The study explored the validity of the assumptions concerning the education-occupation relationship with special reference to manpower planning in Pakistan. Empirical evidence both from the literature on manpower planning and from the real-working situation in Pakistan were collected. We collected data through questionnaires from the respondents. The main research question was: Is the education-employment relationship assumed in Pakistani manpower planning valid? The study is divided into nine chapters. It begins with an introduction to the study in which we highlight its significance, research questions, and the assumptions of the manpower requirements approach concerning this relationship. The second chapter reviews the manpower planning literature critically examining the main features of different methods of the manpower requirements approach. Chapter three presents the overall picture of the "economic structure of Pakistan". Chapter four describes in detail, the various manpower planning exercises conducted in Pakistan and the role of different organizations both at the Federal and Provincial level, involved in the planning exercises. This is followed by a "critical examination of manpower planning in Pakistan" in chapter five. Chapter six describes the "research questions and methodology"used in the research. The "sample and responses" is presented in chapter seven, followed by the "analysis and interpretation" presented in chapter eight focusing on their implications in Pakistan. Chapter nine concludes the study with a "summary of conclusions and recommendations" based on the findings of the present study. On the basis of the evidence collected in this research we concluded that the assumptions made concerning the education-occupation relationship in Pakistani manpower planning exercises are largely invalid.

The three central assertions of this thesis are: (1) that there are no moral grounds for the belief that lesbian and gay sexualities are inferior to heterosexualities, (2) that lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals and heterosexuals are equally valuable and worthy of respect as autonomous human beings with life plans of their own which they have the right to pursue, as long as they do not harm others, (3) that a philosophically informed rationale for arguing for lesbian and gay equality is required in today's aspiring democracies. The concepts of personal autonomy, participatory democracy and the democratic virtues are familiar themes within the Philosophy of Education. This thesis brings these themes to bear on the question of the place of lesbian and gay issues within a democratic education system. In doing so, it places the oppression of lesbians and gays within the broader context of the oppression of other members of the democratic community. It examines these complex and diverse powers of oppression with the aid of philosophical literature and with reference to the philosophical concepts of personal autonomy and participatory democracy. In the light of the previous discussions, philosophical skills, concepts and literature are employed to develop a critique of the educational policies of the British government in the 1980s and 90s and offer alternative policy suggestions based on more adequate accounts of human nature and social values. Finally, both the manner in which education should be controlled, and the form and content of education within a democratic state are critically examined.

This thesis addresses the problems inherent in teaching on war in schools. The focus is on the moral acceptability of killing in war, and the issues this raises for educators. It argues that war can only properly be presented in the curriculum as a controversial issue. In the first chapter it is maintained that war is undeniably a moral matter. Beliefs about aggression are explored to show that international military conflict is not an unavoidable feature of human existence and that war is a prima facie evil. Grounds for the absolute prohibition on taking life are then examined in Chapter 2, to demonstrate that pacifism is not an uncontestable stance. Just war thinking is investigated in Chapter 3. The immunity of civilians demanded by just war theory is shown to present particular difficulties in relation to twentieth century warfare. From the analysis in the first three chapters, the controversiality of war becomes plain. Some reactions to Peace Education, explored in Chapter 4, reflect the anxieties felt by many at the prospect of the moral dilemmas of war being debated in the classroom. The problems for the educator are exacerbated by fears of indoctrination and doubts over the value of teaching on war in schools. In Chapter 5 principles which ought to inform all teaching on war are identified. It is claimed that war must be explicitly presented as a controversial issue and that the teaching should be unbiased, balanced and impartial, adhering to coherence and consistency. Application of these principles to methodology is followed by reflection, in Chapter 6, on the selection of content for teaching on war. Consideration is given to knowledge and understanding, skills, values and dispositions. It is argued that nuclear war should be included and that the value of peace can legitimately be taught.

