Challenging behaviour in schools is a phenomenon focused on by a number of educational documents (Ofsted, 2010) and the media (Vasager, 2011). Challenging behaviour has been shown to have negative impact on a number of student and staff outcomes (DfE, 2012a). Staff outcomes impacted by challenging behaviour include increasing burnout (Crone, Hawken & Bergstrom, 2007) and decreasing self-efficacy (Mitchell & Hastings, 2001), which have been connected to negative impact on staff health (Hastings & Bham, 2003). Time allocated to staff training in schools is decreasing (Bubb & Earley, 2013), highlighting a need for research which considers how school staff can be supported in the limited time available. The impact of a behaviour plan based on solution focused and behavioural principles (developed by a specialist teacher) on students’ challenging behaviour was explored through single case experimental design. Further to this a randomised control design investigated the impact of whole school training relating to the behaviour plan on school staff burnout and self-efficacy. Results showed that the intervention reduced challenging behaviours to differing degrees of all 3 primary students included in the single case experimental design. The whole school training did not significantly impact the number of behaviour plans implemented in classrooms. However, training was shown to have significant positive effects on school staffs’ personal, general, and overall self-efficacy, with no impact on external self-efficacy. The training was also shown to significantly decrease school staffs’ burnout levels; specifically physical fatigue, cognitive weariness, and overall burnout levels, but not emotional exhaustion. This research suggests that the behaviour plan and the accompanying whole school training have the potential to increase teacher self-efficacy, decrease teacher burnout, and provide staff with a suitable intervention to manage challenging behaviour. Areas for further research are highlighted by the limitations and additional observations made during the research process.

Computer-based learning has become a common phenomenon in the modern age. Many distance-learning systems distribute educational resources on the Internet and indeed entire study programmes are now widely available online. Such a large amount of content and information can be intimidating to learners, who may exhibit different individual characteristics, such as variation in goals, interests, motivation and/or learning preferences. This suggests that a uniform approach taken by learning environments to deliver materials and resources to students is not appropriate and that personalisation of such materials/resources should address users' differences to provide a customised learning experience, thus enhancing its effectiveness, lowering drop-out rates and maintaining high student motivation. This thesis addresses the latter issue of learning preferences, specifically investigating learning styles as an adaptation mechanism for personalised computer-based learning. A number of previous studies indicated the positive effect that this kind of adaptation provides, but under closer examination these were not conducted in a scientifically rigorous manner and thus their findings are somewhat limited. This research utilises a quantitative and highly objective approach to investigate visual/verbal and sequential/global learning styles in different user groups. Three user trials were carried out to discover whether there were any benefits to using these learning styles for studying in an adapted environment. Overall, no statistically significant benefits were found and these findings now shed doubt as to whether learning styles are indeed an effective mechanism for personalised learning.

Effective Communication is an integral part of everyday life but recent studies show that in the UK many children fail to obtain this essential skill. The traditional approach to teaching communication skills is still important in school but new developments and the increasing availability of technology in the classroom, offer the potential for new ways to approach this teaching. A number of research institutions in the UK, for example the British Film Institute, are investigating how to use media such as films and television, in the classroom, in order to enhance children’s learning. Making cartoon films is a potentially valuable teaching approach but the lack of a suitable software tool to support this aspiration limits its viability. Existing software tools do reference the learning of communication skills as one of their features but they do not see this as a major learning objective. The aim of this thesis is to investigate three hypotheses based around the concept of using cartoon animation as a tool to enhance learning of communication. The first of these is that film production software which gives children control of character animation design may significantly stimulate their interest in exploring how to express their feelings. The second is that a correctly designed tool will integrate well into classroom teaching to produce effective learning and finally that the same tool can be used to extend learning of these skills outside the classroom. As a result a software tool has been developed to help children engage with the features of character animation, while learning how to express their feelings through storytelling in films. By using the tool, children experience the major steps of character animation design in filmmaking and in this process, each step is specially designed to fulfil their needs and stimulate them to use emotions. Experiments were carried out both in the classroom and out of school. The result indicated that older primary children had significant engagement in exploring emotional usage on the virtual characters and further analysis revealed children’s engagement was associated with age, social adjustment and computer experience. Moreover, using tool-assisted teaching in the classroom could bring some positive effects which do not exist with conventional teaching. In the out of school testing, around half of the children had positive reactions to accepting parental guidance and some of them (including their parents) had significant engagement in exploring emotional usage.

Empirical evidence shows that parental engagement improves children’s learning, social competence and physical health from preschool years through childhood and adolescence and into adulthood. Yet reasons as to what can motivate, or hinder parents to become involved are complex. Research suggests that parental engagement is maximised when parents are actively engaged in decision making (Harris & Goodall, 2007; Irvine, 2005; DCSF, 2009; Ranson, 2011). The aims of the current study were: 1) to illuminate the practice of an individual school regarding how they view engaging with parents in decision making; and 2) to explore the activities that the school employs in engaging with parents and to investigate which of these activities the parents view to be important, positive and worthwhile. Q-methodology was used for the first phase of this study and sought to identify and describe the school staff members’ views of the about the concept of engaging with parents of children described with special educational needs in decision making. Two distinctive viewpoints were revealed: 1) parents as partners and 2) respecting and valuing parents. The second phase of the study employed a focus group to identify the activities the school employs. Finally a survey was used in the third phase to explore which of these activities were rated as most positive and worthwhile by parents. Interestingly the findings from the focus group and the survey corresponded to factors related to the psychological need for competence, autonomy and relatedness in relation to parents’ intrinsic motivation to engage with the school. Proposals are made in relation to implications for the practice of schools as well as suggestions for further research.

