Being a teacher is key to my identity. That I remain committed to a system characterised by low morale, poor conditions, compromised values and disparaged beliefs, surprises me. This thesis asks why and how I sustain a life in public education and what relevance my story may have for others. It poses the following questions: • What values, beliefs & educational approaches are important to me in education & why? • What experiences have contributed to the resilience of my approach to education? • How does my account relate to those of particular others? • What implications does the exploration of the values & beliefs of myself & others have for my present action in education? Such questions are important because of increasing evidence of teacher unhappiness in the UK. This thesis claims that systematic attention to fundamental beliefs promotes change and can build capacity. It traces a journey from introspective analysis towards public and collegiate action in education - a journey I think may be useful for others. Using the systematic study of autobiographies, diaries, letters, key influences and conversations, I seek answers to my questions by examining deeply held beliefs that prompt each major or minor decision. Values subsequently run through this thesis. The resulting enhanced self-understanding and professional activity is used to generate a theoretical basis and practical guidance for staff development in education. An original feature of this ethnographic research is that close friends were research participants. Friends form and fix each other’s’ stories and support the actions that sustain us. They are central to our resilience and other aspects of well-being. Values-conversations with these friends confirmed that values can form young, and remain relatively unchanged over long periods. Our conversations deepened relationships and our joint resolve to act in-line with our values. A common commitment to creativity, though based on different definitions, defined our identities, directed our values and sustained friendship itself. This thesis is also distinctive in its interdisciplinarity. My art works form a deliberately silent narrative argued to be as true, fluid and vulnerable as my words. I also use a musical structure called sonata form systematically to interrogate my conclusions. A blend of methodologies, dominated by auto-ethnography calls upon other interpretative approaches including: art and music criticism, grounded theory and action-based study. This mix of methodologies expressed my cross-curricular thinking and provided the engine that powered the staff development action recorded in the penultimate chapter. The term ‘interdisciplinary praxis-focussed autoethnography’, is introduced to emphasise the intention of action through autobiography which characterises this work. My approach shows that living/working in accordance with core values, developing/nurturing friendships and identifying/extending our distinctive creative strengths have been central to me and my friends’ resilience. This realisation changed my practice in teacher education. It strengthened my belief that teacher well-being is key to improving school experience for children.

This thesis focuses on an investigation which aimed to explore how teachers interpret their roles and construct their professional identities in relation to school improvement and how they can be supported in their contributions in this respect. The initial research questions were set within a conceptual framework linking teacher professionalism and school improvement, in particular the symbiotic and reciprocal relationships between individuals and organisations which were illuminated by the concepts of agency and structuration. Research aims, questions and conceptual development were reflexively and iteratively modified, to encompass the significance of school context in influencing professional identity and agency and to explore intractable dilemmas arising in interpreting external and internal policy requirements in relation to personal values. The implications of narrative enquiry for validity were acknowledged, focusing on distilling the ‘essence’ of situated professional selves and identities through portraiture to explore these substantive themes. The professional values, priorities and aspirations of six teachers were investigated through semi-structured interviews incorporating elicitation tools, and presented as a form of nested case study where individual portraits were set within the organisational landscapes of their two contrasting schools, based on evidence representing a range of perspectives. This involved navigating the methodological territory between narratives and portraits. Analysis is presented as an ‘exhibition’, with three ‘galleries’ exploring different themes emerging from the empirical evidence. This enabled comparisons to be made between the stance that teachers choose to take in relation to internally or externally driven change and their own motivations, aspirations and actions to achieve outcomes according with their personal values and concerns. The research contributes new understandings in relation to how, within ‘imposed’, ‘selected’ and ‘constructed’ organisational environments (Bandura, 2001), teachers’ professional identities are, to a greater or lesser extent, imposed or constructed. This in turn affects their agency in influencing their professional environments aligned with their personal professional values and aspirations. The empirical evidence therefore shows the significance of organisational cultures, leadership and individual agency, in influencing how professional environments and identities are constructed or imposed. A new model is derived from the empirical evidence and parallel conceptual development, contrasting complementary epistemological, ontological and agentic perspectives for schooling. This provides a framework for developing professional identity and professionality, in which individual agency is considered a vital dimension. Since teachers have a predominantly narrative understanding of reality, it is argued that narrative and visual approaches are key to such school improvement work. Making the agentic perspective visible and developmental supports key components of agency - intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness and self-reflectiveness (ibid.). The resulting levels of engagement give grounds for optimism in supporting teachers’ more powerful individual and collective agency, including working critically and strategically with systemic reform, contributing proactively to local initiatives for change and pursuing personal change agendas.