This thesis explores the changing meanings of ‘public’ education and its process of construction. More specifically, I focus on how Argentine education governance resulted from the meaning policy-makers attached to ‘the public’ at a given juncture, how such meaning evolved over time without a corresponding change in governance, and how there seems not to be within public discourse any significant questioning of this divergence between rhetoric and actual structures. I explore early and current discourses which used and defined ‘public education’, and analyse how these paradigmatic definitions shaped policy and constrained practice. The historical ‘junctures’ addressed in this thesis are firstly, the period of preinstitutionalisation of the Argentine education system, focussing especially on the seminal figure of Domingo F. Sarmiento. Secondly, the actual consolidation of the ‘official’ version of ‘state-public’ education, mainly achieved during Jose Ramos Mejia’s administration of the National Education Council, and over and against alternative discourse regimes, such as that emanating from the anarchist circles. The third period explored in this thesis is the contemporary. ‘Common sense’ definitions regarding the ‘public’ nature of ‘public’ education are breaking and the discursive space is opening. Newly admitted voices and versions of schooling seem to be emerging as a result of new understandings of the meaning of what constitutes ‘the public’. However, are these signs of structural reform? Is there any significant questioning within state-public education of its own forms of governance? The reconstruction of the Argentine educational past can be used as a framework for thinking about the reconstruction of its present. I deploy ‘Genealogy’, as understood within the writings of Michel Foucault, as my research strategy. The thesis is organised into seven Chapters. The first are introductory and subsequently I develop a detailed analysis of the varying positions of the public within different discursive paradigms. Finally, I offer some conclusions.

Despite open access to both primary and junior secondary school (JSS), non-enrolment and dropout have been countrywide problems in Ghana. This thesis investigates the nature of student dropout from JSS in one district in the country, through four main questions. What is the relationship between drop-out rates and school characteristics of JSS in K.E.E.A. district? What are the factors causing students to drop out? What are the processes of dropping out? What are the consequences of dropping out? The thesis investigates the above questions in two phases: the first on a macro level, by means of a school survey of all 39 schools in the district; and the second on a micro level, by means of an in-depth study of drop-outs from four schools. In the school survey, among the school factors included in the current study, few showed significant association with the drop-out rates. (However, in subsequent in-depth study, the school characteristics were found to exert some influence; for example, the schools with low drop-out rates had stronger teacher commitment). In the school survey, drop-out rates were clearly associated with gender. The in-depth study of 32 drop-outs from four schools suggested that the cause of drop-out was predominantly finance for males and pregnancy for females. In a comparison of 32 drop-outs and 32 stay-ins, where age, gender, academic achievement and economic status were matched, few differences were found in family composition and school experience. In the examination of matched pairs, drop-outs tended to display particular characteristics, such as belonging to a minority language/ethnic group, or having a slight physical handicap. Parental divorce was common among both drop-outs and stay-ins. The investigation of the process of leaving school revealed that the problem was more complicated than the surface cause might suggest; there were often multiple causes leading drop-outs to abandon their education. When problems such as parents' divorce, belonging to a minority language/ethnic group, or having a slight physical handicap were coupled with poverty, the combination of these factors could cause students to leave school. Although a cause might not be serious enough to effect drop-out by itself, many students were already on the verge of dropping out; thus very little pressure was necessary to cause them to discontinue their schooling. Girls were more vulnerable than boys. Girls in general showed fewer risk factors yet more girls than boys dropped out. In some cases girls would not have dropped out if they had not become pregnant. After leaving school, most drop-outs engaged in economic activities. Only a few drop-outs wished to go back to school, and almost all wished to undertake an apprenticeship to lead to selfemployment. The occupational skills learned in apprenticeship were gender-specific, and women had fewer choices. Inequality was evident at every step; girls were disadvantaged in enrolment, retention, examination results, and in economic activities after leaving school. Education can be an effective tool for empowering the disadvantaged population. However, schooling in rural Ghana was not always meeting the strategic needs of the disadvantaged. Drop-outs, therefore, searched for other alternatives in which they could be successful, such as self-employment in microenterprises.

