Prefrontal cortex is frequently linked to dual-task gait performance; however, its precise role is unknown. The purpose of this thesis was to examine the role of prefrontal cortex in the control of dual-task gait. Using transcranial direct stimulation (tDCS) to alter prefrontal cortex activity, the influence of prefrontal cortex on dual-task gait performance and the corticospinal system was examined across four experiential studies using the guided activation framework of prefrontal cortex function (Miller and Cohen, 2001). The first study examined the role of cognitive task type and walking speed on stride time variability and trunk range of motion during dual-task walking. Results revealed the greatest dual-task cost on gait occurred when walking at a slow speed whilst simultaneously performing a serial subtraction task, compared to performance of a working memory task, providing a rationale for the use of this paradigm in later studies. The second study examined the effect of prefrontal tDCS on dual-task gait performance during both normal and slow walking. Anodal tDCS reduced the dualtask cost on both gait and cognitive task performance, and these effects were not dependent on walking speed. These results indicating that prefrontal tDCS may alter the allocation of cognitive control across tasks during dual-task gait, in accordance with established models of prefrontal cortex function. The third study examined the effect of prefrontal tDCS on corticospinal excitability and working memory performance. Results revealed that cathodal tDCS reduced corticospinal excitability. However, there was no effect of tDCS on working memory performance. Because prefrontal tDCS altered the activity in remote motor networks, these results indicated a possible mechanism by which prefrontal cortex exerts control over gait performance. In addition, because this study failed to replicate previous reports of working memory improvement following tDCS, these results also suggested a degree of inter-individual variability in response to tDCS. The final study examined the influence of walking modality and task difficulty on the effects of prefrontal tDCS on dual-task gait performance. tDCS altered the allocation of cognitive control during over-ground dual-task gait performance, and 3 these effects were mediated by task difficulty. In contrast to the second study, there was no effect of tDCS on treadmill dual-task gait. A secondary aim of the final study was to examine whether cognitive and walking task performance were coordinated. Results revealed that participants articulated answers during the initial swing phase of the gait cycle more frequently than other phases, indicating a degree of coordination between the performance of these tasks. Overall the finding of this thesis indicate that prefrontal cortex is involved in the allocation of cognitive control processes during dual-task walking, in accordance with the guided activation and flexible hub accounts of frontal cortex function (Miller and Cohen, 2001; Cole et al., 2013). These findings may have implications for the design and validation of strategies aimed at improving the cognitive control of gait.

