Construction work and buildings have a major impact on the environment through site modification and the majority contribution to energy use worldwide. Therefore if changes are made to construction processes and the design of buildings, the potential for slowing down environmental degradation could be significant. There is a significant body of academics that believes the education of undergraduate construction students who will be the construction professionals of the future, is the key to making the changes required to industry practices to improve environmental performance. This thesis identifies why initiatives aimed at improving undergraduate environmental knowledge and then attitudes have not been supported more fully by the HE sector, specifically within the construction management discipline. It also explores the use of educational frameworks developed by the relevant professional body in supporting the development of environmental knowledge in graduates. The pedagogical research undertaken involved an extensive literature review and the gathering of data from UK universities and the UK construction industry. Additionally data was gathered from Australian universities in an attempt to identify aspects of good practice in curriculum design to promote literacy in sustainability. The analysis of data led to the development of a model for curriculum design that can be used in conjunction with the professional body framework to promote literacy in sustainability. The validity of the model was evaluated using a simulation of the model in a small scale project and testing changes in student knowledge, attitudes and behaviour before and after undertaking the project. A mixed model methodology was utilised in each phase that allowed for the use of a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches to data collection and analysis at each stage of the work.

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of children with Specific Language Impairment who had integrated from a Language Unit to mainstream school. The aim of the study was to explore the development of the children in the areas of language, academic ability, and psychosocial performance both during and after that period. Data was collected from 40 children in Phase 1 of the study by means of a structured interview schedule (Stone 1991). In Phase 2, the prospective second phase, 7 children were asked to complete the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance (PSPCSA) (Harter and Pike 1984). In both phases, parents of the children took part in unstructured interviews using a chronological or life history approach advocated by May (1993). Teachers in Phase 1 completed the Teacher Rating Scale (Urwin 1988) and in Phase 2, both language unit and mainstream schoolteachers completed the appropriate section of the PSPCSA. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies was used to access the range of experiences of the children and the views of their parents and teachers. Analysis of the data revealed a lack of planning and preparation on the part of mainstream schools for the children during the short integration process. There was minimal collaboration between language units and mainstream teaching staff. The children's statement of Special Educational Need terminated for the majority after 3 months in mainstream school. No further monitoring of the children's verbal abilities took place after that, although a third of the children had continuing speech and language problems. Despite the general failure of the mainstream system to support these children, those who needed help in academic areas did receive it on an ad hoc basis. Two thirds of the children had help with academic subjects, although teachers rated these children as average. In the second phase, teachers showed more concern over the academic and social abilities of the children. The children saw themselves as no different from their mainstream peers. This finding reflects the sometimes overly optimistic views of children in the younger age groups, although there is some evidence from the study that children can be aware of their verbal limitations much earlier than what is generally held to be the age of self awareness at approximately 8 years. Children with SLI in a mainstream setting continue to have difficulties for several years after integration. Parents in this study frequently expressed the view that they would have liked the children to remain in the language units because of the better quality of education they provided. The value of the study lies in its in depth exploration of parent and child views and experiences of SLI within the education system using a combination of research approaches. Increasing the involvement of parents and children in the educational decision-making process is widely advocated. Understanding child and parent perspectives in this area is therefore of considerable importance.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis considers the relevance of Recognition Theory to school education and contributes to the development of a body of empirical research in this field. Recognition has been defined as an essential component of a just society and a central concern of this study is the promotion of a humane form of schooling which embodies the principles and practices of a just and democratic society. The empirical data were gathered in a focus group and interviews with three new teachers working in a school in special measures. Their experiences and their stories of recognition and misrecognition are analysed using Honneth's Recognition Theory as a framework. The methodology of interpretative phenomenological analysis allows the reader to gain an understanding of what the experience of being a new teacher is like for the three teachers. The combination of Recognition Theory and interpretative phenomenological analysis offers the opportunity for a critical reflection on those experiences. My findings suggest that Honneth's Recognition Theory, informed by a Deweyan understanding of education and its relationship to democracy, and broadened to incorporate an ethic of care, as well as an understanding of Klafki's criticalconstructive pedagogy, has the potential to inform a normative understanding of school as a community in which the values of a just, caring and democratic society can be put into practice. This includes recognising teachers and students as valued members of a community in which their voices are heard and respected. In addition, this thesis draws attention to the need for new teachers to gain a critical understanding of the means and ends of education.

