The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of a Focused Words Recognition Method (FWRM) programme on the vocabulary size and motivation of low achieving undergraduates in Taiwan. A quasi-experimental design was taken in a 17-week programme to examine difference between the Focused Word Recognition Method and Conventional Word Recognition groups with 130 college students. The analysis was employing linear regression to analyze collected data from pre-test and post-test of vocabulary-size and Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) plus a qualitative post course survey and in-depth interviews to provide supportive evidence. The results were as follows: 1) from the quantitative analysis, the programme could exert a significant effect on undergraduate participants' vocabulary size; its effect size of (d=1.43) was considered as "large". 2) The programme did not produce significant difference between the control and intervention groups regarding their motivation; its effe9t size of (d=0.21) was viewed "small". 3) The outcome variables, vocabulary size and motivation, had a positive but not sturdy correlation (r=.169, p=.076). 4) The programme generated a significant effect for participants having no prior Phonological Awareness regarding vocabulary size, but it did not work differently on motivation. 5) The programme produced similar effects on two gender groups in relation to vocabulary size and motivation when controlling for all the other relevant variables. This study may involve the limitations such as the nature of nonrandom allocation, a shorter duration and a smaller sample size, but it is still hoped to provide a clearer view for researchers who concern relevant issues to better understand and foster low achieving adult students' English learning

Developing sector-specific university degrees is a challenging process for universities and sectoral members. The development of these degrees needs to incorporate industry-specific resources whilst satisfying the universities' institutional degree requirements. The process is particularly problematic when there has not previously been a degree devoted to the sector and when there has not been sector-wide communication about the need for a degree. This study provides an empirical investigation of the development of Canada's first retail management degree and examines how discursive processes constituted an innovative practice of sector-specific degree development in a fragmented, occupational field. These processes were innovative because they involved a corporate-university partnership, multiple collaborations of institutional and corporate embedded actors, and particular forms of legitimating discursive work. Given the institutional nature of the university, this practice represents a process of institutionalisation, whereby the innovative practice becomes a legitimate means of degree development. By examining this unique case, this study develops an analytic framework to analyse discursive institutionalisation through archival documentation and qualitative interviews. The discursive work performed through the data is characterised by the prominence of generalised issues, and by the nature of its synchronicity, recursiveness and convergence. The resulting institutionalisation processes perform discursive institutional work that is purposive, synchronised, recursive and convergent. This study therefore provides an understanding of how discursive processes institutioalise an innovative practice of retail management degree development.

This writing seeks to make sense of how practicing teachers can be supported in their pursuit of Masters Degrees in Education. Indeed it focuses not on the traditionally conceived supportive mechanisms present within university systems, but the supportive mechanisms which are in their naissance within state schools. It centres on my role and agency as an element of support for three teachers following their own individual journey to achieving a Masters Degree. Each of these paths is discrete in nature; moreover the method or type of support in each case is similarly delineated. It is through this delineation that the text seeks to make sense of how the pursuit of a Masters Degree can utilise support outside of university walls. This work is positioned within a critical poststructural paradigm employing qualitative research methods. Three dyadic modalities of support are identified within the study, these are: mentor/mentee, coach/coachee and critical friendships. The three modalities are examined as individual case studies through combined reference to the current corpus of knowledge associated with these terms, interview data from the participants and the author, all with recourse to selected concepts of Foucault. It is through this textual analysis that an understanding of these modalities is created and furthermore an attempt is made to locate meaning within these overly full dyadic signifiers. Once ascribed with meaning and delineated as such the signifiers are then examined with regard to worth and application within my own practice, the purpose being to improve subsequent endeavours in this area. Writ large within this is the importance of contextual factors which implicitly govern the dyadic relationships and hence limit the transferability of the text. The resultant conclusion is that the strict adherence to codified modes of support is potentially limiting with regard to the teacher ultimately becoming independent of support. A potentially more useful approach to supporting teachers in their Masters journey is to have a cognisance of modality but a flexible approach within this. This hence allows the supporter to eventually reduce the level of support to zero.

