality of relationships in the four domains constitutes , spiritual well-being in each domain. Spiritual health is indicated by the combined effect of spiritual well-being in each of the domains embraced by a person. The principles of grounded theory qualitative research methodology were used to investigate the views of 98 teachers from a variety of schools near Melbourne. Feedback from 23 Australian experts, on the researcher’s definitions, is discussed. To encompass all the teachers’ views of spiritual health, to the initial categories of Personalist, Communalist, Environmentalist and Globalist, a fifth category was added for the small group Rationalists, who embraced the knowledge, but not the inspiration/transcendent aspects, of the first three domains of spiritual well-being. All the teachers believed spiritual health should be included in the school curriculum, most rating it of high importance, two-thirds believing it should be integral to the curriculum. The teachers’ major curriculum concerns focussed on Self, Others, the Transcendent, or Wholeness. Investigation of those teacher characteristics seen as important for promoting spiritual health, with associated hindrances and ideals, showed variation by gender, personal view of spiritual health, major curriculum concern, teacher and school type. Greatest variation was noticed when comparing school type. State school teachers emphasised care for the individual student from a humanistic perspective. Catholic school teachers were concerned for the individual, with religious activities being implemented by dedicated teachers. Other Christian school teachers focussed on corporate, not individualistic, activities, and emphasised relationship with God. Other non-government school teachers emphasised tradition, with attendant moral values. Implications of these variations on school choice are discussed. Principals’ behaviour, speech and attitude were considered by the teachers to be vital in providing opportunities for spiritual development in schools. A 30-item Spiritual Health Measure (of Humanistic and Religious Aspects of Spiritual Health) was developed using the researcher’s model of spiritual health and data from 300 UK teachers. The SHM should be useful as a diagnostic for individuals or groups to provide base data from which to plan enhancement of their spiritual health. This thesis contains an analysis of how well the Victorian Curriculum & Standards Framework provides guidelines for promoting spiritual health. A position of responsibility, called Spiritual Facilitator, is proposed to help ensure that the rhetoric about spiritual well-being is put into practice in schools.
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ItemAn evaluation of the reading comprehension of students in Victoria who are profoundly, prelingually deaf and of an intervention programme to improve their inferential reading comprehension skills( 1995)This thesis is concerned with the reading comprehension of students in Victoria who are profoundly prelingually deaf. The study firstly addresses reading abilities of these students and the factors that affect these abilities. Secondly, this study implements a programme for a sub-group of underachieving readers. The research was conducted in two stages. Stage one evaluated the reading comprehension outcomes for 195 prelingually, profoundly deaf students in government and non-government schools. The subjects were tested on the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Comprehension Test. It was found that there was a wide range of reading comprehension ability amongst the subjects. However, 58.0% of these students were reading in the below the average range compared with 23.0% of their hearing peers. The average rate of advancement for the Australian subjects was found to be 0.5 of a grade per year. The deaf students over 15 years of age achieved an average reading level of grade 6.0 which was commensurate with recent findings from America and higher than that found in Britain. Some significant differences between sub-groups were found. Female deaf readers were reading better than males. There was also a significant difference between the reading competency of the subjects according- to their aetiology. The Rubella subjects tended to be the poorest readers and the Meningitic subjects the most competent readers. Overall the subjects' literal reading scores were significantly higher than their inferential scores. An analysis of the scores for the textual, functional and recreational reading genres showed a significant difference between the scores from the three educational settings with mainstreamed students reading better than integrated who read better than segregated students in all areas. The subjects were also tested for their ability to infer meaning from pictures. Further, a multiple regression showed that being female, having above average academic potential and being in an mainstreamed oral setting and having the ability to use inferential strategies with pictures were all significant predictive factors for reading comprehension competence. Stage two of the research involved 60 subjects who were identified as underachieving from stage one. An intervention programme which aimed at using pictorial material to encourage the use of inferential strategies in reading was developed. The research design involved four groups of 15 subjects (two experimental, two control). The experimental groups received 30 lessons of an intervention programme to teach inferential reading strategies using pictorial and written text. One of the control groups underwent a reference skill programme and the other did not receive any specific intervention. Using the Stanford Diagnostic Test of Reading Comprehension, post-intervention reading comprehension competence was measured. A significant improvement in the reading comprehension competence of the experimental subjects was found. The amount of improvement was more than two reading grade levels over a twelve month span. It was further shown that the subjects over 15 years of age also improved. The programme was particularly effective with the weakest and the youngest deaf readers. The findings of this research have implications for educational programmes designed to improve the literacy of profoundly, prelingually deaf readers. By placing an emphasis on the processes involved in inferential comprehension, the deaf readers learned to interact with the text.