This research explored the role of Muslim faith-based schools in the culturally and religiously diverse city of Birmingham in meeting the religious, cultural and educational needs of Muslim children and the expectations of their parents. The economy- focus post- Second World War mass migration to Europe has acted as the key catalyst for the modern Muslim presence in the UK and wider Europe. While Muslim communities came from ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds, Islam has defined their collective identities. With the joining of their families, the first generation of British Muslims have began to realise the challenges of maintaining Islamic values and identities among their offspring who were growing up within an overall secular and multicultural society. This has marked the establishment of Mosques, community centres and most crucially faith-based Islamic school in the UK. The relevance and desirability of faith-based schooling in general and Muslim schooling in particular has come under a close security in the UK. This study focused on the case of Muslim schooling within the context of multi-faith and multicultural city of Birmingham. The study explored parental motives behind the choice of Islamic schools, their distinctive educational ethos and how they address the challenge of helping Muslim children integrate into the wider multicultural British society. The study adopted an empirical research methodology through utilising a mixed-methods research design to investigate its key questions. The main data collection tools were survey, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. The study sample included 133 parents, 36 students who graduated from schools and 33 teachers and governors running Muslim schools. The quantitative data was analysed using the SPSS software and the interview and focus group discussion were analysed by adopting qualitative data analysis procedures. The overall research findings suggested that parents held positive views of the Muslim schools but at the same time had high expectations about their general academic achievement as well as the Islamic Education provision. Most of the parents shared the view that Muslim schools needed to adopt a more integrated approach to the curriculum striking the balance between Islamic and secular subjects. Parents overwhelmingly thought that the Muslim schools did contribute to the social and cultural of integration of Muslim children into the wider multicultural and multi-faith British society. However, one of the significant findings of the survey analysis was the fact that parents appeared to be ambiguous about the overall achievement of schools in adequately meeting the academic and Islamic religious, moral and spiritual needs of their children. The conclusion chapter summarised the key findings of the study and discussed the implications of the findings for improving the quality of Islamic faith-based schooling within the context of secular and multicultural British society.

In 2004 an inner city primary school, Hawksridge, found itself in the 99th percentile in mathematics and second to bottom nationally. Confronted with a plethora of local authority and National Strategy intensive programmes, which the school did not have the capacity to execute or sustain, Hawksridge's headteacher took the decision to turn to research to establish the school's future direction. The subsequent action research project, which used action learning as a dialogical tool, became the base of their rise from mathematical ‘no-hopers' to ‘influential institution' in 2010. This case study focuses on Set One, the model that was created to experiment with action learning procedures, before it was refined and implemented in Hawksridge as Set Two. The purpose of Set One was to try and establish whether or not action learning procedures could develop teachers' knowledge and understanding of mathematics and in particular their subject, content and pedagogical knowledge. It is set in the context of a time when the government centralised what was to be taught in mathematics, how long for and the style in which it was to be delivered through the national curriculum and the national strategies. The 1999 national numeracy strategy was brought in to support the 1998 mathematics national curriculum. In 2001 a new mathematics curriculum was introduced and this is the version referred to in this work. The primary curriculum is in two Key Stages: Key Stage 1 is for children aged 5 – 7 and Key Stage 2 is for 7 – 11 year old children. Set One, composed of four primary headteachers, their four mathematics' coordinators and four Hawksridge senior managers, met for one year to experiment with action learning procedures. It was capable of instigating a rich mathematical dialogue through its open-ended questioning and able to develop a collaborative, supportive culture where teachers demonstrated that they could be flexible in their thinking. The three key features of action learning in Set One are the development of the skills of reflection, rich mathematical dialogue and collaboration. In the analysis of the transcripts from the sessions, these features are unpicked and scrutinised in detail from the social constructivist perspective. Different types of teacher knowledge are identified, in particular, the knowledge associated with the Mathematics National Curriculum and the National Numeracy Strategy and how teachers have integrated these two government documents as part of their knowledge base. An assessment of how teachers use this knowledge to ask and answer questions is undertaken. The power of open-ended questioning is explored and the growing expertise of Set One as a group evaluated, predominantly, their ability to listen, use silence effectively and to build up powerful stacks of questions capable of challenging teachers' mathematical thinking. Action learning comes with caveats: it is not always a comfortable experience because dissonance is a part of the way it functions and for it to work well there must be trust, truthfulness and integrity. It is also a powerful managerial tool and should be used wisely to support and develop teachers' knowledge and skills. Action learning procedures were implemented into Hawksridge before the termination of Set One. The lessons that have been learned have facilitated teacher development. Hawksridge staff are now capable of reflecting and learning from their daily experiences. Other benefits have been improved classroom practice, based on a probing dialogical questioning style which encourages pupils to think, improved collaboration across the school and a more careful and considered approach to professional development. Hawksridge has managed to find its way forward.

