This thesis presents an exploration of the nature, extent and characteristics of a disciplinary Inclusion Room (IR), from the perspectives of students and staff in a South West secondary school. Over the past five years, this school has significantly reduced fixed term exclusions and improved school attainment against Local Authority averages. This research presents an organisational response to a socio-cultural problem and the paradoxical lenses of social inclusion and discipline. The research uses Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a theoretical and methodological framework. I explore inclusion and professionalism using the perspectives of nine students who entered disciplinary IR and nine staff who knew the students. Inclusion constructs explored include participation, equality and diversity. Professionalism is deliberated through a continuum of managerial control/discretionay judgement, individualistic models/collegial approaches and bureaucratic/continuous learning dimensions. Mixed methods used include document analysis, an on-line questionnaire, student and staff interviews, visual timelines and observations of the students in classrooms. The analysis of IR considers primary, secondary and tertiary contradictions along with disciplinary rules, community and division of labour/power constructs amongst participants to develop a rich understanding of the context. Exploratory data, in the form of a questionnaire, suggests that the students and staff broadly share understanding of inclusion policy, practice and culture in this school. Interviews, further informed by examination of documents, student timelines and observations, show how a disciplinary IR is integrated into, and complements, educational processes; participation (being there), equality and diversity, within the school. Professionalism is characterised by discretionary lenses, collegial working and continuous learning governed by problem solving to support that educational vision. Findings from this work are generalisable as the research develops experience of the school in a naturalistic manner and is illustrative of expectations rather than formal predictions. Nevertheless, schools can use the findings to consider how a disciplinary IR can complement educational processes through increasing participation, equality and diversity. Goals for inclusion can be enhanced through collaborative partnerships and active, ongoing engagement amongst students and staff to develop the educational experience.

This research explores the learning of volunteers who are being trained to perform service-providing roles within UK health and social care charities. Within these charities, volunteers often perform complex roles in dynamic environments, supporting service users and addressing challenging causes. This thesis argues that the charity and voluntary environment offers certain affordances, and also constraints, that provide opportunities for transformative learning experiences. The limited previous studies on the learning of volunteers have tended to concentrate on training evaluations or informal learning 'on the job', resulting in an unhelpful formal/informal dichotomised approach to learning. The research proposes that this approach has been unable to offer a detailed insight into the learning experienced by volunteers within the training process. In particular, this dichotomised view has been unable to account for both the learning of scientific concepts, such as the specific health conditions these charities are addressing, and everyday experiences of both volunteers and service users that are integral to the learning process. To address this gap, the thesis draws upon Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), which is an approach grounded in Hegelian dialectics. Specifically, the CHAT-informed theories of expansive learning (Engeström, 1987) and Transformative Activist Stance (TAS) (Stetsenko, 2008) are synthesised to examine how volunteers interact with and within the charity environment through practices of training. Through this perspective, learning is conceptualised as a form of individual and social transformation, which expands the possibilities for collective activity. Expansive learning and TAS have previously been drawn upon to provide insight into learning in the workplace and in projects of social change respectively. However, so far the theories have not been focused on learning within the charity and voluntary environment. A multiple case study of three health and social care charities based in North West England provides the empirical data for the research. Each charity addresses a complex health and social cause, including stroke, sexual violence and HIV, and relies on volunteers to help provide services. Multiple qualitative methods, including observations of training, charity staff interviews, along with interviews and focus groups with volunteers, allow a range of perspectives and positions to be taken into account in line with the epistemology of the study. Data are analysed through the process of abduction drawing upon a CHAT-informed theoretical framework. The thesis intends to contribute to knowledge in two main areas. Firstly, it aims to increase understanding of learning within volunteer training, including how learning in the charity environment can be supported, sustained and made meaningful to enable transformative experiences. Secondly, it aims to theoretically advance CHAT, and the charity and voluntary environment is presented as a fruitful setting for developing particular aspects of the theory, such as emotion and agency.

