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This dissertation is a critical and comparative examination of late twentieth century and early twenty-first century actor training practices in the United States. It looks specifically at: Viewpoints training as developed by Anne Bogart; Meisner technique; and the physical theatre training at the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre. I examine the ways in which theories about the actor, including ideas about the actor’s mind and body, the actor’s creativity, and the actor’s agency and authority, are embodied in classroom practices. Through the combined study of primary sources such as acting manuals, theories about embodiment and creativity, ethnographic participant-observation accounts from classrooms, interviews with teachers, and a phenomenological approach to describing my experience, I attempt to analyze what it means to be an actor in three different realms of training. The first chapter introduces my critical approaches, including my approach to ideas of embodiment, creativity, ethnography, phenomenology, and pedagogy. In chapter two, I focus on how ideas about reality and relationships are embedded in Meisner training and conduct a case study by observing a class called Acting Realism at Texas State University. In chapter three, I argue that Viewpoints, through an emphasis on deconstructing theatrical hierarchies, offers possibilities for actors to shift the balance of agency. I also conduct a case study based on my participation in a two-week workshop with artists from Bogart’s SITI Company held at Links Hall in Chicago in the summer of 2008. In chapter four, I examine the generative pedagogical strategies at the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre, incorporating my experience as a student in the school’s 2009 summer intensive. Throughout, I suggest that conceptual ideas about the actor’s body-mind, creativity, and idealized role have an embodied effect on the degree of agency the actor experiences in the classroom. I conclude by suggesting ways to approach actor training in the future that can create more context and agency for actors. / text

This qualitative study considers the experiences of three small cohorts of students whose disability has affected their walking, as they attempted to secure places on courses in higher education. It is based on a series of interviews with the students and with staff at their further education college who were responsible for applications procedures. Further information was obtained from a variety of documentary sources - confidential references, communications from the higher education institutions, etc. In order to place the experiences in context, the process is also examined from the perspective of higher education institutions. The approach adopted is to use case studies of a university and a polytechnic. The data again derives from interviews and from analysis of documentary evidence. The third dimension of the study concerns change both in relation to the spread of good practice and also the implications for people with disabilities of the new government policies affecting higher education. The focus is on the part played by Skill: The National Bureau for Students with Disabilities and its efforts to safeguard and improve provision. The little evidence currently available suggests that people with disabilities encounter negative discrimination when they try to enter higher education. The nature of this, how it operates both in terms of contacts with individual applicants and in the determination of policies within institutions, has not been investigated previously. This study can be viewed as a contribution to debates about equality of opportunity and about civil rights. More recently, there has been increased concern about the widening of access to higher education. This investigation is timely and relevant to this development.

The major thrust of the study was to explore the relationships between what a group of Algerian learners claimed to have learned from lessons and the interactive work in which, together with their Algerian teacher, they have participated. This opportunity is taken to examine, in the light of our data, some variables, claimed by classroom centered and second language acquisition studies to be, in some strong sense, relevant to second language development. These variables are: the impact of frequency of language use, the effect of the use of conversational adjustments (CAs) in the discourse, and the role of participation in the classroom. The analysis of the learners' responses has led also to the examination of the importance of the participants' topicalisation. Besides the investigation of the claims, the data was used to test the limits of direct classroom observation to provide answers as to how second language learning develops in the classroom. Two types of data were necessary for the investigation of the issue: Learners' specific claims collected through questionnaires, and detailed accounts of the learning opportunities obtained through systematic observation of 11 hours of audio- recorded naturally occurring classroom data. The latter set was supplemented with field notes taken by the observer and author of this study. The numerical information obtained through the analysis of the data was used in combination with a qualitative analysis of the classroom interaction to derive the following suggestive findings. The relationship between interaction and uptake was seen, in this study, to be far more complicated and indirect than the claims made by others in the field might have led us to believe. Frequency of the ttl teacher's use of language presented a rather low correlation with the students' learning outcomes. The use of CAs did not show an overall significant correlation with the learners' claims. Most of the coding schemes used to quantify learner input generation failed to show a correlation between interaction and progress. A weak correlation appeared between interaction and achievement. The examination of the theme of topicalisation has shown the learners, as discourse initiators, to be more influential than the teacher on what gets claimed to be learned in this specific instructional setting.

