Britain has been repeatedly told that its linguistic capability is behind that of other European countries but this perceived difference has hardly been investigated or explored. This research project aimed to provide insights into how German and English 14- to 16-year-old learners of French as a first foreign language compare to one another in terms of vocabulary size and in their written production in terms of lexical richness, accuracy and syntactic complexity. The participants (on average 50 students per nation) from comparable schools in Germany and England were set two tasks which were marked by three French native speakers using standardised criteria aligned to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEF). The X_lex test established the students' receptive vocabulary size. Lexical richness was measured by the VocabProfile tool and syntactic complexity was established using the mean length oft- units (MLTU). Tokens and types of verb phrases (VP) were counted to measure VP complexity. Error frequency using a word/error calculation and length of product were established. Classroom observations, students' and teachers' questionnaires and semi- structured interviews were used to triangulate the data. The findings suggest that in terms of accuracy, essay scoring and vocabulary size, the German group outperformed the English group, whereas in terms of syntactic complexity and vocabulary richness, the English student fared better. The differences in performance outcomes are analysed and discussed with regard to variables related to the educational contexts (e.g. curriculum design and methodology).

This submission for a PhD explores some of the paradigms of literacy research, and how teachers are positioned to use the knowledge generated to inform literacy education in schools. It draws on the candidate's published work from specific intervention and research projects to examine. on one hand, how a variety of research paradigms position teachers and teaching in relation to evidence based practice, and on the other, how Scottish teachers are professionalized to attend empirical evidence. It highlights how the class of rhetorical traditions creates a theory-practice divide which teachers are not well-placed to negotiate. Recasting educational theory to develop and empirical evidence base to ground the theorization of teachers' classroom work would help promote evidence-informed decisions and about literacy curriculum design and teaching.

UNESCO has been a forerunner in the field of mainstreaming of gender which is evident in countless conferences and publications, notably in its Checklist for the Integration of Gender Issues in the Evaluation of UNESCO’s Programmes (UNESCO 1999b ). The branch with special responsibility for questions of Adult Literacy has been the UNESCO Institute of Education (UIE). Careful historical-comparative analysis of its publications reveals a varied picture on the question of gender. On the one hand it has published evaluation manuals (Bhola 1990, Easton 1996) in which gender goes virtually unnoticed. And on the other there are collected essays of workshops organised and published by the UIE which present some of the strongest voices on the subject, notably Sara Longwe (1997, 1999a), the exponent of the evaluation tool, Women’s Empowerment Framework. While personnel changes in the UIE in the course of the nineties may be a partial explanation, there are other ambiguities in its policies and practice which are not as easily explained. When the evaluation reports of literacy programmes published as exemplary practice by the UIE are examined they reveal some striking differences. Two evaluations of literacy programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa were analysed, one in Oyo State, Nigeria (Omolewa et al. 1998) and the other being the National Literacy Programme of Namibia (Lind 1996). The methods of analysis were both the UNESCO Checklist and the Women’s Empowerment Framework. They both have received wide acceptance within this particular field. Furthermore, their use provides a means of internal comparison. What the study reveals is a striking discrepancy between such policy and the actual practice of evaluation, and at the same time it becomes clear that the Women’s Empowerment Framework is the more rigorous of the two. Particularly in the analysis of the Oyo programme evaluation it becomes evident that such a gender approach is able to uncover significant failures, particular with regard to its patriarchal notion of “empowerment”. Although it too falls short of the standards, the evaluation of the Namibian programme comes a lot closer to the requirements. An explanation for the discrepancy between the two may be located in the fact that whereas the Oyo evaluation was conducted by a team of local consultants, all of whom were male, the Namibian evaluation was a joint local-international initiative with an equal male-female balance. Further study of UIE’s other published evaluation reports would however be necessary in order to confirm such a conclusion. What the study does succeed in establishing is the way in which the role of UNESCO through the UIE’s has been that of a facilitator. By bringing different emphases into dialogue with one another it has served to open up new directions in the field of gender and literacy programme evaluation. / Public Administration / M.A.

UNESCO has been a forerunner in the field of mainstreaming of gender which is evident in countless conferences and publications, notably in its Checklist for the Integration of Gender Issues in the Evaluation of UNESCO’s Programmes (UNESCO 1999b ). The branch with special responsibility for questions of Adult Literacy has been the UNESCO Institute of Education (UIE). Careful historical-comparative analysis of its publications reveals a varied picture on the question of gender. On the one hand it has published evaluation manuals (Bhola 1990, Easton 1996) in which gender goes virtually unnoticed. And on the other there are collected essays of workshops organised and published by the UIE which present some of the strongest voices on the subject, notably Sara Longwe (1997, 1999a), the exponent of the evaluation tool, Women’s Empowerment Framework. While personnel changes in the UIE in the course of the nineties may be a partial explanation, there are other ambiguities in its policies and practice which are not as easily explained. When the evaluation reports of literacy programmes published as exemplary practice by the UIE are examined they reveal some striking differences. Two evaluations of literacy programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa were analysed, one in Oyo State, Nigeria (Omolewa et al. 1998) and the other being the National Literacy Programme of Namibia (Lind 1996). The methods of analysis were both the UNESCO Checklist and the Women’s Empowerment Framework. They both have received wide acceptance within this particular field. Furthermore, their use provides a means of internal comparison. What the study reveals is a striking discrepancy between such policy and the actual practice of evaluation, and at the same time it becomes clear that the Women’s Empowerment Framework is the more rigorous of the two. Particularly in the analysis of the Oyo programme evaluation it becomes evident that such a gender approach is able to uncover significant failures, particular with regard to its patriarchal notion of “empowerment”. Although it too falls short of the standards, the evaluation of the Namibian programme comes a lot closer to the requirements. An explanation for the discrepancy between the two may be located in the fact that whereas the Oyo evaluation was conducted by a team of local consultants, all of whom were male, the Namibian evaluation was a joint local-international initiative with an equal male-female balance. Further study of UIE’s other published evaluation reports would however be necessary in order to confirm such a conclusion. What the study does succeed in establishing is the way in which the role of UNESCO through the UIE’s has been that of a facilitator. By bringing different emphases into dialogue with one another it has served to open up new directions in the field of gender and literacy programme evaluation. / Public Administration and Management / M.A.