This thesis focuses on the learning and use of English as a tool of instruction inside Libyan universities. The study begins with an investigation of the challenges that students and lecturers face in the learning and teaching of the language of English in higher education. In-depth qualitative research was carried out at Sebha University in the South of Libya, including individual and group interviews with staff and students. The thesis, in this respect, makes a particular contribution as it sets out the multiple and contradictory challenges that all parties experience. It seeks not to lay blame but, rather, to understand how the parties concerned understand the issues from their unique point of view. This element of the thesis shows up the major challenges in the teaching and learning of English in higher education in Libya. The second element of empirical work concerns how English is then employed as the language of transmission in a professional field – medicine. This second ‘layer’ of work, then, illustrates what happens when a language which is not the language of either the lecturers or the students is used to try to communicate and develop complex information and understandings. This second element of the work shows then how the challenges evident in the teaching and learning of English are carried into a professional field. The concept of ‘deep rote’ learning in extrapolated from the data. The reliance on rote learning in the teaching of English ‘translates’ into a deeper level of rote in the teaching and learning of Medicine, as lecturers and students alike struggle both with the language and the content of the material they are working with. This ‘deep rote’ is consolidated through social and cultural issues and the challenges associated with funding, resourcing and training of staff in Libyan Higher Education. Connections are made between the area of study and the personal experience of the researcher carrying out the study with a methodological reflection on the challenges faced by a student of this same system. To this end, 45 semi-structured interviews were conducted with staff and students from medicine and education departments at Sebha University, divided as follows: 21 semi-structured interviews with students and 24 semi-structured interviews with staff members. These interviews were followed by three focus groups with a particular focus on shedding light on the issues that the students raised in one-to-one interviews, including the main challenges they face when the lecturers use English as the medium of study instead of Arabic, their experiences of learning English, and the different methods that lecturers use in order to support students’ learning in different areas of study. Each group had five participants with two groups being made up entirely of young women. Grounded Theory was used as the theoretical approach to investigate the collected data. The author tried to put to one side any a priori assumptions about what he would find and used a systematic process of organising the data under themes and categories which were then related to each other. The main motivation for the use of this theory was that the findings gained can be valid and reliable in respect of representing real-world settings. In addition, the stories that are told through this approach are context-specific, detailed, and robustly connected to the data.

This thesis investigates the distinctive characteristics of adult students’ experience of transition to higher education. It addresses a gap in the current academic literature which, driven by concerns about the economic, social and personal implications of ‘problematic’ or ‘failed’ transition, often conceptualises transition to higher education in narrow, instrumental terms and frames it as a predominately linear process with a discernible beginning and end. By highlighting what falls within normative parameters of transition, this approach arguably obscures its heterogeneity. The research presented in this thesis suggests that it particularly lacks the flexibility to illuminate the more diverse experience of adult students whose individual histories, responsibilities, social networks, fears and dreams are – in general – very different to those of ‘traditional’ younger students around whose needs most models of transition support are primarily shaped. By adopting a more radical conceptualisation of transition which sees it as the lifelong ebb and flow of change in response to the multiplicity of factors that impact and shape human experience, the research highlights two overarching aspects of adult students’ experience of transition which have received relatively little attention in the relevant literature. First, it highlights the ubiquitous presence of risk and the anxiety it engenders in adult students’ experience of transition. For the vast majority of adult students their decision to enter higher education later in life is accompanied by a heightened awareness that the expectations behind that decision may not be fully realised. The research suggests that the anxiety that frequently accompanies this awareness permeates their whole experience of transition to higher education and has the potential to intensify concerns about mastering its valued practices. Second, the research highlights the significance of adult students’ social networks outwith higher education. Managing the interaction between these and higher education networks and communities is challenging for some students, particularly when the identity shift inherent in transition entails an element of distancing from longstanding supportive networks. Overall, this research points to the need for a widened perspective on adult students’ transition which moves the focus beyond problem solving towards a more nuanced approach that more fully acknowledges the sheer diversity of the factors involved.

