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The thesis investigates the effects that the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) has on the Higher Education sector. The alternative view presented by the thesis is that more knowledge can be created by concentrating on the different constituents of the RAE and their specific interactions with particular areas of the Higher Education sector. The RAE constituents are interpreted as drivers that influence and impact, in dissimilar fashions, on different activities of Higher Education Institutions (HEI). This micro analysis of the RAE enables the investigation to isolate the single effects of the RAE drivers therefore creating a bottom-up analysis of the overall impact of the RAE. The analysis of the impact that the drivers have on HEIs’ activities focuses on the perception that individuals within the system have of the consequences of the RAE. The focus on perceptions derives from personal observation of the lack of consensus on the consequences that different drivers have on different areas. The use of perceptions as the mean to assess the impact of the RAE enables the investigation to create a picture of the consequences of the RAE that addresses behavioural change. A multi-dimensional crystal view approach is used to accommodate both the micro analysis and the perception assessment. The multi-dimensional crystal view, a research contribution in its own right, is based on the principle that a micro analysis of a complex system can be achieved by decomposing the system into a number of dimensions. Insight is draw when the interactions between some of the dimensions are investigated. In the specific case of the RAE the dimension are: the RAE drivers, HEIs’ activities and points of observation (dimension that captures perceptions). Knowledge and insight can be acquired when the interactions between the dimensions are aggregated at successive higher levels. The supporting tool for the multidimensional crystal view approach is a matrix that facilitates the analytical process. The aggregation of the dimensions comes from combining textual statements from the points of observation (perceptions) on the effects that the drivers of the RAE have on the activities of HEIs. The highest level is a textual statement that synthesises all lower level statements.

This study examines the status of the technical qualifications accorded to graduates in the training programme at Jubail Industrial College, one of two English-medium colleges in Saudi Arabia, and in particular attempts to assess the relevance of these qualifications to their employment, from the points of view of the graduates and of their employers. The study uses a sample population taken from technical graduates and their employers in the six cities of the Eastern Region, to evaluate the attitudes of these two groups by means of questionnaires (90%) and interviews (10%), intended to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the College's training programme. As an adjunct it also seeks to examine the expectations of students who have undertaken their Co-operative Training Programme but not yet entered into employment. It uses the One-Sample T-Test to determine the mean levels of satisfaction of the individual groups and then of the three groups together. The Analysis of Variance Test (ANOVA) and Pair-Wise Comparison Test (Tukey HSD) are used to test differences between the means of the three groups. The study is divided into nine chapters. Chapter I sets out the aims of the research and describes the College's role in training students for work in industry. Chapter II gives an overview of Saudi Arabia, including its educational system and especially technical education and vocational training. Chapter III describes the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu and then focuses on the College, highlighting its mission within the country's economic development and detailing its programmes. Chapter IV describes the policy of economic diversification to reduce dependence on oil and Chapter V reviews the relevant literature on technical and vocational education in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Chapter VI reiterates the aims of the study and explains the null hypotheses associated therewith, as well as the associated factors and elements. Chapter VII presents and analyses the data obtained with respect to the respondents' levels of satisfaction with the factors and elements, and thereafter Chapter VIII discusses the results and draws conclusions about the validity of the null hypotheses, identifying possible causes for the levels of satisfaction expressed. Finally, Chapter IX provides a summary, makes recommendations for the improvement of the College programme, for industrial organisations and for policy makers, and gives suggestions for further research.

