This thesis provides a theoretical basis for applying complexity theory to classroom learning. Existing accounts of complexity in social systems fail to adequately situate human understanding within those systems. Human understanding and action is embedded within the complex systems that we inhabit. As such, we cannot achieve a full and accurate representation of those systems. This challenges epistemological positions which characterise learning as a simple mechanistic process, those which see it as approaching a view of the world 'as it is' and also positions which see learning as a purely social activity. This thesis develops a materialist position which characterises understandings as emergent from, but not reducible to, the material world. The roles of embodied neural networks as well as our linguistic and symbolic systems are considered in order to develop this materialist position. Context and history are shown to be important within complex systems and allow novel understandings to emerge. Furthermore, shared understandings are seen as emergent from processes of response, replication and manipulation of patterns of behaviour and patterns of association. Thus the complexity of learning is accounted for within a coherent ontological and epistemological framework. The implications of this materialist position for considering classroom learning are expounded. Firstly, our models and descriptions of classrooms are reconciled with the view of our understandings as sophisticated yet incomplete models within complex social systems. Models are characterised as themselves material entities which emerge within social systems and may go on to influence behaviour. Secondly, contemporary accounts of learning as the conceptual representation of the world are challenged.

The traditional monopoly of politics and international relations on theorizing power, authority and legitimacy has eroded in the late modern era. The complexity of these domains has been compounded in a strongly interconnected, post-Westphalian world, where sovereignty and statehood are increasingly negotiated, where centres of power and authority have shifted and where new configurations of governance have come to the fore. The conventional conceptual toolbox of inter-national relations has been slow to adapt, and so the need to embrace insights from other disciplines never greater. The study of legitimacy in particular has been hamstrung by conventional drawings of both sovereignty and authority. Public authority, in the Weberian idealist sense, is the legitimated exercise of power. The study of power has broadened considerably in this timeframe; legitimacy, or rather the practice of legitimation, must mirror power's analytical expansion. Even where the need to broaden our conceptualization of legitimation has been conceded, its empirical content has remained woefully thin. The question of how political actors legitimate their authority to act thus remains under-theorized and under-researched. This thesis contributes to contemporary debates regarding power, legitimation and authority in two key respects. The first is in theorizing legitimation as practice: the everyday 'socially meaningful patterns of action' (Adler & Pouliot 2011, p3) that render power authoritative. This practice-based approach, benefitting in particular from the legacies of Foucault and Bourdieu, moves firmly away from accounts of legitimacy as 'inputs' and 'outputs' towards a more processual account. The second is in locating these everyday practices beyond formalized institutions, undertaken by a range of actors in a range of forums. The increasingly blurred 'non-state' operates in the margins between global and local; national/international; public/private and indeed state/non-state, whilst nonetheless sustaining a claim to publicness. These 'twilight' institutions (Lund 2006a) include the non-government organizations in Tanzania on which this thesis is focussed. It draws on extensive critical ethnography in locating everyday governmental and non-governmental legitimation practice, whilst linking the local to the global. This is not solely about facilitating the travel of international relations to its hitherto geographical and theoretical margins, but to return with rigour to the centrality of legitimation as experienced in 'most of the world' (Chatterjee 2004). It asks, in short, how NGOs, as non-state actors, legitimate their authority to act in the everyday, within today's interconnected world.

