The introduction of the 2007 Further Education Teachers’ Qualifications Regulations has meant that a wider group of providers, including those providing adult and community learning (ACL), have had to check that teaching staff are appropriately qualified. However, will this requirement help to ensure that there is ‘better’ quality provision or will it just be an additional cost that takes resources away from delivery of learning? This thesis is to see if any evidence can be found that teachers with higher qualifications, in particular teaching qualifications, provide ‘better’ teaching and learning and obtain higher grades in class observation, and also therefore during inspection. It also looks to see if any other characteristics of teachers employed can be identified as having an impact on classroom performance so that providers working in a similar area to the WEA, and using a workforce that is predominantly part-time sessional tutors, can consider employment and staff development policy to help meet the needs they face regarding quality and inspection. This is done by comparing tutor profiles of the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), employed over a four year period (academic years 2005 – 2008), and grades in 4,267 internal observations of teaching and learning (OTL) undertaken during this period. The thesis explores the background and context of the current reforms of qualifications for teaching staff in the sector and then places the WEA provision and its teaching staff in a wider context. It also considers the use of OTL, and its effect on tutors, as part of a the self-assessment process and how the current quality agenda for the Further Education sector fits within the move of Government to more accountability, measurement and ‘performativity’.

This research study investigates the similarities and differences in assessment policy, perspectives and practices in relation to student learning, desirable graduate outcomes and lifelong learning (LLL) in two departments with similar disciplines: Sociology and Social Policy and English Studies of the Midlands University (MU) – UK and Sociology and English Linguistics and Literature of the Ho Chi Minh City University (HCMU) – Vietnam. The study’s conceptual framework was developed from research literatures on assessment, mainly David Boud’s framework of sustainable assessment or assessment for longer term learning, as the framework for data analysis. The methodology is a comparative case study, and the methods include using semi-structured interviews with 22 staff in both cases, four student focus groups, an action-based intervention at the English department of the HCMU, and document analysis. The similarities and differences across the comparative cases are explained on the basis of the economic, socio-cultural and HE contexts, while Boud’s framework is reframed theoretically and operationally for these contexts, and as a guide to improving practices. The data shows that although more elements of Boud’s framework were found in the MU than the HCMU, assessment in both cases was an imperfect realisation of this framework. The argument is made that this framework can offer a good vision for the two cases to aim at in terms of changes in their assessment perspective and practices, but the framework itself should also be reframed with contextual and cultural features of assessment, as well as the development of human capabilities and functionings in order to encompass a fuller range of educational goals. It is concluded that above all assessment should support not only learning at university but also expansive rather than reductive LLL.

Current demographics within the United Kingdom present a challenging picture, with older people forming a considerable proportion of the population. In particular, older people are spending a longer period outside paid work at a point in the life course constructed as retirement. Increasingly, some older adults are returning to learning as a means of remaining socially connected, keeping active and purely for pleasure. Research which seeks to understand the relevance and importance of learning in later life remains quite disparate and, in addition, there is a lack of longitudinal or biographical research which seeks to explore this phenomenon. The research reported in this thesis aims to offer new insights into later-life learning by exploring how retired older people narrate their experiences of learning, and through consideration of the interrelationship this experience to life course capital.

The thesis investigates whether contemporary policy and practice support formal and informal learning in the field of archaeology. Also, the assumption that multi-sector partnerships broaden community participation in heritage activities is interrogated. The multi-method comparative research model applied both empirical and qualitative methods to three case studies in the Midlands of Britain. Each of these projects gained funding to exhibit archaeology to the public during the course of the research. The policies and practices of the key individuals in the partnerships were investigated through taped interviews, and the data was analysed using cognitive mapping (Tolman, 1948, Buzan, 1993). Data about the visitors were gathered through questionnaire surveys, taped oral accounts, and observational studies. The interests, concerns and agenda of the principle stakeholders were compared. The results indicated that the role of the volunteers was crucial to the success and sustainability of the projects. However, some volunteers felt that they were weaker partners, and this was linked to a distinction between amateurs and professionals. The power of local authorities in heritage partnerships and their conflicting roles as developers and guardians of the archaeological heritage are questioned. Ways to facilitate participatory partnerships are suggested. The research draws on Foucault's definition of discourse, and Bourdieu's human capital theories and his concept of habitus and distinction. The links between informal and formal learning are rarely researched and theorised, but this study identifies how archaeologists, acting as "cultural intermediaries" (Bourdieu, 1984: 14), can create and sustain learning opportunities for adults, collapsing some of the traditional hierarchies between popular entertainment, community knowledge, and intellectual knowledge. The thesis places learning in archaeology within the theory of a structured taxonomy of learning (Biggs, 1971, Biggs and Collis, 1982).

