This thesis examines the experience of gay male student nurses during their university course, which leads to registration as a nurse with the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Using in-depth qualitative interviews I focus on the student’s choice of nursing as a career and their performance of sexuality within the differing spaces of their clinical placements and the university. This thesis explores how these gay student nurses negotiate their gender, masculinity and gay sexuality within the professional boundaries of nursing. Furthermore, it identifies how these students negotiate issues of caring and the formation of therapeutic relationships with their patients, as men and gay men. The theoretical framing of the thesis draws upon Goffman's theories of presentation and performance of the self and Rubin’s 'charmed circle'. Alongside analysis of interview material, I explore the space of the hospital from a personal perspective and interrogate its gendered and desexualized organization through the lens of human geography. Moving between these two analytical frameworks, I examine and draw together the experiences of these students and examine their negotiation of the nursing role as gay men. I argue that the experience of these students and the negotiation of their sexuality as student nurses is fraught and precarious due to the complexities and boundaries of professional nursing roles in contemporary healthcare. Within the conclusion I address the implications of my research for gay nurses, patients, educators and for those who recruit nursing students.

This research project focuses on the body and examines drama/theatre education as a site where politics and aesthetics can be brought together to promote democracy. Specifically, I explore the possibility of forming a way of doing within drama/theatre educational contexts that might influence a way of coming to understand - and potentially in its turn - a way of being. I am especially concerned with democracy as a living practice and I investigate whether students, through an aesthetic communicative nexus that they are encouraged to form within the drama class, and through their artistic actions within that nexus, can explore the possibilities of being ‘political bodies’, meaning the extent to which this allows democratic possibilities to flourish. I see democracy as conditioned by aesthetics and I focus on the power of the aesthetic to distance us from our ordinariness and everydayness and qualify us with a sensibility with which to reflect and think on our ideas and actions. I seek to promote the idea of a democratic culture and the formation of the democratic self that can create and sustain a culture of democracy. In terms of methodology, this project follows action research and an artsinfused methodology. Four groups participated in this research project. The analysis of the data collected from the fieldwork provides information to illustrate the beginnings of a pedagogy that aims to put these ideas into practice.

Abstract: In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis on the promotion of collegiality as an impetus for management in Scottish schools. Collegiality is promoted as having the potential to transform teachers and hence education. This study confronts this ambitious claim arguing that the concept of collegiality has suffered from a lack of theoretical and intellectual scrutiny. Collegiality lacks proper understanding as a concept and as a discourse. Terms associated with it are frequently used in perfunctory ways which are inattentive to its conceptual sophistication. This study attends to complications which emerge when we reflect rigorously on what collegiality means, and how it impacts on various organisations, but in particular school management. Current attempts at developing a collegiate culture in schools are underexploiting its potential as a transformative management model. We are not managing to be collegiate in the most normative of understandings because we are not Managing collegiality in ways which take account of its conceptual and discursive complexity. The key research questions are: From where has the discourse of collegiality come and how has it been promoted? Whose interest might the discourse of collegiality serve? The study takes two main approaches in addressing these. It considers collegiality as a concept, focussing on meaning and implications arising from the application of limited understandings of the idea in a variety of organisational contexts. It then draws on continental philosophy to uncover arguments which position collegiality, currently promoted, as a discourse. The dissertation locates key sources of the discourse of collegiality and the politics and practices of its promotion. It explores the interests claimed to be served by collegiality, contrasts these with the interest more likely to be served, before going on to make normative claims about a rehabilitated understanding of collegiality. It identifies current approaches to collegiality more as being technologies for organisational expediency rather than as conduits of the more attractive and normative understandings which could contribute creatively to a more democratic and ‘dialogic’ school organisational culture. In seeking a more creative and potentially transformative conception and practice of collegiality, the study looks at one particular example of a radical reappraisal and critiques this, finding it attractive in some senses but at odds with the parameters within which school managers work. A discussion develops which explores more attractive and normative understandings and casts these before a backdrop of common approaches to the professional practice of school management. The dissertation contributes to a discussion by which popular understandings of collegiality may be rescued to become more befitting the democratic and socially oriented facets of a school, rather than as a managerialist technology, impacting on learners, teachers and the wider constituency of interest in schooling in rather more limited ways. The study defends normative understandings of collegiality as an organisational impetus tailored for professional arenas, but in so doing it defends management as a necessity in organisational contexts characterised by complexity. Collegiality cannot be an alternative to Management. It is an attractive approach for schools which can be managed if Managed appropriately.

