This thesis examines the impact of the Estates Action (EA) programme in the UK, and Developpment Social des Quartiers (DSQ) programme in France, on run down, post war, marginalised estates. Its focus is the housing management aspects of the problems on the estates. It examines the methodological problems associated with comparative studies of housing estates, then sets out a comparative analysis of the origins, development, and nature of the estates under consideration. The origins and structure of the DSQ/EA programmes are explained, and a descriptive evaluation is given of their impact, based partly 12 detailed case studies. There is considerable use of primary documentary sources, and interviews with both local and national government officials, including with over 100 housing and other agents on the estates. It also draws on published reports and other material. I argue that there are a number of factors, shared in both counties, which create the problems: - the physical state of the estate itself - poor management of the estate - failure to carry out the necessary infrastructural works to accompany construction - the encouragement of low cost home ownership as the natural and desired tenure - the need to fill the empty properties with anyone who would pay rent, allied with social and racial "dumping". The provision of EA/DSQ resources to the estates was due to wider imperatives than simply housing problems of voids or disrepair -rather it was the problems of high pockets of unemployment, rising crime rates, and the notion of "social exclusion". Successful aspects of the programme include physical rehabilitation, new devolved management, and better infrastructural provision, although these were often quickly subject to vandalism. Less successful were the attempts to reduce residualisation by tenure mix or social engineering of allocations. Voids were tackled by a variety of imaginative solutions, and the programmes increasingly included measures to tackle the underlying problems of crime and economic marginalisation. The most effective remedies were those which involved wholesale remodelling of estates, with demolitions and the introduction of new homes, including new tenures. This type of solution is most likely to be effective in the worst estates; though the less radical measures will be effective in the less problematic areas. Note: Throughout this thesis French expressions are generally translated, and where appropriate the original is given between square brackets; for example: APL Housing Benefit [Aide Personalise a Logement] In addition, any price comparisons made at an assumed exchange rate of £1 =F10, irrespective of the year of comparison.

Despite the clinical need for children living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to access and adhere to antiretroviral treatment (ART), rates globally remain roughly half that of adults. Although the structural barriers to accessing HIV and health services are well studied, further research into the psychological and social factors underscoring children’s limited access to HIV care is needed to facilitate scale up amongst health service users and providers. Using a social representations theoretical approach, this thesis examines the interplay between psychological and social factors concerning children’s HIV service uptake in a community setting. A qualitative research study was conducted in Kabarole district, Uganda with 60 adults, including 15 health care workers (HCWs) and 45 adult carers of children, and 82 children (N=142). Methods of data collection were individual interviews, focus groups, a draw-and-write exercise, and participant observation in the main local health clinic setting. A thematic content analysis reveals multiple cross-cutting factors which mediate HIV service usage. For HCWs, despite challenging working conditions, the impact of ART has been positive both professionally and personally. Adult carers, however, continue to be negatively impacted by social stigma against HIV, and fears of potential negative consequences resulting from revealing an HIV-positive status influence their uptake of HIV services. For children, the pervasiveness of HIV in their society, and its negative personal and social impact, has created a sense of fatalism and resignation over potential HIV infection and future suffering. At present, the clinical practice environment does not provide a supportive space for these representations to be openly addressed by health service providers or users. Drawing from these findings, the thesis concludes that in order to increase children’s ART access and adherence, more supportive clinical and social environments will need to be jointly created by health service users and providers, through the building of social capital and increased social trust and cohesion between stakeholder groups. Failing to do so may result in continued low or even decreased HIV service usage for children, particularly in light of recent national legislation which may lead to further entrenchment of HIV stigma against socially vulnerable groups.

