Institutional initiatives set up to meet the demands of a fast changing higher education (HE) landscape do not comfortably sit within a single academic or administrative department but instead require blended professionals, with a mixed portfolio of work, to operate in third space – between the administrative and academic domains of institutions (Whitchurch, 2008). Heads of e-Learning (HeLs) in UK HE institutions are one such group of professionals who lead the enhancement of learning and teaching through the use of technology. However, one must question how HeLs continue to learn and develop in their roles as transformational leaders to meet the continuous demands posed by the ever-changing HE environment and the evolution of technology. This research explored the affordances of third space as a learning environment, questioned how learning and leadership development take place through non-formal workplace experiences, and sought to relate these back to HeLs’ perceived developmental needs. The concept of liminality (van Gennep, 1960; Turner, 1969) was employed as a theoretical framework, learning was conceptualised as socially constructed identity formation and leadership development was deemed to be a result of learning. A mixed methodological approach was employed and a unique analytical framework shed light on data derived from nine in-depth interviews. Third space environments were found to be ‘expansive’ (Evans et al., 2006), with qualities which afforded transformational learning experiences that permanently altered the ways in which one understands the world around them. Liminal conditions in third space environments provided a means of reconciling a leader’s espoused theories and their theories-in-use, whilst leadership development was linked to learner readiness and the development of credibility. Underpinned by participatory practices, the theory of ‘possible selves’ (Ibarra, 2004) offered a means of understanding transformational learning and development in third space, and brought the concept of leadership closer to active citizenship.

This thesis analyses the changing shape of the academic profession in (South) Korea and Malaya or Malaysia, and Singapore since the colonial period. The argument is that the shape of the academic profession which has emerged by the contemporary period is a reflection of both the inherited models of higher education and their redefinition after the colonial period. The specific argument of the thesis is that the shaping of the academic profession in these three countries can be understood because of this colonial genesis and because the State formations of the colonial and postcolonial periods permitted only restricted social space for the university and academic autonomy. Chapter One and Chapter Two set out the theoretical perspective of the thesis, for analysing the academic profession. Chapter Three investigates the emergent academic professions of Korea and Malaya under Japanese and British colonialism. Chapter Four analyses the ways in which the academic professions in South Korea and Malaysia and subsequently Singapore were affected by the modernity projects of the newly independent States and shows how those efforts were affected by the colonial inheritance - and how far an escape was made from that history. The theme extends to the contemporary changes in the shape of the academic profession - its institutional locations, its knowledge priorities, and its international relations - under pressures of globalization and the new policies of `internationalization' of education in South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. Chapter Five as the conclusion to the thesis tries to show how the changing shape of three Asian academic professions can be understood through the social and political contexts of these three States - the formation of the academic profession being more affected by these contexts and by State projects than by imported `ideas of the university'.

Educational technologies occupy a significant and high profile position within higher education with some technologies widely used across the sector. However, although the use of new technologies is often encouraged through institutional policy, training and funding, there is significant variation in actual practices - especially with regards to teaching and learning. Research on teacher thinking suggests that this variation is related to university teachers‟ beliefs and knowledge about technology and learning. A mixed-methods approach was used to investigate university teachers‟ thinking about their use of technology. The first stage of data collection was a quantitative survey of 795 higher education teachers from a sample of 27 UK universities. This identified institutional and subject-related differences in teachers‟ perceptions of impact and use of particular technologies in their teaching. The second stage of data collection was a qualitative multi-site case study of eleven university teachers from three universities that identified their perceptions and beliefs about technology and the contexts in which they act. It investigated how these individuals formed and reinterpreted their beliefs about technology and how they made decisions about when and how to use (or not use) technology. The thesis shows how university teachers‟ thinking about technology is situated in the culture and contexts in which they live and work. It explores the relationships between pedagogic beliefs, beliefs about technology and teachers‟ perceptions of „control‟ over how they use technology. It identifies how some teachers used technology to communicate their personality and build relationships with students but, also, how some used technologies despite believing that these did not have a positive effect on student learning. It shows how, in making sense of their use of technology, academics draw on multiple sources including understandings of the impact of technology on culture and society, perceptions of higher education and their institution, their subject disciplinary background and their identity as teachers and academics.

