The aim of this study is to establish what insights the tracking of both input and output might contribute to corpus-based analyses of the acquisition of chunks among instructed adult second language learners. The automated analysis of electronic corpora of natural language has played a major role in revealing the prevalence of conventionalised word sequences in human communication, thereby challenging predominant atomistic conceptualisations of linguistic processing. While the mastery of nativelike phraseology would appear to be central to second language acquisition, reports of instructed adult learners have commonly highlighted their deficiencies in employing multi-word sequences as compared to native speaker norms. A problem with such studies has been their product-orientated focus, the majority tending to conflate the attempts of multiple learners at a range of chunks, variously specified, at a single point in time, the absence of information as to their corresponding instructional input making it impossible to compare their performance against their levels of exposure to the formulas in question. What appears to be missing is an examination of patterns of acquisition among a set of learners in respect of the same chunk, in relation to input, and over time. The aim of this exploratory investigation is to attempt to fill this gap among existing studies of second language chunk acquisition in instructed learning contexts by providing a window on both the processes and products involved. Drawing on an especially created 170 000 word longitudinal corpus composed of online classroom interaction, the study tracks the oral exposure to and use of a single internally complex word combination of 36 learners on an Open University beginners’ Spanish course. The study uncovers a multifaceted picture of classroom input and output in respect of the same sequence and reveals that, while there is a correlation between frequency of overall exposure and the learners’ propensity to attempt the chunk, this masks considerable variation in the form these attempts take for each individual over time. These findings underline the need to look beyond an amalgamated snapshot of learners’ use of chunks and consider individual differences in recalling and reproducing specific exemplars in relation to exposure to these sequences, while inviting further investigation into the factors that underpin such variation and continued enquiry into those aspects of input that might usefully contribute to this process.

Modelling is a core competence for teacher educators. This action research (AR) study examines further education-based teacher educators’ use of modelling and considers what role this may play in how in-service trainees learn how to teach within a university-validated initial teacher education (ITE) programme. The researcher, a university-based teacher educator, adopted a second-person practice approach to collaborate with a team of teacher educators and their trainees in an English further education college (FEC). The research used, as its conceptual and analytical framework, Kemmis et al.’s ecologies of practices and practice architectures. Data collection instruments employed included films of the teacher educators’ classes and stimulated recall interviews (SRIs) based on them; focus groups with the trainees; and “teacher talk” meetings. There are nine main findings /contributions arising from this study. The principal ones were that effective learning to teach starts with “learning to look”; effective modelling is a result of the teacher educators’ and trainees’ “sayings, doing and relatings”, and that the teacher educators involved in the study were modelling generic, core teaching behaviours. Initially the latter were implicitly modelled, though, as the study progressed, there was greater use of explicit modelling. There was evidence that some trainees noticed their teacher educators’ use of implicit modelling, though others did not “see” it until it was pointed out to them during a peer teaching with debrief intervention. Many of the trainees said what was being modelling could be transferred into their own teaching contexts. This suggests that subject specialist mentors need to model the core practices of the trainees’ subject to complement the generic, core practices modelled by the teacher educators. Inductions for the further education-based teacher educators in this study were uneven and overly technical in their focus. An extended and better balanced induction is proposed. Another recommendation is the proposal, building on Taylor’s work, for a new fifth way of learning to teach: trainees acquiring and using the language of learning to teach. One of the actions arising within the study was the development of a viewing frame that teacher educators could use to enable trainees to “see into” the use of modelling within their classes and the evidence suggests it could be used across all three phases of ITE. The study contributes to debates relating to what is known about the classroom practices of further education-based teacher educators and the factors that shape those practices.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the impact of learners‟ measure of control over their learning, while working in different online learning environments, and how this, in combination with a structured learning material selection according to their learning preferences, can affect their learning performance. A qualitative study was carried out on the understanding of different learning philosophies, different learning environments and different learning preferences, in correlation with learners‟ measure of control over their learning environments, in terms of their influence on their learning performance. The research commenced with a survey of UK Higher Educational institutions, to determine the usage of adaptive e-learning systems in UK HE and the type and nature of the systems in use, which in combination with the literature review enabled the clarification of the research hypothesis and objectives. Since a measurement of learners‟ learning performance was needed, an adaptable personalised e-learning system (ALPELS) was developed to create an environment where a qualitative measurement could be done. Experimental data was then gathered from two cohorts of MSc students over two semesters, who used the newly designed and developed online learning environment. The successful implementation of the project has produced a large amount of data, which demonstrates a correlation between i) adaptable and personalised e-learning systems, and ii) learners‟ learning styles (which in itself supports the behaviouristic approach towards this type of online learning environment – ALPELS). The study indicates a dependency between an online controlled learning environment and learners‟ learning performances, showing that a personalised e-learning system (PELS) would be supportive of recall (R) and understanding (U) types of content materials (with an indication of 4.89%), but also demonstrating an increase in student learning performance in an adaptable e-learning system (ALELS) while using competency (C) types of content materials (with an indication of 5.43%). These outcomes provide a basis for future design of e-learning systems, utilising different models of learner control based on underpinning educational philosophies, in combination with learning preferences, to structure and present learning content according to type.

