In Hong Kong, where English is used as the main medium of instruction in universities, the majority of undergraduates studying in various disciplines are local students whose first language is Chinese. Although there were many studies of second language (L2) writing in English, many of them were oriented towards product or process and were conducted in artificial settings. There have been relatively few situated studies of English L2 writing in higher education in the social contexts in which students undertake their writing tasks. This study seeks to address this primary question: How do nonnative-English-speaking (NNES) business undergraduates in Hong Kong undertake the assessed writing tasks of their disciplinary courses? Case study was used to examine two NNES undergraduate students undertaking their assessed writing tasks in a Hong Kong university. Data were collected over a period of two years and from multiple sources: text-based interviews, participant diaries, and documents (texts produced by the participants, course documents and source materials). Inductive analysis was employed to make sense of the data. Specifically, data were organised, coded, categorised and integrated. The results revealed that the processes through which the participants accomplished their disciplinary writing tasks were complex and influenced in various ways by the contexts in which the writing took place. Task specifications for the assigned tasks, mostly done in groups, were often not clearly stated. This gave rise to the employment of different strategies by students to represent the tasks, guess readers‘ expectations and interact with group mates to achieve their purposes. They also relied heavily on the Web as information sources to complete their tasks, which gave rise to problems such as textual borrowing. The thesis closes by exploring the pedagogical implications, which include the idea that English for Academic Purposes courses should move towards more discipline-specific to better help students cope with their disciplinary writing demands.

The adoption of new managerial philosophies within higher education is well documented and has increased significantly in the last decade. Of these adoptions, strategic planning within higher education institutes in the Republic of Ireland is particularly relevant given the legislative requirement underpinning such planning exercises. This dissertation investigates the lived experiences of academics and manager-academics with strategic planning exercises within Ireland’s Institute of Technology sector, and proposes an alignment-focussed strategic planning framework for consideration. The design, measurement and analysis issues which informed the research instrument sought to measure the degree of alignment across academics and manager-academics with their institute’s strategic plans. A central consideration was whether or not the managerial practices and processes adopted in the preparation of strategic plans impacted negatively or positively on the lived experiences of both groups. Consequently the research methodology was hermeneutically phenomenological. Academic organisations as workplaces have not always proved amenable to either the adoption of new managerial practices or the re-orientation of education to commodity status. The introduction of new managerialism in the Institute of Technology sector has been characterised by legislative change and market forces. Simultaneously this sector has also become more exposed to a growing accountability and transparency agenda at the behest of Ireland’s higher education policy makers. The academics and manager-academics surveyed in this research provide little evidence of a successful transition of new managerialism within those institutes surveyed. Additionally no evidence could be found of alignment with the published strategic plans of those institutes surveyed. The research identified numerous reasons for this non-alignment, including; an inability amongst academics to identify any real benefits from the strategic planning process; and, a perception amongst both groups that the preparation of strategic plans merely satisfied a bureaucratic requirement.

The aim of this research is to explore linguistically how equitably students as primary stakeholders are constructed within a corpus of regulatory texts from fifty British universities. A critical discourse perspective is developed in order to understand how power relations are encoded in these regulations. A mixed methods approach is used, with analysis of quantitative data derived from the corpus as the starting point. Observation of lexical frequencies and patterning in the corpus drives the selection of subsequent data for clausal analysis rooted in systemic functional linguistics. It is noted that there is a low occurrence of verbs that encode material processes of doing, and a high occurrence of modal verbs and mental verbs, with a particularly high usage of the verb will. The implications of these occurrences and also of the high incidence of the passive voice and nominalization are discussed in relation to the encoding of organizational ontology, where students may be constrained, marginalized or even excluded. The thesis, moving beyond analysis and interpretation at the level of the lexeme and the clause, considers two main ways stakeholders may be excluded at a broader textual level. First, the texts may be encoded at such difficult levels of readability that they fail to empower student-stakeholders in high-stakes situations where they may be in conflict with the organization. Second, Theme/Rheme analysis bears out the corpus patterns that show the student is rarely in a strong agentive position in the text. The thesis urges the construction of more dialogic and empowering texts, both at universities and in other contexts where stakeholders risk being disempowered by the organization’s anonymous authors. The conjoined efforts of organizational and linguistic research can provide the principles for writing more emancipatory texts that serve the stakeholder better by minimizing unilateral institutional encoding of dominance and redressing social inequalities.

