Education Commons^™

Transitioning Year 7 Primary Students To Secondary Settings In Western Australian Catholic Schools: A Description Of The Process, Anne Coffey, Richard G. Berlach, Michael O'Neill

Richard Berlach

In 2009 the Catholic education system moved to a six plus six model, even though the public education system in Western Australia decided to remain with a seven year primary and five year secondary school structural arrangement. Prior to implementation, a great deal of planning was undertaken by the Catholic Education Office and individual schools to ensure the smooth transition of Year Seven students to a secondary school setting. This system-wide shift presented a one-time opportunity to investigate the planning arrangements of six Catholic secondary schools that agreed to participate in the study. This study reports the unique challenges experienced …

Managing Major Educational Change: Is The Cyclical Integration Model The Answer?, Richard G. Berlach

Richard Berlach

Where minds meet, there lies the change vector. I have for a long time been fascinated by the way in which change, and specifically educational change, is managed. More often than not it seems, minds fail to meet in a crucial change-space. They either unwittingly zip past each other, deliberately avoid one another, or worse still, collide with excruciating force. This paper examines the interrelated role of government, the public service and teachers in successfully transitioning major change. It is argued that unless these bodies operate in synchrony, change negotiation is likely to be hampered. To this end, a model …

Grouping & Regrouping Using Mixintools: An Exploratory Study, Richard G. Berlach, Keith Mcnaught

Richard Berlach

On a regular basis, teachers find it necessary to place children into groups for instruction. Random assignment is typically the norm when group composition is immaterial to the task. When member-sensitive groups need to be created, teachers might associate specific assignment with colours, numbers or other coding systems. Mixintools offers the teacher a strategy for creating groups in an enjoyable, expedient and variable fashion. Or does it? The purpose of this research was to determine whether the resource had any value from the perspective of both the teacher and the student. Data were sourced from three primary schools and one …

Two Book Reviews, Richard G. Berlach

Richard Berlach

Crowley, S. (2003). Getting the Buggers to Behave (2nd ed.). NY: Continuum.

McLeod, J., & Reynolds, R. (2003). Planning for Learning. Tuggerah, Australia: Social Science Press.

Outcomes Based Education? Rethinking The Provision Of Compulsory Education In Western Australia, Richard G. Berlach, Keith Mcnaught

Richard Berlach

Outcomes based education (OBE), which emphasises a radical reinterpretation of the enterprise of education, is a phenomenon enveloping the Australian compulsory education sector. This paper examines the theoretical tenets of OBE as articulated by its chief exponent, William Spady. It then explores the effects that OBE implementation is having on the Western Australian educational fraternity, touching upon current tensions and emerging consequences. Implementation exigencies in one area of the WA curriculum (Mathematics) are then considered; and finally, possible future ‘outcomes’ are suggested should the identified concerns fail to receive due attention.

University Corporatisation: The Assault Of Rationalism On The Academic Spirit, Richard G. Berlach

Richard Berlach

The world-wide obsession with rationalistically-based decision-making processes has resulted in individuals and societies alike suffering at the hands of bureaucrats and their masters, federal and state politicians. Institutions, industries, and even governments are now being seen as organisations to be managed by cold reason with little or no account being taken of the human spirit or of the attitudes and values of individuals. It appears that human worth and dignity have been replaced by rationalistically-motivated expediency cloaked in jargon divined by corporate management. Sadly, this form of rationality has found its way into Australian universities and is detrimentally affecting the …

The Stroop Test And Its Relationship To Academic Performance And General Behaviour Of Young Students, Anthony Imbrosciano, Richard G. Berlach

Richard Berlach

The test developed by Stroop some seventy years ago is used, among other purposes, as an indicator of attention disorder and general mood fluctuations. The present research attempted to determine whether a correlation existed between the Stroop Test, student ability as defined by a standardised IQ test, and general classroom behaviour. This study involved 87 year three students, across four schools in Perth, Western Australia.

Independent variables included socio-economic level, gender, and school type (government or private). Results indicated a strong positive correlation of IQ and Stroop Test Ranking with Socio-economic status. No significant differences were found between IQ and …

Outcomes-Based Education And The Death Of Knowledge, Richard G. Berlach

Richard Berlach

In a far off time, in the confederacy of Oz, teaching and learning coexisted in an artistically symbiotic relationship. Then the experts came along. No, not experts in educational theory, but experts in the art of Isms – scientific rationalism, reductionism, Fordism, Taylorism, sophism, postmodernism and above all, obscurantism. They took their Isms and applied them to the art of education, and lo and behold, outcomes-based education was born. The Ismistic parents cooed and gloated over their cleverly conceived offspring. In fact, the Ismites within one state of the confederacy hailed this birth as a watershed in education, a paradigm …

‘Tribes Tlc’: Teacher Education Students’ Perceptions, Richard G. Berlach, Annette Sanders

Richard Berlach

Tribes TLC is a process rather than a programme per se that aims to facilitate interactive learning and assist in the engendering of a positive classroom climate. Devised in the USA and imported into a number of contexts internationally, uptake in Australia has been considerable. Thirty second and third year Bachelor of Education students undertook the training hosted by Cooloongalup Primary School prior to participating in a ten week practicum. Data pertaining to the Tribes TLC resource was collected prior to the training phase, post training, and at the conclusion of the practicum. This paper reports the perceptions of students …