The focus of this study is to reflect critically on current policy and practice concerning social exclusion with a view to contributing ideas to improve the lives of people who inhabit our most disadvantaged communities. Three main arguments are developed. Firstly, that engagement in lifelong learning is now central to ensuring social inclusion and disposition and motivation to learn, as well as the capacity to benefit fully from the learning experience are influenced significantly by cognitive, conative and interpersonal skills. These are more widely known as soft skills. Secondly that these soft skills remain little understood, particularly among managers and staff of community based regeneration agencies. Finally, this lack of understanding results in inadequate community based provision to ensure that residents develop the necessary disposition, motivation and resilience to enable them to learn their way out of social exclusion. A case study involving participant observation was conducted in a disadvantaged community in the south Wales Valleys. The study found that engagement in lifelong learning is now essential to ensure social inclusion and residents require a formidable portfolio of skills to learn their way out of social exclusion. The new policy emphasis on residents becoming co-responsible and empowered citizens places a greater significance on soft skills within the context of learning for health and well being, learning for socially active citizenship and learning for economically active citizenship. Despite this, soft skills were little understood among community regenerators and community based learning and support provision to enable residents to acquire soft skills was inadequate. Other policy and practical impediments to soft skills development were found and these, together with the implications for national policies to ensure social inclusion and more importantly the residents of our most disadvantaged communities are discussed.

Existing literature on university knowledge exchange, whether approving or critical, tends to assume that it is the economic value of knowledge that produces opportunities for exchange. Taking as a starting point the contention that this need not be the case, this study examines afresh the nature of knowledge exchange and its value to society. In doing so, it makes reference to the policies of the UK, Welsh Assembly and Scottish Governments, to the approach of the Universities of Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, and to the experiences of academics engaged in social and scientific knowledge exchange projects. Whilst each Government is shown to prioritise economic ends, academics value making a difference to others, increasing personal or institutional kudos and engaging in interesting and exciting projects more highly. Although it remains possible for academics to carry out knowledge exchange with this broad range of outcomes, the mismatch between academic and governmental priorities is problematic. Failure to redefine the value of knowledge exchange to encompass a broader range of outcomes is liable to have implications for Government, for academia and for society: a lack of alignment between policy drivers and academic motivations makes it less likely that policy will achieve its desired ends; universities that fail to accommodate a broader value set risk losing academics to institutions that do; and in failing to provide sufficient space for the conduct of a broad-based knowledge exchange, policy makers will prevent the benefits of academic knowledge to society from being maximised. Universities are shown to be well placed to effect a change in the way that value is defined. However, certain structural issues militate against such a change, and academics and their universities will therefore need to be bold in asserting alternative values.

This thesis explores current issues in the UK student related equality agenda from the perspective of academic members of staff and specialists in equality and diversity. The polytechnic sector (now post-1992 universities) evolved with a strong student/consumer focus, which has not been true of many pre-1992 institutions. Yet with the economic, political and demographic changes to the context of HE over the last ten years, the demands placed on universities have brought this kind of logic into all institutions. The degree to which this approach to students and academic work has affected academic practice has not been even across the sector. Reactions amongst staff and senior managers to the equality agenda have varied. My research takes a comparative case study approach to identify some of these differing perspectives, sampling from the faculty of arts and social sciences in one pre- and one post-1992 institution. Among equality and diversity specialists there is a growing recognition of the barriers to their work in universities, most notably keeping academic members of staff informed and developing their skills in the area. I investigated these issues by interviewing academic staff and specialists about their views on equality and diversity and student-staff relationships. In this thesis I argue that the differences between academics' perspectives in the two case study institutions are guided by their perceptions of the market position of their university. This controls the horizons of their professional identities, influencing their values and practices. The narratives given by academics reflected a conflict between multiple identities of self-as-professional through their institutional, disciplinary and personal spheres of identity and how each interacted with representations of the equality agenda for HEIs. The success of this agenda hinges on constructing positive discourses around professional identity and its intersection with the equality agenda in HEIs.

The thesis illuminates biography, learning and practice and advances understanding of the development of professional knowledge and practice. The purpose of the research was to inform the pedagogical development of practice learning using a biographical perspective to investigate how nurses and health visitors use professional practice experiences to learn and generate knowledge and understandings of practice. The research is set within the healthcare policy context of lifelong and lifewide learning. The literature review builds on my own experiences. An argument is developed for practice learning to be located within a universal knowledge system that provides for the subjective and contextual complexity of nursing practice knowledge and learning. The research strategy is grounded in the theoretical perspectives of interpretive phenomenology and interaction ism. Nine specialist community nurses and health visitors participated in the life story interview of biographical narrative interpretive method. Three transcripts were selected for in-depth analysis of subjective meanings of learning and professional practice. Case comparison of biographical process structures shows how biographies construct a resource for ways of knowing the world that is incorporated into professional agency. Five profiles of formal practice learning were accessible for documentary and textual analysis. Two patterns of orientation were reconstructed from this analysis: a learning practice constituted as a process of identifying and meeting learning needs through client-centred practice and public institutions constituted as a process of support and self-surveillance of the formal learning programme. These mirror biographical learning resources which seem to both construct professional knowledge and constitute the practice learning action environment. Discourse analysis of accounts of client care situations from follow-up narrative interviews with four nurses and two health visitors showed continuity of how individuals learn and do the process of knowing practice through their own personal theories-of-practice. Thematic analysis across the findings has led to the creation of a model of biography, learning and practice and utilises the concept of biographicity to inform pedagogical development of practice learning. The research makes a significant contribution to the body of knowledge on implicit, non-formal and formal learning and the development of professional knowledge at a micro practice action level of client-professional interaction.