Operators called 'logical connectives' convey in a precise way the logical relationships between truth functional propositions and hence determine what can be inferred from them. Mathematical reasoning therefore relies heavily on their use. Whilst the operators are free of ambiguity, this is not so for the linguistic items (called 'linguistic connectives') by which they are codified. In English, at least, there is a widely reported mismatch between the logical concepts and the 'meanings' of the linguistic connectives with which they are frequently identified. This study compares the provision for expressing logical concepts in Japanese, Arabic and English and seeks to ascertain to what extent the problems reported for English are generalisable to the other two languages. It also aims to establish whether the concepts underlying certain logical connectives are 'more readily available' or 'better established' in the speakers of one or other of these languages and, if so, whether this can be attributed to differing provision in the lexicon. Two experiments were carried out using as subjects adults who were native speakers of either English, Japanese or Arabic. One was designed to determine to what extent the appropriate linguistic connectives in each of the three languages convey the associated logical concepts. The second compared performance on five concept identification tasks where the concepts tested were conjunction, inclusive and exclusive disjunction, the conditional and biconditional. The results indicated no significant differences between language groups in the understanding of the linguistic expressions of logical connectives. However, the Japanese language group consistently outperformed the other two groups in all five concept identification tasks and also offered descriptions of these concepts which were more succinct and less variable. Possible explanations for the superior performance of the Japanese group are suggested and some implications for the teaching and learning of mathematics proposed.

This study examined perceptual and cognitive structures that children employ when listening to musical pitches. A number of experiments utilised reaction time as the dependent variable to identify perceptually salient factors in musical pitch perception, particularly the cognitive organisation of musical pitch in a tonal context. A chronometrically measured forced-choice paired—comparisons experimental paradigm was used with children between the ages of six and eleven, with the discrimination of same and different notes in context-free and various contextual presentations tested by a computer—driven environment. Significant correlations suggest that the recognition of same and different notes in both context-free and contextual presentations was progressively facilitated, with responses exhibiting fewer errors and decreasing reaction times with increasing age. Although no significant difference was observed in mean correct reaction times between uncontextualised same and different conditions, significant differences in reaction times were observed within each condition when suffix notes were each contextualised by a major triad prefix. Furthermore, while no significant correlation was observed between same and different notes in context-free presentation, the subsequent contextualisation by a major triad prefix to each comparison suffix note produced a significant positive correlation suggesting that the contextualisation effects were systematic. A further experiment using a diminished triad prefix confirmed that the tonal specificity of the stimuli was related to the observed reaction times, with significant differences in correct reaction times for those stimuli which differed in the tonal range of their constituent pitches in relation to the circle of fifths. The observed differences in the reaction time of responses were interpreted as differential measures of the internalisation of musical pitches to a cognitive structure such as a tonal schema. The hypothesis that perceptual facilitation of the coding of redundancy within such a recognised and practised cognitive structure such as tonality was supported for children of this age.

The central argument of this thesis is that a sociocultural approach, based on Vygotsky’s work, allows embracing simultaneously both the individual and the social aspects of emotions. The thesis comprises two parts. Sociological and psychological literatures about the study of emotions are reviewed to show the difficulties that these disciplines have faced in accounting for both the physiological and the cultural aspects of emotions simultaneously. In the first part of the thesis, I build an all-embracing historical psychological approach that pulls together aspects of Vygotsky’s work in order to overcome those difficulties. In so doing, my investigation of what emotions ‘are’ has changed to acknowledge the need to investigate what emotions ‘do’ in social contexts and interactions. The study of emotions, I argue, needs to avoid their separation from the context in which they emerge to overcome the separation of individual and social aspects of emotions. The second part of this thesis consists of an exploration of the necessary traits for an adequate sociocultural study of emotions in the classroom. This involves the analysis of emotions as they feature within pedagogic practices that take place in four classrooms, through a detailed examination of video-recorded microsituations. Three foci are constructed to discuss situated emotions: context, social practice and microhistory. The empirical study offers the basis for two conclusions. First, through the data analysis I show diverse ways in which teachers accompany, encourage and ‘contain’ or ‘regulate’ emotions as part of the interactions that take place in classrooms. Second, I offer an outline of a sociocultural approach to the study of emotions which does not separate their individual and social aspects. Finally, I discuss some of the implications of this study for teachers’ practices and for future research.

Teaching media literacy as a separate school subject or as part of another school subject is lacking from the Greek educational reality, despite the international academic research and the development and application of media literacy teaching models. This thesis is an analysis of two case study research projects carried out in groups of students in two Greek secondary schools with the aim to study the students’ response to media projects, which are totally new for the Greek educational reality, realized in the English as a Foreign Language class. The data is analyzed according to Burn and Durran’s 3-Cs model of media literacy, and more precisely its Cultural and Creative functions are the aspects used that include the concepts of Cultural Taste, Identity, and Creativity. These concepts are interpreted within the framework of Cultural Studies and Psychology theories. Important theoreticians considered are Bourdieu, Bennett, Giddens, Vygotsky, Jenkins and Bakhtin. The examination of students’ participation in the media projects and their production work suggest that their cultural taste is a combination of global and local influences, a glocal result, in which the family, the peers, the media and the education play an important role. Their identity is multi-faceted, as a reflection of various aspects of their selves, and it is closely related to their cultural taste and their cultural capital. Students’ creativity is also expressed as a complex process, affected both by the guidance of the official educational context and the youth popular culture tendencies. The tensions that emerge in the expression of the students’ cultural taste, identity and creativity during moving image projects characterize the Greek adolescents’ response to the newly-learnt moving image literacy, and raise important questions for educators and researchers.

