Postmodernism is often used as the signifier for the fashionable drift into relativism and unseriousness within Western philosophy. Conference after conference, article after article, book after book have appeared describing, denouncing or celebrating the postmodern condition. Within in this context, critical realism has, by and large, positioned itself against the postmodern turn. This project re-evaluates this stance. Against the critiques which have been levelled at postmodernism I will argue that critical realism is theoretically best placed to mediate the various postmodern positions and concerns by developing a reading of critical realism which places critical realism firmly within the context of postmodernism as an alternate postmodernism. Yet if critical realism can be understood within postmodernism, postmodernism can equally be understood within a more encompassing, more mediated realism. The task then is to find a new language which brings together Apollo and Dionysus, moving towards perspectival realism and a scientific anarchism concerned with the possibility and limitations of representing a complex world characterised by intensity, difference and becoming.

This thesis investigates gender and performance in the GCE A level examination. It attempts to acquire deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to differential performance at 18+. It identifies a 'cross-over' in gender related patterns of performance in examinations between 16+ and 18+, uses a multi-method approach and a number of sources of data to explain the complex patterns observed. This thesis aims to identify the various factors that contribute to differential performance in examinations and to assess the extent of their influence. The impetus for the research stemmed from a concern that the A level examination has been relatively under-researched in relation to gender-equity issues in examination attainment. Previously, the focus of gender-related differences in examination performance had tended to concentrate on the compulsory stage of schooling. Little is known, therefore, about gender-related performance issues at 18+. In this questions specifically focus on the A level examination and are asked in relation to: how we account for gender-related differences in performance; the contribution of the assessment techniques used to these differences and whether there are content, contexts and tasks types used in these examinations that benefit one gender more than another. Data has been collected, analysed and interpreted from over 3,000 examination scripts, 200 questionnaire responses from secondary school teachers and nine school case studies. Teachers' and students' attitudes to, and perceptions of, gender-related attainment at 18+ are explored for their contribution to differential performance. Three subjects - English literature, mathematics and physics - are used to illustrate the issues that are being considered. This thesis contributes knowledge to the gender-equity debate at one of the most significant stages of examining in the UK. The debate is a complex one and the findings of this thesis reflect this. In this thesis, evidence from the data suggests that any future consideration of equity in relation to examination performance must concern itself not only with the assessment techniques used in the examination system, but also with the expectations, experiences and perceptions of teachers and students who are involved in these examinations.

Historically, research on grading, ie the allocation of marks by teachers to pupils has shown that it represents an assessment of both the academic and non academic characteristics of pupils. Recent research examining teacher grading criteria and practices, shows that little has changed. The present study investigates the grading criteria and practices of Greek primary school teachers . Interviews with 17 teachers investigated the extent to which the legislation regarding grading is implemented by teachers, and the possible criteria that they believe they use in grading. The analysis of the interviews showed that teachers' grading was affected not only by the academic attainment of pupils, but also by non academic factors including the overall picture of pupils' academic attainment assessed by tests, classroom participation and homework, pupils' families, linguistic level, intelligence and motivation, pupils' behaviour, teachers' personal likes of some pupils, pupils' differential attainment in different subjects, pupils self perception of attainment, and local school factors. Different teachers' grading was influenced to a different degree by these factors. On the basis of the interviews a questionnaire was devised to enable a larger sample to be studied. 472 primary teachers of both genders, working in different geographical areas of Greece, with different levels of experience and education completed the questionnaire. Its analysis showed the extent to which they were influenced by the criteria elicited in the interviews, and the differences between them. Factor analysis of the questionnaire confirmed the interview findings, and enabled the development of a possible model of the factors influencing grading, which may be used as the basis for explaining teachers' actual grading practices as opposed to their beliefs about them.

The role of the educational supervisor is pivotal in ensuring the working of the system in accordance with general efficiency and national policies. Unfortunately Pakistan's system of educational management and supervision is too much entrenched in the legacy of past and has not succeeded, over the last forty years, in modifying and reforming itself in order to cope with the expanding and changing demands of eduCation in the country since independence( i.e. 1947). The empirical findings of this study support the following. Firstly, the existing style of supervision of secondary schools in Sindh, applied through traditional inspection of schools, is defective and outdated. Secondly, the behaviour of the educational supervisor tends to be too rigid and autocratic . Thirdly, the reasons for the resistance of existing system of supervision to change along the lines and policies formulated in recent years are to be found outside the education system and not merely within the education system or within the supervisory sub-system. The thesis is organised as follows. First chapter looks into the background of the problem and analyses the failure in the existing supervisory system of secondary school education within Pakistan in general and the province of Sindh in particular. Second chapter describes the historical perspectives and development of education in Pakistan with special reference to province of Sindh. Third chapter elaborates the contextual analysis of the problem and focuses on issues of modernization, bureaucracy and participation in Pakistan. Fourth chapter defines the theoretical models and types of supervision derived from the literature for the problem analysis, along with contributions towards the critical examination of the main factors. Fifth chapter depicts the evolution of the supervisory system of secondary education, with particular reference to various changes and reorganisation of the supervisory structure of school education in Sindh. Sixth chapter shows the research tools and the methodology used during the field study. Seventh chapter evaluates the field work that was mostly done in Sindh in the light of the problem and shows the actual functioning or dysfunctioning of the system. Eighth and last chapter concludes the thesis, presents a summary and offers some suggestions for an improved system.

