Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Education Victoria History'

Fifty years ago there were no stored-program electronic computers in the world. Even thirty years ago a computer was something that few organisations could afford, and few people could use. Suddenly, in the 1960s and 70s, everything changed and computers began to become accessible. Today* the need for education in Business Computing is generally acknowledged, with each of Victoria's seven universities offering courses of this type. What happened to promote the extremely rapid adoption of such courses is the subject of this thesis. I will argue that although Computer Science began in Australia's universities of the 1950s, courses in Business Computing commenced in the 1960s due to the requirement of the Commonwealth Government for computing professionals to fulfil its growing administrative needs. The Commonwealth developed Programmer-in-Training courses were later devolved to the new Colleges of Advanced Education. The movement of several key figures from the Commonwealth Public Service to take up positions in Victorian CAEs was significant, and the courses they subsequently developed became the model for many future courses in Business Computing. The reluctance of the universities to become involved in what they saw as little more than vocational training, opened the way for the CAEs to develop this curriculum area.

Despite the considerable significance of publicly funded education in the making of Australian society, state school histories are few in number. In comparison, most corporate and private schools have cemented their sense of community and tradition through full-length publications. This history attempts to redress this imbalance. It is an important social history because this school, Mac.Robertson Girls' High School can trace its origins back to 1905, to the very beginnings of state secondary education when the Melbourne Continuation School (MCS), later Melbourne High School (MHS) and Melbourne Girls' high School (MGHS) was established. Since it is now recognised that there are substantial state, regional and other differences between schools and their local communities, studies of individual schools are needed to underpin more general overviews of particular issues. This history, then, has wider significance: it traces strands of the development of girls' education in Victoria, thus examining the significance and dynamics of single-sex schooling, the education of girls more generally, and, importantly, girls' own experiences (and memories of experiences) of secondary schooling, as well as the meaning they made of those experiences. 'Girls, Education and Empowerment: A History of The Mac.Robertson Girls' High School 1905-2005', departs from traditional models of school history writing that tend to focus on the decision-makers and bureaucrats in education as well as documenting the most 'successful' former students who have made their mark in the world. Drawing on numerous narrative sources and documentary evidence, this history is organised thematically to contextualise and examine what is was like, and meant, to be a girl at this school (Melbourne Continuation School 1905-12; Melbourne High School 1912-27; Melbourne Girls' High School 1927-34, and Mac.Robertson Girls' High School from 1934) during a century of immense social, economic, political and educational change.

Through a longitudinal study of one teacher's science teaching practice set in the context of her base school, this thesis records the effects of the structural and policy changes that have occurred in Victorian education over the past 6-7 years - the 'Kennett era'. Initially, the purpose of the study was to investigate the teacher's practice with the view to improving it. For this, an action research approach was adopted. Across the year 1998, the teacher undertook an innovative science program with two grades, documenting the approach and outcomes. Several other teachers were involved in the project and their personal observations and comments were to form part of the data. This research project was set in the context of a single primary school and case study methodology was used to document the broader situational and daily influences which affected the teacher's practice. It was apparent soon after starting the action research that there were factors which did not allow for the development of the project along the intended lines. By the end of the project, the teacher felt that the action research had been distorted - specifically there had been no opportunity for critical reflection. The collaborative nature of the project did not seem to work. The teacher started to wonder just what had gone wrong. It was only after a break from the school environment that the teacher-researcher had the opportunity to really reflect on what had been happening in her teaching practice. This reflection took into account the huge amount of data generated from the context of the school but essentially reflected on the massive number of changes that were occurring in all schools. Several issues began to emerge which directly affected teaching practice and determined whether teachers had the opportunity to be self-reflective. These issues were identified as changes in curriculum and the teaching role, increased workload, changed power relations and changed security/morale on the professional context. This thesis investigates the structural and policy changes occurring in Victorian education by reference to documentation and the lived experiences of teachers. It studies how the emerging issues affect the practices of teachers, particularly the teacher-researcher. The case study has now evolved to take in the broader context of the policy and structural changes whilst the action research has expanded to look at the ability of a teacher to be self-reflective: a meta-action research perspective. In concluding, the teacher-researcher reflects on the significance of the research in light of the recent change in state government and the increased government importance placed on science education in the primary context.

