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This action research study examines the problems of a middle manager in a school, managing teams to deliver an operational project with little formal authority. The main objective of this study is to find out how a project can be managed in the most effective and efficient way when the teams involved have mixed work place loyalties and are operating within a restricted environment of limited resources. The management focus was on the micro-management of staff to influence performance and improve practice, including the performance of the practitioner-researcher. The study is set using a paradigm of symbolic interactionism based on qualitative research methods using action research. Primary data were gathered during two major research cycles each lasting an academic year. Data were collected using a series of participant logs, a detailed researcher log and indepth interviews with the teams and individuals. In the first cycle, a critical friend also provided data. The study presents the advantages and limitations of the methodology and suggests ways of reducing these limitations and enhancing the trustworthiness of the findings. The complexity of managing teams of form tutors who have multiple job roles and commitments in an inner city school environment is also highlighted. The study also raised sensitive issues and ethics in terms of the data that were generated when based on the performance and attitudes of participants. The main finding of this study was the importance of applying a range of methods which in isolation would have limited effects, but which produced a synergy of effect when applied together. These methods were based around the framework of Buchanan and Boddy's (1992), Public Performance-Backstaging Strategy. The framework included the use of traditional-rational-linear strategies backed up by a political management style. This study applied this basic framework to a specific school setting and introduced other strategies often at the micro level to influence staff. The study also shows the effectiveness of applying a different emphasis of strategy to different groups, from high to under performing staff. Some tactics were shown to be more effective; some worked well with some staff but had the opposite effect with other individuals. The efficiency of various techniques was investigated, some of which were shown to result in a high energy and emotional cost for the manager. The study concludes by showing that in certain circumstances it was more expedient to adopt a management of dilemmas approach rather than seek a total solution to a problem.

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This thesis presents a comparative ethnographic exploration of inclusion in English and Greek secondary education, and at the same time it examines how comparative ethnographic research can be used for understanding inclusion. Inclusion is seen as inseparable from exclusion and both of them as relating to a citizenship and democratic discourse in education. Educational policy and practice in England and Greece are examined in a comparative way in an attempt to highlight how inclusive/exclusive discourses are both localised and part of an international discourse. The purposes of education in each socio-political and cultural context are examined in relation to knowledge/ability and disciplinelbehaviour discourses as presented in young people's representations of their student identities in mainstream schools. The concept of "frameworks of competence" is used to explore how participants in schools actively negotiate inclusion and exclusion.

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The validity of value-added systems of measurement is crucially dependent upon there being a demonstrably unambiguous relationship between the so-called baseline, or intake measures, and any subsequent measure of performance at a later stage. The reliability of such procedures is dependent on the relationships between these two measures being relatively stable over time. A number of questions arise with regard to both the validity and reliability of value-added procedures at any level in education, but this appears to be particularly problematic at Key Stage 3. Target-setting procedures usually employ value-added data as the basis for predicting future performance, and the validity and reliability of target-setting procedures is therefore also problematic. In a five-year longitudinal case study of one secondary comprehensive school, the validity of both of these procedures was investigated using quantitative and qualitative methods. The validity and reliability of Key Stage 2 data, and data from the NFER Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT), as baseline data for value-added procedures, was investigated using regression analysis. Wider perceptions of value-added procedures were opened up using detailed interviews with a representative cross-section of teachers. Target-setting procedures were investigated by analysing numerical performance data in curriculum areas, by the use of questionnaires to students, staff and parents, and by detailed interviews with a representative sample of students. The results of the investigation suggest that whilst value-added procedures have a high level of validity and reliability for Mathematics at Key Stage 3, this is less true for English and Science. For non-core subjects there appears to be no rational basis upon which value-added procedures can be used. Staff attitudes towards both value-added and target-setting were often quite ambivalent; those of students and parents were generally much more positive. A number of concerns emerged with regard to the ways in which such procedures appear to be distorting teaching and learning, producing a culture of performativity where learning is increasingly seen as a means to an end, rather than a worthwhile end in itself. These findings raise some fundamental questions about our philosophy of education, about accountability, and about the knowledge claims which are made as a result of such procedures.

