This study examined perceptual and cognitive structures that children employ when listening to musical pitches. A number of experiments utilised reaction time as the dependent variable to identify perceptually salient factors in musical pitch perception, particularly the cognitive organisation of musical pitch in a tonal context. A chronometrically measured forced-choice paired—comparisons experimental paradigm was used with children between the ages of six and eleven, with the discrimination of same and different notes in context-free and various contextual presentations tested by a computer—driven environment. Significant correlations suggest that the recognition of same and different notes in both context-free and contextual presentations was progressively facilitated, with responses exhibiting fewer errors and decreasing reaction times with increasing age. Although no significant difference was observed in mean correct reaction times between uncontextualised same and different conditions, significant differences in reaction times were observed within each condition when suffix notes were each contextualised by a major triad prefix. Furthermore, while no significant correlation was observed between same and different notes in context-free presentation, the subsequent contextualisation by a major triad prefix to each comparison suffix note produced a significant positive correlation suggesting that the contextualisation effects were systematic. A further experiment using a diminished triad prefix confirmed that the tonal specificity of the stimuli was related to the observed reaction times, with significant differences in correct reaction times for those stimuli which differed in the tonal range of their constituent pitches in relation to the circle of fifths. The observed differences in the reaction time of responses were interpreted as differential measures of the internalisation of musical pitches to a cognitive structure such as a tonal schema. The hypothesis that perceptual facilitation of the coding of redundancy within such a recognised and practised cognitive structure such as tonality was supported for children of this age.

The central argument of this thesis is that a sociocultural approach, based on Vygotsky’s work, allows embracing simultaneously both the individual and the social aspects of emotions. The thesis comprises two parts. Sociological and psychological literatures about the study of emotions are reviewed to show the difficulties that these disciplines have faced in accounting for both the physiological and the cultural aspects of emotions simultaneously. In the first part of the thesis, I build an all-embracing historical psychological approach that pulls together aspects of Vygotsky’s work in order to overcome those difficulties. In so doing, my investigation of what emotions ‘are’ has changed to acknowledge the need to investigate what emotions ‘do’ in social contexts and interactions. The study of emotions, I argue, needs to avoid their separation from the context in which they emerge to overcome the separation of individual and social aspects of emotions. The second part of this thesis consists of an exploration of the necessary traits for an adequate sociocultural study of emotions in the classroom. This involves the analysis of emotions as they feature within pedagogic practices that take place in four classrooms, through a detailed examination of video-recorded microsituations. Three foci are constructed to discuss situated emotions: context, social practice and microhistory. The empirical study offers the basis for two conclusions. First, through the data analysis I show diverse ways in which teachers accompany, encourage and ‘contain’ or ‘regulate’ emotions as part of the interactions that take place in classrooms. Second, I offer an outline of a sociocultural approach to the study of emotions which does not separate their individual and social aspects. Finally, I discuss some of the implications of this study for teachers’ practices and for future research.

Teaching media literacy as a separate school subject or as part of another school subject is lacking from the Greek educational reality, despite the international academic research and the development and application of media literacy teaching models. This thesis is an analysis of two case study research projects carried out in groups of students in two Greek secondary schools with the aim to study the students’ response to media projects, which are totally new for the Greek educational reality, realized in the English as a Foreign Language class. The data is analyzed according to Burn and Durran’s 3-Cs model of media literacy, and more precisely its Cultural and Creative functions are the aspects used that include the concepts of Cultural Taste, Identity, and Creativity. These concepts are interpreted within the framework of Cultural Studies and Psychology theories. Important theoreticians considered are Bourdieu, Bennett, Giddens, Vygotsky, Jenkins and Bakhtin. The examination of students’ participation in the media projects and their production work suggest that their cultural taste is a combination of global and local influences, a glocal result, in which the family, the peers, the media and the education play an important role. Their identity is multi-faceted, as a reflection of various aspects of their selves, and it is closely related to their cultural taste and their cultural capital. Students’ creativity is also expressed as a complex process, affected both by the guidance of the official educational context and the youth popular culture tendencies. The tensions that emerge in the expression of the students’ cultural taste, identity and creativity during moving image projects characterize the Greek adolescents’ response to the newly-learnt moving image literacy, and raise important questions for educators and researchers.

