In Malawi, where a policy of Free Primary Education has been in place for more than fifteen years, relatively few children have never attended school. However, despite high initial enrolments, primary education in Malawi is inefficient, with high dropout and low completion rates. Against a context of underlying poverty, research suggests that many of the children in Malawi denied adequate access to education are those orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. Evidence from Malawi and neighbouring countries indicates that not enough is being done in schools to support vulnerable children in the context of HIV/AIDS and that a powerful argument can be made for new, more flexible models of formal schooling that reach out to young people who face educational exclusion. This doctoral study was part of a wider, three-year collaborative research project working in high HIV prevalence countries to address issues of educational access. It used a sequential, mixed methods design to examine the extent to which a more flexible model of formal schooling that integrates open and distance learning (ODL) strategies with face-to-face teaching and psychosocial support can improve educational access and retention of orphaned and other vulnerable children in rural Malawi. This study identifies and explores household, school and peer-related factors that influence the access and retention of children affected by HIV/AIDS, and confirm the very limited support provided by primary schools. These findings were used to contextualise and inform the development of a school-based intervention to implement a flexible model of schooling; thereafter trialed in 20 sampled schools in two selected districts in Malawi. This doctoral study demonstrates the potential of flexible learning to enhance learning experiences, bring psychosocial benefits and help improve retention of vulnerable pupils in primary schools in high HIV prevalence communities in rural Malawi, with important, positive spill-over effects to pupils at risk of dropout. It also argues that effective innovation requires strategies to create an enabling environment and promote an inclusive philosophy within schools. Further insights were drawn from the perspectives of actors on the benefits, shortfalls and outcomes of the intervention, as well as the successes and challenges of the implementation process. A synthesis and discussion of the empirical findings in relation to the wider literature explores the possibilities for introducing more flexible modes of educational delivery and support within formal schooling.

In this thesis I examine the way in which the changing contexts of the Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 affect children’s perceptions of school and of themselves when they make the transition from Reception to Year 1. Working with 11 children out of a class of 30 who made the transition from the Reception to Year 1 in a two form entry school situated in an outer borough of London, I employed a variation of the ‘Mosaic Approach’ (Clark and Moss 2001 ) to gather data with the children using photographs, tours, observations and conversations. In order to understand the changing context I gathered further information through interviews with the children’s teachers and parents and examined documentary evidence from government and school concerning the Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1. Focusing on the interplay between structure and agency, I undertook an iterative approach to analysis between the field data and literature, which indicated that even small adjustments in teaching styles effected changes in children’s ideas about learning through both play and work. The findings also point to links between children’s understandings of identity as being either fixed or flexible, their individual priorities and the way in which they experience the transition. The findings from this thesis support the view that it may be more important in Year 1 to focus on a pedagogy aimed at developing flexible mastery orientations to learning using children’s interests as a basis for planning than delivering pre-determined curriculum content.

Le projet Filière Bilingue (FiBi), qui a débuté à Bienne (Suisse) en août 2010, est un programme réciproque-immersif destiné aux élèves à partir de lʼécole enfantine. Cet enseignement leur permet de se plonger dans un monde bilingue (suisse-allemand et français), puis plurilingue (allemand, suisse-allemand et français). Ayant donc à se mouvoir dans des situations exolingues, les enfants doivent sʼappuyer sur des stratégies communicatives pour pouvoir interagir avec leurs interlocuteurs tout au long de la journée. Dans le cadre dʼun enseignement réciproque-immersif, ces stratégies communicatives vont constituer un élément fixe lors des interactions entre enfants et enseignants d’une part, et entre les enfants eux-mêmes d’autre part. Notre travail de recherche a pour objectif de mettre en évidence le développement de ces outils communicatifs de huit sujets de sexe féminin pendant les quatre ans entre l'école enfantine et la 2ème année d'école primaire. Les interviews guidées, qui constituent notre corpus, ont toutes été filmées, puis transcrites avec EXMARaLDA. Les stratégies communicatives observées dans les interviews guidées ont ensuite été codées au moyen du logiciel MAXQDA. Elles peuvent être classifiées en dix catégories principales : les stratégies d'évitement, d'alternance linguistique, d'imitation, d'exploration, de coopération, d'appel, de compensation, de transfert, ainsi que non verbales et paraverbales et paraphrastiques. Nous avons pu mettre en évidence des changements dans l’utilisation des stratégies communicatives au fil du processus d'apprentissage de la langue cible dans la complexité, la variété, la combinaison (utilisation simultanée) de plusieurs stratégies communicatives, l'utilisation consciente, ainsi que dans la fonction. / The project Filière bilingue (FiBi), which has been running since 2010, is a two-way immersion program by way of Swiss German, German and French starting at kindergarten in the city of Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. In these bilingual classes are both German and French speaking pupils confronted with both languages from the beginning of their schooling. Therefore, communication strategies are developed, not only between pupils, but also between the pupils and the teacher. The following research study focuses on various communication strategies utilised by eight female pupils over a period of four years, namely from kindergarten to the end of Year 2 of primary school. Through the FiBi project, five semi-structured interviews were taken and then transcribed with the software EXMARaLDA. Subsequently, these transcriptions were coded according to the communication strategy used via the software MAXQDA. From the analysed data, ten types of observed communication strategies were categorised: avoidance/omission, code switching, imitation, guessing, appeal for assistance, retrieval, nonverbal and para-verbal communication, paraphrasing, approximation, and transferring. The research has shown that as the pupils’ competence in the target language increases, so does the complexity, frequency, function, intertwining, and the consciousness use of the communication strategies.