The aim of this study is to provide a preliminary insight into a teaching strategy which deploys independent learning in degree-level chemistry. For this purpose, the impact of the teaching approach applied in a Macromolecules course on students’ knowledge of, understanding about chemical ideas, and intellectual attributes was investigated. To achieve this, diagnostic questions both before and after the teaching, descriptive questionnaires and standardised interviews were used. The sample consisted of first-year undergraduate students who took the Macromolecules course in the Department of Chemistry in one of the top ten universities in the UK. In total, one hundred sixty-seven students took part in the study and interviews were carried out with twenty-four students. The results revealed that the independent learning strategy applied in the Macromolecules course can be effective in improving students’ knowledge of and understanding about chemical ideas, as well as contributing to some of their intellectual attributes. It was also found that when students were left on their own to do independent investigations, without any support, their knowledge of and understanding about chemical ideas from the course content did not change statistically significantly. In addition, whilst there was no statistically significant change in student responses with a sign of misunderstanding for nine out of ten diagnostic questions, in one case there was statistically significant increase in the number of student responses with a sign of misunderstanding. The results of this research study also presented a detailed and personal picture of students’ views of the independent learning approach. Student arguments for their appreciation and disapproval of the strategy were revealed and discussed. The findings of this research study can offer a supplementary resource for teachers at tertiary level to use in situated ways when dealing with similar course contents and similar learning objectives which they encounter during their practice.

Green chemistry is based on a set of radical ideas that overlap with the principles of sustainability and propose a modern version of chemistry that is less toxic, less hazardous, highly efficient and non-polluting. Literature suggests that green chemistry started being taught in universities but was later adapted to lower levels of education. It appears that little research has been done on the impact of green chemistry on students studying chemistry at post-sixteen. This research project is a case study investigating the reaction of a group of Maltese sixth form students to the introduction of green chemistry. It involved the design and implementation of an intervention package to introduce some basic ideas of green chemistry in the classroom and school laboratory. Data were gathered from the participants before and after the intervention through the use of questionnaires, focus groups, research diary and other documents. Similar data were also collected from a second group of students from the same cohort which did not experience the same intervention. A conceptual framework was developed to analyse the attitudinal data while an evaluation scheme was used to analyse the knowledge and understanding data. The effectiveness of the intervention package was assessed using one of the models of educational evaluation. Results of the analysis show that green chemistry raised the students’ environmental awareness and their interest in the subject, and may influence also their motivation to follow a chemistry-related career. Students were particularly interested in the practical side of green chemistry. With green chemistry students also developed a more positive perspective of chemistry. They thought that green chemistry had the potential to close the gap between a traditional curriculum and one that emphasized the impact of chemistry on society. Students strongly supported the inclusion of green chemistry in future A-level chemistry curricula.

Although education in recent years has been recognised as holding the potential for both building peace and fuelling conflict, research in the area is scarce. This thesis therefore investigated the role education has played in peace-building following the 2007/08 post-election violence in Kenya. Kenya was chosen because a peace education programme was launched following the violence, making the country particularly progressive in that respect. In order to generate in-depth knowledge on the matter, a case-study approach using mixed-methods was adopted. In addition to four case studies, interviews were carried out with national policy makers and local school authorities to generate data on peace education policies. The qualitative data from the schools was triangulated with a teacher survey from a larger number of schools. The study found that education can indeed build peace, and that the Kenyan peace education programme can play a role in this. Drivers of conflict were also identified in the schools, pointing to a need for a holistic approach to peace education, where the whole school culture is addressed. Only one of the four case-study schools was found to have implemented peace education to the extent encouraged by the Ministry of Education. The three remaining schools were not found to have implemented peace education to the extent that policy makers had hoped. Within these three schools, a range of challenges faced by peace education initiatives were identified. In particular, the perceived relevance of peace education, location of schools, school leadership, sense of ownership of peace education, and national peace education policies were found to have a particular influence. The findings are followed by a set of recommendations for policy makers, teacher trainers and head teachers, arguing that there is a need for further grounding in national policies, more follow-up work in schools and more thorough training in peace, for peace education to reach its full potential in Kenya.