This study examined teachers and learners’ beliefs about teaching English grammar at Tripoli University. It explored the role of grammar in this context and the optimal method or approach of teaching grammar in such a context. The present investigation aimed at identifying the causes behind the learners’ difficulties in using their knowledge of grammar to communicate effectively and the challenges, which confront the lecturers when dealing with grammar instruction. Grammar teaching has been and continues to be a source of controversy, and heated debate, which has led many second language researchers to rethink the status of grammar in language learning and teaching. Grammar has often generated conflicting views. Thornbury (2009) argues that no other issue has preoccupied theorists and practitioners as much as the grammar debate which has brought about a split of views, specifically into those who claim that grammar should not be taught at all, and others who believe that grammar should be given a central role in English language teaching . In order to achieve reliable and valid results, this research employed a mixed methods approach, since relying on one single research approach and strategy could reduce the effectiveness of this study. The underpinning philosophy identifying this study is positivism because of the large amount of quantitative data. The justification for combining a quantitative and qualitative research approach is related to the purpose of the study, the nature of the problem and research questions. Accordingly, quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire involving students at the English language department at Tripoli University. This was supported by qualitative data collected by using semi- structured interviews for lecturers teaching grammar at the English department. The findings of this study showed that students and lecturers at Tripoli University valued the role of grammar instruction and that it should be recognised in all the different skills. The findings also revealed that the participants were unhappy with the way grammar is taught in lectures. They also suggested that further research be conducted in all the different teaching skills. This study is pertinent because it has academic value. It has added to the literature on the importance of English grammar and contribute to the ongoing debate of whether grammar should be taught or acquired. In addition, it will benefit the students and lecturers in developing communicative competence by enhancing grammar teaching. It will raise awareness about the challenges of teaching English grammar in Libya and benefit future researchers interested in the teaching of grammar.

This thesis is based on an institutional ethnography in a primary school in the north of England during a period of ‘notice to improve’. This regulatory status followed an inspection by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted 2010) in which the school was judged as ‘performing less well than it might in all the circumstances reasonably be expected to perform’. The teaching team is all female. This study situates the teachers’ experience of ‘notice to improve’ within their everyday practices and embodiment of ‘care’ as they enact the policy discourses that organize their work. The study aligns institutional ethnography with a narrative method, ‘The Listening Guide’ (Mauthner and Doucet 1998), and a political ethic of care (Tronto 1993), to reveal and analyse the co-ordination of social relations. Care emerged as a problematic from the teachers’ standpoint, a disjuncture in experience, as they activated and appropriated texts in order “to get out of” notice to improve. Institutional ethnography (Smith 2005) explicates the ruling relations of education policy and performative texts and how these texts are taken up and activated by teachers in coming to care as an institutionally organized aspect of their work. As such the study reveals the trans-local, extra-local and situated connections and coordination of work during a time of enhanced scrutiny and accountability which give rise to disjunctures in the teacher’s wider understanding of care. Analysis reveals an understanding of care as political and moral and involving more than the discourses of intimate relationships and behaviour role modelling promoted in policy and guidance as necessary to good pupil outcomes. The research reveals the hierarchy of textual mediation of teachers’ work and explicates how teachers come to care through political, moral, and personal and professional moral boundaries. This leads to concerns over pedagogical principles, workload, stress and a wider consciousness of the teachers’ self. When behaviour and practice is regarded as risky to pupils, the school, colleagues and self, the recourse, through talk, is to take up the institutional discourse of quality mediated through regulation. A key finding is that teachers’ wider care needs are silenced.

