Over the past decade, and particularly since the publication of The National Plan for Music Education (DfE, 2011), there has been increasing opportunity for community musicians in England to work with young people with challenging behaviour in Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) and in Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (EBD) Units. This study identifies and discusses six key elements that influence community music delivery in these settings. These elements are: what the children bring, organizing structures, ideas and materials, focus and energy, reflection and reflexivity and the intentions of the leader. These elements emerged from the data collected through the study. This study combined action research and grounded theory. It employed a number of data collection methods, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, focus group work and a literature review. The environment of PRUs and EBD Units are based on formal schooling but are both volatile and academically ineffective (Taylor, 2012). Community musicians, who frequently work outside the curriculum, need insights and understandings beyond traditional educational practice if they are to be successful in engaging children in these environments. Community music practice addresses not only musical but also personal and social development. This, and the nature of PRUs, and of the children within them, makes the work complex. Through understanding the role all six elements can play in shaping the child’s experience, the community musician can use this knowledge to develop programmes that address these children’s complex needs, allow them to place themselves at the centre of their own learning and encourage their ownership of their own creative expression. This can give them a sense of meaning for their own often troubled histories and may offer them a pathway to reconstructing their own self concept away from conferred negative identities as excluded children towards seeing themselves as learners and musicians.

The primary aim of this research is to develop my own critical perspective on oppression, marginalisation and education in Kerala, India. First, it critiques Freire’s educational thoughts including banking and problem-posing education; second, it goes on to extend Freire’s ideas to develop a dialogical methodology in the field of Education while addressing my fieldwork struggles and dialogues. Third, it addresses how Freire’s educational thoughts can also be critically understood to explore the oppressive and marginalizing nature of non-formal education and community work in Kerala; fourth, this thesis contributes to innovative knowledge mainly at theoretical, methodological and empirical levels.

Mary Sumner (1828-1921) founded the Anglican Mothers’ Union, which originated as a parish mothers’ meeting in 1876, and followed the Girls’ Friendly Society as the second women’s organisation to be sanctioned by the Church of England. By 1921, the Mothers’ Union had a membership extending across the British Empire and transnationally. Mary Sumner sought to educate mothers in Christian values and pedagogy so that they might educate their children to be future citizens of empire. Her life trajectory occurred against a context of evangelical religious revival, contest over matters of doctrinal authority, the proliferation of women’s philanthropy, the growth of the British Empire and changes in education characterised by state intervention in working-class elementary schooling and the negotiation of educational provision for middle- class girls. This thesis uses primary source material to build on institutional histories of the Mothers’ Union to situate Mary Sumner in networks, emphasise gender and class as mediating of opportunity, and envisage her religious ‘mission’ as educational. The thesis draws on the thinking tools of Pierre Bourdieu, habitus, field and capital, to analyse Mary Sumner’s negotiation of constraint and agency in relation to the fields of religion, mission (understood as religious and philanthropic activism ‘at home’ and overseas) and education through which womanhood runs as a connecting theme. Bourdieu’s concept of reproduction is used to position Mary Sumner in relation to the operation of power across domestic, local and global spaces. The thesis concludes that using Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ highlights how Mary Sumner used opportunities for women within her temporal and socio-cultural context in ways that were complicit with notions of womanhood reflective of patriarchal domination and accepting of hierarchies of class and ‘race’, yet were innovative in her achievement of access for an organisation of women within Anglicanism that was recognised for its educational work.

This doctoral study sets out to investigate how Key Stage 2, primary school children (aged between 7 and 11 years) are being taught to develop information seeking skills and strategies that will allow them to become critical and literate users of information. The methodological approach adopted for this research study is that of interpretivist ethnography. This represents a move away from the traditional quantifiable approaches used in Library and Information Science (LIS) and focuses on gathering data in the natural setting in order to offer a rich picture of the information seeking behaviour of a small group of Key Stage 2 children. In order to become an integrated part of the natural setting it was necessary to become immersed in the school for an extended period of time, one academic school year. Taking a grounded theory approach meant that it was possible, right at the beginning of the fieldwork, to identify situations as they occurred. During the field research, a rich picture emerged of the information seeking strategies and skills of the group of children participating in the study. As the field research progressed, themes and patterns were identified which were then examined against previous research in order to identify similarities or differences in the findings of this study with other studies. The themes that unfolded from the data offered an information seeking model that was specific to the group of Key Stage 2 children. Within the model a further theoretical framework is offered that postulates that a zone of optimal learning exists. The theory suggests that there is an optimal cognitive zone that is the place where new information is assimilated so that it can become knowledge. The zone of optimal learning is the place where a child moves from incomprehension of new information to a cognitive understanding of that information. Investigatingth e influencesu pont he children'si nformations eekingb ehaviour served to highlight both strengths and weaknesses in the ways in which the children developed their information seeking skills and strategies and with this in mind a set of four suggestions are offered that aim to support the way in which information seeking strategies are delivered to Key Stage 2 children based on the children that participated in this study.

