The importance of language education, and education more generally, in contexts of protracted crisis and emergencies is widely acknowledged as a potent tool for nurturing the wellbeing of individuals. It is also important in fostering development within afflicted societies. Despite this and an increasing interest in the improvement of the quality of education in these contexts (UNHCR, 2017; UNESCO, 2017; UNRWA, 2011), there has been scant scholarly attention given to language education models that emerge from those vulnerable settings, and to how they may differ from competence approaches developed in peace-time and in contexts of free mobility. Grounded in the theoretical framework of the capabilities approach for a holistic understanding of language education (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000; Crosbie, 2014), and motivated by rare empirical research investigating language pedagogies in contexts of pain and pressure, this study explores and co- constructs a grounded model for language education in the context of the siege of the Gaza Strip (Palestine). The Gaza Strip has been under siege since 2007, when Israel declared it ‘hostile territory’. The siege of Gaza prevents the free circulation of people, goods, and basic materials. As a result, two million people live, many as refugees of long standing, in a condition of ‘forced immobility’ (Stock, 2016) and worsening living conditions. These have been further affected detrimentally by three military operations in the last decade. The siege affects people’s mental and physical wellbeing, and the development of Palestinian society. In addition to the military hegemony, an epistemological hegemony shaped by orientalising tendencies perturbs all narratives about the ‘question of Palestine’ (Said, 1979; 1980; 1986). The chosen research methodology involves a cycle of critical participatory action research (CPAR), conducted online. The CPAR consists in the development, delivery, observation, analysis and evaluation of a series of specially designed workshops with 13 pre-service English teachers from the Gaza Strip. The aim of the research design is to investigate localized, critical, and creative language pedagogies. The workshop series focuses on the use of creative methods in language education, specifically on the use of Palestinian ‘Arts of Resistance’. The findings in this thesis demonstrate that: (a) pre-service English teachers value teaching approaches which move beyond competency-driven aims and instead engage with students’ dreams, hopes, values, and wellbeing; (b) the capabilities approach offers a lens through which language pedagogy can be framed within contexts of particular vulnerability; (c) participants value the use of Palestinian arts-based methods, as these enable a pedagogical practice which connects politics and aesthetics; and (d) the online network established during the research encounter shaped and was shaped by materiality and in relationality. A synthesis of these findings provides a metaphorical representation of an ecological language education in the context of pain and pressure.

Inclusive education is a recent phenomenon in the education system in Libya. It is about giving equal educational opportunities to all students, whether with disabilities or, not in the mainstream school or classroom. Schools are considered as social institutions that should endeavour to enhance all children’s lives through appropriate teaching and learning practices. However, the school culture, which is generally defined as ‘how things are done here’ is vital for the promotion of inclusive education. The aim of this study were to explore teachers’ perceptions and attitudes towards inclusive education practice in supporting children with disabilities in Libya taking into account the findings of the General People’s Committee of Education report (GPCE,2008). Teachers appeared to play a vital role in enhancing inclusive education through their practices. In order to achieve this aim, the study includes a focused literature review of areas including inclusive education, disability and school culture. Given the nature of this research an interpretive epistemological position was adopted. This study adopts qualitative analysis to collect and analyse the data and present the findings. Content analysis was used for analysing qualitative data gathered via semi-structured interviews. A total of 36 interviews were conducted, with 12 teachers from special schools, 12 teachers from primary schools and 12 teachers from secondary schools. Results from the qualitative data indicated that teachers support inclusive education, however, they had reservations on the inclusion of students with severe disabilities. Several factors were identified to influence teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion. The most common factors were the severity of disability that the students had, inadequate training of teachers on teaching students with disabilities, inadequate government funding, lack of specialised resource personnel, lack of appropriate equipment and resources to support students and teachers in the teaching and learning process. Limited commitment from the Ministry of Education and limited participation and consultation of teachers on policy and curriculum design were also identified as contributing factors for non-inclusion of students with disabilities in mainstream schools.

