ICT has impacted on all aspects of society over recent years, and its potential to transform education continues to be widely acclaimed. The high expectation of the role ICT can play in schools places both opportunities and challenges for those involved in its implementation and application for teaching and learning. This study researched the issues surrounding ICT implementation in UK secondary schools from a school based ICT perspective. It considered the matter as a specific case of change management. It adopted a case study approach, identified a school where ICT use was used to support subject teaching in most areas of the curriculum, and researched the way the school had reached this position. It examined the process adopted, identifying features which may have been influential in achieving widespread use of ICT by staff in most subject areas. Similarly the study sought to uncover any particular whole school characteristics which may have been supportive in the process of achieving whole school ICT permeation. The outcomes of the study were then put to a number of ICT active teachers in different secondary schools in the UK, in order to assess their responses to each of the emerging key factors. The findings of the work highlight the importance of recognising ICT implementation as a special case of change management. Whole school characteristics and the school's `track record' proved to be influential as did the leadership and prevailing ethos. The study also makes specific points about some key features of the implementation process, which it is suggested made a significant contribution to its success. Two particularly influential ones were to `start small and grow', and the need to recognise that people and organisations require time to adjust to change; the process must be monitored and moved forward, but cannot be rushed. The researchh ighlightedm anyi ssuesf or further study;o ne of which wast o consider differenti nterpretationso f the meaningo f ICT implementationa, ndt he aspirationsfo r its use. In this study ICT was seen as, and used as, a tool for learning within existing structuresa nd expectationsI.t is unclearw hethert his is simply a necessarys tagei n a processw hich might leadt o establishingd ifferent approachetso teachinga nd learning setw ithin a systemw ith different structuresb, oundariesa nd expectationsF. urther researchis neededin to what is requiredt o openu p this thinking into useo f ICT as a catalyst for social change.

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A sympathetic but critical examination of Outdoor management Development through interviews with practitioners. A key finding is that there is no clear theoretical foundation for the medium which instead relies on theory borrowed from a number of sources.

The effectiveness of activity-based learning has been discussed by many authors over the past 4,000 years. Despite the suggested strength of a 'hands-on' approach, learning in secondary school mathematics classes has become abstract and analytic. Students are taught out-of-context and seldom are given the opportunity to act upon their educational experiences. To evaluate the effectiveness of practical activities in classroom situations, materials were developed by the author. These concerned areas from the mathematics syllabus of the first and second years of secondary school. Data were collected from urban and rural schools in both Greece and Scotland. The students' performance on the practical activities was investigated in terms of the cognitive difficulty of the introduced mathematical concepts. Culture was also investigated as a differentiating factor in the performance and attitudes of the students. The results of the study indicated a differentiation in performance and attitudes between students of the two countries, in favour of the Greek students. In some tasks first grade students performed better than the second grade ones, in both countries. Cultural differences, as these are reflected in the educational systems, indicated the existence of a 'classroom culture'. This 'classroom culture' appears as the ethos of a school class, created and sustained by the teacher and the students. To that extent more similarities were found between Greece and Scotland rather than differences. These similarities address the formation of values in the mathematics classroom about the nature of mathematics, about understanding mathematics, about the role of the teacher and about education in general.

The literature reveals a gap between expectations and outcomes of e-learning and the need to develop a technologically and pedagogically effective e-learning environment. The literature suggested that making the shift from a Behaviorist to Constructivist approach could narrow this gap. Therefore, the aim of the study was to investigate and determine if the shift from teacher-led (behaviourist) approach to learner-centred approach (constructivist) could help in reducing the gap between expectations and outcomes of e-learning. The focus of the research was on the roles of information and computer technology in improving the quality of teaching and learning, and on looking to future possibilities and challenges to facilitate the development of pedagogically effective e-learning environment. In order to achieve the aim, the primary objective was to examine and evaluate learners' and teachers' experiences of e-learning and how e-learning has impacted on their expectations and what needs to be improved if they are to meet these new expectations. The study identified motivators and barriers to e-learning for teachers and learners and recommended measures that might be taken to remove or lessen the impact of such identified barriers. The study found that the online environment clearly has the capability to propagate the constructivist approach by encouraging learner controlled, critically reflected and deeper learning but also found that many students still preferred the behaviourist approach to learning (direct instructions) and that the preferences for the level of learner-control may also vary from culture to culture (Western culture may emphasise learners' control over their environment while eastern cultures may emphasise teachers' control). Therefore, constructivism may not be suitable to all subjects and all students. The study concluded that placing a greater value on teachers as the knowledge expert and on objectivism of knowledge (Behaviourism) or placing a greater value on learners as independent and constructive learners (Constructivism) creates a bias in either direction and results in unsatisfied learners and teachers. It was established that it is important to tip the balance equally between teachers and learners rather than making it completely student-centred or completely teacher-led approach. The researcher coins it as `teacher-learner balanced' approach.

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This thesis argues that there is an urgent need to reform current methods of teaching English composition to Syrian university students. It shows how current teaching methods relating to writing skills in English, especially methods seeking to develop strategies for organising information beyond the sentence level, are ineffective. Having identified shortcomings in current approaches to writing skills - and since composition is almost a neglected area in English classes in Syrian universities - this study proposes a set of detailed practical proposals for teaching English composition to Syrian university students. In doing so, it takes its directions from analysis, within the thesis, of writing problems faced by Syrian students of English. Generally, the principle underlying current methods of teaching English as a foreign language in Syria is that of a focus on providing students with knowledge of English grammar. Syrian educationalists believe this by itself is enough to produce students who are competent in writing. To find out how efficient such methods actually are, or whether they produce the results aspired to, an examination of grammatical errors in the performance of a group of Syrian students is carried out. Besides the question of the effectiveness of current methods of grammar teaching, however, this research also explores other issues, especially issues concerning strategies used for organising information at both the sentence and paragraph level. The second objective of the study, then, is to assess whether current teaching methods are successful in producing generally competent writers in English. To meet this second aim, a corpus of data is collected and analysed on the 'basis' of arguments put forward by Kintsch (1974) and Sanford and Garrod (1981). As well as investigating issues of information structure in students' writing, this analysis makes it possible to confirm or disconfirm Kaplan's Contrastive Rhetorical Hypothesis (1966), and so reflects on the broad question of crosscultural difficulties in composition that EFL students routinely face. In the light of the above findings, two types of proposal are made: recommendations regarding directions for future studies in contrastive rhetoric and error analysis, and for the teaching of writing in Syria in particular. It is suggested at the beginning of the thesis that there is an urgent need for a change in emphasis in the writing practices carried out in Syrian university classes. The thesis concludes that, instead of concentrating primarily on the teaching of grammatical rules, the communicative functions of writing need to be given more attention. Since ways of teaching writing depend on appropriate modes of assessing writing, the thesis ends with a proposed new schedule of assessment to suit the change in teaching focus outlined in the thesis. Presentation of this new model of assessment is linked to critical description of the ways in which writing is currently assessed in Syrian university classes; and suggestions for future research in assessment are offered.

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