This thesis is concerned with the latest education reform, called 4+4+4 (4+), and overall educational changes in the basic education system (K12) since 2002 by the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP). The study investigates the role that education plays in state formation processes as well as looking at how dominant groups’ ideologies influence education policies. The research problem is the extent to which the state uses education policies to create a new public ideology. There are three key research questions that this thesis addresses. The data for this research was obtained from fifteen semi-structured interviews conducted with teacher trade unions, journalists and policy makers, focusing on their experiences and views not only about the 4+4+4 education system but also about the policymaking process in Turkey. The interviews present the pressing issues within the education system and indicate how education works a state apparatus for the government to gain and secure society’s consent. Located in a critical tradition, the research draws its theoretical framework from the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci, especially focusing on his concepts of hegemony, civil society and consent. Using a Gramscian theoretical framework allows this study to place the 4+ reform in a bigger picture. The thesis analyses the reform not only from a local perspective but also from an international education policy perspective, focusing on the relationship between power, ideology and schooling. The findings suggest that the state and its private associations (i.e. media, and political parties) are actively encouraging Islamisation along with neoliberalism in order to consolidate their hegemonic dominance.

Many contributors to the interdisciplinary field of conflict resolution have emphasised the impact of socio-psychological and psycho-cultural influences in maintaining and perpetuating ethnic conflicts. The review of the literature concerning Cyprus reveals that such factors have been active in the 37 years of ethnic separation between the Greek-Cypriot and the Turkish-Cypriot communities. Although strategies are available to bridge communities and offer prospects for a reconciliation and peace centre on facilitating interaction, contact and dialogue between communities at all levels, it is surprising how little has taken place between the two academic communities on the island. This is in contrast to the picture found in similar conflict cases, such as the ones in Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine. Despite some notable efforts and collaborations currently in place, the numbers involved constitute a very small fraction of the two academic bodies. The research has aimed at establishing the role of higher education in divided societies, not only by examining theoretically and philosophically its importance as a part of a reconciliation process but also by depicting the opinion of academics from both parts of Cyprus. The research has shown that although they are optimistic about future links, they nevertheless identified major implications stemming out of the issues of ‘recognition’, nationalism, social pressure, the impact of media and the characteristics of the academic cultures in each respective community. These explain the contrast between much good-will and little real action. The analysis of findings includes a discussion of possible strategies to establish an open dialogue between the two academic communities and to facilitate collaborations.

The effect of streaming on students' academic self-concept and their perceptions of home environment and classroom climate was examined in a 3-year longitudinal study of a single cohort in Singapore. The subjects were 495 Secondary 1 (average age 13) students, who were streamed based on their Primary School Leaving Examination results taken at the end of Primary 6 (average age 12). The study was conducted with the use of a self-constructed questionnaire on four occasions at approximately 1-year intervals. The measures included the academic self-concept scale, made up of the students' confidence and students' effort subscales, the home environment scale, made up of the relationship with parents and academic support subscales, and the classroom climate scale, made up of the relationship with teachers, teachers' expectations and peer relationship subscales. The results revealed that the students' academic self-concept, and their perceptions of home environment and classroom climate largely declined from Secondary 1 to Secondary 3, and the declines were more pronounced for the higher-ability stream students than the lower ability stream students. In addition, the lower-ability stream students' academic self concept and their perception of classroom climate were more negative than those of their higher-ability stream counterparts immediately after streaming. Nonetheless, they were comparable if not more positive than those of their higher-ability stream counterparts three years after being streamed. Furthermore, regression analyses revealed that perceived teachers' expectations, relationship with teachers, relationship with parents and parental academic support were main predictors of students' academic self-concept. However, parental academic support tended to affect higher-ability stream students' academic self-concept more than that of their lower-ability stream counterparts, whilst teachers' expectations tended to affect the lower-ability stream students' confidence level more than that of their higher-ability stream counterparts.

