This thesis represents the first ever study of Sri Lanka’s leading genre of contemporary popular song covering a period of over twelve years, and how its artists and principal audience interpolate ‘global’ and ‘local’ (linguistic and musical) elements in their invention and negotiation of the genre. The central objective is to articulate the collective linguistic identity of the genre’s artists and principal audience. They are shown to constitute a community of over 5.5 million youth and young adults of Sinhala ethnicity, more than a quarter of the country’s population. Notably, this is also the first ever study of macrosocietal linguistic identity in a musical context involving an interdisciplinary linguistic and musical-structure based approach. Underlying the central objective the thesis addresses broader questions about whether our perception of and response to language/language-mixing in music differs from our perception of and response to language mixing (language) in non-musical (i.e. conversational) contexts and if so, how such differences might be explained in terms of linguistic and/or musico-linguistic structure. The genre explored is termed ‘Post 1998 Leading Sri Lankan Popular Song’ (98+LSLPS): 1998 marks the symbolic year in which the first songs of the genre emerged and became hugely popular in Sri Lanka. At present, it includes around 300 songs. A community of practice model (Wenger 1998) is used to describe the three-way relationship between the artists, audience and songs. The song data analysed are in audio format. Musically, the songs are heterogeneous involving blends of styles, ranging from indigenous Sri Lankan folk tunes to hip hop rhythms to western classical melodies. These are delivered through four presentational techniques among which rap and singing are dominant. It is English and Sinhala mixed language lyrics which distinguish the songs as a genre. Not surprisingly, there is evidence that the community regard the songs as ‘mixed’: however, they are also found to regard the songs as simultaneously ‘not-mixed’. The portrait corresponds to the community’s identification of the songs as simultaneously homogeneous Sinhala and Sinhala-Sri Lankan systems on the one hand and heterogeneous multicultural systems on the other. Exploring the salience of this portrait at the level of the songs’ lyric organisation constitutes the major part of the thesis and is a crucial forerunner to articulating the collective linguistic identity of the community, which is based on interpreting the findings. Accordingly, I advance a novel musico-linguistic analytical framework based on the notion of the musical rhythm derived ‘line’ for analysing the songs. The framework is also a response to the fact that the song lyrics are in audio format rather than being assigned a predetermined structure by transcription. The analyses demonstrate that the songs’ lyric structure is entirely congruent with the portrait assigned to the songs by their community. Interpreted in relation to the community’s collective linguistic identity, it is described as representing a form of overarching monolingualism, deriving from active multilingualism in music. Drawing on the relationship between Sinhala ethnicity and the Sinhala language and the fact that the community members are of Sinhala ethnicity, the study concludes by suggesting that this linguistic profile may be indicative of the community’s definition of the ‘Sinhala’ language in this musical domain. Overall, the study establishes that musical structure governs the organisation of language/language mixing in music and that this is reflected in how communities perceive language/language mixing in music.

This study discusses the experiences of international students studying in English-medium business programmes in three countries: the United Kingdom, Germany and Taiwan. The purpose of this comparative study is to investigate how the students’ identity is constituted in the multicultural business classroom and on the multi-cultural campus, the role in this of cultural components of the curriculum in international business programmes, the ways in which the wider student experience operates in such multi-cultural settings and the implications of each of these facets for teachers and institutional managers. Inter-/cross-cultural competence is held to be a vital skill that business graduates should be equipped with in order to be capable of working in an increasingly diverse global village, and it is believed that such competence can be developed through frequent communication and negotiation with people from other cultures. Sojourners in this study attempted to negotiate new identities in the multicultural learning environment in the alien context in ways that were strongly influenced by individuals’ biographical and life experiences. There were several influential factors in these sojourners’ processes of learning and transition, including: interpersonal and intrapersonal factors; motivations for studying abroad; the nature of the learning environment they encountered; and the settings in which these interactions took place. Holliday’s (1994) “small cultures” theory and Wegner’s (1998) “communities of practice” are concepts used to help explain sojourners’ experiences in terms of where and with whom they interacted, and how this influenced their perception of the learning experience in the international contexts. The three institutes were selected through the purposive sampling method, with pre-set criteria such as the percentage of courses taught in participants’ second or foreign language(s) and the percentage of international students in the student population of the university. The sample of twenty-two student participants was obtained by using opportunistic sampling and snowball sampling methods. The qualitative data set comprised 18 individual interviews, 3 group interviews and 40 diary entries. Data analysis took the form of typological analysis (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993) by dividing the overall data set into categories or groups based on predetermined typologies. One of the main findings of this study is that international students experienced high levels of isolation and marginalisation, which affected their academic confidence and social involvement. The universities concerned were aggressively recruiting international students and making efforts to internationalise curricula, yet the academic and social support on offer was perceived as narrow and very marginalised.

