This research study examines the development of a school guidance programme in a teacher education institute in a turbulent Hong Kong environment. The focus of the study is the teachers’ awareness of the impact of change, their beliefs in human nature, and the skills gained from the programme in dealing with student guidance issues in their classrooms. The study describes the political, economic and social changes in Hong Kong society after 1997 and the consequent impact on primary school teachers, educated and brought up in traditional Chinese families now facing student problems in their classrooms that are being addressed using Western humanistic theories and models. The researcher has used a variety of essentially qualitative strategies. These include: participants’ self-reflection; researcher’s observation and interviews on campus and in school classrooms; and teaching and learning materials. The effectiveness of the programme is judged to be in the teachers’ awareness of the theories imparted, and the relevant skills that they gained, in dealing with these behavioural issues in their classrooms. The study explores how contemporary teachers deliver cognitive knowledge to pupils, but also can learn to play the role of guidance helper to their pupils. Thus, the focus is on affective professional teacher development. The contribution this research makes to our understanding is in its attempt to relate teachers’ values and beliefs to their professional behaviour. It also contributes to an understanding of how Eastern and Western values interact in solving global educational issues. The study enters into the professional reflections of new generation of teachers in Hong Kong’s recent period of rapid cultural change.

The thesis investigates the role a calculator can play in the developing number knowledge of three girls and three boys as part of their mathematics program, during their first two years at primary school. Random sampling was used initially to select six girls and six boys from the twenty-four children entering a 1993 prep class. These twelve children were interviewed on entrance to school and based on the performance of the twelve children on the initial interview, a girl and a boy were chosen from the higher, middle and lower achievers to take part in the full study. The class teachers involved were previously participants in the ‘Calculators in Primary Mathematics’ research program and were committed to the use of calculators in their mathematics program. A case study approach using qualitative methods within the activity theory framework is used to collect relevant data and information, an analysis of five interviews with each child and observations of the children in forty-one classroom lessons provides comprehensive data on the children's developing number knowledge during the two years. The analysis questionnaires establishes each teacher's perceptions of the children's number learning at the beginning and end of each year, compares teacher expectations with children's actual performance for the year and compares curriculum expectations with children's actual performance. A teacher interview established reasons for changes in teaching style; teacher expectations; children's number learning; and was used to confirm my research findings. An activity theory framework provides an appropriate means of co-coordinating perspectives within this research to enable a description of the child's number learning within a social environment. This framework allows for highlighting the mediation offered by the calculator supporting the children's number learning in the classroom. Levels of children's developing number knowledge reached when working with a calculator and as a result of calculator use are mapped against the levels recommended in ‘Mathematics in the National Curriculum’ (National Curriculum Council, December 1988), and the Curriculum and Standards Framework: Mathematics (Board of Studies 2000). Findings from this comparison illustrate that the six children's performance in number was enhanced when using a calculator and indicate that on-going development and understanding of number concepts occurred at levels of performance at least two years in advance of curriculum recommendations for the first two years of school.

This study explored the discursive subject positions that 18 parents, teachers and administrators involved with children identified as experiencing learning difficulties in a Queensland regional primary school between September 2003 and August 2004 drew upon to explain the causes of those children’s learning difficulties. The study used a post-structuralist adaptation of positioning theory and social constructionism and a discourse analytic method to analyse relevant policy documents and participants’ semi-structured interview transcripts to interrogate what models were being used to explain a student's inability to access the curriculum. Despite the existence of alternative explanatory frameworks that functioned as relatively undeveloped resistant counternarratives, the study demonstrated the medical model’s overwhelming dominance in both Education Queensland policy statements and the participants’ subject positions. This dominance shapes and informs the adult stakeholders’ subjectivities and renders the child docile and potentially irrational.

This study is concerned with the satisfactions and dissatisfactions that primary teachers in the Australian Capital Territory experience in their working lives. Its aim is to identify those aspects of satisfaction and/or dissatisfaction by considering relationships between the independent variables. A modified form of Holdaway's Satisfaction with Teaching and Employment Conditions Questionnaire was administered to three hundred and seventy-five teachers. The Likert-type scale and open responses produced data which was analysed in relation to personal variables. Factor analysis was used to determine clustering of items and to investigate relationships between the variables. A number of hypotheses were tested to ascertain the areas of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The findings indicate that teacher satisfaction is linked with intrinsic aspects of their work such as relationships with students, advancement and personal growth. Teachers are most dissatisfied with those aspects of their lives over which they have little control and see the present attitudes of society towards their function and role as an area of serious concern. Statistically significant differences in satisfaction were found between open-space and traditional schools, large and smaller schools, men and women teachers, VII and between teachers working in upper and lower primary classes. The relative distribution of resources between primary and secondary schools is a source of dissatisfaction and the lack of parity in working conditions highlights this inequity. Teacher stress is discussed as an area of growing concern in the ACT and some links with the system's degree of autonomy and community involvement are suggested.

