This study addresses the question of church schools’ compatibility with the tradition of liberal education and the extent to which these schools contribute to intolerance in society. Critics of church schools argue that the religious foundation of church schools contributes little to their academic success and that any school with a similar pupil intake will be academically successful. Critics therefore advocate removal of church schools from the English education system. However, using the evidence in the relevant literature, research studies, and eighty Church of England and Roman Catholic schools’ prospectuses, this study argues that church schools understand and express their nature as: (i) denominational; (ii) voluntary-aided; and (iii) comprehensive. This understanding is crucial to the schools’ approach to their role of providing pupils with skills necessary to live in all forms of society. The skills provided in church schools stem from the Christian understanding of Man as made in the image of God to share in, and provide stewardship for, the created order. In conclusion, this study rejects the argument that church schools: (i) contribute to intolerance in society; (ii) indoctrinate pupils; and (iii) undermine pupils’ autonomy for the following reasons: 1. The schools provide Christian education which accepts differences in human nature and prepares individuals to live in diverse communities. 2. Christian education is incompatible with coercion and manipulation. 3. Christian education provides opportunity for pupils either to accept or to reject the Christian faith or teaching.

This study focused on the issue of paradigms in Human Resource Development (HRD). Its purpose was to validate the HRD Cube as a synthesized model of HRD and to explicate some of the extant paradigms of HRD. The study was carried out by examining the text of articles published in Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD)-sponsored journals. Purposeful, stratified, and random sampling was used to select 16 articles published in AHRD-sponsored journals. Articles were treated as if they were the representative voice(s) of their author(s). Data units from within each article were identified and coded using two sequential techniques. First, units were axially coded and sorted into one of seven pre-determined categories based on the axioms of theory, research, and practice. Second, units were open coded using the constant comparative method, and themes and sub-themes were developed. Axial coding results identified a heavy emphasis on practice. The accumulation of units representing research and theory were comparatively smaller. Evidence of shared perspectives was found that emphasized the practice axiom. The accumulation of units emphasized research-practice, followed by theory-practice, and concluded with theory-research. Data units were also found that described all three axioms concurrently, theory-research-practice. Open coding results identified representative themes and sub-themes within each of the axiom-based categories of theory, research, and practice. Six themes developed in the theory category, 9 themes and 1 sub-theme developed in the research category, and 6 themes and 10 sub-themes developed in the practice category. The results provide evidence to support the overall construction of the HRD Cube. Theory, research, and practice perspectives of HRD were represented within the 16 articles used. The results also support the components described on each side of the HRD Cube. On the theory side, people, processes, and outcomes, and informing disciplines of HRD, were identified. Post-positive, interpretive, and critical epistemologies were identified on the research side. Individual, group, organizational, national, and global levels were identified on the practice side. Given the initial validation and support of the HRD Cube and of the components described within theory, research, and practice sides, within these 16 articles published in AHRD-sponsored journals, at least 18 prospective paradigms of HRD were identified.

This thesis aims to find out how animacy affects sentence structure choice in Turkish learners of L2 English. The study compares three different L2 English proficiency levels with each other as well to L1 English and L1 Turkish. In this way the effect of English, a rigid word order language, and Turkish, a free word order language on sentence structure choice have been compared. A picture description task was applied on 94 participants. The pictures depicted a transitive action taking place between an inanimate agent and an animate patient (animate condition) or between an inanimate agent and an inanimate patient. The subjects were given handouts with the pictures and were asked to write down what is happening in each picture. There were 60 Turkish learners of L2 English and 14 English participants in the study. Turkish learners of English belonged to level-1 (16 students), level-2 (25 students) and level-3 (19 students). In addition, 20 Turkish speakers were consulted for their knowledge of Turkish. It was hypothesized that in L2 English, animate entities would be accessed first and this will directly affect sentence structure choice through grammatical subject assignment or through word order. Thus, it was expected that when the learners are shown a picture depicting a transitive action taking place between an animate patinet and an inanimate agent, they would tend to use the passive in English, which assigns both a sentence-initial position and a subjecthood role to the animate entity. L2 proficiency level and native language were expected to play a role in determining the role of animacy on sentence structure choice. Chi-square analysis and odds ratio calculations were made. The results showed that animacy of the patinet affected sentence structure choice in L2 English by triggering the passivce usage in only level-3 (the most advanced group). Animacy of the patient affected native speakers of English in the same way, i.e. native English speakers tended to use the passive voice in the animate condition. No such effect was found in lower level learners of L2 English (i.e. level-1 and level-2) and Turkish native speakers. It was found that in the animate condition, Turkish native speakers tended to use the OSV word order more frequently than they did in the inanimate condition. This result suggested that in Turkish, animacy of the patient triggers the use of the OSV (Object, Subject, Verb) order rather than the passive voice. In short, the research results suggested that L2 proficency level and native language could play a role in determining how animacy affects sentence structure choice in L2.