Students experience stress due to many factors including educational unpreparedness, financial strain and the inability to integrate socially. This mixed methods study aimed to investigate stress levels of undergraduate students in a post-1992, Scottish university and the potential for measures of stress to act as an indicator of student withdrawal. Additionally, the project was concerned with students' use of support services and the development of a resource to facilitate student resilience with the aim to impact positively on retention. The level of perceived stress reported by students appeared to be high and was coupled with intention to dropout across all study levels. Students' psychological wellbeing appeared to be much lower than results published for the general population and actual withdrawal within the sampled cohort was higher than the University's formal figures would suggest. Perceived stress predicted a student's intention to withdraw but this association did not transfer to actual withdrawal suggesting that other factors, most likely coping mechanisms, play a part in mediating the withdrawal behaviour. Further data collection is required to confirm if a combination of perceived stress and coping data more accurately predicts actual withdrawal, however results showed that measures of perceived stress could be used to indicate a proportion of ‘at risk' students. Low use of avoidance and distraction coping was a better predictor of low self-reported stress than was high use of adaptive coping and this may have implications for interventions that endeavour to reduce stress through improved coping. Despite the seemingly high levels of stress and potential worry over dropout, students were reluctant to seek support and many were unaware of the support services available. An online, stress education resource was developed to build students' understanding of stress and the support available. It was envisaged that this would reduce stigma, aid in student self-awareness and self-assessment and improve their coping repertoire. The intervention was trialled alongside controls and results demonstrate that further work needs to be done to embed stress resilience into the student life cycle. The project reaffirms the need for concern over student wellbeing and highlights areas for improvement. Given students in this study may be considered ‘engaged', results bring to light a population, previously thought to be ‘low risk', but who could benefit from additional support to prevent unnecessary underachievement or attrition.

The overall aim of this study was to investigate the extent and the nature of Garyounis University's role in achieving the goals of social development in Libya based on the project termed "Libya 2025" by the National Office of Planning (2007). This purpose highlights a concern for the reality of Garyounis University's role in society within the Libyan context in terms of achieving social development aims in Libya including the dissemination of: health awareness; knowledge; environmental awareness; vocational awareness; and political awareness. The research also sought to identify the most important difficulties which challenge the university in carrying out this role. Data collection methods consisted of two main approaches including both quantitative and qualitative elements. Firstly, a questionnaire was designed in order to gather data that could assist in investigating the seven fields of the university role searched in this study. The researcher based the construction of this questionnaire on a number of previous studies related to this topic and 225 completed questionnaires were received out of 367 items that were distributed. Secondly, 16 semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to collect more extensive data and to overcome any limitations of the questionnaire. Both research tools were administered to a sample of the academic staff of the University of Benghazi in order to discover their perceptions of the issue under scrutiny. The findings of the study suggest that all the staff at Garyounis University are aware of the content of the law which outlines the societal goals of the institution and they acknowledge the importance of these aspirational goals. However, respondents indicated a wide range of difficulties in fulfilling this role and it was notable that it was perceived that the least attention was paid to health awareness. It is suggested that this study can contribute to the understanding of university-community engagement in Libya in theory and in practice and a series of recommendations are made including suggestions that further investment and training is required if these important goals are to be achieved.

This thesis addresses research on the introduction, use and effectiveness of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), learning resource supports and experiences of applying these as blended learning supports for modules and programmes in universities. The author's five selected papers, which span seven years, address these perspectives and outline experiences of how student feedback can inform design of the learning blend and the effects on student learning experiences in business higher education. The papers relate to linked strands of enquiry within the set of publications, namely: Web-based Learning Supports for Higher Education; Web-based administrative supports and Infrastructure Issues for Higher Education; Developing e-resources for Higher Education Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs); Use of e-Learning resources and VLEs to support action learning for postgraduate students in Higher Education; Developing models to evaluate Student Satisfaction. The contribution to knowledge consists of a foundation for understanding new skills and competences for digital supports as they contribute to blended learning environments and in their support of different learning approaches and for a range of historical approaches that evolve to currently used methods in strategy, design; infrastructure; student feedback/assessment issues. Also evaluations undertaken in support of the papers demonstrate how academics and students behave, relate and learn in digital media, including resource provision and perspectives on how instructors' can promote blended, problem-based and action learning. The papers present the development of a series of evaluation models that have proven to be robust in terms of adapting to changes in the support of VLEs, the differing blends and the approaches to learning. The models are flexible enough to incorporate the variable elements of a full range of philosophical stances to evaluations, where necessity requires.

