Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 15
-
ItemThe effect of evolutionary thought upon selected English and American philosophers who influenced educational thought, 1850-1916( 1963)This thesis has a twofold aim. First, I wish to show that the theory of evolution, especially in its Darwinian form, influenced the development of the philosophies of Herbert Spencer in England, and C.S.Peirce, William James and John Dewey in America. Secondly, I wish to examine critically those portions of these particular philosophies that have been of importance to education. It will be seen that one of these aims is essentially historical, while the other is philosophical. As these two aspects of the task are apt to become confused, they have been treated in separate chapters. The basic chapter is the first, for in it the connection between science and other disciplines is investigated. In some of the later chapters it will be shown that thinkers such as Spencer and Dewey pre-supposed that such connections exist. Chapter one is thus devoted to the discussion of key terms such as "scientific laws", "theory of evolution" and "mechanism", whilst Chapter two deals with Herbert Spencer and his place in the history of education, and Chapter three contains a critical examination of Spencer's ideas in the light of points raised in the first chapter. There is a similar arrangement in the chapters on the pragmatists. The period 1850 to 1916 was chosen for investigation because these two dates mark the years of publication of Herbert Spencer's "Social Statics" and John Dewey's "Democracy and Education" respectively. During the intervening years the theory of evolution had remarkable influence on many facets of intellectual life, and it would be surprising to find that education remained unaffected.
-
ItemMaking the transition : cultural reproduction in the market-place( 1985)This work relates to the cultural, economic and behavioural characteristics of two groups of young people who have recently left school and, either embarked upon a career pathway via tertiary education or on to long-term unemployment. Theories of cultural reproduction and anomie were examined in an attempt to account for the pathways that the two groups had taken. Two anomalies were discovered; students from migrant or working-class backgrounds who were succeeding in higher education and some working class unemployed young people who were beginning the slide into the under class. Cultural reproduction theory was found not to exactly or accurately account for outcomes and life chances whereas anomie theory was found to be a reasonable explication for the state of malaise of a number of those young people interviewed.
-
ItemEstablishing a multi-sited disposition for ethnographic research in the field of education( 2008)This thesis responds to the challenge of how educational research might be practised in a contemporary world that is no longer necessarily organised by nearness and unity. Focusing on ethnography, it argues for what a multi-sited disposition contributes to research in the field of education. By giving prominence to the notion of multi-sited ethnography. as it has been developed by the anthropologist George Marcus this thesis shows how ethnography conceived this way is now necessary in educational research. The study brings together recent concepts from anthropology with Australian educational ethnography, providing an analysis and reconstruction of how to go about doing ethnography in a world that is characterised by partial connections. To highlight the contributions to education of this research disposition, the final part of the thesis provides an exploratory account as an example of how to approach a specific research topic in this field. In sum, this thesis makes a unique contribution' to educational research by providing an ethnographic approach for the study of contemporary educational lives.