Purpose. In 1995, the Government of Hong Kong amalgamated six independent, Government sponsored Colleges of Education, which offered Certificate in Education courses, into the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The remit of the newly-formed, autonomous Institute was to attain university status and to upgrade courses to degree and post-degree level. Many of the existing staff remained with the newly-formed institute while a recruitment drive resulted in an increase in international lecturing staff. This study results from action research, undertaken by the author, to develop pedagogy suitable for both the international lecturing staff and the Chinese student teachers. The research set out to take advantage of the diverse backgrounds of the lecturing staff. Of the various pedagogic strategies employed by lecturing staff, the Total Quality Management (TQM) approach emerged as the most effective, promoting as it does a way for the students to plumb co-operatively the often difficult depths of what they are studying, as well as motivating them in their chosen career. The stringent examination system in Hong Kong, the lack of university places and the economic situation all play their part in determining the student population in the Institute of Education where students whose first choice is to enter the teaching profession could well be outnumbered by those who consider themselves without more attractive alternatives. In addition, the lecturing staff from overseas became aware of the Chinese culture of 'Shame’ among their students - the students who had failed were castigated and further marginalized by their family and friends. It was hoped that the employment of a TQM approach through the use of Quality Learning Teams would help to combat this 'shame' and, hopefully, increase the self-confidence of these 'shamed' students. The project's aim was to introduce and role-model a different pedagogic practice and to utilise constructivist-based pedagogy so that two major outcomes could be measured: (1) that student teachers would become active and confident learners who would themselves challenge their own pupils and (2) that colleagues outside the project could observe the usefulness of this alternative pedagogy and make use of the innovation in their own lecture rooms. This involved investigation of diverse aspects of teaching and learning. Research on individual areas has been quite extensive, but little research has been done in this particular area with regard to student teachers in Hong Kong and it is, therefore, the purpose of this study to add to existing knowledge, with specific emphasis on Quality Learning Teams. The rationale for the study was, on the one hand, the Hong Kong Special Administration (HKSAR) Government Educational Reforms, but also - and more importantly for the lecturers concerned - the search for a means to inculcate a culture of co-operative learning within the student-teacher body, as well as a means for international lecturing staff to create an effective pedagogy, utilizing both mother tongue and English as languages of instruction. Major Findings. The findings of the study indicated that student learning was enhanced by using Quality Learning Teams. This was demonstrated by the overall module results which showed higher module grades for the groups who were subjected to the innovative pedagogy than for those groups who were subjected to the normal 'traditional' pedagogy. Student self-esteem, self-confidence, trust in peers, and a work ethos of self-sufficiency developed amongst the majority of student teachers. Language skills were enhanced and strategies for learning were improved. It is hoped that the results of this study will assist in the future planning of courses in the education of student-teachers and in creating a more 'risk-taking' culture within the lecturing staff at the Institute.

One of the most important changes to UK higher education in the last ten years has been the funding of research within universities and particularly the introduction of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). This thesis is concerned with the organisation of research work within universities and possible impacts of this change in government policy on the research activities within university departments. Much of the recent literature on academics has documented their declining status and persistent undervaluing (Halsey, 1995). The decrease in government funding to higher education and the increase in processes of accountability and assessment are argued to weaken academic autonomy and further the `proletarianisation' of academic work. Further research, however, has raised the question of whether academics are quite so passive in their response to policy changes. Trowler (1998) argues that academics are active agents in their implementation of policy within institutional settings. This thesis investigates the disciplinary and institutional structural processes that govern academic work and analyses in detail the inter-relationship of these structures with the practices of academics. Bourdieu's framework for the analysis of the relationship between structure and agency is used in this study. He argues that there are many social fields within which agents struggle to accumulate forms of symbolic capital. His concept of habitus encapsulates the complex inter-relationship he postulates between structure and agency. Bourdieu is often criticised for being overly deterministic in his analysis of human agency. This thesis attempts to counteract this charge by placing the analysis at the site of interaction of field (structure) and habitus (agency). It is a collective case study of the organisational, managerial and ideational structures (Grenfell and James, 1998) found within six university departments and the involvement of academics in the reproduction and resistance of those structures. The way in which the RAE serves to reproduce and/or reconstruct the disciplinary and institutional structures discussed is also of central concern to this thesis. The study concludes that the RAE has had a profound impact on the forms of construction and evaluation within academic life but that this is mediated through the complex variety of organisational, managerial and ideational structures within institutions and across disciplines. Similarly, the positioning of individuals within institutional and disciplinary structures is important for understanding their particular struggles and strategies for recognition. This is most acute in struggles over the classification of research and non research active which has significantly increased the differentiation of academics within departments. This thesis also concludes by arguing that a greater understanding of the individual academics location within the context of specific institutional interactions will provide a necessary addition to Bourdieu's framework of analysis.

