This work focuses on identity management across media by focusing on a Greek-Cypriot student Society in London. By employing a Communities of Practice framework which focuses on engagement in social practice, the present work deals with issues of community making processes across media as well as the ways in which member positions and relations vis-a-vis the Society have an impact on communication practices and identity construction. Questions underlying such analysis are: A. In what ways do participation and engagement inform identity articulations related to community membership? B. In what ways are community, identities and relations negotiated over time and across media and how do these processes shape communication choices? The data were collected from multiple sites of engagement ranging from face to face recordings, e-mails, diaries, interviews, Facebook threads and the Society’s website. The analysis showed that in community making the use of e-mails and Facebook posts reproduce the development of the Society’s practices and social links among members. With regards to choices of communication mediums it was found that in member relationships characterized by emotional closeness, face-to-face and mobile communication was privileged while e-mail communication was the preferable communication mode in Society-related business. Analysis of e-mail communication among Committee members indicated that through status moves in interaction members are able to orient to particular membership identities and role-dependent activities, while issues of legitimacy to claim arose in the negotiation of past and present (Committee and ex-Committee) positions in the Society. Peripheral membership identities appeared to be the result of weakened relations of mutual engagement. Additionally, preference for Greek text in emails was found to be a way of enhancing in-group membership by aligning language choice with the assumed identities of the members. Greek language (and most importantly Cypriot Greek) - as the readily available resource of the Greek Cypriot members - appeared to be a defining factor in legitimating Greek-Cypriot members as well as the power to marginalize the British Cypriot members (’Charlies’). Ethnically-related resources such as language become tools through which relations of mutual engagement can either be strengthened, or lack mutuality.

My thesis explores the Personal Statements (PSs) written by student applicants and goes beyond merely identifying textual features of the PS itself. I have drawn on an academic literacies perspective (Lea & Street, 1998; Street, 2004) that considers issues of meaning-making, writer identity that students bring to the act of writing, and writing and evaluation practices within a particular institutional and epistemological context. Specifically, I investigate students’ PSs for PhD applications at one UK-based and one US-based university, with the focus on the interpretations and assumptions of students and academics regarding this type of text; students’ identities as presented in their PS writing; and also practices and conventions in relation to the PS across institutional contexts. My data comprises PS texts and in-depth semi-structured interviews with 22 students and 19 academics at two focal universities. My key findings reveal that despite there being similarities between the expectations of students and academics concerning what should be included in the PS, contrasting views tend to occur when academics read and commented on students’ PSs. Such discrepancies are associated with what Street (2009) refers to as the ‘hidden features’ of academic writing, which are often not made explicit to student writers. I have also found that the ways in which students approach their PSs are closely associated with their writer identity that they bring to the act of writing as well as an awareness of their readers and the context for this act of writing. For academics, their interpretations of PSs tend to vary across institutional contexts and even vary amongst individuals within the same department. Such variations may be associated with their consideration of the ideology and epistemology in their disciplinary discourse community. This study contributes to an understanding of the PS and its associated writing and evaluation practices from ideological and epistemological perspectives. It also complements and extends the traditional genre-based move-step approach in relation to this type of text.

Understanding the learner for more effective university Teaching. To teach students efficiently and effectively, it is helpful to understand their conceptions of teaching and learning. Given the higher proportion of school leavers entering Higher Education and greater undergraduate diversity, this is more imperative. With the greater likelihood of large class sizes, more formalised means of understanding students must be sought. Whilst using small group work as part of undergraduate teaching can help, some explicit attempts to collect profile information on students can help teachers offer better learning experiences. Student Expectation Research: The research programme started with a piece of action research (Stevenson, Sander and Naylor, 1996; Stevenson and Sander, 1998) with distance learning students, by collecting their expectations through both a telephone survey and a postal questionnaire. Action Research has very limited generalisability, but the principle of surveying students' expectations was promising and extended. The USET survey (Sander et al, 2000) found mismatches between the teaching that students hoped for and expected. Expectations do not have to be met, although there may be some merit in doing so (Stevenson, Sander and Naylor, 1997). Expectations may also be managed (Hill, 1995). One finding from the USET study was that different groups of students had different reasons for disliking student presentations, perhaps due to different levels of academic confidence. Students' reasons for disliking presentations were pursued through re-analysis of the USET qualitative data (Stevenson and Sand er, 2002, Sander and Stevenson, 2002). However, that students dislike presentations is worrying given their effectiveness (Sander, Sanders and Stevenson, 2OO2). Academic Confidence Research: To explore the possibility of a link between academic confidence and reasons for not liking student presentations, the Academic Confidence Scale was developed and validated (Sander and Sanders, 2003). ln addition to finding the hypothesised group differences in confidence, a startling drop in academic confidence during the first year was detected.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has recommended the implementation of operational risk management in universities since 2001. This case study investigated risk assessment in this context, aiming to critically examine variety in different groups in a single institution. Social Systems Theory formed a framework to create new insights into reflexive understandings of risk, utilising data from interviews, and group discussions during risk assessment training. The study makes a significant contribution to knowledge about real-life risk assessment practices, revealing two parallel and unrelated systems. Firstly, the formal process exhibited calculative difficulties. Assessment discussions relied on qualitative data, historical events and narrative accounts to assess potential severity and frequency, with 19 of 20 participants unwilling to assign risk ratings. Secondly, existing management controls demonstrated successful mitigation of risks, particularly in relation to funding access, but were not recognised as ’risk management’, hampering the integrated approach recommended by HEFCE. The influence of group illustrated that the rating of risk could vary, as could the type of risk that caused concern. In addition, boundaries associated with group roles influenced the attribution of responsibility, illustrated by academic unwillingness to be involved with formal risk management processes. Risk acceptability differed between groups and individuals, making it difficult to establish a single risk appetite that reflected all organisational views. Uncertainty was evident in the formal process in lack of clarity of strategic aims, absence of data and unpredictability of future events, particularly in relation to the actions of others. Most significantly, risk prioritisation had to contend with conflicting perspectives and competing organisational aims, including those of the regulator.

