Persistent school non attendance (PSNA) is a widely acknowledged problem. Outcomes for persistent absentees are poor in the long term. Children and young people (CYP) who are often absent from school are more likely than others to leave with few or no qualifications, to suffer mental health difficulties and to become criminal offenders in adult life. Family coaches work with families where a child has persistently poor or no school attendance, alongside adult unemployment or anti-social behaviour. Uniquely, their work extends across different systems: school; family; professional services and the wider community. As a team, they have extensive experience of casework, having worked with several hundred families in the local authority. This grounded theory study draws upon the unique perspective and experience of this team in order to understand what factors they perceive to induce and constrain the successful reintegration of CYP, from coaching families, to school after a period of PSNA. A theoretical framework, based upon their combined experiences, is set out in order to help inform future work within the local context and beyond. This emphasises the importance of ensuring that CYP feel safe in their family home, as the key focus of successful coaching intervention.

Abstract This study examines the relationship between theory and practice in the science of education. In the first part of the study, theorists’ views about the relationship are examined in three continental orientations of pedagogy or science of education: hermeneutic-humanistic pedagogy (geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik), empirical-analytic science of education and critical pedagogy. In the context of empirical-analytic orientation, the science of education takes the shape of a technical discipline allowing practitioners of education to make diagnoses, prognoses, and technical prognoses. However, in reality the practical application of empirical-analytic knowledge about education is a highly complex and demanding enterprise. In hermeneutic-humanistic pedagogy and critical pedagogy, the relationship between theory and practice is more clearly structured according to the notion of practical or moral science. For pedagogy or science of education, it is not sufficient to merely describe or interpret phenomena of education and their socio-historical context. Education must also have orientation, and educational theories are to serve possible or future practice. In the second part of the study, drawing from the interviews of practitioners from various fields of education, five practitioner’s views about the relationship between theory and practice in education are reconstructed. According to the first view, the source of the problems concerning the relationship between theory and practice in education lies in the questionable scientific status of the science of education and educational theories. The core of the second practitioner’s view is that the problems encountered when applying educational theories to practice stem from the failure of the science of education to acknowledge the pedagogical difference between educational theory and practice. The third practitioner’s view holds that in order to act in the practice of education, the practitioner must focus reflection on the task at hand. The fourth practitioner’s view reconstructed in this study is a notion about the unrealistic and unempirical character of educational theories: instead of describing what really happens in the practice of education, educational theories often outline the actions of ideal educators and subjects of education. According to the fifth practitioner’s view, the practitioner must function as the personal and individual element bridging the gap between theory and practice. / Tiivistelmä Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan kasvatustieteen teoria–käytäntö-suhdetta. Työn alkuosassa eritellään teoria–käytäntö-suhdetta koskevia teoreetikkojen näkemyksiä henkitieteellisessä pedagogiikassa, empiiris-analyyttisessa kasvatustieteessä ja kriittisessä kasvatustieteessä. Empiiris-analyyttisesta kasvatustieteestä on muodostunut teknologinen tiede, jonka avulla käytännön kasvattajien on periaatteessa mahdollista diagnosoida, prognosoida ja teknisesti prognosoida. Empiiris-analyyttisen kasvatusta koskevan tiedon soveltaminen käytäntöön on kuitenkin todellisuudessa huomattavan monimutkaista. Henkitieteellisessä pedagogiikassa ja kriittisessä kasvatustieteessä teoria–käytäntö-suhde on rakentunut edellistä selvemmin praktisen tieteen mallin mukaiseksi. Kasvatustieteen tai tieteellisen pedagogiikan osalta ei tällöin riitä, että tutkimuskohteena olevaa toimintaa ja sen yhteiskunnallis-historiallista kontekstia vain kuvataan tai tulkitaan. Pedagogista toimintaa on myös orientoitava, ja teorioiden on palveltava mahdollista tai tulevaa inhimillistä käytäntöä. Tutkimuksen loppuosassa rekonstruoidaan kasvatuksen eri alueilla toimivilta kerätyn empiirisen haastatteluaineiston perusteella viisi praktikon näkemystä kasvatustieteen teoria–käytäntö-suhteesta. Ensimmäisen näkemyksen mukaan kasvatustieteen teoria–käytäntö-suhteen ongelmien alkulähteenä on kyseenalainen tieteellinen status. Toisessa näkemyksessä teoria–käytäntö-suhteen ongelmat seuraavat kasvatustieteen epäonnistumisesta paikanmäärityksessään pedagogisen differenssin suhteen. Kolmannen näkemyksen yhteydessä esitetään ajatus siitä, että jotta pedagoginen toiminta käytännössä olisi mahdollista, on reflektio välttämättä tarkennettava käytännön toiminnassa käsillä olevaan kohteeseen. Neljäs praktikon näkemys on ajattelutapa, jonka mukaan kasvatustieteelliset teoriat ovat epärealistisia ja epäempiirisiä: ne kuvaavat reaalisen sijaan idealisoidun kasvattajan ja idealisoitujen kasvatettavien toimintaa. Viides praktikon näkemys kiteytyy ajatukseen siitä, että praktikko itse on teoriaa ja käytäntöä välittävä persoonallinen ja yksilöllinen silta.

