Pupils from black backgrounds remain the lowest performing group compared to other ethnic groups. Although there have been improvements in achievement over the years. African Caribbean boys still continue to perform below the expected national average (DfE, 2014). There may be many reasons for this, including the identities the boys adopt. This study aims to compare the identity and self-concept of black male adolescents in the United Kingdom (UK) and Trinidad and Tobago (TT), and the nature of their relationships with their fathers to explore African Caribbean boys in the United Kingdom where they are classified as an ethnic minority and in Trinidad and Tobago where they are not a minority, to gain an understanding of the characteristics that surround African Caribbean identity in these contexts and the possible impact on attainment. Questionnaires including rating scales, drawings of self-perceived role in the wider world and imaginary letters to fathers were adopted in the data collection. Three hundred and eighteen questionnaires were analysed for the UK and Trinidad and Tobago altogether. The age range was 12-25. The two sample groups had a different emphasis on education with the Trinidad and Tobago sample believing that education was critical for achieving success in contrast to the United Kingdom sample. Religious community was seen as a supportive structure where boys were able to find role models and encouragement to do well. Statements relating to lifestyle, friends and social life showed few differences between the samples. Many African Caribbean boys in the United Kingdom had negative experiences in relation to racial prejudice and the police. The Trinidad and Tobago sample did not see this as an issue since they had no lived experiences of institutional racism by the police. Parents in the United Kingdom were more likely to help boys with their homework while boys in the Trinidad and Tobago sample had a greater admiration for their fathers. The friends of boys in the United Kingdom were predominantly black while boys in the Trinidad and Tobago sample had a mixture of friends. There were similarities in the samples in relation to fathers’ absence. Boys in Trinidad and Tobago had greater access to black male role models and were more likely to be in contact with their fathers. Although the boys in the sample faced various types of discrimination, the analysis of the data showed that they did not suffer from low self-esteem. Some boys had developed coping strategies that made them resilient and able to overcome any unfair treatment that they may have experienced. Many boys were emotional about their relationship with their fathers. The findings highlighted the importance of a father being present in the house. Where fathers were present, boys were grateful for their support and admired them. When the father was absent many boys expressed a love/hate relationship. Many felt abandoned. Fathers tended to be seen as the boy’s first role model and many of them aspired to be like their father. Some African Caribbean boys in the United Kingdom, despite a range of lived negative experiences, saw themselves as powerful and being able to cope. Others felt powerless and disillusioned with the world, feeling unable to make changes or be heard. The findings are discussed in terms of their educational implications.

In the United Kingdom, although one in four adults reported experiencing mental health difficulties in one year, only a quarter of them received treatment for their condition BMA (2017). Moreover, this group of adults have been underrepresented in fulltime employment and education. This thesis argues that facilitating Further Education (FE) opportunities for adults with mental health problems, may assist in promoting their well-being and a pathway towards a different future. A narrative study was carried out involving 15 adults with mental health problems, who were attending classes in an FE College. Specifically, participants were asked during extensive one-to-one interviews, about their recent experiences of classroom learning and their narratives were analysed in relation to well-being and transformative learning theory. Participants reported numerous benefits arising from their learning which they felt had positively influenced their sense of well-being and which for some, included transformative changes. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge as it highlights that for adults with mental health problems, formal learning does have the potential to contribute positively to their lives. Furthermore, it suggests that unless certain wider societal factors are sufficiently addressed, the potential for these benefits to be fully realised, will be severely hindered. The thesis also extends the theory of transformative learning theory and highlights the value of bridging the divide between health and education when working with adults with mental health problems. Straddling these two disciplines in this study, has led to new understandings in relation to the best way to support adults with mental health problems in an FE setting. It has additionally led to identifying how best to interview vulnerable learners in a meaningful, safe and ethical way within an educational setting. The implications for policy and practice because of this work are outlined.

This thesis presents the results of a study that embraces and tests Entwistle's theory of deep and surface approaches in relation to students’ interaction with a digital learning environment for mathematics, in real conditions, during tutorial sessions. In contrast to most of the work in the field that seeks ways of adapting a system to students’ specific learning styles, the aim is to find ways to support tutors and researchers to identify students’ prominent approach in order to ultimately encourage the adoption of a deep approach to studying while discouraging a surface approach. To achieve this aim there is an in-depth examination of the relationship between the various scales and subscales of the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) and metrics occurring from the interaction in the digital learning environment ActiveMath. Furthermore, the potential influence of students’ prior knowledge in mathematics in “deep” and “surface” models is discussed. The results point to insights for tutors regarding identifying students’ deep and surface approaches from their interaction with the digital learning environment; suggestions regarding the design of features that encourage a deep approach to studying; and methodological recommendations for researchers regarding future studies which can help to distinguish further deep and surface approaches and to examine them in similar or different educational settings.

