This study explores how a small group of adult literacy facilitators (ALFs) working on a pilot literacy project in a municipality in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, develop their practice. Although many reports have discussed the problems of adult literacy work in the Global South and the shortcomings of available training, very little research has been carried out directly with ALFs, examining the processes through which they develop their educational practice. The thesis reports on a pilot programme which took a dialogic approach inspired by the work of Paulo Freire and with an emphasis on context, meaning and social practice drawn from New Literacy Studies. Learning activities focussed on personal expression and writing as the communication of meaning. Texts for reading were produced from participant writing. The ALFs were trained and supported in implementing the new programme. The research uses Systematisation of Experiences, a Latin American methodology linked to popular education which involves project participants in a collective process of reflection on their experiences, leading to the generation of new knowledge both of the internal dynamics of the programme and the work of the project in relation to the wider context. Bourdieu's concepts of field, habitus, capital and doxa are used to analyse the socio-political setting in which the pilot programme was situated, observing the positions of the research participants within the field of adult literacy in Guatemala. ALFs operate at the margins of the field, subjected to the power structure of the national literacy programme while having no influence on decisions affecting their work. The thesis traces the trajectories of the individual ALFs through the pilot programme and reports on the collaborative work which enabled the growth of trust and a joint sense of purpose. The narrative form attempts to present the multiple voices of participants in dialogue, emphasising the collective processes of knowledge generation. In spite of the difficulties of working with a radically different approach, ALFs supported each other to make important changes in their practice. They observed how participants in their groups responded to the pilot activities and began to question the traditional methods endorsed by the organisation they worked for. Offered the space to design and develop new activities, they demonstrated the ability to make innovative interventions. However, the ALFs felt unsupported by the national adult literacy programme they work for, which has no policy or strategy to develop a professional approach to adult literacy by investing in the training and retention of ALFs. The thesis concludes with the ALFs' views of how the organisation is failing them and what is needed to improve the provision.

This thesis describes a qualitative mixed-methods study carried out in a vocational-technical secondary school with second-chance adolescent learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in a peripheral area of Israel. The learner population was characterized by complex, socio-economically disadvantaged family backgrounds and a high rate of learning disabilities. The study investigated the effects of a Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) intervention to support the development of basic EFL literacy skills by students who lacked solid foundational English skills. The intervention provided an interactive educational software application, The English Club™, on iPod Touch devices to scaffold learning and review of letter sounds and rules of English, integrate them into words and texts, and practice reading, writing and comprehension. Learners developed literacy skills depending on the level they reached in the application. The English Club follows a scaffolded Multi-Sensory Structured Language (MSL) approach, adapting for struggling EFL learners the Hickey Multi-Sensory Method (Combley, 2001), developed by Kathleen Hickey of the British Dyslexia Institute. Printed books containing the material complemented the use of the MALL. The English teachers at the school chose the learners who participated and determined how to integrate the intervention into their English classrooms. An investigation of the teachers' roles was included in the study. The methodology was primarily action research with case studies of individual learners and teachers. Pre-intervention and post-intervention data on learners' English knowledge, skills, attitudes and opinions and on teachers' attitudes and opinions about use of this MALL intervention was generated via skills assessments and semi-structured interviews. As a participant-teacher-observer, I observed the intervention's use in classes and in sessions with individual students. Changes in skills, attitudes and opinions were analyzed in the framework of Vygotsky's theories of language acquisition and the Zone of Proximal Development as elaborated in Scaffolding Theory. Theories of motivation, literacy and second language acquisition, and how struggling learners experience these, have provided additional lenses for analysis. My goals in performing this study were to understand in depth the whole picture of the intervention, both its effects on students' English skills and attitudes, and the factors that shaped these outcomes. The study's findings contribute to an understanding of the ways in which delivering a scaffolded MSL approach to literacy education via MALL can contribute to addressing the world crisis in literacy acquisition, and issues that must be addressed for this type of intervention to be effective. Findings showed that learners who actively engaged in the intervention made significant progress in their English literacy skills, increased their confidence in their ability to learn English and thus their willingness to engage in learning, and demonstrated increased awareness of the connection between their own investment of effort and learning. This success was shaped by many factors, including variation among individual learner profiles, the degree of teachers' support for the intervention, increasing students' motivation to invest effort, minimizing disruptions to the students' learning routine, and maximizing access to charged, working devices and to books. The individual MALL delivery platform enabled an untrained, inexperienced but committed teacher to provide the benefits of this scaffolded method, appropriate to her learners' needs, in multi-level English classrooms and to provide a solution for students returning from extended absences to catch up with missed classwork. Recommendations for policy and practice include use of such scaffolded MSL MALL applications with struggling language learners in conjunction with printed materials and closely accompanied by committed teachers, who do not have to be highly trained in specialized methods to support learning by struggling students. Schools engaging in such interventions need to ensure that the devices will be fully available for use during learning hours, minimize disruptions to the class schedule, and maximize students' use of the MALL app and books in class, during free time at school, and at home. If necessary, extrinsic rewards should be offered to overcome students' learned helplessness.

