Since 1990 the Education for All (EFA) movement has acted as a worldwide commitment to the delivery of primary education as a basic human right. Reducing inequalities in terms of school access and academic achievement became a major concern in developing countries where education reforms were inspired by the EFA initiative. This was the case in Kenya and Mauritius, although evidence from the SACMEQ I (1995) and II (2000) survey studies reveals that these two countries presented the highest incidence of private tuition in the southern and eastern Africa region. In turn, such findings raise concern because they appeared to challenge the EFA objectives of quality and equality. The aim of the present thesis is to examine the phenomenon of private tuition in relation to the provision of primary education of good quality to all pupils (EFA initiative) in Kenya and Mauritius. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s theory on the ecology of human development the micro, meso and macro systems are examined as the three levels of the ecological environment of private tuition. In this way, attention was focussed on two critical points: (a) the position of parents in relation to the provision of paid extra lessons and (b) the potential tensions between the different ecological levels regarding the notion of educational equality put forward by EFA (the macro level), the national educational policies implemented for primary school (meso level) and the pupils’ school context (micro level). Survey data from Grade 6 pupils who participated in the SACMEQ III (2007) study reveals that paid extra lessons are delivered inside public (government) schools by pupils’ school teachers outside official hours. In addition, interviews with a sample of sixty parents reveal that in Kenya, private tuition is perceived not only as an important academic support but also as a safe environment where pupils are supervised by responsible adults, whereas in Mauritius private tuition is perceived as crucial for academic advancement. In conclusion, it was found that in both countries private tuition represents an integral component within their mainstream education systems.

This study explored the educational inclusion of Gypsy/Travellers (G/Ts) in a Local Authority (LA). Using a qualitative design, underpinned by a transformative ethos, it employed unstructured interviews to gather the perspectives of Irish Traveller (IT) parents and School Staff (SS) on the barriers and opportunities for inclusive education (IE) in the local context. Thematic analysis carried out separately on both data sets revealed that similar topics were raised by both sets of participants, which can be understood within three overarching concepts (‘over-arching-concept’s); Discriminatory Attitudes, Achieving Education for All and Creating Welcoming Communities. However, critical differences between how similar issues were understood emerged. These related particularly to understandings of equality and equity and the responsibility for inclusion. These ‘over-arching-concept’s are discussed in relation to how they create a story of exclusion from, rather than inclusion in education for these communities. The study concludes that in order to redress the historical and ongoing discrimination and exclusion experienced by these communities, a positive action approach to developing policies and practices, which complements a more equitable understanding of IE among educational services in this context is needed. Implications for Educational Psychology (EP) practice to support the development of IE in targeted areas within Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) eco-systems are suggested.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the processes of formulation and implementation of policies regarding the integration of disabled children in the mainstream schools of a Brazilian South-eastern State Capital. The investigation was carried out through a documentary analysis and through the application of a questionnaire and an interview to 25 head teachers of the primary State schools of VitOria. The intention was to identify gaps between what is mandated by laws or suggested by other relevant documents and what is actually reported as practice by the head teachers, and how integration was being interpreted and defined at the school level in that Capital. In doing so it was hoped that some of the problems in making integration policies would be identified and practical suggestions for their solutions would be likely to be provided. The study also included a comparative part in which integration policies of four European countries (Spain, Denmark, Holland and the U.K.) were analysed and differences and similarities were highlighted in an attempt to further illustrate and discuss some of the main issues of policy-making in and practice of integration which at the time were being debated world-wide.

This dissertation aims to describe the provision of adult basic literacy education (ABLE) in Barbados and examine the extent to which ABLE provision has been guided by the goals of participants, institutions which offered it and the government which required it. The empirical research study which constitutes the basis of the dissertation is located within the general field of adult education and the particular area of adult literacy. The data is related to both fields by a review of the literature on ABLE theory and practice from international, Caribbean and local perspectives. Focus is placed on the nature of literacy, as has been conveyed by definitions; and values attached to its acquisition, as have been indicated by declarations of its potential benefits. The descriptive component of the dissertation includes profiles of participants and practice of three ABLE programmes operating in Barbados between 1990 and 1993. The descriptive data was obtained from the responses of students and tutors to structured questionnaires and informal discussions; and from classroom observations made by the researcher from the perspectives of both passive and participant observer. Participants' profiles include personal details; information about their motivation, beliefs, attitudes, expectations and previous learning experiences; and the outputs they claim for the provision. The Profiles of practice cover instructional and interactive aspects of the teaching-learning process including the selection of materials, methods and strategies; type of classroom management and the nature of the relationship among participants. The evaluative component comprises an analysis of the data within a framework of national, institutional and personal goals, a focus informed by the importance which educators have attached to goal-setting in educational provision. The main findings of the research are that in most cases, local ABLE provision was not informed by the goals of the three interests and that ABLE practice often appeared to be directed towards outputs opposed to those goals. The main conclusion is that the impetus of the ABLE programmes was not goals but an internal dynamic informed by local attitudes to education in general and beliefs about literacy in particular.

