The research was designed to assess the comparative effectiveness of the schools in question with reference to explicit functions, endeavouring to deduce connexions between effects and patterns of process. The study was based on observation and testing in the five intermediate and senior List D schools for girls in Scotland over a period of eighteen months. A unified approach was adopted: the same concept visa employed both in assessing the process of carrying out the functions of the school, and in measuring the difference between input and output levels in the girls. This concept was "social adjustment", chosen because (i) available evidence suggested that enhancement of social adjustment was a more important explicit function of the schools than, say, lowering of conviction rates (ii) the criterion of reconviction as a measure of effectiveness was found to be misleading when applied to girls' schools and thus (iii) the concept of social adjustment provided a common approach to measuring both process and effectiveness which should facilitate the interpretation of any connexions found between the two. Patterns of process were approached also from a theoretical standpoint, leading to three 'paradigms of therapeutic education' differentiated by their basic social values, and schools were subsequently analysed in terms of these paradigms. Some differential improvements in social adjustment were found which could not be explained by any factors considered except those relating to school process. It was concluded that different approaches to the schools' function could influence in certain ways the resulting levels and types of social adjustment in girls. Using the theoretical paradigms, derived from the concept of social adjustment, these relationships between process and effect were explored interpretively. It was concluded that further research would be necessary to establish the relationships more firmly, but that the unified approach and the use of value-based paradigms offered a profitable framework for such a study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:640552 |
| Date | January 1978 |
| Creators | Anstey, S. C. F. |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/17190 |
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