The thesis seeks to examine the apparent tensions between fundamental ideas found in the literature of fifteenth century English legal theory and practice. The theorists studied are Fortescue and Pecock (whose ideas are set against those of their English and continental predecessors and contemporaries) and the practical materials examined are the Year Books and the Statutes. The work attempts to advance the view that legal thought in fifteenth-century England, both theoretical and practical, is characterised by two essentially opposing concepts of law. According to one outlook, described as the heteronomist thesis, in legal theory human law relies for its authority upon <i>natural law</i> and <i>justice</i>: it is not the human will which is used to shape law, it is these entities, divine in origin, which operate as external influences in the shaping of law. In the Year Books and in legislation the heteronomist thesis expresses itself as a mode or practice of disposing of cases and problems. Persistently during the period, legislators, judges and counsel rely upon <i>conscience</i> and <i>divine law</i>, and to a lesser extent <i>natural law</i> (distinctly moral ideas), and <i>reason</i> and <i>mischief</i> (more mundane ideas of good sense and wrong), to shape and legitimise their respective decisions. According to the other outlook, the autonomist thesis, it is simply the human will that shapes law, rather than abstractions like morality. In legal practice, and to a lesser extent in legal theory, popular <i>consent</i> and <i>usage</i> are conceived to supply the authority which immediately underlies law: it is from these that law and legal decisions originate. This prepares the way for the beginnings of a positivist view of law, by stressing the autonomy of law, its independence from the influences of abstract right and wrong. Legal theory supposes that humanly-created rules are still laws even when they depart from the requirements of abstract right and wrong. In the practical sphere, legislative enactments which are against <i>conscience</i> or which produce <i>mischief</i> are treated as entities which have to be expressly repealed, they are not automatically void. Similarly, judges commonly reject arguments based explicitly upon the claims of <i>reason</i> or <i>conscience</i>: the courts are shy of departing from the demands of law, from the <i>rigor iuris</i>; to depart from established practice would result in <i>inconvenience</i>, inconsistency, and this the courts would exclude even if it meant that a particular individual suffered a <i>mischief</i>.

The extent to which universities should prepare graduates for the workplace has been a particular focus of policy impacting across higher education over the last 20 years as a result of a number of factors: changes to ways in which higher education is funded in the UK and the subsequent cultural shift towards students being perceived as consumers of degree courses; ease of access to the results of metrics by which universities can be compared; the pace of technological change in the workplace and the impact that this has had on the requirements of employers when recruiting graduates. Various reports have focused on attempting to distil the key qualities and skills that employers are looking for when recruiting graduates. How such skills related to employability can or should be enhanced as part of a degree experience are the source of debate at a policy level and amongst academic staff. In the midst of this perceived cultural shift in higher education it is important to explore the perspectives of key stakeholder groups: individuals working at policy level, academic staff, students and employers. This study explores these issues in a particular setting, BSc Music Technology-oriented courses. Such highly vocational degrees offer an opportunity to investigate perceptions in the context of courses that typically highlight the development of skills and attributes carefully aligned to the requirements of employers. Following a qualitative methodology, this research investigates the perspectives of stakeholders through semi-structured interviews, focus groups and a survey. One of the key findings of this study is that there is a disconnect between espoused policy which emphasises ever greater integration between industry and higher education and the reality as experienced by academics, students and employers. The findings highlight the need for improved channels of communication and in particular, the value of informal interactions.

Revision is an important process for learning in higher education. At present, many universities provide online course materials including guidelines to support ubiquitous revision. Most of the traditional course websites, however, simply provide online materials for students to download. The main aim of this thesis is, therefore, to enhance these materials on a course website to facilitate student self-revision. We firstly present a brief review of some aspects of exam revision. Subsequently, we conduct a questionnaire survey to identify patterns of students' revision, difficulties during revision, and potential approaches to address those difficulties. From the survey, many students have concerns about the amount of learning materials to be reviewed in a short period of time. We thus designed a novel software framework (“SRECMATs") that aims to reduce students' workload by enabling them to have direct access to learning materials, gaining quick overviews and related material recommendations. In the second part of the thesis, we develop, launch, and evaluate the first prototype of the SRECMATs software framework. The prototype system was introduced to students on a level 1 Data Structures and Algorithms module in the summer term of 2014/2015. Many of them were willing to use the system and engaged with it constantly during their revision. The usability evaluation of each feature is positive, and students reported that all provided features are simple to use and some are effective for them. The first prototype used TF-IDF as a term weighting scheme to calculate cosine similarity between learning materials. To improve retrieval accuracy, we have proposed a new technique to adjust the weight of the TF-IDF scheme with term important (TI) and term location (TL) components. The results illustrated that using the TI component with the TF-IDF scheme yields the best result for all datasets while the TL technique can improve accuracy on some datasets. Finally, our results contribute to an understanding of students' revision difficulties and how to improve the existing online course materials to maximise the benefits for students.

