This research explores the attitudes of a group of Postgraduate Certificate in Education citizenship student teachers in London in 2012 towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues in education; their own perceptions of their abilities to deal with LGBT education within schools; the training they have received from their teacher training institutions in this area; and how this training may be improved in the future. The research was carried out using a written response questionnaire and five vignette scenarios to which the trainees had to respond. The findings are discussed under themes including the awareness of LGBT legislation in education; preparedness for, confidence in and the importance of LGBT education; and teacher training in this area. References to legislation from 1967 to 2013, including the Equality Act 2010, are made, and Banks‟s (2004) Dimensions of Multicultural Education model is drawn upon to suggest possible developments in teacher training in this area. The research finds that the trainee teachers have a strong sense of commitment and genuine determination towards addressing issues of homophobia and they express the importance of equality within schools on this issue. However, many also feel unprepared in regard to their knowledge and the strategies they can use when approaching some LGBT issues, expressing anxieties in certain situations, especially those which cannot be easily planned for, such as delivering the topic within lessons. The research therefore argues for improvements in LGBT training for postgraduate students as they prepare to enter the profession.

This empirical study, set in secondary school classrooms, examines theoretical constructs around ownership practices: looking at how personal significance and interest affect effort investment, how the role of the teacher and contextual approaches to learning provide incentives to pursue ownership and how active possession can be enhanced through opportunities for self-determined choice with tools to understand learning strategies. This study focuses mainly on the initial stages of nurturing skills towards a sense of ownership and is more about building confidence in taking steps towards controlling learning through self-regulation, process orientated approaches to improvement and help seeking strategies. Sample groups from six domains undertook the full study providing data through questionnaires completed by students at the beginning and end of the study, semi-structured interviews and observations to monitor interventions implemented by teachers, and reflective group interviews with students at the end of the study. Based on the data collected by the questionnaires and interviews, the strongest contributors to perceived change were: setting learning activities into the context of personal goals and involving students in co-constructing new knowledge; provision of choice, expectations of a readiness to learn, scaffolding and tools for managing tasks proactively; personal impact on achievement through proactive help-seeking; and action based process orientated feedback through honest, positive appraisal. The evidence provided by the data suggested that student’ attitudes towards taking ownership for their learning altered as a consequence of the interventions and the impact was not related to gender, IQ or social background. Teachers reported changes in motivation towards taking ownership in individual students, higher levels of achievement being attained than previously expected, and positive changes in whole class attitudes and learning behaviours. Taken as a whole, the data suggested a positive trend towards improvements in the quality of learning in the classroom and students taking greater active possession (ownership) of their learning.

Cognitive Acceleration (CA) Intervention Programmes claim to raise children’s thinking abilities. Evidence from cognitive tests suggests that participants achieve a higher level of thinking by the end of the Year 1 Programme and better results the following year in National Standard Attainment Tests than non- participants. However, test results measuring impact neither inform teachers about how to improve their pedagogy nor give any insights into how the children experience being learners during CA lessons. A constructivist approach is used in this two year study to better understand the children’s perspective on learning within the CA Programme. Interviews where children have opportunities to express their personal constructs afford insights into their understanding of learning during lessons. The impact of CA on children’s developing personal constructs regarding what helps learning is considered. Observations of CA lessons provide insights into the way teachers actualise the CA pedagogy and the way in which children respond within the lessons. The participants of the first year of this study are one group of six children from each of six classes - four CA classes and their four teachers and two non-CA classes and their two teachers. The participants of the second year are one group of six children from each of the same four CA teachers. Interviews reveal how the teachers understand what helps children learn. At the end of the first year the four CA teachers participate in a short intervention. This provided opportunities for the teachers to discuss the children’s constructs to inform the teachers’ understanding of the learning process with a view to using this information to improve teaching. Analyses of observations reveal differences in the actualisation of the CA pedagogy in each class. At the end of the first year, analyses of personal constructs indicate that CA participant children participating verbalise their understanding of learning very differently from non-CA participant children indicating that the CA Progamme has made a substantial difference to the children’s awareness of being a learner and their ability to articulate their ideas. Analyses of personal constructs in the second year of the study indicate that the children are more conscious of the CA pedagogy helping them to learn. Also, results from CA lesson observations in the second year indicate that the teachers have made substantial changes to their pedagogy in line with CA theory which gives support to the belief that understanding the children’s perspectives holds practical implications for teachers in order to maximise children’s thinking abilities through the CA Programme. This study adds a new dimension to the CA literature. This is the first time that the impact of CA is considered through the voices of Year 1 children. In addition, the teachers demonstrate improved pedagogy subsequent to listening to children’s lived experience and set themselves personal targets to implement their new understanding.

