This thesis is a reflective account of an action research project set in a drama classroom.  It is a multi-voiced patchwork text which is created and built imaginatively to re-present my students and my experience in the drama classroom. On one level it deals with the question ‘How can drama be used to enhance life skills in children with specific learning disabilities studying in a school in Mumbai?’ On the second level it is related to the question ‘How can I improve my practice?’ This research is concerned with a teacher’s capacity to recognise and realise the opportunity of an alternate reality in teaching. The reality of loving and caring for the students. The reality of an empathetic, compassionate, just and democratic classroom. The foundation of this study was laid when I saw the children in need suffer due to insensitive teaching practices and uncooperative peers and family. I was concerned with the trauma faced by students in the prevalent educational setting in India. I believe that what I do in education should help make changes for the better in our society. Life skills enhancement, in my understanding, was a way to alleviate the stress the children experienced seeing that life skill education promotes mental well-being in young people and behavioural preparedness.  As a drama teacher I see drama as tool for education. It is a natural vehicle for explorative and experiential learning. The aim of my thesis is to describe and reflect on the learning process and the context in which it occurs. I present the critical points with close analysis of the choices made by me as I taught my pupils using drama as a learning medium. Additionally, this study investigates the influences of action research on my practice and the impact of engaging in the stages of action research which provided me with a methodical structure for implementing and analyzing the teaching and the learning process. This defined structure guided me through systematic and conscious data collection, data analysis, and reflection. The data is composed of classroom observations and transcripts, a collection of the students and my work and interviews with their schoolteachers and parents. The main objective of this research was to enable a gain in positive behavioural intentions and improved psychosocial competence in children. This was accomplished through augmentation of creativity, emotional understanding and development, improved self-esteem and a notion of the joy of autonomy to enable the students to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.

Over the last thirty years in the UK and a small number of other countries, workers and researchers have developed a robust theory of cognitive development by studying young children’s patterns of behaviour (known as ‘schemas’) (Athey, 1990; Matthews, 2003; Pan, 2004). The research has shown that young children across cultures, are intrinsically motivated to explore patterns through their actions, symbolic behaviour, functional dependencies and thought. By working closely with parents and workers and drawing on their intimate knowledge of each child and their family context, I have extended this theory to include the children’s explorations of emotional issues, such as attachment and separation. During the study, I made video observations of eight children, aged two, three and four years, over one to two years, engaging in spontaneous play in the nursery. I viewed the filmed sequences alongside their parents and workers to gain their insights into each child’s motivations and interests. I then revisited the filmed sequences over time and used journaling, as a technique, to record my responses and reflections. I constructed a case study about each child using schema theory and attachment theory as theoretical frameworks for analysing the data. I also constructed a case study about my own growing awareness of my responses to emotions. I identified some basic psychological needs in the data about each child, that seemed to link with the cluster of schemas each child explored. There seemed to be a gender bias. The boys studied seemed more focussed on ‘doing’ and expressed this by using a cluster of predominant schemas such as ‘trajectory’ and ‘connecting’. The girls studied seemed more focussed on ‘having’ and ‘relating’ and expressed these needs by exploring a cluster of schemas, including ‘transporting’, ‘containing’ and ‘enveloping’. Children seemed to use these repeated patterns in four ways; to gain comfort; to give form to experiences or feelings; to explore or work through painful experiences or feelings, and; to come to understand abstract concepts. I articulated my understanding of Piaget’s concept of ‘reflective abstraction’ by applying it to data gathered and to the literature. I proposed extending this concept to include ‘reflective expansion’. The child takes actions forward onto a higher plane within the cognitive domain, when developmentally ready (reflective abstraction), and simultaneously draws on earlier actions to make links in the affective domain when faced with complex abstract concepts beyond their current level of development (reflective expansion).