This Thesis examines the consensus Hinduism in India shares with the ideology of liberal pluralism, and applies these reflections to religious education in the English context. The Rawlsian theory of justice models the political structure of a liberal plural society. Insights from communitarianism, relativism and Alasdair Maclntyre, are critically assessed and used to enlarge this model. Further, Carol Gilligan and Tom Kitwood emphasise that moral citizens in a plural society need, and must provide, a caring and open environment. The overlapping consensus across liberal pluralism and the Hindu tradition is assessed at the (i) theological and (ii) empirical levels. (i) Vedantic concepts are formulated to highlight a potentially strong consensus across Vedantic and liberal viewpoints. The presentation of God as a caring and egalitarian mother is emphasised. (ii) A landscape survey (sample size 550) was conducted to help focus the case-study investigations. Case-studies of four Indian young Hindus studied attitudes towards pluralism through discussions on Ayodhya 1992. The minute sample size of the casestudy meant that this data could not, in itself, justify inductive generalisation. Nevertheless, the case-studies did highlight some important and disconcerting voices, and did not contradict the conclusions from the larger landscape survey. The data warns that contemporary sentiment may be incongruent with the potentially strong consensus across liberal pluralism and Vedantic theology. The conditions responsible for this are explored. It is suggested that a combination of secularism and the exclusion of religious education from State education has contributed to ignorance of liberal theological imperatives and reinforced the communal isolation between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Amongst Hindus, this has caused suspicion and illiberal attitudes. The lessons from India are applied to the English plural situation. Juxtaposing Rawlsian theory aside recent pragmatic initiatives, a model for religious education suitable for the perpetuation of a liberal pluralism is proposed. This Interface Approach Towards a Liberal Indigenous Charter (IATaLIC) model respects liberal justice but recognises the classroom educator's limitations in motivating young persons with a strong religious identity towards a liberal disposition. Equally problematically, traditional religious leaders and scholars within the community may not care for justice. Hence the classroom religious educator, sympathetic towards both the liberal and traditional agendas, must work with the community leaders and scholars. Educators must encourage these personnel to excavate liberal principles from their religious texts, and then evangelise these principles throughout their community. Then, justice will be met and communal integrity maintained. Communal tension in India may be due to a liberal State prohibiting such an approach. In England, opportunities do exist for education to establish a consensus across religious and liberal viewpoints. Such opportunities should not be neglected.

Within sociology, technology is not a common subject for sociological analysis; technology is often treated as if it were no more than an asocial physical product. The argument of this thesis is that technology is as available for sociological analysis as any other social phenomenon. In popular representation, technology is treated as if it were special, and this treatment has had particular consequences for sociological analysis. This thesis attempts to put this special, deferential, attitude to technology aside, and to reveal technology as an unexceptional topic for sociological investigation. Stated baldly, two ideas are demonstrated in this thesis. The first of these is: The way that technology is constructed as a category in sociological literature makes the topic technology resistant to sociological analysis. The second idea follows from this: It is possible to develop a sociological account of technology by reference to a reconceptualised notion of work. The thesis considers those sociological approaches which appear to offer some potential for an elaborated sociology of technology. These move from conventionally academic discussions of a sociology of technology through marxian, culturalist and feminist accounts of work and of technology, to a consideration of the views of technology embodied in particular instances of policy and local action. A view of technology emerges which draws on the divergent traditions of marxian political economy and marxian cultural studies. The thesis concludes with an attempt to embrace both these perspectives in the development of a sociology of technology.

