Australian Journal of Education

A recent national study of the influence of openness of school buildings upon teaching practices and pupil outcomes has found that schools of open area design were associated with lower scores on tests of basic skills. Several possible explanations for the association are suggested in terms of the history of the open planning innovation and observed patterns of usage of school buildings. An interaction was found between school design and school social status on a measure of pupil self-esteem. No association was found between measures of openness of teaching practices and any of the pupil outcomes. Some conceptual problems are examined, especially relating to the definition of “openness” and the importance of values in the application of research findings to educational issues.

Core curriculum is a design concept planned around common, agreed values or universally desired outcomes and common learning experiences. Recently, there has been considerable interest, both in Australia and in other places such as U.K., U.S.A., and Canada, in the possibility of identifying a content and structure for a core curriculum.

This paper argues that the beginnings of a core curriculum (and not one tied to traditional subjects) already exist in Australia. Furthermore, it proposes that the major obstacle in moving schools towards a core curriculum lies not in identifying appropriate content and structure but rather in providing school level support for program design and effective installation.

Organizational climate refers to the notion of perceived environmental quality. This paper reports research conducted in ten New South Wales State secondary schools measuring organizational climate by taking account of pupil and teacher perceptions. It builds on the earlier work of Finlayson, Banks and Loughran in the United Kingdom and serves as a means of validating their dimensions of organizational climate. A technique for clustering schools according to organizational climate and for identifying the separation of the clusters is reported enabling a comparison across schools to be made.

The measures reported have potential for schools wishing to review their current state of organizational health as a means of improving the quality of life for all concerned.

The year 1979 marks the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Open University. During this period it has come to be recognized as one of the major innovations in higher education in recent years. The Open University set out to attempt to solve the problem of drop-outs which had been a source of criticism for other distance education institutions in the past. To a large extent it has been successful in reducing drop-outs to an acceptable minimum. The importance of its success for other institutions which teach at a distance, both in Australia and overseas, is discussed. Caution is expressed about the lack of unanimity in terminology in studies of “drop-outs” and the danger of using “drop-outs” in comparing one institution with another.

Research on teaching, conducted over many years largely from within the process-product paradigm, has contributed few generalizations either to guide teachers directly, or indirectly through its influence on the content of teacher education programs.

Alternative paradigms which recognize as basic the complexity and ambiguity inherent in classroom environments, and the fact that students are active agents in their own learning, appear to show more promise for the future and are likely to be more meaningful and relevant to practising teachers.

Research involving practising teachers, teacher-trainees, and educational researchers working together on projects carefully articulated with professional courses is proposed as offering more promise for the future than a continuation of the search for generalizations from research on teaching conducted within the process-product paradigm.

The identification and discussion of general trends in an education system is difficult if only single variables are considered. A synthesis of the comments made by a diversity of variables provides a more reliable and valid basis. The paper demonstrates a methodology through which significant and meaningful patterns of change can be identified. These patterns can then be interpreted in terms of the political, social and economic contexts of the years to which they pertain. Data for the NSW education system have been used for the longitudinal analysis and they cover the period 1950 to 1975. Patterns in system inputs are identified and discussed separately from patterns in system processes.

Research interest in the school-community relationship has focused specifically on the influence which parents and other community members exert on school policy and curriculum. By contrast, the extra-school role which teachers play in the community at large is a relatively neglected consideration. While expectations in the Australian context appear, with some exceptions, to limit the character of teacher participation in the community, an isolated region of the Philippines provides an example of a context in which teachers are likely to assume a general leadership role. Here, the conflict of two leadership traditions, in conjunction with the unique historical position of the teacher, opens the way to local leadership. The need for those teachers, choosing to act as community leaders, to conform to a specific cultural profile is detailed in a case study.