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This thesis analyses how the extensive use of networked computers, which were the primary classroom learning resource for three Level 3 cohorts of Further Education students, impacted on how the students approached the academic elements of their coursework. Using an ethnographic methodology the students were followed as they progressed over one academic year, to identify how they engaged with their learning and used the technologies over this period. The study of students’ classroom academic and literacy practices when using the new digital technologies of computers and the Internet as resources in post-compulsory education is a relatively neglected area. At a time when there is the continued call for the increased use of these technologies across the curricula, this ethnography offers an insight into students’ responses to the technologies and how these significant educational resources can also divide the classroom into both educational and social-leisure spaces. What became apparent over the year was students’ superficial level of engagement with online research resources and how that information was then processed. Students’ use of software to manipulate digital text bypassed any evidencing of intermediary cognitive processes, therefore at times idea generation, critical development and level of ownership became challenging to identify. Notably, students’ extensive use of computers resulted in their gaze being primarily directed to their computer monitors and despite the sociality amongst students for non-educational activities, both in and out of the classrooms, the benefits of peer discussion and interaction for learning was absent due to this level of academic isolation. Students’ use of the technologies for either educational or social-leisure use was reflective of the learning conditions and what affected their levels of motivation and attention. For a number of students, their excessive use of the classroom computers to access online social-leisure resources came at a cost to their grades and their ambitions for progression had to be reduced. There is no doubting the value of computers and the Internet as classroom learning resources, however, this research identifies that they are certainly not a quick panacea for education. The evidence illustrates that to attain the potential they offer, there needs to be relative adjustments to pedagogy and learning cultures and how students conceptualise the space of computer-resourced classrooms.

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Diese Studie widmete sich dem Beitrag von Erwachsenenbildung zum Empowerment von Teilnehmenden. Ihr Empowerment zeigt sich darin, dass diese ihr Handeln stärker selbst steuern und ihre persönliche Lebenswelt in höherem Umfang selbst gestalten. Ausgehend von Diskursen im deutschsprachigen Raum wird untersucht, in welcher Weise Erwachsenenbildung das Empowerment von Frauen stärken kann. Zur Gestaltung von Erwachsenenbildung zählen die Selbstreflexion der Mitarbeitenden, Zielgruppen- und Teilnehmendenorientierung, lebensweltorientierte Lerninhalte und didaktische Methoden sowie Gemeinschaft und Austausch. Aus gesellschaftskritischer Perspektive wird das Empowerment-Konzept in Individualisierungsprozessen und im Kontext sozialer Benachteiligung verortet. Damit stellt das Empowerment von Teilnehmenden einen Zwischenschritt von traditionell geprägter Erwachsenenbildung zum Paradigma Lebenslangen Lernens dar. Erwachsenenbildung erfüllt in diesem Verständnis die gesellschaftliche Funktion, die Teilnehmenden zu stärken, die durch einen sozialen Wandel verunsichert und überfordert sein können. Der Studie beinhaltet eine empirische Erhebung in der indischen Erwachsenenbildung, in der dem Empowerment-Konzept eine hohe Aufmerksamkeit zukommt. Anhand von Expert/inn/en-Interviews mit Mitarbeitenden von Erwachsenenbildungseinrichtungen in Indien wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie Erwachsenenbildung gestaltet sein soll, damit sie zum Empowerment der Teilnehmenden beitragen kann. Die Interviewauswertung orientiert sich an der Qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse. Sie verschafft Erkenntnisse über die persönliche Lebenswelt von Frauen aus benachteiligten sozialen Gruppen, die an Erwachsenenbildung teilnehmen. Der Beitrag zum Empowerment der Teilnehmenden wird durch einen beziehungsstiftenden Kontext geleistet, der sich an der Lebenswelt der Teilnehmenden orientiert. Dieser ermöglicht diesen neue Beziehungserfahrungen. Zudem können sie sich Wissen und Fähigkeiten aneignen und ihre Lebenswelt selbst gestalten. Teilnehmenden aus benachteiligten sozialen Gruppen ermöglicht dies, die gesellschaftlichen Anforderungen zur Selbststeuerung zu