There has been considerable controversy over the effective approach to teach early reading known as phonics versus whole language. However, synthetic phonics as prime method emerged from a review (Rose, 2006a) of the teaching of early reading in England. The Coalition government declared the phonics screening test at the end of Year 1. In order to raise the standard in literacy the new national curriculum (2013) has been introduced with more high expectations for every year group. The government has also announced its obligation to give more freedom to schools and teachers to tailoring the curriculum according to children's needs. This change in policy and accountability requirements has brought attention towards teachers who are the agents of change. There is a need to explore teachers' perceptions about several reading approaches and the impact of change on their practices. This study was conducted after the implementation of the new national curriculum (DfE, 2013), in attempting to explore teachers' pedagogical knowledge and their practices in the teaching of early reading. By adopting a qualitative case study approach, 11 Early Years and Key Stage 1 teachers' perceptions were explored through semi-structured interviews. In addition, observations of their classes were taken into consideration. Thematic analysis of data concluded that there were some inconsistencies between teachers' perceptions and their classroom practices due to their experience, education, training and the level of class they taught in. Finally, it can be argued here that there is no one single approach to teach reading. The government is trying to increase reading attainment by increasingly being prescriptive about what teachers should teach and how they should teach it. It can also be argued here that too much national assessment at every step of learning increases the level of pressure on teachers and decreases the opportunities of creating children's interest in reading.

Feedback for student teachers during their work-based learning in schools offers significant advantages over feedback in the university-based element of their degree programme. Students receive frequent, often immediate, feedback from an experienced teacher who sees their gradual development and has only a few students to manage. This includes formal feedback linked to assessment criteria but also opportunities for informal, verbal feedback and dialogue that supports socialisation as a colleague. This study investigates how student teachers feel about feedback on their classroom teaching and what they do with that feedback. The study therefore asks how effective all this feedback is in terms of its impact on students’ learning and on their identity as a teacher. A mixed-methods approach first used a large scale survey of student teachers to consider their response to key issues highlighted in the literature on feedback. Semi structured interviews then focused on subtleties in how students’ understanding of feedback, and their engagement with it, relates to how they see their own learning needs. Analysis indicates an overall positive experience: students appreciate feedback from their tutors in schools. Feedback from this workplace setting could therefore be a useful model for improvement elsewhere in their programme. In particular, feedback is valued when it positions the student as a learner, but still respects their developing identity as a teacher. However, students typically adopt passive recipient roles regarding feedback. Even if feedback was prompt, detailed, personalised and frequent, its effectiveness was limited since students failed to engage with questioning or co-creating feedback to develop more sophisticated meaning. The analysis suggests that over-simplified models of teachers learning through reflection could encourage students to see learning from feedback as a mostly private activity. Improving students’ use of feedback therefore requires changes in the way feedback and dialogue are conceptualised within models of teacher reflection.

Inclusion is a major focus of government policies worldwide. It is promoted by international agencies aiming to transform education systems in order to respond to the diversity of all learners. However, this research argues that not enough attention has been paid to the values that underpin the policies that promote inclusion, as well as to the beliefs of significant actors that participate in the policy process and which are considered to affect practice. Hence, the extent to which the move to inclusive education is substantive or linguistic is not clear. The complex conceptualisation of policy implementation as well as the need to study the conditions under which education policies work, encourages the use of complexity theory, which focuses on the idea that the interaction of multiple constituent agents has as an impact the emergence of phenomena-forms and events. The number of educational researchers who adopt sociomaterial approaches such as those developed by complexity theory and actor-network theory has increased. It is believed that complexity theory could contribute to our conceptualisation of policy processes, enhancing our understanding of how education policies become implemented and work. Underpinned by policy sociology and complexity theory as a conceptual framework, this cross-sectional and mixed methods research explores the way that the behaviour policy Better Relationships, Better Learning, Better Behaviour is interpreted and translated in mainstream secondary schools in Scotland. Additionally, this study examines whether complexity theory could contribute to our understanding of policy implementation in order to understand the extent to which the shift from behaviour to relationships in Scottish inclusive education is substantive and based on beliefs that promote inclusive education. In addition to questionnaires distributed to secondary mainstream schools in Scotland, data collection entailed interviews with policymakers, support teachers, support staff and education officers, and focus groups with pupils. The analytic framework is based on complexity theory in order to explore the implementation of the policy.

