Children’s Centres are a relatively new development. There is little published research available about their impact on improving outcomes for children and their families and about the role of the educational psychologist (EP) in Children’s Centres. This thesis describes an action research project that was run in Children’s Centre in the North East of England. The project explored the use of a drop-in service that was offered to parents and carers attending the Children’s Centre. An EP provided this service and the purpose of the drop-in was for parents or carers to be able to speak confidentially to an EP about concerns or issues in connection with any aspect of their child’s development or behaviour. The drop-in service was run intermittently over a two-year period and approximately forty parents and carers attended. Data to inform the research aims and questions were collected using a variety of approaches including: semi-structured interviews, records of discussions, questionnaires, research diary, audio and video recordings. The audio recording was analysed using thematic analysis and the other data were analysed by using patterning to look for themes or issues from the various data collected. Reflective discussions during the action research process facilitated opportunities for triangulation and respondent validation. The drop-in evolved from one where the EP waited for parents to visit them in a designated room to one where the EP attended the groups run by the Children’s Centre staff. The latter model increased the uptake of the service. Another important factor in parents’ engagement with the service was identified by staff at the Children’s Centre. This was the need to develop trust between the parent and the EP. Although, initially, the service was for parents, the staff at the Children’s Centre requested access to the drop-in service. A solution focussed framework was found to be a useful tool to guide the structure of the drop-in. A wide range of topics were brought to the drop-in reflecting Sheppard’s et al’s (2007) discussion about the types of issues upon which the parents were seeking support when they attended Children’s Centres. The study acknowledges that the drop-in is only one type of service that might be provided by an EP and that generalisations to other Children’s Centres might not be appropriate or necessary. However, the study demonstrates the way in which an action research methodology helped to develop a service based around the needs of the community, and facilitated the provision of a drop-in service that was valued by parents and staff in the Children’s Centre.

King Edward's Birmingham, an independent school, provides wholly free places to some 10% of its annual intake of 120 boys. This research investigates how such boys fare academically at school and how their schooling could affect their subsequent lives. Because they have passed the fierce entrance examination without the benefits middle class children might have received through attending feeder prep schools with perhaps additional coaching, the meritocratic thesis suggests they should excel in the school and achieve impressive qualifications. Conversely, the work of Bourdieu and Bernstein indicates that dissonance between home and school environments could create social difficulties and cause these boys to underperform significantly. The results show that most free-place boys achieved results similar to their fee-paying counterparts although few really excelled and a noticeable minority struggled throughout school and gained disappointing final grades. On leaving education, those from the working class prove less likely to enter the elite professions and those who do so advance less than their middle class peers. These differences could be attributed to lower amounts of cultural and social capital. A change in the focus of extra-curricular activities at King Edward's to target the building of these forms of capital could prove beneficial.

This thesis presents an investigation of the contribution school information management systems make to teaching and learning based on qualitative and quantitative research in the Bailiwick of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. addressed the question of whether information systems contribute to teaching and learning and to the mission of the school; to what extent their adoption forms part of an emphasis on performativity and school improvement or on the transformation of the teaching and learning agenda. In the course of the research a further question was posed which sought to identify how practice in this area could be improved to support teaching and learning better. The research built on a critical analytical study which took the form of a Systematic Review of the literature. Initial research drew on data from a sample of Guernsey teachers, an Education Department manager and the Director of the company that produces the Schools Information Management System. This was followed by a collaborative action research project in one school involving the Headteacher, the Senior Leadership Team, other Teachers, Students, Administrative Staff and Parents/Carers. Consistent with this approach the position adopted by the researcher was non-neutral: she does not control environment and knowledge was constructed along with those that participated in the research.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the course Eng 311, Advanced Communication Skills, offered by the Department of Modern Languages at Middle East Technical University. To fulfill this aim two questionnaires were designed to be administered to 198 out of 923 students taking this course, one at the beginning of the term and the other at the end of the term. What is more, another questionnaire was designed to be e-mailed to 114 graduate students who took this course before they graduated. In addition, a different version of the questionnaires was designed to be administered to 22 instructors teaching this course. Later, five of these instructors were also interviewed by the researcher. In this way, all these participants&rsquo / opinions about the objectives, materials and the assessment in Eng 311 were identified. The quantitative data gathered from the questionnaires were analysed by conducting t-tests, ANOVA tests and chi-square tests. The qualitative data gathered fro the open-ended questions in the questionnaires and the interviews were analysed by content analysis by the researcher. The results of the study revealed that the participants were satisfied with the course. Most of the objectives of the course were considered as important by most for the participants. As regard the materials, although there were some complaints about some parts of the textbook, it was considered as effective as a whole. The type of materials that were rated the lowest were CDs and videos. As for the assessment, it was revealed by the results that there were some problems regarding standardization in the department, and the breakdown of points. In addition to these, some instructors also complained that the time allotted to the components of this lesson was not sufficient.

