Adolescents' ideas about provisional historical explanation were analysed in a sample of Portuguese 12 to 20 year-old students, attending the 7th, 9th and 1 1 th grade. In the light of a theoretical framework considering three conceptual clusters - explanatory structure, explanatory consistency, and objectivity and truth - students' ideas were categorised in a model of five levels of progression, functioning as the main working hypothesis, and generated through a qualitative analysis. At Level 1 (the story), students' ideas appear mainly related to description. At Level 2 (the right explanation), there is a focus on the correct explanation, explanations are assessed in everyday terms, and the direct observation paradigm tends to be valued. At Level 3 (the more factors the better), students' concerns appear linked to an ideal of aggregation of factors, evidence is discriminated as sources to the explanation, and the "memory paradigm" tends to be valued. At Level 4, (a consensual explanation?), there is a preoccupation about a perspectiveless neutrality, valuing verification and interlinked factors (explanations may take the narrative form). An objectivist trend defends the search for a consensual explanation whilst a relativist view denies its possibility due to existing different perspectives. At Level 5 (perspective), neutrality and perspective are recognised as genuine features of historical explanation, these appearing in conflict with ideas of perspectiveless neutrality. Explanations may take the narrative mode, and an interlink of factors is valued. Explanatory assessment may appear as evidential confirmation and refutation, and reference may be made to the substantive historical context. A statistical analysis of data concerning levels of progression by sex, age and grade, and responses to some specific sub-tasks, was carried out. Differences on sex were not found statistically significant but differences on age and grade appeared significant at the 5% level.

Assessment for Learning (AfL) remains a controversial and a significant aspect of education across the world, with both opportunities and dangers being presented as this strategy moves from being a radical new initiative to becoming routine. Investigating children’s experiences of AfL with a group of higher achieving pupils in a junior school in England, consideration is given to their cognitive responses to AfL, their personal psychological responses and their experiences of AfL in interaction with their teachers. Theoretical positioning is primarily drawn from the psychoanalytic concepts of Donald Winnicott – creativity and compliance, True and False Selves and the potential space. Lesson aims, success criteria, feedback, self-assessment and peer assessment are viewed through the eyes of the children with results which both support and challenge underlying formative assessment theory. Contributions to knowledge include the effects of the routinization of AfL; the necessity of taking into account the impact of the educational context in any study of AfL; the selective use that pupils make of AfL strategies; and the importance of taking the age, maturity and experience of pupils into account when examining the effectiveness and impact of AfL strategies in the classroom. These assessment strategies are being developed within a context of ‘assessment as measurement’ where ‘learning’, ‘progress’ and ‘improvement’ are regarded by pupils and staff alike as taking place when increasingly higher national curriculum levels in maths and English are being achieved by the children. The danger of routinization is apparent as pupils employ the assessment strategies they have been taught and have experienced throughout their school careers in a mechanical and instrumentalist way. As one pupil said, ‘It’s a bit like cleaning your teeth in the morning. It’s something you just do.’

The focus of the present research is on children's commonsense reasoning in mechanics. The important effect of pre-instructional ideas on children's learning is now widely recognised and much effort has gone into investigating what these ideas are like in various domain areas in science in the past few years. Early researches in this area have provided us with a comprehensive catalog of phenomenological descriptions of various aspects of children's reasoning about forces and motion. A related line of research has grown over recent years, which attempts to probe into whether there are deeper explanations underlying these misconceptions. If we take scientific theories and commonsense reasoning as two ends of a dichotomy, then early researches in this field have predominantly started from the scientific end, looking towards the intuitive end, trying to find out where the intuitive ideas go astray. To look for deeper levels of analysis, some have since turned to looking from the opposite end, trying to take children's ideas seriously, in their own right and not as a distortion of the scientific view. This latter perspective is the one taken by the present research and is believed to be appropriate if an understanding of the phenomenological descriptions of children's intuitive ideas is to be attained. The present research sets out to investigate the possible cognitive models used in the spontaneous interpretation of and reasoning about motion by students with varying amounts of Physics instruction. It is hoped that the resulting models will not only provide a context for interpreting children's misconceptions, but also provide insight into the evolution of naive cognitive models to more scientific ones. The research consists of two tasks. The first is a classification task asking students to categorize comic strip pictures about motion and to explain their underlying reasoning. The second is a programming task, asking students to write expert systems about motion in the language PROLOG. The second task is in fact one of self elicitation of knowledge by the students themselves under the assistance of the researcher. The advantage of such an exercise is that the representation is not only open for inspection by the students but is also explorable. The results from both tasks will be analysed and synthesized in the thesis.