The over-arching theme of this thesis is the effects of parental background on children and the effectiveness of policies designed to improve the academic outcomes of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. The first chapter of this thesis explores the causal link between the education of one generation and that of their children by using IV to account for the endogeneity of parental education and paternal earnings. The second chapter evaluates the effectiveness of an intervention designed to improve the academic success at university of students from socio-economically disadvantaged families. The third and final chapter examines the potential issues in expanding a programme targeted at financially poorer students beyond its initial pilot phase. Chapter One addresses the intergenerational transmission of education and investigates the extent to which early school leaving (at age 16) may be due to variations in parental background. An important contribution of the chapter is to distinguish between the causal effects of parental income and parental education levels. Least squares estimation reveals conventional results – weak effects of income (when the child is 16), stronger effects of maternal education than paternal, and stronger effects on sons than daughters. We find that the education effects remain significant even when household income is included. However, when we use instrumental variable methods to simultaneously account for the endogeneity of parental education and paternal income, only maternal education remains significant (for daughters only) and becomes stronger. These estimates are consistent to various set of instruments. The impact of paternal income varies between specifications but becomes insignificant in our preferred specification. Our results provide limited evidence that policies alleviating income constraints at age 16 can alter schooling decisions but that policies increasing permanent income would lead to increased participation (especially for daughters). Chapter Two is an evaluation of a comprehensive university access programme that provides financial, academic and social support to low socioeconomic students using a natural experiment which exploits the time variation in the expansion of the programme across high schools. Overall, we identity positive treatment effects on retention rates, exam performance and graduation rates, with the impact often stronger for higher ability students. Gender differences are also identified. We find similar results for access students entering through the standard admissions system and those entering with lower grades. This suggests that access programmes can be effective at improving academic outcomes for socioeconomically disadvantaged students. In Chapter Three, we compare the effects of the pilot implementation and the subsequent national roll-out of a large programme, the Educational Maintenance Allowance, in the UK which provides financial transfers to youth who remain in post-compulsory education. While piloting policies is becoming standard in policy evaluation, little is known of their external validity. Using a difference-in-difference-in-differences methodology and several cohorts of the Youth Cohort Study for England and Wales, we estimate the effect of the Education Maintenance Allowance on post-compulsory school participation both in the piloting stage and in its national implementation. We find that the pilot scheme and the national extension had an effect on post-16 schooling but that the evidence in support of the national extension is weaker.

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

The thesis discusses how patriotic education is openly promoted by the government in contemporary Russia through a series of programmes, entitled the ‘State Programme for the Patriotic Education of the Citizens of the Russian Federation’, promoted since 2001. However, this thesis presents the argument that patriotic education cannot fully be understood through examination of these formally organised initiatives. Instead, the thesis contributes towards a rethinking of patriotic education as a communicative process whereby multiple ideas of the nation are delivered to young people, both in formal and informal settings. The thesis argues that this promotion of patriotic education is connected to long-standing debates on nations and nationalism in Russia, but also places these within the more general discourse on nations and nationalism, in particular Anderson’s (2006) definition of the nation as an ‘imagined community’. The thesis is positioned within, and contributes to, more recent arguments surrounding the need to examine everyday ideas of the nation, but maintains a sense of the role played by elites in producing ideas of the nation by intercepting state-produced ideas represented within the education system. Importantly, the three-stage research design maps not only the delivery of these state ideas, but also accesses how these ideas are received and articulated by young people themselves, thus contributing to an understanding of cultural production. This is achieved through triangulation of three qualitative methods: analysis of textbooks, classroom observation, and semi-structured interviews with teachers and students, conducted in St Petersburg. The data generated demonstrates that young people articulate both a sense of local and national belonging, cultivated just as much through their surroundings (historic buildings etc.) as through formal education. The thesis contributes to studies of (Russian) youth by demonstrating that young people negotiate with formal and informal ideas of belonging as they formulate their own understandings and expressions of belonging.

