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This thesis examines the importance of local factors associated with a research-led university’s move toward greater internationalisation. The study explores the university’s rationales for internationalisation along with forces acting to enable and constrain successful internationalisation. Attention is focused on the perceptions of individuals at different levels of the academic hierarchy. The study provides data that add local detail to national and sector surveys of internationalisation. The key data source is 16 semi-structured interviews with staff at the university including senior university leaders and academic staff. Additional information is derived from documents relating to the university’s internationalisation projects. All data are analysed from an insider-researcher position. The study’s findings suggest that local factors of place, tradition and individual agency are important items in shaping internationalisation endeavours. Personal and professional international experiences can create a positive approach for extending international activities within the university. This is offset by concerns about economically driven rationales and the privileging of international as opposed to locally based research. The conceptual framework locates the study within the multifaceted globalisation discourse and creates a structure for examining the significance of local factors, which tend to be overlooked in internationalisation research. Perceptions of internationalisation are analysed in a structure-agency framework. The discourse and metaphors employed are also examined. Similar universities are likely to follow similar paths in response to globalising forces and to pursue greater internationalisation, but their particular trajectories are likely to be coloured by local conditions. Whilst the specifics of this university’s local context may not be readily transferable, it is suggested that other universities would do well to attend to their own local context when thinking globally.

This research deals with how students of a particular learning environment in management education, which I call here the Practice Firms Network Learning Environment (PFN), describe their relationship with this learning environment. In the PFN model students conceptualise, design and sell ‘virtual’ products and services to other people within the model, constituting a market that only exists by the pedagogical intentions of those involved with the model. The research was carried out to explore the relationship between students and the PFN model, and to describe the variation in perception of how students experienced this relationship, from their perspective. The research sample was composed of twenty-nine students from two educational institutions in Brazil, using a phenomenographic approach. The students were interviewed and their narratives were analysed and categorised. The analysis showed that the variation in students’ descriptions of their relationships with the PFN model could be synthesised in seven different categories. The students experienced their relationship with the PFN as a: 1) Pointless experience; 2) Discipline experience; 3) Group Work experience; 4) Competitive experience; 5) Simulated experience; 6) Way of Learning experience; 7) Realistic experience. The conclusions extracted from the data were that a) Students experienced the PFN in qualitatively different ways; b) The range of variation could be arranged to show that students categorised their experiences in the PFN from a completely pointless experience on one hand to a realistic engagement in the PFN on the other hand; c) From within a meaning dimension, students devalued the PFN model when they perceived it as a ‘pointless’ experience and valued it when they perceived it as adding meaning to their experience; d) From within a structural dimension, students perceived the PFN model as structured forms of experience to deal with tasks or situations. Whether or not they learned from these structures was situational. In summary, the study concludes that students engage in learning activities in search of meaning. Nevertheless, the structures of educational activities influence if and how students will achieve their meaning purposes.

Globalisation of higher education has led to an increase in the delivery of transnational programmes, those where students are located in a different country than the providing institution. These programmes are marketed as offering the same degree at the same quality standards as that delivered onshore and often the specific context or place of learning is not considered. Literature on the student experience of learning in this setting is sparse. This study addresses this gap by exploring accounts of students’ processes of networked learning on two transnational Masters programmes delivered by an Irish college in the Gulf region of the Middle East. Processes of learning are theorised using two frameworks: the approaches to learning framework; and the model of networked learning. Data is generated through interviews with 18 students. Findings show two key qualitative differences in the phenomenographical outcome spaces. Firstly, between descriptions focused on academic skills (searching literature, reading, writing) and those focused on ideas (analysing, synthesising, critiquing). Secondly, between descriptions of engagement in the act of networked learning and descriptions of non-engagement, classified as either ‘unable to engage’ or ‘unwilling to engage’. The categories of description at the lower levels of complexity in all outcome spaces are not explained well using either theoretical framework. These findings have a deeper alternative explanation when both the transnational and the individual’s contexts are taken into consideration. Conclusions are drawn for theory, methodology, policy and practice. For theory, an amended definition of networked learning is suggested which allows for the multiple contexts within which learning takes place. For methodology, it is suggested non-inclusive hierarchical structures in outcome spaces are appropriate for phenomenographical studies of the processes of learning. Finally, the notion that transnational programmes can be delivered ‘context-free’ is challenged which has implications for institutional policy and educational practice within higher education.

