This work consists in a theoretical overview of positioning theory, the construction of a methodology for interaction analysis, and its application to classroom interaction. The latter part is based on transcripts from audio-video recordings of 15 hours of lessons in mathematics and physics or science in England and in France, with children aged between 11 and 12. These transcripts were divided up into episodes, units displaying coherence in theme and purpose; and each episode was coded according to the types of behaviour the teacher displayed in them. The same types of behaviour were found in plenary interaction as those found by previous research into group work. Analysis carried out to highlight co-occurring types of behaviour (seen as rights and duties) only yielded two co-occurring rights – asking a scientific question and validating a statement, consistently with the previously noted prevalence of IRE/IRF sequences. A frequency analysis of the levels of occurrence of individual types of behaviour highlighted the scarcity of unsupported teacher statements. Further analysis of the episodes featuring teacher statements showed that the teacher may only introduce new elements on the basis of their own authority in highly specific circumstances: (a) after a student’s mistake, in which case the teacher’s statement is limited to explaining why the aforementioned mistake is one; (b) after a student’s question or (c) after a student’s unsolicited statement. In the last two cases, the teacher’s statement may go beyond the remit of the question or statement. Content introduced in such a way appears to have a longer-lasting legitimacy than that introduced with the help of official content. Some implications of these results are discussed: the need to take into account student agency in further research; and it is suggested that a lecturing style of teaching might be beneficial for learning.

This research examined outlooks on early development and learning of young children with cerebral palsy. Using a research framework informed by Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological model of child development, which integrates scrutiny of ‘person’, ‘process’, ‘context’ and ‘time,’ in combination with an exploratory case-study design, the study focused on the perceptions of a range of stakeholders in a local authority in the West Midlands of England as well as the observed experiences of children themselves. Research questions required examination of stakeholders’ perspectives of the developmental and learning identities of these children, the contextual circumstances for their early educational support, the processes by which their progression was or should be pursued, and future aspirations held for them. The final research question related the revealed outlooks to children’s own observed educational experiences. The wide-ranging review of literature highlighted differences in academic perspectives on child development and disability, also a complex national ‘patchwork’ of early intervention for disabled children in general and for those with cerebral palsy in particular. The empirical study was pursued through questionnaire surveys of parents and practitioners, also interviews with support-service managers and with parents and practitioners of six target children who were subsequently observed in their early educational settings. Integration of quantitative and qualitative data enabled all research questions to be answered comprehensively and in depth. Findings showed that stakeholders’ outlooks on the identity of children with cerebral palsy, evident in discourse and observed practice, were medically, socially or pedagogically oriented. Provision for these children was found to be extensive, but diverse in nature, not simply in terms of the services used, but also in relation to practitioners’ qualifications, experiences, levels of confidence and professional roles. A range of pedagogical processes was evident in the various contexts – differences related to use of space and equipment, adult support, opportunities for children’s socialization and other features. In terms of future aspirations, largely positive views were held, together with concern about the child’s acceptance in peer contexts, particular at times of transition. Drawing from findings, the study argues for a more distinctive pedagogical identity for children with cerebral palsy, echoing the Vygotskian (1993) perspective of disabled children’s development as a socio-culturally influenced, exceptional phenomenon. Their development and early education should be perceived and pursued as an all-encompassing entity, with focus on motivation, interest and independence and reflecting strengthened notions of upbringing and pedagogy. Practical implications include renewed academic and professional discourse, revitalized training for professionals and greater practical involvement of parents in early educational provision.

