The concern of this research is the theory and practice of the National Curriculum that was established in law in England and Wales through the passing of the Education Reform Act (ERA) of 1988. Its contribution to knowledge lies first in my close textual analysis of the government's theoretical exposition of its proposed National Curriculum in The National Curriculum: a consultation document (DES, 1987). Its major contribution is to pursue the principal question through three years of field research of the practice of implementation in a London borough's county high schools. The theory is examined through a study of the documents which accompanied this legislative proposal, and analysed both through reference to the rhetoric specific to the proposal, and other relevant and contemporary literature. I endeavour to establish the origins and implications of the accompanying justifying rhetoric. I focus in particular on the concepts of entitlement and differentiation, frequently employed throughout the proposal and other supporting official documentation, and used both in justification and explanation of what was to be done. I pursue the suggestion of the existence of a gap between the rhetoric of this proposal and the political intentions of the government first through a consideration of the political and educational context of the proposal's emergence. Then I attempt to reveal some of the subsequent reality of implementation through the field research. ii These findings are discussed with reference both to my earlier analysis of the proposals, and the political context from which they emerged. The extent to which the political programme of the Conservative Party, including its policies on education, depended upon the appropriation of language for its justifying rhetoric, and hence legitimation of its activities, is considered throughout.

There are many findings about children's spontaneous reasoning in dynamics. These studies suggest that a non-Newtonian framework is used by students across a large age range but there is controversy as to whether pupils' conceptions represent systematic mental structures or temporary constructions. Ogborn (1985) constructed a theory of commonsense understanding of motion, which proposes a definite structure of thinking. Unlike much previous work, his theory is susceptible to testing. This research sets out to test this hypothesis about the content and nature of commonsense ideas of motion. After preliminary work using interviews and repertory grids, a formal model of the theory was constructed which provided the basis for the collection of data in the main study. The adoption of a causal model of motion provided a template for linking primitive abstractions such as effort and support in a natural way. In order to test a large number and wide age range of subjects (7 - 16 years), a matching pairs paper and pencil task was developed for the main study. Subjects were asked to distinguish between examples of nine stereotypical motions by comparing the similarity or difference of the causes of pairs of motions. It was then possible to test theoretical predictions of the comparisons against empirical data. The results suggest that people's responses can be predicted by the model but that there is an improvement in the correlations with the additon of an animacy correction. An independent test was carried out where the animate nature of moving objects was varied systematically and it was found that this feature, previously neglected by the theoretical account, was an important distinction in subjects' consideration of causes of motion. As predicted, the results were similar over a considerable age range, being however better for older children than the younger ones. Taking account both of these results and of Piaget's description of the sensori-motor period of child development, a new version of the model is proposed, and tested against the available data.

Within a growing body of research there is a tendency towards a depoliticisation of citizenship education (CE) which seems to be replicated by different programs in school. In this thesis, however, I argue for CE that engages with a political perspective through the enhancement of students’ experiences of participation within their daily contexts, particularly the school. The argument develops from an in-depth analysis of students’ representations of political participation (PP) and a consideration of implications for CE in Mexico City’s secondary schools. Based on a mixed methodology that included qualitative work in two schools from contrasting delegaciones (municipalities) of Mexico City, and a representative survey (n=828) of third grade students from all the general secondary schools in these two areas, the thesis finds that students experience a general condition of exclusion from PP. They are largely excluded from a) their own representation of PP, b) the curricular characterisation of PP, and c) quality participation in their schools, families, and broader communities. This account coexists, however, with an ideal characterisation of PP embraced by students and teachers, which reaches its highest level in the curriculum of Civic and Ethical Formation. It turns considerably idealistic due to the lack of practical instrumentation and a strong discrepancy with participants’ representations of actual student involvement in school. Thus, the expected distance in education between real and ideal becomes nonsense. As the ideal is no longer an achievable point of reference, it loses the capacity of orienting a significant pedagogical practice. One of the main consequences of this gap is that students, teachers and principals learn the puerile and politically correct discourse about democracy and student participation. Simultaneously they are socialised into a rather authoritarian school system, where democracy is a marginal and sporadic phenomenon. In spite of this situation that reflects the current priorities of secondary schools, the thesis shows that students’ participation in school is a key factor to developing a virtuous circle of participation with the family and broader communities. For this purpose, enhancing quality political participation in school is vital. I call this the politicisation of CE. While previous works identify PP with the domain of politics, or dissolves any distinctive meaning by ambiguously interchanging the term with others like civic engagement, the thesis provides a more meaningful theoretical approach, clearly inclusive of adolescents, and specially thought to be enacted in the school. It is proposed that its performance entails the construction of a ‘school of proximal development’, the scaffold through which students’ politicity can evolve in an authentic, autonomous and efficacious way.

