Australian Journal of Education

There is no agreed-upon systematic theory upon which open education rests. Nevertheless, in spite of the variation in style and practice that does exist, it is possible to identify certain assumptions and beliefs about children and about learning that generally characterize the position.

An attempt is made to clarify the notion of open education and to contrast it with other orientations by drawing upon recent overseas writing and research. Research comparing ‘open’ and ‘traditional’ classrooms is described, the findings and some criticisms discussed.

Some of the theoretical issues and practical problems associated with curriculum evaluation in general are explored, and the implications for the evaluation of open education programs touched upon.

In this paper a trait-state conception of anxiety is presented which incorporates a number of extensions to current theorizing. The conception is a cognitive one in that it emphasizes information processing that occurs with respect to both the trait and state components of anxiety. The conception indicates a number of insights into human problem solving that can be made through a consideration of cognitive processing, anxiety processing, and their interaction. In particular, the role of coping styles in threat reduction and the influence of A-state on specific cognitive processes are examined. Implications for theory and further research are discussed.

Responses to a questionnaire concerning experiences on their first teaching practice and their reactions to it were obtained for 218 Diploma of Education students at the University of Melbourne. Six main factors were investigated and compared with a similar analysis for Canadian students. The relationships between these factors and changes in attitudes, anxiety and commitment to teaching were examined for a sub-group of 95 students.

The major factor to emerge was marked by the students' impression of having students respond well to their teaching, little trouble with discipline and satisfaction with teaching as a future prospect. Those who felt they had learnt a lot from teaching practice tended to be those who had been given close supervision and good facilities in the school in addition to getting a good response from the children. A teachers' strike which was in progress at the time had little influence, except that contact with radical teachers seemed to shift the students' attitudes on pupil control in the humanistic direction.

The deschooling argument, as being put forward so forcibly today by Illich, Reimer, and others, is not new. One person who has proposed a similar case is D. H. Lawrence. His proposal is attended to here, not so much because of its placement in history, but because of the important nature of the arguments which support it. Lawrence, at the beginning of the universal compulsory schooling movement, foresaw problems and dangers which others, with half a century's hindsight, are only beginning to focus on.

This study investigated school innovativeness and a number of variables commonly found to be associated with this phenomenon in similar North American studies. Analysis of data collected from a sample of Victorian Catholic secondary schools revealed that only teacher age and extent of professional reading appeared to be significantly related to innovativeness. Subsequent factor analysis suggested the importance to school innovativeness of a ‘career consolidation’ factor and an ‘awareness’ factor. The concept of organizational inertia, developed as part of the theoretical framework of this study, also emerged as a relatively important concept.

Those who claim to have made discussion of moral education easier by establishing a value-free concept of morality appeal to ordinary language as justification. This article claims that the discourse of ordinary people conceals at least four significantly divergent conceptions, and shows how the implications for curriculum which flow from each of these differ seriously.

This research concerns secondary pupils' interest in school science and their reasons for finding it difficult. In a preliminary study 24 categories of hardness were identified in the free responses from 1,700 pupils. In the main study 3,808 students in seven other Sydney schools indicated their degree of interest in science and its difficulty in comparison with other subjects; then, through their responses to 33 structured items based upon the categories of hardness, they assessed particular situations and whether in consequence science was hard, easy or about right. With increasing exposure to science, interest progressively declined, most markedly from Form I to Form II, while its reported difficulty increased except for a trend reversal with boys in Forms IV and V. Positive relationships are reported between degree of interest in science and of its difficulty for all respondents and for various sub-groups. Further analyses of response differences between boys and girls and between junior and senior pupils are presented.