This thesis explored the impact of the teacher incentive policies which were designed and implemented in Rwanda between 2008 and 2013, with the aim to understand their impact on teacher motivation. Research evidence shows that, competence and commitment of teachers are among the main determinants of student learning outcomes (Bennell and Akyeampong, 2007). As such, governments have the responsibility to ensure that teachers are appropriately trained and motivated to teach. Yet, motivational and incentives issues among teachers have been inadequately researched in the African context to understand how teacher motivational issues might be addressed by governments and international donors to improve educational quality. Rather, as reported by the Voluntary Services Oversees (VSO) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), educational policies have focused much more on teacher supply and demand issues in response to increased access to education (VSO, 2002; UNESCO, 2005). In countries where teacher motivation issues have been on the education agenda, these have been piecemeal interventions lacking long-term sustainability. As such, UNESCO's 2013/14 Education For All-Global Monitoring Report (EFA-GMR) recommends the need for policy-makers to identify ways how teachers' motivation can be improved so as to enable teachers to work in the service of improving learning for all (UNESCO, 2014). This study employed a mixed methods sequential explanatory research design, where quantitative data (from 276 teachers from 46 schools located in 10 districts) was collected first, followed by qualitative data (obtained from interviews with eighteen participants, selected from institutions involved in teacher incentives' policy making, implementation, facilitation and the beneficiary level). This data was then integrated at the intermediate and final stages of the study and presented concurrently in this thesis. The study was framed around the content (or basic needs) theory of motivation (see Chapter 3). Findings indicate that, individual teacher characteristics are key in understanding how the incentives impact on teachers' levels of motivation. As such, the Government of Rwanda (GoR), should take into consideration these characteristics, when designing the teacher incentive policies for the teaching profession. The study confirms earlier findings that, teachers' pay is very low, both in absolute terms and in comparison to other professions, which is a major motivational challenge. The study further shows that, while most teacher incentives may achieve the purpose for which they are meant, others are likely to result into unintended implications, which should be factored and monitored while designing and implementing the teacher incentives (see Chapter 6, section 6.2.2). Furthermore, the study shows the “8-step monthly protocol on processing the teachers' salaries”, as an example of incentives that are cost-effective and are likely to create an immediate positive motivation impact, and which can be ideal for resource-constrained contexts, such as Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, including Rwanda. The study notes the key potential role of parental contributions to teachers' pay (top-up), and that governments need to harmonise and regulate it, so as to eliminate the imbalance it causes, between primary and secondary teachers; and rural and urban schools. Most teachers responded that teacher training and professional development was the main intrinsic motivational factor. The study noted that, while the teacher's union was viewed as potentially key in enhancing teachers' status, solidarity and power, the teachers' union was very weak and influenced by government, which is characteristic of most unions in the SSA. This is coupled with limited teachers' participation in decision-making on issues that concern them (see DeJaeghere et al, 2006), which is likely to lead to their de-motivation. This study, therefore, has attempted to make a contribution to the development of the theoretical and substantive knowledge in terms of policy changes designed to improve teacher motivation in Rwanda (and possibly in the SSA region). It also contributes to a clarification of the methodology, which can be employed for future research on teacher motivation.

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Teacher educators have increasingly been considered as a crucial occupational group for improving educational standards by the Chinese government, but they are under-researched. Currently, many teacher educators in different teacher education institutions in Shanghai are not identified as teacher educators. Therefore, their contribution to teacher education is not sufficiently valued and support for their professional development is limited. A better understanding of what identities teacher educators have is necessary in order to help define their diverse professional development needs and provide the support necessary for them. However, from the study’s findings it became clear that ‘identity’ is often misunderstood as ‘role and responsibility’ in the Chinese context. Therefore, this study refocused more on exploring the roles and responsibilities, experiences, understandings, and beliefs that guide the professional learning and practices of teacher educators in three different types of institutional settings (university-based, college-based, and teacher training school-based) in Shanghai. This study used a mixed-methods design, utilising both quantitative and qualitative data concurrently, using fifteen teacher educator interviews (nine individual interviews and six group interviews) and the online Teacher Educator Survey (n=252). All data were analysed in a systematic way. The discussion of the findings draws particularly on the policies on teacher educators in Shanghai, on research on the professional development of teacher educators across the world and on the theory of organisational culture that involves how individuals respond to policy in particular settings. This study produced a number of key findings: the teacher educators in Shanghai were identified as an attractive professional group, in which the professionals had a strong sense of commitment and willingness to stay. The roles of Shanghai’s teacher educators and the related expertise, career pathways and motivations, were determined by their different organisational cultures, which were affected by both national and regional policy directions. Teacher educators in Shanghai made strong demands on both the purposes of, and the approaches to, professional development and these were diversely manifested and were highly consistent with the different professional roles, policy directions and organisational cultures. Although Shanghai’s teacher educators were provided with satisfactory ‘physical support’ for their professional development, the non-physical support did not seem sufficient. This study provides evidence of the complexities of teacher educators’ roles, responsibilities, and professional development, which may be of benefit for teacher educators, teachers’ associations, leaders of teacher education institutions and policy makers internationally, as it highlights the importance of understanding and supporting the need to build, sustain and improve teacher education. At a theoretical level, the contribution of this study is a more nuanced understanding in terms of a model of teacher educators’ roles; of the different impact of organisational culture on teacher educators depending on their institutional type; and of their expressed professional commitment and loyalty.

This study develops and explores a technique of individual time data analysis (ITDA) which can be used as a tool for demonstrating the effectiveness of resource use in further education. The study focuses on Information Technology (IT) resources and investigates effectiveness by surveying individual students’ reported resource use and exploring the relationship between this and performance. Using quantitative data from a positivist methodological standpoint, the study aims to provide techniques which are accessible to educational practitioners. Two surveys were used in a West Midlands sixth form college. The first was conducted in the academic year from September 1998 and the second from September 2006. Data was gathered on students’ use of IT resources and performance was measured using students’ value added results. This information was used in a statistical analysis which evaluated the effectiveness of the students’ resource use. The conclusions differed for the two surveys. The 1998 survey showed that those students who spent a greater proportion of their time using IT resources were more likely to achieve better value added results. However, the 2006 survey appeared to show the opposite. As a result of the two surveys the ITDA technique was evaluated and recommended for further development by practitioners.