A growing body of research has argued that university citizenship curricula are inefficient in promoting civic participation, while there is a tendency towards a broader citizenship understanding and new forms of civic engagements and citizenship learning in everyday life. The notion of cultural citizenship in this thesis concentrates on media practices’ relation to civic expression and civic engagement. This research thus argues that not enough attention has been paid to the effects of citizenship education policy on students and students’ active citizenship learning in China. This thesis examines the civic experience of university students in China in the parallel contexts of widespread adoption of mass media and of university citizenship education courses, which have been explicitly mandatory for promoting civic morality education in Chinese universities since 2007. This research project raises significant questions about the meditating influences of these two contexts on students’ perceptions of civic knowledge and civic participation, with particular interest to examine whether and how the notion of cultural citizenship could be applied in the Chinese context and whether it could provide certain implications for citizenship education in China. University students in one university in Beijing contributed to this research by providing both quantitative and qualitative data collected from mixed-methods research. 212 participants contributed to the questionnaire data collection and 12 students took part in interviews. Guided by the theoretical framework of cultural citizenship, a central focus of this study is to explore whether new forms of civic engagement and civic learning and a new direction of citizenship understanding can be identified among university students’ mass media use. The study examines the patterns of students’ mass media use and its relationship to civic participation, and also explores the ways in which mass media shape students and how they interact and perform through the media use. In addition, this study discusses questions about how national context, citizenship tradition and civic education curricula relate to students’ civic perceptions, civic participation and civic motivation in their enactment of cultural citizenship. It thus tries to provide insights and identify problems associated with citizenship courses in Chinese universities. The research finds that Chinese university students can also identify civic issues and engage in civic participation through the influence of mass media, thus indicating the application of cultural citizenship in the wider higher education arena in China. In particular, the findings demonstrate that students’ citizenship knowledge has been influenced by their entertainment experiences with TV programs, social networks and movies. However, the study argues that the full enactment of cultural citizenship in China is conditional with regards to characteristics related to two prerequisites: the quality of participation and the influence of the public sphere in the Chinese context. Most students in the study are found to be inactive civic participants in their everyday lives, especially in political participation. Students express their willingness to take part in civic activities, but they feel constrained by both the current citizenship education curriculum in universities and the strict national policy framework. They mainly choose to accept ideological and political education for the sake of personal development rather than to actively resist it, however, they employ creative ways online to express civic opinions and conduct civic discussion. This can be conceptualised as the cultural dimension of citizenship observed from students who are not passively prescribed by traditional citizenship but who have opportunities to build their own civic understanding in everyday life. These findings lead to the conclusion that the notion of cultural citizenship not only provides a new mode of civic learning for Chinese students but also offers a new direction for configuring citizenship in China. This study enriches the existing global literature on cultural citizenship by providing contemporary evidence from China which is a developing democratic country, as well as offering useful information for Chinese university practitioners, policy makers and citizenship researchers on possible directions for citizenship understanding and citizenship education. In particular, it indicates that it is important for efforts to be made to generate a culture of authentic civic participation for students in the university as well as to promote the development of the public sphere in the community and the country generally.