This thesis reports on the way in which action research techniques %% ere used to conduct a two-year programme of commissioned research. This programme consisted of a brief in two phases from the English National Board for Nursing Midwifery and Health Visiting to develop performance indicators (PIs) for training institutions on a national basis. The substantive research findings are reported. and the contribution of particular aspects of action research to the research project are evaluated, with reference both to the literature on performance monitoring in the public sector and the literature on educational action research. The research findings from a first phase of work show that terminology about performance monitoring is confused, especially with respect to distinctions between "qualitative" and "quantitative" issues. They also show that much current practice neglects important ethical issues such as potentially conflicting models of accountability. An analytic framework is therefore proposed for clarifying various aspects of this terminology and incorporating an ethical dimension which locates information systems within a context of differing and possibly competing interests. The thesis then describes how this framework was used to develop a second phase of research within a policy environment which had, by that time, become highly unstable. Findings from this second phase showed that it would be possible for the Board to specify some core data items from which nationally agreed PIs could be developed, but not without further debate about accountability structures and different models of resource allocation. The research project made an active contribution towards assisting the development of performance and quality monitoring structures at training institution level by publishing some of the research tools, literature and findings as a teaching pack ( Balogh et al 1989). The specific contribution of action research to this project is evaluated by reference to Lew in's (194) original formulation, to Smith's (1981) distinction between four levels of discourse: the discipline, the paradigm, the operational and the technical, and to insights drawn from the critical policy analysis literature. This multi-disciplinary evaluation proves to be useful in contributing to critical debate on nurse and midwife education policy, and more generally in relation to the rapidly developing field of human services management information systems.

Existing research suggests that when pupils study the Holocaust in their history lessons at the age of thirteen or fourteen, they are likely to arrive with a wide range of ideas, beliefs and understandings about the subject. This study sought to examine whether or not this was the case and if so, the nature of these preconceptions. It focused exclusively on pupils’ understandings and conceptions of the Holocaust before they had formally studied the subject in their history lessons. Using complementary methods, the research was conducted on 298 pupils from four different schools in Oxfordshire and London. All pupils completed a spider diagram exercise and a three page questionnaire, with thirty-six pupils participating in either one or two semi-structured interviews involving various open-ended questions and specifically designed tasks. This study found that almost all pupils who participated in the research had considerable and meaningful knowledge of the subject. Consequently, this thesis highlights trends in pupils’ thinking about the Holocaust in a wide range of areas, such as why the Jews were treated in such a manner; who carried out this treatment and why the Nazi killing of the Jews ended. It concludes by highlighting the implications for practice, with specific reference to curriculum planning as well as teaching in the classroom. This study demonstrates that thirteen and fourteen year-olds do arrive in their lessons on the Holocaust with a wide range of preconceptions and that this likely to affect the way that they understanding and learn about it.

There is strong evidence in literature that formative assessment (FA) promotes learning, has a positive impact on teacher development and improves pupil outcomes. It nevertheless remains at the periphery of practice in schools in England. This study investigates why this is so, through an observational study of classroom practice in science in Year 8 (ages 12-13) in three secondary schools in an outer London local authority. The study is set in the context of tensions and anxiety in schools emanating from the government’s ‘standards agenda’, namely, the imposition of National Tests, targets, league tables of results and inspections by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted). Through lesson observations, scrutiny of pupils’ books, interviews with teachers and pupils and discussions with school, local, and national managers, this study confirms the dominance of tests and examinations. It confirms too the practice of ‘triage’ for rationing education and discovers the existence of the ‘tripartite’ system and the ‘factory-model’ of schooling within the walls of comprehensive schools. All of these mitigate against the effective use of FA to promote learning in the classroom. The findings include teachers’ lack of subject knowledge, an acute shortage of physics teachers and the disabling of teachers’ agency through ‘double triage’- leading to demoralisation. The government and school managers continue to use blunt instruments for monitoring narrowly defined ‘standards’ whilst the professional learning of science teachers is neglected. Schools are ‘marking up’ or even ‘making up’ test and coursework results through dishonest practices, masking the fact that they are failing many of their pupils. Finally, Bhaskar’s theory of learning drawn from his theory of creativity and his notion of ‘unfolding the enfolded’ are counter-posed against the theory of innate ability and used to propose a new, improved theory of assessment. This theory is Enabling Assessment, which builds on formative assessment and assessment for learning and provides a model of assessment with transformative potential.