This thesis explored Gypsies' and Travellers' perceptions of the value and importance of literacy to themselves and their communities. It examined the political and social factors that affected the extent and availability of literacy provision for adult Gypsies and Travellers and their level of participation. It focused on how Gypsies' and Travellers' levels of literacy impacted on their ability to engage effectively with authority. The research focused on two rural and one urban authority in the South of England but also drew on information from neighbouring authorities and Ireland. A qualitative constructivist epistemology was adopted in which ethnography was the main research tool. The data were collected through in-depth interviews and informal conversations with Gypsies and Travellers, public officials and local politicians, a survey of adult education providers, observation of sundry national and local meetings, participant observation and analysis of the discourse and dialogue of two official forums and data from a variety of sources including television programmes and press reports. The research found that Gypsies and Travellers attached little value to textual literacy, did not view literacy as important to economic success and did not perceive the ability to read and write as contributing to their status or self esteem. Other skills were valued more highly. These attitudes challenge dominant education and development discourses which perceive textual literacy as essential to economic achievement, self esteem and status. The research also highlighted a vacuum in literacy and education policy and provision for adult Gypsies and Travellers who were largely invisible in post-school policy documents, even in those purporting to address equality issues. There was no targeted provision in the three authorities, only a few short term projects elsewhere and little interest among providers. Although mainstream provision was available to Gypsy and Travellers as to all adults, those who wished to learn preferred to teach themselves or be taught by friends and family. The research drew on current theories of discourse, power and control. Primary and secondary Discourses impacted on two areas, the absence of educational opportunities for adult Gypsies and Travellers and on their communicative practices and agency. The lack of targeted literacy provision for Gypsies and Travellers was not accidental but a result of deep seated negative attitudes constructed and maintained through the secondary Discourses of dominant groups and bureaucratic institutions. Interviews and observations revealed that language and discourse was more important to Gypsies and Travellers than the ability to read and write, particularly when communicating privately or publicly with authorities. In these contexts, their own primary discourses, learned through home and community practices, were insufficient. The Gypsies and Travellers who were formally educated and were bi-discoursal were able to operate within secondary institutional Discourses. Though others had life experiences which gave them some understanding of the Discourses of power and bureaucracy, they were not able to communicate or challenge as effectively. The research critiques current models of literacy provision for adults. Though aspects of the models can address specific literacy requirements in specific situations, none of the models including New Literacy Studies and critical literacies, sufficiently address the need to become bi-discoursal or develop the agency to affect decisions controlling their lives. Gypsies and Travellers fear formal education will lead to loss of identity, acculturation and assimilation, but without it they may lose what they seek to preserve. Different communities have different aspirations and face different tensions in different circumstances and each will make decisions accordingly. This research on Gypsies' and Travellers' perceptions and uses of literacy provides new insights into complex tensions and contradictions at both an empirical and theoretical level.

This thesis reports on a case study of the creative writing of A Level English Language students. The research took place over the two year course and involved five students from one class in an 11 – 18, secondary grammar school in the South East of England. The students were aged 16 at the beginning of the case study. There were two girls and three boys, and all from families with little or no tradition of going to university. The research was based on the theoretical framework of the New Literacy Studies (The New London Group, 1996), where literacy is seen as a socially constructed phenomenon. Genres, discourse and creative voices were researched through discourse analysis toolkit to reflect and interrogate the socially constructed literacy event: the two pieces of coursework each participant produced. Additional data was also included to present a kaleidoscopic deep study of the literacy practice through using interviews, domain-mapping and questionnaires. It is also a reflexive study as it has built on findings from earlier studies for the EdD course, and also projects forwards to the continuing tensions in the teaching of English. Although Creative Writing is now an accredited A Level for examination from 2014, and is a valued component of the A Level English Language, in the earlier years of secondary education students have had limited exposure to creative writing. This is due to the effect of the National Curriculum that has shaped the generation of this case study. Creative writing has been marginalised and devalued within the GCSE (paradoxically since the QCA, 2007 Programme of Study for English put greater emphasis on creativity), where there is limited creative writing opportunity: teachers select a title from a possible six which their students respond to. The Department for Education's draft new National Curriculum has a brief reference to creativity in a list where grammar and accuracy are prioritised. There is a tension in what policy statements, including stakeholders such as Ofsted, say about creative writing and what students experience in delivery of the syllabus driven by the National Curriculum. There is also the anomaly that many students have a range of literacy practices as they operate in increasingly multimodal literacies that schools do not recognise as writing experiences. At present, there is much written about creative writing in primary schools and in Higher Education; but the creative writing of young adults following an A Level course is not visible in policy documents, nor the focus of academic research (with a few exceptions such as Dymoke, 2010, and Bluett, 2010). Therefore, it is an area that is worth exploring. The original contribution to knowledge that the thesis provides is a definition of the literacy practice of the creative writing of A Level English Language students. The thesis, through the case study, identifies the range of influences the students draw on and, in particular, the evidence of intertextuality. How the students develop and shape their creative writing through different creative voices, building on the intertextual influences is presented through the lenses of multiple and multimodal data-sets. In conclusion, a pedagogical model is offered for practitioners who perceive echoes with their own educational contexts.