Worldwide, non-maternal care during the first years of life has gradually become more prevalent. However, there is little evidence about the effect of non-maternal care— especially for under-three-year-olds—on child development. Hence, this thesis explores the association between both maternal employment and type of care at different stages during children’s first three years of life and child development in Chile. My results indicate that there is evidence that maternal employment during the child’s first year of life is detrimental to child development and that delaying maternal employment initiation decreases this detrimental effect on child development. On the other hand, the type of care that the child attends during this first year of life also matters. First, children who are looked after by their grandparent during their first year of life exhibit a positive association with child cognitive and socio-emotional development relative to exclusive maternal care. Second, there is a negative association between relative care and child cognitive and socioemotional development compared to exclusive maternal care. Third, there is a positive association between centre-based care and child cognitive development and a slightly positive association with child socio-emotional development. Finally, controlling for unobserved and fixed child characteristics, I analyse whether the positive association between centre-based care at 6 to 12 months old and child development is also observed on children who entered centre-based care between the ages of 24 and 36 months old. The association between centre-based care between centre-based care and child cognitive development is also positive and there is no significant association with child socioemotional development. In each of my empirical chapters, I test whether child vulnerability define as lowly educated mothers, single parent and low income families, moderates the association between early non-maternal care and child development. Overall, the previously described associations are slightly more detrimental for more vulnerable children. In my three empirical chapters, I use a novel Chilean longitudinal panel survey with waves in 2010 and 2012. To deal with selection bias, in two out three empirical chapters I control for an extensive set of child, mother and family characteristics using OLS regressions and propensity score matching techniques. In addition, in the last empirical chapter I control for (unobserved) individual fixed effects.

The debate that rages around the concept of austerity, specifically in Europe, lacks context. This paper strives to show that successful reforms are 1) pragmatic in their nature, 2) piecemeal in ideology, 3) mandated by supranational institutions that disregard national sovereignty, 4) unattainable prior to the crisis and 5) long-term in their timeframe. Reforms have had beneficial implications above and beyond fiscal austerity. In the case studies of Ireland, Spain and Greece, the reforms instituted are laid out and evaluated. In each case, reforms achieved a different outcome but allow one to see the merits of well-regulated free market capitalism. When reform is appreciated, the legacy of the European and Troika response to the crisis becomes more appropriate.

Framed by insights from critical human geography, political economy, and educational studies, this dissertation offers a critique of the contemporary education reform movement in the United States (hereafter U.S.). The overarching argument made here is that the powerfully positioned individuals and groups at the head of this movement have been less motivated by a desire to actually pursue social justice than by the political expediency that comes with appearing to be doing so. The three papers that follow speak to the existing critical literature on public schooling in the U.S., which argues that the perpetual discussion about how to 'fix' the U.S.'s educational system should be seen as an attempt by its powerfully positioned interlocutors to collapse popular discontent with a variety of persistent social injustices into a focused dissatisfaction with the public schools. This literature has also argued that although the public education system in the U.S. is indeed quite inequitable as it presently exists, and thus an appropriate target for transformation, the education reform movement's efforts to that end have actually reproduced many of the social and pedagogical causes of educational inequity. This dissertation builds on the literature just summarized by demonstrating that the rhetoric of the individuals and groups associated with the education reform movement coalesces around a spatial discourse through which the causes of a variety of social ills are presented as endogenous to the spaces inhabited by the individuals and groups that suffer them with the greatest frequency and intensity. Further, the artificially discrete, enclosed spaces conjured in the name of education reform are enrolled as part of a broader project of legitimizing coercive, individualizing, and competitive-rather than supportive, dialogic, collaborative-forms of pedagogy, and governance more generally.

In this qualitative study of middle school English teachers, I investigated the phenomenon of why teachers stay, year in and year out, despite challenges brought on by educational reforms and negative depictions from the general public. The teachers’ experiences illustrate the dedication and perseverance of professionals committed to working with students year in and year out. I framed this case study (Merriam, 1988) in theories of sensemaking (Maitliss & Christianson, 2014; Wieck, 1995) and critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 2011). The participants were three teachers who taught middle school English for over ten years. Within this time frame, they were exposed to multiple, ongoing reforms: No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Common Core State Standards. I used sensemaking and critical pedagogy lenses to explore how these teachers experienced issues of power and interpreted educational reforms. I also examined the reasons why they persisted in the profession. I employed grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and Gee’s (2011) Seven Building Tasks for analysis to identify four categories to illuminate the teachers’ stories: 1) Public Perception of the Profession, 2) Pedagogy and Curriculum, 3) Relationships, and 4) Being a Teacher. The teachers’ experienced ongoing struggles and yet had longevity in the profession. Implications of the study point to the perils and promises of long-term teaching. The perils were challenges of the profession: demands from administrators, new and limiting curriculum, a negative public perception, and long hours. The promises these teachers kept were commitments to decision makers and the public, middle school students and their families, and to the profession. It is these promises that they kept each year that motivated the teachers and sustained them over time.

