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Research illustrates that deaf and hard of hearing people generally experience more unemployment, are often underemployed and have lower incomes than the hearing population (MacLeod-Gallinger, 1992; RNID, 2006; The Papworth Trust, 2014). However, whilst there are increasing numbers of deaf students entering Higher Education (HESA 2014/15, 2013/14), there is a dearth of literature regarding the employability experiences of deaf graduates. This thesis presents an exploration of deaf graduate employability within the context of successive government policies designed to encourage HEIs to enhance the employability skills of their graduates. This qualitative research study focusses on the lived experiences of eight deaf graduates whilst at university, and their subsequent search for employment upon graduation. Semi-structured interviews, followed by a thematic analysis of the data, were employed to explore the graduates’ employability journeys. The key themes that emerged from the data included accessibility to the wider university curriculum, acquisition of employability skills, additional challenges which deaf graduates face when seeking employment, social networking and the significance of employment within the deaf community. This thesis provides some insight into the little-researched areas of the deaf undergraduate experience and deaf graduate employment. It uncovers some of the inherent challenges of being deaf and seeking work, including the ‘interpreted interview’ and disclosure. It highlights gaps in the provision of support for both deaf students whilst at university and deaf graduates upon graduation, and it seeks to understand the prevalence of employment outcomes within the deaf community. Finally, this study begins a discourse on how support for deaf students and graduates must be enhanced if they are to compete with non-deaf job-seekers in entering the workplace.

This practitioner research has explored the past and present educational experiences of mainly mature female students who are labelled as ‘non-traditional’ in a College-based Higher Education (HE) establishment in the 13th most deprived borough of the United Kingdom (UK). Semi-structured interviews with 19 student participants labelled as ‘non-traditional’ were undertaken to investigate their experience of compulsory and post-compulsory education. Further data was collected to understand staff experience of teaching ‘non-traditional’ students and relevant college documents were analysed to provide understanding of policy. This research was undertaken within the interpretivist paradigm utilising elements of the bricolage approach and phenomenography. Student data was analysed using elements of phenomenological methods, I-Poems and Word Clouds, which allowed emphasis to be placed on personal rather than collective experience. The intention of the research was to allow the ‘voices’ of the student participants to be foregrounded in order to portray their individual stories. This research offers insight into personal educational experiences of students labelled as ‘non-traditional’ and their decisions and choices regarding the pursuit, or not, of HE. The inclusion of analysis of staff participant data and college documents informs this study, setting the educational experiences of the students in wider context. The primary findings of this study propose that there are often multiple factors to be considered when contemplating progression to HE study by students from lower socio-economic (LSE) groups who are labelled as ‘non-traditional’. Decisions whether to progress to post-compulsory education are often based on personal circumstances at the time, and not because the student is suffering from ‘low aspirations’ as is often suggested in the literature. However, when students from LSE groups do engage with HE study, this is often due to a number of factors such as support offered, diagnosis of learning difficulties, increased confidence, change in personal circumstances and local provision of HE courses. This research contributes to the understanding of personal motivations of LSE students who are labelled as ‘non-traditional’ when considering HE study and the barriers they may face in doing so. It contends that education is a very personal journey, and policy makers should take a less linear approach to education provision, avoiding the use of language, which detrimentally portrays those who they are attempting to persuade into HE. There should be recognition that there may be multiple factors, which prevent participation in HE, and non-participation should not be treated as being ‘low aspirational’ or ‘deficient’. People may engage later in life when factors conspire to allow them to enter into HE.

No description available.

