This monograph includes abstracts of theses, special projects and field studies completed by the graduate students in the Faculty of Education at Memorial University from 1977 to January 1995. Information for the monograph was obtained from lists of studies provided by the office of the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, Faculty of Education, and the Center for Newfoundland Studies, Memorial University.
This collection, collation, and overview of research abstracts is meant to achieve two main purposes. First, it should serve as reference material for faculty members, graduate and undergraduate students, and others interested in research in education in Newfoundland and Labrador. The second purpose of this monograph is to inform interested educators and the general public about the historical and ongoing investigation of our school boards, schools, school personnel, students, curriculum, special education, and teaching. Added to these studies are examinations of the opinions and perceptions of parents and the public concerning issues in education.
The collection responds to a continuation of the interest which resulted in several earlier publications (Singh, A.& Gushue, W.J., A Bibliography of Newfoundland Education, 1973; Singh, A., Abstracts of Master of Education Theses, 1976; Singh, A., Baksh, I.J., eds., Dimensions of Newfoundland Education, 1991; Singh, A., The Morning Watch, Vol. 21, nos. 3-4, Fall 1994.)
The material presented here, in an elaborated form, indicates the tremendous effort made by graduate students and members of the Faculty of Education towards understanding the process of education in Newfoundland and Labrador. Obviously, the researchers have identified certain issues, problems and concerns pertinent to education in the province and have used certain theories, methodologies, procedures, and perspectives in analyzing those variables. It is becoming more evident that graduate students are extending the research approaches that can be useful in examining the links between educational theory, practice, and change. These graduate students and their supervisors are realizing that there are many ways of knowing and therefore there are many ways of approaching educational research.
The graduate researchers and their university supervisors have examined many topics under such general categories as school personnel, curriculum, and teaching. It is of some interest to note that almost half of the studies presented in this monograph deal with school personnel, students, parents and the public. It might also be noted that few of these studies attempted to place the personnel in a wider social, cultural, historical, economic, or political context. Very often the studies dealt with discrete components, instances, or circumstances of particular school roles. Such school roles are always human, social, and political. Many of the studies provide solid data that could help other researchers move beyond causal explanations or interpretative understandings to provide a systematic critique of the conditions under which particular educational practices occur. Many of the studies offer hints at how preservice and inservice teacher education can be improved in a fashion that allows real transformation and institutional change. There are studies that point to the gender reality of the proportion of female administrators in provincial schools; the effect of parental expectations on teacher behaviour; and the conflicting perceptions of educational roles. With such studies we can be quickly reminded that much of our knowledge about schooling is produced out of human activity that is motivated by natural needs and interests. We are also reminded by some studies that the reality of school and community culture, expectations, and resources greatly affects schooling and that it is simply not enough to name such realities. Taken altogether this vast array of educational research clearly indicates the complexity of public education in relation to student and teacher attitude, the use of school time, the power of special interest groups, understanding a hidden curriculum, approaches to reading, identifying gifted children, encouraging critical thinking, and solving the drop-out rate. Many of these complexities have been named and numbered but many hoped-for changes can only be realized when there is a systematic understanding of the holistic conditions that shape, limit, and determine such complexities.
In some studies, graduate students did deal with the values, beliefs, judgments, and interests of people involved with the particular research project. In these studies there was an open and critical evaluation of teaching methods, management techniques, reading programs, mainstreaming, and curriculum domains. Many of these questions have been placed in the larger system of society, culture, politics, and economy.
The research conducted by the graduate students in the Faculty of Education provides us with an array of insights into the process of education in Newfoundland and Labrador as well as permitting us to draw some conclusions about the perspectives of the researchers themselves.
Even a cursory look at the content of most abstracts in this monograph reveals that graduate students in the Faculty of Education have used an empirical-experimental-statistical-positivist approach in their quest to study what they perceived to be the important aspects of education in this province. They have, in most cases, described their research goals and objectives from this perspective and have promised solutions to some of the persistent educational problems in the province. From a paradigmatic point of view there has been little noticeable change in the research graduate students have done since 1963.
This is understandable because in the last thirty or forty years, the social sciences have tried very hard to imitate the natural sciences. In doing so, the social scientists' collective self image has been that they have developed empirical methods for confidently describing structural and functional features of society. In turn, educational researchers borrowed theories, methodologies and techniques of data analysis from the social sciences in their attempt to study educational issues. In fact, since the 1950s, the social scientists, educators and the state have in many ways coordinated their efforts to keep refining an empirical-experimental-statistical-positivist approach to educational research and so this has been the established way of doing research.
Today, however, this established way of thinking about doing research is being challenged by many other approaches in the study of society and education. This challenge has come about from rethinking social and educational issues in terms of postmodernist, feminist, poststructuralist, postcolonialist and other emerging discourses. Also, contemporary discourses on the relationship between education and cultural studies has opened up diverse possibilities for looking into social and educational issues leading to the production of different forms of educational knowledge. The present agenda of the Faculty of Education is to give greater opportunity to graduate students to do research in a variety of paradigms.
Since schools are social systems, the studies naturally fall into certain categories: school boards, schools: school personnel, students, curriculum, parents and the public, teaching, special education and miscellaneous. It should be noted that under these general categories, further sub-classifications were necessary. For example, under students, curriculum, teaching and special education, the sub- categories of preschool and primary, elementary, junior high, senior high and post secondary are presented. In some studies, these sub-categories were unspecified or overlapped; these have been included at the end of each general category.
The theses, field studies, or projects have been numbered from 1 to 843, including the appendix. Under each category, and/or sub-category, they have been placed in alphabetical order according to the author's last name. Each abstract has been identified as either a thesis (T), field study (FS), or special project report (SPR). The index will provide the reader with the complete listing of all authors in alphabetical order with the appropriate page number of the applicable research. In addition to this, a subject index has been included which will offer a selected list of discrete topics. In order to make this publication as complete as possible, some studies prior to 1977 have been included. If the year of a particular study was not available, the designation as 'no date' (n.d.) is given after the name of the researcher.
In presenting the studies, we have attempted to shorten some abstracts so as to highlight the major findings or purposes of the study. Some studies did not include abstracts. In those cases, either the title or the way the researcher described the purpose of the study in his/her own language was identified. In other cases, we have drawn upon the summary or conclusion of the particular study.
Because of the scope and purpose of this monograph, not all findings from each of the studies have been mentioned; instead, only one or two findings thought most important by the researcher are cited. It should be noted that most studies yielded a number of other results besides the one cited in this overview.
Amarjit Singh
Clar Doyle
February 1995