The current work represents an attempt to provide an account of the dynamics and explanatory variables in cases of apparent plagiarism and derivation involving ESL students. Through an extension of the Dynamic Model of L2 Writing, the explanatory variables and dynamic interactions involved in derivative writing contexts are analysed. An analysis is also undertaken of the distinct nature of appropriation by ESL students as opposed to general appropriation within the broader, postmodern-influenced academy, and within the popular communications genres of music video production, journalism, the news media, literature, and popular fiction. A brief history of referencing and citation is outlined, and following this history and description of currently widespread appropriation activity, the theoretical Dynamic Model-influenced framework is presented. This framework relies on, and is integrated with, fieldwork data results obtained from conducting a student questionnaire among 135 ESL students enrolled in pre-sessional EAP courses (followed by informal interviews and discussion sessions), by conducting questionnaires among 53 MSc course co-ordinators and 27 EAP specialists from language centres across the UK, and by analysing particular cases of derivation/plagiarism and the texts involved in those cases. These cross-referenced questionnaire and case study results are presented in separate appendices. The study results, in line with the immediate influence hypothesis, suggest that the immediate influences and variables of an L2 writing context, such as L2 proficiency, time constraints, lack of confidence, writing anxiety and a desperate "survival mentality" mindset, contribute to a decision-making-process which leads to the use of derivation/plagiarism as a composing strategy. In such L2 contexts of derivation, the text-mediated reader-writer interaction, occurring within a discourse community (the space surrounding a text), is disrupted by the importation of a text (and author) which should have remained exterior to the interaction, into what should have been a genuine interchange and discourse community contribution. After discussing possible motivation and opportunity considerations behind the use of derivative writing strategies, and giving suggestions for preventing, detecting, and investigating apparent plagiarism in ESL contexts, recommendations are made for institutional policy and procedure, the limitations of the current study are discussed, ideas for further research are presented, and the relationship of postmodern ideology to academe in the Information Age is discussed, culminating in some thought-provoking implications and questions for the Foucault-Barthes assertion that the death of the Author has occurred.

This study investigates the way students and academics in Higher Education understand the notion of graduate 'employability', along with changes within the graduate labour market. The issue of 'employability' has been very much at the forefront of education and employment policy in recent times, particularly in light of the view that we are moving towards a knowledge-driven economy. This study uses a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with fifty-two undergraduate students from a range of different departments in an 'old' university, and twenty-one academics chosen to represent the main disciplines in the study. The study examines the way students perceive the current labour market for graduates, and position themselves within the wider discourse of employability. It further explores the different orientations, attitudes and aspirations students are developing around work and careers. The perceptions of university academics around the issue of graduate employability, and their perceived role in the production of graduates, is also analysed and discussed. The findings suggest that employability is now becoming an organising principle in the way students understand future career progression and manage their expectations. Students view the role of their educational credentials as changing in the context of mass Higher Education and a competitive and congested graduate market. The study further illustrates the ways students orientate themselves to future employment, in terms of the types of goals, attitudes, values and identities they are developing around work and careers. This appears to be influencing the way they manage their future employability and labour market expectations. The data from the academics suggests that many feel their role is changing through mass Higher Education and the changing nature of student learning. Their views on graduate employability are largely based on their values and understanding of the cognitive structures of Higher Education. The findings of this study have implications for future policies of employability within the wider discourse of the knowledge-driven economy.