The thesis explores the experiences and beliefs of pupils and teachers for languages at the primary to secondary school transition in England. The academic aspects of transition (for languages and more broadly) are examined in the literature review and emerge as areas of concern and inadequacy with issues relating to progression, continuity, appropriateness of pedagogy and cross-phase communication and liaison. This exploratory case study adopts an interpretivist paradigm to investigate pertinent aspects of language learning including the perceived aims of Primary Languages; current provision, liaison and assessment activity; and pupils’ self-efficacy and enjoyment of languages as they transfer from primary to secondary school. The study focuses on pupils’ beliefs and experiences of language learning in four cases, each comprising one secondary school and two feeder primary schools. Pupil and teacher questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were administered at three points during this transition: the end of pupils’ final year in primary school, and the beginning and end of their first year at secondary school. Whilst pupils’ transition for languages emerged as patchy, inconsistent, and inadequate in three of the four cases, pupils in one case had a contrasting experience and exhibited higher levels of enjoyment and self-efficacy for languages than in the other cases. The work contributes knowledge about pupils’ beliefs of language learning at a pivotal period in their language education. The case studies and cross-case analysis offer a novel exploration of the important issues in transition for languages and relationships between these issues. In the conclusion, the thesis gives critical consideration to how the findings might inform current and future practices and debates relating to transition for languages and successful language learning in primary schools at the advent of compulsory language learning for all pupils in state-maintained schools in England in Key Stage 2 (aged 7-11 years).

In Pakistan, educational institutions function in parallel under three separate systems: public, private and madrassas. The incidents of 9/11 brought madrassas into the limelight and they emerged as the most controversial educational institutions of Pakistan. International scholarship is polarized on the madrassa issue and presents two opposing pictures about these institutes. For some, madrassas are the cause of radical ideology and militancy, while for others they are a source of free education for the underprivileged. This research compares the attitudes of students attending madrassas with those of students attending other types of school. A comparison of the world view of students coming from different schooling systems was made concerning socio-political and educational issues including an examination of attitudes towards jihad and Islamic militancy. It is argued that students educated under different systems have divergent ideologies about the primary purpose of education, sectarian diversity, the status of women and non-Muslims in Pakistan and, most importantly, Islamic militancy. To determine the worldview of students about the aforesaid issues, both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used. The data were collected from the students of private and public schools and madrassas in South Punjab (N=500). It is argued that madrassas are stratified with some being more liberal than others. The questionnaire and interview tool used in the study attempted to find out the students‘ responses on armed Jihad, sectarian divide, the status of women, the position of non-Muslims in Pakistan and about the purpose of education. The analysis illustrated the ways in which Pakistani society is polarized along socio-economic lines and how different types of schooling are associated with distinct world views. The results indicate that the students from madrassas are somewhat more aggressive and intolerant towards the religious minorities and women than the students of English medium and Urdu medium public schools. They are also less tolerant towards people of other sects and are more susceptible to sectarian prejudices than their counterparts in the English medium and Urdu medium schools. In the same vein, the students from madrassas are more supportive of militancy and jihadist activities than their counterparts. In this regard, the students from Shia and Brailvi madrassas are comparatively less inclined towards the Jihadi notion than that of Ahle Hadith, Deaoband and Jamaat-e-Islami madrassas. While most previous studies of madrassas have presented them as homogeneous institutions, this study highlights the extent to which they are internally stratified and shows that the students studying in these schools have contradictory viewpoints with respect to certain socio-political and religious issues.