The role of the school principal has changed significantly over the years, from school managers to instructional leaders (Blase, Blase and Phillips 2012). The principal’s roles and responsibilities have garnered political attention as policies and regulations are set in place in order to achieve success (Brundrett, 2001). For example, the United States and its centrally driven ‘No Child Left Behind’ policy made significant demands on all schools and school principals. Most training programmes began in the 19th century, with contemporary programmes continuing the work initiated in the 1960s in leading US universities (Brundrett, 2001). How far programmes such as Master’s of Education degrees have kept up with the new realities of the modern principal is an important question (Hallinger, 2013).   Since M.Ed. degrees are considered by many school districts as qualifications for principal positions, my research investigation has focused on how they contribute to principals’ success in the Canadian province of Alberta. The aim of the study is to determine what the contribution of M.Ed. degree study is to school principal success. The objective is to identify the ways in which M.Ed.’s can be changed to improve their effectiveness in developing good leaders. The research study will blend two methodologies. Firstly, there is a documentary analysis of the masters programmes taken by Alberta principals, while a consideration of the application requirements of school boards will open the study and identify the main pillars of principal efficacy and success looked for in Alberta as well as the M.Ed. programmes offered (whether online, on-the-ground, or a blend). Secondly a qualitative interview base of research will develop a depth of understanding in how successful M.Ed. programmes are for school principals and provide a range of information from which to draw from the documentary analysis which identifies M.Ed. programmes as a requirement.

The purpose of this research was to explore how postdoctoral researchers and principal investigators (PIs) in scientific disciplines experience researcher development, following the implementation of the Roberts researcher development policies. This doctoral research used a qualitative methodology with a dual approach of “at-home ethnography” (Alvesson, 2009, p. 174) and semi-structured interviewing to explore the experiences of being and developing as a postdoctoral researcher, as well as being an academic employing postdoctoral researchers, within the structural context of a research- intensive institution. Data from 9 Postdoctoral researchers and 12 Principal investigators (academics) interviewed between 2013-14 is presented in this analysis. The Bourdieusian concepts of field, capital and habitus (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) have been used to frame the analysis of researcher development, as a practice within the field of postdoctoral research. An ethnographic exploration permitted to narrate the institutional implementation of researcher development policies; it also allowed to identify objective structures contributing to shaping the Postdoc habitus and the positioning of researchers within the institutional context. From this small-scale explorative study emerged 6 domains of postdoctoral researcher positioning (projecting, grafting, hopping, stepping, resisting and bobbling) within the field of postdoctoral research. These domains were conceptualised on the basis of volumes and configuration of capital, particular habitus, modes of entry into the postdoctoral field and trajectory within the field. The study identifies instances of symbolic violence that pertain to the lack of capital afforded to postdoctoral researchers. An exploration of PIs’ habitus highlights particular stances in approaching researcher development, that point to a reproduction of the field doxa. The findings bring to the fore that researcher development policies have had limited impact in reconfiguring the postdoctoral field logic and challenge researcher developers in their role within the postdoctoral field.

The thesis investigates how master's students draw on past and co-occurring practices when doing a dissertation at the end of their taught programme. Dissertations invite students to utilize interests they bring to the master's degree. At the same time, dissertations are situated in discipline-specific fields and are an institutionally regulated type of assessment with particular requirements. Each dissertation thus becomes a site of interacting practices. The thesis is based on an ethnographically informed case study that involved twelve students from four different social science oriented master's programmes. It develops a theoretically and empirically grounded conceptualisation of practice, complementing and extending insights on the notion of literacy practices from New Literacy Studies and Academic Literacies, influenced by socio-philosophical practice theories, and based on the empirical case study. This framework, in which meaning is at the centre of what makes a practice, helps to explain how aspects of extra-disciplinary practices are appropriated into dissertation practices.