In 2004, Mozambique introduced a new competency-based curriculum framed around the principles of culturally responsive pedagogy. Teachers need to strategically use local languages, traditions and culture to build on what children bring from home and share with their families to bridge the gap between schools and communities. This study is a qualitative ethnography of the teaching and learning process in one suburban primary school in Mozambique. The aims of the study were to explore teachers' ideas, values, and understanding about the teaching and learning process, and to reflect on how these views, which are manifested in their classroom practices, influenced the implementation of curriculum changes at the classroom level. The study conceptualised the new educational policy in Mozambique as a discourse that has introduced in the field of teachers' practices new pedagogic possibilities and frame of references. Informal conversations, interviews, and observations of lessons and school dynamics were the main methods used for the process of data collection. Teachers, students, parents and community members participated in the study. Ethnography as methodology offered the possibility to gain multi-layered insights into those contextual, social, and cultural realities around which teachers create meanings for their roles and actions, attribute significance to them, and build relations with students, parents, and community members. Understanding how these realities were represented and reproduced in teachers' discourse and practice was regarded as a precondition to interrogating teachers' interpretations of changes. The study combined a Bourdieusian sociological analysis of the teaching and learning process with a postcolonial critique. Whereas Bourdieu's tools of field, habitus and capital supported an understanding of the ‘whys' behind what is going on at classroom level and the cultural and ideological assumptions underpinning teachers' practices, a postcolonial critique exposed the rules of classification and exclusion underpinning the ‘hows' of teachers' pedagogies. The findings of the study showed that the pedagogic discourse of the new curriculum does not resonate with teachers' understanding of their roles, practices and professional identities. The conception of ‘schooling as an extractive process' and the construction of Portuguese as the most important symbolic cultural capital legitimised the process of alienation between schooling and home socialisation and sustained the power relations, determining the separation between inschool and out-of-school languages and knowledges. If, on the one side, teachers dismissed their responsibility to transform and integrate local knowledges into the official curriculum by constructing themselves as implementers of an educational policy that they did not fully grasp, then on the other side, in the process of making sense of the new curriculum, the socio-cultural values that teachers attached to it were challenging their field positions and maintenance. Teachers maintained their distinction through their ‘Portugueseness'. The ‘Portuguese-only discourse' was the most dominant ‘doxa', taken-forgranted by teachers in their practices, despite the fact that Portuguese as Language of Learning and Teaching was perceived as one of the main challenges for student learning. The implication of the study relates to the cultural micro-politics of teachers' identities. To attend to the introduction of curriculum changes as a technical matter fails to address the power-relations embedded in the teaching and learning process. The new pedagogic possibilities fostered by the curriculum are not succeeding. Without the re-narrativisation of how teachers think about them in order to build new field positions and meanings that resonate with changes, the reform seems unlikely to succeed.

By allowing students to play an active role in the assessment of their work, can their perceptions and motivations be changed? This dissertation considers the impact of working collaboratively with primary school teachers and students to develop the skills needed to integrate student-led assessment into their daily practice, with the objective of analysing how this affects the students’ motivations and attitudes towards their work. Three teachers and the researcher, the Head of Primary, concertedly trained in how to develop student-led assessment across a 13-week trial that involved Year 4 students in an English curriculum international school in Malaysia. An experimental group comprising of 28 student participants engaged in three rounds of focus groups, while the three teacher participants engaged in weekly working focus groups as well as three interviews over the trial period. The findings suggest that students benefited from their involvement in student-led assessment since, at the end of the study, they could more accurately understand and explain their progress and predict their grades, as well as explain the uses and importance of assessment as learning. The teachers observed successes, such as increased student motivation, enhanced student understanding, more advanced autonomy, and challenges, such as timing and consistency with student-led assessment across the three Year 4 classes. The research leads to suggestions with regards to implications for practice of teachers, schools and policy makers, as well as directions for future research.