The purpose of this thesis is to develop an understanding about internal fraud and corruption problem in Turkish construction industry. During the research, the reasons behind the internal fraud and corruption problem, types of internal fraud and prevention methods for internal fraud and corruption were investigated and various recommendations were developed. Moreover, fraud risk awareness questionnaire was implemented to understand the likelihood occurrence of internal fraud types in construction sector and proactive and reactive measures against these problems. Moreover, types of fraud incidences experienced by Turkish construction companies were also investigated with the questionnaire. The questionnaire reached to 89 respondents and, recommendations to prevent internal fraud and corruption problem were developed by detailed statistical analyses.

In 2002 a contractually differentiated teaching–focused post, University Teacher (UT), was created within my Russell Group HEI. This interpretivist study seeks to explore the impact of the ‘lived experience’ of this recent post on both myself and a group of 11 colleagues, some of whom were transferred and others employed as UTs. A narrative approach is adopted to evaluate existing public stories of the UK HE sector and changing definitions of academic functions and identities alongside original private stories, both my own and those co-constructed with participants. My primary research comprised in-depth narrative interviews with four Senior UTs, six UTs and one research-focused Lecturer recently transferred from a UT post. The interviews sought to elicit participants’ storied accounts of professional identity construction and management on the career paths towards their current posts and beyond. The interview data was examined reflexively using a pragmatic hybrid model based on a range of narrative analytic lenses: structural and linguistic narrative analysis of three case studies, together with thematic analysis of narratives across all 11 interviews. The participants shared highly personal, emotional and reflective accounts. The case study analysis centred on the identification and scrutiny of overarching plotlines, key episodes, genres and characterisation. The thematic analysis revealed common concerns around the job title, the relative weightings and status of teaching and scholarship, the nature of scholarship and career progression. The complex connection between intra-, inter-, cultural and structural dimensions proved key; personal values and agency, relationships with peers and managers, and institutional and sectoral priorities were all essential to the achievement of a progressive, as opposed to a regressive or static, UT identity typology. UTs clearly had some control over their own agency. However, institutional leaders and line managers were seen to have more significant power to promote or inhibit identity growth for academics on differentiated contracts. Changes have recently been made to the UT post in relation to the job title and promotion criteria. In the conclusions I suggest that further research is needed on the effect of these changes and on the impact of contractual differentiation on staff and students across the HE sector. Implications for institutions and staff on how to facilitate teaching-focused academics’ positive identity growth are also put forward.