The development of talent is a complex process mediated by a host of psychology, social, physical, and environmental variables. Unfortunately, the multiple processes involved in talent development (Gagne, 2004; Simonton, 2001) are frequently ignored by the systems and protocols employed in sport. Modem approaches to talent development are beginning to stress the initial possession, then subsequent development, of Psychological Characteristics of Developing Excellence (PCDEs; MacNamara, Button, & Collins, 2010) as the best way to realize latent potential. Accordingly, the aim of this thesis was to acknowledge this complexity by identifying the psycho-behavioural factors that co-act with physical potential and practice regimes to enhance the efficacy of TID models in sport. The main objectives of this thesis were: 1. To identify the challenges faced along the pathway to excellence and the PCDEs that facilitate the successful negotiation of the pathway to excellence across different performance domains. 2. To identify whether PCDEs are operationalised differentially depending, on an individual's age, stage, and context. 3. To confirm these differential roles through quasi-longitudinal examinations of longterm employment (in musicians) and across a key transition (in athletics, the transitions to university at 18 years of age). 4. To develop a questionnaire to bridge the theory-practice divide in TO processes and enable formative evaluation of PCDEs by practitioners. 5. To provide preliminary validation of the questionnaire by evaluating its discriminant function between good and poor development athletes. The development of talent is a complex process mediated by a host of psychology, social, physical, and environmental variables. Unfortunately, the multiple processes involved in talent development (Gagne, 2004; Simonton, 2001) are frequently ignored by the systems and protocols employed in sport. Modem approaches to talent development are beginning to stress the initial possession, then subsequent development, of Psychological Characteristics of Developing Excellence (PCDEs; MacNamara, Button, & Collins, 2010) as the best way to realize latent potential. Accordingly, the aim of this thesis was to acknowledge this complexity by identifying the psycho-behavioural factors that co-act with physical potential and practice regimes to enhance the efficacy of TID models in sport. The main objectives of this thesis were: 1. To identify the challenges faced along the pathway to excellence and the PCDEs that facilitate the successful negotiation of the pathway to excellence across different performance domains. 2. To identify whether PCDEs are operationalised differentially depending, on an individual's age, stage, and context. 3. To confirm these differential roles through quasi-longitudinal examinations of longterm employment (in musicians) and across a key transition (in athletics, the transitions to university at 18 years of age). 4. To develop a questionnaire to bridge the theory-practice divide in TO processes and enable formative evaluation of PCDEs by practitioners. 5. To provide preliminary validation of the questionnaire by evaluating its discriminant function between good and poor development athletes. The development of talent is a complex process mediated by a host of psychology, social, physical, and environmental variables. Unfortunately, the multiple processes involved in talent development (Gagne, 2004; Simonton, 2001) are frequently ignored by the systems and protocols employed in sport. Modem approaches to talent development are beginning to stress the initial possession, then subsequent development, of Psychological Characteristics of Developing Excellence (PCDEs; MacNamara, Button, & Collins, 2010) as the best way to realize latent potential. Accordingly, the aim of this thesis was to acknowledge this complexity by identifying the psycho-behavioural factors that co-act with physical potential and practice regimes to enhance the efficacy of TID models in sport. The main objectives of this thesis were: 1. To identify the challenges faced along the pathway to excellence and the PCDEs that facilitate the successful negotiation of the pathway to excellence across different performance domains. 2. To identify whether PCDEs are operationalised differentially depending, on an individual's age, stage, and context. 3. To confirm these differential roles through quasi-longitudinal examinations of longterm employment (in musicians) and across a key transition (in athletics, the transitions to university at 18 years of age). 4. To develop a questionnaire to bridge the theory-practice divide in TO processes and enable formative evaluation of PCDEs by practitioners. 5. To provide preliminary validation of the questionnaire by evaluating its discriminant function between good and poor development athletes. To address the first and second objective, Chapter 3 describes a retrospective, qualitative study of the careers of elite performers. The findings of this study suggest that the pathway to excellence is complicated by the specific challenges faced within different performance domains. However, a similar set of PCDEs, albeit differentially deployed, were reported by all participants as facilitators of development. Chapters 4 and 5 employed a quasi-longitudinal research design to address Objective 3 - the differential deployment of PCDEs in particular contexts. Using a sliding populations methodology, young classical musicians were tracked over a 2-year period to explore the PCDEs employed during the macro and micro stages they encountered as they progressed. A similar research design was employed in Chapter 4 to examine the use of PCDEs during a critical transitional period for track and field athletes. Although the results point to the generality of PCDEs at both elite and developmental levels, and across performance domains, there appeared to be an understandable and necessary shift in responsibility from significant others promoting and reinforcing PCDEs in the early years towards self-initiated and autonomous behaviours in the later years; in essence, a shift in the source of regulation (Cleary & Zimmerman, 2001). The studies in Chapters 3, 4, and 5 generated a list of PCDEs that facilitated development, along with an understanding of how PCDEs were deployed differentially along the pathway to excellence. These findings were used to develop the Psychological Characteristics of Developing Excellence Questionnaire (PCDEQ); a questionnaire designed to assess the possession and strategic deployment of the PCDEs. Chapter 6 reported the systematic generation of questionnaire items and an exploratory factor analysis that resulted in a 59- item, 6 factor stnicture PCDEQ. The PCDEQ displayed good psychometric properties and should provide coaches with a theoretically and empirically supported tool to assess, monitor, and develop these key developmental skills. To address the final objective, Chapter 7 presents a discriminant function analysis which revealed that the PCDEQ had very good discriminant function and was able to classify between 67 per cent and 75 per cent of athletes correctly on the basis of their self-reported behaviour in sport. In conclusion, the studies reported in this thesis provide a significant contribution to current knowledge by shifting the fopus away from TID methods based on prediction and correlation towards a consideration of progress and behaviour during development. Future recommendations include the need for further validation of the PCDEQ as well as longitudinal and action-based research assessing the role of PCDEs in talent development.