This thesis aims to contribute to our understanding of academic literacies in the UK context by exploring the practices of subject-based academic teachers around student writing through the lens of teachers’ experiences. Empirical work has yielded a great deal of insight in recent years into students’ experience of writing in higher education; less attention has been paid to student writing from the perspective of discipline-based teachers. This thesis aims to explore the complex lived realities of practice around student writing in the disciplines from teachers’ perspectives. The research on which the thesis is based involved a study of fourteen academics, teaching different subjects in six diverse UK universities, occupying a range of institutional roles. The study used an ethnographically informed methodology to explore individuals’ practice as situated within specific disciplinary and institutional contexts. Multiple sources of data were combined to develop a ‘rich picture’ of practice organised around individual case studies. In keeping with an ‘academic literacies’ approach, the thesis asks questions about how participants’ everyday practices around student writing are bound up with and/or contest institutional practices; how their work with student writers connects with issues of identity, visibility and status, and with broader questions about the nature of contemporary higher education in the UK. Data analysis points to the ways in which established understandings of language in the academy filter into the everyday practices of academic teachers, and to the shaping of these practices in contemporary institutional contexts in a marketised higher education system. The thesis contributes to our understanding of a familiar and taken-for-granted aspect of academic life, and throws light on participants’ efforts to reach beyond routine practices and carve out hospitable spaces for work with student writing. Finally, the thesis suggests some implications for academic teachers and developers and their institutions.

This thesis investigates a change management project involving the attempts of a university faculty to develop the academic skills of first-year undergraduates. While much of this effort had taken place within stand-alone modules dedicated to research skills or personal development, it was recognised that there were multiple influences shaping the student experience. Therefore, the project sought to achieve a more integrated approach, as guided by current pedagogical theory and understandings of organisational behaviour. The project was conducted within an over-arching framework of action research, in which each year of delivery represented iterative cycles with modifications. In order to further investigate the practices and their context, a series of semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted with key personnel who had all contributed, in some way, to skills development throughout the organisational structure of the university. The interviews used a form of projective technique which focussed the participants on their roles within the organisation, their relationships with the curriculum and university departments, as well as their place within the student experience. The resultant data was analysed through a grounded theory approach. The analysis provided factual data, unique perspectives and, perhaps more importantly, a more holistic overview. From this, it was possible to propose a new analytical tool for guiding future efforts, one which encompassed the theoretical underpinnings of teaching and learning within HE, with the pragmatic considerations of implementation, thus combining pedagogical theory and management theory. Paradoxically, the paradigm embraced the instrumental or utilitarian tendencies exhibited by some students in order to achieve the longer-term goal of producing independent learners. This emergent paradigm guided further interventions which acted at a local level to foster better communication among key players and to integrate the contents with the wider curriculum and student experience.

Assessment within higher education is pervasive (Leathwood, 2005). The necessity for marks and grades creates a strong summative assessment environment and can dominate students’ thoughts (Crisp, 2012). However, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that formative interventions over a learning period can ameliorate improvements in learning and achievement (Macfarlane-Dick, 2006; Gibbs, 2006; Black and Wiliam, 1998). This research project is an action-based investigation of student teachers’ learning and self-efficacy and focuses upon a second year (level 5) cohort studying for a BA (Hons) Primary Education degree with qualified teacher status (QTS). The evidence of the impact of formative assessment upon performance (Black and Wiliam, 1998; Juwah et al., 2004) provided a theoretical base underpinning my research project. Data on students’ responses to the implementation of a range of Assessment for Learning (AfL) strategies, assessment processes and their self-efficacy were collected by means of questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and analysis of assignment results. The data indicated that interventions such as staggered submission of assignments and changes to tutor pedagogy, impacted upon students’ performance. The largest gains were demonstrated by those achieving the lowest marks, although improvements were noted across the cohort. Changes in self-efficacy were evident and interesting results occurred when investigating sophistication of students’ assessment definitions linked to their performance. Issues on how best to implement formative assessment strategies within a dominant summative assessment model are central to the project and the thesis concludes with recommendations on how higher education institutions can help create a more ‘assessment literate landscape’.

The Robbins Report (1963) championed the idea that higher education (HE) should be available to all who might benefit. Consequently, fair access and social inclusion have become central to the UK and Welsh Government’s lifelong learning and widening participation agenda. However, not all policies facilitated this. For example, in 1999, the Labour government set a target that 50 per cent of 18 to 30 year-olds should experience HE by 2010 and commentators, such as Gorard and Rees (2006) and O’Shea and Stone (2011) suggest that the 18 to 30 target has led to an emphasis upon this age demographic, leaving older learners either ignored in literature or portrayed as problematic and vulnerable. Additionally, within the educational literature there seems to be a limited understanding of the ways in which relational social processes can act as motivations and barriers to learning across the lifespan (Fuller and Heath, 2010). The present study seeks to address these gaps. HE students, aged 30 years and over, were asked to reflect upon the ways in which such processes influenced their initial decisions to participate in HE and continued to influence their actual HE experience. A phenomenological, qualitative approach was employed with six adult learners who were either at the end of their Foundation Year or at the end of Year 1 of degree level study at a HE Institution in South Wales. A ‘bolder’ design (Smith, Flower & Larkin, 2009) was developed, which combined interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) with auto-driven photo elicitation (APE). Findings suggested that past and present relational social processes were multifaceted and complex, influencing and shaping each individual’s decision to participate and their ongoing engagement. Participants likened their HE experience to a journey, leading them from a powerless to powerful state of personal and academic growth and development. This study challenges and expands on current literature regarding traditional motivations and barriers to learning. Furthermore, it highlights that participation in HE takes place at any age and is not reserved for those under the age of 30.