This thesis aims to elucidate the influences that determine the extent to which the National Science Curriculum of Trinidad and Tobago, as presented by teachers, engages students as critical thinkers. The interpretation of critical thinking is seen in terms of an emancipatory paradigm which leads to social justice. The work takes the form of a case study completed at a mixed gender government secondary school. The context is set within an education system that has come out of a colonial history and where critical thinking is seen as important for the economic advancement of the nation. However, the level of success necessary for achieving this advancement is not seen as being actualised within the present educational regime. A qualitative approach was taken in which critical theory and postcolonial theory were employed in establishing the nature of the power relations at play within this setting. The methods included content analysis of curriculum documents, exercise books and textbooks, lesson observations, focus group interviews with students from Forms 1 to 5 based on a video clip stimulus and structured interviews with teachers. The interviews were all subjected to NVivo coding to determine the themes related to the research questions. The main findings were that students’ skills in terms of the cognitive and affective domains and their critical thinking skills did not appear to develop significantly as they progressed through school nor were the students any more confident to engage in social activism. The pedagogical methods used were more based in direct instruction and did not fulfil the expectations of a critical pedagogy as advocated in the National Certificate of Secondary Education (NCSE) and Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate (CSEC) syllabuses. A neoliberal agenda is seen as influencing the maintenance of an elitist education system and suggestions are provided for changes within the administration of the system, teacher training and pedagogical methods which would result in a more appealing, relevant and motivating school science.

This study aims to investigate problems of curriculum planning and development in geography, with special reference to the curriculum of Portuguese secondary schools. It identifies the theoretical and practical influences which affect curriculum planning and development and gives some suggestions and a rationale that can be employed to overcome these problems. The theoretical bases of curriculum planning and development in general and of curriculum planning and development in geography are examined first. Following this theoretical backg round, the evolution of geographical education over the past 150 years is indicated in order to contribute to an awareness of curriculum change in the past. In order to obtain evidence of the present main problems concerning geographical education and to collect opinions on how to improve it, questionnaires were sent to geography teachers in secondary schools. Questionnaires were also sent to 9th year and 12th year students respectively, (approximately 15 and 18 year old) to ascertain their views about geography and its teaching. To discover how the process of curriculum planning takes place at school level, interviews were undertaken with the heads of geography departments of eight secondary schools which differ in several aspects, e.g. in location, in type, in size, in number of geography teachers and their qualifications and in the availability of teaching resources, among others. In orderto find out how the process of curriculum planning has evolved since the revolution of April 25th 1974 interviews were conducted with curriculum planners. Lastly, strategies and conditions needed for curriculum development in geography are put forward. The essential conclusions of this investigation are that in orderto improvethe delivery of the geography curriculum in Portugal it will be necessary: first, to develop the links between the central, regional and school authorities; secondly, to raise the level of qualifications of teachers of geography; and thirdly, to increase the resources available to schools' geography departments. Consequently the quality of delivery of the curriculum will depend on teachers having expertise in schoolbased curriculum development. The possible ways of extending this study are also discussed in the final chapter.

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.