This research project is interested in the area of personalised and adaptable learning and in particular within an e-learning context. Brusilovsky (1996) and Santally (2005) stress the importance of adaptive systems within e-learning. Karagiannikis and Sampson et al. (2004) argue that personalised learning systems can be defined by their capability to adapt automatically to the changing attitudes of the “learning experience” which can, in turn, be defined by the individual learner characteristics, for example the type of learning material. The project evolved to cover areas including personalised learning, e-learning environments, authoring tools, tagging, learning objects, learning theories and learning styles. The main focus at the start of the project was to provide a personalised and adaptable learning environment for students based on their learning style. During the research, this led to a specific interest about how an academic can create, tag and author learning objects to provide the capability of personalised adaptable e-learning for a learner. Research undertaken was designed to gain an understanding of personalised and adaptive learning techniques, e-learning tools and learning styles. Important findings of this research showed that e-learning platforms do not offer much in the way of a personalised learning experience for a learner. Additionally, the research showed that general adaptive systems and adaptive systems incorporating learning styles are not commonly used or available due to issues with flexibility, reuse and integration. The concept of tagging was investigated during the research and it was found that tagging is underused within e-learning, although the research shows that it could be a good ‘fit’ within e-learning. This therefore led to the decision to create a general purpose discriminatory tagging methodology to allow authors to tag learning objects for personalisation and reuse. The main focus for the evaluation of this tagging methodology was the authoring side of the tagging. It was found that other research projects have evaluated the personalisation of learning content based on a learner’s learning style (see Graf and Kinshuk (2007)). It was therefore felt that there was a sufficient body of existing evidence in this area whereas there was limited research available on the authoring side. The evaluation of the discriminatory tagging methodology demonstrated that the methodology could allow for any discrimination between learners to be used. The example demonstrated within this thesis includes discriminating according to a learner’s learning style and accessibility type. This type of platform independent flexible discriminatory methodology does not exist within current e-learning platforms or other e-learning systems. Therefore, the main contribution of this thesis is therefore a platform independent general-purpose discriminatory tagging methodology.

The use of the term computational thinking, introduced in 2006 by Jeanette Wing, is having repercussions in the field of education. The term brings into sharp focus the concept of thinking about problems in a way that can lead to solutions that may be implemented in a computing device. Implementation of these solutions may involve the use of programming languages. This study explores ways in which programming can be employed as a tool to teach computational thinking and problem solving. Data is collected from teachers, academics, and professionals, purposively selected because of their knowledge of the topics of problem solving, computational thinking, or the teaching of programming. This data is analysed following a grounded theory approach. A Computational Thinking Taxonomy is developed. The relationships between cognitive processes, the pedagogy of programming, and the perceived levels of difficulty of computational thinking skills are illustrated by a model. Specifically, a definition for computational thinking is presented. The skills identified are mapped to Bloom’s Taxonomy: Cognitive Domain. This mapping concentrates computational skills at the application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation levels. Analysis of the data indicates that the less difficult computational thinking skills for beginner programmers are generalisation, evaluation, and algorithm design. Abstraction of functionality is less difficult than abstraction of data, but both are perceived as difficult. The most difficult computational thinking skill is reported as decomposition. This ordering of difficulty for learners is a reversal of the cognitive complexity predicted by Bloom’s model. The plausibility of this inconsistency is explored. The taxonomy, model, and the other results of this study may be used by educators to focus learning onto the computational thinking skills acquired by the learners, while using programming as a tool. They may also be employed in the design of curriculum subjects, such as ICT, computing, or computer science.

