This study contributes to the literature on the academic profession's intellectual freedom. Drawing significantly on two methodological approaches, comparative case study and grounded theory, this dissertation examines three controversies in which government officials challenged academic scientists' federally sponsored research, which had implications for national environmental policies. To structure this examination, I used a two- part framework. For the first part, I investigated the evolving interpretations of events and actors' interests, which revealed the tactics and pressures employed by government officials when challenging the academic scientists' federally sponsored research. For the second part, I used Freidson's theory of professional dominance to help us understand how and in what ways institutionalized arrangements within society supported the academic profession's autonomy and authority over its work. This analysis identified the means by which the academic scientists in my three cases exerted some degree of control over scientific decisions regarding the research assumptions, methods, and analyses of their findings. The study's key findings are presented in the form of five research claims: First, the government challengers may try - sometimes successfully - to exercise their influence over indirect participants in the federally funded research in an attempt to control the dissemination of the federally sponsored research findings. Second, the government challengers, though not scientists themselves, relied heavily on their own judgment to declare publicly the kinds of activities that can and cannot count as legitimate scientific research, rather than relying on the traditional scientific peer-review process. Third, academic scientists may involve members of the public in the dispute. When that happens, the public may help decide whether government officials or academic scientists are better equipped to address the scientific matters associated with the federal policy. Fourth, academic scientists' political allies can support academic scientists' efforts to defend their research within the policymakers' setting. Fifth, academic scientists may assert academic conventions (e.g., peer review) as the standard (or possibly as the preferred) practice through which to evaluate science, even when government challengers question the validity of those conventions. Placed in context of the extant literature, these claims, taken together, suggest that the government officials tried to take actions that exceed their professional competence, specifically as boundary breakers who attempted to infiltrate the jurisdictional responsibilities of the academic scientists. In addition, despite the government officials' attempts to engage in professional boundary-crossing activities, the academic scientists asserted institutionalized practices and standards of the profession (e.g., peer review and open dialogue) and drew on the assistance of external actors (i.e., members of the public and political allies) as countervailing forces to exert control over their research.

This thesis examines from an historical perspective the series of events between 1995 and 1999 in which the public school teachers’ union, the New South Wales Teachers federation, challenged the NSW and Australian government’s provision of funding to private schools. Such funding is known colloquially as state aid. The state aid struggle is conceived in this thesis as an industrial relations contest that went beyond issues simply of state aid. The state aid struggle was a centrepiece of the Teachers Federation’s broader challenge to government’s intensification of efforts to reduce the federation’s effectiveness in shaping the public school system’s priorities. This thesis contends that the decisive importance of the state aid struggle arose from the fundamental strategy used by governments to lower the cost of schooling over time. To achieve this they undertook the state aid strategy – cost reductions would flow from residualising public schools, de-unionising teachers and deregulating wages and conditions. The state aid strategy was implemented through those areas of policy and funding over which the Federation had negligible control or where the Federation’s membership was disunited. The Federation was undermined by governments using policy initiatives to fragment teacher unity. By the end of 1999, governments’ prosecution of the state aid strategy did not seem to have been diverted from the main thrust of its course by the federation’s struggle. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Faculty of Education, 2004. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 112-117).

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-117). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 1994. / Title from title page screen, viewed March 17, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Edward R. Hines (chair), John R. McCarthy, George Padavil, Rodney P. Riegle, Anita H. Webb-Lupo. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-162) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 1999. / Title from title page screen, viewed July 31, 2006. Dissertation Committee: George Padavil (chair), Ramesh B. Chaudhari, William J. Pearch, Victor J. Boschini. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-110) and abstract. Also available in print.

The purpose of this study was to compare per pupil receipts for operation in most school districts in Texas based on the changes in State funding provided for by three major finance bills and to analyze the effects of federal monies provided by Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to determine the degree of equity in the State's school finance structure. The population consisted of 973 public school districts reporting all data for 1974-75, 1976-77, and 1977-78. The districts were grouped into ten wealth deciles based on School Tax Assessment Practices Board assessed property value per student in average daily attendance. A weighted mean value for each decile for each category and year of funding was computed. Correlation coefficients were computed to provide an index of relationship between the categories of dollars available per pupil for operations. Coefficients of variation were determined to express the magnitude of variation relative to the average value for each additive category for each decile.

This evaluation of the Multnomah County Community Action Agency (MCCAA) Latch Key Child Care Program was undertaken at the request of the Multnomah County Planning and Evaluation Department. Latch Key is one of three day care programs classified as "developmental programs for youth" for which Multnomah County is the fiscal agent. The other two are Littles, a full-day pre-school day care program, and Head Start, an educational and developmental program for pre-school children. Littles and Latch Key comprise what is known as Programs for Children, a comprehensive child care program which serves children of low-income working parents who live in the East County area east of 82nd Avenue, plus the Arleta, Errol Heights and Lents Districts which lie within the Portland city limits. With the exception of Mt. Hood Community College, which operates a small day care program, Programs for Children provides the only publicly-supported child care services in the above area, which was designated as a "poverty" area by the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1970. This report will evaluate the Programs for Children administration and Latch Key centers only.