bewältigen, die in Individualisierungsprozessen an sie gerichtet werden. / This study focuses the contribution of adult education towards the empowerment of participants. Their empowerment becomes visible when they start to take more control on their own acting and to form their personal living environment. Focusing discourses in the German-speaking area, it is to be analysed in what way adult education can contribute towards the empowerment of women. The arrangement of adult education includes the self-reflection of staff, target group and participant orientation, the orientation on the living environment of participants, didactical methods as well as community and exchange. From a socio-critical perspective, empowerment can be understood within the individualisation and in the context of social disadvantages. The empowerment of participants is an interim step from traditional adult education towards the paradigm of lifelong learning. In this understanding, adult education fulfils the societal function to strengthen those participants who feel insecure or overburdened within a social change. This study includes an empirical research within adult education in India, in which the concept empowerment is gaining great attention. With expert interviews that have been conducted with staff of adult education providers in India the question is being followed, in what way adult education should be arranged so that it can contribute towards the empowerment of its participants. The analysis of the interviews is oriented at the qualitative content analysis. It enables knowledge on the personal living environment of women who belong to underprivileged groups who participate at adult education. As adult education enables relationships and is orienting at the living environment of its participants it can contribute towards their empowerment. This enables new relationship experiences of the participants. Furthermore, they can gain knowledge and capabilities and create their own living environment. This can enable participants from underprivileged social groups that they can fulfil the societal requirements they are aligned with. / Diese Studie widmet sich dem Beitrag von Erwachsenenbildung zum Empowerment von Teilnehmenden. Ihr Empowerment zeigt sich darin, dass diese ihr Handeln stärker selbst steuern und ihre persönliche Lebenswelt in höherem Umfang selbst gestalten. Ausgehend von Diskursen im deutschsprachigen Raum wird untersucht, in welcher Weise Erwachsenenbildung das Empowerment von Frauen stärken kann. Aus gesellschaftskritischer Perspektive wird das Empowerment-Konzept in Individualisierungsprozessen und im Kontext sozialer Benachteiligung verortet. Damit stellt das Empowerment von Teilnehmenden einen Zwischenschritt von traditionell geprägter Erwachsenenbildung zum Paradigma Lebenslangen Lernens dar. Der Studie beinhaltet eine empirische Erhebung in der indischen Erwachsenenbildung, in der dem Empowerment-Konzept eine hohe Aufmerksamkeit zukommt.

This thesis explores how policy for initial post-16 education and training has changed repeatedly since the 1970s, leading to numerous different arrangements and to new forms of transition for young people. It evaluates critically how GNVQs fit into this picture, and relates their role to wider debates around the purpose of initial post-16 education and training. Using a case study, which focuses on the experience of lecturers and full-time students in one college of further education in the Midlands in the 1990s, the study finds that the social conditions of learning were very significant for students’ and lecturers’ perceptions of GNVQ. Despite the emphasis on qualifications-led reform, and the highly-specified nature of GNVQ, which attempted to impose new approaches to learning, students and teachers made sense of their experience and constructed their own meanings for GNVQ by reconciling the specifications with students’ orientations to learning and imagined futures. They engaged in ‘making the best of it’, by collaborating or colluding to make GNVQ work for them. However, the actions of students and lecturers in making the best of the constraints of GNVQs needs to be set within the context of wider structures and patterns of opportunity, where GNVQs form part of a system which continues to be dominated by A-levels and the academic route. This results in unequal opportunities within diverse qualifications pathways. The study concludes that any proposals for change to initial post-16 education and training need to combine understandings of the structural context in which young people’s transitions are taking place, with more detailed insight into the experience of teachers and students, who make and shape the meaning of different routes and qualifications in practice.

