This thesis is concerned to evaluate Local Education Authority Off-Site Special Units for Disruptive Pupils. By reviewing the relevant literature, and by ascertaining the views of Local Education Authorities, the thesis develops the argument that schools are ambivalent in their reasons for referring disruptive pupils to Off-Site Special Units. Whilst maintaining primary concern for the pupils' reform, a greater concern seems to be evident for the removal of recalcitrant pupils in the best interests of the referring school. Either way, the decision to refer the pupil to an Off-Site Special Unit probably rests upon a failure to appreciate the causes of disruptive behaviour, which in practice are less likely to be explained in pathological terms than in institutional ones. In consequence, the idea that a suitable measure for evaluating units is to be found in rates of successfully reintegrating pupils from units back into mainstream schools is open to question. Since many pupils indicate a desire to return to mainstream school whilst others express a wish to enter employment where recognised patterns of good behaviour are necessary, a criterion for evaluating Off-Site Special Units remains the ability of the Unit to produce behaviour change in pupils attending the Units. The dictum is employed in the present thesis. The Bristol Social Adjustment Guides and a Behaviour Checklist, developed by the writer from one used by the ILEA, are used as before and after measures to show that the behaviour of pupils referred to three Off-Site Special Units in one LEA, does improve during the period of intervention. The behaviour of matched control pupils who remain in mainstream schools does not show a similar improvement. The comments of pupils in the Off-Site Special Units confirm that there are positive gains in the Units.

Societies in general, and the developed ones in particular, are trying hard to control the use of the new educational means to re-educate adults in accordance with the high speed developments in all fields of life. In developing countries, there is still a tendency to identify adult education with literacy campaigns and other basic education programmes. Therefore, whatever the interest and whatever the country, adult education means education for life in its widest sense. Its main purpose is to give a chance to men and women to increase their actual activity in their societies, their responsibility towards them and their share of knowledge. The Egyptian society is facing the following problem: the necessity of reorganising educational programmes for adults in different specialisations with the aim of modernising their knowledge and giving them new skills to meet the continuous changes in the methods of production. To achieve this, we should review first what the advanced world is doing to know where exactly we are. The aim of this study is to throw light on the experiences of the advanced countries in the field of adult education with the purpose of benefiting from them and applying them in the Egyptian society after processing and assimilating them within the characteristics of the society. The task of this thesis is to compare the experiences and ideas of an advanced country, England, which has a very comprehensive "system" of adult education, with those of a developing country, Egypt, in the hope that the two countries can learn something from each other.

No description available.

The research is an analysis of the 'process of development' of a sample of sixteen subjects who attended 'public school' during the term of office of the present government.The specific methodology of the study was that of the 'life-history', in which each subject produced a written account of their life. This was followed by a taped interview which allowed elaboration of issues raised and discussion of aspects of experience not previously covered. Questionnaires were sent to headmasters in order to (a) gauge the specific values of particular schools and (b) to triangulate, where possible, information provided by subjects on the nature of their schooling.The research offers a contribution to sociological discussion at a number of levels:(1) it provides information on the process of elite production and reproduction, and the role in this of 'institutions of influence' and the individual's mediation of the input from these sources;(2) central sociological themes and concepts have been utilized, assessed and developed;(3) aspects of public school life previously accorded limited or inaccurate attention have been subject to empirical and theoretical analysis. The interaction of class and gender, control and hierarchy, the continued relevance of 'fagging' and the 'old boy' network and crucially the nature of sub-cultural affiliations are the principal examples;(4) the nature of the sector's self presentation is outlined;(5) this specific utilization of the life-history technique illuminates its value and potential as a sociological method.

