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.

Recent labour market studies have focussed on the increasing importance of non-standard forms of employment. This study on agency temps aims to contribute to this body of literature, but proposes an alternative perspective. Focussing on the temp's particular employment relationship rather than on the approach of the secondary labour market or the currently fashionable 'flexibility debate', this thesis suggests that the temp's three-way employment relationship is a determinant of the temp's working situation. Labour law literature has shown that the temp's employment status is open to conjecture because of what has been called this 'ambiguous, legal relationship. Using this approach, this thesis suggests that the temp has two 'social' employers, who must be recognised as, important before categorising temps as either 'flexible' or part of the secondary labour market. Furthermore, the temp's situation is characterised by temporality and mobility which give rise to certain feelings of freedom. The temp's status as 'stranger' and the way in which this operates within the three-way employment relationship are therefore an important influence on the temp's experience of work. This thesis suggests that the, temp is a 'stranger'/outsider to the workplace. Temps occupy a position of mobility and temporality defined by their threeway employment relationship. Temps may therefore say that they feel 'free' because they have two social employers and they do not feel that they are employees of either. Temps may experience certain perceptions held by management and permanent co-workers about their ability to perform certain work tasks. Indeed, temps may find that the work they are given is boring and routine. This thesis argues that these conditions are influenced by the structure of the temps' three-way relationship within which temps are 'strangers'. It is not merely a case, then, that temps occupy a secondary labour market position, for example, but that this position must be recognised as including two nominal employers who may collude together in determining the temp's working situation.

This research addresses the construction of gender identities within the context of Initial Teacher Training in Physical Education within England. The life story narratives of ten female student teachers of physical education arc documented and analysed, drawing upon a feminist theoretical framework informed by tenets of poststructuralist thinking. These approaches assisted in accommodating and explaining the contradictory social positions that the women engaged in, within a variety of discourses, as they constructed multiple, diverse and often contradictory gender identities. The participants consist of ten determined and highly successful women (strong minds) who have much to say about their agency (strong words) yet simultaneously find themselves complicit to a number of traditional gender discourses, particularly in terms of the body - an awareness of which increases during the process of training to become a Physical Education Teacher (trained bodies). Such complexity precludes any finite conclusions being drawn. Rather the thesis engages in, and extends, the discussions surrounding the thcorising of gender, resistance, and agency within teacher training in Physical Education. The stories capture some fundamental shifts in the place of feminisms in post-modemity or high modernity, with a simultaneous use of both, to borrow Giddens (1991) terms, 'emancipatory' and 'life politics' styles of feminism; with gender inequality defined as a collective problem, but with an individual solution. Moreover, a number of gendered inequalities at both the structural and micro-political level are highlighted. In particular, a liberal discourse of equal opportunities appeared to mask the institutionalisation of 'otherness' these women experienced in teaching practice, and supported the cssentialisation of male and female identities. Whilst there aren't tales of radical changes in their teaching of Physical Education, the narratives alluded to their embodied vision, and in acts of naming, the agency they had for telling, constructing and shaping their lives is revealed. As such, the thesis concludes by suggesting that teacher education and educational research need to embrace more explicitly and centrally a framework which considers further, the role of gender in the formation of a variety of teachers identities. Moreover, in developing more critical reflexive forms of teacher education, a number of strategies of intervention which draw upon critical post-structuralist perspectives are outlined.

This thesis is an investigation into the accounting practices by which British and American expatriates make sense of Western involvement in the Middle East. Based on the analysis of an audio-taped archive of some sixty hours of face-to-face interview material recorded in Kuwait during a ten-month period in the year immediately following the Persian Gulf Conflict of 1990-91, this project explores the interactional work by which speakers situate their conversational contributions in dialogic anticipation of a range of competing but mutually co-implicative demands for accountability which they take their talk and their participation in the circumstances of that talk to entail. Specifically, speakers are seen to manage the productive tension between the competing demands for accountability to conflicting assumptions about the nature of prejudice on the one hand, and the awareness of and/or sensitivity to cultural difference on the other, in and while attending to the situated concerns for their warrant in making the claims that they do and the degree to which they are implicated in those claims in and through the activity of their production. In this way, conflicting assumptions are show to be constitutive of the social practices whereby speakers account for Western involvement abroad.

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.

The issue of residents' satisfaction with their dwelling units and their neighbourhoods is one of the growing interests in many arenas. The aim of this dissertation was to examine the quality of life of residents in Briardale, Newlands West. The prime intention was to investigate the influence of various life domains on quality of life of the sample populations. The sample population was stratified into three groups, viz. Dwellers in single cottages, semi-detached and duplex units and the flats sector. It has been revealed in the final analysis that neighbourhood deficits influenced neighbourhood satisfaction. It was further established that in addition to dwelling and neighbourhood deficits, socio-economic characteristics influenced the quality of life of residents. The flat dwellers were dissatisfied with their environment and being renters, this influenced their quality of life. Unemployment was highest among this sector. The salient reason for dissatisfaction amongst most residents was the lack of recreational and entertainment facilities, cultural and neighbourhood organizations and the poor quality of the flats and duplex units. The greatest degree of interaction with the neighbours was amongst the flat dwellers and the lowest level of community participation was also among this group. The residents had no confidence in the local civic groups since these groups had done very little in the last decade to improve their quality of life. A great degree of dissatisfaction arose because none of the residents were consulted about their housing needs prior to occupying their dwellings. In spite of the dissatisfactions expressed, most of the residents preferred to remain in this area because of its easy accessibility. In the light of the above, various suggestions and recommendations are tendered in the hope that all stakeholders (planners, policy makers, civic movements and consumers) can utilize this information to improve the quality of life of all residents in the country. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1996.

Purpose. To explore the experiences of healthcare managers at a reformed CSSS (Centres de sante et de services sociaux) in Montreal, Quebec and to document the provincial reforms. The objective is to understand the managers' experiences during a period of transition. / Method. This study consists of two methods: a document review of relevant policies and reforms of Quebec's health and social services. Secondly, qualitative interview methods were used to explore the experiences of seven managers within a CSSS and their attitudes towards the reform. / Results. Managers described the following: a new window of opportunity, importance of leadership in the reform process, distorted communication, environment of trust, and culture of the organisation. / Conclusion. Quebec's health and social services is an ongoing discourse. Distorted communication creates an atmosphere of uncertainty which hinders the reform process. Implications include the need for further research in understanding healthcare professionals and other actors in the reform process.

Managing for Survival explores the ways in which individuals holding management roles in secular non-government human service organisations in South Australia deal with the potential and actual conflict between their personal values, the implicit values of their agency and the tasks required of them by the demands of the economic and political environment in which their agency operates. Changes in the requirements and practices of management, due to changes in government funding and support as a result of economic reform, are the focus of the research. Particular attention is paid to the strategies adopted by managers to cope with the shifting priorities and requirements of a restructured community service industry. / thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2003.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, School of Social Work, 2004. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references.