Appendices 12 to 14 (p. 280-325) have been removed from the electronic copy of this thesis due to third party copyright restrictions. The full version can be consulted at the University of Leicester Library.

This study has explored: 1) the perceptions of medical students towards their writing needs (necessities, lacks, and wants) in writing, and also their perceptions towards syllabus, materials, activities, instruction and the effect of writing in English in the MB (Medical Biology) class; 2) differences of perceptions between Medics I and II; 3) the perceptions of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and MB teachers regarding students’ lacks in writing; 4) collaboration between the ESP teachers and the MB teachers; and 5) the challenges of collaboration. Mixed-method approach was adopted: 267 questionnaires were distributed to Medics I and Medics II students; 16 semi-structured interviews were conducted with students and 9 semi-structured interviews with ESP/MB teachers, coordinators, the Deputy Head of the English language centre and the Dean of Medicine in an Arab university. Findings showed that medical students' perceptions of their writing ‘wants’ were writing practice, reading for different schemata, and grammar practice. Their ‘lacks’ in writing are mainly vocabulary, spelling accuracy and applying grammatical rules in writing. Some students thought they need more guidance, interactive writing activities and innovative general/medical materials. There were no significant differences between Medics I and Medics II students except that Medics II students benefitted more from the writing component. ESP and MB teachers' perceptions regarding the writing needs of the students differed. The data showed similarities regarding the students' and ESP/MB participants’ perceptions of ‘lacks’ such as insufficient reading, paragraph writing and grammar practice. ESP participants believed their students to have more practice in writing while MB participants emphasized content, writing for professional purposes and comprehension of exam questions. Regarding collaboration, the ESP and MB participants showed inclinations to cooperate. However, they had different views on teaching content, the status of the ESP teacher, the use of L1, administrative issues, unclear goals and interpersonal issues.

This study investigates the relationship between social work students’ creativity and their fieldwork performance. Systems theory provides a theoretical framework to explain the ambiguity, indeterminacy and uncertainty in social work practice, and account for the need for creativity during the helping process in fieldwork training. In this study, creativity was defined as the ability in divergent thinking with five dimensions, which are fluency, originality, elaboration, abstractness of titles and resistance to premature closure. The existing literature suggests that social work students’ creativity may have impact on their fieldwork performance in three areas, namely problem solving, application of theories and empathy. 52 social work students from a university in Hong Kong participated in this study and data regarding their creativity and fieldwork performance were collected. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to investigate relationships between participants’ competences in different dimensions of creativity and their fieldwork performance in each of the three fieldwork performance areas. Significant relationships were found between competences in two dimensions of creativity and fieldwork performance in those three areas. Both quadratic and linear significant relationships were found, and in some of them, the competences in some dimensions of creativity were found interacting with each other, and affecting each other’s relationship with fieldwork performance. The findings of this study provided detailed information about the possible relationships between social work students’ competences in different dimensions of creativity and their fieldwork performance in the three selected areas, and some tentative suggestions regarding potential use of the findings of this study for further development of social work curriculum were discussed. Further studies to confirm the findings of this study and to further investigate the possibility of enhancing social works students’ fieldwork performance through improving their competences in certain dimensions of creativity were recommended.

This thesis investigates why Mainland Chinese university students choose to study in Singapore, and how they manage the experience. The study was guided by two research questions: (1) Why do university students from Mainland China choose to study in Singapore? (as opposed to elsewhere) and (2) How do Mainland Chinese university students manage the experience of studying in Singapore, a different cultural environment? The aim of the study and the research questions made an interpretivist paradigm with qualitative research methods most appropriate. The study also adopted a symbolic interactionist perspective, realising that people make sense of their lives and experiences through interaction with others around them. Grounded theory methods of data collection and analysis were used. Participants were 20 Mainland Chinese university students studying in the two main universities in Singapore, namely, the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), including its affiliate, the National Institute of Education (NIE). Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and documents (diary entries) lasting 16 months. The grounded theory that emerged, called the theory of ‘selective pragmatism’, comprises a threefold typology of students and four categories, with the second category presented in two parts. The typology of participants conceptualises and labels the three groups as “the intellectuals”, “the opportunists” and “the loyalists”. The four categories are respectively: (1) Push Factors; (2a) Pull Factors (Other countries outside Mainland China, but excluding Singapore); (2b) Pull Factors (Singapore only); (3) Individual Resilience and (4) Future Intentions. The study shows how participants exercise choices and decisions in a pragmatic but selectively different way in responding to the two research questions. Three distinctively different patterns of responses emerge to form the basis of the threefold typology.