A large number of factors are known to be influential on student absenteeism, but little work has been undertaken into understanding this behaviour at a more conceptualised level. In the UK, it appears that only one small scale study has been undertaken into reasons for absenteeism specifically from lectures, despite the growing concerns about this behaviour. This thesis attempts to both improve understanding of why students miss lectures in a Faculty at a post 1992 university, and to explain this behaviour in a more conceptualised way. Nine attributions categorised using three headings: 'student', `lecture' and `context' are first proposed from which three broad constructs are derived that, it is argued, give meaning to the experience of missing lectures for many students in the Faculty. The three constructs are disinterest, disquiet, and disengagement. Disinterest is about an approach to study and learning in the context of missing lectures and is understood as the 'Can't be bothered' attitude to attending lectures; disquiet is about the affective meaning of students missing lectures and is a 'Don't like it! response to the lecture experience; and disengagement is a rational assessment of lectures as having a low expected gain to the student as a 'What's the point? ' deduction in relation to attending lectures. It is possible that these three constructs allow for a reconstruction of the empirical data within a holistic framework interpreting the behaviour of missing lectures from either an etiological perspective, or from an individual psychoanalytical perspective. Low immediacy, instrumentalism, expectations, isolation, discomfort and goal ambiguity, are argued to be the important influences on disinterest, disquiet and disengagement. This thesis presents empirical evidence supporting disinterest, disquiet and disengagement as important constructs in the student's attendance behaviour, and considers how these constructs might be used to guide future research. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the issues for the Faculty raised by the research.

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Teaching and research tend to be seen as heterogeneous activities, yet in debates in the literature, they are often treated by inference as essentially homogeneous activities (Scott, 2003). Positivistic focused research studies, such as those of Terenzini and Pascarella (1994) and Hattie and Marsh (1996, 2002) on the nexus between teaching and research tend to ‘measure’ research output to evaluate teaching performance. These studies have concluded that, if a relationship between teaching and research did exist, it was marginal at best. Interpretive based studies, (Neumann, 1992, 1993; Rowland, 2000, 2004; Brew, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, and Jenkins, 2005) suggest that academic staff believe a nexus does exist between teaching, research and scholarship. The research philosophy adopted for this research is a (reflexive) phenomenological approach (practice shaping theory), used to structure UK IS/IM academics’ perception surrounding the nexus between teaching, research, scholarship and consultancy. Both quantitative and qualitative data has been obtained, comprising the results from a web-based questionnaire, (with a 30% response rate) and the analysis of twelve semi-structured interviews with six staff from a teaching-led university, and six staff from a research-led university. This research has found that a nexus is perceived to exist and is perceived to inform teaching practices between certain academic activities. Namely, teaching is informed via the process and product of research consultancy, but research and consultancy practices are not informed by teaching. In addition, this research has found that a nexus exists between research and consultancy and that this relationship is bi-directional. The area of scholarship is found to be messy and problematic in any nexus relationship. This research argues when conceptualising and enacting a nexus between teaching, research, scholarship and consultancy that a complex adaptive systems perspective is needed and that the nexus relationship should be relabelled a plexus web.