This thesis is about the relationship between exclusions from school and market forces in education. Through a series of interviews with groups of practitioners, conducted in a city authority between 1988 and 1996, the research looks at the effect of Conservative Government policy which introduced market force mechanisms into education via a programme of legislative reform; it focuses on the significant relationship between Conservative education policy and changes in the number and nature of school exclusions. The early chapters develop the theoretical argument which the research presents: establishing policy provenance, identifYing themes dominant in policy discourse and describing the legislative mechanisms which carry policy. A short chapter drawing on broader based research, outlines the national picture. Chapter Five introduces the field research, stating the questions addressed by the thesis, explaining and justifYing the research methods employed. The remaining chapters present and discuss the evidence. Drawing on the concerted 'voices' of front line practitioners the evidence shows what is happening to school exclusions. Respondents reveal attitudes that underpin decisions determining the exclusion process, showing which pupils are more likely to be excluded. Relating the evidence to the discursive themes developed in the early chapters the thesis seeks to understand why there has been an increase in exclusions from school with the implementation of Conservative policy. The themes of 'standards' 'choice' and 'diversity' in education, run as strands throughout the thesis. Issues which, when considered in relation to the empirical research which reports on the practical experience of children and young people excluded from school, raise searching questions about the efficacy of policy in the concluding chapter. The research engages both theoretically and empirically with the debate on whether the equitable distribution of educational resources and accessing of opportunities should be primarily desert-based or needs-based. It considers the meaning of school exclusion as a process of marginalisation, showing how disempowerment is invested in the implementation of policy. The thesis shows the standard of education this group of pupils have received and the extent of educational autonomy that these pupils and their parents have been able to exercise, - commenting on the efficacy of the policy of a Government that held power for eighteen years and developed a programme of radical reform that continues to have a profound effect upon all state educated children.

This research project is based on ethnographic observations of andinterviews with a sample of nineteen young women about their experiences of sexual harassment in everyday life. The fieldwork was carried out in a school. The aims of the project were to explore young women's perceptions and negotiations of sexual harassment as much as to document the variety of forms it took and to explore the role of schools in the institutionalization of sexual harassment. The methods employed and the methodological perspective adopted were both ethnographic and feminist, underpinned by a realist philosophy and a standpoint epistemology. I highlight the need to address questions about how methodology, epistemology and substantive data are indissolubly interconnected. Thus, the traditional 'scientific' principles of objective impartiality and unemotionality are explicitly challenged by the demand that we reflect critically on -our own inevitably emotional knowledge of the world which we investigate. The appeal to reflexivity rather than to reason or rationality (supposedly unfettered by emotionality) profoundly challenges our understanding of what 'science' means and, therefore, what knowledge is. A definition of sexual harassment is offered. I argue that the phenomenon is a situated, mundane and masculine power practice which reconstructs or reproduces patriarchal social relations. It is patriarchy operationalized. Since the young women with whom I worked collaborated in defining what the research was about by relating their experiences of heterosex, the thesis also explores some of the oppressive continuities between these more intimate encounters and sexual harassment in everyday life. Given that sites of oppression are also potentially at least sites of resistance, the thesis critically examines the ideological context which structures human agency and explores the extent to which young women are empowered to resist rather than accommodate themselves to the oppressive exercise of masculine power. I argue that the school effectively reproduces the oppressive reality in which the young women live their everyday lives.