This study examines the preparedness of FE teachers for educational change with particular focus on a recent merger between two further education colleges in South East England. The merger was conceived three years before implementation with the intention of developing a model that eliminated competition and promoted collaboration between the two colleges. Previous studies on changes in the further education sector (LSIS 2010; LSC 2010) have shown that change whether internally or externally imposed can impact on teachers who are the main fulcrum of educational change but they seem to have very little input in the change process even though they have to constantly adapt their mental framework to cope with the challenges associated with change. The study specifically explored how the merger between both colleges was conducted and whether teachers were prepared to cope with, manage and implement a change of this magnitude. It then goes on to discuss whether teachers require specific skills and knowledge to enable them cope better with change and if so, how such skills should be incorporated into their professional development. The research was designed as a case study which draws on a mixed method approach. Research data were collected through surveys and interviews with six teachers from both merging colleges in order to gain detailed insights into their experiences and how this impacted on their personal and professional lives. The participants who took part in the study were mostly teachers most of who hold additional management responsibilities including course leadership and management. Other participants were curriculum leaders. Data obtained from interviews were transcribed and analysed, with the following themes emerging: integrating cultures and systems, communicating change, motivation, the impact of power and politics during mergers, emotional and psychological issues of change and the pace and timing of the merger. One of the key issues that emerged from the data was teachers’ perception of their role as change agents and their acceptance that change was an intrinsic part of their job that they have to adapt to. The issue however, was the lack of training in change management to prepare and equip them with the skills to manage and cope with change. The non-inclusive, top-down approach to educational change was also an area of concern for teachers because their needs are usually ignored. In developing the case study, selected statistical analyses were conducted to measure the relationship between key variables. The research concludes that, as professionals working in a rapidly changing environment, teachers in the FE sector would benefit from acquiring ‘new knowledge’ in change management which will not only equip them with vital skills to cope with change, but also place them on the same level as other professionals. An alternative framework that empowers teachers for change management and mergers in the FE sector is provided and recommended as a tool that would be of particular use to those responsible for teacher induction, and for coordinating professional development of teachers.

The last decade has witnessed an unprecedented attempt to improve performance outputs from public sector organizations as a whole. This has culminated in a range of government reforms across the whole of the public sector based on the principles of accountability, targets and measurements. Underpinning the performance improvement drive within the public sector is an emerged concept of new public management (NPM) regime which mirrors the management practices of the private sector. This work focuses on the Further Education sector as an entity within the public sector services underpinned by the broad theoretical context to understand why FE colleges with similar characteristics perform differently. The OFSTED report, “Why colleges succeed or Fail” (2004) found a strong correlation between Ofsted’s assessment of management effectiveness and performance of the institutions. Those that were awarded Grade 1 for leadership and management recorded outstanding overall performance output and those judged to have weak leadership and management recorded overall poor performance output. It is would seem logical to draw a conclusion that the quality of FE leadership impacts on the quality and value of its service. This work explores this relationship in greater depth. The focus of this study was to explore the extent to which managerial competences within a situated cultural and structural content contributed to the differences in the performance of FE colleges in England and Wales. The overall objective was to analyse how the competences of senior managers, defined as formal qualification, professional experience, professional functional skills and personal attributes interact with organizational factors such as structure and culture to impact on performance. There is a lack of knowledge on the subject and this hinders the ability to place a value on the quality of leadership in the FE sector and its importance in organizational performance. Four colleges were chosen for the study from East London. The four colleges were from the same socio- economic catchment and they fell within the four categories of Ofsted performance measurements: Outstanding, Good, Satisfactory and Poor. The methodology used in this study examined the phenomena of interest in the four colleges through a process of semi-structured interviews which provided an in-depth and contextual understanding of the problem in a case study scenario. In total 27 managers were interviewed for the study, of which 3 were the college principals, 16 senior managers and 8 middle managers. A performance framework was developed from the research findings which provides some of the answers to the key research questions. Broadly, the findings suggest that some elements of managerial competences such as formal qualifications, personal attributes and educational or managerial orientations within a specific cultural climate and structure contributed to the differential performance outputs of the four FE colleges. The performance framework identified three strong relationship links between these elements which collectively would produce a strong performance outcome. The thesis makes two key contributions to existing knowledge. First, it introduces a conceptual framework that could inform managerial decision making in such a way as to achieve effective performance output from an FE college. The findings could also have a possible broader application across public sector organizations. In addition, the work also makes contributions to extant management literature by either providing some evidence of the relevance of some of the existing work or providing an alternative view to the current lines of thinking.

