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In this thesis I discuss the findings of a small-scale research study carried out in England that set out to explore the over-representation of working class pupils in school exclusion processes. Recent education policy has emphasised the need to improve the educational attainment of pupils from the poorest backgrounds in order to improve their future life chances (DfES, 2004a; 2006a). There is also a substantial body of literature that discusses differences in the way that working class and middle class parents engage in educational processes. Although a link between low socia-economic status and recorded exclusion from school has. been identified in previous research, the factors contributing to this over-representation have not been substantially explored. However, difficulties defining both disciplinary exclusion and social class make exploring this over-representation more problematic. In making this the focus of this thesis I begin to address this gap in the literature. Throughout this thesis I conceptualise both disciplinary exclusion and social class as complex processes. I draw on predominantly qualitative data collected as part of a case study carried out over the course of the academic year 2004/2005. Although interviews and school level secondary data provided much of the data, I also draw on a small number of observations and a questionnaire. I explore the perspectives of different groups of respondents, including professionals working with pupils identified as 'at risk' of exclusion from school in both within-school and non-school contexts and also those of a small number of parents. I structure my discussion of the research findings around three key issues. Firstly I explore disciplinary exclusion as a complex process and illustrate how the over-representation of working class pupils within this process is not always recognised at practice level. Secondly, I consider the effects of social class on the parent-professional interaction that occurs within school exclusion processes and the additional demands that involvement in these processes make on parents. Finally, I consider how limitations in inclusive professional practice, both at institutional and individual levels, contribute to the involvement of working class pupils in disciplinary processes. Throughout this thesis I argue that it is important to recognise disproportionate involvement in school exclusion processes as a particular form of working class educational disadvantage. This thesis makes a contribution to knowledge by developing our understanding of what is currently an under-recognised issue of educational inequity.

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Ceylon has seen very rapid changes in the educational field particularly in the past ten years, consequent on the acceptance of the Report of the Special Committee on Education, 194, by the State Council in the following year. This Committee recommended, among other things, a scheme of free education from the kindergarten to the University, and a scheme of post-primary education, the selection of pupils for which was to be made on the results of a general intelligence test, and attainment tests in language and arithmetic, both of which were to be administered in the mother tongue of the pupils. This Committee also stressed that one of the major defects in the system of education in Ceylon was its excessive uniformity, in that it was purely academic, and recommended that post-primary education should be differentiated according to the abilities and aptitudes of pupils. Ten years have passed since these major recommendations were accepted and given statutory significance, but no tests have yet been constructed and standardized for the selection of pupils for secondary education according to their abilities and aptitudes. The writer, therefore, interested in educational research, has attempted to carry out the above survey on an island-wide scale; incidentally, it is the first of its kind in the history of education in Ceylon. Making use of his non-verbal intelligence group test constructed and validated for Ceylonese children in 1950, and of attainment tests in language and arithmetic, and a practical ability test, all of which were specifically constructed and validated for this survey, the writer has administered these tests to a random representative sample of over 7000 Ceylonese boys and girls in the above age-group, in their mother tongue. An account of this investigation and the results of this survey are reported in this thesis.

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This thesis examines early years practice and offers a critique of normative ways of interpreting and responding to artefacts produced by' children in the foundation stage classroom. It is written from the position of an early years practitioner-researcher who is interrogating her habitual ways of viewing children's work in the classroom setting. Using field notes that document children as they make artefacts,it explores the continuing and powerful effects that Piaget's developmental theory exerts. It takes a particularly close look' at the intimate links between a cognitive account of the child and the conceptualisation of space through the system of perspective. This connection raises significant questions both about the way children are represented and the way they are expected to represent the world. In the first instance, the representation of the child is explored by examining the practice of child observation and the way it is employed as a tool by which teachers come to know the child. The practice of child observation by early years teachers is considered alongside a reflection on the central place of observation as method in ethnographic research. This examination challenges the naturalist claims of observation, and referring to perspective, it re-conceives observation as providing us with a frame through which we look at the world. Thought this way, observation has the potential to shape what we see rather than simply to reflect it. On this basis documentation produced through the practice of observation is reviewed in order to consider how it might reproduce particular ways of seeing the child. While the work owes much to Foucault's conception of a 'normalising gaze' (1991, p.184) that operates to sustain universal truths about the child, its principal aim is to open up new ways to see the child. As a starting point I have taken not only the artefacts child~en produce, but also the documentation I have produced as an observer, in order to reengage with these objects in different ways. This approach is led by an appreciation of the material qualities of the object, as well as an awareness of the dual sense in which the object contains both self and other. This appreciation for the liveliness of the object also contributes to a new way to view the processes at play when children make artefacts in the classroom setting. The research has allowed me, as a practitioner, to go beyond the assumption that children's purposes are limited to representing the world as if seen through a window. At the same time, it has revealed the' powerful way that I, as a teacher, shape the space that children inhabit. In response I have adopted a stance that recognises the power that objects exert during the creative process and the result has been to give credence and value to the unconventional artefacts produced in this way. Finally, and perhaps most usefully for the early years practitioner, my research offers a way for the object to provide a meeting place in which to engage with the child in more open, rather than prescribed, ways.

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