Teaching a subject which involves a long process and inter-related problems can sometimes be difficult through conventional classroom activities. This is particularly difficult at the UK Key Stage 3 (13-14 years) where students are only beginning to understand the processes of reason. Often what the teacher would like to encourage is group discussion but for many reasons, young students may be reluctant to put forward ideas in a conventional classroom setting. An area where this becomes less of a problem is once they get involved in playing a game together. In addition to this certain subjects are difficult to teach because they involve complex interactions that are largely outside the general knowledge of young students. An example of this is the issue of human contributions to climate change. The subject is one of recent heated debate, much of which involves complex arguments on the relationship between the natural contribution to climate variation and those produced by human beings. In the work reported here a computer game has been developed which tries to incorporate the various processes involved in a realistic way. In principle this game can be used individually. However, it also provides the opportunity for generating group discussion and reasoning processes. The game which has been developed uses a non-player character which is controlled by the teacher. The game is played in a networked environment with a number of teams of two players each trying to provide solutions to a complex climate issue. The non player character is able to monitor the performance of the different teams and provide feedback that will be of a more realistic/less predictable nature. This thesis addresses the design and the implementation of the game as a tool for teaching and learning purposes for learning about the human contribution to climate change. Three experiments have been done using this computer game to investigate the effectiveness of game-based learning towards tackling these issues. The first two studies were carried out in the UK while the third study was carried out in Malaysia to investigate educational cultural background. The initial study involved two groups of Key Stage 3 children in a Geography class. The study was undertaken in the normal teaching sequence. The children were divided into pairs during game-play and each session lasted about one hour. The behaviour of the whole group and individual teams was monitored throughout the game-play. Analysis of this shows that the game not only allowed the students to investigate the science but also to communicate with each other during the process. Overall, it is felt that by introducing an environment with which they were sufficiently familiar (playing a game together) the normal inhibitions to communication were removed. The control based experiment reinforced these findings.

China's 'Modern Distance Education' is a government-led initiative prompted by the need to widen access to higher education and by the opportunities offered by the development of a widespread infrastructure of information and communications technologies. Distance education using television, radio and other technologies has a long history in China, but the advent of computer communications opened new possibilities for promoting educational development and the policy goal of modernisation. Distance education in China now involves online learning, to various degrees. However, the effectiveness of online courses depends on learners accessing them and using the resources provided. Does this happen? How well do learners manage their online learning? What barriers do they encounter? This thesis examines these questions through a study of adult distance learners based on analysis of a survey of 2931 learners and in-depth interviews with 21 learners and distance education experts in several locations. I find that: (1) The barriers to online learning faced by the sample learners are of seven types: communication and interaction; teaching and courses; learning resources; learning support services; external support and economic burdens; computer and network operation skills; and conditions for accessing the Internet. (2) Among the seven types of barrier, the 'communication and interaction' barrier is not only acting as the most important one faced by these learners, but also exists as a markedly independent one. (3) Improvements in 'communication and interaction' are the most effective in overcoming the other barriers and also contribute to increasing the learners' learning efficiency. This leads to the perception that working on 'communication and interaction' is very likely to be the best starting point for tackling barriers to online learning. According to these findings, I believe that if the situation of 'communication and interaction' in online learning can be improved for online learners to meet their desire for 'sociability', and once they can thus establish their own 'learning communities' and form relatively stable 'student-to-student' relationships, and 'student-to-teacher' relationships, other learning barriers will be reduced as well. Hence, I argue that we should always pay attention to making 'communication and interaction' occur effectively for online learners in the learning process. We should consider the matter of 'interaction' not only in the delivery process of teaching and tutoring as well as in learning activities, but also in the production of teaching materials and in the provision of learning materials, as well as in the building of learning environments. In a word, it is necessary to put the whole matter of 'interaction' at the core of the instructional system design for online learning.

Hong Kong, a populated city, meets all the necessary technological and economic conditions for e-learning to be thriving in higher education. However, online survey results of students and teachers of a major tertiary educational institution over a period of three years showed that e-learning is not nearly as popular as anticipated and traditional face-to-face learning remains the preferred mode of study. Are the benefits and impact experienced in other countries equally applicable to Hong Kong? What are the barriers to e-learning diffusion in Hong Kong? Answers to these questions were sought from the teachers and researchers of e-learning in Hong Kong higher education. The research was based on a grounded theory methodology and used a three stage mixed-method design for data collection and analysis. The key informants were the teacher-researchers in higher educational institutions in Hong Kong. Several potential issues arising from three rounds of large scale online surveys were explored with them through in-depth interviews, which generated a framework for analysis, and based upon which a follow-up questionnaire survey was formulated and conducted. Inferences were drawn from the combined results of the online survey, the interviews, and the follow-up survey. The results from the study showed that the benefits, impact and barriers identified were broadly similar to those experienced in other countries. Whilst some personal and social conditions such as age, gender and, family and home conditions are not perceived to be important factors in hindering diffusion, certain unique social conditions in Hong Kong - such as the two official languages, the popular mixed-code phenomenon, the teacher-centred and assessment-centric culture, are perceived to contribute to some extent to the hindrance of e-Iearning diffusion. However, the teachers and researchers see more serious barriers in the unfavourable perception and negative attitudes of students and teachers towards e-learning and the lack of self-motivation and self-discipline. Based on these findings, certain areas of further study were suggested for future research.