This study explores how stories of 'lived experience' are used in journalism and journalism education. As a piece of biographical research, it seeks to analyse the relationship between autobiography and journalism in an age, which has been described as 'autobiographical' (Plummer, 2001). Its principal feature is a series of in-depth interviews with high profile, experienced broadcast journalists who reflect on their experiences as journalism educators at the BBC College of Journalism. The role of personal stories in journalism education is considered, since stories are 'hard-wired' into journalism as a craft (Marr, 2004). The research is informed by Mishler's (1999) study of craftartists' narratives of identity and the notion of journalism as craft-artistry emerges as a theme. It also considers the ways in which stories are told and re-told, referring to Denzin's (1989) concept of interpretive biography and 'pentimento' as well as the importance of time, memory, location and the role of epiphanies in self-stories. The relationship between professional and personal identity is considered and the emergent concept of 'autobiographical journalism' is utilised to scrutinise the role of self within the context of the newsroom and the classroom. Here, autobiographical journalism as catharsis and the confessional genre provide some context. Impartiality is a key concept for the professional practice of journalists and for journalism educators and this study considers its importance through a reflexive analysis. The post-Leveson landscape and the need to restore trust in journalism provide important context to the study. My background as a journalist, who worked for the BBC and my current role as a journalism educator inform this thesis, which seeks to ascertain the role of personal stories in inculcating good practice. The participants emphasise the importance of credibility and utility in sharing their experiences with others in a learning environment. The thesis indicates that good practice and a pride in the craft-artistry of journalism could be inculcated through placing the storied selves of self-reflexive practitioners at the heart of the learning experience.

This research examined the perceptions of students, teachers and parents from one school in the South East of England about how and why sex and relationships education (SRE) was taught in their school. The research is framed around the underlying aims, assumptions and discourses within SRE. This research found a disparity between what the teachers thought they had taught, and what the students experienced. The students, teachers and parents all advocated the benefit of schools being able to provide ‘balanced’ SRE compared with other sources. However, this balance was interpreted differently as teachers and parents wanted a greater emphasis on the negative health outcomes of sexual relationships in order to ‘balance out’ the perceived unrealistic and overly positive messages the students may receive through the media. Students, teachers and parents all wanted loving, stable relationships to be promoted and casual relationships discouraged; although marriage was not seen as particularly important. Students wanted to talk about homosexual relationships and aspects of love and desire; however, teachers struggled to find an appropriate way to do this. Both students and teachers felt the use of outside speakers were an effective way of teaching SRE — not only because they were experts in the field, but also due to the degree of ‘relational distance’. From analysing the perceptions of the students, teachers and parents, a public health discourse, delivered through a rational educational approach, was identified as being the most dominant discursive formation. This discourse places an emphasis on controlling sexual behaviour in order to reduce sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and teenage pregnancies. A conservative discourse based on a traditionalist view of sexual relationships and an empowerment discourse were also present but they appeared to be less dominant, whereas other discourses such as libertarian and discourses of desire were virtually absent from the perceptions of how SRE was delivered in this school. The recommendations are that there is a need for further debate about the aims of SRE in relation to the dominance of public health and that interactive teaching methods and outside speakers/ teachers are utilised more to teach SRE.

'Leaders In Need’ is a qualitative study contributing to an understanding of the mechanisms for exploring and identifying leadership development requirements and needs. It explores the views of senior leaders in local government as they reflect upon their individual leadership development needs and the organisational requirements expected of them. The research identifies four themes: becoming a leader, organisational requirements, individual needs and potential for improvements. Theme one explores the entry, experience and education of leaders as they prepare to make a transition from professional to leader. Theme two explores organisational requirements, organisational change, challenge and capability. Theme three explores how individual development needs are defined, identified and satisfied. Theme four explores whether improvements can be made to the mechanisms for investigating organisational development requirements and individual development needs. The research finds that leaders and their organisation do have development needs and requirements responsive to transformative modernisation. There are processes and mechanisms available to assist organisations and individuals explore and identify leadership development. When they are applied they are perceived to lack the rigour and effectiveness to adequately explore and identify leadership development requirements and needs. Perceived performance levels influence the mechanisms for exploring development requirements and needs. Leaders direct personal development activity when performance levels are perceived as acceptable. The organisation directs leadership development when performance levels are perceived as unacceptable. There is potential to improve a leadership development response by ensuring individual and organisational development activities overlap

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The thesis describes an investigation into Chinese adult learners’ learning experiences through case studies of two e-learning programmes conducted in China that were significantly different from each other in their original design. Margaret Archer’s critical realist account of structure and agency informs the theoretical framework of this study. The interactions between individual learners and their e-learning environments combined with their wider social cultural contexts, as manifested in their e-learning experiences are examined mainly through the lens of learners’ reflexivity. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and detailed accounts on learners’ experiences are given from qualitative data, obtained from interviews, digital diaries, informal discussions and reports. Learners were found to be exercising high level of reflexivity as the basis of their decision making in every aspects of their learning, including their commitment to learn, the formation of a learning community, the use made of learning technologies, adaptation to a new learning environment. The findings suggest that e-learning experiences are not technology-driven nor context determined. These findings have significant implications for e-learning design by reassuring the importance in understanding learners’ personal power and social context. They also caution against uncritical direct transfer of educational practice from one context to another.