This study aims at understanding how individuals in Shanghai engage in labour market competition and lifelong learning in a newly marketised and competitive context. It probes the individuals’ participation in ‘the Training Programme for Talents in Shortage’ (STTP), their perceptions of the value of lifelong learning and their experience in competing for employment. It takes the position that rather than focusing only on policy-makers’ views, an understanding of people’s perceptions and participation in this programme can provide a proper basis for the formulation and the evaluation of the policy on a learning society (Gerard and Rees, 2002). STTP is a localized education and training programme in the post-compulsory sector, providing qualifications with largely local value. It has been developed and implemented by the Shanghai Municipal Government since 1993 as a means to enhance the city’s stock of human capital and to promote the development of a ‘learning society’. On the one hand, STTP is inspired and designed by straightforward human capital development concerns and has been implemented through a decentralized, semimarketised approach, to maintain the momentum of the city’s development by targeting key skills shortages. On the other hand, significant socio-economic changes, such as the emergence of a labour market, lead individuals to take on full personal responsibility for their own social position and to compete against each other. People seek to obtain all sorts of advantages to manage and construct their employability; this study investigates the role of STTP and its qualifications in building individuals’ portfolio of skills, qualifications and other aspects of their individual human capital. The thesis draws on two sets of literature: that on lifelong learning and employability, and that on sociological theories of engagement with and participation in lifelong learning, notably rational choice theory and theories of positional competition. Both quantitative and qualitative methods of data gathering and analysis were applied. A questionnaire was administrated to 279 course participants; and interviews were conducted with 11 course participants, 4 non-participants and 4 course deliverers and policy-makers. Both instruments explored perceptions and experiences of the labour market, reasons for participating (or not) in STTP, their views on lifelong learning and the relationship between STTP, lifelong learning and the labour market. The finding suggests that a full understanding of individuals’ work and learning involves an analysis of a complex of relational interdependence between socially and culturally derived factors and personally subjective views of whom they are. In addition, the finding suggests that certain aspects of STTP, coupled with existing perceptions of formal education in Shanghai on the one hand and various interpretations of the needs of the labour market on the other, may be acting to challenge the original intentions of the programme, especially in terms of building a learning society.

This study explores the relationship between identity and learning, in particular the concepts of ‘belonging’ and ‘becoming’ in respect of professional, vocational education. Adopting a case study approach, the study focuses on the quantity surveying discipline and the degree programme offered by my institution, and one specific cohort on same. As they progressed through their studies, an in-depth exploration of the formation of identity (ies) and the dispositions adopted towards learning was undertaken, involving two key milestones: at Level 1 (first year) when the participants had almost completed their studies, and again at Level 3 (third year) when the participants had returned from their period of professional placement. The conclusions of my study raise a number of issues for professional, vocational education in general, and more specifically, the provision of quantity surveying education within my institution. The outcomes of this investigation highlight three key areas for further attention: the tensions inherent in providing discipline-orientated programmes within a semesterised, modularised, more generic-focused system of delivery; issues surrounding the provision of professional placement opportunities including the emotional aspects of same; and the resultant impacts on dispositions and identity, ‘belonging’ and ‘becoming’.

In post-traditional societies, identity has been pervasively understood as a ‘thing’ one needs to and can endeavour to achieve or create. Many studies about identity in the humanities and social sciences have increasingly been approached in both reified and impersonal ways. These trends in understanding identity have made a significant impact on research into education and identity. This thesis aims to demonstrate the complexity of personal identity on a theoretical level and endeavours to rethink the theoretical understanding of personal identity in relation to the notion of learning. Based on Paul Ricoeur and Charles Taylor’s theories of personal identity, this thesis argues that personal identity needs to be understood both as sameness and as selfhood at a conceptual level. Ontologically, the former belongs to the category of ‘thing’, ‘substance’ in terms of permanence in time. The latter belongs the category of ‘being’ in terms of permanence in time. This thesis will argue that this conceptual understanding of personal identity suggests that identity is largely ‘shaped’ by social, cultural, traditional, moral and ethical dimensions in the human world over time, rather than merely being a result of personal endeavour as an individual creation or/and an adaptation to constant social changes. The moral and ethical dimensions of personal identity also suggest that the need for and ‘meaning’ of personal identity to a person in his/her life cannot be simply approached in an objective manner through impersonal terms. Rather, personal identity constitutively depends on self-interpretation, which highlights the role of narrative in understanding personal identity. This thesis further argues that a new understanding about reflexive learning relevant to personal identity can be drawn from this theoretical understanding of personal identity and narrative. This new understanding is based on a person’s reflexivity not only in the dialectical frameworks between sameness, self and others, but also in different moral frameworks. What this presents us with is a different view of lifelong learning as an alternative to lifelong learning implied in the notion of a ‘reflexive project of the self’.

