Josiah Tucker, who was the Anglican Dean of Gloucester from 1758 until his death in 1799, is best known as a political pamphleteer, controversialist and political economist. Regularly called upon by Britain's leading statesmen, and most significantly the Younger Pitt, to advise them on the best course of British economic development, in a large variety of writings he speculated on the consequences of North American independence for the global economy and for international relations; upon the complicated relations between small and large states; and on the related issue of whether low wage costs in poor countries might always erode the competitive advantage of richer nations, thereby establishing perpetual cycles of rise and decline. As a vehement critic of war in all its forms, Tucker was a staunch opponent of Britain's mercantile system – a pejorative term connoting, amongst other things, the aggressive control of global trade for the benefit of the mother country so as to encourage imperial expansion throughout known parts of the world. Though recognising Tucker to be a pioneer of the anti-mercantilist free trade school, extant Tucker scholarship has tended to concentrate on the perceived similarities and dissimilarities between he and the classical economists, particularly Adam Smith. Yet whilst acknowledging the veracity of these various connections and claims, this thesis approaches Tucker from an alternative perspective. Placing Tucker in his proper historical context, the main purpose of this study is to explore the intellectual, political and theo-philosophical background to Tucker's economic thought. Its most original and profound contribution consisting in a detailed and critical analysis of Tucker's links with his ecclesiastical mentor Bishop Joseph Butler, its central concern is to argue the case for Butler's crucial influence over Tucker's free trade ideas – particularly in the guise of the neo-Stoic, Anglican providentialism that buttressed much of Butler's own theories in the field of meta-ethics and moral philosophy.

Hans Kohn (1891-1971) continues to be considered as a founding father of the academic research on, and interpretation of, nationalism. In more than thirty books and hundreds of articles he outlined his theory of this worldwide phenomenon. His theory is well-known as the so called “Kohn Dichotomy”. Based on the main categories of West and East, understood as metaphors and not geographic locations, he differentiated between two forms of nationalism: The Western model, based on the 18th century Enlightenment, emphasized rationality and individual liberty as the basis of progress, tending to limit the state power and aiming at world unity. Its non-Western (Eastern) counterpart is characterized by a reaction against the Enlightenment: it is irrational and romantic, and it glorifies the state power, tending to narrow and exclusivist views. However, Kohn was more than just a theoretician of nationalism – he spent the first half of his life as an active and influential member of the Jewish national movement. As a Zionist he advocated a concept of ethical nationalism that would take the rights of other peoples, particularly the Arab population in Palestine, into consideration. Contemporary research views Kohn either as a theoretician of nationalism or as a Zionist. Therefore, this study is the first attempt to present Kohn's intellectual biography by emphasizing both dimensions. Based on and intertwined with the four main stages of Kohn's life – his youth in Prague (1891-1914), as a prisoner of war in Russia (1915- 1920), as a Zionist in London and Palestine (1921-1934) as well as an academic researcher in the United States of America (1934-1971) – it examines the main threads of his thinking. The leading interpretative idea of this thesis is that throughout his life Kohn kept the conviction that nationalism based on ethical grounds can be a positive force leading to the unity of the world.

High-quality preschool education produces substantial long-term educational, social, and economic benefits, but large benefits occur only when teachers are professionally prepared and adequately compensated. Qualifying the teacher candidates depends on many interrelated components of a teacher education. The aim of this study is to evaluate the student selection policy, decision-making policy, recruitment policy, teacher candidates&rsquo / educational profiles, faculty development and assignment policy, curriculum and instruction, and the graduates&rsquo / competences from the perspectives of the faculty members in the preschool teacher education program. For this purpose, decision-oriented program evaluation CIPP model is taken as a framework. In order to reach in-depth and detailed information from the participants, study is designed as a qualitative phenomenological research. Participants are selected through purposeful sampling strategies that include criterion sampling and snowball sampling procedures from the population of 150 academicians in the 55 preschool teacher education program in Turkey. Data is collected through semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaires from 58 participants. According to the content analysis, findings indicated that there is need for the additional tests in the student selection, improvement in the faculty development policy, accreditation, faculty initiative in curriculum planning and implementing, alternative strategies in practicum, and collaboration of the local authorities and the faculties in the recruitment policy of the graduates. In this respect, it is believed that the findings will pave the way for the program developers to reform the program accordingly, will give further insights about the real experiences of the academicians and take their suggestions to improve the program and will help the researchers to raise some new questions about the preschool teacher education program to investigate.

High-quality preschool education produces substantial long-term educational,social, and economic benefits, but large benefits occur only when teachers are professionally prepared and adequately compensated. Qualifying the teacher candidates depends on many interrelated components of a teacher education. The aim of this study is to evaluate the student selection policy, decision-making policy, recruitment policy, teacher candidates&rsquo / educational profiles, faculty development and assignment policy, curriculum and instruction, and the graduates&rsquo / competences from the perspectives of the faculty members in the preschool teacher education program. For this purpose, decision-oriented program evaluation CIPP model is taken as a framework. In order to reach in-depth and detailed information from the participants, study is designed as a qualitative phenomenological research. Participants are selected through purposeful sampling strategies that include criterion sampling and snowball sampling procedures from the population of 150 academicians in the 55 preschool teacher education program in Turkey. Data is collected through semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaires from 58 participants. According to the content analysis, findings indicated that there is need for the additional tests in the student selection, improvement in the faculty development policy, accreditation, faculty initiative in curriculum planning and implementing, alternative strategies in practicum, and collaboration of the local authorities and the faculties in the recruitment policy of the graduates. In this respect, it is believed that the findings will pave the way for the program developers to reform the program accordingly, will give further insights about the real experiences of the academicians and take their suggestions to improve the program and will help the researchers to raise some new questions about the preschool teacher education program to investigate.