This research investigated the ways in which Management Information Systems (MIS) support learning in FE colleges, based on an analysis of data deriving from respondents in three colleges. The study has adopted Weick’s (1995) theory of Interpretive Sensemaking (SM) as an underpinning theory to explore teacher and managerial responses to discourses of using data to inform decisions. The study is qualitative in nature and uses interviews, documents, and participant observation data, to understand and explain social phenomena. A case study methodology is used in this study as it provides an opportunity for in depth analysis of the role of MIS using various sources and methods of investigation. Two methods of data collection are used. The first data collection method used in this study is documentary collation and analysis. The document sources include sets of policy and procedure texts. The documentary analysis also includes the internal reports generated by MIS software or provided by MIS staff on schedule. The second method of data collection employed in the study is interviews. The interviews data collected are from one to one semi structured interviews and focus groups. In total 60 members of staff were interviewed from which 20 participants were interviewed in focus groups. The study suggests that the main providers of data come from MIS services in colleges. MIS provide tools to make the data available for practitioners to use on a daily basis to support learning. The study suggests that there are some barriers which do not help practitioners to use the data effectively in order to improve learning in FE colleges. This study reveals a number of recommendations for FE colleges to embrace to improve the use of data in decision making and learning: easy access to data, data integration, good communication, professional development, collaboration, motivation to use data, available support in place, purpose to use data, data quality, useful and user friendly software tools, and ownership of data. Additionally two original frameworks have been evolved, a framework for effective MIS in FE colleges and a framework for steps to improve the effective use of data in support of education and learning. Both frameworks can be adopted and implemented easily in FE colleges and can enable educators to support learning and monitor success and achievements effectively.

Play is widely recognized as a natural ability and fundamental right of children. In educational settings, the idea of integrating play into early childhood education to promote children’s learning and development has been continually advocated by researchers, policy-makers and practitioners. However, as play is a culturally situated concept, it may be understood differently by teachers within different social and cultural contexts in terms of its function and value to children’s development and its relation with learning. Moreover, Chinese educational reform underlines play-based pedagogy in early childhood education. This raise questions about how play is interpreted by Chinese early childhood teachers as a vehicle for early learning and motivate the current study to locate play in a Chinese context to explore kindergarten teachers’ understanding and execution of play in practice. A qualitative design with in-depth, open-ended interviews, persistent classroom observation, and documentary review was employed. Twenty-four early childhood education practitioners, including three administrators, three interest class teachers and eighteen teachers, two from each of nine classes in three different Chinese kindergartens were interviewed and the interactions between the teachers and individual children were video-recorded during playtime. A number of relevant official policy documents, regulations and kindergarten curriculum plans were collected to offer context for the research. Data was analyzed by adopting content analysis and constant comparison. The findings show that the teachers construct a notion of ‘eduplay’ in the kindergarten educational settings, which emphasizes more on the instrumental value than the intrinsic value of play. A combination of a cultural transmission/direct approach and an emergent/responsive approach is revealed in their practice. The teachers adopt diverse roles in play. Although didactic features are evident in teachers’ role in play, the teachers show strong desire to play a ‘whole teacher’ role and establish a parallel relationship with children. They share a similar view that teachers’ active involvement can contribute to children’s learning in play and they are more likely to exert their influence on children’s play through direct intervention than play provision. Moreover, the findings reveal that the teacher-child interactions in play in this study are less likely to scaffold children’s learning. There seems to be a tension between teachers’ concerns of safety and children’s intense involvement in play. Three main influences, including the influences from the cultural context, the influences from the institutional context, and the influences from the teachers’ personal context were identified affecting the implementation of play in kindergarten practice.

Background: Emotional and behavioural problem in children and adolescence is an important public health issues. However, there is currently limited epidemiological evidence in terms of its prevalence or stability over time in Malaysia, and limited evidence about the role of parenting programmes in supporting parents and children experiencing such problems. Methods: This research comprises a longitudinal community-based study that measured the prevalence of emotional and behavioural problems among school children aged seven to eight years and thirteen to fourteen years in Malaysia, and assessed their stability at six months. The study also consisted of an evaluation of a parenting programme known as the Khalifah method in which the parents of a group of children aged seven to eight years who had been screened in the prevalence study as having emotional and behavioural problems, were invited to take part in the programme. Parents, teachers and children aged 13 to 14 were assessed at baseline and 6 months time using the SDQ, which was also validated in the Malay Language, as part of the current study. Results: The prevalence of emotional and behavioural problems in Malaysian school children was 9.3% for teacher-report, 8.5% for parent-report, and 3.9% for child-report. There was no significance difference in the prevalence of emotional and behavioural problems over a six-month period, except for Teacher-report emotional (p=0.006) and conduct problems scores (p=0.000) as well as child-report Total Difficulties scores (p=0.000) and emotional problems scores (p=0.002). Four variables were significant predictors of EBD at time 2 – being male, younger, from a low-income family and having externalizing behaviour problems at time 1. Finally the results of the pilot evaluation of the effectiveness of a Parenting Programme suggests that it was effective in reducing behaviour problems among children whose parent’s received the intervention after 6 months (p=0.001), as well increasing parent’s mental well-being (p=0.000). Conclusion: This study shows that the prevalence of EBD among Malaysian children is similar to western countries, and is stable over a 6-month period. It also provides preliminary evidence to suggest that a parenting programme is effective in reducing conduct problems among affected children.