Intellectual disabilities cause significant sub--‐average achievement in learning, with difficulties in perception, attention, communication of ideas, language acquisition, abstraction and generalisation. From a socio--‐constructionist perspective, digital technologies can provide resources to help addressing these difficulties. Tangible technologies are considered particularly promising tools for children with intellectual disabilities, by enabling interaction through physical action and manipulation and facilitating representational concrete--‐ abstract links by integrating physical and digital worlds. However, hands--‐on learning activities remain a recommended but problematic approach for intellectually disabled students. This thesis investigates how and which characteristics of tangible interaction may support children with intellectual disabilities to productively engage in discovery learning. Empirical studies were performed where children with intellectual disabilities used four tangible systems with distinct design characteristics. Four broad themes emerged from qualitative analysis which are central for identifying how to best support exploratory interaction: types of digital representations; physical affordances; representational mappings; and conceptual metaphors. Guidelines for the development of tangible artefacts and facilitation of discovery learning activities with tangibles were derived from these themes. A complementary quantitative analysis investigated the effects of external guidance in promoting episodes of discovery in tangible interaction. This thesis argues that providing tangible interaction alone is not sufficient to bring significant benefits to the experience of intellectually disabled students in discovery learning. Visual digital representations, meaningful spatial configurations of physical representations, temporal and spatial contiguity between action and representations, simple causality and familiar conceptual metaphors are critical in providing informational intrinsic feedback to exploratory actions, which allied with external guidance that creates a minimal underlying structure for interaction, should establish an ideal environment for discovery.

A corpus of written English produced by three groups of adult French beginning learners of English as a foreign language over a period of approximately eight months was examined for evidence relating to the acquisition of past tense forms and related meanings. The findings provide evidence to support several hypotheses which can be usefully grouped within a single framework which sees language acquisition as a process of hypothesis formation and testing whose constraints are both first and second language in origin. These hypotheses can be summarised as follows: (1) Language learning involves the acquisition of a new system of expressing meaning. As a result, the learner engages in a process of matching linguistic form to underlying meaning both within and between languages. Only such a hypothesis, we believe, can satisfactorily explain the apparently random variation that was observed in our subjects' acquisition of past tense. (2) Language transfer is thus necessarily a widespread phenomenon, constraining learners' formation of hypotheses, but is itself constrained by the inter- and intra-language form-meaning transparency of the language item in question. In other words, whenever formmeaning relationships are not wholly transparent, transfer is to be expected. (3) Moreover, even when form-meaning relations are transparent, transfer may take place due to the learner's shortage of processing capacity. When this is lacking, learners tend to maintain communication by relying on existing procedural knowledge, which, at least in the early stages, means well-established first language procedures. This is because, even though humans can process at phenomenal speeds, this is only possible with procedures which are solidly in place. For the vast majority of language learners this implies that first language procedures will always take precedence over weaker second language procedures because they were later traced and are less frequently used. Under the circumstances, where demands are made on the learner, for example, to produce language in real time, there will be a tendency to bypass second language networks and rely on first language circuitry. Consequently, learners make use of their ability to operate a number of strategies (such as planning and monitoring their language output) to produce comprehensible language. This ability, labelled strategic competence, is identified as a key aspect in language use in general.

This research contributes to the scarce literature on the perceptual and cognitive abilities of musical savants. It focuses on one prodigious savant, comparing his abilities with those of other savants and ‘neurotypical’ musicians with absolute pitch. Three experiments are reported. The first comprises a chordal disaggregation task, in which 6 savants and 17 ‘neurotypical’ musicians, had to replicate the stimuli listened. While the savants as a whole outperformed the ‘neurotypical’ musicians, there was some overlap. The most successful participants (savant and some ‘neurotypical’) appeared to use a ‘bottom up’ strategy, whereby the lowest notes were reproduced most successfully. This suggests that savants and some ‘neurotypical’ musicians process chords similarly. The second experiment explored the capacity of the savant to learn and recall a novel piece of music through exposure one bar at a time. The results show that the savant found this conventional approach to learning more difficult than a comparable task, in which exposure to a different though structurally similar piece was only ever as a whole. This finding contributes to the debate on ‘weak central coherence’ that appears to be a feature of the cognitive style of people on the autism spectrum. The third experiment investigates whether and in what ways the prodigious savant’s capacity to process and remember auditory material may be domainHspecific, by comparing his ability to learn and recall a verbal stimulus with an isomorphic musical one. The prodigious savant found the text, which was shorter and less complex than the music, to be very difficult to memorise. However, another savant performed on the task better than one ‘neurotypical’ musician, and worse than another. This finding indicates that savants do not form an entirely homogeneous group with regard to cognitive abilities, and, in the case of the prodigious savant, adds to the debate on the potential modularity of intelligence.