The thesis examines the related concepts of teacher knowledge, professionalism and identity through the lens of teacher research, and in the context of a teacher-research network. The mechanism for exploration was through teacher voice. As the research unfolded, what was revealed was that accessing teacher voice presented a major obstacle as teachers struggled to articulate their own views on knowledge, professionalism and identity, in part because there seemed to be no language to discuss such concepts. The question of discourse thus became a key theme. The research methods developed to address this issue include a card sort as a way of addressing the teacher silences: this approach revealed that teachers were able to engage with ideas around knowledge, professionalism, identity and research when given a language in this way. However, what emerged was far from a cohesive narrative but rather diverse and at times contradictory accounts of associated teacher beliefs and values. Faced with inconsistency and paradox, a new theoretical lens of post-modernism was used to explore the fragmented and splintered narratives which had emerged, and a different account of knowledge, professionalism, identity and research is offered.

This thesis focuses on understanding the complex relationships between geography teachers’ conceptions and practice. Through the use of a Foucauldian (1971, 1979) perspective on discourse, knowledge and power, it examines the discursive structures that produce knowledge about geography and ‘good’ geography teachers (Moore, 2004) in Singapore. The research explores why pre-service teachers conceive geography in particular ways, and the links between their conceptions and practice. It emphasises the ways in which discursive power affects this relationship. The study focuses on six geography pre-service secondary school teachers over the course of one year of teacher education. Utilising concept maps, elicitation exercises and in-depth interviews, it highlights that the national curriculum was powerful in shaping respondents’ discussions of geography, but its impact was mediated by their own professional identities and past experiences of geography. The data also suggests that these conceptions did not always translate into practice because of discourses operating in the school context, which placed respondents in asymmetrical power relationships with their mentors. The mentors’ conceptions of ‘good’ geography teaching usually influenced respondents’ practice more than their own conceptions of geography. Nevertheless, respondents sometimes resisted their mentors, especially if they experienced conflict between the type of teaching that was demanded of them and their own professional identities. iv The research calls on teacher educators and policy makers to acknowledge that programmes to develop teachers’ knowledge in their academic disciplines can be undermined by powerful competing discourses that stress examinable content in school curricula. It highlights the need for teacher education institutions to examine their partnerships with schools for possible conflicts between discourses about ‘good’ teaching in schools and institutional intended outcomes. It suggests that there is a need to strengthen the professional identities of teachers as ‘geographers’ given that identity forms an important base from which teachers respond to discourse.

The notion of some kind of civic education providing a solution to English society’s problems is nothing new and Citizenship Education is perceived as one means of addressing so-called social deficits. There are issues relating to curriculum delivery and training which have arisen from the decision to make citizenship a mandatory subject in maintained secondary schools. Citizenship presents a challenge because it is not a ‘conventional’ subject and teachers have to construct meaningful assessments which relate to discussions of beliefs and values. Philosophical and sociological literatures inform the conceptual analysis of definitions of citizenship. Insights into more recent policy and provision are provided through a discussion of curriculum development and interrogation of assessment documentation from awarding bodies and policy-making organisations. An empirical study aimed to construct a picture of delivery in schools. It employed a multiple-method approach: a questionnaire was used to survey 400 secondary schools across England; and interviews were conducted with pupils (in years 9-11) and teachers in 18 schools. The data were analysed using both quantitative (descriptive and univariate statistics) and qualitative (Successive Approximation and Ideal Type) methodologies. The findings suggest that the way in which citizenship is delivered has an effect upon the means by which it is assessed and has some impact upon the way that the subject is valued. Some teachers were reluctant to use unfamiliar modes of assessment, particularly formative methods which did not result in a grade, because pupils were sceptical of the value of any subject which does not provide a ‘final’ mark. This underlines the fact that assessment is the dominant force in contemporary education. The creation of Ideal Type teachers facilitated further investigation of relationships that teachers had with citizenship, its delivery and how they perceive pupil responses to the subject. Teachers require more resources (financial and time) to increase their assessment skills. The conclusion can be drawn that there is a significant need for more training and support for teachers in the assessment of citizenship. If citizenship is to succeed in its mission to effect a change in society, it needs to be taken seriously and a factor which militates against this aim is the lack of coherent framework of assessment.

The methodological framework for informed decision-making known as Environmental Systems Assessment (ESA) is derived from, and is shown to contain, the existing tools of Risk Assessment, Decision Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Communication is identified as a problem within ESA. A panel process in local waste management between a UK Council, its local lay public and experts illustrates a new methodological implementation of ESA in which risk, decision analytic and life cycle information were all present in parallel and in different forms. These included an innovative and interactive multimedia CD-ROM tailored to the locality (known as 'WOMBLE') and the WISARD software developed with, among other bodies, the Environment Agency of England and Wales. The communications and information in the process are evaluated by social research, the learning of the participants is assessed and it is shown that while a number of significant actions were agreed upon, individual preferences were still stable and significantly different. The potential of the approach is assessed.