Critical literacy is widely acknowledged as a crucial component of 21st century literacies, with a growing number of researchers providing inspirational examples of what can happen when teachers create critically literate ‘niches’ or spaces in their classrooms (O’Brien 1994; Leland et al 2005; Souto-Manning 2009). Despite this increase in scholarly interest, schooling’s traditional focus on code-breaking and comprehension-type literacy practices (Leland et al 2005) has meant that critical literacy still remains on the margins of many classrooms and curricula, as a buzzword, add-on or extension task that is often reserved for the eldest or most able (Comber 2001). Consequently, researchers have found that a critical stance still does not come “naturally” to readers within schooled contexts (Ryan & Anstey 2003; Scull et al 2013), a situation that cannot be remedied until critical literacy is widely used and valued by readers both inside and outside of schools (Carrington & Luke 1997). Responding to this context and motivated by an absence of research into the critically literate practices of families, a key aim of this study has been to find ways of making space for more critical “ways with words” (Heath 1983) to emerge in places other than classrooms. Underpinned by a theoretical understanding that a powerful and productive relationship exists between the effects of metafiction and the broadly-agreed aims of critical literacy, this thesis is an account of what happened when a group of eight parents and their eight primary school-aged children encountered the complex, surprising and disruptive demands of metafiction in picturebooks. Discussions about the picturebooks were located across a range of school-based and out-of-school settings and the resulting qualitative, analytical inquiry focused specifically on the literacy resources that dominated these readers’ responses when they engaged with metafiction. Key findings included the fact that comments with a ‘critical edge’ always emerged in direct response to the provocations of metafiction. More specifically, this study has identified the ability of metafiction to provoke resistance as a reader response; an experience that made it possible for some readers to interrupt and question their ‘natural’ literacy practices. In addition, the effects of metafiction made it possible for readers to develop metaliterate understandings, a term used here to describe a heightened awareness of language in use and of reading as an active, social process of meaning-making. In both cases, the effects of metafiction helped to foreground the often invisible dispositions that give shape to understandings about words - and pictures - and, simultaneously, about the world (Freire 1985).

This study is about the ways in which the term subject knowledge is conceptualised and interpreted by student teachers, university tutors and school mentors in the context of undergraduate primary initial teacher training (ITT) in two post-1992 university providers. Subject knowledge has been a consistent feature of the policy context of ITT over decades, although disparities are apparent between the rhetoric of policy directives, the theoretical knowledge base and how primary teachers’ subject knowledge is represented, and enacted, in communities of practice in primary ITT. The conceptual framework for the research is underpinned by Shulman’s (1987) theoretical knowledge bases for teaching, and draws significantly on the conceptual tools of culture, practice and agents in educational settings, provided by Ellis’s (2007) situated model of subject knowledge. The perspective of the individual is developed further by utilising Kelchtermans’s (2009) personal interpretative framework. An additional lens is provided by the external political context, within which primary ITT is located. The research adopted an inductive, interpretative approach that incorporated multiple methods to construct a bricolage. Data collection included semi-structured questionnaires, semi-structured interviews that incorporated the production of visual data, and content analysis of documents. The study indicates that subject knowledge was understood by participants as an umbrella term representing general teacher knowledge, rather than as a critically distinct concept. Overall, there was a general lack of emphasis on subject-specific pedagogical knowledge evident in the discourse around subject knowledge for primary teaching. Conceptualisations of subject knowledge were highly individualistic. The findings indicated that the culture and practice in different contexts is interpreted and experienced in very different ways by individuals to influence their interpretations of subject knowledge and its place in pedagogy. Thus, this study makes an original contribution to knowledge in the field by: 1) mapping the details of the conceptualisations of subject knowledge held by student primary teachers, university tutors and school mentors in the context of undergraduate primary ITT, to identify commonalities, and disparities, with the theoretical knowledge base; and 2) identifying and examining cross-contextual and personal influences on conceptions of subject knowledge and in so doing, extending and adapting Ellis’s (2007) model of subject knowledge, to the specific context of undergraduate primary ITT.

