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As part of a high quality nursing student experience within Higher Education there is a need to access the voice of the student. By listening to the students, greater clarity and understanding from the students' perspective is proposed. The focus of this research is within the first year of an undergraduate nursing programme. This thesis gives insight into the experiences and perceptions of undergraduate nursing students' transition into Higher Education and professional transformation, within the first year of a three year proframme. In addition, the research sought to illuminate the participants' personal learning journeys and experiences. There is a dearth of literature addressing various aspects of the first year student experience and minimal literature which represents the student voice. The first year experience is a complex and multifaceted area of study. This complexity is related to the Higher Education organisational processes that are required to enable the student to succeed and the amount of personal investment by each student who enters programmes of learning within a university setting. It has been identified that the first year is the most critical to ensuring that students engage with programmes of learning and achieve both academically and professionally (Trotter and Roberts 2006). To develop insight into the learner's journey a theoretical framework is constructed from within an interpretive paradigm. Hermeneutic phenomenology was selected as a suitable methodology for this research, informed by the work of Max van Manen (1990). The use of hermeneutic phenomenology enable the exploration of participants' experiences. The participants in this research were representative of a typical nursing cohort's profile and, therefore, provided the ideal means of investigating the student nurse experience within the first year. Ten student nurses volunteered to participate in this research and data was collected over a period of one year by use of repeated semi-structured interviews and collection of critical incidents using digital voice recorders. Data was analysed using phenomenological and hermeneutic strategies involving in-depth, iterative reading and interpretation to identify themes in the data. Findings from this research identify that the students have developed skills to survive but there was considerable variation in the student experience which impacted on their motivaton and behaviour. A key finding was the ability of students to develop their own skills of coping to deal with the demands of academic life and those of the practice settings. The skills of self-reliance and self efficacy are evident in the findings and are explored in relation to professional transformation.

The rising demand of teamwork during Design for Social Innovation (DfSI) projects has created a need for professional development to be able to work cordially within teams. Traditionally, reflective practices have been considered most effective for the development of professional practice in the field of Design. However, enactive cognitive science points to the practice of Awareness-based Meditative Techniques (AbMT) as an alternate way for such development. Such AbMTs have been extensively studied by different disciplines. This research borrows from: • Social science and positive psychology perspectives, where the act of becoming aware has been associated with an inner value system that guides behaviour. Theoretical perspective from many authors from various backgrounds in AbMT research have been reviewed to propose a model of inner values which could affect teamwork during DfSI project as well as be influenced positively by the practice of AbMT intervention. • A physiological perspective, to measure Heart Rate Variability (HRV) as an indicator of the physical stress which is known to e reduced by AbMT due to an improve ability to deal with such stress. • A psychological perspective, using the Mindful attention and awareness scale (MAAS) questionnaire for quantitative research on the practice of AbMT intervention by participants. Taking a post-positivist stance, this research focuses on creating a depth of information utilising these inter-disciplinary methods. Therefore, three teams working on three similar social innovation projects have been studied for eight weeks- one team populated with all meditators, another with all non-meditators and a third team with both. Analysis of reflections by team members on their own teamwork led to conclusion that- AbMT intervention could lead to improved teamwork during a DfSI project, especially with regard to the responsibilities perceived as the leadership of the team. This is because the meditators in this research reflected that, because of AbMT intervention they could • share responsibilities which they perceived as pertaining to leadership of their team not only with other members of their team but also with the wider community of stakeholders, • prioritise reflective action over unproductive debates for the better functioning of the team rather than satisfaction of own ego and • change their perception from ‘goal oriented’ to ‘people oriented’ approach. Further it was observed that, teams with meditators could use ‘framing’ and ‘reflecting’ activities to work in multi-disciplinary setting of their team and utilise strength of knowledge of their team. It was also observed that teams with meditators got overly focused on social innovation aspects while working with the community of stakeholders and users, and the team temporarily lost focus of financial viability until the client (sponsor) helped the team to regain their focus. However, the relationship between such findings and the effect of AbMT intervention could not be conclusively asserted, though the intervention is one of the key influences on the teams during their DfSI projects. Thus, the key contributions to knowledge from this research are: the model of inner values, the development of the inter-disciplinary hybrid research methodology and evidence of the positive influences that AbMT intervention can have on the teamwork during DfSI projects.

