Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe confused Frenchman : some considerations of 'freedom' in Rousseau's writings and its educational implications( 1987)The focus in this thesis is the concept of 'freedom' and, more specifically, how this concept is used by Rousseau. An attempt will first be made to clarify the meaning of 'freedom' and then Rousseau's discussions about it will be examined. Particular emphasis will be placed on an analysis of educational freedom and what Rousseau writes about it, especially in Emile. It will also be argued that the ideal political freedom that Rousseau proposes in The Social Contract is an extension of the freedom he talks about in Emile. Some critics have levelled the charge that Rousseau is not consistent in his definitions of what constitutes freedom and Max Rafferty has even referred to him as 'the confused Frenchman'. In this thesis it will be argued that this confusion is only apparent and not real. In this respect, the critical literature about Rousseau's theories on freedom will be analysed in an attempt to show that there is indeed an internal consistency of definition in Rousseau's works and that his view is of positive, rather than negative, freedom.
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Item'Ten years after' : equality and the disadvantaged schools program( 1987)In 1973 the Interim Report of the Schols Commission was published providing a blue print for educational policy and planning for the 1970's and 1980's. In particular, the report focussed on the notion of equality in its educational context and the means for the achievement of its expressed ends through specific programs. One such program is the Disadvantaged Schools Program. A full decade of implementation has taken place. This thesis attempts to examine: the theoretical and political warrants of the notion of equality expressed in the Karmel Report, and the effectiveness of its translation into action through the Disadvantaged Schools Program. The focus of the thesis is that the Karmel Report was fundamentally inconsistent in its expression of the concept of educational equality. It examines the contradictions and ambiguities in the Report and the implementation of the Disadvantaged Schools Program against original goals and intentions. The Disadvantaged Schools Program, it is argued, has been undermined by these conceptual inconsistencies, by grants to non-government schools and by the way in which the Program itself came to be administered.
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ItemPerceptions of education and the post-industrial society: a study of student attitudes( 1987)Much has been written in recent years about the emergence of the post-industrial society. The works of writers such as Alvin Toffler, Daniel Bell and Barry Jones have, over the past fifteen years, discussed the question of an emerging new economy and the implications that this will have for both individual citizens and nations. This thesis seeks to examine the attitudes of young people towards the future and to find out the extent to which they feel optimistic or pessimistic about such things as: careers, areas of study at school, the state of the world and contemporary media preoccupations such as nuclear disarmament. The thesis methodology is based on an anaylsis of 2 219 questionnaires completed by Year 10 students in four states, plus a small case study of students' own personal writing about the future. Chapter 3 presents a picture of the post-industrial state as it is popularly portrayed in the press. Chapter 4 examines the way in which education is presented by the media and looks at the criticisms that have been levelled against it by journals such as the Bulletin since 1976. Chapter 5 is an analysis of the survey findings and presents a detailed discussion of these findings. This chapter also tests the validity of hypotheses such as: * That students who intend to seek employment in agriculture and manufacturing will be more likely to feel pessimistic about the future than those who are planning to work in the information and service sector. * That students doing Maths and Science courses will be more optimistic than those doing Humanities and Creative Arts. * That girls will choose careers in more traditional occupations long associated with women, and will therefore feel more pessimistic about the world and the future than boys do.
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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.
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ItemDevolution and effective school leadership: a case study involving ten Victorian state high school principals( 1987)An interview methodology was used in this study in an attempt to ascertain how high school principals view the current devolution proposals (as outlined in the document Taking Schools Into The 1990's) as affecting school leadership in terms of Sergiovanni's leadership model. When conducting the interviews it became quite apparent that Sergiovanni's leadership model was most representative of the leadership patterns of principals in the sample. All of the interviewees believed that a school would need to have a strong and functional culture in order to provide excellence in schooling. The majority of principals saw their role as cultural leader as being more important than their managerial role from the viewpoint of seeking excellence in schooling. Seventy per cent of respondents saw the role of principal as crucial in developing/ maintaining a strong school culture. Furthermore, most principals also believed that the new devolution proposals could enable schools to develop a stronger school culture, thus resulting in greater excellence in schooling. The local appointment of staff was a recommendation seen as being most beneficial in this regard. The recommendation that high schools obtain the services of a full-time administration manager was also seen as allowing the school principal to be a more effective leader in that he could delegate more of his managerial functions and thus concentrate more on his role of cultural leader. Although more detailed research is required, the results of this study are consistent with the claim made in the review of literature that because Sergiovanni comprehensively addresses the issue of school culture then his model would appear to be the most useful in the current educational climate. The results also give encouragement to those who believe that some of the recommendations contained in the latest devolution proposals may result in greater excellence in schooling.
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ItemProblem solving in physics: an information processing approach to the solution of kinematics problems( 1987)Many high school students experience difficulty in solving problems in physics that require only elementary mathematical skills. This study describes the evaluation of a computer aided instruction (CAI) package developed to instruct students to solve numerical problems in introductory kinematics. This package (Blackburne, 1986) was based on an information processing strategy using five equations of motion which allow the use of one routine to solve any of these problems. The evaluation was carried out in the context of a Year 10 science course. Three methods were investigated. Two of these methods were based on the information processing strategy. One of these was the CAI method, and the other, a classroom adaption of the computer method. The third method was a traditional classroom approach as outlined in most common physics texts that use three equations of motion. Results showed that the method made the difference, not the medium of the computer. Both the information processing methods yielded significantly fewer errors than the traditional method. An analysis of the kinds of errors made revealed that the most significant difference occurred in the selection of the correct rule to solve the problem then, to a lesser extent, the correct interpretation of the question and extraction of the relevant data.