Sports leadership has received increased promotion during the past two decades, as a tool for providing individuals with leadership skills and in contributing towards community sport development objectives. Sports Leaders UK (SLUK) play a key role in providing sports leadership training programmes in the UK, training over 200,000 leaders each year. This aims of this research was to evaluate the work of SLUK, in contributing towards the development of sport the personal and career development of the leaders undertaking the awards. A mixed methods approach was adopted to achieve ‘enhancement’ of findings. The first quantitative phase involved binary logistic regression analysis of SLUK’s candidate database (n=76,179) and set out to identify the predictor variables associated with award completion. The second quantitative phase provided analysis of surveys (n=76), and set out to explore relationships between the leaders’ career and personal development and involvement in the SLUK awards. The final qualitative study sought to gain the views and perspectives of the sports leaders who had engaged with the SLUK awards through the use of semi-structured interviews (n=16). This study aimed to further investigate the impact of SLUK awards on career development and in contributing towards sport and other community outcomes. Results showed that the SLUK awards were perceived to contribute to developing sport, particularly within the school environment. Furthermore, with the training and development of more sports leaders who are actively leading sport, more opportunities were found to be provided across the UK. Engagement in the awards was found to increase feelings of self-worth, which in turn helped build self-esteem and confidence in the leaders. Important factors which appeared to be associated with award completion and continued leadership behaviour included location of the award (i.e. centre type) and choice of participation in the awards. The research provides original contribution to knowledge by exploring the impact of SLUK awards on the leaders’ personal development and community sport. Future delivery of sports leadership needs to be focused in communities if sports leaders are to make the transition from schools to community clubs and continue volunteering. Support from mentors was found to be crucial in ensuring that sports leaders sustain their voluntary leadership.

Lifelong learning requires motivation to complete learning projects across the lifespan. Understanding an individual’s commitment to extended periods of learning is not well understood. There are particular gaps in longitudinal and biographical accounts of learners grounded in frameworks of lifespan theories. Equally missing are accounts that consider the dynamical nature of learning across time. Three learner biographies are examined to develop a dynamical control perspective of motivation for extended learning. Drawing on a regulatory framework the Lifespan Theory of Control and concepts from complexity perspectives particularly Non Linear Dynamical Systems Theory, including feedback, attractors and bifurcation, A model is offered which synthesises processes of control, motivation and dynamics leading to competence and accounting for extended periods of learning.

This thesis reports on barriers and enablers to participation within Further Education from the perspective of the student voice. It is based on the work of Veronica McGivney (1993) who reported on research undertaken by Cross (1981) which divided deterrents to participation into three categories, namely, Situational, Institutional and Dispositional. McGivney reports these categories to be “oversimplified”. Student participation/non-participation is explored via the opinions/perspectives of learners on the Access to Higher Education Programme within a traditional mining community which is in the process of redefining its identity following the closure of local coal mines within the last few decades. To accommodate the complexity that arose from this research, the discourses of both ‘individual needs’ and ‘student voice’ have been problematised. Quantitative and qualitative survey methods are drawn upon including data from questionnaires, focus group and college Management Information Systems. Nine emergent themes that may act as sub-layers to the themes of Situational, Institutional and Dispositional categories reported by McGivney and one meta-theme (Opportunity) are discussed. High levels of interrelatedness between emergent themes point to a fluid dynamic within the decision-making process of prospective participants. The research concludes with a practical ‘framework for participation’ that attempts to reflect this fluidity.