Within the socio-cultural school of thought, Galperin, was influenced by Vygotsky’s theory of mind. Following Vygotsky’s argument about the leading role of instruction within the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), Galperin developed an instructional approach, known as Systemic Theoretical Instruction (STI), which encourages the active construction of materialized concepts and their monitored transformation into mental processes in order to foster development. Following from this, the present thesis aimed at investigating a) how knowledge at a conceptual level can be fostered and supported online, b) the affordances of an online (Moodle-based) Pedagogic Unit to potentially foster L2 English online academic training with specific reference to Applied Linguistics terminology (although the findings could be applicable to other disciplines as well) c) the effectiveness of the online scaffolding mechanisms that were developed for each online task and d) the students’ views with regards to all the previous. To this end, this study adopted an exploratory qualitative approach and collected various types of data to support conceptual development among 13 UK based L2 learners who were pursuing postgraduate studies. Importantly, while existing STI investigations have employed mainly qualitative data, the analysis conducted for this study included both quantitative and qualitative methods such as introspection techniques, recorded interviews, pre-post interview tasks, concept-mapping, online Moodle tasks and questionnaires, screen-captures and audio recordings of the online activities. The findings revealed that the Moodle unit was a suitable environment in fostering the students’ conceptual development and that specific scaffolding features and types of tasks have contributed towards this. Furthermore, this study contributes to the growing body of research into the potential role of scaffolding to enhance ZPDs in online environments in order to facilitate the L2 learners’ English for Academic Purposes training. It also sheds light into the affordances of STI and online environments to develop the students’ academic speaking and reading skills which, ultimately, contribute to overall conceptual development. Finally, it highlights the potential role of verbalisation (through introspection tasks, use of concept maps and oral presentations) as a means of both fostering and assessing conceptual development.

During the nineteenth century, as today, nausea and vomiting were common signs and symptoms of illness, the interpretation of which contributed to doctors' diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic choices. At the core of this thesis lies the research question: how did medical understandings and management of nausea and vomiting change in the period 1800-1900? In addition to being signs of bodily disorder, nausea and vomiting constituted an individual, typically non-medicalised experience of sickness. As such, a secondary thesis question is: how were nausea and vomiting experienced, interpreted and responded to by sufferers? These questions are pursued through four key themes: physiology, vomit analysis, morning sickness and sea-sickness. Medical textbooks, journals, hospital case reports, newspapers, letters and diaries are the principal source base. Throughout the nineteenth century physiological explanations for nausea and vomiting followed a generally reductionist path. In the 1830s Marshall Hall's reflex theory encouraged new perceptions of the nervous mechanisms involved in nausea and vomiting, and helped stimulate their redefinition into local, central and peripheral causes. Changing physiological explanations for nausea and vomiting were also contemporaneous to the growth of microscopy. This thesis draws attention to the interest nineteenth-century practitioners showed in using vomited matters as pathological fluids. This is explored primarily through a case study of sarcina ventriculi, a vegetable microorganism discovered in fermenting vomit. Responses to this discovery showed that laboratory techniques were largely inapplicable to everyday occurrences of nausea and vomiting. Consequently, neither the increasing localisation of the causes of vomiting, nor interest in vomited matters as pathological fluids, contributed to specificity in diagnoses or treatments. This research thereby demonstrates the cumulative and overlapping nature of nineteenth-century medical cosmologies - 'bedside', 'hospital' and 'laboratory' - and the continuation of the 'clinical art'. The histories of morning sickness and sea-sickness contextualise medical understandings of nausea and vomiting in relation to these transient conditions. They bring to the fore perceptions of health and sickness and show that medical theory was often secondary to cultural beliefs and practices. Specifically, this thesis questions the medicalisation of pregnancy during the nineteenth century and uses experiences of sea-sickness to reveal new features of Victorian understandings of the mind-body relationship. This thesis shows that 'feeling sick' (nausea) was arguably as significant to contemporaries as actually 'being sick' (vomiting). It also confirms the complexity and fluidity of taken-for-granted terms such as: 'patient', 'sufferer', 'disease', 'illness' 'sign' and 'symptom', and, of course, 'sick'. Furthermore, it demonstrates the importance to historians of studying everyday, self-limiting illnesses and morbidity.

Thesis advisor: Jane M. Flanagan / Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore nurses’ experiences of Watson’s Theory of Human Caring Caritas Process Three: Cultivation of One’s Own Spiritual Practices and Transpersonal Self, Beyond Ego-Self. Background: There is currently an inadequacy of spiritual care provided to patients and families in the ICU despite a significant articulated need. Nurses report discomfort with and a lack of preparation in providing spiritual care competently. Nurses with strong personal spiritual development are more likely to report comfort with spiritual caregiving and provide spiritual care. Watson’s Theory of Human Caring Caritas Process Three; Cultivation of One’s Own Spiritual Practice and Transpersonal Self, Going Beyond Ego-Self makes explicit the primacy of relationship between nurse spiritual development and transpersonal spiritual nursing care. However, the nature of spiritual development of nurses in the ICU remains unknown. Methods: A qualitative descriptive methodology with directed content analysis applying Watson’s Caritas Process Three was used to analyze data for this study. Results: Ten ICU Nurses provided evidence of the experience of Caritas Process Three. Five themes were identified in the analysis of data: Caritas nurses vary in their ability to move beyond ego-self, Personal spiritual practices serve as a barrier and/or facilitator to nurses’ ability to provide spiritual care, Critical illness as experienced by patients and families provided the opportunity for nurses to explore spirituality with other, The care environment serves as a barrier and/or facilitator to nurses’ personal spiritual growth, and Cultivation of spiritual practice and spiritual identity is integral to a life-long process of consciousness evolution. Conclusions: The findings of this study extend and inform Caritas Process Three of Watson’s Theory of Human Caring. Nurses in this study provide evidence for the primacy of personal spiritual development for the delivery of spiritual and transpersonal care for patients in the ICU. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing. / Discipline: Nursing.