In recent years, there has been growing interest towards integrating industry into the teaching and learning processes. This is due to many factors including increased concerns about the mismatch between the skills and abilities of the talent pool, strengthening partnership and improving quality of engineering education. Thus, greater emphasis on the teaching and learning processes to enhance the students’ learning experience leads to the university-industry partnership to the forefront interest of the university. On the other hand, exclusion of industry’s engagement in the teaching and learning processes have been identified as the main source of chronic criticism on the higher engineering education segment in recent years. This study demonstrates a research model that hypothesised the influence of teaching and learning domains on the university-industry partnership towards enhancing the learning experience of the engineering students. Using the structural equation modelling (SEM), the hypothesis was tested on the primary data collected from 212 communities of the industry. Furthermore, the study investigated the preference of industry on the type of linkages to foster university-industry partnership using analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The results revealed that nine out of the thirteen hypotheses had significant associations including six direct paths and three indirect effects in the model. The findings indicated the need for industry-university partnership in three main constructs including cooperation in education, the mobility of people and intellectual enhancement. Moreover, internship programme was the important linkage in achieving the overall university-industry partnerships goals, followed by the staff training programme, academic development, consultancy work, student learning activity and publication activity. In summary, the study demonstrates that teaching and learning relevance could be enhanced through optimizing industry’s enrichment activities into the learning process, improving the measures for accreditation in narrowing the gap between theory and practice and proactively improving the quality of teaching by exploring the staff training programmes.

According to the creators of Foundation Degrees, effective employer engagement involves participation in programme design and review, together with the provision, delivery and assessment of content: also the offer of workplace learning. The principal focus of the current study is the management and assessment of workplace learning modules for full time built environment Foundation Degrees, and the participation in this of each stakeholder group: providers, employers, students and Professional Bodies. Certain factors have been identified, deemed critical to the success of this essential element of the curriculum. Nowhere in the existing literature are the perspectives of all the stakeholders, sometimes conflicting, brought together in a single empirical study, particularly one which takes account of current recessionary pressures. The current study, qualitative in nature, examines the standpoint of each stakeholder: seeking their interpretation and experience of, and satisfaction with, workplace learning in the light of their own needs and expectations, and identifying common ground. Data is drawn from questionnaires and interviews involving representatives of all stakeholder groups, focusing in particular on six providers offering contrasting examples of practice, and the employers, students and Professional Bodies associated with each. All interviewees were asked for indicators of successful workplace learning, for the factors which in their experience promoted and sustained effective engagement, and for any possible barriers to this. Various forces are found to operate upon the stakeholders, ranging from large-scale commercial pressures (particularly in time of recession) to small localised issues. Employer engagement calls for relationships involving understanding, commitment, sustained effort and effective communications on the part of all key stakeholders and not just the employer. There is room for greater standardisation of the management and assessment of workplace learning, and some form of framework is thought desirable by the majority of respondents, although nothing too prescriptive. A draft framework has been created which seeks to satisfy as much as possible the needs and expectations of all the key stakeholders, based on the critical success factors referred to above. Whilst Professional Bodies are generally respected by the other parties, their present input to and control over workplace learning appears limited. The findings of this study are intended to inform all parties to construction-related vocational education, particularly those involved in the provision of Foundation Degrees or Honours Degrees, where a period of workplace learning is a required element.

This thesis explores the extent of rationales for developmental impacts of personality disordered offenders’ engagement in education. The study investigates the educational experiences of a sample of twelve personality disordered offenders receiving interventions in a high secure hospital unit. Engaging offenders in education in prison is challenging as many offenders have apprehensions, apprehensions about joining education which stem from previous negative educational experiences. Many offenders share a common profile, they come from disadvantaged backgrounds, fail to engage at school and leave education with low levels of attainment and poor personal and social skills. Lack of skills and qualifications often leads to a pattern of repeat offending. The combination of previous experiences, offending histories and mental disorder pose particular problems for personality disordered offenders in relation to their engagement in education. A qualitative case study research method is employed to understand the educational experiences of the twelve participants, which are compared to existing theories on offender education. The findings of this research reveal that in addition to previous learning experiences, emotional, behavioural and social difficulties create barriers to learning. In particular mental health issues are found to negatively influence personality disordered offenders’ engagement in education. Although there are barriers that negatively impact on learning other factors are identified as encouraging engagement in education. The reason why individuals start education is not necessarily the reason why they continue. Therefore factors that initially engage offenders in education as well as factors that maintain offenders’ continued engagement in education are explored. Whilst there are some interrelating factors that engage offenders in initial and continued education additional factors are also realised. Engaging personality disordered offenders in education is important as education has the power to enrich, change and develop people (Meek et al, 2012). The findings determine that as well as developing academically, the outcomes of personality disordered offenders’ continued engagement in education are increased social skills and self-awareness, the greatest agent for change. The final conclusions indicate that personality disordered offenders’ engagement in education can be explained through the concept of ‘gradualness’.