<p>This essay, called <em>Motivation and reading comprehension</em>, is a study of the correlation between the motivation to read and the reading comprehension of Swedish students in their final year of school before university level, meaning that they are eighteen or nineteen years old, sometimes more.</p><p>The relation between the identity of the individual and the learning process has been a matter of scientific interest for some time, and this essay works in that tradition by investigating the connection between how pupils regard reading and how well developed their ability to decode text is.</p><p>The reading comprehension is measured through a test that consists of a text from the Swedish epic by Vilhelm Moberg, <em>Invandrarna</em>,<strong> </strong>where the reader at certain intervals throughout the text is asked to<strong> </strong>mark the correct word from a choice of three. This test has been used and evaluated extensively by Per Fröjd, who has found that the results are reliable and useful.</p><p>To measure the motivation to read I’ve constructed a survey to be answered before taking the reading test. It focuses on three different parts of reading motivation that are noted as the most important ones by Ivar Bråten. These are the feeling of joy and interest for reading, the goal to acquire knowledge of a specific subject, and the expectations that you have on yourself as a reader.</p><p>Results show a weak or non-existent correlation between the two factors for the whole of the subjects, but once those who have a first language other than Swedish are removed the correlation becomes significant. There does not appear to be any difference based on gender, at least none that can be divined from these results.</p><p>The analysis does not give any reason to question previous research, and together with earlier studies of compulsory school this means that we can assume that the relation between motivation and reading comprehension is relevant throughout all the stages of schooling.</p><p>Regarding further studies a possible fruitful area of inquiry could be the significance of motivation for the students who are studying at a different language than their first.</p>

This thesis documents my exploration of professional development of four experienced English language teachers of diverse background taking the MA TESOL programme at the University of Manchester. Having considered professional development to be about change construed broadly to professional identity and teacher beliefs, I explored it through a series of individual in-depth interviews held throughout the programme. The majority of the interviews focused on the teachers' ongoing life and development and allowed the teachers space to make meaning of what they were going through and how they were developing as they engaged in the programme. On the basis of the interviews, stories about the teachers and their year were constructed. Within the stories, I synthesized what I had learned about the teachers' experience and highlighted the changes that I could see had happened to their professional identity and teacher beliefs. The stories provide a vivid example of professional development of experienced English language teachers through a master's degree. They also bring to the fore the significance of future-directed thoughts for how teachers develop professionally, which is rarely acknowledged in the existing literature. I further use the stories as a ground to conceptualize professional development of the four teachers to account for the important role their thoughts about the future played in it. Using the concepts of imagined identity and antenarrative, which I borrow from the literature, I describe it as an iterative pursuit of an ever-evolving imagined identity, or identities, and antenarrative, or antenarratives. Finally, I examine the cases using the conceptualization as a lens and offer some further insights about professional development in TESOL.

This essay, called Motivation and reading comprehension, is a study of the correlation between the motivation to read and the reading comprehension of Swedish students in their final year of school before university level, meaning that they are eighteen or nineteen years old, sometimes more. The relation between the identity of the individual and the learning process has been a matter of scientific interest for some time, and this essay works in that tradition by investigating the connection between how pupils regard reading and how well developed their ability to decode text is. The reading comprehension is measured through a test that consists of a text from the Swedish epic by Vilhelm Moberg, Invandrarna, where the reader at certain intervals throughout the text is asked to mark the correct word from a choice of three. This test has been used and evaluated extensively by Per Fröjd, who has found that the results are reliable and useful. To measure the motivation to read I’ve constructed a survey to be answered before taking the reading test. It focuses on three different parts of reading motivation that are noted as the most important ones by Ivar Bråten. These are the feeling of joy and interest for reading, the goal to acquire knowledge of a specific subject, and the expectations that you have on yourself as a reader. Results show a weak or non-existent correlation between the two factors for the whole of the subjects, but once those who have a first language other than Swedish are removed the correlation becomes significant. There does not appear to be any difference based on gender, at least none that can be divined from these results. The analysis does not give any reason to question previous research, and together with earlier studies of compulsory school this means that we can assume that the relation between motivation and reading comprehension is relevant throughout all the stages of schooling. Regarding further studies a possible fruitful area of inquiry could be the significance of motivation for the students who are studying at a different language than their first.

This thesis explores the experiences of an educational project manager/team leader, and at some point job-seeker, mostly in foreign countries. The focus lies, in conclusion, on developing awareness of everyday politics, brought about mainly by a significant change in the understanding of three closely related concepts: culture, language and identity. The understanding of culture developed into a notion of culture of groups - part of complex networks of other groups - simultaneously formed by and forming interdependent people who are interrelating according to evolving/emerging, explicit/implicit customs, norms, values and ethics. The exploration of language revealed patterns of conversation, common to specific groups, allowing co-creation of significant symbols, of which appropriate use enabled communication, establishment and mutual recognition. Identity became recognised as a social construct - dynamically adapting to specific local circumstances (groups), to social acts, which it forms and is formed by at the same time. In researcher's management practice and career-coaching-trajectory rather abstract and idealised text and talk describing people and/in organisations was encountered frequently, seemingly aimed at reducing the inevitable uncertainty that results from the complexity of human relating. Attention is paid to ways in which people speak and write about them-selves and/at work and how this influences the experience of self and/at work, which revealed a relation between abstract and idealised conversational patterns and impacted sense of self. The career-coaching experience in particular exposed how these conversational patterns in/and the strategic construction of 'glossy' identities (of organisations and people) do not reflect everyday perception of self and/at work, as work is developed in social interaction, of which meaning is negotiated and evolves through people's differing intentions, expectations and emerging insights; through everyday politics. Becoming 'politically savvy', acquiring awareness of everyday politics, is necessary for our functioning in organisational life. The argument is that developing 'political savvy' - becoming self-conscious in complex organisational environments where strategically co-created idealised images of self, organisations and work are common practice - is increasingly taxing, as glossy identities 'airbrush' away the messiness of everyday work life. The challenge for managers is to endeavour to see beyond these images, explicit strategies and certain conversational patterns, and develop their ability to make sense - by reflecting and taking a reflexive stance - of what it is people are doing together. Taking seriously everyday experiences may provide choice, options to proceed, possibly to develop (trust in) 'political savvy', and may increase awareness of how people adapt, change and develop (in) social acts because of and despite this.