Understanding students’ intercultural development has become increasingly important with the recognition that graduates require knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will allow them to contribute effectively in a global context. Although universities policies often suggest that students who study on culturally diverse campuses will mix and develop interculturally little research actually explores the extent to which this occurs. This study examined the intercultural development of a cohort of first year UK and non-UK psychology students studying at one UK university. The Intercultural Development Inventory was used to assess students’ stages of development upon entry and seven months on. Questionnaires and interviews further explored students’ intercultural experiences prior to and during university. Students entered university at a range of developmental stages. There was no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of UK and non-UK students. Although the majority of students reported relatively high levels of intercultural contact during university, particularly non-UK students, neither group experienced a significant change. Time lived abroad best predicted initial development for all students. Having friends from other cultures was also a predictor for UK students and growing up in cities was a predictor for non-UK students. No variables predicted changes in students’ scores. However, ‘feelings of not fitting in’ had a small negative relationship with UK students’ change scores and ‘being increasingly active in clubs and societies’ had a small negative relationship with non-UK students’ change scores. Thematic analysis suggests that students’ development may have been hindered by the intercultural challenges they experienced at university. UK students with limited prior intercultural experiences in particular reported challenges although some non-UK students with extensive intercultural experience also experienced challenges. Cultural clustering and administrative segregation may have also limited contact opportunities.

In 2011, a curricular reform of primary education in Malaysia known as the Standard Curriculum for Primary Schools (SCPS) was implemented for all taught subjects including English. The aim of the English language curriculum reform was to place great emphasis on the development of student communicative competence through interactive, learner-centred teaching approaches. Research suggests that the implementation of a curriculum reform at the classroom level depends largely on the extent to which teachers understand what the curriculum policy is intended to achieve and whether they perceive the policy as relevant and feasible. This study critically examines the effectiveness of the SCPS for English in three dimensions: (1) the clarity and usefulness of the curriculum documentation; (2) the effectiveness of the curriculum dissemination process; and, (3) the implementation of the curriculum in the classroom. A mixed-method was used in the study. It consisted of semi-structured interviews, document analysis, lesson observations, systematic interaction analysis of digitally recorded lessons, discourse analysis of lesson transcripts and video-stimulated reflective dialogue. The study involved 8 teachers, 2 curriculum trainers, 2 District Education Officers, and one officer from the Curriculum Development Division of Ministry of Education (MOE) in Malaysia. A total of 32 primary English lessons, four from each of the teachers involved, were also observed, video-recorded and systematically analysed. The findings revealed that the SCPS was not fully understood by the teachers and top-down, cascading of the curriculum process was largely ineffective. They also highlighted incongruence between the curriculum policy and classroom practice. The findings suggest there is a need to revise the SCPS documentation, to evaluate the curriculum dissemination process, and to support teachers in curriculum implementation at the classroom level. The wider implications of the findings for curriculum policy makers and teacher professional development are also discussed.

Within the input-poor foreign language classroom, opportunities to draw on implicit learning mechanisms are limited. Yet little research has explored the effectiveness of explicit instruction for young learners. The current study investigated the extent to which English learners of L2 German (aged 9-11) benefitted from instruction on accusative case-marking (den) for masculine definite articles in German, a problematic feature for L1 English learners due to a reliance on word order when assigning grammatical roles (as predicted by MacWhinney’s Competition Model and VanPatten’s First Noun Principle). Two input-based interventions provided explicit information plus EITHER: Task Essential Form-Meaning Connection (TE-FMC) activities forcing attention on the article and its role-assigning function; OR Task Essential-Form (TE-F) activities forcing attention on the article only ('spot the form'). Learners were randomly assigned to the TE-FMC (n = 45) and TE-F (n = 41) treatments. A control group (n = 52) received instruction on lexical items, but no exposure to den. Two untimed written tasks (sentence matching, gap fill), three one-to-one oral tasks (act-out comprehension, act-out production, elicited imitation), and a metalinguistic task were administered as pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests to assess knowledge of der and den. Both interventions yielded large, durable gains across the written and oral tasks. The Control group made no improvement. The TE-FMC and TE-F learners’ verbalisable knowledge also improved at post-test, but deteriorated by delayed post-test. Under both conditions, learners had developed explicit knowledge of the target feature, available on untimed written tasks, as well as more automatized knowledge, accessible under time and communicative pressure. Fine-grained analysis revealed that group-level gains could be accounted for by a sub-group of learners within each condition, reflecting the influence of individual differences on instructional effectiveness. The findings contribute to previous research by demonstrating the beneficial role of explicit instruction and knowledge for child L2 learning.