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Understanding how to develop instructional materials for distance education students is a challenging problem, but it is exacerbated when a domain is complex to teach, such as computer science. Visual representations have a history of use in computing as a means to alleviate the difficulties of learning abstract concepts. However, it is not clear whether improvements observed are as a result of improvements in the visual representations used in instructional materials or due to individual differences in students. This research examines the two themes of individual differences and visual representation in order to investigate how they collectively impact on improving instructional materials for distance education students studying computer science. It investigates the impact of different representations on learning while additionally investigating the relationship between individual differences and student learning. The research in this thesis shows that visual representations are important in designing instructional materials. In particular, texts with visual representations have the power to cue students to perceive instructional materials as easier to process and more engaging. Investigation into the impact of concrete high-imagery versus abstract low-imagery visual representations illustrated that concrete visual representations incurred fewer cognitive overheads for computer science students and were able to ameliorate the challenges of learning computing. The research in this thesis into individual differences demonstrated that Imagers did benefit more from studying instructional materials containing text with visual components. However the research indicates that appropriate selection of individual difference tests is dependent upon the application, i.e., whether the results are to be used to assess generalised tendencies or episodes in learning and whether the tests examine underlying approaches to cognition or practices in education. An underlying question was whether students studying instructional materials containing low-imagery visual representations would cope as well as those studying high-imagery ones. Accomplished learners demonstrated that they could perform as well as with those receiving high-imagery visual representations. However, studying and recalling these materials did incur more cognitive processing. This thesis argues that improving instructional materials by including appropriate visual representations is a useful basis for improving learning for distance education computer science students.

Transitioning from GCSE to ‘A’ level, students struggle emotionally and academically to meet the requirements of ‘A’ level study, drop out and fail (Hall, 2003; DfES, 2011a). The OECD (2003) found that post-16 learners rarely know how to learn on their own whereas effective learners have a positive academic self-concept related to higher attainment (Marsh, 2007). This study followed transitioning students working either collaboratively or alone asking what happens when a transitional intervention is used, such as a collaborative learning strategy, with students studying psychology and ethics for the first time and is there any impact on their academic self-concept and attainment? Rooted in a social constructivist paradigm, a mixed method, 9-month study followed 73 learners in their first 12 weeks of an ‘A’ level programme. Students chose one of three groups; a group guided by a more knowledgeable peer, dyadic pairs or alone. A concurrent triangulation strategy was employed to quantitatively and qualitatively assess students’ transitional experiences. Qualitative data revealed students valued a collaborative strategy. They felt a significant emotional attachment to their peers, which aided academic confidence and understanding. Dovetailed with quantitative data all three contexts showed increased academic self-concept correlated positively with increase in ALIS expected grades (r= +0.299). Emerging themes were the importance of choice of study group, the need for fun, that collaboration stabilised students’ emotional wellbeing, students developed a positive regard for others, an increased positive social identity and improved academic self-concept. Findings illustrate schools can facilitate students’ transition, protect them from isolation, boost their emotional wellbeing, and support their academic confidence, not only increasing their academic attainment but preparing them for life-long learning. This research is not only of value to students but also to teachers, headteachers and governors as well as academics and leaders of further education who lobby for more resilient, competent and buoyant learners.