Mechanics’ Institutes were an integral element of the nineteenth-century British adult education movement, which was itself part of an on-going radicalisation of the working class. Such was the popularity of Mechanics’ Institutes, and so reflective of contemporary British cultural philosophy, that they were copied throughout the British Empire. The Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute, established in 1859, instilled a powerful, male-gendered British middle-class influence over the cultural, social and educational development of the Ballarat city. The focus of this study is to identify and analyse the significance of the contribution made by the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute to the evolving cultural development of the wider Ballarat community, with a particular emphasis on the gender and class dimensions of this influence. This is done within the context of debates about ‘radical fragments’ and ‘egalitarianism’. Utilizing a methodology based on an extensive review of archival records, contemporary newspapers held at the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute, and previously published research, this study was able to show that, during the period from its inception in 1859 to 1880, the Institute became a focal point for numerous cultural, social and educational activities. As one of the few institutions open to all classes, it was in a position to provide a significant influence over the developing culture of the Ballarat community. The study has also identified the use made of the Institute’s School of Design by women and the contribution of these educational classes to preparing women for employment outside their traditional roles of wives and mothers. The thesis argues that despite some early radical elements, the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute initially espoused liberal egalitarian values. By 1880, however, the Institute was more readily identifiable as reflecting British, male, middle-class values.
Doctor of Philosophy

Mechanics’ Institutes were an integral element of the nineteenth-century British adult education movement, which was itself part of an on-going radicalisation of the working class. Such was the popularity of Mechanics’ Institutes, and so reflective of contemporary British cultural philosophy, that they were copied throughout the British Empire. The Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute, established in 1859, instilled a powerful, male-gendered British middle-class influence over the cultural, social and educational development of the Ballarat city. The focus of this study is to identify and analyse the significance of the contribution made by the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute to the evolving cultural development of the wider Ballarat community, with a particular emphasis on the gender and class dimensions of this influence. This is done within the context of debates about ‘radical fragments’ and ‘egalitarianism’. Utilizing a methodology based on an extensive review of archival records, contemporary newspapers held at the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute, and previously published research, this study was able to show that, during the period from its inception in 1859 to 1880, the Institute became a focal point for numerous cultural, social and educational activities. As one of the few institutions open to all classes, it was in a position to provide a significant influence over the developing culture of the Ballarat community. The study has also identified the use made of the Institute’s School of Design by women and the contribution of these educational classes to preparing women for employment outside their traditional roles of wives and mothers. The thesis argues that despite some early radical elements, the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute initially espoused liberal egalitarian values. By 1880, however, the Institute was more readily identifiable as reflecting British, male, middle-class values.
Doctor of Philosophy

Science and technology is regularly featured on radio, in newspapers, and on television, but most people only get firsthand exposure to ‘cutting-edge’ technologies in museums and other exhibitions. During this period, the Science Museum was the only permanent national presentation of science and technology. Thus, it is important to acknowledge the Museum’s history and the socio-political framework in which it operated. Understanding the delays in the Museum’s physical development is critical, as is understanding the gradual changes in the Museum’s educational provision, audience, and purpose. While the Museum was the main national exhibition space, the Festival of Britain in 1951 also provided a platform for the presentation of science and technology and was a statement of Britain’s place within the new post-War world. Specifically, within its narrative, the Festival addressed the relationship between the arts and the sciences and the influence of science and technology on daily life. Another example of the presentation of science was the quest for a planetarium in London - a story that involves the Science Museum, entrepreneurs, and Madame Tussauds. Comparing the Museum’s efforts with successful planetarium schemes isolates several of the Museum’s weaknesses - for example, the lack of consistent leadership and the lack of administrative and financial freedom - that are touched on throughout the work. Since most of this history is unknown, this work provides a fundamental basis for understanding the Museum’s current position, for making connections and comparisons that can apply to similar problems at other institutions, and for learning lessons from the struggles that can, in turn, be applied to other institutions.

Arena Theatre Company’s Eat Your Young is examined as an intrinsic case study. The aim is to investigate the role of a director in the creation of an original multi-media theatre production designed for young people. The study explores the current social, political and cultural position of young people and argues that they are viewed and portrayed as a marginalised “other”. The history of Arena Theatre Company is documented in relation to the development of Theatre in Education from its British roots to the Company’s current emphasis on contemporary artists exploring the possibilities of multi-art form technology. The development of multi-media usage in theatre over the past century is outlined in order to gain an understanding of Arena’s place within this technological experimentation. Utilising ethnographic methodology, including participant observation, “unstructured” interactive interviews and the construction of participant monologues, the creative rehearsal and planning process of Eat Your Young is chartered over a five month period. The outcomes of the study confirm the literature relating to the qualities of a good director: they are leadership, vision and the ability to collaborate. The metaphor chief architect is coined to describe the central figure of the director, Rosemary Myers. The case study discusses the development of a Company culture where artists work in an intensive social and interactive environment and it identifies the unique pressures and individual responsibility of the role of director.