For several decades improvement of science education has been a major concern of policy makers concerned that the U.S. is a “nation at risk” owing to the dearth of students pursing careers in science. Recent policy proposals have argued that provision of broadband digital connectivity to organizations in the informal sector would increase the reach of the formal, academic sector to raise the overall level of science literacy in the country. This dissertation reports on a longitudinal study of a physics telementoring activity jointly run by a university-community collaborative at a community learning center. The activity implemented a digital infrastructure that exceeds the technical and social-institutional arrangements promoted by policy makers. In addition to broadband internet access (for tele-conferencing between students at the community center and physicists at a university), supplemented by digital software designed to promote physics education, the activity included the presence of a collaborating researcher/tutor at the community learning center to coordinate and document the instructional activities. The current research revealed a fundamental contradiction between the logic, goals, and practices of the physics instructors, and the corresponding logic, goals, and practices of the participants at the community learning center. This contradiction revolves around a contrast between the physicists’ formal, logocentric ways of understanding expressed in the ability to explain the scientific rules underlying physical phenomena and the informal, pragmatic orientation of the youth and adults at the learning center. The observations in this dissertation should remind techno-enthusiasts, especially in the arena of public education policy, that there are no turnkey solutions in “distance” science education. Technically “connecting” people is not equivalent to creating conditions that expand opportunities to learn and a functioning socio-technical system that supports learning. Secondly, for designers and practitioners of informal learning in community-university collaborative settings, it is critically important to understand distance learning activities as developing “cross-cultural, ” collaborative encounters, the results of which are more likely to be hybrids of different ways of learning and knowing than the conversion of informal learning into a tool for instruction that will allow youth to “think like physicists.”

The persistence of a 120 year-old mathematics curriculum despite dramatic changes in society (Dossey et al., 2016; NCTM, 2018) and the failure of the US mathematics education system to achieve many of its stated aims, especially for students from traditionally marginalized populations (Attridge & Inglis, 2013; Carnevale & Desrochers, 2003a; Ganter & Barker, 2004; Kastberg et al., 2016; Lei et al., 2015; Mullis et al., 2016) raises the question: “What aims, if any, actually shape the curriculum experienced by students?” This dissertation adds to what is known about curricular systems by building a theory of the role of aims for school mathematics in curriculum development, planning, and enactment. It does so by undertaking a qualitative analysis of ten lessons by four different teachers at two different high schools; tracking how the lessons are transformed from instructional materials into plans by the teacher and then enacted in classrooms and perceived by students. This dissertation analyzes these lessons through the lens of activity theory, enabling a deeper understanding of how aims can be described and how they permeate curricular systems. The data analysis produces a framework for how aims can be described and categorized, how aims permeate an individual stage of curriculum, and how aims permeate across stages of curriculum. It finds that aims can be conceptualized as having two parts, a central activity for which mathematical learning is designed to prepare students and the function that school mathematics plays in preparing students to participate in that central activity. The extent to which and how aims permeate a stage of curriculum can be described as the extent to which the mathematical goals for the lesson are connected to clear central aims. The aims found in particular stages of curriculum and the levels of permeation of those aims in those stages can be tracked across stages to determine whether the stages are reinforcing each other’s support for the achievement of aims or working at cross purposes. The application of this framework to the selected curricular systems reveals many lessons with low levels of aim permeation and extensive changes in the aims of lessons as the curriculum is transformed from intention to plan to enactment. This study suggests that aims are underutilized in curricular planning and provides evidence that the mathematics curriculum may be built following disciplinary logic with aims created to justify what is already in place. Further research must be done to explore this conjecture. If it is supported, then curriculum decision makers who seek to improve the extent to which they achieve their aims and eliminate racial and economic disparities in this achievement must begin by elevating the role of aims in their curricular work.

Youth experiences with digital technologies demonstrate untapped potential for informing school-based learning responsive to adolescent identity and socialization practices (Ito et al., 2008). This study presents the formation of a collaborative model for appropriating youth and digital practices for developing new literacies with high school students in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands (New London Group, 1996). The research incorporates diversity in technology access and participation of predominately Latino students in English classrooms as a resource to engage literacy development across multiple discursive domains and challenge deficit discourses for Latino youth.The participatory approach combines interventionist research, in the cultural historical tradition of expansive learning (Engeström, 1987) with ethnographic methods for informing curricular practice (González, Moll,&Amanti, 2005; Lee, 2007) and new literacies pedagogy stressing collaborative, critical, and multimodal semiosis infused with Freirian praxis (Coiro et al., 2008; Freire, 1999; Lemke, 2003). Research involved co-developing, co-teaching and daily participant observation within the multiple online and offline spaces of a high school writing course, a weekly after school club begun with students from the class and several additional classrooms. A variety of data illustrates tensions and synergies of migrating practices across systems of activity represented by teacher, researcher and student standpoints. The research maps how socio-spatial relationships among academic and youth discourses, modalities, and participants' classroom positions were reconfigured through the use of digital tools joined with pedagogies responsive to adolescents' social and digital practices.An afterschool group's wiki participation extended students' oral and visual literacies into written expression and gave other participants a model of collaborative practice to guide classroom interaction. Engaging familiar and new tools for inquiries based on youth interests and complementary analytical concepts emphasized the primacy of the social and pedagogical aspects of technology. Students' agency in theorizing identity and developing representational spaces (Lefebvre, 1991) emerged as a key mediator for expanding their literacies across personal and academic contexts. In the collaborative process, participants forged new, hybrid genres, audiences and identities for distributing and developing their literacy practices across false dichotomies of home/school and online/offline spaces, and for reconfiguring normative school literacy regimes.

