This thesis is based on a research study that examined aspects of the implementation of the Welsh Baccalaureate Advanced Diploma. Particular emphasis is given to the compulsory integration of Essential Skills Wales into the upper-secondary curriculum and the extent to which this contributes towards fulfilling the policy promise to offer a common learning Core to all students irrespective of their programmes of study and site of learning. By drawing insights from Bernstein’s sociology, I provide a principled analysis of the challenge of integrating these generic forms of everyday knowledge and make empirically visible their theoretically identified misrecognition and complexity. Based on a comparative twin case study (i.e. Communication and Application of Number) carried out across six considerably different educational sites, my findings uncover the peculiarities and challenges of pacing and evaluating the teaching and learning involved in Essential Skills Wales, and also point to administrative constraints, individual and institutional commitment to the demonstration of knowledge acquisition (i.e. certification). Students’ choices of subjects and qualifications (i.e. A level and BTECs), and the prioritisation of these, point to the power Higher Education institutions have to influence upper-secondary education. This is a separate strand of empirical work in the study, through which we see the possibility of a shift towards vocational qualifications under the overarching Welsh Baccalaureate Advanced Diploma. Based on this indication, I put forward the suggestion that, although the Welsh Baccalaureate is a notable attempt to change the relationship between specialised and everyday knowledge, and between academic (general) and vocational qualifications, it remains the latest form of the applied studies track in a tripartite upper-secondary system. To conclude, the Welsh Baccalaureate may contribute to the creation of a more subtle system of pedagogic differentiation, but upper-secondary education in Wales and the rest of the UK will most likely continue to be highly specialised, competitive and stratified.

This thesis explores the terms and conditions of the standard employment contract (POEA-SEC) for overseas Filipino seafarers. The contract, and the workers’ experience of it, is studied as an institutional arrangement prescribed by the Philippine government for the deployment of seafarers as contractual workers in the global labour market. This study aims to answer questions posed at the outset of this research on the enforcement and implementation of the POEA-SEC and its effectiveness in protecting the welfare and well-being of seafarers. This research examined the views, perceptions and experiences of seafarers and other major stakeholders in relation to their use of the POEA-SEC. The process of approval of the POEA-SEC was used as a case study to generate qualitative data. Multiple approaches such as legal analysis, semi-structured interviews, site observation, and focus groups were employed to gather evidence. Participants all came from the Philippines, a developing country in Southeast Asia. The thesis argues that the POEA-SEC is essentially an economic arrangement, which is fundamentally constructed to capture the remittance of workers. The contract is insufficient to address the problems associated with the vulnerability of the working conditions currently experienced by Filipino seafarers. Deploying the seafarers as short-term, contractual and cheap labour under the POEA-SEC undermines long established labour protection legislation, which is designed to protect the rights of workers to, for example, security of tenure and competitive rates of employment. The experience of the seafarers on-board the ship suggests that the contract cannot intercede in a beneficial way and falls short as a legal document to protect Filipino seafarers. The contract is remote from seafarers, merely symbolic and systematically fails to address seafarer issues, such as fatigue, stress and anxiety which affect their health and well-being. What is reflected in the inadequacy of the contract is the inability (and, it might be argued, collusion) of the Philippine state (and others, e.g. trade unions) to protect its citizens (as migrant labour) from the sometimes onerous demands of seafaring and the worst excesses of capital (shipowners and their proxies i.e. crewing agencies).

A promising, yet relatively small, body of academic scholarship on UK home-education has emerged in recent years. However, it persists as an area of research marked by partisanship. The digital age is often heralded as an era of liberation; empowering disparate groups to network, exchange practice, and learn from one another. However, few have considered what this might mean for home-education. This study sought to answer the overdue call for research in this area. This thesis is a mixed methods study; based on an online survey of 242 home-educators and 52 individual and group interviews with 85 parents, children and young people who used a range of new technologies. These families resided in different localities across England, Wales and Scotland. The analyses explored the role of new technologies, knowledge and learning within the themes of community, pedagogy and identity. The findings indicated that home-educating families participate in a diverse landscape of online networks and offline communities. New technologies have been effective in mobilising support at times of ‘threat’. It was also found that participation in this landscape has given new home-educators access to resources and confidence in their practice. The use of these resources and networks over time suggests a pedagogical journey that strengthens the transmission of values and production of identity, as learners get older. It concluded that home-education invites ideological conflict and internal struggle and that the appropriation of new technologies has both freed families from the old structures of school and placed them into new ones. This study sheds light on how some learning communities are transforming and being transformed by the tools used to reach an alternative destination in education. For home-education, the mixed role of new technologies surfaces a series of unresolved tensions, paradoxes and unanswered questions.