-
ItemRaymond Williams : a critique of his theory of culture and education( 1980)This thesis is a critical exposition of Williams' theory of culture as expounded in two of his early works, Culture and Society 1780-1950, and The Long Revolution, and of the influence of that theory on his views on education. Williams' views on man, on valued knowledge and on the ideal society, being fundamental to an understanding of his theory of culture and its connection with education, are given particular attention. Williams sees man as evolving into a being with a unique brain and hence as having the potential to learn, to reason, to communicate and to create. The process of realising this potential is identified by Williams as both the process of interaction within culture and also the characteristic achievement of culture. However, this thesis argues that such a view of man, allegedly drawn from experience, is selectively based and conjectural. Williams' account of what constitutes valued knowledge is based partly on his attempt to re-define culture by a synthesis of previous definitions, and partly on his argument that knowledge is socially created. But, despite his own overt objections to a distinctive 'high' culture, it is evident that Williams himself is extending the selection of valued knowledge and activity, not avoiding selection. At the same time, he is preserving the distinction between skilled intellectual activities (associated with the ideal of 'high culture') and the more 'ordinary' activities of a culture. The thesis also questions Williams' proposition that knowledge is a social creation based ideally on a pooling of common experience. It argues that 'experience' is not invariably the sound basis for knowledge that Williams assumes it to be and it questions the need for his strong emphasis on commonly shared experience. A 'common culture' functioning both for the expression of, and as the necessary basis for an egalitarian society is the distinctive mark of Williams' ideal society, a society which he believes will nurture man's evolving potential and hence his cultural progress. The characteristics of that ideal society - communal solidarity, participating democracy, consensus by open communication, and the principal of 'equality of being' - are critically examined, and attention is drawn to some ambiguities and apparent contradictions in their exposition. Finally, the function Williams ascribes to education, namely, that of being an important means of developing man's individual and collective potential, is examined. Williams' concern for developing intellectual skills, and for directing these towards the changing of society, is contrasted with his tendency to subordinate education to stated social ends. This, it is argued, may lead in practice to less dynamic results and be more open to distortion than Williams obviously intends. In summary, it is maintained that Williams' arguments from experience form an inadequate base for the claims his theory of culture is called on to support; that his attempt to redefine culture by a synthesis of existing and to some degree conflicting definitions leaves unresolved a number of ambiguities and contradictions; and that these weaknesses are reflected in some of his prescriptions for education.
-
ItemToward a competent society : a critical analysis of H.G. Well's conceptions of social change and the education programme he designed to effect that change( 1989)This thesis developed out of initial research on Raymond Williams's conceptions of culture, society and education. Williams had argued that 'a long revolution' was evident in human affairs, from which a common culture must finally emerge. It was a matter of survival for it to do so. Williams saw culture as 'our common life' and argued that it was the proper field in which criticism and selection of what was of value to the common life should take place. It must eventually be organized on a global basis and deliberately constructed by means of participatory democracy. To achieve these ends, Williams demanded an education that would promote a competent society governed by human needs and not by inherited models. (See particularly, Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (London, 1961; Penguin edition, 1965), esp. p.174, and Raymond Williams, Towards 2000 (Penguin Books, 1986). It seemed that in the social and political writings of H.G.Wells, there were many antecedents to Williams's ideas. Wells was engaged in promoting a deliberate revolution in human affairs akin to Williams's idea of a 'long revolution'. It was meant to effect profound social change, culminating in the formation of a global society and thereby rescuing the human species from impending disaster, even extinction. It seemed worthwhile to explore some of these antecedent ideas in Wells's writings and to examine the claims he made for them. This thesis accordingly examines the ideas of H.G.Wells on social change with particular reference to his models for world order and the means by which this change was to be achieved - revolution and education. It is argued that Wells posited a competent society as the ultimate goal of human endeavour and effective social change, a society distinguished by full control over its destiny and the ability to extend a life of complete satisfaction to all of its members, yet there are a number of contradictions that would operate to frustrate that realisation.
-
ItemSocial area indicators and educational achievement( 1982)This study was concerned with the development and validation of a national indicator of educational disadvantage which would be suitable for guiding resource allocation decisions associated with the Disadvantaged Schools Program in Australia. The national indicator was constructed by using a series of stepwise regression analyses in order to obtain a linear combination of census based descriptions of school neighbourhoods which would be highly correlated with school mean achievement scores. A correlational investigation of the properties of this indicator showed that it was an appropriate tool for the identification of schools in which there were high proportions of students who (1) had not mastered the basic skills of Literacy and Numeracy, (2) displayed behavioural characteristics which formed barriers to effective learning, and (3) lived in neighbourhoods having social profiles which were typical of communities suffering from deprivation and poverty. A theoretical model was developed in order to estimate the optimal level of precision with which indicators of educational disadvantage could be used to deliver resources to those students who were in most need of assistance. This model was used to demonstrate that resource allocation programs which employ schools as the units of identification and funding must take into account the nature of the variation of student characteristics between and within schools. The technique of factor analysis was employed to investigate the dimensions of residential differentiation associated with the neighbourhoods surrounding Australian schools. Three dimensions emerged from these analyses which were congruent with the postulates of the Shevky- Bell Social Area Analysis model. The interrelationships between these dimensions and school scores on the national indicator of educational disadvantage presented a picture of the 'social landscape' surrounding educationally disadvantaged schools in Australia as one in which there were: high concentrations of persons in the economically and socially vulnerable position of having low levels of educational attainment and low levels of occupational skill, low concentrations of persons living according to the popular model of Australian family life characterized by single family households, stable families, and separate dwellings, high concentrations of persons likely to have language communication problems because they were born in non-English speaking countries.