Much research has been done into the knowledge, skills and attributes that are important to legal practice; furthermore, many bodies have released reports on what they would like graduates to start practice with. As a result, clinical legal education has grown in popularity, with the use of live client clinics to educate future lawyers. However, little empirical research has been done into whether they work as educators intend, and develop the necessary knowledge, skills and attributes needed to start practice. This research investigated whether live client clinics develop students and which knowledge, skills and attributes are important to practice. This study used Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory as its conceptual framework, influential to clinical legal education. The study used the Diamond16, a visual method, as its main data collection tool and semistructured group interviews. Data was collected from a sample of students, tutors and lawyers, in four live client clinics, across three countries and two law firms. This study followed five firms in Northumbria’s SLO throughout the academic year, collecting comparative data from the other participants. Results show the live client clinics can develop certain knowledge, skills and attributes in law students, but we cannot create “practice ready” graduates. Some of the learning in the student law office appeared to be because of their tutor’s influence rather than experience. Lastly, the knowledge, skills and attributes which were perceived to be important to practice are presented, drawing on the distinction between “hard” and “soft” skills. This research produced important results for legal educator wishing to justify the establishment or sustainability of a clinic and for those within policy who are implementing changes to legal education and qualification.

In recent years, there has been growing interest towards integrating industry into the teaching and learning processes. This is due to many factors including increased concerns about the mismatch between the skills and abilities of the talent pool, strengthening partnership and improving quality of engineering education. Thus, greater emphasis on the teaching and learning processes to enhance the students’ learning experience leads to the university-industry partnership to the forefront interest of the university. On the other hand, exclusion of industry’s engagement in the teaching and learning processes have been identified as the main source of chronic criticism on the higher engineering education segment in recent years. This study demonstrates a research model that hypothesised the influence of teaching and learning domains on the university-industry partnership towards enhancing the learning experience of the engineering students. Using the structural equation modelling (SEM), the hypothesis was tested on the primary data collected from 212 communities of the industry. Furthermore, the study investigated the preference of industry on the type of linkages to foster university-industry partnership using analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The results revealed that nine out of the thirteen hypotheses had significant associations including six direct paths and three indirect effects in the model. The findings indicated the need for industry-university partnership in three main constructs including cooperation in education, the mobility of people and intellectual enhancement. Moreover, internship programme was the important linkage in achieving the overall university-industry partnerships goals, followed by the staff training programme, academic development, consultancy work, student learning activity and publication activity. In summary, the study demonstrates that teaching and learning relevance could be enhanced through optimizing industry’s enrichment activities into the learning process, improving the measures for accreditation in narrowing the gap between theory and practice and proactively improving the quality of teaching by exploring the staff training programmes.

Ongoing research has identified a potential disconnect in academic and pedagogic expectation between academic staff and students. At the same time a context of higher tuition fees and changing student expectations renders this relationship even more important to the success of higher education institutions. This research investigated the sources of student expectations for the pedagogic relationship, the alignment between staff and student expectations and the potential impact of expectation fulfilment and frustration on the student experience. The study used the Psychological Contract as a theoretical framework, responding to recent calls for the further use of psychological contracts in education. The author has taught business in both secondary and university contexts for a number of years. This experience informed the phenomenological positioning of the thesis, its focus, its location in a large post -’92 business school, its mixed methods and an analytical method (template analysis) which has enabled both anticipated and emergent themes to be explored. Data was collected from a sample of students at regular intervals throughout their first year of study and from staff. Both exploratory statistical analysis of survey data and template analysis of interviews suggested that staff and students’ initial expectations broadly concur. However the practical implications of such notions as ‘independent learning’ develop significantly over the first year and it is contended that pre-entry expectations are significantly influenced by students’ experience of the pedagogic relationship at tertiary education level. The initial pedagogic psychological contract changes significantly over the first year as post entry experiences (or the ‘reality shock’) reshapes and reconfigures their expectations. The research developed a series of recommendations to both secondary schools and universities to improve the management of expectations.

This thesis explored the factors contributing to the employability and identity development of occupational psychology graduates at various career stages. A mixed methods approach was taken to achieve three broad aims of the professional doctorate: 1) raising awareness of employability within the occupational psychology (OP) profession; 2) improving theoretical understanding of employability applied to a domain specific occupational sample; and finally 3) enhancing the professional practice of the thesis author. A qualitative study using focus group methodology (N=6) and thematic analysis identified barriers and facilitators to OP employability culminating in six core themes of ‘identity, ‘continuing professional development’, ‘making a difference’, ‘adaptability’, ‘evidence-based practice’ and ‘external environment’ (study 1). These themes were translated into an Occupational Psychologists Facilitators to Employability Scale (OPFES) which was assessed for its psychometric properties (N=88) using exploratory factor analysis. This study also detailed the development of a Subjective Career Satisfaction Scale (SCSS) (study 2). A revised version of the OPFES and measures of employability antecedents (Competence and Psychological Capital) and career success were distributed to the OP community (N=185). An analysis of the demographic data detailed the variety of OP careers. This study emphasised the potential challenges in creating a strong professional identity (study 3). Structural Equation Modelling determined the relationship between employability and career success (objective and subjective) where final models suggested different relationships between employability antecedents and objective and subjective career success (study 4). Finally, a narrative thematic analysis of OP stories (N=20) concluded the thesis (study 5). This study revealed the presence of five identity types: ‘learners’, ‘networkers’, ‘compromisers’, ‘achievers’ and ‘career builders. Each type was present in the career stories adding further support for the concept of ‘career identity complexity’. Overall, findings indicated that the career of an OP graduate was varied, that multiple employability antecedents could enhance career success and that a diversity of strategies were utilised in identity formation. Support was provided for Career Construction Theory and the influence of human capital and personal resources in employability. Reflections on how the research outcomes have impacted on the thesis author’s professional development are discussed throughout. The research programme contributes an evidence base for interventions that can inform MSc curriculum and the ongoing career and professional development of OccPsychs.

