The aim of this project was to develop a model for the structure of the development of statistical thinking in students of secondary school age, i.e. 12-18. Previous research has tended to concentrate on individual problems and no large scale research has been carried out in this area. The aim was therefore to produce a model which encompassed all areas of Statistics and showed the building up of concepts. The basis of the model was a hierarchical structure based on Gagne's Cumulative Learning Theory, with due allowances made for subsequent criticisms of the rigidity of such a model. Models were proposed in five areas considered to involve the main principles of elementary statistics. Superimposed on to these maps of conceptual development was a 3-stage structure corresponding to classical Piagetian stages. Prior to testing a detailed survey was made of available techniques for examining the validity of such models. In particular the Inclusion Analysis technique devised by Clarke & White was carefully examined noting cases where it was inappropiate or invalid. After some initial testing and expert analysis the initial models were modified. The strength of the restructured models was examined by presenting detailed written tests to over 200 students in the age range under investigation. Using Clarke & White Inclusion Tests the strength of links between the concepts was tested and some justification given to the ordering of concepts in the hierarchy and adjustments made where necessary. The validity of grouping skills into 3 stages was tested and an attempt made to correspond these to age using correlation techniques. Although, from the data collected the full detail of the model could not be entirely supported, there was evidence to justify the main framework and certain key linkages to produce a final model. This enabled a detailed analysis of the National Curriculum and its United States counterpart to take place in terms of age-related content and structure. Suggestions were also presented to writers and curriculum designers in the light of research findings.

The hypothesis of this research is as follows: "Conceptual modelling is a useful activity for the early part of gathering requirements for agent-based systems." This thesis examines the difficulties of gathering and expressing requirements for agent based systems, and describes the development of a requirements elicitation framework. Conceptual modelling in the form of Conceptual Graphs is offered as a means of representing the constituent parts of an agent-based system. In particular, use of a specific graph, the Transaction Model, illustrates how complex agent concepts can be modelled and tested prior to detailed design specification, by utilising a design metaphor for an organisational activity. Using an exemplar in the healthcare domain, a preliminary design framework is developed showing how the Transaction Agent Modelling (TrAM) approach assisted the design of complex community healthcare payment models. Insight gained during the design process is used to enrich and refine the framework in order that detailed ontological specifications can be constructed, before validating with a mobile learning scenario. The ensuing discussion evaluates how useful the approach is, and demonstrates the following contributions: Use of the Transaction Model to impose a rigour upon the requirements elicitation process for agent-based systems; Use of Conceptual Graph type hierarchies for ontology construction; A means to check the transaction models using graphical inferencing with Peirce Logic; Provision of a method for the elicitation and decomposition of soft goals; The TrAM process for agent system requirements elicitation.

Introduction Clinical Reasoning is an important competency for medical students to learn. I am a Clinical Lecturer in Medicine and I run a course which has clinical reasoning as a key component. It was identified at curriculum meetings, that Clinical reasoning can be challenging to teach and that there was some evidence that it is an area of the curriculum that could be further developed and improved upon. Study Aim To address the concern about improving the teaching of clinical reasoning skills, my study aimed to; • Develop effective approaches for teaching clinical reasoning to medical students and evaluate them, • Identify educational principles that would help students learn clinical reasoning and share them with curriculum developers, The questions that I identified to support this aim were; • What enhances the students’ ability to learn clinical reasoning? • What makes it harder to learn clinical reasoning? New knowledge was developed by exploring how the theories around clinical reasoning and its teaching could be applied in a practical setting. Methodology An action research approach was used to identify the concerns and issues around teaching clinical reasoning, look for solutions, plan and implement changes and evaluate the changes. The last element of the study was the development of principles when developing a curriculum or teaching sessions for clinical reasoning. Results A new teaching session was designed and delivered to third year medical students. Several key factors important in designing a teaching session around clinical reasoning were identified. Scenarios used in clinical reasoning teaching should be written so that the information in the history is nonspecific and broad enough to allow for thinking across different body systems. They also should be well written to allow actors to play the simulated patient role realistically. The tutors involved need to have the skills to encourage the students to apply knowledge to the scenario through interaction. The tutors need to be able to engender a feeling of safety within the group being taught. There are some indications that the tutors need to have a high level of metacognition themselves. Students need to practice using the clinical reasoning processes and receive feedback on their thought processes. The teaching sessions need to allow time for the students to think and a stop start method was highly rated by the students as a method for doing this. Assessments and teaching materials around clinical reasoning need to avoid the use of “buzz words” or formulaic thinking. Further research into how novices use the clinical reasoning process is needed, as the study suggested that students use inductive reasoning and leave it late to start the reasoning process. They also try and use pattern recognition using “buzz words” very early on in their career.