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This thesis is an ethnographic study of a group of Chinese postgraduate students in a British university as they become adjusted to the culture of teaching and learning in the new learning environment during their first year of overseas study. It focuses on these Chinese students’ initial perceptions of British teaching and learning practices compared with their inherited culture of learning and how they make adjustments, emotionally, cognitively, and behaviourally, in order to make their learning successful, with the result of changes and developments in their conceptions and beliefs about knowing and learning. The present study seeks to draw together understanding from the fields of intercultural adaptation theories, tertiary students’ conceptions of learning research, and the interface of culture and learning, i.e. cultures of learning, to explore the impact of studying abroad on students’ intellectual development and personal growth so as to inform international and intercultural education.

In the late 1990s the Government concluded that poor adult literacy and numeracy were having an effect on the United Kingdom’s competitiveness. Consequently, in 1999, Claus Moser was asked to undertake a review and make recommendations as to how greater numbers of disadvantaged adults might be encouraged to seek advice and start learning. Moser’s findings stimulated the Government to develop and launch the Skills for Life Strategy out of which came the Learndirect ‘Gremlins’ Campaign, a flagship awareness raising programme. The researcher set out to develop a body of knowledge related to participation in learning, to find out more about callers to the Learndirect Helpline, and to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the publicly funded support services such as the Information, Advice & Guidance Service and providers of learning. Out of a cohort of 360 callers, 165 agreed to take part in a telephone interview, and 52 said they had taken up a learning opportunity; however, only 27 were found to have taken up Learning & Skills Council ( LSC ) funded programmes leaving the researcher to conclude that the remaining 25 had either taken up programmes funded by Jobcentre Plus, started to learn informally, or were uncomfortable in admitting that they hadn’t started learning. Perhaps the most striking finding from the research was that the majority of respondents who chose not to take up learning were keen to stay involved. Also it was found that adults living in disadvantaged communities were significantly less likely to take up LSC funded learning opportunities; but, with additional support, learners from those communities had the potential to perform better than those from other areas. Of those who went into learning a lower percentage than the Nottinghamshire average was employed full - time, a higher percentage was employed part - time and a higher percentage was economically inactive. More were in lower order occupations, with a bias towards personal service occupations. The Government responded to Moser’s findings by setting challenging targets; however, although the targets have been exceeded, there is a significant difference in performance between 16 to 19 year olds re – taking GCSEs in English and Mathematics, and adults, aged 20 +, taking literacy and / or numeracy qualifications. During the 2004 academic year 46% of the former achieved their learning aim, but only 20% of the latter, suggesting that a renewed focus is needed on adults, especially the hard to reach living in disadvantaged communities. It is recommended, therefore, that there should be a drive for greater consistency in the quality of information, advice & guidance and learning provision, and a more coherent network of high quality community based provision with enhanced levels of support provided by Information, Advice & Guidance Partnerships.

Objectives: This thesis will explore some innovative solutions to communication difficulties that exist in higher education teaching of introductory programming. Communication between a teacher and student is important, as it is the main opportunity where a student can ask a teacher questions about a particular problem they have, and a teacher can give feedback to direct them towards a solution. It is expected that through utilising technology in laboratory practical classes, communication between teachers and student can be improved. Methods: This thesis primarily explores the possibilities of using student compiler and method invocation data, collected during a practical class and sent directly to a teacher. This data maybe beneficial as a method of allowing teachers to see if a student requires help. This thesis utilises a variety of research methods including questionnaires, observations of classroom interactions and collection of data recorded from student and teachers interactions with the technology. The approaches are used during an investigation into the current approaches of laboratory practical teaching, before progressing onto investigations using the technology developed that accompanies this thesis. Results: The results identified that the majority of the students and teachers who used the technology felt that it improved their ability to communicate within laboratory practical classes. The teachers felt that they could use the data collected by the technology to view activity from the students and see a student’s progress. The teachers could interpret the data collected from the technology and students who needed help could be identified. Conclusions: This thesis has demonstrated that technology has the potential to improve communication in laboratory classes, and enable teachers to support students more effectively. However, the technology developed in this thesis, does not eliminate the requirement for a teacher to interact with a student face-to-face, but rather its role is to act as an indicator of students who may need assistance.