This study provides an in-depth understanding of how academics perceive and experience a performance management system in a British university. Specifically, it examines - within the context of a university department - the meaning and purposes of performance management; the effectiveness of the processes; the management of the system and its effectiveness; the impact of the system on academics’ working lives; and the areas requiring improvement. The study particularly explores the tension between performance management as a means of accountability within a managerial context and the more traditional academic ethos of professional autonomy. The research adopts a qualitative case study approach by selecting a School of Education in an older researchled University. The case School was primarily chosen for its ease of access. However, it had also operated performance management for some time, and it had academics with both high and low research profiles, a phenomenon which was likely to present a range of experiences of the performance management system. Twelve academics with varied backgrounds in terms of years of service, seniority and gender were participants in the study. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and documentary sources between September 2006 and February 2007. A two-level analytical coding approach was used to derive themes from the collected data. Among the major findings were that the participants found the meanings and purposes of performance management ambiguous; and that the many different processes contained within the system were perceived as fragmenting and confusing in achieving the intended outcomes. Compounding the concern was the lack of dedicated and able academics to manage the process. With work intensification - a prominent feature of academic life, academics became frustrated with the lack of time available for their research work. To defend their research ethos, the study provides evidence that some academics look for a more structured system to address the unbalanced workload issue.

Although the role of the academic head of department (HoD) has always been important to university management and performance, an increasing significance given to bureaucracy, academic performance and productivity, and government accountability has greatly elevated the importance of this position. Previous research and anecdotal evidence suggests that as academics move into HoD roles, usually with little or no training, they experience a problem of struggling to adequately manage key aspects of their role. It is this problem – and its manifestations – that forms the research focus of this study. Based on the research question, “What are the career trajectories of academics who become HoDs in a selected post-1992 university?” the study aimed to achieve greater understanding of why academics become HoDs, what it is like being a HoD, and how the experience influences their future career plans. The study adopts an interpretive approach, in line with social constructivism. Edited topical life history interviews were undertaken with 17 male and female HoDs, from a range of disciplines, in a post-1992 UK university. These data were analysed using coding, categorisation and theme formation techniques and developing profiles of each of the respondents. The findings from this study suggest that academics who become HoDs not only need the capacity to assume a range of personal and professional identities, but need to regularly adopt and switch between them. Whether individuals can successfully balance and manage these multiple identities, or whether they experience major conflicts and difficulties within or between them, greatly affects their experiences of being a HoD and may influence their subsequent career decisions. It is claimed that the focus, approach and analytical framework - based on the interrelationships between the concepts of socialisation, identity and career trajectory - provide a distinct and original contribution to knowledge in this area. Although the results of this study cannot be generalised, the findings may help other individuals and institutions move towards a firmer understanding of the academic who becomes HoD - in relation to theory, practice and future research.

This paper reports on the findings from an investigation conducted in the Arab Gulf region into student and faculty perceptions of effective and ineffective teaching practices at the university level. Samples were drawn from both genders in two dissimilar academic programs: the university preparatory intensive English program (IEP) and the mainstream science program. Specifically, this study focuses on the characteristics of effective and ineffective teaching from the point of view of four population groups: English students, English faculty, science students and science faculty. The method of enquiry made use of both interviews and a questionnaire. Means, ranking, and standard deviation followed by other analyses indicated that there was a high degree of similarity between students and faculty with respect to the perceived attributes of effective and ineffective teaching. It appears that the effective teacher is the mirror image of the ineffective by being imbued with a generous dose of personality traits in addition to skills. Both faculty and students in this research conducted in the Gulf depicted the excellent university professor as someone who: (1) is respectful, (2) makes classes interesting, (3) is fair in evaluating, (4) cares about students’ success, (5) shows a love for their subject, (6) is friendly, (7) encourages questions and discussion, (8) is always well prepared and organized, and (9) makes difficult subjects easy to learn. Findings of students’ and faculty’s perspectives suggest that effective teaching is the blending of both personality and ability factors. The key factor, however, remains the teacher’s personality.