This thesis reviews and critically reflects on 'learning organization' theory and practice. Specifically, it reviews and assesses relevant theories of adult learning and links those theories to the learning organization literature. Using existing literature and practice, empirical research work was undertaken in two organizations to validate, or otherwise, key elements of learning organization theory and practice and to identify patterns in the content and process of creating a learning organization. A learning-in-organizations model is then developed which combines learning organization theory and practice, adult learning theory, and the management of change literature. The multi-layered character of the learning-in-organizations model synthesizes key aspects of the learning processes in the organizations studied. The model also provides a framework (a) for research purposes to systematically define and evaluate learning in organizations, and (b) for management, groups, and individuals to use as a prompt or aide-memoire to develop and evaluate learning activity in their organizations. Key questions guiding the research include: What is meant by 'learning'? How can the complexity of learning be revealed? How can learning in organizations be evaluated? How do responses to the above questions change our understanding of what constitutes a 'learning organization'? The research is qualitative to reveal more of the subtleties of the learning process at the individual and group levels in organizations. The research process comprises four main activities: a review of existing learning organization literature and practice to identify key proposed characteristics of a learning organization; a documentary search in the two research sites; in-depth interviews in the two research sites; and the writing of case studies and their comparison to reveal learning patterns and processes. The research shows that much of current learning organization description remains anecdotal and rhetorical. Confusion exists regarding how learning in organizations is developed and assessed. Key learning organization hallmarks and characteristics are often flawed. In addition, defining and evaluating learning in organizations is often carried out in a rudimentary fashion. This research contributes to learning organization theory and practice: (a) by providing a synthesis and critical analysis of existing learning organization literature, (b) by providing some of the first empirical data on the creation of a learning organization, (c) by linking theories of adult learning to thinking on learning in organizations, and (d) develops a new model for evaluating learning in an organization by linking learning organization theory to andragogy and the management of change literature using qualitative rather than quantitative criteria.

This study analyses the roles, responsibilities and functions of parents in the education of their children. Parents are found to be involved in classroom-based as well as non-classroom based school activities. A sample of 5 headteachers, 35 teachers, 45 parents and 12 parent governors was selected in exploring parental involvement in schools. Parental involvement was also examined in four supplementary schools. The views expressed by parents, teachers, headteachers, parent governors and the organisers of the supplementary schools were analysed. Parental involvement was found to have been in practice for over two decades or so, recent development such as the 1986 Education Act and the 1988 Education Reform Act have brought in parents to be more responsible and more aware of their roles in the education of their children than before. Parental involvement has been examined as a model, having a set of four activities - accountability, partnership, supportive and advisory. Having looked at these activities closely, it is argued that accountability and partnership tend to play a more dominant role than supportive and advisory activities. This is because accountability and partnership permeate most activities of parental involvement. The views expressed by parents, teachers, headteachers and parent governors as well as the organisers of the supplementary schools, supported this view. A theory of conflict and integration was examined, which also showed that if there is objective accountability and partnership, and both parents and teachers see each other in this partnership with respect, then accountability will bring about mutual relationship, hence, making conflict gives way to integration of ideas, experiences objectives and methods. However, parental involvement practices have been found to be of benefit to the child, parents, teachers and the community in immeasurable terms. A prominent area that has shown such immeasurable benefit has been in reading which were done either in the school or at home by parents, organised and supervised by teachers. In this particular area, there has been much more research than in any other area of activity of parental involvement. The aspect of governing bodies has recently tended to deflect the attention of professionals, school administrators and educationists from other areas of parental involvement processes. It is however, enlightening parents on their roles and responsibilities for their children's education.

This thesis is a reflection and an argument. It is a reflection on the history of the intermedial embrace between film and theatre and the implications this has for contemporary educators and learners in higher education performing arts programmes. It is also a critical argument for how and why cine-theatrical intermediality is distinct in creating particularly poignant and insightful modes of experience and learning that reveal new ways of perceiving our being-in-the-world. A disposition of vulnerability is central to the thinking and ethos within the study as I propose that the phenomenological, embodied experience of cine-theatrical practice potentially exposes educators and learners to their own fragility as the significance of our human body in contiguous time and space is brought into question. The work resides within two main sections: Mapping Constellations and Case Studies: Cine-Theatrical Pedagogy in Practice. In Mapping Constellations I pursue the parallel aims of mapping the key territories of intermediality, intermodality and hypermediality in practitioner and pedagogical terms whilst also reappraising intermediality and principally cine theatricality's significance as central modes of 20th and 21st century practice through which all of theatre and theatre pedagogy may be informed. In this context, Case Studies: Cine-Theatrical Pedagogy in Practice follows on to consider how professional methodologies of intermedial practice may act as pedagogical lenses to inform teaching and learning. Each is framed philosophically as representing a particular and revelatory pedagogy that discloses and challenges our sense of self in time and space, self as 'other' and self as a mediated, social being.