The origins, nature and significance of modern sail training in the UK as an educational venture are considered, and providers’ claims in respect of the benefits of participation are scrutinised. The study employs a sociological perspective, and has two main elements. First, the contemporary sail training movement is examined. It is shown to have origins and relations in the historical and cultural context of seafaring, and is located in a relationship to the practices of youth work and adventures education.  An analytic framework of traditions is developed to differentiate the range of approaches identified in a survey of sail training providers in terms of their distinctive origins, value positions and culture, expressed purposes and preferred types of vessel. Case studies of three sail training organisations representative of the main traditions are presented, and it is argued that these distinctive traditions can be understood as ideologies, expressing significantly distinct views of the social world. The second element of the study is an ethnographic account of practice in the main traditions, using observation and interview data from eleven voyages. The findings give attention to the experience of domestic and communal life and to participants’ engagement in technical aspects of seafaring. The problems of living at sea faced by all participants are shown to form an inescapable background to exposure to the tasks and techniques of maritime work. Evidence from the fieldwork is compared with claims by providers regarding the benefits of participation, and it is argued that in its own terms sail training can be successful as an environment for learning to work with others in both the technical and domestic domains. Voyage duration is established as a key variable, and discrepant cases at two levels help to establish both the significance of boundaries, and the limiting conditions for positive outcomes in respect of providers’ claims. The central arguments of the study are, firstly, that sail training expresses implicit ideologies, through the ways power is understood and expressed. Secondly it is argued that it is the creation of an enclosed community or total institution, through the physical and social boundaries of a ship at sea that give the experience of participation its particular character as an environment for learning.

The purpose of this study is to determine how strategic planning is implemented in Malaysian Islamic public universities and how it can further improve the management and administration of those institutions. The study was done on a comparative method between two largest Malaysian public universities, namely, the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) and the National University of Malaysia (UKM). The researcher considered in particular the similarities and differences between the two universities’ strategic planning and the potential benefits and limitations of the same. The researcher employed a survey instrument consisting of a triangulation of interviews, document analysis and direct observation. Analysis of the survey responses indicated the following findings: (a) Both universities share similarities in certain elements of their strategic planning, and differ in certain other elements of their strategic planning; and, (b) Respondents agreed that strategic planning has a considerable number of potential benefits as well as limitations.

Promises by consecutive governments to ’reform the public services’ carry the implication that few changes have taken place in this sector since its inception, and that the negative image of the public sector still exercises the mind of the people as well as that of successive governments. Despite extensive reform, the transformation of the public sector appears to have produced a form of public service that satisfies no-one. One of the debates about public services has been whether provision is best achieved through a welfare state, which plans and provides services, or through the ‘market’, which is sometimes represented as a more efficient way of allocating resources and delivering services. The way this issue has been address by governments over the past 20 years or so has led to extensive changes within the public sector. Sociologically, this research is located at the intersection of a number of debates that have exercised the sociological imagination for the last decades of the 20^th century. These include the forms and exercise of power in modern society, how society should be organised, and concerns about a social world that has become increasingly individualistic. However, the issues surrounding the reform of the public services also involve concepts and theories used in, and developed by, other disciplines from economics, politics, public administration and social policy to management. The argument made in this thesis is that the reform of the public sector is closely tied to issues of governance that stem from particular power relations. Those in power have governed through the development of specific rationalities and the thesis explores the concept of freedom both as a rationality and as a practice of government. These can be seen in the adoption of neo-liberal ideologies and practices in global and local contexts that have led to the introduction of market principles and mechanisms to aspects of social life that have changed the notion of collective provision for citizens to that of meeting the needs of individuals as consumers. In the research, Further Education is used as a case study to examine <i>particular</i> aspects of arguments. The incorporation of Further Education colleges in Scotland in 1993 demonstrated the application of the ideas and policies of the New Right through the introduction of market principles and as a result democratic representation, control, management, and governance within FE have changed in significant ways. To ascertain the significance of the reforms and ensuing changes, the merits and demerits of markets versus hierarchy; the extent and effects of decentralisation; new forms of control and scrutiny and the way processes and changes have been interpreted by key players will be evaluated. The forms of organisation that have emerged will be examined in terms of their intended and unintended consequences and it will be argued that despite the negative perceptions of reform, Further Education has used modifications in organisation to its own advantage. Finally, it will be shown that the particular form of governance that has been established can be used by different political administrations to meet their own objectives and that although Further Education has been criticised as some as being too adaptable, this very characteristic has, thus far, ensured its survival.