This study investigates the significance of Aristotelian virtue in teaching and learning in music performance. In response to a number of critical issues in professional practice, it is argued that virtue, framed within eudaimonistic happiness, should form an integral part of teaching and learning. Through an examination of Aristotle’s analysis of virtue, and primarily through his Nicomachean Ethics, virtue is presented as having the hallmarks of dynamic and responsive action and therefore as being of potential interest to teachers of music. Having acknowledged that music performance can be a particularly challenging arena, this study also considers why Aristotle, via his analysis in Politics of the reasons for educating students in music, provides further underlying reasons for its inclusion. By considering the work of one of his students, Aristoxenus, the investigation also establishes that here in Aristotle is a philosopher-teacher who is, we can be reassured, very much an informed music ‘amateur’. Noting the twofold importance that Aristotle gives to music in education, that is, how music contributes to our development and the worthwhile nature of understanding music for itself, the discussion explores and clarifies the notion of music performance. A range of frameworks are analysed and, after Godlovitch, personalism is defended as a framework. This is significant because personalism recognises the individual as both musician and human being. Thus, the demands, on both character and intellect, emerge strongly here as they do in Nicomachean Ethics. Having established that music performance is demanding, of both character and intellect, the virtue of courage is argued as crucial. The Aristotelian notion of courage is tested and its reaches extended, partly through the analysis of case studies. Ultimately, it is posited that courageous action forms part of eudaimonistic happiness. This study also considers Egan’s theory that intellectual disturbance occurs during stages of learning, thus providing further demands. It is argued that, in responding to such disturbance, teachers’ practice should embody characteristics of Aristotelian practical wisdom. In this way, it is posited that teachers act as valuable role models, both to their students and to their colleagues, including those colleagues new to the profession. With these challenges now identified and analysed, music performance is conceptualised as gift making. Importantly, this contributes to foregrounding the significant aspect of pleasure that is integral to Aristotelian virtuous action. The discussion closes by providing a defence of the position that Aristotelian virtue is of significance to teachers and students as they navigate their daily existence within the world of music performance.

In one secondary school in Scotland, there was a trend that girls performed significantly better than boys at the more challenging levels of external examinations. The focus of this thesis has been an exploration of 16 to 18-year-old, academically able boys’ perceptions of their learning in this school, to seek an explanation for this phenomenon. The literature review considers the concept of gender in education; the policy landscape and national attainment data in relation to gender and attainment; and the key reviews/studies carried out in this field to provide governments with a deeper understanding of gendered performance, and recommendations for educational professionals to bring about improvements. These reviews/studies focused on all boys and not on this particular subset of academically able boys. A central issue in gender equity in education is the lived experiences of different groups of learners in schools. The stance taken in this research is to consider the learning of selected boys (who are high attaining, or who have the potential to achieve highly academically) from the senior year groups in one school by exploring, through interview, their personal experiences, views, perceptions and opinions about learning: the factors that facilitate and hinder progress in learning. For the case study approach adopted, groups of girls, teachers and parents in the school were also interviewed to triangulate the findings from the boys’ interviews. A grounded theory approach, using methods developed by Strauss and Corbin (1990, 2008) and Glaser (1992), and supplemented by techniques advocated by Charmaz (2014), was used for the interviewing and the analysis of the empirical data collected: using line-by-line coding, conceptualisation, categorisation and theory generation. The advantage of grounded theory is that it is ‘grounded’ in the empirical data. This interpretative approach makes no attempt to select and ‘test’ factors that could be influencing the phenomenon, rather exploring widely to seek understanding from the perspective of the subjects. The grounded theory that emerged from the case study in School A was that these boys realise what is required of them to be successful in their learning, and what hinders their learning, but their success is limited by adopting an essentialist construction of their gender with gender stereotypical characteristics. The phenomenon is not unique to this one school and so a similar case study approach was undertaken in two further schools, Schools B and C, to consider the transferability of the theory emerging from the data collected in School A. School B had a similar gendered attainment profile to School A, whereas in School C there was little or no difference in attainment by gender. The thesis concludes with some recommendations for policy and practice: professional learning of teachers, working with parents on understanding gender, and the privileging of ‘pupil voice’ as a way of exploring issues such as gender.

This research study focuses on the partnership between teachers and teaching assistants working in the secondary mathematics classroom. The impact teaching assistants (TAs) have on student learning and progress has been a widely debated topic and the focus of previous research studies. The publication of results from the deployment and impact of support staff (DISS) project (Blatchford et al. 2009) has renewed the focus on the impact and management of TAs. The DISS study concluded that TAs have a negative impact on the progress of students, but also highlighted that this outcome was inconsistent with the perception of teachers who felt that TAs have a positive impact on student behaviour and engagement. Blatchford et al concluded that the negative impact of TAs could be caused by a lack of training of TAs and a lack of understanding by teachers about the most effective way to utilise TAs in the classroom. They recommended that further research into the work of TAs and an increased focus on the training and professional development of both teachers and TAs was needed. A questionnaire was employed to provide information about existing working practices of teachers and TAs and a multiple embedded case study methodology was subsequently utilised to analyse three teacher-TA partnerships which are considered effective, in order to identify which characteristics of the way they work collaboratively encourage effective partnerships and practices. One of the main outcomes from this research is the identification of 40 factors which contribute towards the development of effective teacher-TA partnerships. The importance of each of these factors in the development of effective partnerships was assessed using aspects of multi-attribute utility theory. A self-evaluation tool for teachers and TAs was then developed based on these outcomes. The self-evaluation tool gives teachers and TAs the opportunity to quickly and easily assess their current practice and identify a focus for their future professional development, encouraging the development of an effective partnership. TAs are ideally positioned to have a significant positive impact on the progress and learning of students but, at present, the positive perceptions by teachers of TA support are not evidenced in students’ progress or learning. It is imperative for the future of the TA role that partnerships between teachers and TAs become more effective, as the improved partnerships will likely impact upon student progress and learning. The selfevaluation tool, developed in this research study, is designed to impact on the effectiveness of these teacher-TA partnerships through mutual professional development.