A growing body of research has argued that university citizenship curricula are inefficient in promoting civic participation, while there is a tendency towards a broader citizenship understanding and new forms of civic engagements and citizenship learning in everyday life. The notion of cultural citizenship in this thesis concentrates on media practices’ relation to civic expression and civic engagement. This research thus argues that not enough attention has been paid to the effects of citizenship education policy on students and students’ active citizenship learning in China. This thesis examines the civic experience of university students in China in the parallel contexts of widespread adoption of mass media and of university citizenship education courses, which have been explicitly mandatory for promoting civic morality education in Chinese universities since 2007. This research project raises significant questions about the meditating influences of these two contexts on students’ perceptions of civic knowledge and civic participation, with particular interest to examine whether and how the notion of cultural citizenship could be applied in the Chinese context and whether it could provide certain implications for citizenship education in China. University students in one university in Beijing contributed to this research by providing both quantitative and qualitative data collected from mixed-methods research. 212 participants contributed to the questionnaire data collection and 12 students took part in interviews. Guided by the theoretical framework of cultural citizenship, a central focus of this study is to explore whether new forms of civic engagement and civic learning and a new direction of citizenship understanding can be identified among university students’ mass media use. The study examines the patterns of students’ mass media use and its relationship to civic participation, and also explores the ways in which mass media shape students and how they interact and perform through the media use. In addition, this study discusses questions about how national context, citizenship tradition and civic education curricula relate to students’ civic perceptions, civic participation and civic motivation in their enactment of cultural citizenship. It thus tries to provide insights and identify problems associated with citizenship courses in Chinese universities. The research finds that Chinese university students can also identify civic issues and engage in civic participation through the influence of mass media, thus indicating the application of cultural citizenship in the wider higher education arena in China. In particular, the findings demonstrate that students’ citizenship knowledge has been influenced by their entertainment experiences with TV programs, social networks and movies. However, the study argues that the full enactment of cultural citizenship in China is conditional with regards to characteristics related to two prerequisites: the quality of participation and the influence of the public sphere in the Chinese context. Most students in the study are found to be inactive civic participants in their everyday lives, especially in political participation. Students express their willingness to take part in civic activities, but they feel constrained by both the current citizenship education curriculum in universities and the strict national policy framework. They mainly choose to accept ideological and political education for the sake of personal development rather than to actively resist it, however, they employ creative ways online to express civic opinions and conduct civic discussion. This can be conceptualised as the cultural dimension of citizenship observed from students who are not passively prescribed by traditional citizenship but who have opportunities to build their own civic understanding in everyday life. These findings lead to the conclusion that the notion of cultural citizenship not only provides a new mode of civic learning for Chinese students but also offers a new direction for configuring citizenship in China. This study enriches the existing global literature on cultural citizenship by providing contemporary evidence from China which is a developing democratic country, as well as offering useful information for Chinese university practitioners, policy makers and citizenship researchers on possible directions for citizenship understanding and citizenship education. In particular, it indicates that it is important for efforts to be made to generate a culture of authentic civic participation for students in the university as well as to promote the development of the public sphere in the community and the country generally.

Within Higher Education, a substantial amount of research has explored black students’ experiences within post 1992 universities (Elevation Networks 2012; BITC 2010; RfO 2011; Leathwood 2004; Read et al. 2003). Research indicates that British African Caribbean men (BACM) are well represented in higher education (Richardson 2010). However, when the type of universities these students attend is examined, research indicates that substantially more black students attend post-1992 universities than ‘old universities’ (Bhattacharyya et al. 2003; Elevation Networks 2012). In 2010 less than one per cent of all Oxbridge students were black. Between 2010 and 2012 less than five per cent of all students entering Russell Group and Oxbridge universities were British African Caribbean (Boliver 2013). Only limited research has explored the outcomes of ethnic minority students studying at Russell Group universities (Fielding 2008; Richardson 2008) and much of this has been quantitative rather than qualitative. Furthermore, minimal research has explored the experiences of black students and black men in particular through their experiences of attending elite UK universities. This dissertation explores the counter-narratives of the few British African Caribbean men who have successfully attended and graduated from elite universities in England and Wales. This research examines these students’ recognised as well as unrecognised, resources and capitals to gain an understanding of the factors that have assisted them in their matriculation to, and graduation from, elite universities. It is hoped that these findings will be beneficial in helping staff involved in the admission processes at elite universities to gain a better understanding of areas that need improvement in order to increase the numbers of British African Caribbean male students attending elite universities. Lastly, this research hopes its findings will be beneficial in influencing more black men in future generations to aspire to attend elite UK institutions.