Based on the importance place of metacognition in education, the current study aimed to investigate whether the embedded metacognitive prompts in the manual lead a change in PSTs&rsquo / metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive skills. Throught 2009-2010 Fall semester, the data were collected from pre-service science teachers (PSTs) who enrolled in the Laboratory Applications in Science Education course. The course was offered as a must course in Elementary Science Education programme in one of the biggest universites in Ankara. The method selected for the study was mix method. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analyzed. Quantitative data was collected from 28 PSTs and qualitative data was collected from 7 PSTs who were the members of the researcher&rsquo / s group. In accordance with the purpose of the current study, descriptive statistics and independent samples t-test was conducted for quantitative data. In terms of qualitative part, the study was case study and interviews which were conducted before and after the course were analyzed to observe the change of PSTs&rsquo / metacognition. The result of the study revealed that before the course most of the PSTs did not report metacognitive skills. After the course it was observed that their metacognitive skills were developed. Among metacognitive skills, the most reported skill was monitoring skill after the course. It can be concluded from the study that metacognitive prompts embedded into the manual provided a metacognitively learning environment and a development in PSTs&rsquo / metacognition.

This thesis is a reflective account of an action research project set in a drama classroom.  It is a multi-voiced patchwork text which is created and built imaginatively to re-present my students and my experience in the drama classroom. On one level it deals with the question ‘How can drama be used to enhance life skills in children with specific learning disabilities studying in a school in Mumbai?’ On the second level it is related to the question ‘How can I improve my practice?’ This research is concerned with a teacher’s capacity to recognise and realise the opportunity of an alternate reality in teaching. The reality of loving and caring for the students. The reality of an empathetic, compassionate, just and democratic classroom. The foundation of this study was laid when I saw the children in need suffer due to insensitive teaching practices and uncooperative peers and family. I was concerned with the trauma faced by students in the prevalent educational setting in India. I believe that what I do in education should help make changes for the better in our society. Life skills enhancement, in my understanding, was a way to alleviate the stress the children experienced seeing that life skill education promotes mental well-being in young people and behavioural preparedness.  As a drama teacher I see drama as tool for education. It is a natural vehicle for explorative and experiential learning. The aim of my thesis is to describe and reflect on the learning process and the context in which it occurs. I present the critical points with close analysis of the choices made by me as I taught my pupils using drama as a learning medium. Additionally, this study investigates the influences of action research on my practice and the impact of engaging in the stages of action research which provided me with a methodical structure for implementing and analyzing the teaching and the learning process. This defined structure guided me through systematic and conscious data collection, data analysis, and reflection. The data is composed of classroom observations and transcripts, a collection of the students and my work and interviews with their schoolteachers and parents. The main objective of this research was to enable a gain in positive behavioural intentions and improved psychosocial competence in children. This was accomplished through augmentation of creativity, emotional understanding and development, improved self-esteem and a notion of the joy of autonomy to enable the students to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.

In common with many other countries including small island developing states (SIDS), the criteria for appointment as a head teacher in the Seychelles were not formalised but, in practice, promotion was based mainly on teaching qualifications and experience, level of commitment shown to education, and contributions made to public life. Since 2002, educational leadership training has been offered to senior school leaders through a partnership between Seychelles and UK universities but it is not clear whether these qualifications enable head teachers to lead their institutions effectively. In practice, the acquisition of such training is being considered in the selection and appointment of senior school leaders but this is not yet an official policy. This thesis reports research focused on people in headship and other senior leadership positions in Seychelles who have followed one of these programmes. The research is an evaluation of the leadership development project designed to inform senior ministry officials of its impact. It presents a critical view of leadership development and its impact in a specific context, a SIDS with a centralised education system. In a survey involving 100% of these trained leaders, the interview responses highlight issues related to the basis of their selection for training and subsequent appointment in post; their training experiences, the extent to which they have been able to put into practice what they have learnt, and how their learning has impacted on their respective school. Responses obtained from senior Ministry officials show how the trained leaders’ performance after training is perceived within the Ministry. A case study of a primary school examines in depth observable changes in leadership practices impacting on school outcomes that are attributed to leadership training and development. The research shows that the Seychelles education system was very successful in preparing its leaders through partnerships with HE education bodies; with more than 90% of senior school leaders (heads and deputy heads) achieving a master’s qualification. The findings also show a positive impact in terms of leaders’ satisfaction with the course, changes in their knowledge, disposition and skills; changes in their leadership practices and, to some extent, improved school outcomes. The findings revealed a lack of established structures and comprehensive programmes for induction and mentoring of leaders; the lack of formal criteria and procedures for the selection of leaders for training, appointment, promotion and deployment; and limited provision for on-going support and continuous professional development. Central selection prevails with female domination of leadership positions at system and institutional levels. The significance of this research is mainly in its originality as the only study of leadership development, and its impact on school outcomes, in Seychelles.