Using the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS) conducted in 1987/88 and 1998/99, this thesis examines two thematic areas of non-monetary returns to education in Ghana. One of the primary aims is to find the differences in the effects of education over the decade (1987/88–1998/99), using standard and non-standard econometric analysis. In addition, the later survey year serves as a robustness check on the first. The first theme examines health status; measured as illness and its duration, as well as the use of anthropometric indicators. The study finds that parental education is positively associated with child’s reported illness and its duration. Further verification of this outcome using an instrumental variable (2SLS) approach that assumes possible endogeneity of parental education supports the results relating to maternal education in both survey years. In contrast, paternal primary education tends to reduce children’s reported illness; but this is only statistically significant in GLSS 1. These outcomes, although perverse are not uncommon in developing countries, and may be the result of systematic reporting bias. The analysis also reveals inconsistent results regarding adults’ health status between the two survey years. For example, we find that illness and its duration increase with personal education in GLSS 1, but the converse is true in GLSS 4, ceteris paribus. The mixed results of this study imply that the relationship between education and health status varies across health measures, and probably over time. Hence caution should be exercised before broad conclusions are drawn and policies made regarding these two vital socioeconomic indicators (education and health). The last theme analyses fertility in both structural and reduced form functions. The structural function involves a two-stage process. The first stage estimates the effect of education on three proximate determinants of fertility - the duration of breastfeeding, contraceptive use and age at cohabitation. The second stage subsequently models the fertility function by estimating three measures: the probability of having at least one birth; the unconditional number of births; and the number of births conditional on one having occurred, using the predicted values of the proximate determinants as inputs similar to the conventional production function. The reduced form fertility model estimates the impact of women’s education on the number of live births. The findings are that (1) education increases the use of contraception, delays age at cohabitation and shortens the duration of breastfeeding, as anticipated; (2) contraception and age at cohabitation subsequently tend to reduce the overall number of live births, though we observe an ambiguous outcome regarding breastfeeding; (3) education, in a fuller and direct way, also shows a strong negative association with fertility in both surveys; and finally (4) fertility appears to have declined over the period studied. We also find a structural shift in respect of the influence of women’s education from post-primary to primary level on fertility, ceteris paribus.

Family literacy programmes have become an increasingly popular pedagogical tool utilised by policy makers to help address the literacy needs of families with low skill competencies and who are viewed as economically and socially underachieving. Taking a comparative case study approach, in this research I consider what benefits family literacy programmes have for the literacy skills of families. Drawing on Bourdieu's habitus (1993) and field (1977) and Bourdieu, Coleman (1988) and Putnam's (2000) notions of social capital, in this research I compare family literacy programmes in selected case study areas within England, Ireland and Malta. The objectives are to establish differences and similarities in policy rationale, the characteristics of delivery and learner engagement. Predominantly qualitative in nature, the research consisted of 94 semi-structured interviews with actors involved in family literacy programmes across the three areas including coordinators, practitioners, learners, ex-learners, non-participating fathers and children's teachers. Interviews were supplemented and triangulated by a range of other data sources including a number of classroom observations. Family literacy programmes across the three areas exhibited many similarities: the content of sessions; the underlying policy rationale for offering and funding programmes; the motivation of learners for attending; benefits reported by learners; and difficulties faced by practitioners. In addition, parents attending were mainly mothers. Some differences were also found, mainly between Ireland and the other two participating areas. For example, in Ireland different types of locations were used and children were not usually present. However, the main difference was not cultural, but political, between the desired policy outcomes, and the motivation of learners. The evidence suggests that, regardless of the cultural context, there is a mismatch or at least a lack of awareness between the two, with learners predominantly motivated to attend to help their children, whilst policy objectives primarily seek to address inadequate literacy levels, as part of wider social inclusion strategies.

Personal development is the cornerstone of lifelong learning and academic and professional achievement. Co-curricular activities are good learning opportunities and support people to develop. A thorough review and examination of personal development education at HKIVE is needed so that new generations of students can more effectively learn and achieve their goals, enabling them to meet the crucial challenges of the 21st century. Initially, the researcher examined course documents to identify the key areas of personal development education. Data was collected from 134 students, eight educators and six human resource practitioners so as to understand these issues deeply. The study findings indicate that personal development opportunities at HKIVE are ineffective. The College should review existing personal development training to expand learning opportunities for students. Educators are advised to adopt innovative new learning strategies to facilitate personal development. No single training programme can cover all aspects of individual development and learning should be based on personal needs and initiated by students. Furthermore, fostering good attitudes is a key factor in developing students' motivation to learn more. Peers also form an important resource to reinforce students' self-image and self-esteem within the peer group. In addition, the new method of judging competency comprises: knowledge (Stratford, 1994), performance (Summerall, Lopez, Oehlert, 2000), outcome (Proctor, 1991), attitude and self-development. Finally, assessment issues are highly controversial and may serve formative, summative or normative purposes, subject to availability of resources and staff professionalism. This study offers new personal development teaching ideas and a practical guide for educators. Moreover, this study formulates a new learning model for competency and informal learning - critical issues for the VTC in future research and development.