School trips in environment centres, in museums and at live animal shows can cover the same curriculum objectives, relating to habitats and adaptations, at age-appropriate levels. However, each of these three settings has traditions and goals which influence the subtexts conveyed by educators, and therefore the messages pupils gather from learning experiences. This research investigated children’s experiences in these three different informal learning settings in London, UK. The aim was to identify and understand the learning that took place. The main evidence was collected with 180 year 4 pupil participants from local state primary schools. Their learning is visualised in a conceptual framework ‘SPEAK’ that represents learning in the domains of Skills, Place, Emotion, Attitudes and Knowledge (SPEAK). Analysis was based on an existing socioecological literacy framework. There is evidence that the environment exploration was the source of considerable motivation for children. Live animal shows led to children describing species, and subsequently recalling aspects of individual animals’ personalities. Natural history specimen collections developed skills of observation, identification, discovery and reading. A representation of the SPEAK domains is proposed as a tool for reflection for educators, to review the learning intentions of informal teaching experiences. A case study at the Royal Veterinary College shows how it has been used to understand learning, using iPads. A salience theory of informal learning is proposed through considering memorable and transformative aspects of informal learning, from a learning psychology perspective. Aspects of this theory are suggested as areas for future research.

The inclusion of science in the primary school curriculum makes it necessary to have plausible scientific activities that fulfil certain educational objectives. The purpose of this study is to show to what extent it is possible to combine such criteria. Tasks have been constructed, each in two versions - Structured and Investigation plus Goal - in each four topic domains. Levels of success are given for both versions of the tasks, both overall and in relation to their cognitive demands. The tasks are constructed so as to elicit, as far as possible, a number of 'scientific processes'. This notion is not, however, taken for granted. The study looks at processes in the context of the tasks; at when it makes sense to label processes as such or when they are better considered as content bound, and at the nature of what in fact has been elicited from children. It has been possible to answer some questions related to children's 'scientific' behaviour such as, How complete are children's investigations?, Do children notice relevant phenomena? Do they draw conclusions from what they noticed? How well do children identify and control variables?, How good are children at using 'what-if reasoning', What explanations of the phenomena do children give? and, Do children make notes when doing an investigation? The framework of the study describes and compares two models of defining and eliciting 'scientific' processes, leading to the organization of the literature review in terms of: problems of transfer from the nature of science, problems of defining and matching, and problems of eliciting and discriminating. The conclusions are organized around three main areas of concern: 1) the tasks, 2) the processes, and 3) children's behaviour. The first comments on the tasks as potentially pedagogic and diagnostic devices. The second considers the problems of defining and eliciting 'scientific' processes. The last recapitulates the findings on children's behaviour, emphasizing some of their commonsense features.

The focus of the present research is on children's understanding and use of data bases. Previous research in this area is limited and has been mainly machine-centered. Some studies have been done to analyse the effectiveness of data bases compared to more traditional methods (paper and pencil) in information handling activities; and some others have focused on the comparison among several data base systems in order to see to what extent the system characteristics (data base structures - command/menu driven systems) influence the process of information retrieval. However very little attention has been paid to the process of teaching and learning data bases, to the nature and structure of data base tasks, and the factors that affect students' performance on such data base tasks. This latter perspective, task-centered, is the one taken by the present research. The present research investigates the possible existence of a theoretically proposed five-level hierarchy of data base tasks. 13 and 16 year old students' performance on two different types of data base tasks using GRASS is examined. The research also involves questions about the skills and knowledge that students possess and which affect the quality of data base interrogation activity, such as understanding of the nature of data bases, understanding of the nature of data base search and structure. and understanding of Boolean logic in the phrasing of complex queries. Children were tested on a range of such tasks before and after being trained in the use of GRASS. The results show that children at 13 and 16 can perform simple data base operations and tasks rather successfully. There is some hierarchy in the difficulty of tasks, but not precisely that proposed theoretically. Tasks involving two variables, and relations between them, are relatively difficult, particularly for the younger group. Tasks requiring simple retrieval and sorting data are the easiest. Logical operations present difficulties, especially in the construction of logical sentences, with simple AND combinations being the easiest. OR is sometimes treated as AND, particularly when interpreting negative OR propositions. Contradictions and tautologies are very difficult both to interpret and construct. Children seem to have an adequate if simple model of a data base in terms of the types of information a data base can and can not contain. However, their models of the ways information is kept, organised and found in a data base are not so adequate.