UK higher education has seen unprecedented fluctuations, particularly within the last decade. Policy developments and government strategies are dramatically altering the sector and irreversibly changing the student-university relationship. Of particular note, a consumerist ethos has become the prevalent mind-set amongst the student body and, consequently, students have developed clear expectations about what they want from their university experience. In order to begin to explore these perceptions and needs, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of first year undergraduate students from across three programmes of study at the University of Central Lancashire: Business Administration, Business and Management, and Business Studies. The structure and content of the interview questions were derived from the results of an earlier focus group meeting held with students from a local 'feeder institution' who were studying Business and who were considering entering university in 2017-2018 (although not necessarily UCLan). The findings from these interviews, along with those from a set of follow up meetings, are in line with the results of other, earlier studies described within the literature which suggest that students enter university with a specific set of expectations, that are, in many cases, unfulfilled. However, the empirical research presented here makes a distinctive contribution to the field in several respects: first, that psychological contract theory is employed as a useful lens through which to investigate the student-university relationship; second, the behavioural responses to dissatisfaction are examined using the Exit-Voice-Loyalty-Neglect (EVLN) framework as a mechanism for exploring these reactions; and third, previous studies employing the EVLN framework in the context of higher education have all taken place overseas and largely used quantitative methods of investigation. Therefore, this research is distinctive in that it takes place in a UK setting and employs qualitative methods. The use of qualitative methods has added to our understanding of the student experience by highlighting some of the underlying causes of dissatisfaction and the ways in which students might respond to the breach of perceived promises. The EVLN framework has demonstrated its value as a conceptual tool in exploring students' reactions and reveals that the expectation-reality mismatch can lead to feelings of entrapment and hopelessness amongst the student body. The outcomes uncovered in this thesis have real-world implications for management practice, not only at UCLan, but for other universities that may be facing similar issues.

When we watch an expert perform, how does that inform our own knowledge and skills in that subject, or establish what our potential might be to become a ‘better’ learner? There is much policy and rhetoric around the development of this ‘expert’ learner through ‘Learner Voice’ initiatives, yet this is a sparsely researched area. Mainly anecdotal, with poorly documented methodology, it is also heavily biased towards compulsory-aged education. This study, set within Further Education, adds to knowledge by providing evidence of how learners can improve the quality of teaching, and their own learning, through direct involvement in reflection and discussion with teachers. It also considers the implications of this for those involved: learners, teachers, the organisation and wider policy. Using an action-research model, and observations, eight volunteer participants from a teacher training curriculum area engaged with this study: two ‘learners’, each paired with a different ‘teacher’ for the observation; three teaching staff who were ‘observed’; and the curriculum area manager. Interviews were conducted throughout the research, with main participants interviewed up to three times to draw out their phenomenological interpretations and reflections. Working within a community of learning, with multiple points of interaction and ‘layers’, two theoretical frameworks were used in analysing the interviews: communities of practice and ecological learning systems. Finding them insufficient in isolation, to improve the data analysis, and the nuances of these layers – ‘micro’, ‘meso’, ‘exo’ and ‘macro’ – a ‘continuum of practice’ was devised to combine these frameworks. Additional theoretical concepts – self-efficacy, self-esteem, self-concept and self-categorization theories – were also used to interpret evidence of an individual’s sense of identity and their perceived trajectory. Evidence suggests interactions within observation partnerships, including those observed, were influenced by the theoretical framework embedded within that interaction: an appropriate framework approach can enhance the quality of outcome from these collaborations.