This research explored young people’s learning needs related to sexuality and relationships within the current rapidly changing social, cultural and religious context of the Maltese Islands. It also explored the challenges, opportunities and alternative means by which these needs can be met. A definitional matrix for needs assessment that adopts a sociological perspective to people’s needs, which is widely used in health promotion, was employed. This thesis was framed around the underlying principles of youth involvement, participation and empowerment, and thus emphasised young people’s own perspective of their learning needs. The mixed-methodology approach was adopted in this research. The first stage of investigation sought to achieve an overview of sexual behaviour and knowledge among young Maltese people aged 14 - 16 attending secondary schools. A stratified random sample of 1310 pupils (68% response rate) provided a first-ever snapshot of young people’s sexual behaviour in Malta. The second stage sought to explore young people’s felt and expressed learning needs within and outside the school setting by way of sixteen focus groups involving another 166 pupils. Findings suggest a relatively low rate of pupils who would have practiced sexual intercourse by school-leaving age in Malta (12.3%). Mean age at first intercourse seems similar to that of other European countries (14 years) for both genders. Only a fifth used condoms every time they had sex. Knowledge of STIs was scant. The pupils were more informed about HIV. Girls were more knowledgeable. Boys had sex with more sexual partners. No gender differences were noted in substance abuse with sex. Discussions among pupils revealed a high degree of perceived unmet learning need. Participants valued highly learning about sexuality but thought it received much less attention than their other academic learning needs. Disparities between schools were evidenced. Learning was sporadic and uncoordinated with conflicting messages from different teachers. Often sessions started timely to pupils’ needs, but ended prematurely. Learning from parents was scanty and associated with the overall relationship and bonding between parents and the child. Gaps were noted between perceived ideal sources (teachers, parents and visiting speakers) and actual / preferred sources (friends and the media). Needs were perceived in relation to the content and timing of learning, sources of knowledge, learning styles and resources. Maltese pupils had diverse values and called for a variety of approaches. Recommendations were made for a national sexuality education policy to standardize the framework of sexuality education among Maltese schools; more initial teacher training and inservice training in sexuality education to meet the needs of a diverse group of adolescents through various approaches; more collaboration among teachers within schools; parenting skills and lifelong learning opportunities for parents; more active involvement of adolescents and a wider consultation with schools and families in the evaluation of sexuality education.

Adaptive hypermedia systems, such as intelligent tutoring systems, aim to reduce reliance upon a teacher. However, such systems have some drawbacks such as inconsistency when estimating a learner‟s knowledge level, and a lack of a pedagogically informed approach to teaching and learning. These drawbacks may be addressed by a competency model. Such a model has the benefits of an improved pedagogical approach to e-learning and a more consistent profile of learners‟ competences. Such a model also renders competences machine processable, sharable, and modifiable. The aim of this research is to investigate and design a competence-based system which provides appropriate study materials from the Web to the learner without any intervention from the teacher. Each step within the system for deriving the study material links from the learners‟ competences is described in detail. A competence structure is designed from a set of intended learning outcomes. An XML-schema represents the information within a competence structure to support machine processing. Experiments were carried out to evaluate the competence-based system for recommending links by considering the learner‟s reaction, by comparing the learning improvement between the competence-based approach and other approaches, and by exploring the effects of search engines used and keywords on the search results. From these experiments, some conclusions have been drawn, such as: learning paths with more nodes are more helpful, and Web links of a competence node with a lower level of Bloom‟s taxonomy showed higher ratings than those with a higher level of Bloom‟s taxonomy. In addition, a competence-based system is accepted by learners at the reaction level. A freely-browsing and a competence-based system produced equal improvements in learners‟ learning. Different types of search engines (Google and Google API) and categories of keywords (SM and CA+SM+CO) show no significant differences between the qualities of study material links in helping learners achieve their competences. Furthermore, the links from Google were found to be as good as those from an educational search engine. Some future work is suggested, for example, more exploration of a complex competence structure and learning paths, improvements on the usability and accessibility of the application, and more in-depth consideration of self-assessment.