Intellectual disabilities cause significant sub--‐average achievement in learning, with difficulties in perception, attention, communication of ideas, language acquisition, abstraction and generalisation. From a socio--‐constructionist perspective, digital technologies can provide resources to help addressing these difficulties. Tangible technologies are considered particularly promising tools for children with intellectual disabilities, by enabling interaction through physical action and manipulation and facilitating representational concrete--‐ abstract links by integrating physical and digital worlds. However, hands--‐on learning activities remain a recommended but problematic approach for intellectually disabled students. This thesis investigates how and which characteristics of tangible interaction may support children with intellectual disabilities to productively engage in discovery learning. Empirical studies were performed where children with intellectual disabilities used four tangible systems with distinct design characteristics. Four broad themes emerged from qualitative analysis which are central for identifying how to best support exploratory interaction: types of digital representations; physical affordances; representational mappings; and conceptual metaphors. Guidelines for the development of tangible artefacts and facilitation of discovery learning activities with tangibles were derived from these themes. A complementary quantitative analysis investigated the effects of external guidance in promoting episodes of discovery in tangible interaction. This thesis argues that providing tangible interaction alone is not sufficient to bring significant benefits to the experience of intellectually disabled students in discovery learning. Visual digital representations, meaningful spatial configurations of physical representations, temporal and spatial contiguity between action and representations, simple causality and familiar conceptual metaphors are critical in providing informational intrinsic feedback to exploratory actions, which allied with external guidance that creates a minimal underlying structure for interaction, should establish an ideal environment for discovery.

A corpus of written English produced by three groups of adult French beginning learners of English as a foreign language over a period of approximately eight months was examined for evidence relating to the acquisition of past tense forms and related meanings. The findings provide evidence to support several hypotheses which can be usefully grouped within a single framework which sees language acquisition as a process of hypothesis formation and testing whose constraints are both first and second language in origin. These hypotheses can be summarised as follows: (1) Language learning involves the acquisition of a new system of expressing meaning. As a result, the learner engages in a process of matching linguistic form to underlying meaning both within and between languages. Only such a hypothesis, we believe, can satisfactorily explain the apparently random variation that was observed in our subjects' acquisition of past tense. (2) Language transfer is thus necessarily a widespread phenomenon, constraining learners' formation of hypotheses, but is itself constrained by the inter- and intra-language form-meaning transparency of the language item in question. In other words, whenever formmeaning relationships are not wholly transparent, transfer is to be expected. (3) Moreover, even when form-meaning relations are transparent, transfer may take place due to the learner's shortage of processing capacity. When this is lacking, learners tend to maintain communication by relying on existing procedural knowledge, which, at least in the early stages, means well-established first language procedures. This is because, even though humans can process at phenomenal speeds, this is only possible with procedures which are solidly in place. For the vast majority of language learners this implies that first language procedures will always take precedence over weaker second language procedures because they were later traced and are less frequently used. Under the circumstances, where demands are made on the learner, for example, to produce language in real time, there will be a tendency to bypass second language networks and rely on first language circuitry. Consequently, learners make use of their ability to operate a number of strategies (such as planning and monitoring their language output) to produce comprehensible language. This ability, labelled strategic competence, is identified as a key aspect in language use in general.

This research contributes to the scarce literature on the perceptual and cognitive abilities of musical savants. It focuses on one prodigious savant, comparing his abilities with those of other savants and ‘neurotypical’ musicians with absolute pitch. Three experiments are reported. The first comprises a chordal disaggregation task, in which 6 savants and 17 ‘neurotypical’ musicians, had to replicate the stimuli listened. While the savants as a whole outperformed the ‘neurotypical’ musicians, there was some overlap. The most successful participants (savant and some ‘neurotypical’) appeared to use a ‘bottom up’ strategy, whereby the lowest notes were reproduced most successfully. This suggests that savants and some ‘neurotypical’ musicians process chords similarly. The second experiment explored the capacity of the savant to learn and recall a novel piece of music through exposure one bar at a time. The results show that the savant found this conventional approach to learning more difficult than a comparable task, in which exposure to a different though structurally similar piece was only ever as a whole. This finding contributes to the debate on ‘weak central coherence’ that appears to be a feature of the cognitive style of people on the autism spectrum. The third experiment investigates whether and in what ways the prodigious savant’s capacity to process and remember auditory material may be domainHspecific, by comparing his ability to learn and recall a verbal stimulus with an isomorphic musical one. The prodigious savant found the text, which was shorter and less complex than the music, to be very difficult to memorise. However, another savant performed on the task better than one ‘neurotypical’ musician, and worse than another. This finding indicates that savants do not form an entirely homogeneous group with regard to cognitive abilities, and, in the case of the prodigious savant, adds to the debate on the potential modularity of intelligence.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the factors which influence the child's understanding of angle. Fifty-four students aged from 6 to 14, were set 92 activities to solve in three separate sections. The activities were elaborated according to six interwoven variables: (a) activities in static and dynamic perspectives carried out under (b) three different representational systems: oral (everyday life model), written (paper and pencil model), and bodysyntonic (Logo model). These were inserted in three situations (c), rotation, navigation and comparison, using (d) different materials. The children were asked (e) to perform an action or to recognise differences and similarities between angles, followed by an explanation, or description of what they had done. All activities involved (f) different sizes of angle. The findings were submitted to both quantitative and posteriori qualitative analysis. Cross-sectionally by age, the data indicate a strong trend of improved performance with age. This points to a developmental effect, but the school's influence has to be taken into account. The results suggest that the child's acquisition of the conception of angle has a dynamic perspective as its starting-point. In particular, the children performed better within activities which involved rotation. This does not imply that every child used the dynamic perspective of angle consistently across all tasks. In fact the choice of perspective frequently changedaccording to the meaning of the situation, which could sometimes be depended on cultural influences. This was particularly apparent in the watch arena, the situation which the children were most successful. In a comparison of representational systems, the best performances were achieved in activities on Logo, while activities conducted with paper & pencil proved to be the most difficult. Performance was also enhanced in tasks which required action by the children. These findings indicate that there exist various factors influencing a child's understanding of angle, and these factors are close interrelated.

