The aim of this study was to focus on experienced and novice teachers' strategies for teaching mathematics in English and Turkish primary classrooms and to look at the implications for Turkish teacher training programmes. Therefore, both experienced and novice teachers' strategies were examined and compared in the two countries.;Teachers who work in primary schools in Leicester were used as experienced teachers and PGCE students were used as novices in UK. In Turkey, similarly teachers who work in primary schools were used as experienced teachers whereas B.Ed students were used as novices. Questionnaires were administered to a sample of 169 teachers: 41 primary teachers, 45 PGCE students in England and 44 teachers and 39 B.Ed students in Turkey. The questionnaire consisted of questions about teachers' personal characteristics an the strategies/techniques they used for teaching mathematics. There were closed and open-ended questions in the questionnaire. Also, six teachers were observed: two experienced teachers and two PGCE students in UK and two experienced teachers in Turkey. For this observation, a schedule was used involving sub-headings such as time, teacher's position and teacher's strategies.;The findings of the study revealed that open-ended questions and observations supported the responses given to closed questions. It was found that there were generally more similarities between experienced English teachers and PGCE students in using techniques and strategies than there were between experienced Turkish teachers and B.Ed students. The results of the study also indicated that both groups of teachers in UK used more child-centred teaching techniques such as investigation, discussion and problem solving whereas Turkish teachers used more teacher-centred ones such as exposition and demonstration.;The results highlighted that more teaching practice is needed in Turkish teacher training programmes, and that more practical method courses rather than theory-based ones are needed for shifting towards to the new system.

Education appears unavoidably linked to values but the content and manner of values education seems a matter of some confusion and controversy. In considering this proposition recent writing is reviewed. First, to show that there is a real dilemma in modern education concerning the values and purposes which are served in schools, particularly secondary schools, and in the difficulty of finding firm ground from which to clarify the situation. Second, to attempt to explore the meaning of the term 'values in education' and to find an approach from which the questions arising may be tackled. The methods of research are then set out, outlining the methodology and the concepts used. This includes a description of the sample of schools and of the means of gathering, processing and considering data, from students, teachers and headteachers, by questionnaire and interview. The results are then set out: First, the questionnaire, under the headings of Priorities, Qualities, Offences in School and in Wider Society, attitudes to the Curriculum, the School Ethos and the direction of Student Development: Second, the interviews, under the headings of five main questions. The last two chapters are concerned with reactions to the enquiry; with findings related to the original hypotheses and with inferences drawn from these findings. The interest shown in the project is discussed, the relationship to the National Curriculum, political control and the issues of motivation. The conclusions include the suggestion that both teachers and students are interested in a 'valuate' aspect of education but a difficulty is the individualistic nature of much educational practice. It is also found that both teachers and students appear unsure of the 'core mission' of their schools and that insufficient attention is paid to this in teacher training. Thus a need is suggested for a clearer vision concerning the overall purpose of education.

The molecular mechanism of hAl-1 glutathione S-transferase (GST) has been probed using fluorescence and NMR spectroscopy, kinetic analysis and X-ray crystallography. The results show that the mechanism of hAl-1 GST involves hydrophobic substrate activation, and the efficiency of this process is a crucial factor in hydrophobic substrate specificity. Hydrophobic substrate activation can only occur when the glutathione peptidyl moiety has bound, inducing a conformational change in the protein. The main region of the protein that is involved in this conformational change is the characteristic C-terminal helix of hAl-1 GST and the integrity of this region has been shown to be essential for hydrophobic substrate activation. It is thought that the C-terminal helix correctly orientates the hydrophobic substrate in the active site allowing activation to occur. The deletion of the C-terminal helix alters the substrate specificity of the enzyme, with the truncated enzyme having a high activity towards ethacrynic acid, normally a pi-class GST substrate. Thus the characteristic C-terminal helix of alpha class GSTs is a major determinant in substrate specificity, in particular determining the characteristic substrate specificity of hAl-1 GST.

