Worldwide, accumulating evidence indicates an international movement within countries towards the development of integrated early childhood education and care services (OECD, 2001). Not only do demographic trends underscore such a demand, but also extensive research documents the cognitive, social and emotional developmental benefits of high quality integrated provision in early childhood while at the same time contributing to countries’ ability to compete in a global economy (Eming-Young, 2002). This thesis is concerned with an analysis of the feasibility of transferring the English Early Excellence Centres (EEC) Programme to early childhood settings in Greece. The EEC Programme was introduced by the English Government in 1997 to develop and promote models of high quality integrated education and care services for young children and families as an important part of Government’s broad based strategy for increasing opportunities, supporting families, reducing social exclusion, increasing the health of the nation and addressing child poverty. Case studies were constructed at three Early Excellence Centres (EECs) in England - and two key policy makers involved in the programme were also interviewed. The analysis of the interviews, questionnaires and documents collected during the research in England provided useful insights into the development of integrated services at practice and policy level, along with the successes and challenges encountered during the process of change. Further exploratory case study research took place in Greece to examine whether there is the potential and desire to move towards integration. The theory of a ‘tipping point’ (Gladwell, 2000) provided some profoundly suggestive arguments and insights to analyse the processes by which the English EEC Programme developed at policy level, and how it ‘crossed a threshold’, tipped and spread nationally and internationally. In addition, this theory offered a practical thinking tool for constructing a strategy towards integration in Greece. Analysis revealed that a change process towards integration is not easy to manage; is most productively seen as a social process that gradually unfolds over time; and which acknowledges the socio-economic, political and cultural context of each country. This research indicates that keeping our focus on the development of integration at ground level could be an effective starting point in Greece, -but the development and delivery of integrated services also needs local and central support. A strategy towards establishing integrated service provision in Greece needs to explore what already exists and start building on that; to support personal and professional development; to value the participation of parents; to promote research; and to influence policy. This thesis wishes to stimulate debate, to contribute to the limited Greek literature in the area of integrated early childhood services and to be of interest to policy makers and advocates who have the capacity to shape the direction of the early childhood system in Greece.

Section A is a systematic review of the literature surrounding school-based interventions to address the stigma faced by people diagnosed with mental health problems. It asks the question of what the role of these interventions currently and potentially is and what is important for their efficacy. It begins by acknowledging the problem that stigma and discrimination presents, identifying what leads to and perpetuates this stigma. It then presents key theoretical and empirical contributions to our understanding of stigma and also to our understanding of how learning develops and attitudes form. The review goes on to look at what has been done in schools to date and highlights ‘active ingredients’ in these programmes, discussing the extent to which the current picture addresses theoretical and empirical contributions. Suggestions for further research are provided. Section B provides the findings of a grounded theory study investigating how primary school teachers communicate with children about mental health problems. Individual semi-structured interviews were carried out with fifteen teachers in three state schools. A model of communication is presented, which explains why discussions about mental health problems are absent from the primary school classroom. There appear to be a number of reasons for this. Teachers have fears about the implications of talking about mental health problems with children. These are connected to their beliefs and fears regarding those with mental health problems, their beliefs about mental health problems in relation to children and its place in the classroom, and about their professional roles. Relating to theory, teachers perceive themselves as part of a homogenous ‘in-group’ as distinct from a homogenous ‘out-group’ with mental health problems. Fears, beliefs and ingroup perceptions lead teachers to ‘play safe’ and avoid conversations about mental health problems in the classroom. This absence of discussion may reinforce for children that mental health problems are taboo. Greater links are required between schools and mental health services, and clinical psychologists need to be proactive in influencing policymakers by promoting the argument that teaching on mental health problems has an important place within the British school curriculum. Section C is a critical appraisal of this research, including discussion of the experience of being a researcher throughout this process. Consideration is given to the skills developed, areas where they may need to be expanded upon, areas where things could have been done differently, as well as research and clinical implications of the findings.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of problem-based learning (PBL) on students’ mathematical performance. This includes mathematics achievement and students’ attitudes towards mathematics for third and eighth grade students in Saudi Arabia. Mathematics achievement includes, knowing, applying, and reasoning domains, while students’ attitudes towards mathematics covers, ‘Like learning mathematics’, ‘value mathematics’, and ‘a confidence to learn mathematics’. This study goes deeper to examine the interaction of a PBL teaching strategy, with trained face-to-face and self-directed learning teachers, on students’ performance (mathematics achievement and attitudes towards mathematics). It also examines the interaction between different ability levels of students (high and low levels) with a PBL teaching strategy (with trained face-to-face or self-directed learning teachers) on students’ performance. It draws upon findings and techniques of the TIMSS international benchmarking studies. Mixed methods are used to analyse the quasi-experimental study data. One -way ANOVA, Mixed ANOVA, and paired t-tests models are used to analyse quantitative data, while a semi-structured interview with teachers, and author’s observations are used to enrich understanding of PBL and mathematical performance. The findings show that the PBL teaching strategy significantly improves students’ knowledge application, and is better than the traditional teaching methods among third grade students. This improvement, however, occurred only with the trained face-to-face teacher’s group. Furthermore, there is robust evidence that using a PBL teaching strategy could raise significantly students’ liking of learning mathematics, and confidence to learn mathematics, more than traditional teaching methods among third grade students. Howe ver, there was no evidence that PBL could improve students’ performance (mathematics achievement and attitudes towards mathematics), more than traditional teaching methods, among eighth grade students. In 8th grade, the findings for low achieving students show significant improvement compared to high achieving students, whether PBL is applied or not. However, for 3th grade students, no significant difference in mathematical achievement between high and low achieving students was found. The results were not expected for high achieving students and this is also discussed. The implications of these findings for mathematics education in Saudi Arabia are considered.