This research explores aspects of emerging pedagogy in the work of seven members of faculty across disciplines, in three English higher education institutions. It takes place in a context of changing global and national circumstances and contributes insights into pedagogy as it is enacted under the distortion of market forces and the commodification of education. A case study approach, underpinned by critical realism is used to analyse participants’ pedagogic endeavours. This is combined with a multi-level consideration of the global, national and institutional processes influential in each case. To overcome the epistemological challenges involved with dealing with the complexity of the myriad possible influences, methodological features of the research involve the use of retroduction and abductive inference. Features of agency, of human knowledge and pedagogy and of the changing nature of higher education are analysed by identifying structures as having interacting social, cultural and material aspects within a stratified reality. An Archerian morphogenetic approach reveals structure and agency interactions over time in participants’ accounts. The study finds that, in spite of adverse conditions, there is a richness and depth to participants’ understanding and facilitation of their students’ learning. Participants draw upon significant internal resources to overcome the problems faced in teaching. Pedagogic approaches that are most distorted, under the drive to commodify and marketise aspects of higher education, are those that allow students to develop their own practices within the discipline they are entering, and to reformulate external knowledge for themselves within their own unfolding experiences. This study claims that the use of critical realism has been an extremely fruitful way to analyse emergent aspects of participants’ pedagogy within the current complex and shifting terrain of English higher education.

The thesis addresses a relatively under-explored area in this field of study within the socio-constructivist paradigm. The main aim is to investigate how 9-year-old school children visualize habitat dioramas to build a mental model, how they make sense of the dioramas to understand local flora and fauna, and how previous knowledge influences the way they visualise habitat dioramas. Data collected included a first drawing done in class, a second drawing done at the Natural History Museum before and a third following the viewing of the habitat dioramas. Each pupil was interviewed after the respective task to allow for a comprehensive description of the content of the drawings. The children we also asked to produce a web (mind map) and they were also observed as they interacted with the dioramas. Data was mainly analysed qualitatively through direct examination of the drawings and with the aid of the computer package Atlas.ti. Some general trends emerge in the findings such as animals being more present in drawings than plants. Animal diversity ranks in decreasing order from birds, mammals, arthropods and fish to reptiles, while plants are mainly seeded and ornamental. Generally drawings progress from imaginative in class and before seeing the diorama, to increasingly drawing from observation in the diorama drawings. More significantly, pupils undergo a transformation through their drawings, which may show a change from isolated organisms on a sheet of paper to greater elaboration or better accuracy in placing organisms in habitat. However, others show an opposite transformation or no significant change at all. To a certain extent, children seem to interpret the diorama through the lens of their previously held mental model. What children already know partly influences what they choose to represent, but they also accommodate new knowledge they obtain from the diorama. Dioramas that help recall familiar environments are more likely to capture attention and afford a longer viewing time, thus imparting new knowledge and moulding the child’s mental model. Habitat dioramas have the potential to serve as models for learning in Biology and Environmental Education at primary level. An interpretative model for museum settings is proposed, while its potential applications in other areas of science education and limitations are considered.