The study explores the role and contribution of education in developing a localized and relevant HIV/AIDS prevention strategy through a multi-voiced approach, involving the educational institutions, as well as the traditional leaders, community-members, including parents. The study comprised all public schools in one Zambian province from 2002-2008.  The study explores, among other factors, the role of traditional culture in mitigating and exacerbating the spread of the disease. Zambia was one of the countries hardest hit by the HIV/AIDs epidemic, and one of the few countries in the region that, in 2002, had a clear policy on the role of education in fighting the epidemic. Through the process of developing and implementing a learner-centered interactive HIV/AIDS education program in the province. based upon MOE`s  HIV/AIDS policies and strategies, syllabi, and teachers guides, and at the same time emphasizing the broader community as a point of departure. The qualitative and interpretivist research was conducted within a constructivist grounded theoretical approach. The study applies comprehensive and multilayered perspectives while utilizing a broad range of methods.   Documentary analyses, structured and semi-structured interviews, in depth conversations with traditional and educational leaders, teachers, parents and pupils, were all carried out during the period of the study. Nvivo, a computer-supported data analysis tool was used to support the process of categorizing the qualitative data and the study applied Cultural- and Historical Activity Theory for analytic purposes. The study revealed the mismatch between the decentralized, national HIV/AIDS prevention education approach, as stated in the policy documents and the global UNAIDS, centralized and cross-sectoral strategies favored by the Zambian government. The uncoordinated efforts did not reach  the grassroots level, where professionals, at district and school level, perceived and applied policies in highly different ways, if at all reaching students and the communities. The main categories of drivers of the epidemic were of socio-cultural and economic character, e.g. polygamy, sexual cleansing, local healing, gender inequality and poverty,  sexual violence, multiple concurrent sexual partners and prostitution, but there were also variety of local drivers, depending upon context. When analyzing the participatory approaches of the HIV/AIDS prevention strategy, predominantly, at the school-community level, the findings revealed that the traditional leaders, being legitimate leaders in their kingdoms, and the custodians of culture and traditions, were found to be gate openers to promote behavioral change and cultural transformation in their villages. The traditional leaders worked hand in hand with the schools and the villagers. Their involvement legitimated that discourses and HIV/AIDS prevention actions were taken at school as well as within their own chiefdom. Utilizing their traditional leadership structures, the chiefs sustained their cultural rites, e.g. cleansing, in order to chase away the evil spirits, by turning the rites into practices that do no put people at risk for contracting HIV. Particularly at the global and state level, culture has been seen as drivers of the epidemic. The study revealed that the traditional leaders used their role as significant others, became gate-openers, using their legitimate role as custodians of culture to transform cultural rites and practices.

The current study is focussed on teachers' beliefs in inclusion and dyslexia and how these are linked to their professional practice when working with dyslexic learners in their primary classrooms in two cultural contexts; in Cyprus and in North West England. The study is guided by the theoretical framework of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) which was used as the descriptive and analytical tool to explore teachers' personal interpretations and inclusive practice. A qualitative research design is used and includes semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and follow-up discussions with ten teachers in total, five Greek-Cypriot and five British teachers. The findings indicate that the teachers presented both similarities and differences on the way the concepts of inclusion and dyslexia are perceived and understood. For example, teachers interpret 'inclusion' as a shared objective to work collectively towards, making reference to shared values such as 'human rights' and 'equal participation'. One difference identified in some of the Cypriot teachers was that that they appeared more critical about teaching disabled students (e.g. students with more complex needs) in relation to their counterparts. In terms of dyslexia, most of the Cypriot and British teachers conceptualised it as a disorder with a biological basis but, at the same time, they refer to the mediating role played by the environment in contributing further to students' difficulties with literacy. Teachers who engage in practices in their classrooms in order to be more inclusive were identified as those who propose innovation in their activities. On the other hand, there are teachers who seem less inclusive, by creating learning opportunities which are not sufficiently made available for everyone and can allow dyslexic students to access the curriculum. The study enriches the international literature on teachers' beliefs and how they are can influence teachers' professional practice. Cultural Historical Activity Theory, contributed into understanding the factors that can influence teachers' practice for inclusion and their between interactive relationship in an activity system. This is an important area of investigation since changing teachers' beliefs about students' ability can reflect changes in their professional practice.