Children in Colombia have engaged in chronic warfare since before the country’s foundation. However, current policy and intervention models targeting war-affected children in Colombia have been designed and implemented through the narrow scope of child recruitment, disregarding other dynamics of the war and representing child combatants as one-dimensional victims. Many young combatants outside the recognised armed forces are excluded from interventions and forms of support granted to child soldiers. Children residing in areas of armed conflict or other prolonged situations of violence often become perpetrators (Boyden & de Berry, 2004; Kuper, 2005; Rosen, 2005). Recent studies present evidence that many children participate in conflict of their own volition, utilising creativity and resilience to improve their circumstances (Rosen, 2005; Honwana, 2006; Hart, 2006; Rosen, 2007; Poretti, 2008; Mayall & Morrow, 2011). This study builds on these analyses by exploring the perspectives of young people with varying forms of engagement in conflict beyond child soldiering in the Colombian conflict. Utilising a combination of creative qualitative methods in workshops with young people, including audio-visual activities, capoeira, and dancing, enabled me to collect data on their responses to violence in two contrasting communities in Cali and Medellín. In learning about the trajectories of children’s lives under conditions of protracted violence and economic uncertainty in a fragmented context, this study analyses in two locations the ways young people have negotiated their daily responsibilities and developed survival strategies while employing their agency when navigating multidimensional types of violence. The analysis reveals young people’s realities and responses to interconnected forms of violence and inequalities in Colombia examining their experiences of direct engagement with violence and the structural uncertainties resulting from the protracted conflict, and how memory is used in relation to the fragmented contexts of their lives. The findings pointed to the link between the various dynamics of their participation in contexts of violence in Colombia as they shift between roles and identities beyond child soldiering; and how young people maximise opportunities and resist limiting conditions by employing their resilience as creative entrepreneurs. The thesis concludes on the one hand that it is not feasible to examine children’s engagement in the Colombian war only through the lens of child soldiering as a phenomenon on its own. On the other hand, it argues that children are not just tactical agents—making strategic decisions based on resources available to them (Honwana, 2006)—but also use their creativity and entrepreneurial agency shifting among myriad identities and roles, earning privileges and power and resisting exclusion, inequality and their limiting circumstances.

Character Education (CE) is an amorphous subject. It has been recontextualised in various forms, depending on the goals of particular programmes as well as the prevailing ideology. CE is therefore, by definition, political. Using Bernstein’s ‘pedagogic device’ as a conceptual tool, this thesis critically analyses how a neoliberal-developmental state (where a strong authoritarian State single-mindedly pursues economic development) recontextualises CE. The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to explore Singapore’s conception of CE and second, to investigate how CE has been differentiated in the mainstream and gifted education programme (GEP) in two Primary schools. It involves critically analysing how CE has been recontextualised by both the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the two Singapore schools. By framing my analysis around the complexity and multiplicity of factors involved when different pedagogic agents interpret, translate, recontextualise and enact CE as an education policy, the criteria for the prioritisation of knowledge/skills/values comes to the fore. Unlike other studies which adopt an a priori conception of CE, I have used a naturalist-interpretive approach and employed multiple data collection methods. These approaches and methods allow a triangulation of my empirical findings. In terms of policy, this study reveals that the MOE’s decision for mainstream CE to be taught in the Mother Tongue languages has resulted in the provision of two starkly different discourses being transmitted to mainstream and GEP students. The didactic and communitarian orientation of the mainstream CE curriculum coexist in direct contrast with the GEP curriculum which emphasizes student needs and individuality. Additionally, the untapped ‘relative autonomy’ in the two schools studied suggest a subliminal acceptance of State-defined good citizenry. I argue that CE and the values it promotes aim to socialise students into accepting the changing neoliberal economic realities, specifically the declining levels of social mobility and increasing levels of inequality. These findings raise questions about CE’s potential to impart critical thinking and to nurture strong and independent individuals, or at the very least, serve as a provocation to think and act in relation to a precarious future.

This thesis is an examination of the (im)possibility of the critical in pedagogy and student writing. More specifically, using Foucault’s concept of governance, and his genealogical problematization of power/knowledge which animates and constrains the present, it interrogates normative understandings of ‘the critical’ as a criterion against which practice and language are evaluated in the academy. A poststructuralist, materialist approach to understanding academic work and its subjects is developed and employed in exploring the ‘ruins’ of pedagogy and student writing, where the metaphor of ‘ruins’ refers to ‘the crumbling edifice of Enlightenment values’ (Maclure 2011:997). Foucault’s methods and sensitivities, and Derrida’s understanding of the ‘event’ of writing, are conjointly put to work to problematise the operations of power in the governance, administration and legitimation of hegemonic understandings of ‘the critical’ in higher education. Deploying as analytical notions and tools Foucault’s understanding of power as multiple forces of resistance and consent, or as an immanence in our doings which operates in minute, micro-physical heterogeneous ways, this thesis scrutinizes the ways the present of critical pedagogical practice, and undergraduate student writing in the field of intercultural communication, is produced and conditioned from within. The ineluctable oscillation between resistance and consent in such presents puts into question the post- possibility of ‘the critical’, here understood as ‘the right to difference, variation and metamorphosis’ (Derrida 2006:87) within the ‘matrix of calculabilities’ in the university (Ball & Olmedo 2012:103). This question is put into context in relation to the wider field of pedagogical and student writing practices. Using close reading of student assessment texts, contingent ‘micro-practices of resistance’ are considered for ways they fleetingly keep openness in play, and proposed as one tentative way forward for a post-critical praxis of literacy pedagogy and writing.