This thesis investigates the extent to which Thai national culture can be used to explain students' behaviour. In addition to exploring the cultural and social aspects of the classroom community, it also takes into account the importance of understanding the way students perceive their reality and as a consequence ethnographic research techniques are utilised. The research was carried out at a provincial university in Thailand, with a focal group of forty English major students. Two ethnographic research methods, namely classroom observation and interviews, were used in the research. While the classroom observations were carried out to describe the characteristics of the classroom and identify salient patterns of students' behaviours in the classroom, the interviews were conducted with the intention of allowing students to reflect on their own patterns of behaviours. The classroom observation not only showed the physical characteristics of the classroom, but also identified the teacher-student and student-student patterns of behaviour. These social aspects of the classroom revealed that while some student behaviour coincided with Thai national cultural characteristics, other patterns of behaviour deviated from commonly held beliefs about Thai students' behaviour. Pair and group interviews were then conducted to give students a chance to reflect on their interactions and their disruptive behaviour in class. While students' interviews offered insights into several personal issues, such as students' reasons to study English at the University, their transitions from high-schools to university and their self-perception, their accounts really highlighted the importance of the social interactions and relationships on their behaviour in the classroom. Social interaction, in the form of relationships with teachers, peer pressure, or peer reaction had, from the perspective of the students, significant explanatory force; these were strategically viewed and evaluated by students as the factors guiding their behaviour. Although this thesis aims to explore the influence of Thai culture on students' behaviour, it became clear during the research that unless students were made conscious of cultural influences, they were mostly unaware of the possibility that Thai culture might affect their behaviour. Because this thesis relies on the emic view of the students, the lack of students' verbal support for the influence of Thai culture on their behaviour makes the answer to the research question inconclusive. This leads to a discussion of the level of analysis students used when asked to interpret their behaviour and whether students viewed their behaviour at the social or cultural level. The study both highlights the significance of social interaction and context, and also distinguishes between a large culture and small culture paradigm. While the large culture approach views culture as essentially a feature of ethnic, national, and international groups, the small culture approach views culture as part of any social grouping. By seeing the classroom as a small culture and allowing students to explain their own behaviour, the research gains deeper insights into the students' world and their construction of their realities, the significance of which is explained and developed.

In the context of an increasing awareness of improving the standards of English in Malaysia, this study explores Year 1 literacy practices in English and offers important insights into the three major innovations introduced in 2002: the English Hour, Big Books and CD-ROMs. The findings are examined in the context of the Ministry's desire to promote active engagement and high quality interaction. Two studies were conducted using a naturalistic approach. In 2003,50 questionnaires were distributed to primary school teachers: 5 classes and 9 teachers in 2 primary and 3 pre-schools were observed teaching English, Bahasa Malaysia and Arabic/Jawi. These teachers were also interviewed. In 2004,2 trainers and 10 teachers were interviewed, 48 lessons of English, Mathematics and Science in English by the 10 teachers were observed, but the study focuses on the literacy practices in 26 lessons by 4 English teachers in four schools. Interviews and role plays with 28 children from these four classes in 7 groups of 4 inform the accounts and discussion of reading and writing events and practices. The 2004 study suggests that the Ministry of Education's directives to English classes to integrate the use of the English Hour, Big Books and CD-ROMs have only been partially implemented in the classroom. The Ministry's hopes to provide more active engagement and to increase students' interests and motivation through the Big Books and the CD-ROMs were achieved, but the expectations of high quality interaction were not realised. Methods need to be developed to accommodate teachers' beliefs about the value of drilling, repetition and choral reading with the Ministry's desire to extend these interaction patterns and practices. The present study contributes to existing research on the implementation of the English Hour, Big Books and CD-ROMs in Year 1 English classrooms, specifically from the perspective of Year 1 English classes in non-English speaking contexts. It also provides greater understanding of issues to be addressed in future teacher education developments.

This study examines the motivations, beliefs and attitudes of beginning modern foreign languages teachers towards foreign language teaching and learning during their initial teacher education and the changes in attitudes towards and beliefs about their subject and its methodology. In so doing, the study uncovers the students' initial and developing methodological landscapes. The scope of the study is unusual in its breadth of response'a! nd in its multi-method approach incorporating qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis, identifying interconnections in the data. A total of 235 student teachers' responses contribute to the research: the pre-course beliefs of eight cohorts of beginning teachers are analysed to establish a basis for exploring any change. The research subsequently adopts a longitudinal approach, where data' is obtained through a series of ten snapshot questionnaires administered to three separate cohorts of student teachers. This data is supplemented by smaller samples from two cohorts in a different initial teacher education institution. It is further triangulated through twelve group discussions on video from two cohorts. Analysis is of whole and aggregated cohorts and also by gender and native speaker. Views indicated by the beginning teachers' stated perceptions of their development incorporate elements from a variety of learning-to-teach theories. Some more generic themes which emerge as important in student teachers' thinking throughout the year include the desire for fantasy solutions and the process of future-wishing, both of which serve as attempts to avoid a true (and difficult) developmental process. Stability of fundamental beliefs is evident, but substantial change occurs in perceptions of items contributing to the methodological landscape, particularly in the areas of target language and grammar.