The many valuable aspects of Chinese education have been seen throughout the world. For example Chinese teachers have been invited into the UK to instruct UK teachers on how to improve the quality of Mathematics education there. However, from 2001 onwards the government of China has sought to import pedagogies from the West in order to tackle observed problems with their own education system. Many scholars feel the problems the government were trying to address – the lack of critical thinking, a tendency to rote learning and an exam focused mind-set – would lead to failure for these techniques. However, these studies have all been with older students in high school and beyond. Little or no work has focused on students in the primary grades. Casual observation of Chinese primary school students would imply that they have no trouble in coming up with ideas and discussing them. The initiative for the study in this thesis has therefore been to see if this age range of students would be open to discussion based classes. A study was undertaken to determine if the removal of the teacher from control of the discussion would facilitate this age group to partake in face to face discussion. Other aims were to see whether constructivist learning would result or would the face based, hierarchical Confucian background education system prevent this. The original study was encouraging and as a result a technology based intervention was developed to see if this could help to improve the discussion and would allow further opportunities for students to feel able to engage. To encourage this the new system was also made anonymous. A third study was introduced to see if this approach could prove beneficial to the teachers also as to get such approaches adopted in Chinese schools the teachers would also need to see the benefit of the approach. The resultant study has demonstrated that not only do Chinese primary school students engage in face to face study but they also can be further encouraged by use of an online system. Further developments also indicate that the system can be valuable to the teachers who can use it as an aid to find out the preconceptions of their students and thus help them in developing a more focused curriculum. The thesis ends by describing ways in which this study can continue to have a positive impact in developing students’ critical thinking skills.

This study aimed to explore what changes happen to a group’s outcomes and mechanisms, in relation to emotional literacy, following a small group targeted emotional literacy intervention. This was achieved through the use of a single case study design which employed the use of semi – structured group interviews and numerical data. The qualitative and quantitative measures were used prior to and after the intervention to allow for consideration of change over time. The statistical analysis indicates that access to a needs led targeted intervention is effective in producing positive outcomes in relation to emotional literacy levels for the pupils that access it. The thematic analysis provided a rich and in depth insight into the mechanisms that facilitate this change and demonstrated a positive movement in the group’s emotional literacy thoughts, skills, knowledge and practices. This study provides an original contribution to the existing research into emotional literacy by taking an exploratory and explanatory approach.

The concept of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children presents conceptually controversial and practical challenges on several levels. These include the theoretical basis of the disorder, its manifestations in everyday life and identification and assessment procedures. The field has attracted considerable attention from professionals in the areas of education, psychology and health. One of the major areas where ADHD behaviours can present problems is in school settings. The present research derives from, and addresses, English educational perspectives and practices, based in school settings. It was primarily concerned with seeking new insights and generating testable hypotheses concerning incidence, multi-professional identification, assessment and management of the condition and situational variability in ADHD symptoms in schools. The exploratory study was in two related parts. These were undertaken concurrently using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques and data gathering methods. Part 1 of the research was based on detailed analyses of data from the first countywide ADHD survey covering all schools in a Local Education Authority in the West Midlands (LEA 1) in 2003. Data pertaining specifically to pupils at key stages 1/2 have been extracted from the 2003 survey data and subjected to further descriptive analyses. Comparisons have been made with findings from five other LEA school surveys in order to obtain a more extensive appraisal of the reported incidence of the disorder. Part 2 adopted a case study approach in which data-gathering techniques included the use of field notes, a range of interviews, analysis of documents and observation. Two classroom observation schedules have been devised and used extensively over a two-year period throughout six individual case studies in schools within LEA 1. The case studies have produced a wide range of unique data on the variability of ADHD symptoms across curricular contexts and over time. The findings and hypotheses generated in the present research have significance for inclusive educational practice, highlighting the importance of multi-professional approaches to the identification and management of ADHD and pedagogical and curricular flexibility in schools. These form part of the Government’s ongoing reform of children’s services as set out in Every Child Matters (DfES, 2003) and Removing Barriers to Achievement (DfES, 2004a).