The aim of this research study was to explore strategies for reducing student alienation in comprehensive high schools. In the first instance, the study investigated three major high school reports, one in Britain and two in Australia, commissioned in the early 1980's. Curriculum strategies were believed to be the possible way forward in reducing student alienation but early in the research it became clear that curriculum strategies on their own were not enough. As such, a selection of strategies was determined from the literature and a model for the reduction of student alienation developed. Surveys of over 2500 students were analysed and a longitudinal case study of the implementation of the model in a comprehensive high school followed. Initial research identified a fundamental weakness with the over-all approach taken in the reports. The established structures of the comprehensive high school tended to dominate over the new strategies. Individual strategies for reducing alienation were in the main ad hoc additions to the existing structure of the school. The research undertaken endeavoured to show that strategies for reducing student alienation can only be effective using an integrated approach, implying a new approach for the school and the system itself. The alignment model as developed has the potential to change the alienating features of a school. Ideally the impact of such an integrated strategic approach on policy, operations, curriculum, and relationships as well as system support and physical resources needs to be undertaken in such a way as to produce a positive comparative advantage for all students, teachers and parents of the school. For the principal of a comprehensive high school this offers an alternative management of change approach to the needs deficiency or system directed approaches.

The general theme is the experience of the Curriculum Development Unit as a case study in innovation in modern Irish education. The main time span is 1972-1987. The approach is broadly historical. The story of the Curriculum Development Unit is told in the context of what was happening in the Irish educational system during the period in question and, more broadly, in the context of the political and social development of contemporary Ireland. Against this background the Unit's experience is assessed - as an illustration of the influence of certain national events and also for the light that the development of the Unit itself can throw on these events. Two main research questions are addressed in the dissertation: What is the story underlying the Unit's efforts to institutionalise itself? How may this story be told by one of the principal actors involved? The focus of the research is on the efforts to institutionalise the innovative activities of the Unit. The main thesis is that this effort has largely failed mainly because of the strong centralising tendencies in the Irish system and the improbable nature of the Unit's sponsorship - a partnership between the local education authority, a university and a Government ministry. This is not to belittle the Unit's achievements; these perhaps have been all the more significant given the failure to institutionalise the Unit. The Unit may yet prove to be an interesting example of a phenomenon that is in keeping with the late twentieth century - an ad hoc body with no guarantee of survival, which manages to exist and even prosper in situations where more stable organisations are falling by the wayside.

This thesis addresses a specific aspect of geography in school education, the role of geographic information systems (GIS) in supporting relational understanding of place. It does this by combining a literature-based conceptual analysis with schools-based empirical enquiry. The main research question that steers the thesis is: What role does GIS play in constructing relational knowledge about place through school geography education? The research offers new insights on the ways in which teachers can use GIS in geography education to construct relational knowledge about place. Following a discussion of place, relational knowledge and GIS in both academic and school geography, a methodology for the research is fully explained and justified. A qualitative enquiry approach is adopted via a multi-staged design consisting of case study and practitioner research. Analysis of interviews with teachers and pupils, lesson observations and document analyses yields ‘thick description’ of constructing place knowledge through GIS. A synthesis of the conceptual and empirical analyses provides the basis for a discussion of findings. Findings identify GIS as a powerful medium for relational spatial analysis in school geography but also reveal its limitations on relational constructions and interpretations of place. A model of geographical knowledge construction in GIS is presented as a device for developing teachers’ critical engagement with GIS in school geography. The thesis concludes with a critical evaluation and recommendations for future study.

Postmodernism is often used as the signifier for the fashionable drift into relativism and unseriousness within Western philosophy. Conference after conference, article after article, book after book have appeared describing, denouncing or celebrating the postmodern condition. Within in this context, critical realism has, by and large, positioned itself against the postmodern turn. This project re-evaluates this stance. Against the critiques which have been levelled at postmodernism I will argue that critical realism is theoretically best placed to mediate the various postmodern positions and concerns by developing a reading of critical realism which places critical realism firmly within the context of postmodernism as an alternate postmodernism. Yet if critical realism can be understood within postmodernism, postmodernism can equally be understood within a more encompassing, more mediated realism. The task then is to find a new language which brings together Apollo and Dionysus, moving towards perspectival realism and a scientific anarchism concerned with the possibility and limitations of representing a complex world characterised by intensity, difference and becoming.

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