This PhD thesis develops a Brechtian research pedagogy for intercultural education. Taking its lead from progressive intercultural educators and researchers who conceptualise intercultural experiences as being ‘radically embodied’, this thesis is underpinned by a concept of culture as fluid and constantly ‘in the making’. In order to give ethical and pedagogical consideration to such a performative view of culture, Brechtian thinking and theatre practice is employed and translated into the intercultural education research space. Placing Brechtian Verfremdung – ‘estrangement’ - at the heart of methodology, such research pedagogy works from within the precarity of intercultural spaces. Based on an immanent ethics that emerges from and shapes within the relationships built in the research space, the researcher’s role is that of the facilitator and co-producer of data. A Brechtian research pedagogy is thus considered a mode of production; one that does not conceptually presuppose ethics and pedagogy, but considers them as ‘becoming’ and integrated within its methods. It asks two questions i) can a Brechtian informed approach to pedagogy create and change experiences of ‘strangeness’ and ii) if so, how is this achieved and manifested? The focus of this thesis is international students’ dynamic and in flux experiences of strangeness. During four half-day workshops in consecutive weeks, a group of ten international postgraduate students encounter a Brechtian research space, where, using drama, creative writing and filming methods, they engage in an open, embodied conversation on ‘intercultural experiences’. I trace participants’ process of intercultural learning and ‘intercultural making’ through the embodied methods used in the drama research workshops. These embodied methods stimulate a variety of reflective modes and produce multilayered data for analysis: pictures, conversations, creative writing pieces and even non-verbal gestures. In order to prevent an early reification of these ‘texts’ into academic ‘strangeness knowledge’, they are in turn estranged and used in a mode of artistic production. This allows for active thinking about the research question as well as aids reflection on the modes of encounter within the research space. ‘Estrangement’ draws attention not only to the content of intercultural stories used, but to their inherent discursive structures and the effects these can have on participants’ well-being. The research project’s main emphasis, then, is on the process of research and starts to work towards a respective Brechtian representational practice by developing the term ‘dialogic aesthetic framing’. It is suggested that representations should be equally seen as modes of production, dependent on an audience’s active reading between the research’s ‘metaphoric gaps’. Future research would seek to develop this more product-oriented focus further, so as to test and develop concrete artistic, representational practices for a Brechtian research pedagogy.

Background Current behavioural models of challenging behaviour suggest that the way in which difficult behaviour is managed by staff can serve to either reduce or maintain the behaviour in the long term (Hastings & Remington, 1994; Hastings & Brown, 2000; Hastings et al, 2003). Therefore, it is important to consider factors that may influence special education staff’s behavioural responses to pupils’ challenging behaviour and the associated causal attributions and emotional reactions. One area that has received little attention is the potential impact of a pupil’s diagnosis in addition to their learning disability on staff members’ responses. Materials and Methods This present study involved 102 special education staff who were asked to provide cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses to written vignettes of one of three conditions: (1) a pupil with a learning disability without an additional diagnosis displaying aggressive behaviour, (2) a pupil with a learning disability and an Autism Spectrum Disorder displaying aggressive behaviour, and (3) a pupil with a learning disability and Epilepsy displaying aggressive behaviour. Staff background characteristics were also measured. Results Planned analysis showed that participants did not significantly differ in their responses to challenging behaviour of a pupil with and without additional diagnoses. Secondary analysis indicated that only a minority of participants considered the additional diagnosis to be the main cause of the pupil’s challenging behaviour. In addition, a number of significant associations between staff background characteristics and self-efficacy were found. Conclusions The results are discussed in relation to recent literature. Methodological issues and implications for clinical practice are also considered.

This thesis explores how men with mild to moderate learning disabilities perceive and experience how disability, relative poverty and gender impact on their health. Its theoretical framework grounded in analysis of these social divisions, and informed by the men’s own accounts - previously neglected in research, reveals complex challenges affecting their health on a daily basis. Consistent with the thesis’ overarching perspective, key elements of a participatory approach were adopted in the fieldwork to ensure men with learning disabilities’ active research involvement. They comprised the steering group, and twenty men participated in qualitative interviews facilitated by accessible materials and detailed preliminary preparations. The findings showed the men were aware of health issues, but were grappling with the adverse health effects of impairment, including disabilist health care and victimisation. Low income associated with limited employment confined most men to relative poverty with negative effects on health. The findings demonstrated a sharp appreciation of masculinity. Marginalised by other men, they experienced health threatening abuse, but their resistance to conventional male disregard for health care, had positive implications for their health. The thesis provides a more informed, nuanced understanding of the adverse impact of different dimensions of social disadvantage on the health of men with mild to moderate learning disabilities. In doing so, it demonstrates the value of developing knowledge grounded in their perspectives and experience.