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Les professeurs de lettres en lycée sont invités à construire des « séquences d’enseignement cohérentes fondées sur une problématique littéraire » et à « inciter les élèves à problématiser leur réflexion en relation avec l’objet d’étude concerné » (programmes de lettres de l'Éducation Nationale, septembre 2010). La mise en œuvre de ces exigences par les élèves et les professeurs est complexe et passe par une clarification épistémologique et didactique.Dans un premier travail de recherche (mené en Master 2 MEEF, parcours « Expertise, enseignement et apprentissage »), nous avons montré, au terme d'une exploration des savoirs fondamentaux de la discipline des lettres notamment éclairée par la Poétique d'Aristote, que l'œuvre littéraire peut être appréhendée comme la tentative de réponse à un problème, tentative que l'auteur construit au moyen d'une forme littéraire. Dans cette perspective, le modèle de problématisation de Michel Fabre appuyé notamment sur les travaux de Gilles Deleuze (pour la logique du sens) de Gaston Bachelard (pour la construction de problèmes) et de Michel Meyer (pour le questionnement problématologique) permet de guider les élèves vers la compréhension du sens de l'œuvre en les aidant à reconstruire le problème à laquelle l'œuvre tente de répondre. À l'aide d'enregistrements de travaux d'élèves et d'un entretien post-séance mené avec un professeur de lycée, nous avons pu repérer, par des analyses successives, des éléments susceptibles de générer l'activité de problématisation dans la lecture des textes littéraires, ainsi que certaines conditions à respecter de la part du professeur pour que cette activité favorise la construction de nouveaux savoirs par les élèves.La mise en activité des élèves au service de la construction de compétences de lecture apparaissant de plus en plus comme une pratique pertinente et nécessaire dans les classes de lycée, l'intérêt de notre recherche se déplace vers le lien entre problématisation et compétence de lecture littéraire : l'activité de problématisation dans la lecture analytique des textes (quelle que soit leur longueur) est-elle une démarche adéquate et performante pour permettre aux lycéens de construire avec la liberté nécessaire leurs compétences de lecture littéraire ? / Can reading literature be viewed as problem building and can it help high-school students get involved in encountering, getting familiar with, written works and acquiring critical skills? This is what this doctoral research defends within the theoretical framework of problematization (Fabre, Orange) and in the perspective of the theory of the subjective reader. This research first questions the presence of the paradign of the problem in the field of teaching French along with its links with the current methods of literature reading in high school: what does setting a problem about a text mean and is there a specific way to problematize one’s thinking in the field of Literature studies? It assumes that the problem-building process may be a relevant method of reconfiguring the text by the student, and that it may shed light on the links between subjective impressions and objectifying reading. This work then puts this hypothesis to the test. With the help of recordings of class activities at Première and Seconde levels and post-lesson interviews of students and teachers, it analyses students’ language interactions using problematization’s lozenge and provides elements likely to generate the activity of problematization as well as certain prerequisites to its triggering student involvement and the development of literary reading skills. Finally it analyses a survey carried out with French departments in two schools experimenting on how they guide students through their encounter of texts, and offers a few recommendations, particularly as to adopting an ethical approach, training teachers and anchoring written works in the students’ memory.

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Beginning in 1999,81 public secondary schools have been transformed into "Smart Schools" in Malaysia. Smart schools utilise computers and technology based teaching and learning approaches. Tight public budget constraints mean the policy must also be cost effective in terms of academic and social outcomes. By using at the perspective of government and household expenditure, the study attempts to compare the cost effectiveness of students' progress in the Smart schools and the other secondary schools in the Northern State of Malaysia. 404 Form 4 students in year 2000 were randomly selected from 11 Smart and 11 Traditional secondary schools in Penang, Kedah and Perlis. School and individual students level data were collected by questionnaire survey. Recurrent costs, academic and social effectiveness and cost effectiveness ratios were estimated using an ingredients approach and multilevel modelling techniques. The findings show that Smart schools are more socially cost effective and less academically cost effective, except for English, than Traditional schools. There was no difference of cost effectiveness between rural and urban schools. Teacher costs dominated school costs. A characteristic of cost effective Smart schools for expansionw as suggested.F inally, directions for future researcha re discussed