This thesis investigates the importance of the work community and its social organisation and the role it has for the participants' ability to learn and to form a professional identity as pedagogical leaders. Furthermore, the thesis wants to investigate if it matters to the directors’ learning how the principal (municipality or private company) organises for learning. The empirical material for the study comes mainly from semi-structured interviews with participants in the directors’ programme and close colleagues. An expression for the working community in a workplace is a community of practice. Learning and social interaction are about negotiation of meaning, making sense in everyday life. All four interviewed participants have contexts with features of communities of practice. In a few cases, it is clear that the context is about educational leadership, in a practice that is designed in collaboration with colleagues. Although there are significant differences in both the scope and the structure of supporting structures between the two investigated private contexts, it becomes clear that their structure leads to learning. The lack of structure in municipal schools leaves their directors with little access to guidance for their learning and identity development.

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This thesis examines technological framings for communication and identity issues, with a particular focus on Swedish mainstream schools where children with cochlear implants are pupils. Based on a sociocultural perspective on learning, the thesis focuses on how pupils and teachers interact with (and thus learn from) each other in classroom settings. The study comprises a) a sociohistorical analysis of three Swedish non-governmental organizations’ periodicals from 1891 to 2010, and b) an ethnographic study including micro-analyses of interaction in two mainstream classrooms where there are children with cochlear implants. The sociohistorical analysis illustrates how different technologies, in a range of ways, have shaped (i) how people with hearing loss communicate and interact with others and (ii) their identity positions. The analysis also demonstrates the presence of language ideologies in settings where children with hearing loss are taught. Here the main preference is for spoken communication, even though different types of visual communication emerge during the 1980s and 1990s. In addition, the issue of integration has been a matter of debate since the 1970s and provides a backdrop for the current situation, where an increasing number of children with cochlear implants receive their schooling in mainstream public rather than segregated regional deaf schools. Against this background, micro-analyses have been carried out of classroom interaction and recurring patterns and activities have been identified. The results illustrate that audiologically-oriented and communicative-link technologies play major roles in the classrooms and these both facilitate and limit the pupils’ participation. Based on postcolonial theory, the results can be understood in terms of participation and non-participation of the pupil with cochlear implants, who acquire peripheral identity positions in these classroom settings. The analysis also illuminates unequal power relations regarding technologies in use, and expressions of language ideologies in the classrooms, where spoken communication is preferred. Overall, the everyday life of children with cochlear implants in mainstream schools appears to be complex, and it is technologies in use that frame the conditions for their participation in interaction and communication.

Education reform initiatives continue to push schools to improve methods of measuring accountability intended to improve student achievement in the United States. Federal programs like the Teacher Incentive Find (TIF) provide school districts with funds to develop and implement school accountability and leadership programs. Teacher leadership is one of the concepts being formally developed amongst these initiatives. My applied thesis project focused on work I conducted with a team of researchers at American Institutes for Research, where we evaluated a teacher leadership program in its third year of implementation. Teacher leadership is facilitated through distributive leadership. School leaders distribute responsibilities that provide teachers with opportunities to extend their expertise outside of their own classrooms. My thesis explores teacher leadership roles and investigates implementation across the client school district. It also discusses how particular anthropological theories about communities of practice, learning, and identity can provide a foundation for conceptualizing teacher leadership implementation and the social interactions between program actors.