This thesis reports on a study which explored the experiences of teachers working at Gilmore Primary School in the Australian Capital Territory as they initiated the management philosophy known as Total Quality Management (TQM). The teachers' perceptions of key TQM ideas were obtained from staff meeting notes, interviews and a variety of questionnaires. The teachers' perceptions constituted the data for the study. The study utilised ethnographic methodology incorporating aspects interpretive and critical approaches. Participants in the study were actively engaged in the initiation project and as such were taking part, with the researcher, in a co-operative experiential enquiry. Key TQM ideas provided the themes for this study. These themes were; continuous improvement, shared vision, customer and process focus, teamwork, outrageous goals and systematic data gathering. Teachers' perceptions regarding each of these themes or key ideas were analysed by considering the effect on them of two sets of factors. The first set consisted of factors in educational change while the second was comprised of factors in the culture of teaching. TQM history, principles and practices as well as the two sets of factors related to educational change and the culture of teaching were discussed in a review of literature. From the analysis of teachers' perceptions a series of recommendations were developed for implementing TQM at Gilmore Primary School and for more general application of theory and practice.

This study examines the articulated vision of a new Catholic primary school in order to describe and assess its developing organisational culture. The following questions provide the major focus of the study: I How and to what extent does the Vision Statement describe the developing Catholic school culture at St Clare of Assisi Primary School? 2. What are the common beliefs and values underlying the Vision Statement at St Clare of Assisi Primary School? A review of the literature reveals that many educational researchers stress the importance of schools developing a strong, coordinated, cohesive and positive culture. The need for this culture to be based on a clearly articulated vision, embodying shared values and beliefs is also indicated and this provides the rationale for the study. A number of frameworks for school culture are examined and adapted to develop a conceptual framework for the study. The resulting Model for Developing Catholic School Culture provides a structure which enables collected data to be sorted and analysed, so that the research questions can be addressed. This study utilises the methodology of ethnographic research. Data collection strategies include participant observation, interviews, surveys, and other sources including school records and documents, photographs, artefacts and memorabilia. The findings are organised under five headings, each of which represents a belief articulated in the school's Vision Statement. These beliefs are examined to see how they are enacted verbally, visually and behaviourally by the school community Conclusions are drawn as to the relevance of the Vision Statement to the school community Other significant values and beliefs evident from an examination of the data are also identified The study concludes that the Vision Statement effectively describes the developing culture of the school for there is congruence between its beliefs and actions. What emerges of particular significance from this study is the importance of a school community articulating a shared vision. A school's Vision Statement serves a dual purpose It is the filter which allows the shared beliefs and values of the school community to be articulated, while at the same time serving as a scaffold for checking if these shared beliefs and values are being enacted by the community.

The basic purpose of this study is to analyse in general terms Schools Commission policy and planning in regard to the development of library resources and services for Australian primary schools in both the government and non-government education systems. The core of the study is a survey of the provision and needs of primary school libraries in the Australian Capital Territory, based on the Schools Commission Guidelines for library services in primary schools. The survey is not an end in itself, but is a means of appraisal of the school libraries program of the Australian government as viewed at the grass roots level in one particular area. The report falls into two sections. Section I is an introductory section which gives firstly an overview of the work of the Federal government in the development of school libraries and services between 1968 and 1975. The introductory section also analyses the development of the Schools Commission guideline standards for primary school libraries, and explains the role of the standards in relation to both the 'needs' criterion of the Commission's educational program and the equitable distribution of government funds. The standards are not absolutes in terms of precise structural specifications to be applied in all circumstances, but rather an affirmation of possibility in relation to a given ambit. It is in Section II that the data from the survey of the primary school libraries in the Australian Capital Territory is analysed, and some comparisons are made with the Monash University study of provision and needs in primary school libraries carried out in 1975. The objectives of the ACT survey are not, however, oriented simply to a factual statement of provision and needs, but also to highlighting the instrinsic and recurring administrative problems associated with the provision of library resources services in schools. Issues raised by the survey relate to differentiated staffing patterns, obsolescence of materials, centralised versus decentralised collections, tolerable loss rate for books, custodial attitudes of teacher-librarians, teacher attitudes to the library, production and use of audiovisual materials by teachers and students, community use of school libraries, identification of needs by individual schools, availability of central support services for selection and processing of materials, funding for resource provision. In regard to conclusions the report does not attempt to offer anything but tentative suggestions, because of the range of variables in most cases, which could not be eliminated or controlled in a survey of this. type. However, some factors do emerge which could be the basis for more detailed analysis, such as the nature of obsolescence in regard to school library materials, and the relationship between types of library service and the 'open' or traditional1 structure of the school program. There is one factor which the survey does show quite clearly, namely the gap that exists between policy decisions taken at the national level and the implementation of that policy at the local level.