This thesis explores experiences of college-based higher education (CBHE) in England, positioning this type of provision within the national and local geographies of English higher education. Focusing on institutions located in higher education 'cold spots', the thesis situates these institutions within local and policy narratives of both lack of and need for educational opportunity. The case study research design examines two case institutions, and involves documentary analysis and interviews with higher education directors, tutors and final year students on two degree courses in each college, as well as interviews with key figures in national Further Education policy. Data analysis deploys the concept of possible selves in an original, sociologically-oriented dialogue with de Certeau's 'spatial story' to produce accounts of placed possible selves. The key contributions of the thesis are, firstly, that shared and homogenous societal narratives of university higher education dominate even in places and for educational subjects without university education. Secondly, the thesis challenges reductive binary understandings of student mobilities, in which mobility and privilege are diametrically opposed to immobility and disadvantage. Finally, the concept of local capital offers a way of understanding social, cultural and economic commitments to place that moves beyond a language of deficit.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate some of the processes that contribute to the effective comprehension of text in an adult population. The thesis begins with an assessment of component skills that are of theoretical relevance to reading comprehension skill. Experiment One explored the relation between gist-based memory processes and reading comprehension skill. Weaknesses in semantic processing have been shown to contribute to comprehension difficulties both in childhood (e.g. Nation & Snowling, 1999), and adulthood (e.g. Perfetti, Yang & Schmalhoffer, 2007). Weekes, Hamilton, Oakhill & Holliday (2008) used the false memory (DRM) paradigm developed by Deese (1959); Roediger and McDermott (1995) to assess the relation between reading comprehension and memory processes in children. In the DRM, subjects memorise lists of semantically related words (e.g. bed, rest, awake) for later recall. During recall, it is typical to see intrusions of semantically related but non-presented items (e.g. ‘sleep' is often falsely recalled following presentation of the above). Weekes et al. (2008) found that children with comprehension difficulties produced fewer such intrusions than did good comprehenders, suggesting that poor comprehenders have difficulty extracting the central theme or ‘gist' from the word lists, a deficit that was attributed to weakness in semantic processing and memory. Experiment One demonstrated that this effect was not replicable in an adult population. Although there is evidence that deficits in semantic processing contribute to reading comprehension difficulties in adulthood, these appear to be too subtle to manifest themselves in the DRM paradigm. In Experiment Two, measures of vocabulary, word-level skills (orthography and decoding), working memory and verbal IQ were taken from a population of young adult readers. These measures were used as predictors of comprehension skill in multiple regression analyses. Moderate support for the Verbal Efficiency/Lexical Quality Hypothesis (Perfetti, 1985; 2007) was obtained, in that word-level skills and vocabulary size accounted for unique portions of variance in comprehension skill. Experiments Three and Four explored the processes involved in on-line reading comprehension and, specifically, in a comprehension task that demanded integration. In both experiments, subjects took part in a coherence judgement task (Ferstl, Guthke & von Cramon, 2002; Ferstl, 2006) in which they had to verify whether two sentences cohered with one another or not. Four conditions that resulted from crossing coherence and cohesion (i.e. the presence of a lexical connection), were used: Coherent and cohesive (where sentences cohered, and a cohesive tie made their coherence explicit); coherent and incohesive (where sentences cohered, but coherence had to be inferred on the basis of pragmatic information rather than lexical cohesion); incoherent and cohesive (where sentences that do not cohere were erroneously linked with a cohesive tie); and incoherent and incohesive (where sentences did not cohere, and were not erroneously linked with a cohesive tie). Typically, the paradigm elicits an interaction between coherence and cohesion in reading times for the second (target) sentence: Targets in coherent and cohesive trials are read more quickly than targets in coherent and incohesive trials; and targets in incoherent and incohesive trials are read more quickly than are targets in incoherent and cohesive trials. Experiment Three replicated this interaction, and demonstrated that variance in its size was predicted by working memory capacity, with high working memory readers showing larger interaction effect sizes than low capacity readers. The interaction was interpreted as a monitoring effect that was triggered by target sentences in the atypical conditions (i.e. incoherent and cohesive; coherent and incohesive). It was proposed that high capacity readers were better able to engage in this monitoring. Experiment Four sought to explore the semantic deficit hypothesis in relation to this effect, with the proposal that efficient semantic processes, rather than working memory capacity, contributed to variance in the size of the interaction. Performance on a semantic fluency task was found to predict unique variance in the size of the interaction effect, over and above that accounted for by working memory capacity. This finding suggests that the effect is better explained by semantic processing than by working memory capacity, and that the interaction may be better described as a semantic elaboration effect rather than a comprehension monitoring effect. The conclusion of this thesis is that reading comprehension in adult readers relies upon efficient and accurate lexical access, comprising both lower-level processes such as accurate word recognition and decoding skill, and higher-level processes of semantic elaboration and integration.

Typically, adult educators in Jamaica are part-time employees who are either trained in pedagogy or are employed because of their advanced training or skills in a particular discipline. As adult education in Jamaica and the Caribbean undergoes change, policy focus has concentrated on identifying the discipline with lifelong learning rather than adult literacy. Although the importance of the role of adult educators to the change process is acknowledged, the changes in adult education are not yet focussed on the role of the adult educator and equipping the adult educator to function in this dynamic environment. This study of an adult education institution in Jamaica aims to explore the perceptions of stakeholders, teachers, students and administrators, on how adult education is viewed, the role of part-time faculty in adult education, the quality of teaching they offer and measures to enhance teaching quality in this institution and others like it. I argue that the equipping of adult educators is important for successful adult education, part-time faculty who make up the significant majority of the cohort of adult educators deserve special attention and that Continuing Professional Development is a useful tool that serves the interest of equipping both individual teachers and institutions. Data was collected and analysed by means of a qualitative methodology utilising interviews, focus groups and qualitative questionnaires in two centres of the case institution. The study finds that teachers are crucial to successful adult education. Because of the ambivalence of adult learners and their needs for emotional as well as cognitive support, the onus is on teachers to provide learning environments in which adult learners can make best use of a learning opportunity. Many teachers, however, do not have specialist training for this task. Part-time faculty in the study want professional development although they do not think traditional methods of professional development suit their circumstances. They do have clear ideas of the kind of CPD support that they think will meet their needs. The study suggests guidelines for developing a model of CPD that is suitable for part-time faculty in adult education.