CHANGE:
Social and economic conditions:
- Increased mobility of the population: People ready to move from rural to urban or smaller urban to larger urban areas to take advantage of more jobs and better education facilities.
- The growth of knowledge: technological advances results in an increase of knowledge available. This growth in knowledge has led to a recognition that schools also need to teach students how to handle change and deal with as yet unknown information.
- Improvements in communications and transport: Countries and regions that until the 19th century were isolated because of their geographic position; they are no9w interlinked in ways not imagined then. The introduction of television, satellite and media has gained significant ability to influence public opinion and act as an agent in the socialization process. The growth of communication and media has meant that schools now have to compete to capture the attention and imagination of students.
- Changes in employment prospects: technology is replacing human jobs.
- Changes in attitudes and values: changing social norms= less agreement and certainty about the religious, ethical and moral bases of community life. In an effort to define the values that government secondary schools in NSW should uphold, the NSW department of Education issued a revised document in 1991 titles ‘The Values we teach’. E.g’s: Of goals in this document: a multicultural in nature, democratic actively contributing to the life of the school and the wider community.
CONTINUITY:
- No national system; 6 states and 2 territories have their own education systems.