The learning of second language vocabulary in lists of word-pairs is a widespread practice despite the disapproval of many in the second language learning domain. There is an acknowledged mismatch between psychological theories on the one hand and techniques of vocabulary learning on the other. Psychology does not address the relevant issues directly and second language learning practice is often atheoretical and unprincipled. This thesis reviews aspects of psychology which appear to be relevant to second language vocabulary learning and their applicability. A series of experiments is conducted with comprehensive school students learning French, aged 11-13. The first part of the study deals with the presentation of vocabulary items to be learned. Presenting items in the order First Language - Second Language is the more versatile form of presentation if both generation and comprehension are required on the part of the learner. The transferability of list learning to testing in a sentential context depends on the ability of the learner and the task involved. Higher-ability list learners are inhibited in a generation task but not in a comprehension task; the opposite is true for lower-ability learners. Learning in a context improves the performance of higher-ability learners in generation but makes little difference to lower-ability learners. An explanation is suggested in terms of transfer-appropriate processing. The position of items in the list is not a reliable indicator of learnability. Primacy, recency, and serial effects may be obtained but none of them is consistent. The same conclusion applies to different ways of presenting wordpairs. The second part of the study examines aspects of word learnability. Objective word frequency is not a reliable indicator of learnability in this context. Word category and the presence of an English word embedded in a French word are promising indicators of leamability.

This thesis is a study of the comparative academic effectiveness of Catholic schools in England. It uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches to investigate the hypothesis that, pupils who attend Catholic comprehensive schools will, all things being equal, achieve higher levels of academic attainment in GCSE examinations at the age of sixteen than similar pupils attending other maintained comprehensive schools. The study reviews the published findings of research in this field in England and the United States of America and reports previously unpublished analysis of the results of school inspections made under Section 9 of the Education Act 1992 by OFSTED. There has been very little empirical research into the academic effectiveness of Catholic schools in England. Findings that have been reported have arisen from studies which were focused on other issues and this facet of the results has not been investigated further. In contrast, in the USA there has been a significant quantity of large scale research indicating the academic superiority of schools in the Catholic sector. The research uses a simple form of multi-level modelling as the main analytical tool to compare the performance of pupils (n = 2335) attending eighteen comprehensive schools in a medium sized shire county. In addition, a case study approach is used to compare two different models of Catholic school in the sample to highlight factors which may contribute to their differing levels of academic productivity. The findings partly confirm previous research that has indicated the superiority of Catholic schools in England and extends understanding of the possible causes of that superiority. The study suggests areas for further research and possible applications of the findings for Church authorities and other providers of maintained schools.

This thesis is an empirical examination of coursework and coursework assessment in the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). The research was conducted using the condensed fieldwork methods of multi-site case study, and fits broadly within the ethnographic research tradition. Case studies of the effects of coursework were made in six schools, across three different counties and two metropolitan districts. Examination texts, it is argued in the thesis, are open to interpretation and re-interpretation at different moments of use. Textual reading, moreover, is only part of the policy process - construction, reading, meaning formulation, meaning re-formulation and implementation. Texts allow multiple readings, although some texts are more 'readerly' than 'writerly'. These sources of meaning compete with previous examination technologies and with other discursive forms. They are practical documents and they are guided by specific sets of ideological meaning. They seek to provide apparatus for differentiating between candidates, and they play their part in the creation of individual subjectivities. A typology of teachers' attitudes towards GCSE coursework is developed, and these are classified as conformist, adaptive, oppositional, ritualistic, transformative and non-conformist. Teachers' initial reading of GCSE texts or their initial confrontation with the ideas behind the new examination draws upon both those internalized rules which actors reproduce in their day to day working lives and those structural resources which position actors within set frameworks. Those elements of structure that are relevant to the matter in hand condition, but do not determine, actors' responses. Initial textual readings give way to subsequent interpretations and reinterpretations of coursework processes, and all the various readings are implicated in the implementation and reimplementation of coursework strategies. This cycle of activity at different moments and in different guises influences actual practice. An account is given of the way those structural and interactional influences impact upon initial textual readings within one of the case-study schools. Curriculum policy and curriculum practice within specific sites is always the result of contestation. Within institutions that devolve power and decision-making, outcomes are never all the same; that contestation will have different outcomes at different moments and at different places. Further to this, five sets of polarized concepts - weak/strong knowledge framing, formative/summative modes of assessment, the production of reliable/unreliable assessment data, limited/extended amounts and types of teacher interventions in coursework processes and normal/irregular classroom practices - are developed to help analyse issues such as the influence of the GCSE on classroom practice, integration of assessment and curriculum, pupil-teacher relations, pedagogy and pupil motivation. Finally the threads of the argument that has been developed in this thesis are drawn together to show how dislocated relationships between examination policy texts and realisation have consequences for examination comparability, educational disadvantage, and the production and reproduction of educational knowledge in schools.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has proposed that economic growth in developing countries can best be achieved through a good delivery of technical/vocational education targeted to the specific needs of the country and its economy. In Iraq, the state regards technical/vocational education within the secondary system of education as the main source of the middle-rank skilled labour needed to satisfy the requirements of the economy. This study analyses the development of technical/vocational secondary education policies in Iraq. It seeks to examine this system in relation to the country's geopolitical, economic, social and cultural circumstances. The first chapter considers the arguments for and against I technical and vocational: education. The second chapter is concerned with Iraq's geopolitical position and examines the structure of its society. It will also examine the evolution and development of the Iraqi economy, with the main focus on the period after 1968. The third chapter is an analysis of the existing Iraqi educational system, including principles, aims and priorities, levels of education and quantitative growth, education finance and administration, curriculum and examination system. The fourth chapter reviews the nature of and growing need for technical and vocational education throughout the history of the country. The fifth chapter evaluates the existing system of technical and vocational education by firstly, examining its characteristics and then the problems facing it. Implications for planning and the reform of technical and vocational education in Iraq emerge from the conclusions and suggestions which constitute the final part.