While there exists an extensive research literature that focuses upon literacy development in monolingual, English speaking children, very little research has been conducted regarding the problems encountered by children learning English as an additional language (EAL). Recent political and educational concerns have been the educational under-achievement of minority ethnic children and their underrepresentation in those identified as having specific learning difficulties. This thesis aims to further our understanding of factors underlying literacy development in both monolingual and EAL children to produce evidence to inform policy and practice in addressing these concerns. A three-year longitudinal study is reported together with a series of experimental studies. The longitudinal study examines the developmental pattern of the processes underlying literacy development in children learning EAL and also their monolingual peers. Forty-three children learning EAL and forty-three monolingual (English speaking) children were assessed on a range of cognitive-linguistic measures in School Year 2. Testing was repeated in School Years 3 and 4. The experimental studies explored in more detail the comprehension-related difficulties identified in the EAL children in the first year of the longitudinal study. Given that boys' underachievement in literacy is a general concern in the monolingual population, gender differences within both the monolingual and EAL children are also examined in the longitudinal study. Children learning EAL and their monolingual peers achieved similar levels of success on reading accuracy-related measures and made similar progress over the three years. For the EAL children there was no evidence of gender differences whilst for the monolingual children there were lower scores for the boys. On comprehension-related measures, although both groups of children made a similar level of progress at each point in time, children learning EAL experienced more difficulty than their monolingual peers. Gender differences in comprehension were, in general, not found for either group of children. The findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications for addressing the educational underachievement of ethnic minority children and the identification of specific learning difficulties in these children.

This thesis investigates design methods and phase models towards a reinterpretation of the design process towards a specific design task. The study reveals the essence of the process as a design process core, onto which may be built design process models to suit design tasks of diverse nature and scale.

Pupils who present with Behavioural, Emotional and Social Difficulties (BESD) at school have been the focus of extensive study, research and reports for many years in England. These have focused on exploring the nature of BESD, contributing factors relating to school and the schools that have shown evidence of good practice when working with these pupils. This work has reflected the situation in the English education system. In Cyprus, however, answers to questions about how best to educate pupils who may demonstrate BESD remain elusive. In 2003, the Cypriot government approved a policy prioritising the education of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. The policy instituted ‘Zones of Educational Priority programme’ as it is an area-based initiative. The schools joining this programme and working under the policy have been selected based on the areas in which they are located and the local populations’ socio-economic and educational status. Additionally, many of the pupils registered in these schools present with BESD. Despite this fact, up to the time the research described in this thesis was conducted; the issue of good practice when working with these pupils seems to have been neglected by Cypriot researchers and educational authorities. The study reported here was begun in 2008 and continued in 2009. It involved two primary schools operating under the Zones of Educational Priority policy in Cyprus and is a case study of what ‘good practice’ is perceived to be in relation to pupils with BESD. For the purposes of this research, 22 semi-structured interviews were carried out, as well as 29 lesson observations and informal conversations. The collected data was subjected to content analysis and the findings are reported and discussed in a way that allow the readers to draw their own conclusions concerning how the study has reinforced what is already known in the area of study as well as how it has contributed to building new knowledge.

The aim of this research is to take a first step towards shedding some light in the education of MD students in Greece by focusing on the experiences of parents as they accompany their children through their journey. In the first phase of the study semi structured interviews conducted with parents provided a more personal account of the situation. In the second phase, the same topic was approached through a survey addressed to the representatives of all parent associations for children and adults with multiple and severe disabilities in Greece, which provided the collective perspective. The data was analysed using thematic content analysis and statistical analysis for social research. The first phase revealed that the education of MD children and adults is viewed as a personal case and responsibility of the families. The findings from the second phase indicate that the parent associations have ideologically adopted a more social perspective and struggle towards the educational and social inclusion of MD children and adults. However, often they are forced to assume the role of filling the gaps of the non-existent public social provision. The inclusion of MD children and adults into the Greek educational system, not merely as presence but as equal participators, requires the total reform of the social, and by extension the educational system. MD students are still placed on the margin of policies, of the educational and social life, and often of our thoughts and consideration.