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The thesis examines primary school children’s understanding of their own national identity and their perceptions about what it means to be Welsh. Both topics are investigated from a qualitative standpoint and contribute to the mainly statistical material in the field. The data were collected with children aged nine to ten years in three schools (two English-medium schools and one Welsh-medium school) in an urban area of south-east Wales. The study used multimodal methods, incorporating writing, drawings and interviews to capture the children’s insights. Findings demonstrated that children aged nine to ten are able to define their national identities in clear and discerning ways. Welsh was the most cited national identity, both in singular and multiple definitions of their national identity. Family, birthplace and residency were identified as factors in shaping their sense of their own national identity. Language did not feature strongly in the children’s responses about their own national identity. When reflecting on being Welsh and Welshness, the children’s drawings and annotations indicated common and often stereotypical views. These responses mainly occurred when the children discussed skin colour, religion and leisure activities. In this part of the investigation, the school, sport and the media were influential in shaping the children’s perceptions of a Welsh person. By contrast, while language was not highlighted by the children as a significant feature when considering their own national identity, the children’s perceptions of a Welsh person placed an emphasis on the Welsh language in this association. Debates regarding national identity in the UK and Welsh contexts have recently been central to the public discourse. In Wales this has been particularly evident since devolution in 1999. This qualitative study not only contributes to the existing body of research regarding children’s ability to define their own national identity, but also to how this manifests itself in the devolved context of Wales.

This thesis is a theoretical and philosophical discussion of the nature of poetic discourse, with a subsequent discussion of pedagogic practice arising from the views expressed, whose effectiveness is illustrated by a subjective selection of protocols. The central claim is that the peculiar nature of poetic discourse is inherently dramatic, since it internalizes 'voices'. Therefore, to achieve a total experience of poetry the reader needs to engage his own schemata in their body/thought entirety. This implies that he has not to limit himself to the 'sounding' of the 'voices' he achieves in the text just within his 'inward ear', but he has to 'embody' them, 'inhabit' them within a 'physical space of representation', letting them inter-act with other readers' embodiments. In so doing, the reader becomes an Acting Reader. The contribution this thesis offers to research on Discourse Analysis and Literary Stylistics consists in recognizing the vocal, 'physical' dimension of poetic texts (a dimension which is often neglected) as a way of achieving a more thorough personal awareness of the poetic experience. Accordingly, I elaborate a principled pedagogic approach to poetic language through the reader's use of drama techniques with the aim to demonstrate how it can be relevant in the teaching of poetry to either Ll or L2 students at both High School and University levels. So that in the theoretical part (Chapters 1-4) I place my rationale against a context of 'new-critic', semiotic, and deconstructionist approaches to literary theory and teaching methodology to demonstrate how they imply only a one-way communication of a pre-established interpretation (Chapters 1-2). Then I describe the first 'two phases' of the reader's activation of 'familiarizing' top-down and 'defamiliarizing' bottom-up strategies in his attempt to authenticate the peculiar structural and semantic arrangement of the poetic text (Chapter 3). Eventually, these two top-down/bottom-up phases come to merge during the final interactive phase (Chapter 4) in which I postulate a group of acting readers' multiple 'embodied' poetic discourses - controlled by the same poetic text - inter-acting in a representational 'physical' space to recreate selves, schemata, and iconic contexts. This theory systematically informs the practical part of my research (Chapters 5-9) consisting in 'dialogic' classroom operationalizations of each of the three phases. I pragmatically demonstrate (through protocol analysis) that to be conceptually receptive to poetic language the student/acting-reader needs to be physically prepared to be receptive to it. Stylistics, thus, is meant as the analysis of the acting reader's own responses, not as the analysis of the text (Chapter 5). I first provide 'top-down' affective evidence that the nature of schemata is essentially 'bodily', as the body is the experiential way to conceptualization (Chapter 6). Then, I show students/acting-readers' 'bottom-up' cognitive embodiments of ideational/interpersonal 'voices' in both macro- and micro-communication (Chapter 7), to finally describe groups of acting readers' pragmatic achievements of 'interactive' dramatic embodiments of collective poetic discourses (Chapter 8). I conclude (Chapter 9) by indicating possible theoretical and pedagogic developments of my rationale.

Στην εργασία αυτή ασχοληθήκαμε με τη θεωρία της φιλοσοφίας για παιδιά και τους θεωρητικούς που ασχολήθηκαν με αυτό το πρόγραμμα. Επίσης παρουσιάζουμε την πρακτική που ακολουθείται σε ένα πρόγραμμα φιλοσοφίας για παιδιά. Τέλος παραθέτουμε την πιλοτική έρευνα που πραγματοποιήσαμε σε δύο νηπιαγωγεία της Πάτρας κατά την οποία εφαρμόσαμε το πρόγραμμα ΦγΠ σε μια ομάδα ελέγχου και σε μια πειραματική ομάδα. / In this project we give a presentation of the theory and practise of Philosophy for Children and those who established this programme. Moreover we present a pilot research that took place in two preschools in Patras,where we put into practice philosophy for children in a trial and a transcript team.

This research investigates opportunities for Service Design in Education. The focus is on a particular type of change happening within education that of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) where Service Design has little presence and limited knowledge. This research has been carried out through grounded theory and contextualised in English institutions of primary education. As a result it identified Service Design as an approach to enable transformational change within educational institutions that seek to move towards ESD. To establish the basis for the research, a literature review has been carried out on Service Design, the vision of ESD and its application in the context of English schools. As a result, Service Design capability to re-design services at organisational level was linked to the gap in normative re-educative change processes towards ESD in English schools. The rest of the research sought to build on these findings. In-depth case studies with five primary schools and a cross-case analysis have been carried out to establish an understanding of ESD change at organisational level. It focused on elements relevant to normative re-educative change processes, which included social and personal norms and values residing within organisational systems. From the case studies, principles, concepts and processes were identified that enabled schools to engage with ESD at the deepest level. The knowledge derived from the case studies was further developed in order to relate the ESD phenomenon to Service Design. Service thinking and organisational change theory were applied to develop a Sustainable Education as a Service Model (SES MODEL) to understand ESD as a phenomenon in a service system. A SES Model was presented back to Service Design community. The sense-making of ESD was undertaken with seven service design practitioners by conducting semi-structured interviews during which they explored the SES Model. The outcome of the interviews showed the model to build service designer s capacity to engage with ESD, while the use of the model showed that designers could envision using it at a normative re-educative change level. The research shows that ESD is a new concept, which is relevant to Service Design. It therefore offers opportunities for further service design research and practical applications.