This thesis explores tensions within UK childcare policy and welfare reform. Through an ethnographic study of policy implementation, I examine themes of government, governance and governmentality. The evidence based policy movement assumes that the nature of evidence is self-evident but ethnographic data reveals how implementers draw on cultural resources of interpretive repertoires, myth and symbolism to make sense of policy. Central Government structures the policy implementation process with a “core offer”, hypothecated funding, a timetable and targets. Local policy actors manage implementation partly through tick box performative practices but they stretch time and juggle money. Implementation practices comprise branding, reification and commodification processes and the design of elastic policy products. Change and stasis are both in evidence with time-scales experienced variously as tight, as long running or as plus ça change. The community is produced as subject and object of governance, as an agent of change and a site for policy intervention. This glosses over childcare as women’s issue, market tensions and social class determinants of child poverty. Drawing on a range of theoretical resources and using the analogy of a palimpsest I show how discursive governance achieves a temporary policy settlement. This is neither workfare nor welfare but an unanticipated creative set of outcomes, exemplified in a circus project. I reveal some relatively hidden aspects of public policy and analyse give-away artefacts as hyper-visible policy manifestations. Commitment to a public service ethos is in evidence with policy implementers exercising their discretion in the interstices of market and state bureaucratic governance regimes. The Sure Start brand moves on from a flagship programme to Sure Start Children’s Centres but a novel Community Learning Partnership struggles to tug the oil tanker of children’s welfare services in a radically new direction or solve the wicked issue of child poverty.

Spelling is a tool by which one records his thoughts and ideas; therefore it is a vital part of life. To fulfill its task successfully, spelling must be accurate. Spelling is that tool by which the happenings of the past are revealed to the present and are preserved for the future. For any individual who attempts to transfer his thoughts and words by symbols onto paper, correct spelling is a prime essential. It follows, then, that to develop perfect habits of spelling in order that perfect transcriptions of thoughts might be made is the duty of the teacher. This duty has been attempted by teachers for many generations. But it is an established fact that the goal has not been reached, for there is a stupendous number of misspellings in the written work of students in high schools. Many methods have been advanced for correcting this incompetence in spelling; when these were tried, they have failed to secure the coveted goal. In some instances the cure has aggravated the disease. Successful abolishment of this handicap baffles the teaching profession. In a course in American pronunciation recently conducted at North Texas State College, the teacher presented the fact that there are factors in the English language which tend to become stumbling-blocks to the attainment of perfect spelling. For the first time it became evident to this writer that certain elements within the language might be the cause of the spelling problem. Therefore, the readings for this thesis were undertaken for the purpose of finding the logical causes for poor spelling habits and with the hope of discovering a workable remedy.

EXPLORING THE PERCEPTION OF SELF-EFFICACY AMONG TEACHERS AND PRINCIPALS IN MEETING THE DEMANDS OF CONTEMPORARY SCHOOL REFORM INITIATIVES

The three articles that make up this thesis consider the diverse forms of contentious politics and mass mobilization that emerged during the 25th January Egyptian Revolution in 2011 and its aftermath. The first article, discussing the eighteen days of anti-Mubarak protest, pays special attention to the position of the Egyptian army in and around Midan al-Tahrir, and recounts how protestors sought to co-opt and neutralize the threat posed by regime forces. It finds that fraternizing protestors developed a repertoire of contention that made situational, emotional claims on the loyalty of regime troops. The second article explores the role of elections and protests during the failed democratic transition away from authoritarian rule that began on 11 February with Mubarak’s resignation and ended on 3 July 2013 with a military coup. Highlighting the Muslim Brothers’ demobilization and privileging of procedural democracy following Mubarak’s ousting, it offers an alternative account of where and when Egypt’s democratic project went wrong. The final article considers opposition to the 3 July coup and in particular the effects of state repression on the daily street protests launched by the Muslim Brothers and their allies in the post-coup period. Far from being defeated, anti-coup contention, it is suggested, has instead been contained in ways that have made protest less visible and less disruptive over time. Taken as a whole, the thesis suggests new ways to understand and explain the 25th January Revolution, its trajectories and legacies.