This thesis aims to elucidate perceptions and practices in relation to learning disabilities in different contexts over a period of a hundred years, between 1780 and 1880. Previous studies have concentrated on institutional and professional contexts, on informed medical opinion for example, or on focused studies of local practices. Here a wider range of opinion and practice is sought. The Introduction includes a discussion of nomenclature, and explains why 'intellectual impairment' is used rather than the familiar term 'learning disability'. Part I of the thesis explores perceptions of, and responses to, intellectual impairment held by different people in various contexts, while Part II employs biographical methods to examine the life histories of a number of intellectually impaired people in their familial setting. Part I starts with the views of professionals - educationists,doctors (who were at the forefront of the well documented emergence of idiot education in the 1840s) and also charity workers. Concentrating on previously neglected issues, the thesis shows that educational theory and practice offered nothing to families with an intellectually impaired child, and medical dominance had negligible competition. In a chapter on the efforts of charity workers as well as doctors to promote and raise money for the new idiot asylums, the focus is on the notion of idiocy that they put forward. Here ideas from the past mingled with new ideas. The question of the nature and origin of the image, or images, of the idiot is continued in two chapters that explore the varied and changing portrayals of intellectual impairment in imaginative literature. Part II uses family papers in a novel way to investigate the lives of individuals who had an intellectual impairment, and the responses of their families. These families, well known because of at least one eminent member, and well documented, are at the least, comfortably off. But within these parameters there is variation. Augustus, son of William and Caroline Lamb, is from the aristocracy, while Laura, daughter of Leslie Stephen of DNB fame, is from the middle class intelligentsia. This makes the similarity of responses to an intellectually impaired child the more interesting. For the most part, a child's difficulty was conceptualised as an educational, health or social problem, and not in terms of idiocy or a related all inclusive notion. The final chapter of Part II, that explores experiences of the modestly off or the poor, uses, in the absence of family papers, other sources of information. The inclusion of both the familial and private, and the public, contexts enables this thesis to reveal a wider range of perceptions and practices in relation to intellectual impairment during the period than have previous studies.

Government policy emphasises the role higher education is expected to play in the era of the "information society" and the benefits the increasing use of new technology in teaching and learning within the university will bring. Accordingly, the purpose of this research was to explore the influence of the WWW in teaching and learning in universities. The study was designed in response to a rejection of technological deterministic approaches and the call for more empirically grounded study of the relationships between society and technology. It examines the use of the WWW in six case study modules in two universities in England from a staff, student and institutional perspective, located within the national context. A case study design, utilising a communications framework, was adopted to guide the research process. The methods utilised were: literature review, analysis of national and university policy documents, semi structured interviews with staff and students, two student questionnaires, focus groups with students and analysis of the case study websites. The cases explored here provide a rather different picture to that painted by the dominant discourses about ICTs and higher education. The use of the web in teaching and learning neither appears to be radically transforming the university, nor to be providing (or even regarded as) a ready solution to the problems the sector currently encounters. Yet, the technology is, in places, adding to the experiences of staff and students in a variety of complex ways. Through exploring practical instances of educational innovation this research has indicated the mesh of interrelating factors that are at work when using the web in teaching and learning, and the importance of considering the full range of experiences of the individuals involved, the variable purposes of using the technology, and the influence of the social contexts that surround initiatives. The benefits of the use of a communications model in further research is highlighted, and the use of mixed model studies promoted to gain greater understanding, aid with generalizability, and provide arguments to counter techno deterministic accounts prevalent in this area.

Class of 2013 Abstract / Specific Aims: To determine if melanoma cells are more vulnerable to Amodiaquine (AQ) or Lumefantrine (LF)-based artemisinin combination therapy compared to artemisinin monotherapy. Methods: Tested anti-malarials in vitro for anti-melanoma activity, which contained 100,000 of the A375 human metastatic melanoma cells that were repeatedly treated independently three times. Main Results: Dihydroartemisinin (DHA) monotherapy induced significant cell death in melanoma cells. However, artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) did not enhance DHA-induced cell death. AQ protected against DHA-induced cell death causing morphological changes detected by electron microscopy. As for LF, it did not affect DHA-induced cell death. Conclusion: The results demonstrated that ACT does not display enhanced anti-melanoma activity compared to artemisinin monotherapy. It suggests that AQ may have anti-oxidant properties, but would need to be explored further in the context of anti-oxidant cyto-protection.

No description available.