This thesis addresses the concept of `children's right to participation'. In an effort of conceptualisation, it starts by providing a definition of four views through which this right might be considered: inalienable; statutory; granted; exercised. Several levels at which these views may operate are also examined. These include macro-, meso- and micro-levels. Not withstanding the importance of macro- and meso-levels, a case is made for the appropriateness of microlevels as loci for both the research and the exercise of participation rights. This is a view stemming from the psycho-educational perspective in which this thesis is inscribed. The importance of going beyond Conventions and concentrating research efforts in that the exercise of participation becomes a reality for children in their everyday lives is highlighted. It was deemed that undertaking a case study in a primary school would be helpful in that effort. Two research questions were examined through such design: Question 1: How can the `exercised right to participation' in the primary school be defined? Question 2: What are the factors that influence such participation? In order to explore the first question, a set of indicators regarding granted and exercised participation was conceived, and it was applied in Santa Maria primary school (Portugal). This encompassed the school as a whole, the different classrooms and individual children. The results led to the conclusion that Santa Maria school, as a whole, did not appear to constitute a participation-oriented ethos. However, some elements indicated the existence of important discrepancies among the different classrooms, namely in what concerned the participation experiences of the children that attended them. With regards to the second research question, several hypotheses were defined as to the factors that might influence the exercise of participation. These included: the children's age, the children's personal characteristics as well as the teachers' attitudes. The latter seemed to prevail as a determining factor, which entails considerable implications for future research undertakings as well as potential pragmatic interventions.

This study investigated questioning practice in Malaysian secondary school classrooms to determine teachers' rationale for adopting certain questioning techniques, and to use the findings to inform teacher education. Although questioning is a central aspect of any classroom interaction, it is still an under-researched area in the Malaysian classroom context. This study employs an in-depth naturalistic approach and focuses on every day classroom events pertaining to questioning. The study aimed to investigate teachers' knowledge and beliefs that underpin their techniques of posing and sourcing questions; the levels and types of questions they pose for English and EST (science taught in English); and students' perception of their teachers' questions. Seven teachers of English and two intact classes of Form 5 science students from a secondary school in Malaysia participated in the study. Five research instruments (observation, individual interviews, extended interviews, focus group interviews and document review) were used for triangulation of data of the study during the three-month fieldwork. The findings indicate that the majority of questions these teachers posed in English and EST lessons were in the low-level, factual category; questions based on and from sources/materials were not fully utilized; teachers had the tendency to dominate classroom interaction in their questioning; and teachers' beliefs about their students' needs and ability more than their knowledge inform their questioning practice. These teachers rationalised the apparent mismatch between what is stipulated by the national curriculum and how they actually teach in terms of posing questions as their way of accommodating their students' ability and needs and preparing their students for their SPM (Malaysian Certificate of Education) examination. Through these findings the researcher hopes to create awareness among education authorities, practicing teachers and student teachers of the state of current classroom practice pertaining to questioning and suggest some ways in which this situation can be improved.

