Transitions are an inevitable part of the human experience. This inquiry aimed to investigate how psychologists experienced some personal transitions in relation to their clinical work. The two examples of transitions investigated were a personal bereavement and the decision to live without a Christian faith. There were two purposive samples of psychologists in this inquiry, one for each transition. This phenomenological study used an adapted version of Moustakas‟s heuristic inquiry which emphasised co-construction. This inquiry found that transitions affected the author‟s and participants‟ therapeutic practice in each study in idiosyncratic ways. Some effects were changes in personal philosophy, increased empathy and an increased ability to work therapeutically with clients experiencing transitions. Some of the implications of these affects were on the therapists‟ use of personal experiences in clinical work, fitness to practise and the development of empathy. Conducting this inquiry led to the researcher‟s personal and professional development, comparable to personal therapy. Examples of the researcher‟s personal development were increased self-reflection and ability to cope with vulnerability. Examples of the researcher‟s professional development were an increased understanding of transition theory and its application in clinical work, and a greater focus on facilitating clients to identify specific resources and coping mechanisms during transition. The implications of the findings of this inquiry for Counselling Psychology were on the importance of therapists‟ self-care and its promotion within applied psychology, the role of reflexive research methods in psychology training and the content of clinical supervision. Specific areas of further research were highlighted including targeted aspects of self-care, the personal effects of leaving religious sects and the relevance of research in the personal development requirement of training. Limitations of the studies were critiqued with reference to phenomenology and phenomenological methods and the use of an adapted version of heuristic inquiry.

This thesis explores the question of what constitutes ‘good education’ in the 21st Century, particularly in the context of the further education (FE) sector, and argues that an intensified regime of performativity in FE colleges has resulted in the dominance of an increasingly impoverished model of education. This ethnographic study, undertaken from 2009 to 2012, analyses the experiences of two cohorts of trainee FE teachers as they progressed through their Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) and Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) years. The methodology explicitly foregrounds the role of serendipity in the research, and its role in revealing critical moments in the students’ encounters with the FE workplace. The data include field notes of PGCE class discussions, students’ reflective diaries and my own reflections. An initial literature review explores the notion of ‘good education’ and the sociopolitical policies which have reshaped it, with a particular focus on their impact on FE teachers. My readings of other relevant literature are then integrated with the research findings, providing a context against which to interpret the data. The thesis also draws on an eclectic range of theory including critical pedagogy, social theories of time and analyses of consumerism in contemporary culture in order to offer a multi-layered explanation of the findings and to identify three key themes: the scripting of teachers and their practices; time pressures on teachers and students’ sense of consumer-driven entitlement. These themes are then synthesised using the overarching framework of Bauman’s (2000) concept of liquid modernity. I argue that this concept offers a holistic explanation of the forces impacting negatively on teachers and their practices. The study concludes by exploring opportunities for teacher resistance to such negative impacts and recommending strategies which might be adopted in a bid to reinstate a model of good education in colleges of further education. The thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge in a number of ways. It is innovative in its explicit use of serendipity in the field of FE research. It contributes new knowledge about the recent intensification of instrumentalism in FE, showing that this is not simply a static phenomenon. It provides evidence of new intensifications of managerial control over the teacher and his/her practice, shifting from broad prescriptions to direct scripting. This is linked to an innovative application of social theories of time to FE teachers' initial education and workplace experience, revealing the intensification of time pressures and their impact. I also link these to the emergence of a consumerist sense of entitlement among students, and its impact on student-teacher relations and the nature of education, which have not previously been discussed in depth in the literature on FE. Finally, the thesis offers an original and holistic interpretation of all three themes using Bauman's (2000) concept of liquid modernity, and utilises this synthesis to offer strategies for transforming the nature of education in FE.

Effective patient care requires interprofessional collaboration and decisions based on clinical guidelines. The goal of this study was to determine how interprofessional collaboration influences the introduction of nursing Best Practice Guidelines. This study was a secondary qualitative analysis of data obtained from interviews and reports from two selected sites (long term care and community health care) that demonstrated interprofessional collaboration during the introduction of nursing Best Practice Guidelines. Findings emphasized the importance of communication, the role of an interprofessional team, and the understanding of the roles of all involved in the introduction of discipline specific clinical guidelines. In addition, unregulated staff members were involved in leadership roles and their work was important in providing effective interprofessional collaborative care during the introduction of guidelines. Therefore, it is essential to appropriately involve all members of the interprofessional team, regardless of discipline or educational level, during the introduction of clinical guidelines.

The first years in the teaching profession are challenging, unforgettable, and shape the professional development of novice teachers. This study aimed at exploring the participation experiences of novice teachers in English teaching communities of practice and examining if this participation influenced their reported approaches to teaching English. Wenger, McDermott and Snyder’s theory of communities of practice was used and data was collected from online close and open-ended surveys, interviews, and staff meeting observations. The findings show that, independently of the social background of students and the financial resources of different school contexts, community support has a direct impact on the quality of the practices of novice teachers in CoPs, their participation and integration in the communities, and their reported approaches to teaching English. Moreover, in supportive contexts, NTEs’ approach to teaching was communicative-focused because their communities allowed them to experiment with language and try new ideas. This study extends the work of Wenger, McDermott and Snyder on organisational and managerial communities by providing insights into the field of second language education. Furthermore, it extends the work of scholars with novice teachers in English language teaching by addressing the socioeconomic aspect of their experiences and by connecting community support directly to the approaches to teaching of novice teachers. This research offers insights to novice teachers on the practices carried out in English teaching communities in the Chilean context and offers experienced teachers the opportunity to reflect on how they treat and work with novice teachers.