This thesis examines the history of the Manchester Art Museum (Manchester, England), which was founded by Thomas Coglan Horsfall (1841-1932) in 1886. It considers the museum’s permanent collections and its programming from 1886 to 1898 with brief notes on the later years of the institution. While, like previous work on the Manchester Art Museum, the thesis contextualizes the museum within Victorian arts and community institutions, it breaks new ground by highlighting the ways in which it diverged from these institutions. The analysis of the museum’s collections and programming emphasizes the contributions that Horsfall and the Art Museum Committee made to museum education through the museum’s circulating loan collections and school tours.

The latter half of the 19th century was a time of immense change in Presbyterianism worldwide in respect of the role of music in worship. Within this period the long tradition of unaccompanied congregational psalmody gave way to the introduction of hymnody, instrumental music (initially provided by harmoniums and later by pipe organs) and choral music in the form of anthems. The Presbyterian Church of Victoria, formed in 1859 as a union of the Church of Scotland and the majority of the Free Presbyterian and the United Presbyterian churches and numerically the strongest branch of Presbyterianism in Australia, was to the forefront in embracing this tide of change. Beginning in 1861with the proposal for the compilation of a colonial hymnbook, issues associated with musical repertoire and practice occupied a prominent place in discussions and decision making over the next 30 years. Between 1861 and 1901 hymnody was successfully introduced into church worship with the adoption of three hymnals in 1867, 1883 and 1898. Programs of music education were devised for the teaching of the new repertoire and for improving the standard of congregational singing. A hallmark tradition of Presbyterianism was overturned with the introduction of instruments into worship, initially as a support for congregational singing but in time as providers of purely instrumental music also. The profile of the choir changed dramatically. Making extensive use of primary sources, this study aims to document the process of change in Victoria between 1861 and 1901, exploring the rationales underlying decisions taken and historical factors facilitating change. Musical developments in Victoria are viewed in the context of those elsewhere, especially Scotland and of general changes in aesthetic taste. The study concludes that the process of musical change shows the Presbyterian Church of Victoria to have been a forwardlooking and well-endowed institution with the confidence to take initiatives independent of Scottish control. It is also concluded that changes in musical practice within the worship of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria reflect developments taking place in other denominations and the changing aesthetic tastes of the Victorian era.

This thesis investigates the development of radical politics in Liverpool in the first half of the nineteenth century and argues that distinctive events and trends in Liverpool exercised an important influence on the activities of the Reform Movement nationally between 1848 and 1854. It addresses two important but largely neglected areas of historiography: first, the political history of Liverpool in the years between the abolition of the slave trade and the mass influx of Irish refugees in mid-century, during which time the town rose to commercial pre-eminence; secondly, the influence of major provincial centres such as Liverpool on politics at the national level. The origins of Liverpool’s reformist Town Council of 1835-1841 are traced and show a continuity of thought and personalities over several decades against a backdrop of Tory paternalism and institutionalised corruption. The new reformist administration is seen as laying the foundations of a modern society through good governance, financial economy, civil liberty and innovation. On the Corn Laws issue, Liverpool’s reformers were reluctant to follow Manchester’s lead, preferring to pursue free trade on a broad front. This study follows their progress and shows how, ultimately, their thinking on financial reform influenced Cobden’s “National Budget” and remained an ever-present stimulus for several decades. The most prominent of Liverpool’s radical reformers was Sir Joshua Walmsley, whose achievements in both municipal and national politics have received much less attention from historians than they have merited. This study details the influences and experiences in his early career and then traces how, through political dexterity, he pushed parliamentary reform to the forefront of the national political agenda and established the National Parliamentary and Financial Reform Association in 1849. The influence exerted by his Liverpool background on both his political development and style of campaigning may be seen throughout his parliamentary career.