This thesis reports an exploratory and contrastive corpus study examining two phenomena in postgraduate academic writing: expressing commitment/detachment and signalling authorial presence in dissertations. More specifically, the overall purpose of the study is to investigate how postgraduate academic writers from particular contexts build their academic stance and voice by employing a range of linguistic items that could be identified as hedges, boosters and authorial references. The corpus consists of a total of 90 discussions sections of master’s dissertations, 30 from Turkish L1 writers, 30 from Turkish writers of English and 30 from UK English L1 writers. A range of items, discourse functions and roles were determined during the pilot study via Nvivo 9. Then, the whole corpus was searched and analysed via WordSmith 5.0 based on the linguistic item list signalling certainty/doubt or authorial presence. In order to address two crucial phenomena in dissertation writing of postgraduates represented by three groups, both quantitative and qualitative approaches were adapted. Three key findings are as follows: 1. The postgraduates polarised: they either frequently qualified their level of commitment or else they seemingly intentionally withheld their commitment from what they asserted. The tone of writing adopted by the Turkish L1 writers differed markedly from that of the English L1 & L2 writers, as evidenced by their use of linguistic signalling expressions; the English L1 and L2 writers preferred to sound more detached from their knowledge claims, compared with the Turkish L1 writers. Therefore, the findings emphasise the importance of the language factor in expressing commitment-detachment across groups. 2. The authorial references included two broad categories: (1) Explicit authorial references (I and we-based pronouns); (2) Implicit authorial references (passive and element-prominent constructions speaking for the author). The Turkish L1 writers and the Turkish writers of English (from Turkish culture) appeared to construct less personal academic prose compared with the English L1 writers. This seems to reflect a broader cultural difference. 3. In terms of the authorial roles identified in relation to the accompanying verbs, the postgraduate writers tended to appear in their discourse most frequently as (1) Research Conductor, followed by (2) Discourse Creator & Participant; then (3) Opinion Holder. The rhetorical role indicating the membership of the postgraduates to a community (either academic or institutional), (4) Community-self, was the least frequent role adopted by the postgraduates in their discussion sections. It is recommended that, in order to raise postgraduates’ awareness about the writing conventions and practices in their disciplines, they should be provided with the standards required with respect to style via modelling from previous successful dissertations completed in their field. This is suggested as particularly important for ‘novice’ writers.

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in entrepreneurship education and it has taken hold across the world, including Malaysia. In 2011, the Malaysian Ministry of Education (MOE) reformed its primary school curriculum and introduced entrepreneurship education into the new curriculum on a cross-curricular basis. Based on field work undertaken in one of the districts in Malaysia, this study investigates the perceptions of a selected group of respondents concerning the implementation of the government’s new entrepreneurship education programme in Year 1. It looks at respondents’ understanding of the entrepreneurship element, their views on the purpose of its implementation and the pedagogical and political issues faced during the implementation process. The research also focuses on other important theoretical issues including curriculum reform, human capital and entrepreneurship education. This is a qualitative research study using a case study approach. It was conducted based on in-depth interviews with 48 respondents from five different groups of professionals (officers, headteachers, subject teachers, expert teachers and teachers’ trainers). Respondents were selected using different sampling methods and the acquired data were analysed using Nvivo 9 software. A thematic analysis approach was used to identify themes. The findings suggest that there were relatively different views on the concept and purpose of entrepreneurship education. Specific differences between the implementers (the teachers), headteachers and curriculum developers were also identified. Nevertheless, most respondents agreed that the implementation was a positive development and most respondents had similar opinions concerning the cross-curricular approach. As expected, the findings also showed that the lack of monitoring and poor training had slowed down the implementation. Since there has been little research carried out on entrepreneurship education in primary schools especially in Malaysia, this study will be relevant for the design of future policies in the region and future academic research. It not only reveals the respondents’ perceptions and the actual practice in schools, but it also contributes to the body of knowledge on entrepreneurship education and curriculum reform for future reference.

