Faculty of Education - Theses
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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.
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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.
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ItemUndergraduate course preferences of students with some previous tertiary education( 1982)The thesis is an examination of the factors which affect the course choice of applicants to tertiary institutions. The sample is taken from the 1977 applicant cohort registered with the Victorian Universities Admissions Committee. The applicants in the sample are those who had already been enrolled in tertiary educational institutions for at least one year, prior to their application in 1977. The aims of the study are to examine the effect of previous tertiary experience, employment experience, age and sex on the course choice of the applicants. The data used in the study were taken from:. application files held by the Victorian Universities Admissions Committee. The results of the analysis are compared with the results of studies carried out in Australia and overseas which described the vocational and educational choices of students entering tertiary institutions for the first time, and subsequently transferring to other institutions in some cases. The main difference between this study and those which preceded it is that the applicant sample in this study contains persons aged from seventeen years to more than sixty-five years, whilst previous analyses had been confined in the main to the young applicants. A comparison is made between the course choices of the young applicants, aged 22 years or less, and the older applicants, aged 23 years or more. The results of this study are similar to those already published. Nevertheless some new information about the effect of the Victorian tertiary education system - the number and nature of the institutions - on the choices of applicants is presented. In addition the study makes available a comparison of age groups which has not yet been attempted elsewhere. The study shows that applicants of all ages have two objectives: the first, to obtain a qualification which will enable them to find satisfying employment; the second, the study a course which provides them with interesting activity which enables them to find personal satisfaction. In the main students wish to undertake the second objective at a University, whilst vocational training is sought at. a variety of institutions. The prestige and academic standing of the institutions is an important factor in the determination of the applicants' choices, and as a result many are not satisfied in their application.
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ItemVoices from below: family, school and community on the Braybrook plains 1854-1892( 1993)This thesis identifies and documents a number of families and neighbourhoods on the plains west of Melbourne in the years 1854 to 1892. It traces their interaction with each other, with teachers and with the central education bureaucracy. A major aim is to make visible the women and children in these neighbourhoods and, where possible, to let them speak for themselves. The period studied is the latter part of the nineteenth century, from the early years of local control and government aid through the various boards of education to the first two decades of 'free, compulsory and secular education'. Braybrook Shire is divided into different neighbourhoods, ranging from the small and fluctuating industrial community at Maribyrnong and the 'labouring-class' suburb of Maidstone, to the dairying and stock-holding areas at Albion-Braybrook, then further west to the settlement of Kororoit Creek, with its farms and explosives factory, and beyond to the sparsely-settled rural areas of Derrimut, Mt Cotterell and Rockbank. The diversity of the small communities studied and the microscopic approach adopted, challenge the view that local communities are uniform, static, isolated entities and that women and men are passive victims of outside forces. There is oppression and hardship, but also evidence that local people had a range of strategies for survival and some victories in local battles with the State. Schooling was clearly an important issue to these early migrant settlers, despite the need for children's labour in family economies. 'Community' is seen to be complex, including mobility and continuity, conflict and kinship ties, and interaction between the private and the public domain. The thesis demonstrates women's importance in the local culture and the value of searching for local perspectives and the voices of 'ordinary' people. The sources and the methodology used suggest possible approaches for other researchers.