IB or SACE?: An investigation into student course choice at the senior secondary level in an Adelaide school.

Abstract

This portfolio is an investigation of the process of students' decision-making in choosing between two courses, the South Australian Certificate of Education (a local credential) and the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, in the final two years of their senior schooling. This investigation was carried out at an independent school for boys in Adelaide between 2001 and 2009. The aim of the investigation was threefold: to establish what factors were affecting the course choice of the Focus School's students; to examine how these students as 'customers' articulated the risks involved in this decision; and to gain a student-based appraisal of the two course policy. Three separate projects made up the research portfolio, entitled 'Deciding for the Future', 'Coping with the Present Decision' and 'Evaluating the Past Decision'. The first was an inquiry by survey of 116 Year 10 students about to embark on their chosen course. The second examined the responses from two surveys administered to a subset (17) of the above students as they studied their chosen course in Year 11 and Year 12. The third was the analysis of survey material from 20 former students about their chosen course and their subsequent directions since leaving school ten years earlier. The data, collected from qualitative research questionnaires that were a combination of closed and open-ended questions, were then analysed thematically. The findings indicated that their course choice was a complex and highly individual process that could be the result of competing forces such as personal likes and dislikes, short and long term ambitions and pragmatic and aesthetic motivations. Students could be interpreted as customers shopping for a product and weighing up how to manage the risks in an educational marketplace. It was hoped that, from these findings, the school community would have a deeper understanding of the decision-making processes which would lead to better support for students and others who were involved in such a decision. The data analysis also demonstrated some important differences in long term outcomes for the students doing each course; as well as a degree of customer satisfaction with what the choice of courses offered them.