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In recent years the use of Computer-Based Learning (CBL) has become the focus of much attention, for a range of stakeholders, in Higher Education and beyond. The research in the area of CBL has largely focussed on comparisons with more traditional forms of teaching and has used measurements of learning achieved to draw conclusions regarding CBL. Although the case for considering students as consumers and the need for learner centred approaches has been strongly made, there has been little in depth research on the student perspective regarding the instructional and interface design of CBL materials. This thesis seeks to address this by eliciting the views of students using CBL material within Higher Education and Business, regarding the design of a range of CBL material currently in use. The results reveal the importance of providing a range of options within the design of the CBL material in order to cater for the range of learners concerned. The results reveal the complexity involved in meeting user needs and wants when both cognitive and affective domains are considered. Importantly the use of graphics, multimedia and interactivity is revealed to have both direct and indirect value for learners. The use of on-screen text has been shown to have clear value in terms of information transfer, but to become problematic for users where it is perceived as over-used. This thesis concludes that there are benefits to be gained from the inclusion of multimedia and interactive elements within a wide range of CBL material, currently in use in Higher Education and beyond. There are also benefits for learners in the provision of both information transfer and problem solving modalities. In order to cater for a range of users the design of the CBL material should offer quality and flexibility within both instructional and interface design elements and that flexibility should be under the control of the users concerned.

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This study critically examines the meaning of approaches to learning in a Higher Education setting. In particular it highlights 'how' students leam by examining the way in which they approach their studies. The initial investigations into Approaches to Learning were conducted [in Sweden] by Marton and Saljo [during the sixties and seventies]. In their qualitative, phenomenographic work they attempted to discover the student experience of learning, focussing upon their approach to learning. Two key classifications of student's approach to learning were the outcomes of this research. These were deep level processing approach and a surface level approach. It was claimed that the approach used would affect the level of understanding obtained. This idiographic work was developed further by Entwistle and Ramsden (1983), however they directed the research in a nomothetic direction. The main outcome of their work was the Approaches to Studying Inventory (ASI) which according to these authors could quantitatively measure a student's predisposition to selected Approaches to Learning. The research approach adopted for this study does not however follow the nomothetic trend set by Entwistle and Ramsden, instead it attempts to develop the original work by Marton and Saljo by using an idiographic approach. The methodological approach used in this study is existential phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) as this allows an examination of the learner as an individual. Further this approach facilitates a full description of the lived experiences so that a full insight into the lifeworld of the student may be presented. By adopting this alternate approach it is possible to develop the work of Marton and Saljo and enable a critique of the nomothetic approach used by Entwistle and Ramsden. The method used to enter the learner's lifeworld is qualitative interviews with six students studying in the Business School at the University of Derby. Each student was interviewed three times during the course of an academic year. The analytical procedure was guided by the rigours of a phenomenological methodology and a detailed profile of the individual lifeworld was formed. The Noesis-Noema distinction was also used as an analytical tool to summarise the meaning of learning for each of the participants. The findings from this phenomenological study demonstrated that approaches to learning is a complex and unique experience for each learner. The lifeworld descriptions of each student demonstrates this complexity, in particular it illuminates the inter-relationships which contribute to the individual complex nature of approaches to learning. Despite the individualistic nature of approaches to learning there were some issues that were common to the learners sampled. The themes were sociality and the student's approach to learning, learning as a support to wider needs, the meaning of learning and the student approach and what they do when trying to leam. All of these themes played a part in the meaning of approaches to learning for the students sampled. The phenomenological approach enabled an understanding of the complexity and individuality of approaches to learning by extricating the meanings of approaches to learning within the context of their lifeworld. The noema-noesis distinction proved invaluable as a heuristic device, identifying how the students 'approached' the 'object' of their learning. These findings highlighted the inadequacies of the ASI which is unable to elucidate the meanings and context of approaches to learning. This study demonstrates that if we want to understand the meanings and depth of approaches to learning then we must go beyond quantifiable variables, the nomothetic approach and instead focus on the individual's situation in life, the idiographic approach.