This thesis is an inquiry into the relationship between drama and traditional stories and their potential contributions, when used together, to the moral education of young children. The stimulus for this inquiry has stemmed from my own academic interests and professional practice as a teacher educator for the primary age range. It is underpinned by a belief that this is an area which has been both under-researched and under-theorised but that it is nonetheless of interest and importance for drama teachers, primary teachers and others who share an interest in the moral development of young children. The research has proceeded with two parallel but closely related forms of inquiry. The one has been an academic investigation into those theoretical issues which underpin the project and the other has consisted of fieldwork within primary classrooms, centred upon my own teaching. In its final form, the thesis is presented in two parts of roughly equal length, the one concentrating on theoretical concerns, the other consisting of a critical analysis of my own classroom practice, where issues of theory are investigated as they directly impinge upon it. However, it has been a key aim throughout this project to relate theory closely to practice, so that the one might continually inform the other as the research progressed. In the introduction, I give an account of the genesis of the inquiry, provide an argument for its significance to the contemporary educational debate and give a clear exposition of its parameters. In Part I, I begin with a discussion of current developments in moral educational theory and make the case for the importance of narrative and narrative literature in the development of moral understanding. In applying these theories to literary versions of traditional tales, however, it becomes quickly clear that the area is problematic and informed by contradictory theories and profound disagreement. I propose that the narrative form of these tales is inappropriate to didactic moral teaching and argue that a perspective which is informed by their mythic and oral origins is best placed to help our understanding of how they can be harnessed for the purposes of moral learning. I argue that there are historical and artistic reasons for seeing an important role for drama. in this process and examine how moral processes are engaged and informed by the dramatic event. In Part IT, I introduce the fieldwork with a critical look at how the practices of drama in education can be used to engage children in ethical exploration as defined within the parameters of this inquiry. I provide a detailed account of the research methodology followed by three case studies, each of which recounts and analyses a series of lessons with three separate classes of children, centred around three distinct traditional tales. These case studies are discursive in nature, each focusing upon issues and questions generated by the particular stories and lessons. They are informed by the theoretical exposition in Part I but generate their own theoretical perspectives and hypotheses which I propose to have implications for general classroom practice within this area. In the concluding chapter, I propose that the theoretical thrust and practical findings of the project signal an important role for drama in a school's moral education policy and suggest particular areas of inquiry which would further inform this argument.

Development agencies have been sending educational aid to Ghana for more than three decades, their declared purpose being to support the country’s educational development. Despite the aid and development agencies’ own literature indicating the aid is promoting education development, there has been little research exploring the aid’s actual outcomes as experienced in country by recipients. This dissertation therefore sought to explore experiences of Ghanaian educational aid recipients: teachers, head teachers, district, and national education managers, focusing on whether and how educational aid has contributed to or hindered educational development. Using an interpretive approach, the participants’ perceptions of their experiences of aid were sought. The interviewing method was used to collect data as it gave the opportunity to hear from the recipients’ individually. 13 participants were interviewed from the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service, two primary schools and a District Education Office. King’s (2007) template analysis strategy was used to identify important themes in the recipients’ accounts of experiences, and the themes interpreted to arrive at findings. Six major findings were identified, the most significant being that the outcomes of aid are mixed – having both positive and negative impacts. Positive impacts include increased funding and learning experiences, whilst the negatives include aid conditionality. The other findings are that aid may be funding non-priority items; an urgent need to improve the delivery of aid; measuring the outcomes of aid is a challenge; there are tensions around the appropriateness of aid; and, aid not being the first option for recipients to seek assistance. Implications of these findings for practice include recommendations to: decentralise needs assessment for aid processes from the national authorities to include a cross section of regional, district and school staff in consultations; development agencies to allow recipients to decide what and how funds are used to meet local educational needs; the recipient nation to develop a standardized evaluation framework that can generate necessary data to report aid results; the need for the national government to incrementally wean the country off aid by pursuing alternative sources of funding; and in the short term, the need for development agencies to provide sustainable aid if the need arises. The concluding observation is the urgent need to recognise that aid can be improved for the betterment of those who it is intended to benefit.

This thesis explores how the concept of well-being is understood and operationalised in the early years through examining the implementation of the Foundation Phase in Wales. In 2008, the Welsh Government presented well-being as one of seven Areas of Learning in the Foundation Phase, which is the statutory curriculum for 3-to-7 year olds. Despite the appealing interest of well-being within policy, very limited research focuses on understanding the nature of well-being in schools and the curriculum. Well-being is generally acknowledged as a complex concept and there are many different explanations. In addition, and despite the fast-growing interest in education there is little consensus about child well-being. Therefore, this study explores primary school practitioners’ knowledge and understanding of well-being and examines day-to-day classroom practices. This qualitative case study included eight focus groups, 21 practitioner interviews, as well as 342 hours of observations in two primary schools. Several Bernsteinian concepts are drawn upon in the analysis. Key findings suggest that practitioners are uncertain about the nature of well-being as well as operationalising and capturing well-being. The study reveals four different dimensions associated with the concept of well-being, and one unwarranted assumption shared by some practitioners about a child’s well-being and their socio-economic background. In addition, five different types of well-being practices are identified; four of these practices are integrated in nature and one of them is discretely delivered by adults. The study shows that criterion-referenced assessment is implemented in different ways, but practitioners encounter various difficulties when capturing children’s well-being. Practitioners also report that well-being assessment tools are missing helpful follow-up strategies. The thesis concludes by discussing ways of developing practitioners’ understanding of complex concepts such as well-being and pedagogy, and the longer term policy implications regarding the curriculum and assessment. Future directions about child well-being research are considered.