In response to poor levels of fruit and vegetable consumption in children across the UK, numerous interventions have been developed in schools in an attempt to encourage children to meet the recommended five a day. This programme of research examined the potential of a school-based healthy eating intervention, the Food Dudes programme, to increase children’s fruit and vegetable consumption in the long-term, at both school and at home, in 15 schools across the West Midlands. In contrast to previous studies that focused on the internal validity of the intervention, the programme of research utilised a socio-ecological approach to explore the wider contextual factors involved in behaviour change, beyond discussion of efficacy. Evidence from the six outputs indicated that the Programme was: effective in increasing fruit and vegetable consumption in the short-term only; more effective for children who consumed school-provided lunches than those provided from home (output 3); did not result in any decreases in high fat and/or sugar foods (output 4), not able to transfer to the home environment (output 5); and difficult to implement as part of the school day (output 6). Sustaining healthy eating behaviours beyond the intervention was a key challenge. Whilst interventions such as Food Dudes may work at the intrapersonal level of an ecological system, issues of sustainability arise from the intervention’s inability to extend or function beyond individual level behaviour change. The ecological approach on children’s’ eating behaviour offers an alternative theoretical approach to explain the effectiveness of interventions such as Food Dudes, and as a basis for proposing alternative intervention strategies.

The deployment of technology across the globe towards creating efficient learning environments is growing rapidly. In the United Kingdom, for example, the government is investing an enormous amount of money in primary school early years programming lessons. The ideology behind this push is to strengthen the link between the younger generation and the technological growth that will continue to have an ever-increasing impact on their lives and to fuel the pace of innovation. One of the core themes of this area is that of computer programming, which has now become a mandatory subject in early years’ education. As a result of this change, many challenges are being faced by teachers and pupils; for example, teachers require more training and young students need appropriate tools that suit their level of learning. Therefore, this research aimed to help facilitate the process of teaching and learning programming for the young generation via the provision of a suitable technologically educational programming system whereby they can develop their programming skills. This proposed system has some pedagogical characteristics that distinguish it from other programming tutoring systems. The proposed system is based on assessment-driven learning whereby pupils are provided with suitable programming learning that fits their appropriate learning levels. Another characteristic of this proposed system is that pupils are learning programming through a deep learning approach, e.g. thinking and analysing how to solve the problem, not like other existing tools which have attempted only to achieve lower learning outcomes, e.g. remembering a concept and then answering multiple-choice questions. Two experimental studies were conducted on pupils from two UK primary schools to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed system, and the results indicated that pupils found the proposed system helped them to learn programming, as well as they made good progress and they enjoyed what they were learning. Consequently, it can be interpreted from the research findings that an automated teaching and learning programming system that supports the right pedagogical aspects, e.g. assessment-driven learning with the inclusion of game-based learning, would make the learning process more successful and enjoyable for pupils in early years of education.