This dissertation has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Glasgow EdD. As someone with a professional background in education, government and parliament, and an academic background in politics and citizenship, I was keen to identify an area of study that might draw upon these areas of interest. The emergence of A Curriculum for Excellence as a major new policy initiative in the mid-2000s appeared to represent an ideal case study scenario for just such a study. I wished to examine the ways in which this policy had been initiated, formulated, developed and implemented. In particular I was very aware of the optimistic and aspirational claims around new and improved modes of policymaking that had contributed to the discourse around devolution in the late 1990s. I wanted to test these claims in the light of the development of A Curriculum for Excellence. In order to address these claims I developed a conceptual framework that placed a strong emphasis on themes of genealogy and governance. Through this framework, and a methodology based on literature review and in depth interviews with some key participants in the policy process, I hoped to scrutinise some aspects of the Scottish policy process that are rarely examined. These include the influential role of individuals and organisations, the ways in which policy is mediated in an apparent pursuit of consensus and the consequences of this approach to policy. My core research questions were: 1. To what extent was the genealogy of A Curriculum for Excellence influenced and shaped by the post-devolutionary context? 2. Does an analysis of the governance of A Curriculum for Excellence provide evidence of a change in post-devolution policymaking in education? 3. What does the educational policymaking architecture look like in post-devolution Scotland? In answering these questions I identified a number of key findings, including that the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) development can be situated in a policy context that has been informed by the advent of devolution. It provides partial evidence of a change in the post devolution conduct of education policy, although some procedures for policy consultation should be reviewed and enhanced further, with a greater focus on deliberative forms of engagement at all stages in the policy process. Policy goals should be stated more clearly and in ways that can facilitate review and evaluation. Procedures should also be put in place to promote greater continuity of staff and institutions involved in the core development and delivery of major policy initiatives in Scottish education. The policy architecture that has emerged in the post-devolution period is a hybrid model that has not resolved the longstanding tension between consensual, pluralistic and mediating instincts on the one hand; and centralised control and governance on the other. The informal and organic system of checks and balances in the Scottish policy landscape that had evolved in the pre-devolutionary era has to a large extent been retained. This has implications for the scope, speed and ambition of any policy development and implementation, as exemplified by CfE in this case study. In order to improve the prospects for effective policy change in future, I recommend that the roles of the different organisations with responsibility for educational policymaking in Scotland should be reviewed and clarified. Furthermore the procedures for policymaking should be clarified, formalised and made more transparent in the same way as legislative procedures were reviewed as part of the devolution settlement.

This study examines the concept of ‘difficulty and challenge’ in curriculum, teaching and learning of young learners. It draws its data from the inschool and out-of-school experiences and perspectives of high-attaining, ‘gifted and talented’ pupils, mainly of late primary-school and early secondary-school age, and from their educators. The study is based on a largely interpretative paradigm and draws from ideas of grounded theory. It treats with caution the notion that such a study will produce a ‘theory’, as advocated in much of the grounded-theory literature, setting out instead to produce a ‘persuasive perspective’ on its theme. Data are largely qualitative in nature, analysed through coding and grouping of principal concepts and sub-themes. Some quantitative data are used to substantiate the analysis. The investigation’s sources of data were decided upon as the study progressed in response to the growing conceptualisation of its theme. Its beginnings were with pupils in out-of-school ‘Advanced Learning Centres’ (ALCs) for gifted and talented pupils, progressing to gifted and talented pupils and their teachers in primary schools, then to summer schools organised for older pupils by the National Academy of Gifted and Talented Youth. Finally, specialist teachers and initial teacher-training tutors provided more in-depth consideration of the topic. Data came from a survey of ALC pupils across England, from observations of classroom practice using a specially designed observation framework, and from group and individual interviews. Using the data, a visual configuration of difficulty and challenge is constructed in the study, and a glossary of key terms and their definitions is built up in stages. The implications of these outcomes for educational practice are considered. The study contributes to pedagogical understanding and development of this important aspect of the teaching and learning of gifted and talented pupils and informs pedagogical thinking relating to all learners.