Learners approach learning tasks with varying degrees of confidence and their confidence may influence the prospects of progress and success. The main purpose of the investigations reported in this thesis was to explore confidence in relation to learning, in the context of education in Saudi Arabia, focussing mainly on early university experiences. Because of access to students in Saudi Arabia, most of the sample of over 1400 students were female. Confidence is an elusive concept but it can affect many areas of life. This study seeks to explore academic confidence, to see how it relates to other aspects of confidence and to see whether any aspects of learning or the nature of learning situations relates particularly to the enhancement of confidence with learners. The study starts by exploring what is meant by confidence, specifically in an educational setting, and then moves on to consider how experiences held in memory relate to the formation and development of confidence. In thinking of confidence, it is suggested that confidence can be seen, at least in part, as an attitude towards oneself. It is how a person sees himself in the context of a task or opportunity. This study starts by an attempt to explore several aspects of confidence to see to what extent confidence is a generic characteristic and how academic confidence might relate to that. Academic confidence might be related to specific cognitive characteristics or to views of learning or to specific kinds of learning situations. Questionnaires and interviews were the approach adopted in this study. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken to establish some kind of measure of the validity of the questionnaires. Working memory capacity was measured using the digits span backwards test while examination and test data were also obtained. In every case, large samples were used in the data collection. The overall aim was to obtain a picture of the nature of confidence and to see how this was related to other attributes (which were also measured by survey) and to performance (as measured by formal examinations). The key observation is that academic performance tends only to be correlated with academic confidence. Thus, confidence is probably not a general attribute. Interviews tend to confirm the outcomes from the survey. In that working memory is a well established rate determining factor in much learning, it might be thought that that working memory capacity might be a factor in enhancing confidence but, in the context of the sample of female students used in this study, this was not found to be so. Students were asked to look at themselves in the learning process, to indicate their preferred styles of learning and assessment but, in general, few aspects seem to show any strong relationship with the development of academic confidence. However, those who expressed specific confidence in their abilities related to studying tended to be those who were, in fact, better performers as measured by examinations. Thus, students seem to be appropriately self-aware. Also, the importance of tests and examinations was seen and it did appear that results from these were a major feature of confidence growth. Attitudes to learning (following the Perry model, 1999) also tend not to correlate significantly with academic performance although there is a hint that assessment might be important. Aspects of learning style, purposes of learning, evaluation in examinations, group-working skills and academic self-perception showed few clear patterns in relation to confidence. The strong. overall impression is that preferred curriculum approaches are not very important in developing confidence although the influence of the subject teacher may be very important. Also it seems to be an innate human characteristic to seek for meaning. Memorisation is not, perhaps, the natural way forward. All of this tends to give a kind of picture of characteristics that might describe some confident students rather than give a set of criteria for developing a confident person. Although not the main purpose of the study, the patterns of results from the many questionnaires revealed major deficiencies in the Saudi education system as seen by the learners and offers an agenda for change for the future. There seemed to be an expressed interest in more opportunities for thinking (rather than memorising), for questioning, creativity and working in groups. From all of this, it might be deduced that the key feature underpinning confidence lies in simple success (reflected in speed of learning, understanding, and examination success). Thus, confidence makes it possible for students to enjoy the challenges of further learning, to take risks and to take risks in a social learning situation like group work. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is the lack of features which correlate with measures of academic confidence. Any attempt to find some kind of insight into a way of teaching and learning which generates increased confidence is not easy from the data. There are two possible reasons for this. Perhaps, different students prefer different ways and this hides any significant correlations overall. Perhaps, also, the students are so accustomed to a system which offers information in quantity and provides rewards only to those who can recall it accurately that this hides other possibilities for these students. The one thing that stands out is that success seems to lead to confidence. These students are among those who have been more successful at school in terms of examinations. The fundamental question is how to offer success to those who are not so good at formal examinations based on recall. If success is so dependent on this and confidence is not related much to other aspects, then there is a real danger that the examination system will generate a population where many are unsuccessful. The system might be leading to a destruction of confidence. It does not seem to be the style of examination but the fact of success in examinations which is an important determinant of confidence. The samples considered were drawn from those who had been successful at school. Further studies might focus on those, who were not so successful.