It is well-known that there are no general approaches for observer and controller design for nonlinear systems. Instead, focus is placed upon design for classes of systems. On the other hand, a wide variety of dynamical systems belong to the class of state-affine systems. Amongst these are biological wastewater treatment processes, which are essential in order to prevent pollution in the environment and prevent disease in the consumption of recycled water. An interesting aspect found in biological wastewater treatment systems, and many typical industrial processes, are time-delays. In almost all systems there are time-delays and nonlinearities and it is not surprising that time-delay and nonlinear systems have received a great deal of attention in mathematics and control engineering. This project introduces new methodologies for the design of controllers and observers for a class of state-affine systems and a class of linear time-delay systems. Firstly, new observable and controllable canonical forms are introduced. These are then used to establish new controller and observer design methodologies for a class of state¬affine systems. In particular, an adaptive observer design is established. The methodologies are simple since they are based upon linear techniques. Secondly, a full-state controller and a separation principle are established for a class of single-input single-output linear time-delay systems. The designs are based on a new stability criterion and are derived from first principles. Finally, the new observer design methodology for the class of state-affine systems is used to produce observers for the estimation of biomass concentration in a biological wastewater treatment bioreactor. The observers are applied in theory and in simulation, where a full and a partial knowledge of the kinetic rate of reaction of biomass are considered. In addition, the performances are shown both in the absence and in the presence of measurement noise for a variety of influent flow characteristics.

This dissertation is set in the context of a private university in the city of Lahore, Pakistan. It is an exploration of the impact of the phenomenon of self-efficacy on teachers and learners and how self-efficacy influences teaching and learning in the given setting. It investigates the sources of self-efficacy for teachers and students through qualitative methodology using a case study approach. The data for this study were gathered over a period of 16 months by in-depth semi-structured interviews with teachers, focus group discussion with students, and classroom observations. By using methods and sample triangulation, the research investigates the perspectives of the teachers and the learners. The study portrays the interplay of the self-efficacy of teachers and students as having encouraging influences on both groups. High self-efficacy beliefs of teachers make them more focused, ambitious, resilient and competent. These beliefs can contribute towards making them effective on the one hand and inculcate the same qualities in their students by raising their selfefficacy beliefs on the other. Reciprocal effect of teachers' self-efficacy on learners' self-efficacy and vice-versa emerged as a prominent element of the present HE teaching/learning setting. Experiences quoted by the learners suggest that their high self-efficacy beliefs result in better learning outcomes. The study shows that sources of self-efficacy are more positive than negative. Teachers and students do get affected by negative sources but their resilience keeps them goaloriented and determined. Self-efficacy, thus, turns out to be a productive factor in making teaching and learning effective in the given context.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the approach of the Parti Communiste Franc cais (from 1956 to 1982) to the emergence of new strata of salaried `intellectual workers' (technicians, engineers, low to middle managers in industry and commerce, scientific researchers, teachers etc) parallelled by the gradual diminution of the traditional industrial working class which forms the core of the Party's support base. This examination is carried out in the context of the debate in France (initiated in the 1950s by social theorists of the Left) on the class membership and role of these strata. The reason for the emergence of such a debate is that in a society given to both a rapid evolution of its social structure and an increased polarisation between Left and Right, a precise knowledge of the objective and subjective determinations of new strata would enable parties to the Left to make proper distinctions between potential allies and adversaries. The thesis posits the view that the PCF has failed to make correct distinctions between its potential allies and adversaries and has thus pursued unsuccessful alliance strategies. The thesis contributes towards a scientifically-based understanding of one of the reasons governing the PCF's steady decline since the 1950s.