There is currently a notable amount of research suggesting that educators should use computer games as part of their teaching. Most of this research suggests why games should be used choosing very specific example games, or making broad sweeping statements about gaming as a whole. But very little of the research explains how these games should be used. What features should be present in the game? Do these features change depending on a given learning outcome? Do they change depending on the type of game? This thesis begins by compiling a prospective set of required features for an educational game, taken from literature on Learning Environments, as well as the requirements of different learning styles. This requirement set is cross-referenced with an overview of some typical, commercially available games, to show that such games are capable of meeting these requirements. This preliminary list is used in two investigations: the first explores how well the chosen features are offered by a series of current educational mini-games; the second shows how different requirements are offered by different commercially-available computer game genres. The results of these investigations are used to refine the list, before carrying out a user survey to identify the important features offered by different game genres, and to determine whether game quality improves as more of the features are met. The survey results show that some key requirements separate the genres significantly, while others were consistent across all genres. In addition, there is a positive correlation between each feature offered, and the overall user enjoyment of the game. The thesis concludes with a proposed framework of game genres and features, to assist in the design and selection of games for a given educational scenario, as well as some suggestions for future work.

This thesis reports on research that explored the impact of the Education Reform Act (ERA) (1988) on the provision of Physical Education (PE) and sport in state schools within one Local Education Authority (LEA) in England. Specifically, it highlights the complexity of the development and 'implementation' of the National Curriculum for Physical Education (NCPE) and addresses the issues of power and control in the policy process. Chapter 1 outlines the policies within the ERA and the issues arising from them for the provision of PE and sport in schools. Chapters 2 and 3 detail the theoretical and methodological bases of the research respectively. The former centres on policy analysis in education and specifically, the conceptualisation of policy 'as a process'. The latter presents research 'as a process' and addresses the role of a qualitative and ethnographic approach, the integration of theoretical, methodological and empirical issues, and the utilisation of both quantitative and qualitative methods in facilitating the enquiry and understanding of the NCPE as both 'policy' and 'practice'. Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 address the policy process at different 'levels' in the education system, describing and analysing the role that central government and the NCPE working group (chapter 4), the LEA (chapter 5), schools and the PE departments and teachers within them (chapters 6 & 7) played in determining the 'effects' of the ERA on the future provision of PE and sport in schools and specifically, what constituted a NCPE in 'policy' and 'practice'. These chapters provide a comprehensive account of the emergence of the NCPE and its interaction with, in particular, the introduction of Local Management of Schools. A variety of data illustrates that in many respects, the introduction of a NCPE signalled 'no change' in PE. In chapter 8 a revised theoretical framework, centring on the interaction of frames (Lundgren,1977i Bernstein, 1990) is presented as a basis for the development of further studies of education policy. In conclusion attention is drawn to methodological issues raised by the research and the need for further research to explore the implications of the observed absence of change in PE if a NCPE is to provide a 'broad and balanced' PE curriculum for all children.

This case study investigates how readers read comics. The work, based upon Roland Barthes' concept of relay discussed in Image, Music, Text (1977), considers that a reader tmderstands the comic at the higher level of the diegesis by switching between signifying systems. The research fmdings suggest that the reading of comics requires visual and verbal intermediate literacy skills and that textual coherence occurs for readers when they reach the critical point in their own reading. The coherence of the text and critical point for the reader are achieved as a result of the cOlmections between the signifying systems of description and depiction, at the level of the individual sign and the textual structure. The analysis of such data as the features of the comic and readers' responses to texts, proposes a model based upon the concept of a core and periphery spiral. It suggests that knowledge frameworks, visual and verbal literacy and the metalinguistic skill of 'relay' are required to read the comic text; but in order to reach a critical point for understanding these need to be synthesised with affective responses. The comic form is also placed into a cultural and literacy context and implications of the fmdings for using this form in education are discussed.