English language, which does not have a precedent in the respect that it is used by such a variety of speakers with so many different first languages in such a wide range of contexts across the world, has served to make the complex nature of language more visible to us. Given such an opportunity, a considerable amount of research has been devoted to the description and analysis of what people do with this global lingua franca (i.e. people’s language practices, performances, and consequential linguistic variation and change). However, on the other hand, little research has approached what people say about this global phenomenon. Given this gap, this PhD thesis explores the ways people think, talk about and make sense of English, language, communication, and various other issues and concepts surrounding this area of global language practices, since the nature of language cannot be fully understood from observation and description of actual language use alone. It is for this purpose that this thesis begins by engaging with academic theories of, approaches to, and research on English in a global context and language ideologies. Such conceptual understanding underpins the approaches taken in this research, which specifically explored East Asian English users’ ideas of and beliefs about English and language through a questionnaire survey and qualitative in-depth interviews. Explorations and discussions of the findings of this study emphasise the point that what is accessible in people’s talk on language is emphatically not only their ideas of English or language at face value. People’s micro-level everyday practices and macro-level social expectations and norms are merged and condensed into their accounts on language through their interpretive filters, which is an invaluable source that help linguists have a better understanding of language both as a practice and concept. These insights pose critical questions for language attitude research and add deeper considerations to discussions of language(s) and language users in the field of English as a lingua franca.

The concept of critical thinking has been influential in curriculum policy and practice across sectors of UK education and has been identified as a key consideration in recent consultations about A level reform. The purpose of this study is to describe the meanings attributed to critical thinking in expert accounts and to compare these with policy maker and participant meanings in the context of A level Critical Thinking. A distinctive feature is the attention given to underlying epistemological and ontological assumptions of these accounts. The prevailing concept of critical thinking is of a universally applicable set of skills and dispositions for assessing reasoning and evidence, which derives from the informal logic movement and rests on a fallibilist epistemology. This contrasts with discipline specific concepts. In social realist theory critical thinking has been associated with ‘soft genericism’ and implicated in an ‘evacuation of knowledge’. A critique and extension of this theory is proposed which differentiates between multiple forms and functions of critical thinking in the curriculum. Evidence on student views was gathered in a mixed methods case study, supplemented by a teacher response activity. Students attributed high value to critical thinking and were confident in their ability to apply skills to academic and life situations; whilst they felt that these skills were not taught in other subjects. In apparent contradiction, teachers suggested correspondence between the skills expected for high performance across subjects and those in A level Critical Thinking. Additionally, they emphasized the importance of subject specific contextualising to depth of critical evaluation. It was concluded that knowledge and critical thinking are complementary rather than conflicting forces in education and that a differently conceived critical thinking based on social constructionist epistemology is compatible with and essential to the knowledge curriculum envisaged by social realists.

The global spread of English and its wide-ranging use worldwide have exerted a great influence on the socio-cultural and sociolinguistic situation and led to a substantial change in language use, pedagogy and policy. This changing situation of English use has brought about the new emerging mode of communication, which is English as a lingua franca (henceforth ELF). The hybridity and heterogeneity is an inevitable result of frequent and widespread language contact in ELF situations, and this variability and diversity is characterised as the primary nature of ELF communication. This fluid and hybrid nature of ELF communication has resulted from the need for more accommodative and adaptive behaviour in the interaction. Therefore, accommodation has been considered as one of the most influential and effective pragmatic strategies in ELF. The research reported in this thesis aimed to investigate how flexibly and effectively ELF speakers deal with the variability and diversity by employing various accommodative strategies, and the study is particularly focused on pragmatic accommodation among East Asian ELF speakers. The findings of the study show that East Asian speakers of ELF strategically and dynamically engage in pragmatic processes of co-construction of meaning and accommodation and adopt convergent pragmatic strategies such as repetition, paraphrase, and utterance completion. The high frequency of accommodation strategies for solidarity seems to indicate that East Asian speakers of ELF draw on their own cultural values and communicative behaviours, which emphasise positive politeness and rapport-oriented relationships in conversation, and the result suggests the need for reconsideration of communicative competence in order to foreground the significance of pragmatic and strategic competence in intercultural communication settings. The study provides pedagogical implications of the need for awareness on sociolinguistic issues in teachers education and suggests a more ELF-oriented and diversity-driven teaching approach.