This is a case study of TVEI as exemplified in one local setting. The study begins with events and conditions in an outer London borough prior to its announcement in November 1982 and breaks off in July 1989. The field work is in two phases: the first was based on a two year evaluation, the second on a return visit to the borough in the Summer of 1989. The study is largely focused on the local setting, though additional chapters, supporting the study, examine (a) the larger national issues, (b) and the circumstances and orientation of the research. A further chapter examines philosophical concepts arising out of the vocational issues within the case. Three identifiable themes emerged from the case study: management of structural change, technology and vocational education. These are explored largely through the narrative which forms the bulk of the work. First, as TVEI became increasingly linked to changes in mainstream curriculum, the study came to focus on organisational change in the borough as a whole, which was intimately connected with changes sweeping through the curriculum. Second, Technology was a central issue for curriculum content and the study reveals the emergence of a balanced definition of technology as both related to artefacts and human contexts. From this flowed a cross-curricular policy of provision. The third theme, pursued within the narrative, as well as in the final chapter, consists of philosopical and cultural issues associated with vocational education. In the process, modern and Aristotelian concepts of the practical which inform vocational education, are explored. Overall, the study reveals that a team-oriented management structure emerged to deal with changes significantly influenced by TVEI. The curriculum became more integrated, community-orientated and flexible. The research ended, however, before specific, long-term local effects of the National Curriculum could be ascertained.

This study is concerned to evaluate the effectiveness of various forms of in-service education and training (INSET) for political education. Political education is seen as a broader enterprise than simply inculcating a knowledge of the workings of political institutions. It is argued that the main focus of INSET should be on the professional performance of teachers, on what their opinions are, what they know and what they are able to achieve. Various approaches to, and theories of educational evaluation are categorised and early attempts to evaluate INSET are surveyed. It is contended that the most appropriate mode of evaluation should incorporate the Case-Study, Formative, Responsive, Descriptive/Illuminative, Processed-based, Portrayal and Democratic methods. The particular approach devised is developed from the 'Cumulative Case-Study' technique. An analysis of a national survey of teachers' needs and opinions indicates that teachers involved in political education identify practical concerns as their main need and practical INSET sessions as their preference. The survey suggests a set of priorities which can be used to build a range of models of INSET course provision to form the basis of a theoretical framework for INSET course evaluation. A set of five models is derived from the principal aims of INSET courses identified in the national survey. As the basis of the evaluation these models provide hypotheses to be investigated and categories for the selection and analysis of research data. Two of the eleven case-studies conducted are presented to provide a selection of qualitative and quantitative data as well as to indicate the development of the research theory and the evaluation methodology. The findings indicate a range of specific recommendations for the planning and implementation of INSET courses if they are to meet the needs of teachers of political education. Many of the conclusions would apply equally to INSET courses in other fields.

Both schools and society have a strong interest in promoting young people’s willingness and capacity for prosocial behaviour. Vertical Tutoring, a pastoral system whereby students are organised into mixed age tutor groups, has been claimed by its supporters to promote aspects of prosocial behaviour. However, only a few researchers have examined Vertical Tutoring in depth and none have explored the micro-detail of their activities and any relationship with prosocial behaviour. The writer seeks to address this through a mixed-method qualitative case study of the activities and prosocial behaviour in two vertical tutor groups at a challenging comprehensive school near London. He uses a series of focused observations, interviews with students and tutors, and a focus group of students, to collect data and Bar-Tal and Raviv’s six phase model of the cognitive development of helping behaviour, and the five techniques they identify for promoting it, as a framework for exploring the possible relationship between the structured activities students do in tutor time and any prosocial acts they perform. The writer finds that the most significant activities in the development of students’ willingness and capacity to behave prosocially seem to be the ones which familiarise the students with each other and create a bond between them. This leads to his contribution of a sixth technique for promoting the cognitive development of prosocial behaviour, in addition to the five already identified by Bar-Tal and Raviv. He also contributes a refinement to their six phase model, recommending the subdivision of the fifth phase into two levels dependent on the degree to which an individual generalises their perception of a general social contract of reciprocity.

