Students with learning difficulties are said by many writers to be prohibited from having a valued learner identity and denied a voice in which to influence their educational circumstances. They are, it is argued, kept submerged in a ‘culture of silence’, where they are homogenised as a deficit category of learners and, therefore, perceived in a one-dimensional way. Such disabling barriers stem from practitioner assumptions and wider sociological influences, which are also part of this same culture. The by-products of this thinking have prevented practitioners from developing more interactive and enabling relationships with their students. Starting with a commitment to listen to student views, and explore accessible, flexible and innovative ways in which to advocate these, the research reported in this thesis sought ways to address this agenda. Set in a further education college, five student co-researchers, four practitioner co-researchers and a facilitator co-researcher embarked on a year long project to learn how the same students could be supported in contributing to their own learning. Being a transparent account, the inquiry was also interested in exploring the difficulties of this endeavour and whether student empowerment would alter the relational dynamics and, therefore, practitioner roles. As the facilitator was instrumental in introducing these ideas, she also examined her own influential role. Data were generated from observations and co-researcher experiences of engaging with roles, body collages, student interviews, photo voice, journals, portfolios and reflective meetings. These exploratory processes and methods were predicated upon the ideological frameworks of the social model of disability and multiple intelligences theory. The study revealed that renegotiated co-researcher roles and body collages were effective processes for enabling reciprocal engagement, causing students to empower themselves and leading practitioners to rethink in ways that had not been anticipated. These processes were also felt to be educationally effective in relation to curriculum aims. Whilst journals and lengthy meetings proved to be impractical and of little use, the reflective journal did prove to be an essential tool for the facilitator, allowing her to draw upon further evidence. The findings indicate that student voice can be raised through collaboration and forging relationships of trust and co-ownership. The thesis concludes by arguing that silences were broken, not least since these collaborative actions are still being used in the particular context in ways that are conducive to everyday practices. Although time and commitment are needed, these are valuable strategies that other marginalised educational communities may benefit from adopting.

This study examined student academic optimism in four diverse North Texas school districts. This study used a convergent parallel mixed methods design to analyze results of an online administration of the survey, and Latinx student responses to a focus group protocol derived from the survey. Quantitative results indicate the individual scales making up the construct align with previous research results. The three scales were found to be strongly and significantly correlated, indicating the potential for validation. Qualitative results indicate Latinx students' perceptions of their academic careers align with four themes. Latinx students are keenly aware of their teachers as a person, their school as a community, the intrusion of the outside world, and students as agents. Qualitative results support the importance of the three components of the construct, student trust in teachers, student academic press, and student identification with school. As a new source of data, combined with existing metrics of instructional effectiveness, student academic optimism could increase the ability of decision makers to improve the overall efficacy of school systems especially when addressing the persistent opportunity gaps for Latinx and other students of color.

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This sociological study explores the past and current higher education (HE) experience of educationalists at Gaza’s universities and how this experience may be evolving in the shifting socio-political context in the Arab World. The thesis is motivated by three questions: 1. What are the perspectives of academic staff in the Faculties of Education at Gaza’s universities on their own past HE experiences? 2. What are the perspectives of students and their lecturers (academic staff) in the Faculties of Education at Gaza’s universities on students’ current HE experiences? 3. How do educationalists in the Faculties of Education at Gaza’s universities perceive the shifting socio-political context in the Arab World, and what current or future impact do they think it will have on the education context at Gaza’s universities? To examine these questions, I conducted an inductive qualitative study. Using 36 in-depth, semi- structured interviews which lasted between (90-300 min), I collected data from educationalists (15 academic staff; 21 students) at two of Gaza’s universities. Due to difficulties of access to the Gaza Strip, the participants were interviewed via Skype from Cambridge. Informed by the literature review, and triangulated with other research activities, such as reviewing participants’ CVs, browsing universities websites, and keeping a reflective journal, a thematic analysis was conducted on the interview data. Theoretically, although this study has benefited from conceptual insights, such as those found in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and in Pierre Bourdieu’s work on symbolic violence, it is a micro-level study, which is mainly data driven. The findings of this research show that in the past, educationalists were relatively more passive in terms of shaping their HE experiences, despite efforts to become resilient. In the present, students and their lecturers continue to face challenges that impact negatively on their participation and everyday life at Gaza’s universities. However, how the HE experience will evolve out of this context in the future is uncertain. The Arab Spring revolutions have had an influence on Gaza HE institutions’ campuses as they have triggered more awareness of students’ grievances and discontent. Because of some political and educational barriers, however, students’ voices are a cacophony; they remain split between “compliance” and resistance (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 471; Swartz, 2013, p. 39). Previously, Sara Roy (1995) rightly indicated a structure of “de-development” in the Gaza Strip (p.110). The findings from this research show that the impact of occupation and of the changes in the Arab World on the educational context in Gaza are more complex than previously thought. There is a simultaneous process of construction and destruction that is both external and internal to educationalists and which undermines academic work at Gaza’s universities. Based on this, the study concludes by explaining six implications of this complex structure for academic practice at Gaza’s universities, offering nine policy recommendations for HE reform, and highlighting six areas for future research.