This thesis consists of two studies, described in two papers, and a re-analysis of data from these studies. The aim is to broaden the knowledge about what contributions a learning theory, variation theory (Marton, 2015), can give to teachers’ teaching practice. The studies have an action research approach (Elliot, 1991). Data was generated in the two studies with two different “teacher groups” having different learning goals for their students. Each group consisted of a researcher and five mathematic teachers. Variation theory was used as a theoretical tool to plan, teach and assess teaching in the context of a Professional Learning Community (PLC) called Subject Didactic Groups. The empirical data consists of audio recordings and documentations from meetings with one of the teacher groups as well as video recordings from student interviews and one of the teachers teaching, in the other group. The thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) resulted in the following themes: With variation theory as a theoretical tool the teachers could a) specify what the students needed to learn, b) design and teach tasks that afforded possibilities for the students to learn what was identified as necessary to learn and c) focus on and assess qualities in the students answers. This study suggests that variation theory is a learning theory that has bearing on teachers’ teaching practice.

The field practicum is designed to offer students the opportunity to integrate knowledge and practice prior to graduation; however, students continue to lack the ability to connect theory to practice within the field practicum. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the beliefs, attitudes, and perspectives of social work students regarding the application of theory to practice within the field practicum. The conceptual framework included concepts of empowerment, empowerment theory, and social constructivism. The research question addressed how social work students at a local university described the issues related to connecting theory to practice within the field practicum. Data collection involved interviews with 6 social work practicum students, observations, and document analysis. Data were coded and analyzed to identify 4 themes: learned theories, concerns, theory to practice, and student beliefs related to theory and practice. Findings confirmed students' inability to connect theory to practice. Findings were used to develop a project incorporating simulated learning environments in social work curricula to increase the connection of theory to practice. Findings may be used to enhance students' ability to integrate theory into practice, which may strengthen the profession of social work through improved service delivery at local, state, national, and global levels.

Effective leadership in Islamic schools involves the incorporation of Islamic principles in the leadership behaviors and practices. With so much literature about the need of Islamic leadership in Islamic institutions in the United States, the problem addressed by the study was whether school principals in Islamic schools exhibited and led these schools according to the principles of Islamic leadership. The study described leadership approaches used by school principals in Islamic schools and how those leadership approaches were influenced by Islamic leadership principles, comparing the Islamic leadership principles derived from the literature with the leadership principles of principals of Islamic schools. A complete population of 12 Islamic school principals in the state of Michigan participated in the study. Data was obtained by individual, face-to-face interviews to get rich descriptive information about their leadership approaches, trait, styles, and principles.

The ancient canons are regarded as a collection of texts with almost the same status as the biblical text in the Easter Orthodox Church. The corpus has therefore a firm position in the identity of this church-tradition and is recognized as how faith, expressed in the gospels should be lived in ecclesial practice. How the ancient canons should be applied or used in contemporary ecclesial practice has been challenged in modernity. This thesis addresses how some scholars have faced this challenge answering how the canons could be relevant to contemporary ecclesial practice. More precise, it evaluates some answers to the question of relevance after (what we could regard as the first answer in modernity) the Scholastic school. The Scholastic school is approaching the canons more or less as formalist law. This has stirred justified reactions by a stream of scholars in the field. In the present study three such reactions is considered in the works of John H Erickson, Andrey Shishkov and David Wagschal. The basic argument of the thesis is, to better answer question of relevance, a new paradigm needs to be introduced, distinguishing between social identity and discursive practice. This means to accept “a space of uncertainty” letting go of the ambition to apply the ancient canons and instead give space to contemporary life situations to be informed by them. The tension between the past and the present is managed by an understanding of canon law as a substantive justice system in which the ancient canons belongs a realm of identity, and canon law as an outcome of discursive practice. In the end we could suggest that “the space of uncertainty” needs to be managed by an institution.