In Developmental Work Research and its Change Laboratory methodology, development is understood as being when a group of people collaboratively change their material object. This study argues that this understanding ignores personal zones of proximal development and personal history as a beginning, and functional concepts as an outcome. Perceiving the subject of an activity as a homogenous group, I claim, is tantamount to an assimilation model of integration. Integration models that aim at homogenization rely on abstract concepts of others and require retooling in order to be more empathetic and expansive. Switzerland in 1998 adopted an acculturation model of assimilation that was thought to be the only possible solution for the maintenance of national unity. The model has been referred to as a national capitalistic ‘steamroller’ based on homogenization and exclusion. Under this perspective, migrant and refugee parents are categorised by mainstream educators as desisting from their children’s formal education, and national parents represent the perfect model. The empirical work was carried out within a home-school project in a French-speaking canton in Switzerland. The project was designed by a group of special education teachers. The study explores the potential of Developmental Work Research and Change Laboratory methodology, as developed by Engeström (1987), to produce radical and sustained organisational change in a social context. Through the inclusion of an analysis of subject positioning, the findings show that Change Laboratory offers a solid background for retooling new concepts of immigrant people to one that is more empathetic and expansive. The conflicts that ensued within the Change Laboratory sessions opened a developmental zone in which the concepts of being a national or a foreigner were reconstructed. The study suggests ways of improving Change Laboratory methodology for better understanding of subject positioning.

This study explores six English as a foreign language students in an English content-based course of critical thinking delivered via distance at the Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) in Iran. Framed within cultural-historical activity theory, the study seeks to shed light on the complex nature of students' course-related activities with a particular focus on contradictions that underlie any human activity. The construct of contradictions provides a theoretical lens to understand the complex web of relationships among a number of elements in the course taking activity situated in a cultural-historical setting beset with political controversies, technological challenges, and demands of the bilingual curriculum of the university. To capture the complex nature of contradictions, the study employed a naturalistic methodology and relied primarily on in-depth interviews with the participants, observations of their online behaviors, and the artifacts that student participants produced by the end of the semester. The findings indicate that most participants had multiple activity systems within the course environment, some of which were oriented towards academic and others non-academic objects. According to the data and theoretical interpretations, most participants had primary, secondary, and quaternary contradictions. Most primary contradictions had the nature of use and exchange value, which in practical terms indicates the orientation towards genuine learning or earning a grade. Primary and quaternary contradictions led to many secondary contradictions. Furthermore, it transpired that content-based instruction pushed the participants to engage actively in actions oriented towards improving English even for the participants who did not have the object of improving English. Among many other findings are detrimental consequences of contradictions that are traced back to the persecutions of BIHE students, faculty, and staff.

Healthcare centers face increasing revenue risk under the Medicare Access and Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (MACRA). The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies that successful leaders of healthcare centers use to mitigate the risk of reimbursement penalties under MACRA. The conceptual framework of this study was Generation 3 cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT-III), and the analysis process used was Yin's recursive and iterative phases. Participants of this study were 6 leaders of healthcare centers in the United States identified as having high quality and low cost via the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid public use files. Semistructured interviews were used to explore the identification of strategic opportunity, strategy formation, implementation, and control. Themes for organizational culture that emerged from data analysis included a foundation core with flexibility and iterative process-improvement practice. Themes in the strategy formation process included total employee involvement and a quality-first, cost-benefit strategy structure. Themes in the implementation process included multiple departmental and organizational collaboration, task-based implementation, and data transparency. Localized cadence meetings were a theme in the control process. Improvements to the organization as a result of this study include a series of standards for organizational culture, a toolbox including CHAT-III as a tool for the identification of strategic opportunity and a methodology for strategy formation and implementation, and control to help ensure financial sustainability. Implications for positive social change include the increased probability of continued ready access to healthcare, improved population health, and lower mortality rates for the communities served.