This is a qualitative study of the use of social media as a mediating agent between three teachers in Turkey and their students, whose age range was 12-15. This research was designed to discover how teachers’ communicative acts occur around three iconic social-media tools - YouTube, Google+ and WhatsApp. It also reports students’ understanding of such communicative acts as they influence the teacher/student relationship. Over the last decade, there has been a growing interest among researchers in exploring the use of social media for educational purposes. Studies have investigated learning and teaching recruiting the use of social media, particularly in higher education. To date, however, there is a dearth of studies regarding how teachers approach social media with the aim of fostering their relationship with students in the Middle School age range. Two main research questions were addressed in relation to this gap: a) What repertoires of communication arise following the adoption of social media by teachers of middle school classes? and b) How are perceptions of teacher identity and teacher-student relationships influenced by teachers’ adoption of social media? As encouraged by the interpretivist paradigm on which this study is based, students’ and teachers’ voices were given analytic priority to explore how the participants reflected their understanding of the teacher/student interactions which occur on social media. A qualitative case study approach was adopted and methods of interview, online documentation and observation were employed to generate field data. The inductive thematic content analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was applied to this data. The findings suggest that the use of social media as a medium between teachers and middle-school students was valuable for fostering in students a more positive attitude towards their teachers. A sharp distinction was reported by the participants between communication practices within social media and within face-to-face classroom contexts. Social media were favoured for being more informal. The findings indicate that digital social media not only offer a variety of communication channels which foster teacher/student interactions but also restructure these interactions by giving teachers an opportunity to project a different identity, in particular a more flexible and informal one. Each of the three case studies illustrated the variety of ways in which the design of social media can configure distinctive and challenging forms of new communication practice. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding that the teacher/student relationship can be further nurtured within secondary education through the exploratory use of social-media tools such as YouTube, Google+ and WhatsApp. When the necessary motivation and appropriate utilisation exist, an informal usage of social-media tools outside school hours might allow the creation of a warmer classroom atmosphere in which middle-school students might feel a sense of closeness towards their teachers. The findings suggest conducting more qualitative studies which explore teachers’ use of social media with middle-school students in order to better identify the potential challenges and conflicts which teachers and students could face such as the implications of observed hyper-use of these media on the work-life balance of teachers and institutional and societal resistance to this form of teacher-student exchange on social media.

This study investigates English language learners’ interaction with paper text and web text reading. Four main research questions shape the study: 1) What evidence exists to suggest that ESL learners use different strategies when reading printed text as opposed to reading web text? 2) What metacognitive strategies do ESL students use and report when reading and learning from printed and web-based texts? 3) What issues do ESL learners identify in relation to their use of the Internet? and 4) What are the implications for ESL pedagogy? While research has increasingly been focused on second language reading, it has primarily been centered on how the learner interacts and decodes printed text. However, little research has been conducted on how the English language learner processes web text, navigates the Internet, or evaluates and comprehends what he/she is reading through the use of digital literacy skills and metacognitive strategies. The intention of this study was to gain insight into the online reading strategies of English language learners in order to explore if there was a need for the Teaching of English to Students of Other Languages (TESOL) profession to teach digital literacy in the language classroom. A subjectivist approach was used to examine the metacognitive online reading strategies of intermediate and upper intermediate ESL students. The present writer acted in the role of both workshop facilitator and researcher during the eight-week study between September and November 2011. Data were drawn from the researcher’s observation notes, interviews with the student participants, group discussions, and student participants’ journals. As a result, data generation included both public views (expressed orally through interviews) and private and reflective views (expressed through journal writing). Thus, the data contained both real time and ex post facto viewpoints. The central voices heard were the researcher and the student participants. The research methodology for the study was interpretive and qualitative. Data triangulation was achieved through a series of interviews and text analysis. The findings of this thesis suggest that while students may appear digitally literate enough to randomly surf the Net, they lack sufficient skills to effectively research and evaluate information online. In addition, the study shows that language learners engage in characteristically different reading practices and strategies when reading print and web text. The research also indicates that there is a need for digital literacy skills to be taught in conjunction with the teaching of the target language in the TESOL settings studied. Recommended pedagogical practices include suggestions to teach digital literacies in conjunction with print-based literacy practices; to provide both TESOL teachers-in-training and seasoned TESOL educators the means to develop digital literacy skills through formal instruction or through professional development workshops; to emphasize the need for lifelong learning of digital skills to keep current with the constant changes and development of digital technology; to reshape TESOL curricula to accommodate digital literacy and language teaching practices to meet the needs of the language classroom in the 21st century; to create literacy lesson sequences that will help the language learner develop, strengthen, and apply critical reading strategies; and to promote the wider adoption of more interactive teaching.