This thesis studies the markets, organizations, and people involved in the American drug trade in three sites: El Paso, Phoenix, and Chicago. The multisited analysis explores the relationships that exist within each site and provides an overview of how the drug trade differs in various contexts. This study illustrates that, contrary to the rhetoric of politicians and law enforcement actors over the past decade, there is not a vast, singular criminal conspiracy that organizes the drug trade with the intent of taking over cities in the U.S. Instead, there exists a flexible network of actors that operates largely in the margins of society. These actors participate in the network for various lengths of time and supply the ongoing demand for illicit drugs and/or the protection required for such activities in various U.S. markets. These participants include street and prison gangs, transportation organizations, and other groups and individuals, who often work as subcontractors, for employers they may not know, accepting risky tasks for what they may view as a lucrative opportunity. Moreover, this study shows that settings are important in determining how actors in the drug trade behave. This study demonstrates that when the state can effectively respond to violent acts, the criminal entrepreneurs seek to minimize publicly visible acts of violence, thus shifting acts of violence from the street to places out of public view or to prisons or jails. Ultimately, context must be taken into account if policy which seeks to reduce the harms of the drug trade in terms of unwanted usage and violence are to be effectively operationalized.

This thesis addresses a gap in knowledge of sustainability in relation to food – namely how the social ‘pillar’ is being interpreted and acted on, and by whom, in the UK’s conventional food supply. Sustainability is widely seen to have three pillars (environmental, economic and social), with the latter the least well understood. The thesis uses a governance perspective, where sustainability is viewed as a problem seen to be in need of intervention by public and other rule-making authorities. The research first reviewed UK-level state policy relating to social sustainability and food. It then explored organisational websites to find out what types of entity were active on social sustainability, and in what ways. The website research yielded data 135 separate entities, and was supplemented by 27 qualitative interviews. It was found that actors from a range of categories beyond companies producing food were involved in governing this area, such as financial actors, ‘infrastructure’ providers, consultants, advocacy groups and standards organisations. They used an array of governance techniques, including re-badging existing activities, outsourcing, advocacy, collaboration, and multiple forms of ‘audit’. The range of social concerns on which they acted was extensive, from nutrition and employment to education and animal welfare. They were both substantive (such as the nutritional content of food) and procedural (such as accountability). However, the activities were very inconsistently associated with sustainability, leading to the conclusion that social sustainability does not yet have a settled meaning in the context of the conventional food supply, and given the highly normative nature of its constituent concerns, its meaning may always be dynamic and contested. Overall, non-state governance was found to be ad hoc and opportunistic, but also resourceful and idealistic. In the absence of coherent state guidance, it served the actors’ diverse interests rather than any agreed public goal.

This study explores the concentration of convictions in Maltese families through a study of all inmates interned at the prison setting, Corradino Correctional Facility (CCF), between 1950 and 2010. The main aim of this study is to explore patterns of intergenerational crime for the first time in the Maltese islands, to understand how and why convictions run in Maltese families. In other words, the focus here is on the potential role of the family in crime continuity, the familial relationships between incarcerated inmates and the influence of these relationships on emerging crime trends. Quantitative methods are used to examine intergenerational presence and the evolvement of crime covering at least two to three generations of families. This is achieved through employing a risk factor approach to explore potential “crime promoters” that could act as transmission proxies in crime continuity. One in every three inmates registered at CCF belongs to the intergenerational cohort. Moreover, the findings from this study identify that having a sibling, a parent and/or a spouse convicted of a crime is a risk/mediating factor for crime continuity, and the risk is further augmented by the increased presence of criminal relatives. This is compounded by exposure to crime through co-offending, social networks between related inmates within the walls of CCF and also the time a person spends in their neighbourhood. The intergenerational cohort is more crime prolific as attested by intense conviction patterns and recidivism trends and is also inclined towards committing serious crimes and crimes that require more planning and organisation. The processes required for this may be accommodated by the family providing one with entrusted accomplices. The relatively larger crime families (5-node to 10+ node structures) together represent one quarter of the intergenerational cohort. As crime families increase in size, a blend of restricted and extended relationships features evidently attesting the concentration and continuity of offending. The `orma (a large group of people/children), hosting 54 related inmates symbolises the fusion of five crime families through assortative partnering; representing crime continuity across two to five generations. The occurrence of multiple risk factors for intergenerational offending in Malta that were simultaneously identified in this study include: economic inactivity; residing in neighbourhoods laden with crime families; poverty pockets and offenderresidence hotspots. These combined individual and ecological risk factors help to explain the concentration of convictions in a relatively small number of crime families.