Results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) places Mexico at the lower end of a list of 32 countries in the evaluation of students’ reading ability. Research suggests that students’ reading comprehension can be improved by the direct teaching of reading strategies. Previous studies analysing the effectiveness of strategy training have demonstrated that comprehension can be enhanced by making students aware of their thinking while reading, and by teaching them to monitor their understanding. However, these studies focus only on comprehension of texts in English language and it is unclear whether these findings can be transferred to the Mexican context. It might be hypothesised that the direct teaching of reading strategies might also foster the comprehension of Spanish texts but few studies have attempted to test this hypothesis empirically. This thesis reports on a quasi-randomised experimental intervention that was carried out in a secondary school located in a low-income working class neighbourhood in Mexico City. All students (N=177) in their last year of compulsory education were selected to participate in the project. All participants were randomly allocated to one of two groups: a) strategy group (direct teaching of reading strategies) and b) active control group. Students in the strategy group were taught cognitive and metacognitive strategies to test whether this would improve their reading comprehension. The intervention was carried out over a 6-month time period. The researcher taught both groups during the first two months and introduced the strategies. Two Spanish teachers subsequently practiced the strategies with the students for another two months. No further teaching of strategies was provided in the last two months. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative data analyses. Improvements in comprehension were assessed using a comprehension test developed on the basis of material from PISA assessments. A self-reported instrument helped to examine differences in the reported use of reading strategies and findings from this instrument were corroborated with evidence from a ‘think aloud’ verbal report. Reading comprehension was assessed before the intervention and at two and six months. Strategy use was elicited before the intervention and at two months. The results suggest that both groups improved their reading comprehension after the intervention but only the strategy group maintained their gains over time. Students in the strategy group more often reported to be aware of and use reading strategies than their peers in the control group. Both findings are statistically significant. However, a correlation test found no statistical significant correlation between gain scores of self-reported use of strategies and reading comprehension. This highlights the importance of employing multiple outcome measures to assess the effectiveness of reading comprehension instruction.

The current educational position and viability of the standalone preparatory (prep) school in England is examined through the perceptions of three sets of key stakeholders: parents, prep Heads, and senior school Heads. This type of school has been in existence for centuries and today forms a unique part of the independent education sector, but it is believed to be under threat due to declining numbers and school closures. The research used purposive and convenience sampling to identify case studies and face-to-face interviews were conducted with the key stakeholders. The case studies were selected from the Greater London area (deemed urban) and the Rest of England (deemed rural). Parents and Heads from eight prep schools and six senior schools were interviewed. The key stakeholders expressed their views with regard to the benefits (or otherwise) of prep schools and the pupils educated in them, the clients and the competition of such establishments. The study examines the issues currently facing the prep school as identified by the key stakeholders and considers whether these issues pose a potential threat to the sector’s viability. These risks are also considered in comparison to some broader trends affecting the education market in general. The research highlighted a large number of similarities across stakeholder views across geographical locations and noted the emergence of a new type of client. A second strand to the London market was identified which had a different purpose behind their choosing of a prep school. While no single threat is likely to be fatal to the prep school, a number of threats have appeared which, in combination risk a long, slow demise of this type of school. Although pupil numbers have plateaued over recent years, the emergence of the new customer, together with a willingness to adapt and to address at least some of the threats being faced, could be enough to ensure the survival of prep schools. However evidence of tension between education and the market was evident and could in itself impact on such a school.