-
ItemA case-study examination of the concept of open access education( 1982)The purpose of this study is to explore means whereby some of the problems currently and commonly encountered by teachers engaged in the teaching and learning processes of secondary education may be eased. This is done by means of an examination of the concept of open access education. As the outcome of a literature review, a definition delineating the ideal is projected. Three schools accepting the philosophical underpinnings of the concept of open access education are investigated and compared with this definition. Criteria are then proposed for the open access education concept to be encompassed within the current system of secondary education in Victoria. From the practice is developed the theory. The examination of the schools accepting the concept of open access education disclosed improved efficiency in teaching and learning due to such factors as:providing the means to cater for individual needs at required levels, decreased stress for teachers and students, a positive motivation and high morale. From the theory engendered through this practice, new practice may be generated.
-
ItemSecondary education in the Australian social order, 1788-1898: a study in the evolution of the theory and the curriculum of secondary education, and the methods of teaching, in the changing Australian social order( 1958)In spite of all the hard words said about educational histories there should be no need to justify the historical study of education. The school, like the Church or the Theatre, is a social institution: if we may write the history of one, we may write the history of the others. As to the peculiar value of the enterprise, there will be differences of opinion; the distinctive values of the study of history are again in question. Suffice to say that it is the writer's suspicion that the debate on the content and method of secondary education, which has been conducted with considerable vigour in Australia in the past twenty years or so, would have been more fruitful if, to the various capacities brought to it, there had been added the capacity to see the problems of secondary education in the perspective of their development. It is surely not unimportant that the architects of educational policy should he enabled to see their problem in depth.
-
ItemSocial purity and the spatial distancing of classes through the urban school systems( 1984)That education through schools is a powerful force on the social fabric of modern urban societies is the underlying concern of this two part thesis. The first part of this thesis, a literature review and problem formulation exercise, takes three concepts pertaining to urban society from three 'fields of study' and attempts to put them into an 'education in schools' framework in order to test their validity. One of the three concepts is Richard Sennett's 'pure environment'. In an active sense this concept includes those . actions undertaken by sections of society to create or maintain 'purity' around them. The second concept is a geographic sociological idea of 'distancing'. Part of the process of the research section of this thesis is an attempt to use 'distancing' solely as a spatial concept. The third concept developed .here is the marxist view of the city as a productive-reproductive organ. Manuel Castells, a renowned urban sociologist of marxist methodology conceptualised the city as being constituted of the four elements; Production (Reproduction), Consumption, Exchange and Management. The most influential of these elements, according to Castells is the Production-Reproduction nexus. Succinctly put, these three concepts about the social functioning of the city produce the following abstraction of urban social activity. Urbanites, according to Richard Sennett, are in an adolescent phase of social development. This adolescent characteristic makes them fearful of things unknown and of change. In order to avoid the fearful, the unknown and any change, the urbanite attempts to create about him a completely known and comfortable environment, PURIFIED of all that is unknown or fearful. Once such a situation is obtained, as perfectly as possible, given all the real world restraints, the society, by virtue of the groups acting within it, will attempt to reproduce, in marxist terms 'Produce', what has been established as the status quo. This collective group action avoids the unknown and maintains the established pure environment where the status quo dominates. In all this the active component is the action of 'distancing'. Sociologically speaking, 'distancing' is the social separation of various 'pure' status groups within the urban society. In the geographical sense, 'distancing' is the spatial grouping and separateness of these status groups across the urban region. Manuel Castells and other writers in the field, including David Smith, argue that it is the distribution or consumption of items of 'collective consumption' which is a crucial factor in dividing society into several status groups. Publicly provided education is a principal item of collective consumption in the urban society. A research study, which