This thesis aimed to identify how effectively distributed leadership can contribute to school improvement as related to and experienced by middle managers (heads of department) at x school. The research drew upon both the theoretical and empirical literature pertaining to distributed leadership in order to provide the conceptual framework for the case study approach. A mixed methods approach was employed with data collected a focus group of five middle managers, 13 semi-structured interviews and 15 questionnaires. The findings demonstrated that school improvement was seen as clearly taking place at x school through the leadership practised by middle managers. This in turn aided the school in building the internal capacity for future development. However, the extent to which the middle managers exhibited distributed leadership was questionable and varied from one department to another. The school was seen as showing discrepancies between distributed leadership in theory and distributed leadership in practice and thus not benefiting from the advantages that distributed leadership theory suggests. There was also a lack of understanding surrounding the concept of distributed leadership amongst the middle managers. Recommendations are made which would enable distributed leadership to be developed at x school.

The study explores the issues of participation, and to an extent, learning in an open online community of independent game developers, GameSalad.com. GameSalad is a firm-hosted online support forum for a desktop application of the same name. It is geared to provide members and users with a platform for sharing of information pertaining to their game development, and a place to seek and provide help. It is a large community with over 114,000 registered members (as of March 2015), with an average of 106,000 monthly active unique users, and a high degree of activity such as the posting of tutorials and tips, sharing game development progress, and announcing the launch of a new game. However, the majority of the interactions on the forum are concerned with seeking and providing help. This study focuses on issues around community, participation, and learning within online networks and is underpinned by a concern for participatory and social experiential perspectives on learning. In order to explore participation, an exploratory mixed-method approach was used. This involved a three-phase data collection procedure. First, observation of interaction in the community was carried out (noting the pattern of threads opened, weekly leader boards, resources, and general practices) coupled with document analysis to identify threads that reflected high participation or were deemed beneficial by interviewees. Second, online survey of 35 items including five demographic items, twenty forced 2-point semantic differential scale items, and ten 5-point Likert scale items was carried out, to measure members’ perceptions of the community and identity (n = 110 responses). Third, semi-structured sequential interviews were carried out with 21 volunteer interviewees online, using the forum’s own private messaging system over a period from August 2014 to March 2015. Although originally conceived as an overarching study of online participation, the study became focused on the more active members of the community, and on the question as to why and how some members of online communities appear to take on helping roles. The findings from both survey and interviews showed a strong sense of community among active members, and that active members saw their identity in the online community as an extension of their off-line self. Although open to all members, participants who volunteered to be interviewed tended to be among the more active members and many had adopted ‘caretaker’ or helper role in the community. The interviews showed that giving help was motivated by a mix of extrinsic and intrinsic elements, in particular, helpers were aware of the need to sustain the community and in many cases felt an obligation to offer help as a return or ‘pay it forward’ for the help they had received in the past. They were motivated by community mindedness, empathy, self-confidence and sense of identity. The giving of help depends on ‘mood’, this mood is generated not only when helpers feel they have the available time and relevant expertise in order to help, but also when those asking for help have asked in an appropriate manner and provided sufficient contextualisation. In part, learning in the community is seen as a social exchange, and members put a value on the discussions they saw useful. However, this study reveals some of the problems experienced by the company behind the community, tensions among some members of the community, as well as issues pertaining to shared knowledge and artefacts. This study improves our understanding of community of practice, the provision of help, the motivation for helping, as well as the dynamics of participation in an open online community. It gives insight into the sustainability of online community by showing the motivation, strategies for, and consequences of helping. It also gives insight into how informal learning is embedded in social interactions and perceived value. The study is not a unique case but it is one of an underreported area, a highly participative community. Methodologically, this study offers mixed method approach with a strong focus on qualitative data and analysis methods, with an innovative way of triangulating data.