Reading comprehension in pupils in Years Four and Five was investigated in a series of experiments predominantly using error detection in short, narrative passages. The claim that readers of this age may exclusively accept decodability as sufficient to judge text as non-problematic was investigated. Little evidence was found in support of this claim. However evidence was obtained that consonant strings were more often detected than nonsense words and more nonsense words were detected than real words of inappropriate meaning when they were substituted into the same passages at the same points. Fewer real words of inappropriate meaning were detected when they were the same part of speech as the word they replaced than when they were a different part of speech. No evidence was obtained that significant numbers of children exclusively detected only nonsense words. However decreasing the readability of the passages significantly reduced the detection rate for real words of inappropriate meaning while the detection rate for consonant strings and nonsense words remained both higher and more stable. It was suggested that children who are asked to read passages of too low a readability for them may be more likely to exclusively employ a lexical standard of comprehension. No evidence was obtained that asking children to read or listen to a passage a second time before completing an error detection task improved their performance. Moreover no difference in semantic comprehension monitoring was found to be dependent on whether the material was presented orally or visually. Better comprehenders were better than less good comprehenders on both error detection and doze tasks. However there was no difference in the relationship between performance on prompted e.g. doze, as compared to unprompted e.g. error detection, comprehension tasks between better and less good comprehenders. Both groups performed better on the prompted comprehension tasks. Better performance was maintained on doze tasks even when the subjects were not only alerted to having to read the passage for meaning but knew they were to be asked questions on it. The extensive use of unprompted comprehension tasks with feedback was proposed as a method of closing the gap between students' performance on unprompted as contrasted with prompted measures of comprehension. Better comprehenders were better at sequencing sentences to make a story but did not perform better than less good comprehenders at recognising sentences from stories they had just read. Both better and less good comprehenders were less good at rejecting as having just been read sentences semantically congruent with the stories as contrasted with sentences semantically incongruent with the stories. This was consistent with most readers engaging in constructive processing of short stories. The results of this series of experiments were compatible with and discussed in terms of comprehension involving the construction of a mental model of what is heard or read while listening to or reading short stories. Suggestions for further experiments were made.

This thesis examines discourses around reading and reading instruction, with particular reference to children. The argument is that literate practices are crucially involved in the formation of that child. Psychology, when it establishes itself as the science which has the measure of the individual, becomes intertwined with literate practices and illuminates the relation between reading and the child in a new way. This thesis suggests that to understand the interrelations between reading, psychology and the child in our culture, one must pay attention to problems connected with the government of that culture, and, more specifically, to what Foucault has termed `governmentality'. Nowadays, literate practices are fundamental to the construction of citizens fit to take their place in society; this has not always been so. This thesis writes a genealogy of how a cognitive maximisation of literacy skills became a social imperative. It examines a series of crucial historical moments in this transformation. First, a set of reorganisations in the philological world in the middle of the eighteenth century enable the reader to become, for the first time, a problem. Second, the nineteenth-century reappraisal of the transformative effects of education makes literacy for the lower orders desirable. Experiments in techniques of schooling allow for the formation of certain sorts of individuals. The thesis examines these processes of formation and analyses the contemporaneous reorganisation of the teacher-pupil relationship. Third, the beginning of our century sees psychology take an interest in literacy and the child. Psychology colonises such discursive processes and provides techniques for making new aspects of the literate child visible. The child is scientifically made subject to a set of practices which aim to calculate and administer.

Purpose: This study aims to explore the similarities and differences of perceived risk and protective factors to school adaptation as experienced by children living in army compared to non-army families to inform educational psychology practice. Design/Method: This study followed a qualitative design. Parents of 3 and 4 year olds, attending a maintained nursery, in a specific Southern East England area, which is host to an army base and where children experience a relative number of disadvantages were contacted through a research leaflet and a family information questionnaire. 6 parents each from army and non-army families, and 4 practitioners who talked about 3 children in their classes, participated in semi-structured interviews. The transcripts were subjected to a thematic analysis. Findings: Unique risks, such as deployment and parental absence, are experienced by children living in army families, and they emotionally affect children. However, as well as adapting well to difficult situations, unlike children living in non-army families, these children benefit from community cohesion and social and familial support. Children living in army families are also exposed to unique risks such as army culture, possible bereavement and injury, post-deployment reunion, transitions and relocations. Despite experiencing these risks which have the potential to be extreme, proactive systemic planning is at the forethought of familial and school systems, whereas children living in non-army families experience many risks at family and school levels, such as parenting difficulties, parental mental health difficulties, conflict-based familial relationships and divided school systems. Implications for EP practice: EPs are well placed in implementing systemic support strategies at familial and school levels to help parents and practitioners at a crucial time in their children’s educational career, and promote school adaptation. Originality/value: This study uniquely contributes to the limited literature on risk and protective factors experienced by children from army families in the UK. The comparative nature of this study provides suggestions for EP interventions.