A comparative examination was undertaken of funding mechanisms and Quality Assurance Systems (QAS) in higher education in Egypt and the UK with the aim of identifying implications for reform in Egypt. These issues are examined by applying the concepts of autonomy, accountability, efficiency and equity as analytical and evaluative tools, chosen because of their central place in the analysis of the governance and finance of higher education. The principal sources of data are document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 47 academic and administrative staff in Cairo University and 29 at the University of Birmingham. The main findings show that different forms of funding and QAS differ in their consequence for the autonomy, accountability, efficiency and equity of universities. There are also contested perspectives between the expectations of policy pronouncements and the experience of those working in the sector. It was also found that there are overlapping contextual factors of governance and culture that contribute to the impact of funding and QAS so that they cannot be understood as stand-alone ‘objective’ phenomena because they are shaped and re-shaped by the regulatory and cultural environment. This leads to the conclusion that changes to funding and QAS in Egypt need to be reformed and developed in ways that address issues of governance and culture. A set of pilot projects is proposed to test their feasibility and build support for change. While the study has identified several fundamental systemic problems that need to be addressed, it is argued that these are best done through evolutionary pilot projects such as evolving a funding formula; cost-sharing; staffing; student representation systems and capacity building and training.

This study is an investigation of the use of L1 in two sixth grade CLIL Geography and Home Economics classrooms in two Cypriot Primary schools. An overview of the international literature indicated that L1 is used in such classrooms for disciplining and instruction giving (Gierlinger 2007), group work (Dalton-Puffer 2007), text mediation and explanation of ideas (Buchholz 2007, Arthur and Martin 2006), off-topic talk(Nikula 2005) and label quests (Heath 1986, Arthur and Martin 2006). This study is ethnographically-informed as it employs fundamental elements of ethnography together with analysis of video-recordings of classroom interaction, a key characteristic of the micro-ethnographic approach (Erickson, 1996, 2004; Garcez,2008). The findings from 640 video recorded lessons (320 minutes of each subject) show that the functions of bilingual events span the single word to interactive exchange in length, and are evenly distributed across instructional and regulative registers (Christie 2000, Gardner 2006). The four-fold new classification identifies an expanded repertoire of word level bilingual events, including the L2>L1 label quests which are particularly important in CLIL contexts; a range of bilingual events including codeswitching for instructional purposes; a new category of events related to code management; and clear examples of regulative events such as disciplining and giving instructions that are well documented in the literature.

The research was a case study into the pedagogy in a maintained nursery with a specialist provision for children with severe and complex additional needs (AN). It used conceptual frameworks developed within a sociocultural approach from Vygotsky’s (1978) theory to investigate the mediation of children’s cognitive development and inclusion, regarded as participation, by the pedagogy and practitioners. Rogoff’s (1995) Three Planes of Analysis was adopted as a unifying conceptual framework to represent the pedagogy. Data was collected from: semi-structured interviews with 13 practitioners working with children with and without AN in the mainstream and specialist provision; observations of Mediated Learning Experiences (MLEs) between practitioners and children with and without AN, and observations of two children, one with and one without AN during a session in the nursery. A thematic analysis of the data (Braun and Clarke, 2006) suggested themes relating to practice, learning and cognitive development and participation within the community plane; mediation of learning and cognitive development within the interpersonal plane and mediation of participation within the personal plane. Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) (Engeström, 1999) was used to show the interconnected activity systems that constituted the pedagogy within and between these three planes. Implications for EP practice were suggested.

This study examines the discursive practices of two Family Literacy, Language and Numeracy practitioners teaching a family literacy programme together. Drawing on positioning analysis and linguistic ethnography, I am exploring how the practitioners use narratives-in-interaction to position themselves, each other, the parents with whom they work, and the programme on which they teach. This research reveals how both dominant and locally constructed discourses are invoked, reworked and embedded within the practitioners’ narrative allusions, with such discourses often becoming naturalised through their repeated citation. Analyses of the interactional and lexical content of narratives-in-interaction facilitate this study’s twin-focus on the social identification of the narrated, and the narrators’ emergent identity construction. Investigating the discourses that circulate about parents uncovers how the telling of narratives not only impacts on the ways in which the parents are socially identified in discursive terms, but suggests that this may affect how the parents are dealt with in more practical ways by the practitioners. Through the sharing and co-construction of small stories, the practitioners make claims in relation to their own identities, particularly in terms of their working relationship with one another and the roles they undertake in concert and in counterpoint to each other.