Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Education and the imagination: the theory and practice of children's imaginative reading in the middle post-primary years
    McRoberts, Richard (1948-) ( 1988)
    This study examines the teaching of imaginative literature in Australian post-primary schools. Commencing in a review of the historical background and contemporary justifications for novel study in the classroom, it then seeks to describe the orthodox prescriptions for practical work. Those principles which attract widespread agreement are noted, as well as those which are either ambiguous or in dispute. With this review of the theory as a foundation, the actual practice of reading in schools is then investigated. The field research consists of a random sample of two hundred and twenty-two Year 9 students and twelve teachers from six Ballarat schools, tested by questionnaire and selective follow up interviews. The results of both are used to provide a picture of the extent to which the theoretical principles correlate to the day to day reality of classroom work. The conclusion acknowledges the largely positive impressions emerging from this limited sample, but notes the dearth of research in this area, and the pressing need for further study on a large scale.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    The public examination of English in Victoria : a study of one external influence on the secondary school English curriculum
    Hamerston, Michael T. ( 1980)
    The secondary school English curriculum was determined by groups outside schools during the period 1944-1974. External domination of teaching content and methodology was ensured by a system of Public and Matriculation Examinations which empowered agents of the universities to prescribe courses and to assess students' performance in those courses. The University of Melbourne exercised these functions through its Professorial Board and the Schools Board before relinquishing its powers to the Victorian Universities and Schools Examination Board in 1965. Statute and tradition allowed these bodies to establish themselves as a centre apart from schools, and to legitimise their authority through the institutionalised processes of prescription, examination and review of performance. The effect of these processes was to subordinate schools, teachers and pupils. There was immense inertia in the Victorian system of external prescription and examination. Courses and examination papers remained essentially unmodified for long periods. Significant development in the conception and content of English courses occurred, effectively, only at Year 12 in response to social and educational pressures which had previously led to the withdrawal of Public Intermediate and Leaving Examinations. Broadening the goals of H.S.C. English did not, however, signal diminished control over curriculum from the centre. The fact of competitive examinations at the end of secondary schooling continued to shape content and methodology in the earlier years. Competitive examinations engendered in schools, teachers and pupils a narrow conformity, the results of which can most clearly be seen in the failure of the Class A system to produce school-based curriculum initiatives of any substance. The effect of external prescription and examination of English courses was profound. Relationships between teachers and pupils were strongly mediated by the system, reducing the autonomy of both by subjugating their intentions to the instrumental demands of evaluation. So much of a student's 'life chance' depended upon examination success that teachers and taught were continually constrained to focus their attention on the tasks expected in examinations. Fragmentation, in line with the different sections of examination papers, rather than integration became, therefore, the organising principle for teaching aimed at developing those techniques believed to be essential for success in the examination game. External examinations dictated that the English classroom was a place where pupils met to prepare for their encounters with examinations rather than to explore the nature and richness of experience through literature and their own use of language for real ends. The system of Public and Matriculation Examinations established in 1944 was a potent influence on the secondary school English curriculum. The system rested upon a powerful, conservative centre whose legitimacy was so thoroughly entrenched that it was able to admit reform only on its own terms. Thus, it was possible after twenty-five years of relative stasis to negotiate evolution in the details of the school English curriculum without alteration to the essential power relationships. After thirty years, English teachers were still without autonomy. Year 12 English courses continued to exert the pressures and to exact the dependence which had constrained mother tongue studies throughout secondary schools since 1944.