This study is an action research project concerned with the effect of a change initiative on primary teachers' behaviour. It involves trying out a change approach and then refining and testing that approach in a consciously conducted change experiment. The study has two investigative strands. Both of these build on previous research into change that I conducted at a school in which I was working in 1986. The 1986 research described difficulties I had in conducting school self evaluation and the development of a revised approach to change. The product of the 1986 study was a change model. One strand of this study is an investigation into the effectiveness of that model in supporting teachers moving along the path to change. The second investigative strand of the study is concerned with the wider effect of implementing the change model on staff relationships in primary schools. The phrase 'changing the rules' in the title of the study harks back to an article by Helen Simons (1987) in which she suggests that activities such as self evaluation are 'against the rules of schools as institutions'. One element of this second strand of the study is an investigation into the rules governing staff relationships. It examines whether the closed behaviours that initially undermined the 1986 initiative are more widely prevalent in primary schools. The 1986 change initiative appeared to leave a residual effect of increased openness and collaboration between staff. A further element of this strand of the study is therefore an examination of whether implementing the change model affects staff relationships in other primary schools. The study examines the extent to which the change model acts to dismantle closed patterns of interaction between staff and replace them with more open ones. During the time that has elapsed between setting out and concluding this research there has been a growing focus on staff relationships in schools. Reviewing research into school culture Fullan (1991) suggests that "we have not yet made much head way in how to establish collaborative cultures in schools". This study is an investigation into a possible process by which the rules of schools I have known as a teacher, deputy headteacher and headteacher might be changed.

This thesis takes global learning out of the formal setting of a Northern classroom to a rural community setting in the Global South as a social learning process. It begins with a critical reflection of a large EU project to develop a global learning programme as a Global North South initiative. The focus narrows to Zanzibar, a small island state, to critically reflect on the delivery of the programme. And then further to focus on the global social learning and change that occurred in a rural community setting in the north of the island. Through participatory action research, I investigate the relevance of global learning as a social learning process, how norms and rules are shaped within a community setting and how these enable social change towards sustainable livelihoods. The thesis splices the intersection between critical and social theories of learning and engagement, to include critical social theories of Habermas (1984) and Wals (2007); critical race theories of Giroux (1997) and Said (1994) and distributive justice and entitlements theories of Sen (1997) and Moser (1998). It demonstrates the importance of dissonance and a safe space for deliberative dialogue, to be able to consider the global pressures and forces on local realities as the precursor to social change towards sustainability. I conclude by relating the learning from this small island state to the wider world and the current discourse on quality of education in a community development context.

This thesis explores the powers exercised by government as it attempts to transform educational policy into practice. It originates from an interest in the TVEI programme, administered for the government by the Manpower Services Commission during the 1980s. The engine for this rapid modification of existing practice in both school and college appeared to relate to the device of funding on the basis of contract. This observation led to an attempt to analyze the range of powers available to central government and others. This required both a historical and a comparative analysis, together with a concern for the way in which human behaviour is shaped by specific power relationships. Chapter 1 sets out the origins of the study and establishes a model of the "bases of power". Thereafter, Chapters 2 and 3 consider the extent to which government has held or extended its grip on these different types of power during this century. Chapter 2 deals separately with 1918 to 1939, and 1944 to 1974. After reviewing the model in the light of those accounts, Chapter 3 examines the period from 1974 to the Education Reform Act of 1988. Having established the increasing significance of "remunerative" power based on categorical or contractual funding, Chapter 4 argues that such strategies contain certain key elements : namely, criteria, bid, contract, monitoring, evaluation and replication. Using this analytical tool, Chapters 5, 6 and 7 examine three illustrative cases, starting with the TVEI programme from which the enquiry originated. Chapter 6 examines the impact of a similar funding strategy within the reorganisation of INSET, while Chapter 7 draws on a detailed research study of similar initiatives within higher education. In Chapter 8 an attempt is made to draw together the argument, to relate it to the ever expanding use of contract across the range of social policy and, finally, to consider the implications of this undeniably efficient mode of policy implementation for an avowedly democratic society.

The focus of this research is on the interaction secondary school students and teachers had with radioactivity related information. An accident involving radioactive material which happened in Brazil in 1987 provides the context in relation to which the enquiry is framed. The selected groups' knowledge and perceptions are discussed in relation to topics which include: the conceptualisation of both the nature of physical entities involved and processes which appear to be at work in explanatory accounts of radioactivity; analogies and interpretative schemas as an attempt to go beneath the surface of the most common kinds of misunderstandings; the relationships between the layperson and the scientific information necessary to make sense of scientific/technological events, in terms of students' sources of information, interests and needs as well as self-evaluation of their understandings; the relationships between science and society and the role of secondary education in the context of the communication of such ideas considering its implications for people's daily life. The empirical study conducted with both students and teachers consisted of a questionnaire and of an interview study. Data derived from the questionnaire is essentially quantitative and was analysed by using multi-variate statistical methods. Data derived from the interviews is essentially qualitative and was analysed using systemic network analysis techniques. Results are discussed in terms of the implications of understanding better the role of analogies making sense of new information, and the use of knowledge in context as well as the use of pragmatic knowledge, derived from social expectations, for both research on commonsense and to schooling, so as to inform decisions about pedagogic interventions within a Science Technology and Society approach.