Si la loi Guizot du 28 juin 1833 a officiellement créé l'enseignement primaire en France, étonnament, l'historiographie de l'école y a porté peu d'intérêt. Notre thèse ambitionne de combler modestement ce vide en s'intéressant au positionnement de la législation scolaire par rapport à l'Ancien Régime scolaire, sous un angle pédagogique, l'organisation des classes, et structurel, à travers les écoles primaires supérieures.Dans un premier temps, les rares études consacrées à la loi nous conduisent à proposer une nouvelle lecture de la genèse du texte à partir d'une triple approche : politique, historique, et philosophique. La seconde partie est consacrée au lien pédagogique entretenu par la législation avec l'Ancien Régime scolaire. Indéniablement, certaines formes de modernité éducative émergent, même si elles resteront encore à un niveau théorique pendant de longues années durant. La troisième partie est réservée à la double influence européenne à l'oeuvre dans la loi : suisse et prussienne. Nous montrerons que François Guizot s'est appuyé sur le projet de 1798 du ministre suisse Stapfer et que Victor Cousin a importé les Bürgerschulen sur le sol français dans le but de protéger l'enseignement secondaire. À la suite, notre thèse s'attache à l'étude des écoles primaires supérieures fondées par la loi. Plutôt que de répondre à des besoins économiques nouveaux, la place qu'elles occuperont au sein de l'instruction intermédiaire permettra de réserver l'enseignement secondaire à une minorité d'élèves. Pour terminer, notre recherche se poursuit jusqu'à l'enseignement spécial de Victor Duruy, qui aurait prolongé les écoles primaires supérieures de Guizot. En conclusion, nous soulignons l'importance de la loi Guizot dans la construction de l'école moderne, mais aussi la fermeture de l'enseignement secondaire qu'elle a suscitée
If the Guizot law of 28 june 1833 established officially the primary education in France, surprisingly, the historiography of the school had little interest in it. Our tesis aspires to fill modestly that void and is interested in the positioning of the legislation with the school of Ancien Régime, under an pedagogical angle, the organization ot the classes, and structural, through the écoles primaires supérieures.Firstly, the few studies dedicated to the law lead us to propose a new reading of the genesis of the text from a three approaches: political, historical and philosophical.The second part is devoted to the link pedagogical of the legislation with the old school system. Obviously, a certain educational modernity appear, even if they will stay at a theoretical level during many years still. The third part is dedicated to the double european influence to the law: Swiss and Prussian. We will show that Guizot relied on the school project of 1798 of the Swiss Minister Stapfer and that Victor Cousin imported the Bürgerschulen in the French ground with the aim of protecting the secondary education.Then, our tesis attemps to the study of écoles primaires supérieures funded by the law. Rather than to answer economic new needs, the place that they will occupy in the intermediate education will allow to reserve the secondary education for pupils' minority. Finally, our research goes on until the enseignement secondaire spécial of Victor Duruy, which would have extended les écoles primaires supérieures of Guizot. In conclusion, we stress the importance of the Guizot Law in the construction of the modern school, but also the closure of the secondary education it has generated

This thesis is a re-evaluation of a movement founded to provide what Samuel Smiles called “the road to learning” for workers in the nineteenth century. Mechanics’ institutes emerged during the 1820s to both criticism and acclaim, becoming part of the physical and intellectual fabric of the age and inspiring a nationwide building programme funded entirely by public subscription. Beginning with a handful of examples in major British cities, they eventually spread across the Anglophone world. They were at the forefront of public engagement with arts, science and technology. This thesis is a history of the mechanics’ institute movement in the British Isles from the 1820s through to the late 1860s, when State involvement in areas previously dominated by private enterprises such as mechanics’ institutes, for example library provision and elementary schooling, became more pronounced. The existing historiography on mechanics’ institutes is primarily regional in scope and this thesis breaks new ground by synthesising a national perspective on their wider social, political and cultural histories. It contributes to these broader themes, as well as areas as diverse as educational history, the history of public exhibition and public spaces, visual culture, print culture, popular literacy and literature (including literature generated by the Institutes themselves, such as poetry and prose composed by members), financial services, education in cultural and aesthetic judgement, Institutes as sources of protest by means of Parliamentary petitions, economic history, and the nature, theory and practice of the popular dissemination of ideas. These advances free the thesis from ongoing debate around the success or failure of mechanics’ institutes, allowing the emphasis to be on the experiential history of the “living” Institute. The diverse source base for the thesis includes art, sculpture, poetry and memoir alongside such things as economic data, library loan statistics, membership numbers and profit / loss accounts from institute reports. The methodology therefore incorporates qualitative (for example, tracing the evolution of attitudes towards Institutes in contemporary culture by analysing the language used to describe them over time) and quantitative (for example, exploring Institutes as providers of financial services to working people) techniques. For the first time, mechanics’ institutes are studied in relation to political corruption, debates concerning the morality of literature and literacy during the nineteenth century, and the legislative processes of the period.