In Mexico, as in other Latin American countries, school relationships –crucial for ensuring the right to education— are framed under the concept of school convivencia. This Spanish language term refers to the experiences of living together and learning to live together. In Mexico the need to improve convivencia has gone hand in hand with concerns about the need to increase citizen protection and reduce social violence. Educational policies foster the role of schools in this regard, but schools are often perceived as victims of an external harsh context that hinders the possibility of transformation. The ethnographic research here presented is aimed to analyse the relationships between two Mexican schools and their local communities, particularly in terms of families’ engagement, and the implications of such relationships for school convivencia. Data from participant observations, interviews and surveys was analysed using grounded theory oriented coding and situational analysis. The notion of convivencia was theoretically developed using a distinction between restrictive and comprehensive approaches. School practices were examined through an analytical scheme based on explicit and tacit convivencia practices, highlighting processes of conflict management, inclusion and participation. The main findings show, firstly, a restrictive understanding of school convivencia in both the educational policy and in the schools’ explicitly recognized work on convivencia, which is based on modifying students’ individual wrong behaviour. Secondly, that a wider more comprehensive approach which includes other types of actors and relationships is needed to explain and intervene in school convivencia. Finally, four modes –alliance, confrontation, detachment, collaboration- are presented as forms to understand convivencia patterns between families and schools. These modes aid to explain how constructions around the “appropriate” family and the “appropriate” involvement –in relation especially to the notion of “dysfunctional families”— shape specific patterns of relationships that contribute to the exclusion of the schools’ most vulnerable population.

Playwork began in the adventure playgrounds set up in the UK just after the Second World War and is currently an officially recognised profession in the UK. Despite its growing international profile and established history, the playwork field is still unable to distinguish itself from other approaches to working with children. This inability to define and describe what is unique about playwork has created significant barriers to the development of the playwork profession over the last seventy years and poses a threat to the continued survival of the playwork field. This study takes a new approach to the age-old problem of a unique identity for playwork by treating it as a collective and historical problem. Inspired by Turner’s (1961, p.5) description of children being attracted by the “unorthodox recipe" of adventure playgrounds, this study set out to investigate whether any recipe of what it means to do playwork has ever been recorded in the playwork literature. Using Grounded Theory, 243 rare historical playwork primary sources were fragmented to identify key elements of playwork theory and practice. This deconstruction of the historical playwork primary sources rediscovered the lost philosophy of the adventure playground pioneers, and this was used to develop the P.A.R.S. (Playwork Action Research System) model of playwork practice. Conceptualised as a form of action research and constructed as a Venn diagram, this model is the first to define and describe what it means to do playwork as a unique and collective approach to working with children. The P.A.R.S. model provides a paradigm shift with which to define playwork as a unique form of practice within the wider children’s workforce by redefining the aim of playwork practice as compensating children for the presence of adults in their time and space, rather than providing and facilitating play.

Negotiating Self- and Peer Feedback on Teamwork Competencies with the Use of Reflective Journals in Higher Education Results indicate an overall improvement in teamwork competencies over three time points. Features of what students reflect on their learning of self and peer feedback were discovered. Major implications for practices related to teamwork and the development of teamwork competencies in higher education are discussed.

The study aims to investigate the problem of the under-representation of women as leaders in Higher Education institutions in three European countries, England, Italy and Sweden. In doing so, it focusses on a group of women and their career experiences in becoming institutional leaders. Specifically, the women in this study are those with a professional career, having started off in an administrative or management role, in HE, in another sector, or in a profession. Their leadership roles include head of administration, academic registrar, and deputy or pro-vice-chancellor. The decision to choose professional women as leaders resulted from gaps of knowledge in the literature but also from my experience as a woman and senior manager in the sector. Methodologically, the study uses Giddens’ interrelated concepts of structure and agency to look at the factors influencing women’s careers. In doing so, it focusses on how these women have used personal agency as a response to structural barriers encountered in their career, and also how they positioned themselves once they became leaders. Empirically, a total of fifteen interviews were conducted in the three countries with accounts thematically analysed. The findings report four categories of practices that women opt for to succeed in career, these being identification, moral duty, super-confidence, and dedication to professional development in the field of practice. Further findings shed light on eight areas of influence where it is more likely to find key factors personally and professionally; these refer to the sector and its institutions, career routes, age and leadership, academic credibility, among others. The conclusions and the original contribution to the field show that women have gained a fair understanding of themselves as players within the sector, while they understand that men are still more likely to rule the most important choices affecting their careers as leaders.