Partnership is a dominant theme of public policy and service provision in England and in other western countries. It is also a concept that remains relatively under-researched and under-theorised, especially with respect to conceptualising underlying relational processes that can shape conflict and consensus within partnerships. This thesis draws on a richly textured ethnographic study, using an in-depth casestudy of a voluntarily-founded, network-like, cross-sectoral partnership, which aimed to develop and implement a community learning centre in the village parish of Broadley, located in the English Midlands. The research sees fieldwork conducted over twenty-four months, using multiple methods of qualitative data-generation including the observation of partnership meetings and activities, semi-structured interviews and the collection of partnership artefacts (meeting minutes, funding bid document, emails). It presents an ethnographic view of the inner workings of one partnership and follows its entire lifecycle. This partnership was not sustained and did not realise the vision to which it aspired. A central concern of this thesis is to investigate the development of conflict and consensus within partnership practice. The contribution of the thesis is to tease out how these elements are understood. This study challenges naive texts that prescribe simplistic, recipe-based formulas for achieving partnership success. Instead, it illustrates what can happen when partners do not develop sufficiently strong and balanced sets of social ties between one another. Consequently, this thesis sets up a new research agenda focusing more specifically on issues of community overlaps, identities and social ties. This thesis has value in terms of providing a deeply relational account of challenges facing the development of one cross-sectoral, network-like partnership. It draws together insights from partnership literature, community literature and fieldwork,and provides a strong basis from which further research can be developed.

This doctoral project challenges the conventions of academic enquiry that, by default, still largely shape the procedures of practice-based PhDs. It has been submitted in the form of a ‘thesis by performance’ - a thesis that can only be realized through live readings that present knowledge production as something done in and around bodies and their contexts. The aim has been to reposition institutional and educational knowledge in an intimate, subjective relationship with the body, particularly the researchers own body. The ideas gathered together in this ‘thesis by performance’ address the body and its context using material that was sometimes appropriated, sometimes invented and sometimes autobiographically constructed. From the start, these approaches and sources were used to directly address those listening in the present, the ‘now’ in which words were spoken. An approach influenced by feminist thinkers in the arts, Kathy Acker, Chris Kraus, Katrina Palmer and Linda Stupart. The methodological development of the research has been entirely iterative – developed through the making and presenting of performance texts. Each text was presented live as part of mixed-media installations, experimenting with how language and voice can be visualised and choreographed. Consequently, the resulting ‘thesis by performance’ is a doctoral submission unimpeded by a printed script - only an introductory statement and two appendices are available outside of a live reading. In this way the process of performance can inspire new terms of reference in the field of postgraduate practice-led research entirely on its own terms.

Alongside the social and economic reform of the 1980s, special education and inclusive education have been developing rapidly over the last three decades in China. Despite increasing research on the positive relationship between parental involvement and children’s educational achievement, only a limited number of studies have begun to focus on how Chinese parents get involved in inclusive education in China. The aim of this research was to explore how a small group of Chinese hearing parents support their deaf children to be ready for and educated at mainstream schools in Beijing, China. A qualitative research design combining constructivist grounded theory and autoethnography was applied to this study. Following the guidelines of Charmaz’s grounded theory, intensive interviews were conducted with 10 Chinese hearing parents of deaf children in Beijing, China. All hearing parents were interviewed twice, resulting in 18 total interviews plus back-up interviews. Additionally, my own story of being a deaf person growing up and attending regular schools in Beijing, provided autoethnographic reflections on the data and codes. The analysis of interview data has explored and developed a conceptual theory of parental involvement including three key categories: the effects of parental involvement, parental involvement strategies, and the barriers to parental involvement. Also, these findings showed that Chinese hearing parents’ ‘tried and tested’ strategies for supporting their deaf child to be ready for and educated at mainstream schools and actively removing the barriers to their involvement. In conclusion, the findings of this research discussed that these parents’ attitudes towards deafness and inclusive education could influence their strategies in deaf diagnosis, early intervention, school settings and coaching their deaf child. And these findings suggested that this theoretical model of parental involvement could influence a deaf child’s development in self-concept and deaf identity, contributing to the theories and practices of parental involvement and inclusive education for deaf children in China.