This thesis examines the history of Commonwealth Government higher education policy in Australia between 1958 and 1997 and its impact on the development of two groups of academic librarians: the Association of Librarians in Colleges in Advanced Education (ALCAE) and the Committee of Australian University Librarians (CAUL). Although university librarians had met occasionally since the late 1920s, it was only in 1965 that a more formal organisation, known as CAUL, was established to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information. ALCAE was set up in 1969 and played an important role helping develop a special concept of library service peculiar to the newly formed College of Advanced Education (CAE) sector. As well as examining the impact of Commonwealth Government higher education policy on ALCAE and CAUL, the thesis also explores the influence of other factors on these two groups, including the range of personalities that comprised them, and their relationship with their parent institutions and with other professional groups and organisations. The study focuses on how higher education policy and these other external and internal factors shaped the functions, aspirations, and internal dynamics of these two groups and how this resulted in each group evolving differently. The author argues that, because of the greater attention given to the special educational role of libraries in the CAE curriculum, the group of college librarians had the opportunity to participate in, and have some influence on, Commonwealth Government statutory bodies responsible for the coordination of policy and the distribution of funding for the CAE sector. The link between ALCAE and formal policy-making processes resulted in a more dynamic group than CAUL, with the university librarians being discouraged by their Vice-Chancellors from having contact with university funding bodies because of the desire of the universities to maintain a greater level of control over their affairs and resist interference from government. The circumstances of each group underwent a reversal over time as ALCAE's effectiveness began to diminish as a result of changes to the CAE sector and as member interest was transferred to other groups and organisations. Conversely, CAUL gradually became a more active group during the 1980s and early 1990s as a result of changes to higher education, the efforts of some university librarians, and changes in membership. This study is based principally on primary source material, with the story of ALCAE and CAUL being told through the use of a combination of original documentation (including minutes of meetings and correspondence) and interviews with members of each group and other key figures.