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This study investigated teachers' professional learning and pedagogy as they grappled with the challenges and implications of using new information and communications technologies (ICT) in their classrooms. It contributes to knowledge about the way teachers learn and change, their pedagogical interventions, the impact of different professional learning strategies, and identification of issues connected with the transition from personal learning to collegial and organizational learning. It also informs educational practice in terms of four major uses of ICT in classrooms: i)Digital information resources and new literacy demands; ii)Collaborative online projects; iii)Animation and multiliteracies development; iv)ICT and early numeracy development.

This research project in performance studies is anchored around the writing, devising and performing of a series of three solo performance works entitled Rapture, Rapture II, and Rapture III. Rapture III was examined in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. This written document, including annotated scripts for each of the performances, and one three hour video tape, is submitted in further partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree. The written document, examined performance of Rapture III, and video documentation constitute the 'thesis' submitted in total fulfilment of those requirements. This thesis draws on tropes of 'tyrannies and lies', 'defying gravity', 'presence and absence', 'subjectivity', 'knowledge and truth', and 'discourse' itself. These tropes are heuristically derived from the author's professional performance training experience ' with Monika Pagneux, Philippe Gaulier, Anzu Furukawa, Theatre de Complicite and Pantheatre ' and from wide readings 'around' performance making. The thesis engages with James Hillman's writings in imaginal psychology, the theories of Jean Baudrillard, Deleuze-Guattari, Roland Barthes, Adam Phillips, Helne Cixous, and Italo Calvino. The 'movement' of the thesis ' between the inception of ideas, through writing of scripts and devising and performing the solo works, to writing as a continuation of performance, and exegeses of the solos and their processes -is conceived as 'dialogical'. Each of the elements is seen to be in critical 'conversation' with the others, and not (necessarily) prescriptive or descriptive of them. The performative 'action' of the thesis is framed as a series of 'excursions' and is related within the written document to 'dis-coursing'. Both in the writing and performance making (including video), the thesis interrogates 'subjectivity' and processes of subjectification by means of performance. It contends that subjectivity is the 'stuff' of performance, and vice versa. Fictional, artificial, and imaginal, the language of performance re-doubles itself as the 'real' in the postulate that what is 'real', always and already - in philosophy, psychoanalysis, and discourses of 'identity' and the 'self' - is performance itself. More than 'performative', these are some of the sites, the 'stuff', the very phenomena of performance: the 'thing' of performance, what it is.

Obscenities offstage is conceived and designed as a study in performance. It is alert to the dangers inherent in positing erotic fields, especially so-called 'gay saunas', as objects of study, dangers that have dogged the scientific research, both qualitative and quantitative, undertaken in this field since the 1960s. The dangers arise precisely because the positing of the sauna as a coherent unitary object to be studied by the researcher as a coherent unitary subject naturalises a discrete relation that is in effect utterly bogus. The project reconfigures the epistemic stage of sauna research. It recognises that the scene of the gay sauna resists anything more than incomplete, inconclusive or reductive representation, not through some teleological or mystificatory agency, but simply because it is technically, that is, materially and socially, designed to do so. With its focus on producing effects of ambiguity, anonymity, darkness, disorientation, excitation, hermeticism, muteness, obscurity, seclusion and synaesthesia, on producing these effects as the commodities on which its commercial viability effectively depends, the gay sauna can be recognised as a zone in which the knowledge sought by the physical and human sciences is necessarily and always located just out of reach, offstage. Performance as an episteme [sic] offers methodological opportunities here that have hitherto been unexplored. Performance produces effects of knowledge not in spite of but through the production, articulation, shimmer and play of contingent reality effects, and importantly for this project through an ontological intervention that deconstructs the 'naturalised' opposition of absence and presence. It is with the commonplace performative force known as 'offstage'—in Latin, obscaenus—that the current project strives to know the gay sauna, and yet let it remain 'obscene'.

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