This thesis is about studio habits. Specifically, it considers what happens in practice in the artist's studio and ways in which creative acts have been visualised and disseminated. The chapters of this thesis are organised around views of the studios of four twentieth century painters: Francis Bacon (1908-1994), Lee Krasner (1909-1984), Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) and Agnes Martin (1913-2005). Each of these artists' studio habits has been fundamental to their respective mythologies and the studios they occupied in their lifetimes have inflected discussion of their work. Drawing on critical theories of sexuality, gender and space, this thesis argues that the idea of the artist as a master continues to dominate as an explanation of art-making but that this characterisation is called into question by these four artist's specific practices in the studio. Close readings of the studio habits in these case studies, considered here as a situated negotiation between artist and studio, challenges the idea of mastery that studio-view exhibits and images tend to promote. Notions of mastery are inclined to construct practice as a paradigm between an active artist and passive studio materials and these, in turn, are apt to be read in terms of masculinity and femininity, respectively. Thus, the role of studio artist has tended to privilege a male lead. Therefore, analysing particular performances of masculinity by these artists provides a means to contest reading studio-view images as statements of mastery and the damaging and inequitable connotations this designation implies. Furthermore, this thesis argues that the recent trend to preserve studio material, or to otherwise encompass traces of practice in exhibits, films and photographs, may be correlated with theoretical shifts which took place in latter half of the twentieth century as a response to philosophical losses entailed in the critique of authority and objecthood and the rise of performance and conceptual art practices.

This thesis is concerned with examining what the influence of reading is, on those young men who choose to read. Looking at the responses of a number of young men, a tripartite approach details the reading history of each respondent, discusses participants’ responses to their general reading, and examines participants reading and responses to John Boyne’s novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The research aims were to develop both a theoretical and empirical understanding of how reading influences selfhood, whilst exploring ideas about reading and its value. Within education there is a perception that ‘Boys don’t read’. This study examines whether young men, beyond the influence of school, read; and if they do read, what value they place on it. Respondents, aged 21 to 26, comprised a small scale opportunist sample, all comprehensive-school educated. Key questions addressed focused on what the experiences and perceptions of reading among participants were, what value was placed on reading, and what was learnt from it, and how that reading influenced the selfhood of those young men who read? Theories relevant to reading and self construction are presented. The data were collected by the researcher from the participants via face to face interviews, and is analysed and interpreted under four sections; the reading accounts, their interpretation, themes therein and the sense of self of the participants emergent from their reading responses. In its conclusion, the study strongly suggests that the effect of reading has a potent influence on the selfhood of those who read, in term of intellectual, moral and emotional development.

Using e-learning has become a credited learning delivery method in developed countries. The importance of this research arises from a widespread acknowledgement that implementing and evaluating quality in the learning process, whether it is face-to-face or e-learning, is important to guarantee the success of developing learners‘ understanding and knowledge. The research uses an instrumental case study to investigate the efficacy of e-learning in the Egyptian higher education context and to produce a model of implementing and evaluating quality in e-learning systems. Several methods are adopted including interviews, questionnaire, focus groups, VLE feedback, and a pre-post achievement test to collect the data. The study describes the participants‘ attitudes toward e-learning, what they perceive as quality e-learning systems and as critical success factors for implementing such systems inside the Egyptian higher education, and how they view the effectiveness and quality of e-learning systems. In addition, the study indicates that the majority of the participants are satisfied with using e-learning systems in their learning as long as the critical success factors are applied. This research also suggests that e-learning has a positive impact on learners‘ achievement levels.

This ESRC funded study investigates how young children integrate a range of multimodal strategies, including talk, body movement, gesture and gaze, to make and express meaning at home and playgroup during their first year in preschool. Using longitudinal ethnogrpahic video case studies of four 3-year-old children, two boys and two girls, this study identifies patterns in the children's uses of different communicative strategies that relate to the dynamics of the social, institutional and immediate contexts in which they are situated, particularly with regard to whether at home or in playgroup; with familiar or less familiar other; with adults or peers; with peers of the same sex or age group and with different playgroup activities. The thesis draws on post-modern interpretations of knowledge and truths to reflect critically on the different pedagogic discourses concerning the role of talk in learning implied in the Foundation Stage Cuurriculum and to revisit Vygtskian and neo-Vygotskian theories of talk and learning in the light of children's multimodal sign making in different settings. Byinterpreting the children's gaze, facial gestures and body movements as part of both communicative and meaning-making processes, the study peices together unique and composite understandings of how children conform to and resist the communicative practices of the 'speech community' (Hymes 1996) within the playgroup studied. These findings in turn give new insights into the genesis of pupil identity and issues of power, control and agency. Futhermore, the study discusses the development of systems for handling and representing complex video data alongside more traditional data collection methods, including audio recordings, field and diary notes and interviews. The thesis concludes by discussing how the study findings contribute to growing understandings of the multimodal processes of young children's making and expresing of meaning and consequent implications for early years policy and practice.

When photographed at night these spaces float between necessity and abandonment; reminding us that all we have built could very easily be taken away leaving us with these quiet relics of a time that use to be, but no longer is. In a not-so-distant future these ramps stand as monumental representations of what is to come, soon to exist as monuments to the past. These will be the relics we leave behind, totems of an automotive culture.

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