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The study proposes a conceptual framework for the establishment of an in-service activity as an integral part of the school staff's function. The School-based Interdisciplinary Workshop Approach (S.I.W.A.) is shown to be in accord with social values and with a growing tendency of these values to turn into norms of teaching profession. The proposed approach is based on the assumption that teaching behaviours practiced by teachers in the classroom are linked to the 'climate' of the school and to modes which other teachers accept. Therefore any attempt to modify teaching behaviours has a better chance of success if it is organised as a school-based group activity. On the practical level the study set out to establish a pilot project aimed at producing information about three areas of con-cern: acceptability, effectiveness and feasibility of the proposal. The intention of the project was to modify some behaviours in education. The project was confined to one school year, and consisted of twelve sessions, separated from one another by inter-vals of increasing length, ranging from one to three weeks. The content of the sessions centred on the educational objectives of the scientific methods. The material used was based on a selection of activities devised by the Science Teacher Education Project (STEP). Four schools provided the 'experimental' groups and two others the reference groups. Observation by trained observers and the responses of teachers and pupils to various questionnaires, made up the data-gathering apparatus. The results obtained by the evaluative procedures indicate that in the three relevant areas of concern, the S.I.W.A. had at least some of the merits that were proposed for it. The project was welcomed by the teachers; some of the 'desired' modification observed by the observers was corroborated by the pupils; and it was suggested that a wider implementation is feasible.

The thesis is in three parts. Part I deals with the conceptual background, principally the meaning and place of literacy in adult education, together with the purposes of various projects concerned with mass adult literacy and the organisation of literacy schemes in Cambridgeshire. Part II identifies and classifies Tutors' aims and suggests the possibility of adopting an ethological approach as an appropriate methodological means of analysis. Part III demonstrates how quotations from tape-recorded interviews with Tutors and Students may be analysed to reveal structures of evidence which indicate criteria of achievement. The findings suggest that, in the process of achievement, the improvement in skills was subservient to, and dependent upon, the enhancement of self-image. The criteria of achievement were, in order of importance: affective personal achievements, affective social achievements, socio-economic achievements, cognitive achievements and enactive achievements. Constituent sub-criteria within each group are listed, and it is argued that they are inter-related. Any grouping of criteria chosen and applied to any individual's progress will contain at least one of the prime criteria listed in the affective personal or social achievement domains, and these are synonymous with the general aims of adult education. These notions are set in the context of the United Kingdom literacy campaign and there is a contiguous discussion of the recruitment, training and use of volunteer tutors, the role of broadcasting, alternative systems of tuition and the need for counselling.

This thesis is concerned with an examination of dimensions of primary school headteachers' and teachers' concepts of the evaluation of INSET in thirty schools selected from two contrasting Local Education Authorities in the north of England. The focus of the research includes analyses and comparisons of these dimensions, especially within the setting of school-initiated INSET. Three hypotheses were formulated relating to the evaluation of INSET and accountability, the evidence of coherence with regard to the discernible dimensions of concepts of evaluation and a comparison of the responses of headteachers and teachers. Viewed within the context of the increasing demands upon schools from new inspection procedures and, in general, more extensive and obvious public accountability, the findings do not auger well for institutional evaluation and school improvement. Particularly since the publication of DES Circular 6/86, the changes affecting the funding and provision of INSET have been sweeping, radical and of magnitude. This investigation draws attention to the serious difficulties which are facing primary school headteachers and governors in ensuring that, especially for small schools, suitable in-service opportunities are available for the benefit of the staff and, ultimately, of the children they teach. Given the persistent demands emanating from the introduction of the National Curriculum and from the onset of appraisal, there will continue to be a need for the delivery of INSET of high quality. However, with the decreasing influence of Iiocal Education Authorities within the spheres of the provision, monitoring and evaluation of INSET, there will be a growing onus upon the schools to meet these requirements. From the results of this study, primary school staff are not ready to undertake these additional responsibilities.

This study is a comparative analysis of systems and policies for teacher training in England, Wales and the Republic of Turkey. The introduction defines the terms of reference and sets up the framework of the recruitment, appointment and career expectations of trainee students in the two countries. The central sections of the study examine in details the structure and content of the teacher training curriculum in England, Wales, England and the Republic of Turkey. From this examination emerges a picture of two sharply contrasting approaches. The Turkish system is highly centralised with a strong emphasis placed upon students acquiring theories of knowledge. In England and Wales a very decentralised system is gradually becoming more centrally driven by Government and its related agencies. However, the thrust of central documentation and directives does not entirely negate the amount and extent of applied theory which English students acquire in the course of an increasingly school based training. The study concludes by examining the likely future direction of teacher training in the context of the Republic of Turkey joining the European Common Market. Centrally imposed policies, while providing clarity, will need to be tempered by some of the pragmatic flexibility which is a current feature of the English system. A fusion of the strengths of both systems will be necessary for the successful implementation of teacher training in both countries as the twenty first century draws closer.

