This thesis explores alienated students' perceptions of the organizational health of a
Year 7 to 10 A.C.T. high school. The study emerged at the theoretical level from a
concern that school effectiveness studies focussed too narrowly on student academic
attainment as an indicator of an effective school. A broader view of effectiveness
would hopefully show that in the case of comprehensive co-educational government
high schools, student alienation could have a powerful effect in undermining the
achievement of academic goals in such schools.
Because these schools have little control over their student clientele and require
compulsory student attendance until age 15, it seemed a degree of alienation was
inevitable. The task for high school administrators, it was hypothesized, lay in
minimizing these alienation levels in order to reduce the impact such student
alienation might have on other school effectiveness indicators like teacher
commitment, teacher morale and time on task in classes.
My experience as a practitioner, in the Student Welfare area of a large ACT
government high school, also indicated that the traditional "top down" strategy of
much research in the field of Educational Administration that concentrated on the
perspectives of principals and teachers only gave one view of the processes within a
school. The other, complementary "bottom up" view came from students. In
particular, it was hypothesized, the perspectives the most alienated students in a
government high school held towards the organizational health of the school might
represent an unusual test of school effectiveness.
This was because the commitment of such students towards the school and its stated
academic goals was most problematic. The promotion of a school "culture" or
"ethos" that could integrate low level and high level alienation students, and thereby
foster school effectiveness, appeared to be possible only to the extent that high level
alienation students could be kept on side or neutralized by high school
administrators.
These speculations were largely confirmed in this study. Apart from the interaction
of sex and year level with alienation, the other major finding was that teacher
consideration, or the extent to which teachers show concern for students as
individuals, was the only organizational health dimension that produced a significant
difference between students on the basis of alienation level.
In short, the study is not concerned with student alienation as such. Rather it is
concerned with understanding how alienated students perceive a relatively effective
school. This would hopefully enable that alienation to be minimized and managed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219162 |
| Date | January 1990 |
| Creators | Nield, Robert, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Robert Nield |
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