Children in their final years of primary schooling tend to emphasize the use of detail and the production of naturalistic representations, when modelling the human figure with clay. Children of this age rarely construct clay figures which are noted for their dynamic quality in terms of finish, proportion, or pose. This study examined the effect of using a "formative" modelling technique on the clay models made by 11 year old children. Involved in the study were two groups of 11 year old children. Both groups of children undertook a pre-test, a post-test, and a series of clay modelling activities similar to other activities described in most primary school art curricula. The experimental group of children were instructed in the use of a "formative" modelling technique in which children develop their clay figures from a single mass of clay and refrain from constructing the figures by a combination of separate parts. The control group received no instruction. Brown's Modified "Secondary" Characteristics Rating Scale was used to identify differences between pre- and post-test clay figures. Results suggest that the "formative" modelling technique did not induce a different approach to the modelling of finish, proportion, and pose in the clay figures made by boys and girls 11 years of age. However, there was evidence of a gender difference.

This study describes the development and evaluation of a parent training model to test if a correlation exists between effective tutoring and locus of control. The model utilized parents of boys previously referred to the Educational Clinic for reading difficulties. The parents became the major treatment resource for remediating reading problems of their 8 to 11 year old boys. The venue was a local public library where a series of five lessons and three follow-up sessions were held with both parents and their sons present over a six month period. Reading strategies to develop the utilization of contextual clues were introduced and practiced at these sessions. Control group children from a variety of schools in Canberra were selected to match the 21 treatment children by the criteria of chronological age and pre-test results on an objective word recognition test. The parents were pre- and post-tested using the Rotter I-E Scale while all boys were given the IAR Scale, the Neale Analysis of Reading, ACER Word Recognition, a Goodman-Eurke Miscue passage and the Survey of General Reading Attitude. Analysis of results indicated that sample size limited the number of significant results obtained. No significant results between I-E ratings and dependent variables were found. The tutor's and spouse's initial I-E perceptions were correlated at p=.08. Correlations between tutor final I and subject final I ratings were nonsignificant but positively correlated. The initial and final I-E ratings of tutors were correlated at the p<.0l level. A negative correlation significant at p=.0l or better was noted between tutor behaviours and reading speed gains. This was also true of correlations between speed and both accuracy and comprehension (at p<.02 or greater). A trend to greater gains on all reading measures (at p=>.2 or higher) favouring the treatment group (when compared with the control group) suggests that a tutor programme based on improving reading comprehension may be of value to the clinic-referred retarded reader. A more comprehensive study bypassing the problems of sample size and differing causes for reading retardation is outlined using the n=l paradigm. Both locus of control and motivational factors of tutors and learners will be investigated.

In November, 1986, Mrs Lorna Ireland; Principal of Junee Primary School in the Riverina Region of New South Wales; approached a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics Education at Riverina-Murray Institute of Higher Education in Wagga Wagga; seeking his involvement in a project aimed to assist teachers at the school with their mathematics teaching. In addition to the planned involvement in 1987 of this mathematics educator, the school was also to be a pilot school for the trialling of a strand of the New South Wales Education Department's Draft Mathematics Curriculum and a participating school in the numeracy component of the federal government's Basic Learning in Primary Schools program. This study documents the mathematics education activities which involved Junee Primary School teachers in 1987. It focuses on the RMIHE involvement in the school but considers this in the context of broader mathematics curriculum activity. The process of change is described within a theoretical framework derived from a review of relevant literature. The research methodology employed is fundamentally ethnographic and relies on the collection of qualitative data to derive descriptions of people and events. The data analysis relates to curriculum change, the role of the change agent and the role of mathematics educators in school mathematics programs. A discussion of outcomes highlights the strengths of an approach to curriculum change which had its genesis in the school rather than in some external agency. The generation of problems and issues and the resolution of these are features of the analysis which tracks the progress towards professional development autonomy of one group of teachers.