It is clear from common experiences that abstract ideas are often difficult to understand, and that the use of concrete examples is often useful, perhaps always necessary. The research investigates some aspects of the relation between abstraction and examples: how 11-12 year old children move in their thinking between more and less generic levels; between greater and lesser degrees of abstraction; from example to generalization and vice versa, in the context of science education. The central interest is in how children use and modify concrete reasoning schemes. Its significance is in eliciting deep and implicit ideas which affect how children learn science. The empirical work consists of four related studies. The analysis is both qualitative and quantitative, in both cases looking for patterns in response. The first study explores the limitations of the boundaries of ontological categories in children's transformations of entities. Results provide evidence that ontological categories such as natural kinds and artefacts exist in thinking and that schemes are the "bridges" which can make possible even cross-ontological transformations. The second study explores the way that dimensions organise various entities and suggests a novel analysis of analogies. Results show that schemes appear in children's reasoning as packages. The presence of one scheme may predict the presence of another. Children use schemes such as "flow" and "path", which interact and modify one another. The use of examples in science teaching varies. The focus of the third study is on the analysis of examples of ideas in terms of objects which can be seen schematically. Results show that children are able to give consistent examples, in many cases different from the examples in their text books. Schemes that are used by children in the description of objects appear together across the various examples. Examples constrain the schemes children use to describe entities that take part in them. Examples work rather like metaphors. The fourth study shows that children are able to establish connections between concrete examples and generalizations. They think of some instances as better examples of ideas than others. The fit between examples and ideas is good when schemes such as `support', 'border', 'autonomous action' or better when several such anticipated schemes, are satisfied and poor when some are and some not.

This research is an exploratory study with 6th form students about their ability to use some different approaches to computational modelling. It involves a survey through an individual questionnaire about causal diagramming and mathematical knowledge, which aims at characterizing the students' model building capability. Also, it includes an intensive study with pairs of students doing exploratory and expressive tasks using two modelling systems: IQON and STELLA. Data was gathered through written notes from observation, written answers given to questionnaires and data recorded in the computer. Overlapping questionnaires connected the survey and the intensive study. Comparisons between the use of causal diagrams and IQON were carried out. Results show that students in some cases replace variables by objects, events and processes, though this seems to depend on the problem. There is evidence of semiquantitative reasoning, which tends to be complex and its nature and frequency seems to depend on subject matter. It is natural even in quantitative tasks and may depend on gender and background. To use/make computational models it is important to reason in a semi-quantitative way, to imagine the world in terms of variables, to understand about rate of change, to think at a system level and to understand causation in a system. Results support the use of IQON, which allows the student to think rather freely about a system. STELLA's structure and metaphor obliges the student to think about rates. Evidence of the difficulty of thinking about rates in a formal mathematical way is presented. Students seem to articulate analogies according to their scientific backgrounds, and to use their own ideas. They tend not to invoke reality to interpret models, but have a well defined conception of the relationship between model and reality. Results suggest that 6th form students can undertake valuable work with both computational systems.

The academic recognition of human geography as a discipline of knowledge is determined by the definitional rigours of scientific criteria. The development of human geography has been largely orchestrated by the philosophical underpinnings of `normal' science. Logical positivism has prescribed the epistemological and methodological dictums of its terms of reference as well as for the meaning of rationality and social reality. The scientific paradigm otherwise validates and affirms the credibility of human geography as a social science. Many of its presumptions have been adopted from those employed in the physical and biological sciences. Empiricism and nominalism are the fundamental axioms for the investigation of socio-spatial phenomena by the 'scientific method'. Recent developments in geographic thought challenge this view. The emergence of alternative themes in human geography - namely those of structuralism and reflexivity - have appealed either to a Marxist critique of political economy or to phenomenology and existentialism in an attempt to uncover the dynamics of interaction between man and his spatial environment. The pluralistic face of human geography has not only raised a hermeneutic dilemma but also questions the acceptability of 'normal' science and the parameters which it seeks to impose. The ethos of this study is grounded in the presupposition that all the major philosophical positions which currently influence geographical research and education must initially tackle the question and purpose of human existence. Its contention is that the individual social actor cannot be objectified as an impersonal particular within the corpus of geographic inquiry. Nor can he be made subordinate to technico-scientific, ideological or philosophical contingencies. Moreover, the ontological clarification of socio-spatial relations is a necessary precondition for the formulation of an epistemological standpoint and of methodological procedure. Failing this, human geography cannot adequately explain present-day spatial problems and must either resort to some emancipatory futuristic view of 'optimistic humanism' quo, utopian idealism, or concede that pessimism and nihilism constitute the actual epistemological backcloth of its premises.