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This thesis presents a Bourdieusian analysis of a mentoring scheme in order to understand whether it may develop social capital at the individual level. Differential rates in the acquisition of sought after graduate jobs suggest that higher education is not facilitating fair access to what is a limited supply of graduate-entry, high status, well-paid careers. As such, there is a need to understand how universities might best support their students who come from groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education in obtaining graduate level employment. This thesis seeks to make a contribution to knowledge in this area; it offers an evaluation of the effectiveness of a mentoring scheme run in a Russell Group University Business School in preparing students for and connecting them with the world of work. The research aims to create knowledge about how students from different backgrounds experience and benefit from mentoring by business professionals. It tests the application of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework to the professional mentoring scheme and makes some proposals as to how Bourdieu’s theories might be refined. The insights gained from the study are used to offer suggestions for the design of future mentoring schemes to ensure that they optimise value to students from non-traditional backgrounds.

The purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of students’ post-secondary lived experiences at a rural college in Canada. My primary question was: How do students, who have engaged with the learning opportunities at Prairie Site College, make sense of being engaged in these experiences? The theoretical framework of appreciative inquiry (AI) was applied using the methodology of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to address the research question. Ten graduating students at a rural college in Canada took part in the study. To collect data the visual research technique of photo-elicitation and semi-structured interviews were implemented. The study found that positive learning experiences include two key aspects that contribute to learner success: belongingness and authentic learning activities promote student engagement. Students that feel connected to their learning environment are more compelled to seek out new learning activities. Learners who experience practical, real-world activities understand concepts better. The outcome of combining belongingness and authentic learning promotes transformational learning thus providing learners with confidence to learn, grow, and develop positive self-esteem as well as experience transformational life changes. The implications for professional practice in supporting positive learning in post-secondary learners include creating an atmosphere of belongingness where learners feel cared about, find connections and experience trust. Building an authentic learning environment incorporates support for learners and provides for engagement with others in real-world activities. Learners who experience this combination should experience personal change.

The management and measurement of the non-academic impact of research has emerged as a strong and consistent theme within the higher education research environment in the UK. This has been mirrored in other national contexts, particularly in Australia, where research impact policy is evolving at a similar pace. The impact agenda - a move to assess the ways in which investment in academic research delivers measurable socio-economic benefit - has sparked discussion and in some instances controversy, amongst the academic community and beyond. Critics argue that it is symptomatic of the marketisation of knowledge and that it threatens traditional academic norms and ideals, whilst its advocates welcome the opportunity to increase the visibility of research beyond academia. In this thesis, I explore the response of academics in the UK and Australia to impact in these two respective national contexts. Adopting a case study approach and using interviews with mid-senior career academics (n=51), I drew my findings both inductively and deductively using thematic analysis. The thesis contributes to the relatively small but emerging body of scholarly research into academics’ attitudes towards research impact. Analysis indicates that considerations of research impact have profound effects on academic behaviour and identity. Increased focus on justifying the value of research affects how academics feel about their roles and responsibilities. An association with knowledge and its utility dominates academic perceptions and is seen to be in direct tension with a strong sense of epistemic responsibility. Whilst responsibility emerges as a key motivation for engagement with the impact agenda, the pressures of an increasingly competitive research environment can be seen to negatively affect the integrity of academics. These effects span disciplinary and national boundaries and reveal two distinctive cultures where affinities between academics whose research has a less instrumental nature, appear to contrast with views expressed predominantly from those with an instrumental focus. Analysis reveals complex diversity across the disciplines in how impact is understood and contextualised, indicative of a new clustering of academic disciplines, distinct from the traditional divide between arts and sciences yet reminiscent of a pure/applied distinction. Despite a persistent theme of resistance, it is perhaps in the acknowledgement and understanding of the diversity in disciplinary responses that the potential for the impact agenda to bring enhanced intellectual credibility to applied research can be explored, providing greater motivation for the disciplines to work together for maximum impact. These findings have significant implications for national governments, policy makers and funders, as well as for leaders of academic institutions and of course, for the academic community.