The commodification of higher education has been described, within the philosophical and sociological literature, in opposition to, or in alliance with principled perspectives about the nature, purpose or value of 'higher education': for example, as that which is intrinsically valuable, a social good, a democratic requirement or an individual entitlement. This thesis argues that such approaches are relatively unproductive in providing descriptions that can inform higher education practice. Rather, it is argued, they largely seem to operate to reproduce the principled perspectives with which they are aligned or opposed. The thesis examines the following question: How do official texts that describe higher education, operate to (re)produce and/or resist the idea of its commodification? The methodology employed to examine this question, locates 'official' texts as empirical objects for analysis. The analysis proceeds by identifying and organising oppositions and alliances within these texts, to produce a constructive description of how each text is operating within the higher education field. Specific descriptions of higher education within official texts are analysed in relation to constructed theoretical spaces that describe modes of discursive action, including the commodified mode. The method provides a means of describing commodification as a discursive modality rather than as a representation of use-value/exchange-value or market/non-market type oppositions. This approach is productive in describing the ways that official texts operate to regulate higher education practice without reproducing a principled perspective. Despite some explicit references to the economic or commodity value of higher education, official texts tend to use such descriptions to promote the introduction or maintenance of bureaucratic and regulatory systems that actually stand in opposition to the commodified mode. This conclusion is in contrast with the idea that official descriptions of higher education are operating to promote increasing commodification.

This research examines the nature and form of Edexcel’s BTEC National assessment policy and practice, as found within a small college Engineering Programme Area. The study investigated the salient influences and considerations underpinning both the explicit and implicit lecturer assessment constructs. The backwash effects of these constructs are considered, and how these impact on lecturers’ micro-level classroom practice, and on students’ engagement with assessment. This study also considers the effect assessment has on preparing students for progression from BTEC National programmes. BTEC National qualifications of the 2000s have their origins in the 1970s Technician Education Council’s programmes, founded on the recommendations of the Haslegrave Committee’s Report (Haslegrave, 1969). Although BTEC programmes have evolved over the past four decades, the central tenets of Haslegrave, that of unitised, teacher-assessed, broken-up summative assessment, still underpin BTEC National assessment of the 2000s. Current BTEC units are criterion-referenced, and employ formative assessment as an integral aspect of the educational ethos of the qualification. The research design involved a single site case study of assessment-in-action within a small programme area offering BTEC Nationals in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and in Manufacturing Engineering. This study used an interpretative approach, based on semi-structured interviews with seven lecturers and thirteen students during academic years 2006-2008. Findings suggest BTEC assessment practice relies significantly on the integrity of the lecturers, who construct their assessment practice by accommodating and balancing various external and internal requirements and influences placed upon them. It is through the programme area community of practice that notions of standards evolve, these being significantly influenced by cultural considerations, which impact on all aspects of assessment practice. This study finds an ethical departmental ethos in which all students should pass, and an assessment regime implicitly designed to aid student retention and achievement, but from which emanates a focus on criteria compliance. This tends to produce assessment constructs encouraging instrumental learning, where students’ achievements can be based on incremental improvement of the same assessment through multiple attempts, and where the potential for developing learning is diminished as formative assessment becomes conflated with summative intent. Both the assessment regime and the type of learning implicitly encouraged, has the potential to hamper some students’ preparedness for progression from the BTEC National programmes. Based on the findings of this research, considerations and recommendations are offered, both at the macro level of BTEC policy and at the departmental programme area micro-level of classroom practice, with the intention of enhancing students preparedness for progression from the National programmes. The study concludes that, despite radical changes in technician assessment practice having occurred since instigation of the Haslegrave recommendations, concerns emanating from assessment practice of the 1950s and 60s are still present within modern-day BTEC assessment, a case of plus ça change.