Non-cognitive skills are the centerpiece of this thesis which consists of two parts. Part I looks at the relationship between non-cognitive skills and educational attainment as well as at the development of non-cognitive skills, in particular at the role played by parenting practices. Part II focuses on the relationship between non-cognitive skills and fertility timing. The measures of non-cognitive skills used in Parts I and II are attitude towards learning - a measure obtained by factor analysis using insights from the five-factor model of personality - and the Big Five personality traits, respectively. Using both the BHPS and AddHealth, attitude towards learning is found to be an important determinant of educational 'success, thereby adding to the empirical evidence on the importance of non-cognitive skills in explaining educational attainment. The importance of this particular non-cognitive skill also shows that children's own attitudes or behaviours matter for their academic success. The results also show a statistically significant association between parenting practices and both educational attainment and formation of attitude towards learning. Having rules at home and children's rapport with the family is associated with higher educational qualifications and it also fosters the development of a pro-learn'ing attitude. In face of these results, one can say that parenting practices might be a considerable source of inequality of opportunity. The results in Part II show that personality traits contribute to the differences in fertility timing between more and less educated women in two different ways: first, personality traits influence both education and fertility decisions; and second, more educated women do not equally delay childbirth compared with less educated women: the more 'open-minded' are the ones severely postponing childbearing. This thesis shows that non-cognitive skills are an important source of heterogeneity - one that is usually not taken into account.

No description available.

This thesis contains three empirical chapters on young people's educational opportunities, attitudes and aspirations in both developing and developed countries. In Chapter 2, we evaluate the medium-run impact of Familias en Accion, a conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme, on the school enrolment probability of 7 to 17 year old Colombian children living in rural areas of the country. Our difference-in-differences estimates find no significant programme effects but significant, even if small in magnitude, anticipation effects. This poses doubts on the efficacy of CCT programmes in reducing income inequality in the longrun and in stimulating the demand for formal education in the short-run. In Chapter 3, we use data from the youth component of the British Household Panel Survey to examine gender differences in educational attitudes and aspirations among 11 to 15 year olds. While girls have more positive aspirations and attitudes than boys, the impacts of gender on children's attitudes and aspirations vary significantly with parental education level, parental attitudes to education, child's age and the indirect cost of education. These findings have implications for policies designed to reduce educational attainment differences between boys and girls as they identify factors which exacerbate the educational disadvantage of boys relative to girls. In Chapter 4, we evaluate the impact of parental education and household income on 10 to 15 year olds ' aspirations for higher education using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Survey. OLS estimates reveal no maternal education effects but positive paternal education and household income effects. IV estimates of the model, which simultaneously account for endogeneity in parental education and household income, find no significant effects of household income on children's aspirations for higher education but positive, even though very imprecisely identified, paternal education effects.

No description available.

This doctoral research is a reflexive ethnography, having as its aim, to understand and learn about 'others.' It is an educational journey to explore the methodological issues related to ethnography, and to get to know and write about, another culture. The elements that are drawn upon to address a given problem, and influence interpretations, differ from culture to culture. Drawing in Foucault and Agamben, I explored such elements in terms of what is called a 'dispositif' (or its English translation, ‘device’ or ‘apparatus’). Such issues and problems in fieldwork are difficult to solve without knowing key dispositifs operating in peoples’ lives. Methods for collecting data, including interview and observation, enable us to gain insight into the ways of seeing and acting, that members recognise, as being like an insider. This led me to exploring language as having a central role to understand those key dispositifs. Identity-in-question, pattern of thinking, and language, are involved in coming to understand the aesthetics of communication, and are steps for building trust relations, through which, one becomes visible for others as an insider. Then, analytical methods, to draw identity boundaries, such as, polythetic and monothetic, would be appropriate. I also looked at the ways in which dispositifs are operationalized through schooling and public pedagogy in order to capture behaviours, and in order to empower themselves through creative educative acts. However, when these dispositifs are hijacked by power, to shape behaviours, creating obedience, and managing consents, the issue is raised of how the legitimating practices of the multitude are to be managed. Thus, this thesis has discussed and contributed insights into the significance for ethnographic researchers, of coming, to understand the key dispositifs through which members of communities come to see their worlds and legitimate their activities.

The thesis deals with the problem of the anthropological study of the relationship between beliefs and social action. The Israeli kibbutz is used an an ethnographic example and test case. A discussion of individualist and collectivist approaches to the problem concludes that they erect a barrier between beliefs and social action. A dialectical approach is elaborated and a definition of ideology formulated. Literature on the kibbutz is reviewed, its history examined and more recent studies classified as survey oriented and structural functionalist, psychological, or belonging to the Manchester School. Participant observation as a method, the collective education system, the definition of the kibbutz as community and ideology, women's position and the family and work roles are introduced as points for discussion. The dialectical approach and the definition of ideology as interpretable, situationally transcendent and persuasive are used to examine the history of the kibbutz movement and the development of ideology.

No description available.

This thesis describes an approach to study collective learning processes. It was inspired by concepts first introduced by the Russian literary theorist and philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin. The thesis argues that Bakhtin's concepts are highly relevant to the study of collective learning as they point to the potential for changes that .artia' from dialogic tensions both within and between the modes of speech ("speech genres" in Bakhtinian terms) that people use in their everyday talk, and they provide us with new metaphors-to think about how we theorize about people's learning. Insights from the approach developed in the study are compared to insights associated with established theories of collective learning. The approach was developed in a study of the learning of a group of parents who participated in a course entitled 'A Child Protection Course for Parents.' The notion of speech genre was used in the study to explore how people engaged in distinct but interrelated spheres of activity develop relatively distinct forms of social language. The concept of polyphony was used as a perspective to write and theorize about learning, which allows us to visualize unfinalizability by portraying different voices without merging them into more one-sided interpretations. This concept explains how the author identified the different languages used by the course members, as well as how the voice of the author dialogised with the voices of the people written about in the study. Bakhtin's writing about the carnivalesque was used to reflect on the liberating and transformative potential of laughter. The thesis conceptualised the learning of the group as dialogising. The Bakhtin-inspired 'approach that was developed illuminated how, as they worked to analyse complex, imaginary scenarios of childcare needs, the parents dialogised between different social languages and developed a new speech genre. This is described in the study as a new "language of tolerance" that differed greatly from the "language of judgment" which participants had used at the beginning of the course. The Bakhtinian approach gives us a unique understanding into learning by interpreting practice as subtle changes in speech genres that develop in a process of dialogising between languages. It is suggested that Bakhtin's concepts can add considerably to dialectic and monologic perspectives used in existing learning theories

No description available.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of two specialist settings in England, where young children's communication and 'communication difficulties' were objects of expert intervention. It describes the intertwining of institutional discourses and practices, which both construct and sustain current, dominant understandings of good and normal communication. Instead of delineating 'communication difficulty' as a matter of disability or individual tragedy, this thesis focuses on the 'socialness' of face-to-face communication. It deconstructs the discourse of communication as a skill, right and need in disability childhood contexts, and the somewhat taken-for-granted importance of communication skills in today's everyday life. On the basis of my findings, this thesis promotes an understanding of communication as a complex, contextual phenomenon, and aspects of 'communication difficulties' as social constructions.