Despite the goal of increased globalisation, the proportion of American college undergraduates studying abroad remains at just over one percent. This thesis investigates traditional beliefs which have affected perceptions of study abroad and which have constrained policy development in American higher education. Chapter One outlines a statistical portrait of study abroad, identifying its participants as undergraduate females and showing how study abroad is a marginal activity. The institutional changes proposed within the last two decades to increase study abroad use are discussed, and it is shown how elements of discourse within the higher education community have devalued the purposes of studying abroad, the programmes, and participants. Chapter Two establishes the conceptual framework for this inquiry. Michel Foucault's theory of discourse, belief, and power is outlined as a guide for an analysis 5 of how beliefs about study abroad evolve, wield power over individuals and institutions, and are subject to change and the reallocation of power. Using Foucault's theory that emerging strands of discourse produce persistent beliefs, Chapter Three identifies prevailing traditional beliefs about study abroad and the historical and contemporary discourses which produced and now sustain them. The influence of gender on these beliefs is demonstrated. Chapter Four examines the alternative discourses of sponsors and participants in study abroad. These discourses could contribute to a redefinition of the situation. Chapter Five offers reflections on current policy directions and some suggestions about new possibilities.

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This thesis evaluates two short teaching modules which are managed by the author. The modules are convened for qualified mental health nurses who are working in acute adult inpatient wards in several London mental hospitals. The main purpose of the modules is to teach trainees psychosocial interventions (PSI) based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to equip them to care for patients with severe mental illness. PSI has been found to be helpful for patients with psychotic symptoms in community contexts. In this study, the implementation of PSI in acute inpatient mental health settings is explored. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the modules, a questionnaire was administered to each trainee (experimental group) before and after the modules to elicit their opinion of their ability in caring for patients with these psychotic symptoms. Their responses 'pre module' were then compared to their responses 'post module'. The same questionnaire was also given to colleagues matched for length of service and experience who had not undertaken the modules (reference group).The effectiveness of the modules was further evaluated by comparing the experimental group's post module responses to the responses of the reference group. The thesis also examines the aids and barriers to implementing the skills which trainees learned on the modules in their clinical practice. To achieve this, a focus group and semi- structured audio taped interviews were carried out with the experimental group. For the same purpose, a questionnaire was administered to the patients for whom they acted as 'primary nurse' throughout their stay on the ward. Their responses were compared to patients for whom the reference group acted as 'primary nurse'. The conclusion from the study was that the modules were effective in teaching trainees these skills, but that they found it difficult to implement them in practice.

This study examines the development of English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching for adults as a distinct discipline from the period of its inception until the mid-1980s when it appears to have been well on the way to its constitution as and acceptance as a separate discipline. The history of ESL provision is established from interviews and from the literature, and competition between paradigms is discussed. The ESL provision in one borough in the London region is examined, and particular attention paid to the ideas and views of teachers who appeared to be undergoing a transformation from what could best be described as voluntary workers to professionals. Interviews with potential students are discussed because their ideas and concepts not only came into conflict with the received wisdom of ESL, but also had an effect upon the development of the subject. Particular attention is paid to women students because of their importance to the development of ESL. The thesis addresses itself practically to debates within ESL about its context and its politics, and academically to discussions about the relation of education to "race", gender and class. Additionally, it discusses the relationship between changes within the curriculum and outside social aims and social forces. Here the professionalisation of ESL is of importance: the thesis links the claims and practices of the new professionals to their working-conditions on the one hand, and issues of social control on the other. A crisis accompanied the establishment of ESL as a subject which was both financial (fear of cuts) and ideological (challenges to the old approach). Two ways of seeing the work have competed: assimilationist views linked to ESL's welfare origins which saw "the need for English" as self-evident; and a pluralist discourse emphasising "bilingualism". Interviews with potential students showed that "the need for English" was not staightforward; but the pluralist discourse in ESL was stimulated by a struggle for professional status within education rather than by increased proximity to students. It was found that though pluralist views were put forward in ESL publications, the assimilationist discourse was widespread among tutors, who were unlikely to give up their freedom to define the work as they chose unless improvements to their working-conditions were available. The need for an alternative to both is discussed. The thesis is in three parts. Following a chapter on theory and method, the first section (chapters 2 and 3) examines the development of ESL up to the mid-1980s. The welfare origins of ESL and its development into an educational subject are discussed. The second section (chapters 4 and 5) draws on fieldwork in an outer London borough in 1984-5 to describe the different sorts of ESL provision there and discuss the teachers' views of the work. The third section (chapters 6 and 7) explores issues of potential students' approaches to ESL classes. Chapter 6 considers factors affecting adults' approaches to learning new languages and to formal education, and chapter 7 discusses interviews with potential students of ESL in the same outer London borough to compare with the ideas of providers. In conclusion, chapter 8 discusses the implications of the work of ESL in terms of social control. The importance of the curriculum is stressed, and alternatives to assimilationist and pluralist conceptions argued.