In Singapore, there is an increasing presence of theatre artists as educators across varied sectors of the educational institutions. However despite their active engagement with education, research on what and how they do their teaching is limited. This thesis sets out to investigate the theatre artists’ teaching practices in education settings. The literature reviewed as part of this inquiry point to an identifiable system of pedagogy in the theatre artists’ teaching practices. As such, one of the key strands of this research is to identify and name what is distinctive about theatre artists’ teaching practices. But more than just identifying characteristics, I am interested in understanding if there is an overarching philosophy that guides these practices. To that end, I conceptualised a framework, which examines the theatre artists’ teaching practices as inhabiting a nested nexus of two distinguishably separate fields: Theatre and Education. Each with its own variegated influences and systems of knowledge and values that govern practices. Working with an overarching Bourdieusean theoretical framework, in particular habitus and field, as well as invoking Lyotard’s notion of differend, the study relies on interdisciplinary theories to aid explication of key concepts related to the study. The study also employs a melding of ethnographic case study and reflective practitioner as its methodology. Additionally, it works with “critiquing across difference” (Lather 2008) as a means to challenge and destabilise the reflective practitioner lens. This is achieved by structuring the research into two phases. Phase I involves researching in England. Working with four theatre artists, I examine how each assumes their position as educators in various education settings both within and beyond the school environment. The opportunity gained from this experience informed Phase II research in Singapore, the main focus of this inquiry. The findings suggest that to understand theatre artists’ teaching practices require an examination of contexts influencing their teaching acts. This includes their layered histories of both artistic and teaching experiences as well as the relationship they have with the school culture and the objectives and needs of their teaching projects. Additionally, in examining their teaching moments, the study discovers a pattern of doing the same approaches or strategies, differently. Working from the data, an overarching world view guiding the construction of their teaching practices is eventually proposed.

The thesis is essentially an explication of a research paradigm, referred to as the Creative Analytic Paradigm (CAP), which is a basic category of social research encompassed by a superordinate category, referred to as generative social research. The thesis presents a contrasting concept of social research to that of paradigms located within quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods research. The approach to writing the thesis has endeavoured to reflect the character of the research process by incorporating extracts from a memo dataset and by dispersing elements from the substantive content within the encompassing context of paradigm development. The thesis contributes to the burgeoning discourse related to the development of reflective practice and future of qualitative research, including prospects for post qualitative research. The substantive content of the thesis comprises five satellite topics illustrating the genealogy of the CAP with a particular focus on the Generative Divergent Analysis (GDA) model. The general area of interest, referred to as the primary sensitizing concept within the terminology of the CAP, is the early-years physical learning environment. The thesis presents a process model of research which supports a being-in-relation to evocative objects related to the physical learning environment. The contemplative dispositional nature of the paradigm valorises acquaintanceship and ongoing relationship as part of a personal aesthetic. The potential for professional practitioners utilising this approach to research in the context of an ongoing professional conversation is in the focus on fluency and flexibility of reflective thinking, the generation of unbounded ideas and differentiation of the perceptual and conceptual field. The thesis concludes by exploring the potential for developing approaches to research within an alternative generative social research category in contrast to quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods approaches.