L’émergence de la psychiatrie comme discipline distincte de la médecine somatique, dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle, s’inscrit dans le cadre de la réforme de la législation sur les aliénés, qui conduit à la création de nouveaux asiles publics dédiés au traitement des malades mentaux en Angleterre, dont celui du Comté du Middlesex, à Hanwell, en 1831. L’Asile de Hanwell, situé près de Londres, est un asile pour aliénés indigents, qui fonctionne de manière complémentaire par rapport à des institutions telles que les workhouses – emblématiques de la nouvelle Loi sur les Pauvres de 1834 – dans la prise en charge d’individus qui sont dans l’incapacité de subvenir à leurs besoins. Sous la direction du docteur John Conolly (1794-1866), qui, dès sa nomination à la direction médicale de l’établissement en 1839, met en place une politique de non-restraint (abandon des moyens de contention mécaniques) à une échelle jusqu’alors inédite, l’Asile de Hanwell est explicitement conçu comme un outil dont la fonction première est thérapeutique, dénué de toute intention punitive. L’influence que cet établissement exercera sur les institutions similaires en Angleterre dès les années 1840 contribue à l’optimisme thérapeutique quant au traitement des aliénés qui prévaut alors, et l’asile victorien, en dépit de ses imperfections, se veut un authentique refuge et un lieu de soins. La conception thérapeutique du Dr Conolly s’inscrit dans la continuité du traitement moral défini par le médecin français Philippe Pinel, mais s’inspire également des expériences menées à La Retraite (York), ou à l’asile de Lincoln. Cette thérapie innovante a la particularité de mettre l’accent sur la qualité de l’environnement et du mode de vie des patients, ainsi que sur les distractions diverses qui leur sont proposées : jeux, fêtes de Noël, kermesses, lecture, musique, sport et danse. La logique de soins qui s’applique alors, le moral management, repose sur une thérapie d’occupation. L’originalité de ce traitement sur le plan médical s’accompagne d’une dimension sociale, voire politique. En effet, loin de limiter ses ambitions au strict domaine médical, le Dr Conolly, connu pour son engagement en faveur de l’éducation populaire au sein de la Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, tout autant que pour son soutien au mouvement chartiste, mène un combat permanent, de 1839 à 1852, pour que les patients, hommes et femmes, aient accès à une instruction au sein de l’école de l’Asile, dont la création et le maintien sont loin de faire l’unanimité. Conolly envisage l’éducation comme un élément central, qui va bien au-delà d’une simple distraction pour les malades et représente un véritable outil d’insertion sociale et d’émancipation des classes populaires. Il rejoint en cela une conception owéniste de l’éducation, et l’école de l’Asile de Hanwell copie quasiment trait pour trait l’école de New Lanark telle qu’elle se présentait au début du XIXe siècle. Robert Owen (1771-1858) rend d’ailleurs visite à John Conolly dès sa nomination, au printemps 1839. Étudier l’expérience menée dans cet établissement emblématique sous l’autorité de John Conolly – non sans lien avec les expériences sociales menées par les owénistes – et l’influence que cette expérience a pu avoir par la suite dans le paysage psychiatrique victorien, permet d’analyser le non-restraint dans sa dimension thérapeutique, sociale et politique. L’Asile de Hanwell sera pendant près de trente ans une référence dans le traitement des aliénés, et servira de modèle à bon nombre d’institutions, particulièrement en Angleterre. L’influence de Hanwell s’estompera dans les années 1870, qui verront l’émergence de théories de l’hérédité peu compatibles avec le traitement moral
The emergence of psychiatry as a separate discipline from general medicine, in the first half of the nineteenth century, was linked to the Lunacy Reform movement (County Asylums Acts) that led to the creation of new public asylums dedicated to the treatment of the mentally ill in England. The Middlesex County Asylum in Hanwell, built in 1831, was one of them. Hanwell Asylum, situated in the western suburbs of London, was a pauper lunatic asylum that operated as a complementary institution to the numerous workhouses – symbols of the New Poor Law of 1834 – taking care of people who were deemed unable to take care of themselves. As soon as he was appointed medical superintendent of the institution, in 1839, Dr John Conolly (1794-1866) implemented a whole new policy of non-restraint, applied on an unprecedented scale, and Hanwell Asylum under his leadership was explicitly and primarily intended to be a therapeutic tool, devoid of any punitive purpose. The influence of Hanwell on similar institutions, from the1840s onwards, contributed to the prevailing therapeutic optimism of the time, and Victorian asylums, despite their defects, were meant to be genuine places of refuge and care. Dr Conolly’s therapeutic methods were coherent with “moral treatment” as defined by French doctor Philippe Pinel, but were also based on previous experiences conducted at the York Retreat or Lincoln Asylum. One of the main features of this pioneering treatment was the special emphasis it placed on the high quality of the patients’ environment and way of life, as well as on the wide range of entertainment offered to them: games, Christmas parties, summer fêtes, reading sessions, music, sport and dancing. The approach favoured in terms of health care, a “moral management” approach, was grounded on the principles of occupational therapy. The originality of this treatment from a medical point of view was reinforced by its social and, indeed, political dimension. From 1839 to 1852, far from limiting his ambitions to a strictly medical field, Dr Conolly – well-known for his commitment to the cause of popular education, as a member of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as well as for his support of the Chartist movement – actually kept on fighting for the right of male and female patients alike to receive proper instruction within the asylum school, which remained highly controversial and constantly threatened with closure. Conolly viewed education as a central element, going far beyond a mere distraction for the insane and truly constituting a tool for social insertion and a means of emancipation for the lower classes. His views on education were similar to the Owenite conception of education and the asylum school at Hanwell was a faithful replica of the New Lanark School at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Besides, Robert Owen (1771-1858) came to Hanwell Asylum and visited John Conolly soon after he was appointed superintendent there, during the spring of 1839. Studying the case of this emblematic institution and the experience carried out within its premises under John Conolly’s authority – an experience which may not be unrelated to Owenite social experimentation – and analysing the impact this experience may have had within the Victorian psychiatric landscape in the years that followed, is an invaluable way of understanding the non-restraint movement through its various dimensions: therapeutic, social and political. For nearly thirty years, Hanwell Asylum remained a benchmark in the treatment of the insane, and served as a model for many other institutions, particularly in England. Its influence began receding in the 1870s, with the emergence of theories of heredity that were hardly compatible with the tenets of moral management

When Australian law teaching began in 1857, few lawyers in common-law systems had studied law at university. The University of Melbourne's new course joined the early stages of a dual transformation, of legal training into university study and of contemporary common law into an academic discipline. Victoria's Supreme Court immediately gave the law school what was known in America as 'diploma privilege': its students could enter legal practice without passing a separate admission exam. Soon university study became mandatory for locally trained lawyers, ensuring the law school's survival but placing it at the centre of disputes over the kind of education the profession should receive. Friction between practitioners and academics hinted at the negotiation of new roles as university study shifted legal training further from its apprenticeship origins. The structure of the university (linked to the judiciary through membership of its governing council) and the profession (whose organisations did not control the admission of new practitioners) aided the law school's efforts to defend both its training role and its curriculum against outside attack.
Legal academics turned increasingly to the social sciences to maintain law's claim to be not only a professional skill, but an academic discipline. A research-based and reform-oriented theory of law appealed to the nascent academic profession, linking it to legal practice and the development of public policy but at the same time marking out for the law school a domain of its own. American ideas informed thinking about research and, in particular, pedagogy, although the university's slender financial resources, dependent on government grants, limited change until after World War II. In other ways the law school consciously departed from American models. It taught undergraduate, not graduate, students, and its curriculum included history, jurisprudence and non-legal subjects alongside legal doctrine. Its few professors specialised in public law and jurisprudence, leaving private law to a corps of part-time practitioner-teachers. The result was a distinctive model of state-certified compulsory education in both legal doctrine and the history and social meanings of law.