This work is a collection of chapters that revolve around the issues of representing and interpreting the educational experiences of students who live in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, in their attempts to succeed in post-compulsory education (higher and further Education). The work presents the story of a student from this population in the form of a testimonio, a methodological discussion on the nature and uses of testimonio in the light of Foucauldian genealogy principles, a proposal for the ethical exercise of reading and writing the testimonios produced, and three exercises of interpretation which address and problematize assumptions that operate in the understanding of villas and their inhabitants. The methodological discussion draws on principles of ethnography and Foucauldian genealogy to consider the use and nature of stories for the purposes of doing research. It presents and discusses the Latin American testimonio as a form of account that intends to represent the voice of subaltern groups with the aim of contributing to social change. The ethical discussion will look closely at the ways in which the researcher becomes a subject while doing research, both in his/her relationship with the object of study and in the relationship with his/herself. In this sense, it will look at the violence involved in the production of knowledge that is exerted in relation to an ‘object’ of study. Finally, this work includes three exercises of interpretation aimed at re-thinking villas through ‘using and troubling’ conceptual tools in the reading of the testimonios co-constructed in this research. The idea of villas as neighbourhoods abandoned by the State, separated from the city and outside the norm is re-thought. The interpretations produced in this set of chapters will look at the complexity of the position of the students producing testimonios in their condition as inhabitants of villas.

The following thesis is concerned with what I have termed professional discourse. I have used the term to call attention to two elements. With professional, I have indicated a recent move in educational analysis and research on teachers and other practitioners which represents a shift to a concern with practical activities, a tacit or explicit resistance to theory, and an attempt to displace the cognitive paradigm of research and theorizing. With the notion of discourse, I have indicated that, in order that the as yet limited debate on professional activity be opened up, it has to be linked with the discourse on practice. By the latter, I mean the opposition between practice and theory at the analytical level, and its most recent unfoldings and manifestations. The thesis identifies a vocabulary of practice, implicating such concepts as reflection, repetition, judgment, skill, example, exemplar, and a series of oppositional terms, such as saying/showing, competence/performance, explicit/implicit knowledge. These serve as a link between the professional and the practical. The problematic of the theory/practice relation in its various formulations is, then, explicitly addressed in the work of Dreyfus, Habermas, Lyotard and Derrida. The thesis claims that (a) it is Dreyfus' thesis on exemplarity that makes the link possible between the professional and the practical, but (b) it is only with Habermas, Lyotard and Derrida that the professional/practical discourse can take its linguistic turn. Then the thesis addresses the implications of the linguistic turn. It argues that it is only through an examination of the metaphysical presuppositions of the linguistic turn that the claim of professional discourse to be free from the determinations of theory can be assessed; in particular, the research methodologies of professional discourse have not made a decision concerning metaphysics and thus they are reduced to methodological technicity.

This thesis is concerned with theorising educational change. This involves the identification of a distinct theoretical object; the conceptualisation of a dynamic of educational change and the delimitation of the fundamental units of analysis. Together, these provide the basis for the development in Part One of the thesis of a content-theoretical model. Working within a Marxist Reproduction problematic, power and domination are theorised in terms of Social Forms - wage, state and civil-forms - which are the product of the social relations of production within the Capitalist Mode of Production. The education system is taken to be the most public and formal site of their reproduction. Since social forms are a feature of the social structure, including the education system, a 'translation effect' can be identified between different levels of analysis. This approach therefore entails recognition of the fact that reproduction is contested and has a political aspect. The object of analysis has been to reveal this political aspect by delineating the relationship between the economic and the political ( the wage and state-forms), thereby demonstrating how 'the political' makes possible the reproductive role of the education system. In Part Two of the thesis, this content-theoretical model is employed in an analysis of the introduction of the 'new vocationalism' into Further Education. Focussing upon the FE teachers' trade union organisation NATFHE, this analysis reveals that, faced with the introduction of the new vocationalism in the shape of the Youth Training Scheme, a 'strategy of opportunism' has been the dominant logic informing their collective action. Such a strategy is shown to contribute to the proletarianisation of FE teachers, thereby rendering their opposition to the new vocationalism ineffective.