will examine the extent to which social 'purity' together with social and geographic distancing interact with education, has thus suggested itself. The empirical research into this issue was based on the Central Metropolitan Region of the Victorian Education Department as it existed in 1981. This region included the central and near eastern suburbs of Melbourne. The target population. of the study were the school students, who in 1981, were attending secondary, school after exiting from a state primary school in 1980. Information was collected from these students as to their secondary school destinations. Those of particular interest to this study were those who chose not to attend their local state co-educational high school. Data was collected from these students concerning the total number of them coming from each of the sixteen high school catchments which constituted the Central Region. These numbers were later divided into those attending private schools and those attending other co-educational high schools in the region. Once their secondary' school destination was known a measurement of the distance they travelled to the secondary school of their choice was taken and averaged for each of the sixteen catchments. As mentioned, the Central Region consisted of sixteen co-educational high school catchments. A range of eight 1976 census statistics were used to derive a social 'purity' score for each of these catchments. The data thus obtained on levels of 'purity', numbers of students moving away from the local high school and the distance they travelled were each mapped and, in turn, subjected to statistical analysis to ascertain the strength of any causal relationship that may, or may not, have existed between the purity score and the other two variables. The statistical analysis suggested that several hypotheses concerning a relationship between' purity 'scores for these catchments and the distancing scores could not be supported. However, the mapped analysis of this data clearly revealed a pattern of 'purity' values as well as a distinct amount of movement out of certain catchments and into other catchments. The conclusion reached was that the current data was insufficient, or of the wrong type to fully support the hypothesis. However, there is enough evidence to suggest that the principal concepts are in operation and that, perhaps, a modified or expanded study would tend to reveal these processes more fully.
-
ItemCritical pedagogy and its application to curriculum policy( 1991)Curriculum theory can be seen as social theory because a curriculum interrelates knowledge and social practices that legitimate the dominant culture. The relationship between society and schooling is reflected in the curriculum; a critical pedagogy attempts to reveal the ideological content within the curriculum as it is related to the question of power. An analysis of schooling and the curriculum traditionally has been divided into two main categories. The functionalist mode comprises various human capital economists, such as Becker (1964), who give emphasis to the functional role between schooling and economic and social requirements. In this case, schools' role is to prepare their students for the job market.-Within this functionalist mode, a more critical analysis has also been developed by Bowles and Gintis (1976) and Carnoy and Levin (1976), among others, who argue that schools reproduce the prevailing class structure. The other tradition wants to see schools as autonomous so that schools can be used as initiaters of social and political_ change, as was emphasized by Dewey (1916) and other progressive educational theorists. This paper addresses the question of whether different classes can benefit From the same academically oriented curriculum. Bourdieu and Passeron [1977) argue that the educational system merely reproduces the cultural capital which has been distributed before students enter education; those with the highest amount of cultural capital will benefit most from schooling. The same argument is taken up by Bantock [1965) who maintains that working class children are for cultural reasons likely to be inhibited from gaining the best of education even if they were given equal chances; because, as he continues to argue, 'high culture' for the working classes is meaningless. Thus, these different writers would agree that members of the working class are inhibited because of their working class culture rather than their measured IQ. Jencks (1972) and Boudon (1974) in a slightly different way argue that the class inequalities which have deeply structured roots, and are maintained by social forces, are beyond the reach of equalitarian educational reform. However, it will be argued in this paper that schooling must promote a common culture for all if all participants in schools are to benefit equally. An 'organic' curriculum suited to either class will only cement and fortify class divisions. Instead, this paper argues for the adoption of a strict academic curriculum as a means of redistributing knowledge, and thus political power, so that education may be disengaged from serving the ands of an exploitative, capitalist economy.