This thesis represents a small-scale ethnography of access education. Using methods of auto/biography, I study the field of access education through students' life stories, spoken narratives and diary entries, while writing myself and aspects of my own auto/biography into the research. My analytical approach is framed by feminist post/structural theories, drawing on analytical tools such as deconstruction and discourse analysis and conceptual tools including power, collaboration through praxis, reflexivity, subjectivity and experience. The thesis focuses on a group of students returning to learning through various 'access courses' available at their local FE College within the context of burgeoning national policy on widening educational participation. In examining the competing discourses within the field of access education, it reveals the hidden dynamics in which access students are re/positioned in complex, contradictory and multiple ways. The research examines the implications of educational participation for access students and explores the effectiveness of interactive and collaborative approaches to the research and education of marginalised groups. The ethnography situates students and researcher as co-participants. Placing mature students' representations of educational experiences at the centre of knowledge production, the thesis argues that we must understand the backgrounds, interests and experiences of the particular social groups that policy seeks to target. I argue for the revitalisation of lively discussions about pedagogy within access education rooted in reflexive praxis that are committed to a politics of difference and to anticlassist, anti(hetero )sexist and antiracist practices. New forms of access practices that are inclusive and responsive to fluidity and context are presented through the insights of co-participants.

Assessment has been shown to direct student learning behaviour by influencing the quality and quantity of effort, the aspects of the course syllabus that will be attended to and the qualitative outcomes of learning. From the late 1960s through to the 1990s a wealth of education research was undertaken to explore student learning behaviour and this shaped the design and delivery of modern day curricula, including the emergence of 'constructive alignment'. With this, distinct efforts to express learning outcomes which link to assessment procedures were made and criteria against which performance standards were to be judged were published. Along with such initiatives the variety of assessment methods also increased, yet little evaluation of the impact of such changes on student learning behaviour has been made. However, a recent report submitted to the Higher Education Academy suggests that the modern teaching and assessment environment is associated with a range of negative learning responses. These include less effort, less coverage of the syllabus and a less deep approach to studying. This work examined the assessment characteristics of an undergraduate physiotherapy programme situated in a modern university with an educational philosophy of constructive alignment. It considers the relationship between the assessment environment and resultant student learning behaviour. The study showed that students endeavoured to adopt a deep approach to their learning and were engendered with a professional responsibility to commit themselves to a personal stance of understanding and meaning-making. It is suggested that this outcome is due to the vocational nature of the programme and the inherent community of practice that this brings, and the associated affiliation of the profession to the concept of clinical reasoning. A further finding questions the assumed pedagogic stance surrounding deep and surface approaches to learning. It is suggested that a deep learning motive — achieving assessment strategy may well describe many learners and befits a contemporary, mass higher education system.

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The need for a deeper understanding of students' experiences of e-learning, particularly amongst widening access students, forms the motivation for this work. The three key themes of higher education policy, tech nology- enhanced learning, and student personal space were used to develop a framework for analysing the match (or mismatch) between the potential learner's circumstances and how these circumstances impact on the ability of the learner to create their own unique learning environment. To enable a more intimate insight into student classroom and out-ofclassroom learning experiences, interviews using the 'Biographic- Narrative- Interpretative Method (BNIM)' were undertaken (Wengraf, 2001). These narratives enable personal and individual accounts of behaviour, and place the work within the phenomenological tradition. The findings reveal how students draw upon their life experiences outside of the university to 'colonise' their learning spaces, and to construct their view of 'self' as student. Further, their creation of this space impacts on those around them; control over one space seems to permit flexibility elsewhere. Students from deprived backgrounds face more complex challenges in trying to combine and prioritise the competing demands of education, work and family life. The implications from this study are that, in the context of a new managerialist agenda, government and university policy should incorporate a vision of the learning spaces offered to students, and take account of diverse student voices. Inside and outside of the formal classroom, tutors need to change their perceptions as to what is valued as meaningful knowledge construction. Furthermore, differing student experiences need to be acknowledged when designing appropriate and meaningful learning environments - including online environments.

The rate of undergraduate non-completion at public universities in Argentina is high by international comparison. However, the understanding of its causes has been obscured by a polarized debate between the government and the university community on issues of efficiency and funding. In this context, the experiences non-completers have been neglected amid an oversimplification of the complex set of factors at play in non-completion. This thesis examines the issues, factors and definition of non-completion within public universities in Argentina by exploring the lives of students and their decision-making processes. It draws primarily on qualitative data collected in a single case study institution through semi-structured interviews. Theoretical and methodological weaknesses in the dominant international approaches to non-completion are identified, particularly in relation to Tinto's well-known model of integration. A critical research tradition is employed to draw attention instead to wider social and cultural influences in non-completion, and over and against perspectives that focus on the student-as-the-problem which underplay the role of institutional practices. Non-completion within the case study institution is neither simply a personal nor an institutional phenomenon and cannot be reduced to or explained solely in those terms and at those levels. Non-completion has to be understood as part of a decision-making process within a complex interplay of institutions, families, communities, social class and national (economic and political) factors both in relation to individual and institutional action. The findings also highlight the role of 'institutional habitus' (Reay et al., 2005) in underlining the significance of the types of capital differently available to, held by and embodied in the students; and therefore illustrate ways in which institutional practices and cultures can work, albeit unintentionally, to systematically advantage some students to the detriment of others within public universities.

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