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Diss.--Humboldt Universität--Berlin, 2000. / Bibliogr. p.228-281.

This thesis explores patterns of access and experiences of meaningful access under India’s Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act) from a critical gender perspective (Fraser, 1997; Jackson, 1999). Within the RTE Act, special attention is given to Section 12(1)(c), the free private school seats provision. The argument is that in order to fully analyze education progress, research must advance beyond focusing on physical access to exploring indicators of meaningful access. This thesis discusses the construction of a quantitative variable, ‘silent exclusion’, as a composite drawn from wider qualitative research. The first available data from the Insights into Education household survey in Delhi are analyzed using statistical and econometric techniques. It was found that private unaided recognized schools remain inaccessible for the most marginalized households. Child’s sex was not found to have a significant effect on school management choice, and both boys and girls attended privately and publically managed elementary schools in the sample. Four access issues pertaining to the free seat provision were identified: public awareness; reaching intended beneficiaries; low success rates for applicants; and continuing financial challenges for households accessing a free seat. In terms of children’s schooling experiences, low levels of silent exclusion were reported overall. Explicit displays of discrimination and exclusion were not found in the sample; however, less visible displays of exclusion were noted, such as a lack of leadership opportunities for children from lower income households, scheduled castes/tribes, and children attending government-managed schools. A lack of political and social pressure to fully implement the RTE Act at the local level is evident, which raises the question of how much a law in itself can bring about social change in the education sector.

To examine the barriers faced by the financially excluded, this research investigates financial inclusion as a sub-concept of social inclusion. The study assesses two demand-side barriers confronting the involuntarily financially excluded: financial literacy and self-efficacy. It thus goes beyond previous work that has sought to increase access to financial services by addressing supply-side barriers (specifically accessibility, affordability, availability and eligibility), mainly through various technological advances. Employing a preintervention/ post-intervention field experiment to measure the financial behaviour of individuals, the study monitored the use over a six-month period of an appropriately developed banking offering. Banking was offered to participants from rural areas near four distinct towns in Ghana, following the provision of training on financial literacy and selfefficacy. The results showed that regardless of whether participants received training in both, either or neither, they did not use their bank accounts for their financial transactions or savings. Secondarily, the results indicated that although financial literacy training may improve the financial knowledge of individuals, it does not necessarily lead to increased confidence on the part of the individual with regard to using formal financial services. In contrast, although the self-efficacy training (both on its own and together with financial literacy) did not translate into financial inclusion, participants reported that it had provided them with skills to guide their financial decision-making. Moreover, limited qualitative results obtained from participants indicated that they find the cash economy in which they operate adequate to their needs as members of their communities. As the main findings of this study suggest that developing the financial knowledge and attitude of the financially excluded, having addressed supply-side barriers of financial inclusion, still does not encourage the use of an appropriately developed banking offering, the explanation for the (non-)usage of banking products must lie elsewhere. The structure of an economy has to be seen as central to financial inclusion in that the influence of the cash economy and the informal economy mean that financial inclusion is not a precondition for social inclusion. This has serious implications for policy in sub-Saharan Africa. It may be that financial inclusion should be regarded as a result of an improving economic situation, rather than a contributory cause. Stakeholders should consider financial inclusion alongside and as part of policy initiatives designed to improve educational levels, digital skills, and a general understanding of the formal financial and, indeed, economic system. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / PhD / Unrestricted