The study observed five introductory classes at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, to find out what academic literacy practices are being engendered and how criticality is being fostered through those practices. The results are intended to help both myself, as a teacher researcher, and the university to identify how students make the difficult transition from expectations of literacy at secondary school to those at university. I observed lecturers and students in their classroom environment for a semester (16 weeks); interviewed lecturers who taught the courses observed and conducted five focus groups, made up of eight students each, with volunteers from each of the classes observed. These interviews were replicated in two other public universities: the Universities of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology where two and five lecturers respectively participated in individual interviews, and eight students each participated in focus groups. Finally, I triangulated the data in order to identify emergent patterns of lecturers' and students' experiences with teaching and learning. The data indicates that students need more explicit teaching of the basic literacy skills they are assumed to have. Most students in the study had difficulty comprehending academic texts. Additionally, students rarely attempted to read their assigned texts beforehand since they had little experience in anticipating what to look for or connect with in the text. Student writing is poor, as they have no opportunity to practice continuous writing. In order to address the literacy difficulties of these students, there is the need to pay attention to institutional and faculty engagement practices which promote student learning. A major area for improvement is in encouraging lecturers to teach using more explicit methods so that students can move from where they are in their literacy competence to where lecturers expect them to be. The place to explain to students what is expected in a discipline is within that discipline (Skillen et al., 2001), rather than assume that students will automatically see the shift in expectations for each field of study. Although there was substantial consensus about the importance of criticality in lecturers' aims for student learning, this was not adequately translated into literacy practices. Massification has led to a preference for multiple-choice testing which has removed the need to read and write for assessment, inviting students out of the intellectual dialogue that characterizes the various disciplines as they engage critically and thoughtfully with course readings (Svinicki, 2005; Carroll, 2002). The findings of this study indicate that lecturers have only adapted to the changed circumstances of massification in ways that mean that the critical acquisition of academic literacies is diminished. The impact of massification on teaching and learning has resulted in lecturers feeling under pressure to teach in ways that conflict with their personal ideologies. To foster criticality in students lecturers will have to learn new skills as what may happen with a group of 20 cannot be translated into a group of hundred or more. There are policies in place to enhance teaching and learning but few mechanisms to implement them. In the most important sense that the university in its policy statements and course outlines values critical thinking and deep engagement with ideas and concepts, the practices described by students and lecturers are completely in tension. In order to address the literacy difficulties of students, universities will need to actively support lecturers in teaching reform efforts so as to respond to pressures on them to increase their output while maintaining quality. Significant progress is likely to come about only if universities are willing to invest in resources that are needed to experiment with institution-wide changes.

This thesis reports on a study of the effects of a two-tiered Buddy Reading Programme on the reading skills of 12 to 14 year old middle school students in a high-poverty urban school in a Midwestern United States school. The research took place during one school year with white and African American students. The research, influenced by action research, was in the form of a Buddy Reading intervention programme using a reciprocal teaching model, within a constructivist paradigm. The key finding of the study was that the social nature of the programme allowed the middle school students to rehearse texts, engage in dialogue surrounding texts, and led to improvement in the affective aspects of reading, as well as in reading skills. This social aspect led many of the students to engage in literacy activities beyond those required either for the programme or in classroom instruction. A second finding of the study was that a comprehensive, balanced approach to literacy instruction was effective for simulating the process of reading for the struggling readers and leading them to emulate the reading processes of proficient readers. Through the programme, the students were immersed in a literacy-rich environment and interacted with texts in a positive, natural way.