No description available.

In this thesis the aim has been to consider student learning in Business Education in the 16-19 age range through an examination of aspects of Experiential Learning. The main aspects of Experiential Learning that have been focused on include enterprise, work-related learning, risk and failure and how these impact on student learning and motivation. There is also a focus on the Young Enterprise Programme. The methodology used in the research is underpinned by a pragmatist paradigm in terms of the choice of methods, which has led to the use of a mixed methods or 'blended' approach. Data was collected from the key stakeholders in the 16-19 age phase of education and included the students themselves, educational institutions, teachers, employers, and students involved in the Young Enterprise Programme. The data was then analysed in order to illuminate the six themes for investigation. An initial study was undertaken and the findings from this indicated a dichotomy between schools and colleges in how Experiential Learning was used. More significantly however, there was contradictory evidence with regard to risk taking, and the opportunities which students are given in order to experience failure. These findings, alongside key aspects of the literature, were used to develop six main themes for investigation. The main study that then followed, indicated that experience of risk and failure, often via informal and incidental learning, can lead to new understanding and new modes of thinking. It also indicated that although valuable, work placement does not always provide a meaningful and consistent experience for students, and may encourage them to focus on success and the established ways of doing things. The findings then led to the conclusion that in a successful collaborative group, learners can have the support and encouragement to take risks and make changes. In turn, such groups and the associated support that they provide can promote more effective work related Experiential Learning. The findings from the main study, and the subsequent discussion and analysis of these, and also led to a consideration of the implications of the study for professional practice. Young people seeking work in the future are likely to need to be more flexible and entrepreneurial in their attitudes. The research indicates that the education system needs a greater capacity for innovation and creativity, in relation to facilitating the experience of risk and failure for students, in order to develop those flexible and entrepreneurial attitudes.

This study focuses on primary foreign language teaching and learning. It seeks to reveal the perspectives and practice of three different stakeholders: specialist teachers, generalist teachers and head teachers. The study then places these beliefs and practice within a local, national and international context, considering the supporting factors for Primary Foreign Languages (PFL), as well as the challenges. It is a timely piece of research as it was conducted during the period when foreign language learning, for the first time in England, became statutory in primary schools. Furthermore, it took place during a timeframe of rapid change at all levels of education, which has had an effect on the translation of policy to practice. Data collection took place in two phases. In Phase One, an initial PFL practice mapping online questionnaire was sent to all schools in the Local Authority (LA) (n=69). Three schools agreed to participate. In Phase Two data collection methods employed in each of the three schools consisted of participant observations, semi-structured interviews, a self-reflective diary, informal conversation with staff and analysis of policy documents. The findings of the study show that all stakeholders in each school were supportive of PFL. However, this support did not translate into practice as the responsibility for PFL often rested solely with the specialist. As a result, the subject and specialists could be described as annexed, not fully integrated into the curriculum, and the specialists sought support from private companies instead of internally within the school. The majority of generalist teachers did not feel qualified to deliver the subject and there was a lack of future training options open to teachers wishing to train as PFL specialists. Those teachers who did express an interest in learning how to teach PFL felt that they could not engage fully with this endeavour due to internal and external pressure imposed upon them to achieve the highest possible pupil attainment in English and Maths. A disconnect was also revealed between the teachers’ most popular rationale for PFL teaching, which was preparing children to be ‘21st century global citizens’, and their actual practice. The teachers in the study recognised that, through learning a language and experiencing its culture, it may be possible to move from “egocentricity and ethnocentricity to a more altruistic sense of mutual benefit” (Byram, 2008:131). However, while espousing support for the teaching of intercultural understanding (ICU), the study reveals a lack of understanding in practice from stakeholders, policy writers and teachers. Overall, there is much goodwill for PFL as a subject, however, due to national and international drivers, it occupies a vulnerable place within the curriculum.