This study presents the outcomes of an exploration of the ways in which instrumental music teachers (IMTs) engaged to teach in UK university departments experience their work and interpret their role. It provides the basis for realistic steps for enriching their contribution to and relationship with the department in which they are situated. The area of activity was examined through a qualitative research approach within a single case study design that highlights the particularities and complexities of the case and of its context. It progressed through semi-structured interviews, document review, job-shadowing and a research diary that engaged participants in an iterative process aimed at generating rich descriptions of the situation and increasing the veracity of its subsequent interpretation. The findings echo the isolated location found in earlier studies of IMTs in HE (Burwell, 2005; Haddon, 2009; Purser, 2005, Young et al, 2003) but note that they did not display the secretive or isolationist tendencies previously espoused. Instead there was a narrative of neglect and exclusion by the employer that contributed to a low sense of entitlement from these employees who occupy a peripheral and static position at the margins of departmental operations. It concludes that IMTs do not form a convenient organisational sub-unit (Weick and Orton, 1990) or a community of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991) that would respond in a uniform fashion. Instead, they experience their engagement with the university in an individual manner framed by their personal and professional environment or umwelt (Uexküll, 1985) and interpreted according to their particular interests, needs and priorities. Finally it suggests that the employing department must recognise this diversity and facilitate greater participation of its IMTs through the creation of permeable boundaries that permit but do not require involvement in curriculum design and assessment, teaching innovations and research into instrumental pedagogy.

The purpose of this case study was to explore how a group of principals from diverse backgrounds and different locations create and perpetuate a virtual community of practice. This investigation is a case study of Connected Principals, a group that has come together to create a regular blog on significant issues within education and the principalship. In addition, this group regularly disseminates pertinent information on Twitter via a hash tag. The study includes a content analysis of the blogs posted by Connected Principals as well as social network analysis of the group’s Twitter network and of the key players within the Twitter network. In addition, the investigation includes interviews with six of the key blog and Twitter contributors in order to triangulate the information gleaned from the other analyses. The results of the study provide a thorough description of Connected Principals. While the study set out with the framework of a community of practice, the findings led to the idea that what was actually created by this group is an affinity space. In addition, the results give indication that the members of the group generate social capital within their field. Overall, the study contributes to the literature by providing an in-depth look at a relatively new field in education.

This research report describes the learning histories of computer assistants and expert assessment practice. This takes place in a workplace where computer training, specifically the fixing of hardware (CPU) occurs. It is hoped that the evidence collected might contribute towards the recognition and understanding of tacit assessment on the National Qualifications Framework, (NQF). In uncovering these learning histories and expert assessment practices, a component of ethnography which involves case history interviews and discussions was used. The theoretical framework used was situated learning theory and the legitimate peripheral participation of the computer assistants. This framework is itself embedded in the theory of constructivism. Case histories used as a component of ethnography is part of a bigger ethnographic project developed by the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA). This particular study will contribute along with other projects in the University of Witwatersrand research group, to make up a full ethnographic account of learning and assessment in the workplace.

This study explores MBA students’ experiences of academic writing, and endeavours to determine the difficulties experienced by MBA students during the writing of their dissertations especially in terms of academic literacy. Case study research design and mixed methods were used to generate both quantitative and qualitative data in this qualitative study. A constant comparative method of analysis was used to identify categories and themes within the data. The results of this research showed that the majority of MBA students, while at Business School X, viewed their identities primarily as business professionals as opposed to students of business in an academic setting. Findings of the study showed that MBA students’ identities as readers and writers are strongly framed by the business genres they encounter in their professional capacities. The study also revealed that MBA students writing their dissertations desire to produce a professionally relevant research document as much as one that meets the requirements of academic rigour. It is within this arena of academic research writing that a dilemma exists for MBA students with reference to the purpose, format and value of the dissertation as a vehicle for reporting research findings. Recommendations are that academic literacies and genre pedagogy are mainstreamed into the course design of the MBA programme at Business School X and that the repurposing of the dissertation as a genre be evaluated in terms of business relevance.