Over the past 20 years there have been rapid developments in IT to create software that supports both learning and qualitative research. This thesis examines the design and use of that software, and argues that the exploratory approach in both learning and analysis produces superior outcomes. As such, the exploratory approach is seen as one that is particularly well supported by the software. A range of learning software and objects is discussed: Correlation Explorer, coMentor, learning websites, reusable learning objects, open educational resources, and videos. These are successive attempts by myself, and others, to develop software and other objects that support high quality learning. They do this in a variety of ways: by creating learning tools that promote exploration, by encouraging online collaboration and sharing, and by providing materials that can be used in a range of learning contexts. Some of the problems of their use are discussed, such as mistaken conceptions, and finding and adapting learning objects. In a parallel fashion, this thesis argues that the development of software to assist qualitative data analysis has supported a range of analytic approaches. By their very nature these tend to be exploratory – the thesis argues that the core of qualitative analysis involves exploration of the data. The new analytic tools the software offers afford especially good support to exploratory analyses. These tools include text searching, code hierarchies, code queries, and the use of charts and diagrams.

Downsizing is a widely known phenomenon and has been studied by the researchers quite frequently. This research project treats downsizing as a form of strategic change and focuses on how integrated human resource practices and role of change agent can contribute to the success of downsizing strategy. By success, it is meant here the level of return earned by investing in downsizing strategy. This study considers the economic perspective of downsizing and study downsizing as investment strategy. The idea on which this research is based is that organisations downsize to manage their investments in assets. The most common assets an organisation possesses are capital and financial assets. Downsizing may include change in human assets, physical assets, both human and physical assets. Organisations investment in strategic change of downsizing in expectation of greater financial benefits as compared to the initial costs associated with the downsizing. It is a deductive study with objective stance and positivist philosophy. Methodologically, the use of survey strategy and a combination of analytical procedures including: univaraite, bivariate and multivariate analysis demonstrates that integrated strategic human resource practices and the role of change agent are actually major contributors to earn higher level of returns on downsizing strategy. The findings of the study show that it is not always possible for a well-designed or modified communication strategy – where communication strategy is a part of strategic human resource practices – to communicate organisational downsizing to its stakeholders. The study makes contribution to the body of knowledge theoretically and on the practical side, it contributes to create awareness about the effects of strategic human resource practices and role of change agent at the time of downsizing.

Recent studies in marketing theories have developed the conceptualisation of marketing capabilities in for-profit businesses. Despite the evidence of the importance of marketing capabilities in shaping the direction of marketing in for-profit businesses, only a small amount of research investigating the concept of marketing capabilities in the non-profit organisation context. Building on the existing literature of marketing and non-profit marketing, this research offers an investigation into marketing capabilities and market orientation on performance in non-profit organisation. A quantitative research method was adopted and a survey was used to gather data from the UK-based non-profit organisations. Together with the literature review, research hypotheses and an operational model was developed. The model was tested with a survey which was directed at managers and executives of different UK non-profit organisations. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the survey responses. The structural model showed a good fit with the data and good convergent and discriminant validity as well as reliability stability. This research is the first to formulate and develop the concepts of marketing capabilities and market orientation in the non-profit context. The outcome of this research adds new perspectives to the growing body of non-profit marketing literature, and suggests directions for future research. This research also offers important implications for management bodies in the non-profit organisations and public policy-makers alike.

Although research on lesbian, gay and bisexual people has been recently increased within criminology that which specifically examines or includes transgender identities remains exceedingly rare. There is evidence that transgender individuals and LGB individuals both experience similar types of discrimination; however, there are important differences between those who identify as transgender (one’s gender identity) and those who identity as LGB (one’s sexuality). The present study provides qualitative data from 20 American officers and 19 English and Welsh constables on a particularly under-researched group within criminology: transgender police. Drawing upon theoretical perspectives from criminology, sociology and social psychology, this study examines if gender ideologies and hypermasculinity are monolithic across police cultures. By doing so, the reinforcement of gender binaries which impact gender ideologies and hypermasculinity were perceived as endemic, yet administratively addressable. The purpose of this research is to examine how transgender identities are perceived and how they are treated within policing. This research answers the following research questions: what are police perceptions towards transgender officers, and what are the consequences of these perceptions?; what are the occupational experiences and perceptions of officers who identify as transgender within policing?; and what are the reported positive and negative administrative issues that transgender individuals face within policing?. This research found that cisgender (i.e. non-transgender) police, particularly those who are heterosexual, collectively viewed LGB and transgender identities as violating conventional gender ideologies. Further, this research found that transgender police faced varied amounts of heterosexism and genderism based on how well they were able to conform to masculine or feminine ideals in addition to how their occupational transition was administratively managed. Yet some hopeful themes were found that are promising for the future acceptance of additional transgender identities within policing. For example, administrative improvements, such as supportive supervision and leadership alongside transition policies, can improve the occupational experiences of transgender officers and reduce the frequency of bias incidents, complaints and grievances. Further, it was discovered that officers who work alongside transgender colleagues are more understanding of transgender identities and certain social barriers that they face.