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In European, UK and Scottish policy social exclusion has been the main discourse of poverty and disadvantage for at least the last sixteen years. However social exclusion is a contested term and there is limited consensus about its nature and definition. Adult physical activity and adult literacy provision have been identified in policy as having a role in addressing social exclusion and so this study explored understandings of social exclusion in policy and in practitioners’ discourses about their practice in both these types of provision. I undertook an analysis of Scottish policy texts relating to social exclusion, literacy and physical activity. This showed that policy discourse about social exclusion had evolved between 1999 and 2011 from a combative to a more enabling style. It also showed an increasingly overt individualistic economic discourse established as the underpinning rationale for policy intervention. I then undertook a series of semi-structured interviews with nine literacy practitioners and seven physical activity practitioners. Using an approach informed by Critical Discourse Analysis I identified themes in the data. Practitioners’ narratives were analysed in reference to a typology, RED, MUD and SID, (Levitas, 2005) which describes the different ways social exclusion is understood in the UK. These are respectively, a redistributive discourse (RED) which links social exclusion to poverty, a discourse that deploys cultural explanations of social exclusion (MUD) and a discourse which analyses social exclusion in relation to the labour market (SID). The study indicated that social exclusion was understood and interpreted by practitioners in different ways but that a theme of economic individualism framed their discursive practices and echoed policy. The study also revealed discursive links between policy texts and practitioners’ discourses and these were more apparent in literacy practitioners’ discourses than in physical activity practitioners’ discourses. Similarities between both groups of practitioners were most evident in how they identified lack of confidence as a defining characteristic of people who experienced social exclusion and the central role of confidence building in their respective provision. My analysis showed that individual practitioners sometimes articulated simultaneously contradictory discourses about their practice however literacy practitioners’ discourses considered together were more uniform than those of physical activity practitioners. The findings illuminate the complicated and sometimes contradictory landscape of policy and practitioners’ discourses about social exclusion and their practice. They draw attention to the delimitations and constraints on practitioners’ discourses and to the need to support reflexivity in professional practice.

The research focuses on young people excluded from school, and those identified as being at risk of exclusion. It assesses their skills in communication, empathy / perspective taking, and incorporates information from staff at their schools relating to their perceptions of the participants’ communication skills and their risk of exclusion. This data, along with interviews with a smaller sample of the young people who have experienced permanent exclusion, is used to discuss implications for policy and intervention with regard to supporting pupils with language difficulties. The research is set out in two papers. Paper One describes the findings from an assessment of communication skill and empathy / perspective taking. Paper Two uses the findings from Paper One to compare the participants’ skills with the perceptions of their teachers regarding their communication ability and risk of exclusion, and also describes the findings from interviews with a selection of the participants. The research demonstrated significant communication difficulties in the sample groups. This has implications for their prospects, as the literature review highlights the difficulties that young people can experience if their language difficulties are not addressed. The questionnaire completed by staff showed that although many staff were aware of the pupils’ language difficulties, they often underestimated the extent of these difficulties.

This study examines the intersections of class, social exclusion and education policy during New Labour’s time in office, with the bulk of its focus falling upon secondary schooling. Working against wider political, academic and popular effacements and recodifications of class, and with a particular focus upon its marginalisation within both political and academic discourses of social exclusion, both concepts are mapped out in ways which allow them to be understood in tandem and as rooted within the structures, processes and relations of society and its constitutive institutions. Qualitative in approach, and set within the ebb and flow of long running educational struggles heavily imbued with issues of class, the study uses semistructured interviews with 21 education professionals to explore the impact of the current market-based education policy regime upon the institutional structures, processes and professional practices which confront working class pupils on a daily basis. In turn, it examines the ways in which working class pupils and the shaping of their educational experiences are understood by those trained and charged to teach in an education system intimately bound to the re/production of class inequalities and social exclusion. Parallel to this, the project uses biographically orientated interviews with 17 working class young people in order to explore the variegated ways in which class and social exclusion intersect within their schooling careers as they are shaped along shifting axes through, within, and against the kinds of contexts and conditions mapped out by education professionals. The study provides key insights into the contemporary circulation of class within schools: invoked through crosscutting narratives of ‘ability’, ‘deficiency’ and ‘social constructivism’ by education professionals caught within systemic pressures to perform, and a ubiquitous facet of working class educational experience which is continually stirring, settling, straining to be re/made, and wrought through shifting layers and dimensions of in/exclusion.

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

<p>How do consumers respond when they experience threats to interpersonal relationships, or social exclusion? This research suggests that consumers will seek brands that are characterized by a specific personality trait dimension. In particular, consumers will seek sincere brands as a means to fulfill the need to belong. I argue that this sincerity orientation effect occurs because the sincerity dimension is positively associated with relationship growth and strength. Several studies demonstrate that when excluded, consumers become biased in their impressions of and preferences for sincere brands; they also feel stronger self-brand connections to sincere brands. Further, two studies demonstrate the moderating roles of identity-relevant affirmation and self-esteem in the relationship between exclusion and sincerity orientation towards brands.</p> / Dissertation