Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemA history of aims in printing education in Melbourne 1870-1970( 1977)Aims in printing education have reflected a tradition of craft distinction. This has helped fashion the peculiar contributions of industrial or educational groups and individuals. In the 1880s the printing union, a relatively articulate group, led the way in promoting health and education provisions for regulating apprenticeship under a factories act. Latent education ideas were evoked in the 1890s by the economic depression and radical technological change with the introduction of the Linotype. These ideas were embodied into a self-help scheme of printing education by enthusiasts, the first classes being held in the Athenaeum in .April 1898. The scheme was adopted as the basis of a course in the Working Men's College when impracticalities became obvious. Classes commenced in June 1899. Printing employee groups maintained policies for government controlled apprenticeship and for state provision and supervision of technical education. These attitudes were gradually confirmed by master printers. Printers tended to have an advanced attitude regarding apprenticeship regulation, particularly compulsory day-time training provisions, under consideration by commissions, apprenticeship conferences and in legislative bills between 1900 and 1927. Technological and economic change in the 1920s and 1930s encouraged individuals in the trade to foster apprenticeship reform, curriculum development and self-help printing education. In the late 1940s a group with printing and educational interests, motivated by a desire to control printing education more effectively, took initiatives which led to the establishment of a mono-purpose printing school under the Education Department. The Melbourne School of Printing and Graphic Arts received its first printing apprentices in May 1950. The principal, staff and school council were pre-occupied with problems of accommodation, plant and equipment in the 1950s and 1960s. Even so, at least equal attention was given to entry and achievement standards and curriculum development in apprenticeship courses in practice, theory, design, science and “liberal” studies. Also the principal, in particular, and industrial representatives espoused technician and technologist level printing education. Thus aims and developments have represented an amalgam of traditional craft assumptions of worth and value as well as responses to the prevailing technological and economic environment.
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ItemVocational education and apprenticeship: a study of vocational education in the 20th century in England, Australia and the United States with special reference to the role of apprenticeship training and with recommendations for the modification of that training( [1978])My thesis outlines in brief the sorts of traditions and practices on which the institution of apprenticeship has been built, both as a form of training and as a social device to provide both moral guardianship and continuing education for the trainee. Although there is considerable evidence that the system has failed on both these counts since the decay of the old system three hundred years ago, apprenticeship continues to survive as the usual method for contracting training in exchange for service in England and Australia. It even receives official sanction and subsidization. Nevertheless, even on the mundane level of job practice, apprenticeship may be an unsatisfactory arrangement for both trainees and instructors, and the fact that the system has long been exposed to the hostile influences of labour and management still further hobbles its effectiveness as a form of training and of work induction. With the development of systematized and institutionalized technical instruction in the twentieth century, especially in the vocation-conscious United States, youth has even more opportunities to achieve vocational potential outside the cramping service status of apprenticeship. There may even be some doubt whether there should any longer be a place for apprenticeship in modern industrial societies where many sorts of skill must be newly developed and where a spirit of versatility will better ensure the tradesman continuing employment in the last quarter of this century.