This study explores the implementation of a pedagogy of active learning in an English Department in a university in Libya. The current (2017) social and political situation in Libya reflects an environment in which authority and traditional relations of power are changing. This study traces the fortunes of a pedagogical intervention that endows both teachers and students with increased authority over, and ownership of, the processes of learning. For many years, top-down attempts to improve higher education in Libya have failed but this study introduces a bottom-up change in pedagogy introduced by the researcher, teachers and students. Thus, this pedagogical project pursued in the classroom, links to and reflects changes in the wider and traditional order of Libyan society. The shortage of English-language and technical skills in the labour market reflects continued historical failure at tertiary education levels. Four decades of highly centralized decision-making have failed to implement top down educational reform and raise the standard of English teaching. This study investigates if a bottom-up classroom intervention by prepared and committed teachers is a more productive strategy for raising educational standards. This study examines the standard of English teaching at a Libyan University and identifies weaknesses in the quality of teaching. Findings from phase one reveal teachers are over-reliant on traditional lectures as a mode of delivery and their focus is on transmitting knowledge rather than promoting student engagement through active learning. Therefore, phase two – feasibility study – introduces a new mechanism of interactive teaching methods based on active learning. Six teachers are trained to have a different pedagogy in their approach to students; that is nurturing active learning. This study investigates how six teachers understand how learners learn a second language and investigates their capacity to deliver a pedagogy of active learning which encourages learners to take greater responsibility for their own learning by means of interviews, observations and video analysis. Evidence obtained from video analysis shows that student engagement and participation increased. They asked more questions, shared more ideas with their peers, and appeared more confident in their learning. In addition, some teachers had greater awareness of the application of some interactive teaching methods, and offered more opportunities for student centred interactions.

This thesis investigates attitudes expressed by UK primary school educators towards children institutionally classified as English as an Additional Language (‘EAL’) in mainstream schools, an underexplored area. A Critical Discourse Analytical approach is adopted and Martin and White's (2005) APPRAISAL framework utilised for investigating discourses of attitudes is adopted to analyse the research interviews of fifteen participants drawn from six suburban schools in northern England. These participants include head teachers and deputies, EAL co-ordinators, an SEN co-ordinator, a Family Liaison Manager, class teachers, Bilingual Learning Assistants, and Higher Level Teaching Assistants. Their discourses of judgement are analysed in conjunction with Bourdieu’s theory of practice constructs (1977) in order to explore the entrenched linguistic and societal ideologies within them. Findings suggest that judgements of linguistic and social capital made by participants reveal aspects of their habitus, the series of dispositions guiding their behaviours and attitudes, while also showing that attitudes to language are often conflated with attitudes to other social identities. A monolingual ideology is engrained amongst educators, with (Standard) English uncontested in its dominance in education; discourses that expose the power of teachers in controlling what is seen as the legitimate language of the school. There are many contradictions present in participants’ discourses around the value of bi/ multi-lingualism and home language maintenance. Analysis of attitudinal discourse highlights the importance of school leadership for the creation of a positive school climate in working with children who speak languages beyond English. The significance of this work includes filling a research gap regarding studies on teachers’ attitudes and the contribution of a more positive designation for the children at the heart of this study. Recommendations for consciousness- and awareness-raising professional development are made. Observations are made regarding APPRAISAL for analysis for researchers using the framework, only recently applied to research interview data.

Visual materials are central to second language listening (L2), yet their use in L2 listening assessment is very limited. Disagreement about the listening abilities that should be included in L2 listening construct and absence of empirical evidence about the effects of visual materials on performance in L2 listening tests led to disagreement about their use in L2 listening tests. Moreover, previous research did not explore how test takers interact with visual materials other than video texts. The present research attempts to contribute to the existing literature by exploring test takers’ viewing patterns using eye-tracking technology with both video and still photo texts during L2 academic listening test. In addition, cued retrospective reports are employed to extract test takers’ perceptions about the two types of visual materials and shedding light on the underlying cognitive processes they employed. Mixed-research method based on triangulation design was used to investigate test takers’ (n = 30) performance in video, still photo, and audio texts, in addition to recording their viewing patterns, and their reported perceptions about the visual materials. The results revealed that test takers’ performance in the video texts was superior to both still photos and audio texts, with statistically significant difference to audio texts. Cued retrospective report data showed higher helpful perceptions by test takers related to video texts with strong correlation to their scores, while still photo texts were perceived with higher distractedness. Eye tracking data partially coincided with the rest of the results, with two out of three measures- Fixation counts and Total dwell time- found to be higher with video texts. Implications of the study are that visual materials, especially video texts, should be considered in L2 listening tests as they present better representations to the target language use domain, which requires reconsidering the current L2 listening construct.