In recent years research on writing in academic contexts began to focus on the types and nature of writing tasks students encounter in the content subjects. Research has also examined particular rhetorical features like the use of interactional metadiscourse features that writers use to present their voice in writing and which might distinguish specific genres. These developments in academic writing have also considered the socio-cultural context in which specific genres are produced. The pedagogical motivation for researchers has been to better understand students' writing needs in their content subjects in order to prepare them for academic writing in their disciplines. Much of this research has focused on other fields of study like science and engineering and business students and in L1 contexts and I have found nothing that relates specifically to academic writing for Media Studies and Primary Education in the context of Botswana. Using mixed-methods approach to genre analysis, this thesis compares students' use of interactional metadiscourse features to present voice in three writing contexts, the EAP preparatory course and two undergraduate courses (Media Studies and Primary Education) at the University of Botswana. A sub-corpus of L1 (BAWE) undergraduate writers working on similar essays was also used to compare how the L2 writers and L1 writers in this study vary in the use of these features in essay writing. A total of 123 essays from these various contexts were analyzed. Interviews with students and tutors in the EAP department and Media Studies and Primary Education departments were also done to understand the socio-cultural context in which the essays were produced. The results indicate that writing tasks in the departments of Media Studies and Primary Education included both the general essay and discipline specific genres. The comparison of interactional metadiscourse features in the different sub-corpora indicated variations in the use of these features by the different groups of learners. Contextual information shows that such variations reflect the different values and beliefs about academic writing of the concrete discourse communities that students belong to. These values and beliefs can be problematic for EAP tutors who have to prepare students for writing in the various disciplines. The research has provided valuable insights into writing in Botswana context and may prove to have relevance for similar contexts. They have raised pedagogical implications for the design of the EAP writing course at the University of Botswana where a focus on a more contextual approach to teaching the academic writing would prove useful. The findings of this study are also potentially beneficial to the wider EAP community and the field of Applied Linguistics as an example of a mixed-method, contextual approach to genre analysis.

This thesis makes three original claims: two substantive and one methodological. It locates the thesis in the subject of philosophy of education and uses Richard Rorty’s metaphilosophical work to justify a claim to knowledge. This claim takes the form of a redescription of an established concept, judgement, to increase its usefulness in education. Usefulness is evaluated with regard to new developments in pragmatism that emphasise transitionalism and meliorism. To the best of the writer's knowledge Rorty has not been used in this way. The major substantive claim to knowledge is a redescription of judgement in the educational context of philosophy for children. This thesis argues that understanding judgement as a form of transition is educationally and philosophically useful. In order to make the argument it advances a minor substantive claim by offering a critique of Aristotle, Kant and Dewey that draws attention to a common factor in their philosophy, that of judgement being a property solely attributed to individuals. In outline the thesis consists of five chapters. First, it outlines why judgement might be regarded as a problematic concept before justifying my use of Rorty; second, it advances the major premise that judgement in the works of Aristotle, Kant and Dewey is a figurative account. Next it offers the minor premise that figurative accounts of judgement in philosophy of education are not always useful. In the penultimate chapter it concludes by offering an alternative account of judgement as transition and elaborate upon the emphasis on relationality made possible by the redescription. Finally it shows the implications of this redescription in the context of an educational movement: Philosophy for Children. It argues that Philosophy for Children as a pedagogical movement can exemplify education practices that draw upon my re-conceptualised understanding of judgement. In addition it offers a pathway for future development.

This thesis attempts to provide evidence, based in historical and contemporary research, of the importance of early years education, not only in terms of academic achievement, but of social outcomes as well; to examine the perceptions of teachers in relationship to societal influences and the effects of such on the changing educational needs of the child; and to suggest possible elements for high quality programme development in the early years. Section I attempts to set in context certain apparent key influences on the growth and development of early childhood education. Whilst the main focus of the thesis is a comparison of Britain and Canada, Section I also provides an international context by examining early years programmes in several other countries. Section II addresses the critical nature of familial and community environments with respect to parents' initial involvement as their children's first teachers and their continued involvement in a partnership with schools. This section also discusses the importance of early intervention for children 'at risk' in the context of its broad benefits to society. Section III deals with the methodology and data analysis of a survey of teachers in Britain and Canada. The survey, complemented by interviews with several of the respondents, was designed to gather perceptions and reflections from teachers. Section IV identifies features of successful early childhood programs in terms of what appears to work according to current research and the perceptions of teachers. In addition, it provides illustrations of selected programmes in Canada and Britain that have incorporated many of these features. Since societal changes identified in the thesis are urging educators and policy makers to re-examine their approach to early years provision, the last section suggests elements necessary for high quality early education programmes that will provide opportunities to maximise the individual potential of all children.