In 1943 the Ministry of Education took the decision to sponsor the production of an experimental programme of nonfiction films specifically to be used as ‘instructional’ teaching aids in the secondary classroom. The intervention was a development of pre-war efforts on the part of a number of organisations from the teaching and cultural sectors to realise the value of ‘educational’ film, in response to recognition of the medium’s social and cultural influence. This historical example demonstrates that government recognition of film as an educational resource has been achieved in the past. However, in 2012, the British Film Institute (BFI) launched a new education plan, at the centre of which was the aim to advocate the value of film education to Government (British Film Institute, 2012c). This aim had been the focus of film education initiatives in the previous decade without resolution, for example in the national strategy Film: 21st Century Literacy (UK Film Council, 2009). My research analyses the Ministry of Education’s production experiment in order to discover whether the findings can inform current film education strategies and offer an insight into why the struggle for government recognition of film education still remains. This research combines film theory, archival research and education histories in order to contextualise the films within the particular historical moment of their production. I apply a pragmatic approach to the postmodern and poststructural theories of for example, Nichols (1991), Plantinga (1997), Renov (1993) and Winston (1995) in my textual analysis of the 16 films, sourced from the British Film Institute National Archive. The analysis of form and style informs my discussion of concepts of realism, ‘objectivity’ and ‘truth’ in relation to the films and the social and political ideologies conveyed through the texts. I also analyse contemporary documentation sourced from The National Archives in order to identify the objectives, the pedagogical rationale and the ideological project motivating the Ministry’s experiment as a whole and evaluate its outcomes. I argue that the methodology of the Ministry of Education experiment was flawed so that no definitive conclusions were drawn regarding the educational ‘value’ of film. Furthermore, the ‘experiment’ was turned to political purpose so that the ideological project informing and conveyed through the filmic discourse actually worked to impose the social stratification inherent within the post-war tripartite education system. I also argue that, due in part to technological advances which have removed the need for state sponsorship of educational film production, government recognition is now unnecessary, and carries the risk of ideological and political incentives overcoming the pedagogical objectives of ‘21st century literacy’. I make the recommendation that film education initiatives should exist outside of political agendas and instead build links with teacher training institutions in order to ensure the driving force behind its practical application is pedagogical rather than political.

Government policy and academic research both talk about transforming learning through networked technologies – sharing newly available information about the learning context with new partners to support lifelong learning activities, and giving learners increased power and autonomy. This thesis examines how such learning opportunities might be supported. In order to ground these learning opportunities in current educational activity it studies homework, which is an example of a learning activity that spans multiple contexts and the current roll-out point of networked technologies in UK schools. This thesis uses an ecological approach to studying homework practices and activities, and the views, needs and roles of stakeholders, working with ICT coordinators, children, and families. Its core findings are twofold, and centre on the opening up and closing down of homework to involvement within the homework community. The first core finding is that children benefit from actively structuring their homework activities to involve or exclude other family members, and that the networked technologies which teachers plan to use in homework fail to mediate these processes successfully, unlike traditional homework technologies. The second core finding is that details of homework activities transmitted across a network can include too much information about a child or a family’s wider activities, violating privacy and leading families to reject technologies. This thesis identifies design tactics which can help children and their families negotiate how and when information is shared, and provides evidence that these design solutions can be implemented successfully within homework, if designed to fit within the ecology of the home. It discusses the circumstances in which these tactics could be useful in supporting lifelong learning, and establishes the importance of considering how families will integrate any educational activity or technology within their everyday activities.

This research was motivated by my personal desire to learn more about reflective teaching, and by the fact that a number of local researchers in the Cayman Islands highlighted the need to accumulate a body of knowledge addressing local issues in all disciplines, including teaching and learning. The purpose of this investigation was to provide a practically adequate understanding of lesson planning, implementation, and evaluation from the perspective of selected seasoned teachers in the Islands and their use of elements of reflective teaching in these areas. This qualitative instrumental case study employed a critical-realist philosophic stance. Six broad research questions guided the study. Participants included four seasoned teachers. The field research included interviews and documentary analysis. Interviews focused on participants'experience and observations, regarding the research areas. Documents, in the form of lesson plans, were used to confirm or make findings, more or less plausible. Interview transcripts were analysed to determine similarities and differences in respondents' perspectives, and issues warranting further attention. I ended the study by summarising what I perceived was the respondents' practically adequate understanding of the areas being researched. In addition, I made two major conclusions, regarding reflective teaching. One, how the respondents carried out their role as lesson planners, implementers, and evaluators, resulted from a dynamic relationship between their teaching philosophy and/or belief, personal choice, mood and the varied contextual constrains such as administratively decreed policies and heavy workload. I then made a case for the relevance and importance of reflection in coping with, understanding, and effectively using this relationship in the teaching/learning process. Two, the respondents employed their practical knowledge or experience of what works,and generally, they were found to exercise degrees of reflectivity that is, being 'more or less'reflective about their teaching. Limitations of the study were stated and avenue for further work suggested.