The thesis reports on three corpus-based studies in a Saudi university context. The first study is a computer-aided error analysis (CEA) of a corpus of Saudi English majors’ writing. The second and third studies employ the DDL approach to teach collocations and lexical phrases. The errors in the Saudi learner corpus (SLC) were tagged following the Louvain Error Tagging Manual 1.2. The CEA revealed that the ten largest error subcategories were (Form, Spelling), then (Grammar, Verb Tense), (Lexical, Single), (Grammar, Articles), (Grammar, Verb Number), (Grammar, Noun Number), (Word Redundant, Singular), (Word, Missing), (Lexical, Phrase) and finally (Punctuation, Missing). These error types are analysed qualitatively to identify the linguistic features that seem to be problematic for Saudi EFL learners. Multiword units are notoriously difficult for L2 learners, and the Saudi EFL context is no exception; in the second and third studies a number of collocations and lexical phrases were selected from the SLC to be taught using DDL paper-based and dictionary-based materials. The results showed that learners in general learn better under the DDL treatment. Learning gains as a result of the DDL instructional condition in short-term delayed posttests were not significantly better than the dictionary-based instructional condition in the case of collocations, but they were significantly higher for the lexical phrases. The DDL long-term delayed posttests results were significantly better than the dictionary results for both the collocations and lexical phrases. A questionnaire and retrospective interviews were used to investigate students’ and teachers’ attitudes and the results encouragingly revealed that they felt positive about the DDL materials. The data shed light on strengths and weaknesses of the DDL and the traditional approaches. The thesis closes with a discussion of the pedagogical implications, particularly with reference to the use of corpus tools and corpus-based materials in the Saudi EFL context.

Within the socio-cultural school of thought, Galperin, was influenced by Vygotsky’s theory of mind. Following Vygotsky’s argument about the leading role of instruction within the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), Galperin developed an instructional approach, known as Systemic Theoretical Instruction (STI), which encourages the active construction of materialized concepts and their monitored transformation into mental processes in order to foster development. Following from this, the present thesis aimed at investigating a) how knowledge at a conceptual level can be fostered and supported online, b) the affordances of an online (Moodle-based) Pedagogic Unit to potentially foster L2 English online academic training with specific reference to Applied Linguistics terminology (although the findings could be applicable to other disciplines as well) c) the effectiveness of the online scaffolding mechanisms that were developed for each online task and d) the students’ views with regards to all the previous. To this end, this study adopted an exploratory qualitative approach and collected various types of data to support conceptual development among 13 UK based L2 learners who were pursuing postgraduate studies. Importantly, while existing STI investigations have employed mainly qualitative data, the analysis conducted for this study included both quantitative and qualitative methods such as introspection techniques, recorded interviews, pre-post interview tasks, concept-mapping, online Moodle tasks and questionnaires, screen-captures and audio recordings of the online activities. The findings revealed that the Moodle unit was a suitable environment in fostering the students’ conceptual development and that specific scaffolding features and types of tasks have contributed towards this. Furthermore, this study contributes to the growing body of research into the potential role of scaffolding to enhance ZPDs in online environments in order to facilitate the L2 learners’ English for Academic Purposes training. It also sheds light into the affordances of STI and online environments to develop the students’ academic speaking and reading skills which, ultimately, contribute to overall conceptual development. Finally, it highlights the potential role of verbalisation (through introspection tasks, use of concept maps and oral presentations) as a means of both fostering and assessing conceptual development.

This thesis explores the motivations and lived experiences of Nigerian Christian women engaged in postgraduate studies in UK higher education based on 20 semi-structured interviews. For this group of women, their educational quest abroad is happening at the phase in the normative life course when they are expected by Nigerian society to be wives as well as mothers. Such cultural expectations carry social sanctions for non-conformity. This thesis investigates the immense social pressures the women come under as their educational achievements are not considered as important as the fulfillment of their social roles in their home country, and the strategies/negotiations they engage in to gain and maintain support for their educational pursuit. Being that they are studying and living in an egalitarian society like the UK, the thesis also examines why the women remain attached to Nigerian patriarchal values. Using empirical data, the thesis attempts to challenge and critique the current debates on international student migration that portray it as an individualized process and international student migrants as a homogenous group. It argues that the participants’ motivations and migration experiences are gendered and embedded in social relationships and processes. Furthermore, the thesis claims that the set of women interviewees are not just engaged in academic study alone as the literatures tend to portray international student migrants, they are also family members (wives/mothers/daughters) and workers, who consciously juggle their multiple roles in an order that seems to prioritize their social roles above the rest. The thesis asserts that the women are not victims; rather they are agentic beings whose compliant attitudes to patriarchal gender structures and roles are rooted in their religious and cultural beliefs.