The thesis is an investigation into the proper way a liberal education system should respond to the diversity of opinions that are held in modern societies. The work primarily engages with the philosophy of John Rawls as laid out in his book Political Liberalism. The first section of the thesis defends Rawls' account from its most prominent critics. In particular, I defend Rawls’ response to pluralism. Following this, I analyse the application of political liberalism to education. This reveals a serious problem with Rawls' account: while Rawls responds fairly to pluralism in the case of adults, his model fails to consider the implications of education for children themselves. I develop this objection into an internal problem for Rawls’ theory by showing that children must be counted as full members of the community, which means they cannot be ignored when considering issues of legitimacy. I show that political liberalism, as defended by Rawls, is blind to the effects of different schemes of education on the welfare of children. In light of this, I show that children could reasonably reject Rawls' account; a conclusion which renders Rawls’ model illegitimate. The thesis thus shows that political liberalism fails to deal adequately with the case of education. Further, this case study reveals internal problems with the theory that go beyond the particular example of education. After highlighting this problem, I propose a modification to Rawls' account which can both better respond to the case of education and remain faithful to the core goals of political liberalism. My account is less deferential to parents' wishes than is Rawls’ model, but it does not depend on one contested view of the good life.

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The current trends in educational research, in educational theory (academic and applied), and in educational practice, have brought to the fore, issues of what understanding in educational contexts entails. These pressures to develop a concept of educational understanding are examined and, following Bereiter, a distinction is made between explanatory theories which seek to interpret how understanding develops in educational contexts along with why there are variations in understanding, and instructional theories which seek to specify what understanding should be as developed by a person in an educational context. It is argued that, at the level of educational theory, understanding in educational contexts can only be fully explained in terms of the life milieu of the person - that is, the person's developmental history as an individual in a range of physical and social contexts - and in terms of the relationship between education and the society within which it is practised. An adaptational framework is suggested which sees understanding as various forms of relationships between the personal understanding of the individual and the target understandings of the contexts that individual encounters in life. These relationships may range from complete lack of engagement between personal understanding and target understanding, through various forms of mismatch, to forms of relationship in which the adaptational specifications of the target are complied with. The target understandings themselves are viewed as being embedded like sets within a universal set of all possible understandings. Thus a particular target understanding in the curriculum, can be placed in a broader context of institution, social background, national purposes, norms and so on, as required by the explanatory goals of a particular research project. An attempt is made to show the relevance of these concepts for both educational theory and practice.

The UN has declared 2005 to 2014 the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. However, education is often viewed as an unalloyed good and consequently, there have been few empirical studies on the costs and benefits of different forms of education within the fields of environmental conservation and sustainable development. Likewise, studies quantifying success of conservation and sustainable development projects are also limited. Without quantitative data on either of these aspects it is difficult to translate research into action, which is vital if conservation and sustainable development strategies are to succeed. This study explores educational policies at global and local scales based on conservation interventions funded by the DEFRA Darwin Initiative. At the global scale, I carry out an analysis of the role of educational activities in projects funded by the Darwin Initiative since its inception. At the local scale, I carry out an in-depth case study of the success of a Darwin-funded project for the conservation of the saiga antelope (Saiga tartarica) conservation in Kalmykia, Russia. The geographically small area studied meant that cultural and demographic influences could be controlled, allowing for an in-depth exploration of a media-based public awareness campaign in comparison with other conservation interventions. Fieldwork was carried out over three months, using willingness-to-pay (WTP) as an indicator of behavioural intention. Analysis involved generalised linear modelling techniques. To expand the study from a case-by-case scenario to a global comparative analysis, a database was developed of Darwin Initiative project reports, as the scheme has been promoting biodiversity conservation and sustainable resource use worldwide for many years and emphasises the importance of education within its remit. It therefore offers a range of education initiatives both in terms of scale and strategy providing the variance required for such a meta-analysis. The study involved a combination of quantitative statistical and cost-benefit analyses alongside qualitative in-depth interviews with project leaders. This may be one of the few studies on environmental conservation and sustainable development success in which intervention effectiveness has been properly quantified and robustly examined. WTP, as an indicator of behavioural intention, was established as a practical measure of conservation success at field-level. At the larger scale, consistent measures of success can be developed that can be used to analyse large datasets in a quantitative manner. These measures have been used successfully to establish education as a useful tool for environmental conservation and sustainable development and to demonstrate important distinctions in cost-effectiveness of different educational strategies. It is hoped that this comprehensive and quantitative comparative assessment of the effectiveness and success of different conservation interventions will be used in future implementation of conservation, and in particular environmental education policies, to ensure that sustainable development and environmental conservation strategies are both cost-effective and successful.

School reform is a major concern in many countries that seek to improve their educational systems and enhance their performances. In consequence, many global schemes, theories, studies, attempts, and programmes have been introduced to promote education in recent years. Saudi Arabia is one of these countries that implemented educational change by introducing many initiatives. The Tatweer Programme is one of these initiatives and is considered as a major recent reform. The main purpose of this study is to investigate this reform in depth by examining the perceptions and experiences of the Tatweer leaders and teachers to find out which extent they have been enabled to be innovative, and to examine the types of leadership and decision-making that have been undertaken by such schools. This study adopted a qualitative case study that employed interviews, focus groups and documentary analysis. The design of the study has been divided into two phases; the first phase was the feasibility study and the second phase was the main study. The research sample of the feasibility study was head teachers, educational experts and Tatweer Unit’s members. The sample of the main study was three Tatweer schools, Tatweer Unit members and one official of Tatweer Project in Riyadh. The findings of this study identified the level of autonomy in managing the school; the Tatweer schools’ system is semi-autonomous when it comes to the internal management, but it lacks autonomy when it comes to staff appointment, student assessment, and curriculum development. In addition, the managerial work has been distributed through teams and members; the Excellence Team plays a critical role in school effectiveness leading an efficient change. Moreover, Professional Learning Communities have been used to enhance the work within Tatweer schools. Finally the findings show that there have been major shifts in the Tatweer schools’ system; the shifting from centralisation to semi-decentralisation; from the culture of the individual to the culture of community; from the traditional school to one focused on self-evaluation and planning; from management to leadership; and from an isolated school being open to society. These shifts have impacted positively on the attitudes of students, parents and staff.

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This thesis examines the connections between neuroscience and education, with a particular focus on the recently formed sub-discipline, Mind, Brain and Education. There will be a detailed analysis of various philosophical quandaries which befall neuroscience in general and neuroeducation in particular, most notably the mereological fallacy (Bennett and Hacker 2003), the first-person/third-person asymmetry principle, and so-called irreducible uncertainty. On the basis of this philosophical analysis, the author will conclude that the potential for the collaboration between neuroscience and education is fundamentally restricted. Moreover, it will be shown that neuroscience and neuroeducation are stuck in Cartesian, Newtonian mode, both of which are philosophical models which are outdated and conceptually flawed. Finally, in light of recent advancements within Quantum Physics, the author will offer a new conceptual mode, on which to base educational reflections, predicated in the main on the philosophy of Quantum pioneer Niels Bohr. Simultaneously, there will be connections established between the aforementioned philosophy with the philosophy (of mind, grammar and language) of Ludwig Wittgenstein, to offer a Wittgensteinian-Bohrian mode, of education to replace the problematic Cartesian-Newtonian model which is still adopted in many educational circles today.

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