Libyan in-service teachers of English with poor INSET provision and low-resourced school environments stand to gain a great deal from Internet-based Continuing Professional Development (I-CPD). The aim of this exploratory and descriptive study was threefold: first, to understand current practices and conditions pertaining to CPD provision for Libyan teachers; second, to explore the potential of Internet-based CPD for Libyan teachers through a bottom-up informal approach; third, to develop an I-CPD model appropriate for the Libyan context. A mixed-method interventionist case study approach formed the methodological framework of the research. Fact Finding (Phase 1) was carried out to scout the field using a teachers' questionnaire and semi-structured interviews at six language schools in Tripoli. In the Case Study (Phase 2) a typical language institution with in-house Internet access was selected to deliver a progressive intervention course designed to meet the needs of teachers in low-resourced school contexts, but with access to public Internet cafés. Eight case teachers were engaged in problem-based learning to enhance their Internet skills, then using instructional, peer and task support teachers were engaged in blended learning via a web-based Yahoo Group. A ten-week long Extended Case Study (Phase 3) merged Case members from Phase 2 with other teachers from Libya and the UK, forming a larger online group (60 participants) facilitated by a web-hosted Virtual Learning Environment (Merlin). The Fact Finding phase revealed an overall intermediate level in Internet skills and encouraging attitudes towards I-CPD. A more organised petroleum sector emerged, where professional development was assigned higher priority than in the public or private sectors. The Case Study data showed moderate teacher participation in blended learning while task responses reflected minimum engagement with tasks, and little critical reflection. The low response in the Extended Case Study phase prompted attention to the possible causes of low online participation. In addition to generic barriers to asynchronous online learning, such as lurking and the lack of time, underlying context-specific causes have emerged which point to what is termed intellectual-error phobia (ie-phobia) within unbonded groups: while teachers readily participated in low-level tasks, when faced with high-order group-based tasks, they admitted fear of posting trivial responses that were archived and perhaps criticised by other teachers. To minimise ie-phobia and encourage online interaction, a blended multi-dimensional support model is proposed in which f2f orientation and social cohesion precede Internet-based learning that adopts progressive online activities, thus gradually fostering teacher independence and promoting sustainable I-CPD that is holistic and optimised.

Developing effectiveness in learning is the goal of teaching. In order to achieve this goal and to bridge the gap between teaching and learning in the EFL classroom, SLA researchers in the past decades have become increasingly interested in pedagogical conceptions, such as Learner-centredness, Communicative Language Teaching, and Task-Based Language Learning (TBL). In particular, research into TBL pedagogy has had an important influence on the field of English language teaching in recent years in the West. However, there have been few studies into TBL in the EFL classroom in Macau. Thus, this study explores whether or not task-based learning pedagogy could be beneficial to Chinese tertiary learners of English. Based on the philosophy of constructivism, the study aimed to investigate Chinese tertiary learners’ beliefs about and motivations for English learning through research carried out before, during and after the implementation of a specially designed programme of task-based English teaching. Twenty-four undergraduate learners from different regions of China were investigated by quantitative instruments (i.e., BALLI, and Motivation Questionnaire) and qualitative instruments (i.e., field-notes, ‘motivation’ graphs and notes, learner diaries, and follow-up interviews) before, during and after the 15-week task-based EFL programme. Both quantitative and qualitative findings reflected that the learners’ self-concept beliefs and intrinsic motivation for English learning were increasingly enhanced by the task-based EFL programme, thus convincingly demonstrating that task-based learning pedagogy was beneficial to Chinese tertiary learners of English. The thesis concludes with a consideration of the implications of such task-based learning pedagogy for further research.