The proportion of children entering primary school at the stipulated age in 2010 in Sub-Saharan Africa was 57%. For the same year, the net attendance ratios for primary and lower secondary education were 76% and 47% respectively. These figures are correlated in that delayed school enrolment increases the risk of dropout which in turn shortens the school life expectancy for children. These observations are the motivation behind this research. By writing this thesis, three substantive research questions have been explored: (1) what is Sierra Leone’s progress towards achieving universal basic education (2) what are the determinants of school attendance at basic education in West Africa and (3) does living in a community with more educated mothers enhance children’s school attendance at basic education. Three countries have been used: Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ghana. Sierra Leone and Liberia have been used to reflect poor and post-conflict states with transitional and premature education systems respectively. Ghana is representative of middle income and politically stable countries with more advanced education systems in the region. The most recent Demographic and Health Survey for the three countries are used for analysis. Four empirical chapters are presented. The first chapter addresses research question 1. It applies simple statistical analyses to United Nations indicators for evaluating progress towards universal education. The second and third chapters answer the second research question and the final chapter answers the third research question. These three chapters employ multilevel statistical techniques to model the determinants of primary and junior secondary school attendance. The second empirical chapter focuses on the interaction between household and community poverty with the aim of investigating whether the attendance of poor children suffers more than affluent children by residing in a poor community. The third empirical chapter explores the determinants of junior secondary school attendance with the aim of deducing whether there are significant differences between post-conflict countries and more stable countries. The final chapter focuses on the relationship between mothers’ education and school attendance at basic education, arguing that living in a community with a high proportion of more educated mothers enhances the likelihood that a child will attend school, irrespective of the child’s background. The results from the first chapter show that the realisation of UBE is distant in Sierra Leone. There has been a decline in the number of children entering primary education; junior secondary education has however doubled although it remains low at 21%. Children from the poorest households are the most excluded from school followed by rural children and girls. The results from the second empirical chapter showed that there is a significant interaction between household and community poverty where poor children living in poor communities experience a greater depreciation in their probability of attending school than more affluent children who live in the same deprived environment in Sierra Leone. No such interaction was found in Liberia or Ghana. In the third empirical chapter, the sex of the child, agricultural livelihood within a community, household wealth and area of residence were significant in Sierra Leone and Liberia. In Ghana, sex of the household head and maternal orphanhood were significant. The hypothesis of the relationship between mothers’ community education and children’s school attendance for the final empirical chapter was confirmed.

The development and maintenance of healthy physical activity behaviours from an early age is a priority for public health in the UK. Schools provide a number of different opportunities (time inside and outside of the curriculum) and resources in the form of space, equipment and staff for children to learn and develop healthy behaviours, at a time when they are most receptive to behaviour change. The overall aim of the thesis was to identify the different opportunities within the school context whereby children could be physically active and use theoretically driven, whole school interventions to optimise and subsequently increase healthful physical activity. Study 1 demonstrated that primary schools wishing to use pedometers within their curricula can be confident that the EZ-V model is sufficiently accurate to measure physical activity in the form of steps taken (r=0.897). Using the EZ-V pedometer, Study 2 demonstrated that feedback from pedometers along with information on how children can be physically active during the school day, can significantly increase children's mean daily steps-min"' compared to feedback alone or control groups over the course of a school week. Furthermore, boys were significantly more active than girls across each treatment group. Study 3 explored the affect of the primary school travel plan (TP) on the moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) of 7-11 year olds during the winter and summer season. In order to examine the impact of the TP, schools were separated into schools deemed to have an Established TP (implemented for at least 2 years) or `New' schools (i. e., had just drafted their TP and were in the first year of its implementation). Children in the New TP schools accumulated 7.24 (winter) and 24.11 (summer) more minutes of MVPA (5.2% and 15.66% respectively) throughout the day compared with those in the Established TP school children (F(1,35=) 0.955, p=0.207, d=0.33). Overall, children were more active during the summer by 7.81 minutes (F(I, 35) = 0.089, p=0.768, d=0.1). The final study examined the affect of a 12 week, multi-component, whole school intervention which aimed to increase children's school day MVPA. Following baseline physical activity measures via accelerometry, intervention components consisting of a Health Week, Playtime Pals and a Pedometer Challenge were delivered sequentially over the first 6 weeks. Subsequent accelerometer data were collected after each intervention was delivered at 2,4,6 and 12 weeks. Results showed that from baseline to follow-up, children increased their MVPA by 6.57 minutes during the school day, which according to the Q statistic was likely to be beneficial. Results from the Pedometer Challenge found that boy s' mean pedometer steps"day-' were significantly higher than girls' (F(I, 95)= 9.987, p=0.002, d=0.65) and overall, mean pedometer steps-day"' significantly increased from week one to week five (F(,, 93)= 5.845, p=0.018, d=0.24). When the lowest and highest active 50% groups were compared, children in the lowest active 50% group significantly increased their steps from week one to week five (F(l, 47)= 20.847, p=0.000, d=0.93), while the highest active 50% did not (F(1,47)= 0.000, p=0.990, d=0). Furthermore, boys in the highest active 50% group were found to accumulate significantly more steps than the girls, in the highest active 50% group (F(I, 46)= 14.701, p=0.000, d=0.81), while there was no significant difference between the boys' and girls' pedometer steps in the lowest 50% group (F(l, 46)= 0.456, p=0.503, d=0.14). The overall findings of the thesis suggest that schools can successfully optimise the different opportunities during the school day in order to increase children's physical activity, but that larger, controlled and longitudinally designed studies are needed to confirm cause and effect. Most importantly, these changes may have most impact in the least active boys and girls. Interventions such as this should therefore be targeted at the least active children to ensure that they benefit as much as possible from the opportunity to increase their daily physical activity.