Earlier studies have shown that the majority of the teachers in primary schools in Nigeria are ill-equipped to teach science. It was also established that most of these primary school science teachers had rather poor background and training in science. The present study was therefore designed to establish the efficacy of practical workshops as a way of furthering teachers' professional competency in science. This was done through a field study of these teachers in their teaching environment. The investigation was carried out in three phases. The first phase involved a questionnaire survey covering 180 primary six teachers located in three of the 30 states of Nigeria (Anambra, Kaduna and Plateau). The aim of this survey was to identify the topics in the primary science core curriculum which the teachers found difficult to teach. It was found that the teachers found magnetism a difficult topic to teach. The second phase involved the mounting of a 2-day in-service training workshop on the teaching of magnetism, for fifty teachers located in Anambra state. The workshop was designed as one of the mechanism for improving the knowledge and teaching skills of the teachers in science. The third phase of the study involved post-workshop visits, follow-up interviews and the observation of the teachers in action in their own classrooms. The visits were followed by a 1-day workshop which provided an opportunity for the workshop programme to be evaluated as well as for the teachers to meet for mutual exchanges of experiences. The outcomes of the workshops indicated that the teachers, as a result of their participation in the workshops, had achieved a greater understanding of magnetism and subsequently were able to teach the topic more confidently. The implications of this study for pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes as well as classroom science teaching practice are discussed.

This research set out to examine initial teacher training programmes for school mathematics in institutions in Nigeria with the aim of establishing their characteristics, quality and appropriateness. The focus of the study was the curricula of colleges of education and the understandings and expectations of student teachers at the terminal point of their training in these colleges. The study sought to determine: a) the characteristic features of programmes that exist in Nigeria for the initial training of school mathematics teachers; b) the differences among the training programmes; c) the relationship between the training curricula and the school mathematics curriculum in Nigeria; d) the level of understanding of school mathematics subject matter among trainees who have completed the training programmes. Data were collected and analysed from three sources to allow triangulation of findings. The first sought information from curricular provisions in initial training programmes, in terms of the knowledge components expected to be understood by a mathematics teacher. The second, a school mathematics contents test, was used to identify prospective teachers' level of understanding of school mathematics at the end of their training. The third, a questionnaire, was used to seek mathematics teacher trainers' views about the training programmes in their institutions. The research drew the following conclusions: 1) There are differences between mathematics teachers training programmes in Nigeria. The initial teacher qualifications awarded by different colleges of education cannot, therefore, be said to be of the same quality. 2) Mathematics teachers training programmes in Nigeria are not achieving their intended objectives because there are contradictions between their stated aims and the curricular provisions for training. 3) The level of understanding of subject matter by prospective teachers in Nigeria is low. Over 30% of student teachers cannot be relied upon to teach the school mathematics syllabus with confidence. 4) There is low understanding among teacher trainers of the objectives and philosophy of teacher education in Nigeria. Most teacher trainers believe that the main purpose of training is to help student teachers develop enthusiasm and intellectual ability for further mathematics. In summary, it is suggested that the curricula for training school mathematics teachers at colleges of education in Nigeria are not related to the subject matter of school mathematics nor to the needs of trainees and they need substantial revision.

This research study focuses on the role of kinaesthesis and motor response in promoting musical memory. The main questions addressed are: What is the nature of musical memory? How is it promoted? Is a kinaesthetic or muscular strategy a particularly effective means of promoting musical memory? The investigation which follows is mainly conceptual, yet reinforced by some empirical work. It falls into three parts: 1) Cognitive processes; 2) The potential role of kinaesthesis and movement as imagery strategies; 3) Empirical investigation. In part one a framework for the investigation is established. The study of general aspects of memory is linked to research in music cognition and memory. A chapter on representation and imagery is concerned with those techniques and strategies by which musical memory is developed. Part two examines the nature of kinaesthesis and its role in cognitive processes and musical cognition. Rhythmic experience is considered in relation to kinaesthesis and its overt manifestation in physical movement. The major contribution of Emile Jaques- Dalcroze is presented, as a study of kinaesthetic strategy in practice. The close correspondence between music and expressive movement is examined, before a chapter in which a conceptual framework is proposed. The third and final part presents the empirical work undertaken in testing the kinaesthetic principle: 'The stronger the muscular sensations, the clearer and more precise the images' (Jaques-Dalcroze) A replication experiment is described which forms the basis for an experiment on kinaesthetic strategy, the success of which lends support to the theoretical evidence presented. Conclusions are drawn and Dalcroze practice reviewed in the light of these findings and the preceding theoretical work.