Despite the significant body of research on examination malpractice, there is still the need to focus research on preventing examination malpractice in secondary schools. At present, schools prevent examination malpractice through invigilation, structural arrangements in the examination rooms and punishment of offenders. These methods are failing schools in preventing examination malpracitce because they do not address students' problems that determine examination malpractice. The aim of the study was to axplore the effectiveness of preventing examination malpractice by consulting students on schooling and by consulting students on schooling and by using a community approach in its prevention. Research into consulting students, their participation in identifying school problems and in initiating solutions to them through student voice has become increasingly evident in the last few decades, but to date, student voice has not been studied as a method for preventing malpractice in schools. Research has predominently used questionnaires to capture students' views on examination malpractice thereby taking for granted, students' feelings, values , interpretations and experiences of their personal and school contexts that determine examination malpractice. The study is geared towards understanding this unexamined areas. The study reports the use of "qualitative dominant" mixed methods to explore the perspective of teachers and students on examination malpractice and on consulting students on schooling. Multiple case studies of students and teachers in three secondary schools in Nigeria were carried out. Data was collected through a combination of focus groups, interviews, questionnaires and observations. Data was analysed by using interpretative and deductive approaches. Key findings from the study show that examination malpracitce is prevalent in secondary schools and is predominently determined by academic/institutional factors. The study confirms that as students are experienced in schooling, consulting them about schooling and about preventing examination malpractice will likely improve their committment to education, their responsibility towards the prevention of examinataion malpractice and enhance teacher and student relationships and examination integrity/morality

Over the last two decades, teacher education (TE) has witnessed substantial changes in the way the divide between theory and practice is viewed. This has resulted in changes in the approaches used to deliver TE programmes. Since Dewey (1933), teacher educators have been concerned with how to prepare teachers who are reflective about what they are doing. Hence, there has been widely applied emphasis on the investigation of practice. This study describes the introduction of Reflective Practice (RP) to Libyan fourth-year trainee teachers to enhance their thinking about pedagogic skills. Its main aim is to examine to what extent trainee teachers will engage in a reflective practice (RP) programme, how they will reflect on their everyday understanding and practice and how they may improve their thinking about practice as a result. It describes how an action research study was conducted with a group of 30 prospective teachers over a period of 14 weeks and involved three phases. The first two phases lasted twelve weeks. In the first phase, the participants engaged in general discussions on instructional strategies, and this paved the way for the second phase, where there was in-college teaching practice. Finally, the participants practised teaching for two consecutive weeks in a real-life context, i.e. in a secondary school. The findings indicate that the implementation of RP in the Libyan context promoted a culture of observation and critical discussions in a setting that has traditionally been characterised as passive and non-reflective. The study indicates that RP is an essential component of pre-service teachers’ development. However, if we are to make more progress, we need to aim for more understanding of the pedagogic process that supports trainee teachers’ (TTs) pedagogic inquiry. This will require good collaborative work between colleges and schools, between educators and language tutors in schools and colleges, and among TTs themselves.

The students in the Brunei mainstream education system eventually learn most subjects in English, which is not the first language for most of them. Reading in English is valued as it provides access to knowledge across the curriculum for the majority of students in Brunei as elsewhere too. Reading both for comprehension and learning are two areas of interest in this study. This thesis looks at the strategy use of (upper) secondary students of different abilities from three schools in Brunei when reading their academic materials in English. It aims to compare reading strategies the students used and which strategies the teachers taught (the use of) in two subject areas: English Language and Content Subjects. Adopting both quantitative and qualitative approaches, data was primarily collected from upper secondary students in three schools in Brunei; one of which consists of high ability students while the other two schools have mixed ability students. In the quantitative part of the study, students responded to the questionnaire on the perceived reading strategies used when reading. In the qualitative part of the study, twenty five students participated in semi-structured interviews where ten of them did a think-aloud reading activity. In terms of reading strategy use, the quantitative results showed that students employed cognitive reading strategies more than metacognitive strategies when they read in English. The qualitative results also revealed that students of different ability groups, in general did not differ greatly in the types of strategies they used. However, the frequency in the use of strategies and in the elaboration and execution of these strategies do vary among the students and across the two subject areas. Findings of the study further suggest that; (a) reading in the two subject areas differ in the emphasis of reading strategies, (b) ability may contribute to the differences in strategy use among students in the two subject areas.