Reading is normally by eye and by ear, but what happens if eyesight is severely impaired? The hypothesis put forward in the first part of this thesis is that partially sighted children adopt a predominantly nonlexical word recognition and production strategy. This is likely to be because of the reading tuition they receive, which emphasises individual letters and letter patterns in words in relation to pronunciation. This study explores the word and picture processing abilities of a small group of partially sighted children, using a series of experimental tasks. Surprisingly, the analysis of oral reading errors in Study 1 revealed that the partially sighted children were using the same salient graphic cues as young fully sighted readers were normally found to be using. Further experiments using lexical decision tasks were carried out in Study 2 to investigate more closely the strategies used by partially sighted and matched fully sighted children in relation to lexical and nonlexical processing. Although there was clear evidence of nonlexical processing on the part of partially sighted children, there were also signs of lexical processing, too. Additional evidence was provided by their spellings presented in Study 3. The investigations described here suggest that the compensatory reading tuition experienced by the PS children led to a dominant nonlexical processing strategy, though not to the exclusion of lexical processing. Impaired eyesight was not associated inevitably with poor reading and spelling levels. The second hypothesis is that impaired eyesight is associated with poor visual recognition and recall of pictures, because of difficulty in accurate identification and slow processing. However, under the favourable conditions provided, which included a relatively lengthy exposure time, this was not entirely the case. The ability of the PS children to recognise pictures was remarkably good. Greater difficulty by them with the recall of pictures suggested partial specification of internal representations. These studies were set alongside comparable work with blind children. They contribute to the very sparse literature on PS children and confirm that these children can overcome severe visual handicap to present a profile of skilled accomplishment.

Secondary education is increasingly recognised to be a time of challenge for many children with special educational needs (SEN), and particularly those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Individuals with ASD have a profile of needs, including social difficulties, sensory needs and anxiety, that make them particularly vulnerable within the secondary setting, and parents increasingly seek more specialist provision as their children reach secondary age. Building on these findings, this research study aimed to examine the secondary school experiences of children with ASD. This study adopted an ecosystemic perspective (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) and used a mixed-method multi-informant approach to examine both intrinsic child characteristics and wider systemic factors influencing the secondary school experiences of 16 children with ASD aged 11-15 years. Children attended a range of secondary provision including maintained and independent special, local mainstream and autism bases. This allowed for a thorough examination of children’s secondary school experiences, including investigation of differences by type of provision. Furthermore, this multi-informant approach revealed the views of children with ASD and their parents and teachers are not always consistent. Autistic behaviours were significantly associated with type of provision (mainstream versus special), yet cognitive ability, sensory symptoms and anxiety were not. The accounts of children, parents and teachers revealed the overall success of children’s secondary placements did not vary according to type of provision (mainstream versus special), although where children attended out of county provision, these placements were noticeably less successful. Difficulties primarily centred around the challenges of meeting the needs of cognitively able children whose ASD impacts on their ability to cope in mainstream schools. Children’s secondary school experiences were particularly influenced by their social vulnerability and feelings of difference. A range of systemic mitigating factors were identified, including transition preparation, teaching strategies, professional involvement, home-school communication and availability of provision. The findings have important implications for EPs, particularly with regards to providing training, transition support, and psychosocial interventions in school. The findings also highlight a crucial role for the EP in accessing children’s views, and mediating between parents and children where conflict exists.

It has often been reported that individuals with autism process visual motion information atypically. This thesis uses psychophysical methods and a parent-report questionnaire to characterise better the nature of atypical motion processing in children with autism. In Chapter 1, I review the evidence for atypical sensory perception in autism, focusing on the processing of dynamic information. In Chapter 2, I show that children with autism are just as sensitive to speed information as typically developing (TD) children, but have elevated motion coherence thresholds specifically for slow stimuli. In Chapter 3, I analyse questionnaire results which suggest that children with autism have difficulties processing speed-related information in everyday life. In Chapters 4 and 5 I use an equivalent noise direction integration task alongside a standard motion coherence paradigm to determine whether local and/or global factors limit sensitivity to coherent motion information in TD children and children with autism. In Chapter 4, I show that the ability to average motion information drives age-related increases in coherent motion sensitivity in TD children. In Chapter 5, I present the unexpected finding that children with autism have enhanced integration of motion information compared to TD children. In an attempt to resolve discrepant motion coherence findings, I reveal that children with autism are equally susceptible to correspondence noise as TD children in Chapter 6. In Chapter 7, I discuss the importance of these findings within the context of current theoretical accounts, and suggest that we need a more nuanced account of motion processing abilities in autism. In particular, I argue that motion processing in autism may be characterised by increased integration and reduced segregation of signal from noise.