As the highest degree awarded, successful completion of a doctorate demands that learners work at a conceptual level. The demands of independent, original research intended to extend knowledge in a field can lead to oscillating feelings of confidence, acceptance, and belonging—intellectually and socially. Exposure to new ideas, norms, and ethics can cause learners to question their position within their various social contexts. The descriptions of doctoral experiences of identity positioning in networked learning environments is the focus of this thesis. I set out to examine to what extent doctoral students in two NL programs experience identity positioning; how they describe this process; and whether or not positioning might be described differently by students in different fields. This investigation took place at a distance university in Canada in which the learners used networking technologies to exchange information and discuss ideas. Participants were solicited from doctoral courses offered via networked learning in education and business. The main method of data collection was semi-structured interviews. The interviews were transcribed and coded through qualitative open coding in which I sought themes indicative of social positioning. Discourse analysis was also used to aid in the analysis of interview transcripts, allowing deeper interrogation of the meanings of and relationships between specific utterances appearing within the transcripts. The results indicate that doctoral students experience identity positioning across multiple aspects of their lives including, but not limited to their social, intimate, professional, and academic contexts. The importance of this work is partially directed towards the concerns of governments and funding agencies that may pass over the intangible benefits of doctoral studies in search of direct and measureable economic and social outcomes. More importantly, this work is intended to draw attention to the variety of social contexts that may impact doctoral students’ experiences, and how these influences might influence learners’ persistence, completion, and enjoyment of doctoral studies.

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The research reported in this thesis investigates the attitudes of Open University (OU) students towards work-based learning (WBL) and reflection in learning and practice. It also seeks to evaluate the potential of educational technologies to support work-based learning and reflection. The research was carried out using a mixed methods approach, which yielded data amenable to both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The methods used to collect data consisted of an electronic survey sent to 788 OU work-based learners and follow-up telephone interviews conducted with 10 learners selected from amongst the 200 who responded to the survey. The paradigm of pragmatism informed the research design, data collection and analysis. The findings of the research suggested that: • OU students derive motivation by participating in WBL and could see its relevance and benefits to their personal, academic and career development. • OU students had an understanding of the key concepts associated with reflection, although this understanding tended to focus on the dimension of reflection concerned with looking back at experience and learning from it rather than on surfacing tacit knowledge. • Most work-based learners saw the value of using reflective techniques to help them to integrate work and study and to improve performance. • Although the more established technologies of email and online discussion forums were the predominant for both work and study purposes, it was found that ‘Web 2.0’ technologies were used by many students for leisure purposes. Provisional conclusions include the suggestion that, although there is evidence of a latent demand for using new technologies to engage in informal reflective activity, simply making these technologies available without sufficient thought being given to the pedagogical efficacy of doing so may lead to sub-optimal results; in particular, when considering the use such tools for reflective activity as part of a formal assessment. The research also indicates that the demography, attitudes and behaviours of OU students also need to be taken in to account when integrating new technologies. There are several aspects to this, including the willingness and ability of students to use new technologies effectively for study purposes and whether the OU prescribes the technology or allows some student choice.

This thesis presents a longitudinal study of undergraduate achievement within a modular first degree course, analysing the academic records of a cohort of students who graduated from the Modular Degree Programme at Oxford Brookes University. Multilevel models are fitted to the marks achieved by members of this cohort in each module taken. Level 1 units are individual module entries, nested within occasions within individual student's programmes. These models were fitted by maximum likelihood and used to study the effects of both student and module characteristics on performance. The effects of these factors on mean marks, on the consistency of students performance and on the variation between students were studied by including complex variation at level 1 and random effects at student level in the models. In addition, individual progress charts were fitted, showing how patterns of progress vary from one student to another. Reviewing the hierarchical structure, it was found that a more complex, crossclassified structure is needed to represent the data accurately. This recognises that individual module entries are clustered within modules, as well as within students. Fitting large multilevel cross-classified models is computationally difficult, however newly developed MCMC estimation techniques allowed a model based on the more complex structure and including random effects and complex variation to be fitted. This analysis shows how MCMC estimation techniques can be used to fit a large cross-classified multilevel model, incorporating random effects and complex variation. The results obtained describe students' progress over the period of their degree course and measure the effects, other things being equal, of factors such as assessment methods, age and subject on mean levels of achievement, consistency of performance and the variation between students, providing a model for future studies of achievement within a modular framework.