Throughout the English-speaking world, minority language children (LMC) or children who speak English as an additional language (EAL) are being educated in mainstream classrooms where they have little or no opportunity to use their mother tongue. This study investigates how educators at primary schools in Merseyside, where English is usually the only language in the classroom, respond to the educational and academic needs (linguistic, cognitive) of LMC/EAL children. It addresses socio-linguistic issues, teaching strategies and instructional approaches related to linguistic development and academic achievement of LMCIEAL pupils. It outlines the background to policy and practice in relation to LMCIEAL pupils in Britain. School districts across the United Kingdom are serving increasing number of children from varied cultural and social-linguistic backgrounds in mainstream classrooms. While the population of LMC/EAL will continue to increase, the majority of teachers and those in teacher programs are mainly from a white British background with limited awareness, knowledge and understanding of linguistic needs of LMC/EAL children in mainstream classrooms. Thus, a major challenge for educators is to develop and provide resources that enable teaching such diverse populations to become more effective. The research investigates in particular, how well local authorities and schools can raise standards for all learners in mainstream primary classrooms and examines the ways in which mainstream educational policy and practice has attempted to adapt in recognising that linguistic diversity is the norm rather than the exception in modem British society. The research focuses on what instructional strategies that schools employ in order to provide the best support for language minority children in the classroom in term of the individually focused approaches to learning, closer link between school and home and resources available for schools serving LMC/EAL pupils. The focus of this research is on the experience of staff from 20 primary schools within two local authorities in Merseyside. Questionnaires, semi-structured interviews with the primary schools staff and local authority advisers and government/school policy documents were used as data sources. The results of the study showed that the institution and community (use of first language) play a role in academic achievement of LMC/EAL pupils. The study revealed that teachers within mainstream classrooms recognise the importance of bilingualism, but due to the lack of resources and support, they found it hard to put it into practice. The results indicated that most participants were from a dominant language (English) background, which lack the awareness and experience needed to be effective in multi cultural classrooms. Suggestions are made for improved content delivery and further research including bilingualism as a teaching approach should become a legitimate topic for discussion and further research.

This thesis examines how family background, measured as parents education, and household access to amenities affects children’s school enrolment, and how parents education affects earnings. I also examine how education and family background affects performance of unregistered urban businesses. In the first empirical study, rural educated parents’ effects on biological children’s enrolment were stronger, with educated fathers’ effects positive for boys and girls. Educated mothers helped boys, perhaps indicating more “traditional” values among women. Urban educated parents’ effects were weaker, which is plausible, given the weaker influence of “traditional” values. For non-biological urban children, educated mothers effect were adverse, suggesting that children fulfil a servant-type role to facilitate the educated mother’s market work. Poor access to amenities reduces enrolment. In the second empirical study, while family background was important for education, there were also direct effects of family background on earnings given education for urban individuals, implying that “connections” and nepotism may be important. The final study shows that education is important for performance of unregistered businesses without workers. Among firms with workers, education is insignificant, a result admittedly difficult to explain. Parental business ownership assists performance, an implication that parental business owners can effectively train children to business ownership.

Collaboration has become closely linked with school improvement. Literature identifies elements which contribute to successful collaboration. This study identifies some of these elements. The study focus is collaboration of senior leaders in primary schools in a Midland’s LA. It identifies senior leaders’ understanding of collaboration and how the collaborative process is developed in contributing schools. The study is largely qualitative and based on the perceptions of primary school leaders. The methodology is that of survey, within this two methods were used to gather data – questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The questionnaire was designed to identify themes relating to collaboration which were then developed using semi-structured interviews to provide additional data and clarify specific areas relating to senior leaders’ perceptions and understanding of collaboration and their approach to collaborative working in primary schools. The findings show collaboration is perceived to be important to school improvement although the majority of contributors in this study have a ‘top-down’ approach. The study identifies if collaboration is to be successful there may be a need for reflection to be built into the collaborative process presenting a potential model for discussion on how reflection could be included in the collaborative process in primary schools. The study contributes to existing knowledge of collaboration of senior leaders in primary schools presenting a tentative ladder, based on literature and findings in this study, for different stages of collaboration moving forward from little or no collaboration to achieving successful effective equal collaboration, identifying how collaboration may be further developed in primary schools.