This qualitative research study focusses on ‘The professional experience of Irish Catholic women teachers in Victoria from 1930 to 1980’. The research is based on a collection of reconstructed oral histories derived from interviews conducted with twenty-two Irish Catholic women, both lay and religious, who were primary and secondary teachers in Victoria, Australia. The professional lives reflected in these stories span from the 1930 to 1980. This study explores how Irish women teachers experienced education in Australian Catholic schools in Victoria in terms of curriculum, pedagogy, discipline, culture and religious traditions.

Steiner education, also known as Waldorf education, has represented a form of education “against the grain” in the Australian education landscape since its introduction as a practice in Sydney in 1957. Now with sixty schools or programs nationally, and an accredited Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework, Steiner education has shown that educational roots can be sunk into a different educational soil and can prosper. Contributing to the history of education in Australia, as well as to the contemporary understanding of educational alternatives in the Australian context, this study examines the localised development of Steiner education between the years spanning approximately 1970-2010, predominantly in Victoria. Three periods are covered, comprising a founding school phase (1970s), a second-generation Steiner school phase (1980s) and a publicly funded Steiner “streams” phase (approx. 1990 – 2010). Interviews with forty Steiner educators are drawn on, in addition to documentary sources such as school newsletters and newspaper articles, to examine the creation of six Steiner schools or programs. The thesis by publication comprises five papers – four already published and one under review – and an exegesis. Three of the papers are historical, one explores the ethical and methodological considerations stemming from the insider-outsider positioning of the researcher, and one examines the place of Steiner education in the contemporary education landscape in Australia. The orientations of each paper draw on different elements of the methodology, including: practice theory, Gee’s D/d discourse analysis, oral history, biographical sociology, and auto-ethnography. The basis of Steiner education in an epistemology of movement, representing a foundational interest in dynamic performative discourse and concepts, in contrast to representational, static ones, represents a further red thread throughout this study. The exegesis places these papers in a broader context of debates on education and Steiner education more broadly, pulling together some of the literature and the methodological orientation as a whole. The focus for this study is firstly on the local circumstances of the creation of the schools and programs being examined, from the perspective primarily of Steiner educators involved, and secondly on the evolving external socio-political and bureaucratic contexts for these initiatives. The significance of this study lies in how it shows that while policies such as ‘choice’ may afford important opportunities for the creation of new Steiner schools and programs, they also constrain the conceptualisation of Steiner education. Secondly, it demonstrates that neoliberal approaches to education has narrowed conceptions of epistemological diversity within schooling, contributing to a glossing over of philosophical alternatives in contemporary scholarship on alternative education. Thirdly, the value of examining alternative education to highlight ideological and philosophical tensions and fault lines is shown, particularly in relation to the challenges of philosophical educational change. And finally, the case is made that contemplative inquiry, as well as philosophical and theoretical developments emphasising dynamic concepts of enactment and performance, such as socio-materialism, present helpful new framings for the notion of applied inner- life activity as recognised within Steiner education.

This dissertation describes and examines the fictional representations of friendship between middle-class boys at all-male public boarding schools during the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries in England. In the texts under consideration, romantic friendships embody educational, social, and spiritual ideals; readings of sermons, letters, memoirs, and book illustrations contextualize these ideals and suggest that they mirror a broader ideological framework in the culture. Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) and F. W. Farrar's Eric (1858), which consolidate the tropes of the schoolboy narrative, self-consciously reflect the philosophical and educational standards of Thomas Arnold, Headmaster at Rugby School from 1828 to 1842. For Arnold, highly emotional friendships, based on Christian values, helped to develop piety and to reflect, in earthly terms, the spiritual brotherhood that all "men" share with God. Friendships in Charles Dickens's fiction also conform to many of these narrative and ideological constructs. Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9) represents the comforts of compassionate friendship, while David Copperfield (1849-50) illustrates the torturous complexity of the schoolboy romance. In Our Mutual Friend (1864-5), Dickens alludes parenthetically to Mortimer and Eugene's school days in order to evoke the history and depth of their adult friendship. Edwardian fiction presents a revised discourse on schoolboy friendship, with expressions of affection breaking through a strenuous emotional reserve. In E. M. Forster's A Room With a View (1908), the schoolboy Freddy Honeychurch invites George Emerson to share an uninhibited bond (the "Sacred Lake" bathing scene) that both contrasts with the atomized heterosexual relations in the novel and presages their eventual brotherhood (when George marries Freddy's sister Lucy). The animals in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (1908) inhabit a homosocial society modelled on Grahame's fantasy of the public school. E. F. Benson's David Blaize (1916) dignifies friendship between boys in spite of the political, intellectual, and aesthetic breakdown of male identity and relations that resulted from the oppressive traumas over masculinity indicative of the fin-de-siecle.