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a Cooperative Learning intervention upon the mean peer acceptance levels of all children (N=54) within two Year four classes in a mainstream primary school in the North West of England. A pre-test post-test non equivalent groups quasi-experimental design is employed, with the dependent variable, peer acceptance, measured by the 'Social Inclusion Survey' and the 'Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire'. Inferential analysis in the form of 'Gain Score Analysis' supports the initial hypotheses, demonstrating that children within the experimental group were, on average, significantly more accepted at post-test by both their same sex and opposite sex peers, in relation to both the 'work' and 'play' contexts, than children within the no intervention control group. Furthermore, children within the experimental group self-reported, on average, significantly greater levels of 'prosocial behaviour' and significantly reduced 'peer problems' at post-test than children in the control group. It is concluded that the Cooperative Learning intervention employed for this study may be considered effective in enhancing mean peer acceptance levels, reducing 'peer problems' and enhancing 'prosocial behaviours' within the context in which this study was conducted. Methodological limitations, ethical concerns and implications for future research and professional practice are also considered.

“The evidence base on numeracy interventions is patchy” (DfE, 2012, p. 6), and in the majority of studies the statistical analysis of data is not without its limitations (Dowker, 2009). The purpose of this study is therefore to add to this evidence base. A mixed methods explanatory sequential design was used to explore the efficacy of a Numicon-based intervention on the numeracy attainment and attitudes towards numeracy of children in Year 3 experiencing mathematical difficulties. Phase 1 implemented a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design to explore the impact of a Numicon-based intervention across four primary schools. Twenty-five children aged 7 to 8, working at Levels 1C to 2B in numeracy, were allocated to the experimental condition (n = 15) and waiting list control (WLC) condition (n = 10). Interventions were delivered during the autumn term to children in the experimental condition by trained staff within school. The duration and content of sessions varied depending upon the needs of the children. The WLC condition received the intervention during the spring term. The Sandwell Early Numeracy Test- Revised (SENT-R) was administered to investigate the impact of the intervention on numeracy attainment. At post-testing, no statistical significance was found between the experimental and WLC conditions. The null hypothesis was therefore accepted. The ‘Maths and Me Survey’ was used to measure children’s attitudes towards numeracy. Again, at post-testing, no statistical significance was found between conditions, and so the null hypothesis was accepted. During phase 2 of the study, interviews were conducted to obtain the facilitators perceptions of the intervention. Using thematic analysis, two overarching themes were identified: ‘outcomes of the intervention’ which focussed on affective factors and children’s knowledge and understanding; and ‘factors and underpinning mechanisms’, which considered the importance of a whole school ethos, the role of parents, features of Numicon, practicalities of implementing an intervention and theoretical underpinnings. The findings of the current study are considered in light of previous research, as are the implications for Educational Psychologists and other professionals. Methodological issues that arose during the study are also discussed. Areas of future research are considered, focussing on the need for more research into the efficacy of Numicon-based interventions and on the development of attitudes towards numeracy.

This thesis is motivated to harness UK children’s enthusiasm and energy on using social software to connect with each other. The overarching research aim of this thesis is to investigate how social software can cultivate children aged 11 – 14 as a community of learners out of school, in order to support their education. Two key issues: informality of out-of-school learning and transitions of learning practices across home and school, are identified as research challenges. Community of Practice is proposed as the theoretical construct to open up and provide useful coverage to respond to these two challenges. In five case studies, various methodologies are utilised to investigate the actual uses that children make of social software as well as to explore the networked dynamics within a community that mediate the fate of technology. First, UK children’s use of a nationwide homework message board in two subjects: Maths and English is investigated. Findings suggest that seeking for help is the prevailing concern expressed by the children, when they confront their private study out of school. A strong emotional tone is evoked in the board, which sustains children’s co-participation as a community. Second, whether and how an online whiteboard can support children’s GCSE Maths exam revision with a teacher during out-of-school hours is explored. Findings shed light on the difficulty in nurturing a community of learners through social software and .the role of a teacher’s online presence out of school. The third study explores how a group of students and a teacher are cultivated as a learning community across classroom (physical) and a social networking site (virtual). Findings suggest that the informality of socio-emotional chat, content production and identity construction helps to identify the non-academic dimension of being a learner within a community. In order to cultivate a learning community, it is suggested that children should be supported to form a community that will function better in the class rather than just being put into continuous tuition hours with extra teacher support out of school. Findings also discover the benefit to access a teacher via multiple communication channels. Furthermore, in an attempt to illuminate the underlying networked dynamics in a social software-supported community, Chinese children using a homework message board is investigated. Findings suggest that the specific emotional tone revealed in the UK message board is related to the UK children’s particular perspectives in learning and knowledge. Finally, interviews with two cultural groups of children: English and Chinese are conducted, in which the children mapped their in-school and out-of-school activities and their personal preferences of technologies. Findings suggest that the fate of a supportive technology must be judged with a firm grasp of the learning culture that it is implemented.