This study was conducted to look at some cognitive (working memory and field dependency) and attitudinal factors which relate to learning and teaching mathematics. The purpose was to suggest ways that might help to improve students’ performance in mathematics. A multi-step strategy was used to examine the relationship between these variables and learning mathematics. The first and the second steps focussed on the students and the third step looked at the mathematics teachers and inspectors ideas about learning and teaching mathematics. This research has investigated the influence of working memory capacity and field dependency on mathematics achievement. The working memory space and the degree of field dependency were measured for 1346 school students aged between 14-16 years from public schools in Kuwait. The Digit Backward Test was used to determine working memory space, and the Group Embedded Figure Test was used to measure the degree of field-dependency for the students, both these tests have been used widely and their validity is assured. However, absolute measurements were not important in this study, as rank order was all that was required. In order to investigate the correlations between performance in different topics in mathematics and the working memory space and field dependency, mathematics tests were developed where some questions had high working memory demand and others had very low working memory demand. Furthermore, in order to investigate which versions of tasks will lead to improved mathematics performance, some questions were presented as symbolic tasks; others were presented as visual tasks; some of them presented as abstract tasks and others related to life. This study also explored the attitudes of the students towards mathematics in the following areas: the importance of mathematics as a discipline; attitudes towards learning mathematics; confidence in mathematics classes; the relationship between attitudes and achievement; activities in mathematics classes, and opinions about mathematicians. The perceptions of mathematics teachers and inspectors were investigated to see the extent to which their views related to the findings from work with students. A sample of 25 mathematics teachers and 4 mathematics inspectors was selected randomly and they were interviewed to compare their views. This step involved semi-structured interviews which offered an opportunity to focus on some key areas as well as giving freedom for the teachers to expand their views. The results indicated that field dependent students with low working memory capacity perform badly in mathematics. This might be attributed to their inability to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant items, with consequent working memory overload. Evidence shows that the way the questions or the problems are given to the students is very important for the students to understand and to succeed in solving them. Complicated shapes or long involved text are both more likely to produce overloading of the working memory space. Therefore, the study recommends that teachers should organise their material with great care in order that students are not penalised for some personal characteristic over which they have no control. This study also showed a clear evidence of a decline in attitudes with age and the excessively overloaded curriculum was a likely reason along with the perceptions that some topics were irrelevant. Furthermore, this study reflects the crucial role that the mathematics teacher plays in the formation of student attitudes towards mathematics. Thus, aiming to develop positive attitudes towards mathematics including confidence, enjoyment and an appreciation of it as a powerful tool should be parallel with the acquisition and the understanding of mathematics concepts and skills in mathematics education. Finally, the interviews show that there is no agreement about the objectives of mathematics education in Kuwait between those who decide the syllabuses (mathematics inspectors) and those who are going to teach these syllabuses (mathematics teachers). When the issue of the purpose for mathematics education is agreed, then it may be possible to consider what topics might further these aims most fully. In fact, teachers are involved daily in the teaching processes and they know the population of their students very well. Thus, their views about the syllabuses should be taken into consideration and they should be involved in the process of deciding the syllabuses. The study has major implications for the development of mathematics education in Kuwait but many of the findings will be widely applicable in other educational systems.

This Innovation Report reports on best practice in ICT teacher development (ICTTD) based on a literature study and an empirical action research study. The study was conducted with the assistance of a mobile-learning tutoring programme in four resource-constrained schools in South Africa. All the participating teachers had little or no ICT skills. It is predicated on the assumption that quality education helps in the reduction of poverty and inequality. It argues that the performance of an education system reflects the quality of its teachers, which is enhanced by in-service training, especially access to ICT-enriched lifelong learning (LLL) and continuing professional development (CPD). This requires teachers to acquire ICT skills and for their ICT learning styles to be considered. The main research question was concerned with how teachers acquire and improve ICT skills. The response to the main question identified the following important ICTTD enablers and best practice: collaborative learning, integration of pedagogy and subject knowledge with technology, leadership and use of practical ICTTD. The study took advantage of the ubiquity of mobile phones in South Africa, which as the most rapidly adopted technology in history, enabled learners to participate in the study. The participating tutoring teachers (TTs) were Life Orientation and Life Skills (LOLS) teachers who were asked to conduct online Life Orientation and Life Skills tutorials. They were chosen because they were least likely to be ICT competent. The participation in synchronous online tutorials gave the teachers a practical ICT user experience. They made use of the limited numbers of computers, and the learners used the more widely available mobile phones. The tutoring teachers (TTs) were supported by suitably qualified volunteer tutors (VTs) whose participation in the study improved both the tutor: learner ratio and the technology-enhanced learning TEL experience for the teachers and learners. The VTs and TTs were called Dr LOLS tutors. The interactions between the mobile learners and teachers were enabled by the social network MXit and the Chat Call Centre online (C3TO) platform, which is created by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria. All the teachers acquired new ICT skills during the study. Key findings of the study include: -- The importance of enabling the VTs to ‘teach from anywhere’ and at a time agreed with learners, compared to the notion of ‘learning from anywhere anytime’, given that most learners did not own, but shared the mobile phones they used. -- Mobile-learning can be a gateway to a ‘device agnostic’ technology-enhanced learning (TEL) experience. -- The lack of mainstreamed TEL policy in poor schools limits the contribution TEL can make to poverty and inequality reduction. Implications for educational policy include; making integrated ICTTD mandatory at pre-service training, a TEL policy that integrates mobile-learning and repositions TEL as part of poverty reduction imperative.