Prompted by the Labour government's proposal to introduce education on family relationships into the National Curriculum, this research project was set up to investigate how teachers portrayed 'family' within the classroom and the reactions that children had to the images that were presented. The intention was to highlight any problems that might arise from including 'family' into the formal curriculum. The fieldwork was conducted in three primary and three secondary schools. Two of each of the schools were located in the West Country and the remaining two, in order to give some ethnic and cultural balance to the project, were in the West Midlands. A total of sixteen teachers and forty children were involved. In each school, three topics or lessons that concerned 'family' were observed during the course of one academic year; this was followed by interviews with the teachers, to ascertain their intentions within the lesson, and with the pupils, to gain their reaction. Final interviews with each of the children encouraged them to reflect on what they had learned about 'family' during the year. Government documents concerned with family education suggest an agreement on the values on which family should be based and appear to regard family as an uncomplicated concept. The data collected, however, indicate that 'family' is regarded by teachers as a complex and sensitive subject that should be approached with caution. In addition pupils show a variety of reactions to the lessons, ranging from anger and distress to ready acceptance. The project's contribution to knowledge is therefore to demonstrate some of the complexities that are involved in teaching about 'family' and to inform one aspect of the ongoing debate on values education within Britain.

The subject of this thesis, career choice for young adults with (specific) learning disabilities, deals with two main issues. The first concerns the decision-making difficulties of young adults with learning disabilities as compared with their nondisabled peers. The second and major part of this thesis, deals with the development and validation of a self-report screening method for identifying those are likely to be at risk of being learning disabled. The primary purpose of this device is to provide career counsellors and other professionals, who generally receive only superficial training in the area of specific learning disabilities, with a tool for identifying individuals likely to have learning disabilities. It is important to emphasise from the outset that screening is not diagnosis. Even a very good screening tool can at best identify those at high risk for LDS. Also screening may identify problem areas but no information is available regarding aetiology or source of the problems. Finally screening is necessary because a large section of the population has been identified as potentially containing large numbers of LDS (Singleton et al. 1998). However, before beginning the research, a thorough review of the issues of definition that plague the field is undertaken. While the issues raised cannot be resolved in this thesis, they form a necessary background to the research done. In principle, learning disabilities are understood to be characterised by poor automisation of learning skills due to neurological malfunction, contrasted by at least average intelligence. Therefore the goal of screening is to identify the presence of these difficulties, while explanation of their causes remains the proper area of expertise of diagnosticians who bear the onus of showing evidence of neurological malfunction. The present research, then, is three-phased. First, the Career Decision Difficulties (CDD) questionnaire (Gati et al. 1996) is applied to establish empirical support for the hypothesis that young adults with specific learning disabilities have greater difficulties making career decisions than their non-disabled peers do and to identify problem areas of particular difficulty for these young adults. The second phase of the research is based on the assumption that the majority of adults with specific learning disabilities have not been diagnosed and are unaware of the reasons for study problems that they encounter. Against this background, a parsimonious and easily administered screening device is needed. The second part of the thesis focuses on the development and validation of a self-report model - the Strengths and Weaknesses Academic Profile (SWAP) - and a questionnaire based on it, and their use as a counselling tool. The questionnaire based on the SWAP model was administered to a sample of about 500 young adults in Israel studying in preacademic schemes, of which 117 were previously diagnosed as learning disabled. The data was then analysed for validation. Finally, the results were normed on a larger sample of just over 900. The third phase was undertaken in order to address outstanding issues of validation resulting from the inherent methodological weakness of the Israeli research, a further sample was tested in Sheffield, UK. Unlike the Israeli sample, the non-diagnosed were tested to reveal any hidden dyslexics and they were subsequently removed from the control group. I present here an epidemiological sample validating a research tool in a real life scenario. In order to check the construct validity of this tool, a stricter research definition of LD was adopted, and the same process was undertaken using a well-defined sample known to be dyslexic and non-dyslexic. In conclusion, the results of this empirical demonstration show that the SWAP model predicts to a satisfactory degree those individuals who are at high risk of dyslexia. This thesis combines the strengths of an experimental qualitative approach with those of a quantitative empirical approach. In the main sample, the Israeli sample, scores were normed and converted into percentiles. Preliminary data regarding the predictive success of the use of SWAP for referral for diagnosis is presented. In addition, several case studies are included as examples of the use of SWAP as a counselling tool.