This research examines the development of the EU higher education policy under the theoretical lenses of historical institutionalism. Starting from the assumption that institutions matter, this thesis follows the evolution of higher education policy in the EU premises from its emergence in the early 1970s to date. Unfolding in four phases, this case study focuses on the institutional parameters of the policy and the polity context in order to explain the critical factors that shaped the policy outcomes and the scope of higher education. In a story development full of unanticipated consequences and normative building, this thesis critically examines the relation between the levels of governance to assess their impact on the policy outcome. The main finding is that higher education has been developed as a `market-supporting' policy. The human capital role of higher education has been the main attribute identified in the EU level. As such, higher education gradually evolved from being a policy field aimed at battling unemployment to becoming one of the driving forces behind the knowledge driven society. At the same time higher education moved from the doldrums of EU competence and activity to the centre of policy action to become a policy example of applying the new modes of EU governance. In between the formal EU settings and the Bologna process, institutions and actors have withheld the idea that academic and professional mobility, recognition, comparability are the main areas for the future European workforce.

Using TIMSS data set on MENA countries, this study examines the determinants of educational outcome and gender inequality of learning in eight selected countries. The complicated structure of the data has been considered carefully during all the stages of the analysis employing plausible values and jackknife standard error technique to accommodate the measurement error of the dependant variable and the clustering of students in classes and schools. The education production functions provide broad evidence from mean and quantile analysis of very low returns to schooling; few school variables are significant and none have effects across countries and quantiles. In general, student characteristics were far more important than school factors in explaining test scores, but there was considerable variability across countries in which specific factors were significant. Strikingly, computer usage was found to influence students’ performance negatively in six MENA countries. Only Turkey and Iran had a significant positive effect of computer usage on maths achievements. Gender inequality of academic achievement has been investigated thoroughly using mean and quantile decomposition analysis. There is mixed picture of gender inequality across the eight countries with three pro-boys, three pro-girls and two gender-neutral. This exercise gives no general pattern of gender inequality across MENA. A detailed analysis of Egyptian students’ achievements explains the differential gap between school types, notably being single or mixed sex and Arabic or language schools. Single-sex schools perform better than mixed schools especially for girls. The single-sex language schools are more effective than the Arabic single sex school. This confirms the dominance of the language schools and is also related to the style and social-economic status of enrolled students.

This study explored the impact of paired reading, when delivered by a peer, on the reading ability and school connectedness of looked-after children (LAC). Relevant theory and research in three main areas is discussed: the under-achievement of LAC, reading development and difficulties and school connectedness. It is well understood that LAC are at risk of underachievement in reading (Department for Education, 2013), however they are an under-represented group in intervention research. Additionally, despite research illustrating the potential impact of school connectedness on a range of social, emotional and academic factors (Shochet et al, 2006 & Catalano et al, 2004) few studies have explored this with the LAC population. The present study attempted to address this by implementing a reading intervention using a peer approach with LAC. A single case experimental design was used with five participants. Weekly data was collected on reading accuracy, reading fluency and self-reported school connectedness. Pre and post data was also collected from teachers using two scales from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ): peer problems and pro-social behaviour. The results indicated a positive effect of paired reading on percentage reading accuracy, as shown in four of the five cases. Reading fluency did not significantly improve during the intervention for any of the participants. Similarly, school connectedness did not improve in three of the participants, although increased ratings were seen when paired reading was replaced with a non-reading intervention in three of the five participants. A significant difference in SDQ data was not observed. The study provides further evidence for the impact of paired reading on reading accuracy and suggests the potential for peer interventions to improve school connectedness. The discussion considered the generalizability of the findings and the nature of the measures used as potential limitations of this research. The study indicates the need for further research into school connectedness with LAC and highlights the potential role for EPs in recommending and supporting both academic and social interventions with this population.

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.