This thesis examines economic growth and change across the city of Melbourne over the 2000s. In the late 1970s to early 1980s, and again in the early 1990s, Melbourne was seen as having a bleak future, as a consequence of the deindustrialisation occurring in the city throughout the late twentieth century. However, Melbourne grew rapidly at the start of the twenty-first century, renewing its profile globally and attracting population. This thesis examines the factors behind the rise of Greater Melbourne over the 2000s, and specifically the rapid revival of the central city area of Melbourne. The study assesses the relevance of economic geography theories (the Global Cities hypothesis, the World City Network (WCN) and agglomeration economies) in relation to Melbourne’s economic growth. Globalisation related theories concerning knowledge cities and workers are also considered.

abstract: In the last 200 years, advancements in science and technology have made understanding female sexual function and the female body more feasible; however, many women throughout the US still lack fundamental understanding of the reproductive system in the twenty-first century. Many factors contribute to the lack of knowledge and misconceptions that women still have. Discussing sexual health tends to make some people uncomfortable and this study aims to investigate what aspects of somewhat recent US history in women’s health care may have led to that discomfort. This thesis examines the question: what are some of the factors that shaped women’s reproductive medicine in the US from the mid 1800s and throughout the 1900s and what influence could the past have had on how women and their physicians understand female sexuality in medicine and how physicians diagnose their female patients in the twenty-first century. A literature review of primary source medical texts written at the end of the 1800s provides insight about patterns among physicians at the time and their medical practice with female patients. Factors like gendered expectations in medical practice, misconceptions about the female body and behaviors, and issues of morality in sex medicine all contributed to women lacking understanding of sex female reproductive functions. Other factors like a physician’s role throughout history and non-medical reproductive health providers and solutions likely also influenced the reproductive medicine women received. Examining the patterns of the past provides some insight into some of the outdated and gendered practices still exhibited in healthcare. Expanding sexual education programs, encouraging discussion about sex and reproductive health, and checking gendered implicit bias in reproductive healthcare could help eliminate echoes of hysteria ideology in the twenty-first century medicine.
Dissertation/Thesis
Masters Thesis Biology 2019

The significance of the Mildura Sculpture Triennials from 1961 to 1978 lies in their role as critical nodal points in an expanding and increasingly complex system of institutions and agents that emerge, expand and interact within the Australian art world. These triennial events provide a valuable case-study of the developments in sculptural practice in Australia and offer a close reading of the genesis of an autonomous field of visual art practice; a genesis dependent upon the expansion of the new tertiary education policies for universities and colleges of advanced education that arose in response to the generational pressure created by the post war baby boom. Given that there was virtually no market for modern sculpture in Australia at the inauguration of these triennials in the 1960s, the extent of the impact of the pressures and expectations of a burgeoning young population upon tertiary education, specifically the art schools, art history departments and art teacher training and, the expanding desire for cultural fulfilment and rapid developments in the cultural institution sector, is delineated at these triennial events. The expansion of the education system and the consequent expanded employment opportunities this offered to young sculptors in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, posited the first real challenge and alternative economy to the existing heterogeneous market economy for artistic works. In order to reinscribe the Mildura Sculpture Triennials into recent Australian art history as an important contributor to the institutional development of Australian contemporary art practice, I have drawn upon the reflexive methodological framework of French cultural theorist and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and his explanation of the factors necessary for the genesis and development of autonomous fields of cultural production. Bourdieu's method provides an interpretative framework with which to identify these components necessary to the development of an institutional identity - the visual arts profession. This autonomous field parallels, conflicts with and at times connects with the heterogeneous art market economy, depending on the strength of its relative autonomy from the field of economic and political power. However, this is beyond the scope of this thesis. Mildura's significance lies in the way that the triennial gatherings provide a view into the disparate components that would connect to and eventually create an autonomous field of artistic production, that of the visual arts profession. However, the evolution of each of the components, which were the bedrock of Mildura, was driven by its own needs and necessities and not by the needs of the larger field of which they would eventually become a part. Bourdieu's understanding of the ontologic complicitiy between dispositions and the development of an autonomous field offers a non-teleological approach to the significance of Mildura as a site to map these rapid changes and also Mildura's subsequent displacement from the historical record.