Mentoring is a burgeoning activity, occurring in a large variety of organisational settings. Although the gains for all parties are well recognised the emphasis in much of the mentoring literature is on benefits for recipients. This study highlights the lack of attention paid to mentor development and through a qualitative study of a community mentoring project, draws out a number of important aspects aimed at informing future training and support for mentors. A multi-method approach, incorporating documentary and experiential analysis, together with focus groups and interviews, provides details of recruitment and selection, training and matching, and reveals mentors' responses to different aspects of their role. In particular a tension is detected between the voluntary nature of mentoring and the recruitment requirement for `mentor readiness' in order to meet mentees' needs. The potential for enhancing mentor development through role-play during training is emphasised, and exposes the need for contextual understanding. The crucial need for an understanding of the mentoring context is discussed alongside the ongoing modification of that understanding through interaction with the mentee during mentoring practice. This process of practice-based learning is considered vital in the development of mentors and mechanisms for enhancing and capturing learning through self-reflection are described. The need for mentor networks in which mentors can share good practice and begin to build communities of practice is also stressed. Another important aspect which is accented in this study is the definition of mentoring itself. The term `transactional mentoring' is introduced in order to distinguish between spontaneous mentoring and formal mentoring which is usually time constrained and reliant upon a negotiated scheme definition and agreements made between the mentor and mentee

The present research is a system for coding the verbal interactions of teachers and children. Its purpose is to facilitate the interdisciplinary study of the teaching-learning process as one instance of the general communicative process. The coding system is based on data collected in conversations recorded on audio tapes in a dyadic setting between hearing-impaired children and their teachers in two schools in Great Britain. Hearing-impaired children were studied because a wide range of linguistic, cognitive, and affective competencies can be found amongst them. In addition, their communicative behaviours and those of their teachers tend to be exaggerated in many respects; thus, it is easier to study these behaviours in such a population than in the general population. The coding system is also based on previously developed coding systems and other research studies on various aspects of conversation and discourse processes. It includes procedures for dividing the conversation into units ("moves"), and for assigning a pedagogical function (soliciting, responding, reacting, structuring) to each move. The categories and codes describing the pedagogical function of reacting for both. teachers and children are greatly expanded over those found in other systems so that (a) the role of the teacher as reactor and as active listener, as well as solicitor, can be described, and (b) the child's role in the teaching-learning process can be studied. Each move is coded with respect to seven categories ("details"), including: pausing, turntaking, language, cognitive level, conversational function, and link to other moves.A conceptual framework for the coding system was developed that divides teacher and child behaviours into five levels, each higher level reflecting a relative increase in the degree of dependence of behaviours assigned to that level upon other aspects of the conversational context. It is suggested that this is a useful model for coding verbal interaction. It is further suggested that the design and format of the coding system can serve as a model for other systems for coding interaction. Procedures for testing reliability of the coding system are outlined. The general test of reliability which was conducted resulted in better than 907. agreement between coders. Three closely interrelated features of the conversational setting were selected as the primary focus of the coding systems the control exercised by the teacher over the nature and extent of the child's participation, the control exercised by the teacher over the unfolding of the subject matter, and the actions taken by the teacher in response to the nature and extent of the child's participation. Preliminary analysis of some of the coded data suggests that teachers exercise control over the nature and extent of a child's participation by the responses they prescribe and the language and cognitive levels they solicit, as well as through their pausing and turntaking behaviour. The control exercised by teachers over the unfolding of the subject matter is reflected in sequences of moves within segments of the interaction, as well as in sequences of segments. Thus, trains of thought can be described. The actions taken by teachers in response to the nature and extent of the child's participation provide feedback to the child that he can use to evaluate the appropriateness and correctness of his participation, and also an opportunity for the teacher to continue or alter the type and degree of control previously used. On the basis of preliminary analysis of the data it is hypothesized that the quality of interactions between hearing-impaired children and their teachers may greatly influence the linguistic, cognitive, and affective growth of the children. The process by which this may occur is discussed. It is thought that messages about the nature of conversation, about the functions language serves in conversation, and about the roles of the participants are conveyed through combinations and patterns of behaviours. Over time, such messages are internalized by each participant, creating in each a set of beliefs and expectations that influence future interactions. It is suggested that the coding system might be used in studying verbal interaction in the general population as well, and may be especially valuable for studying the interactions of children and their caregivers. It is also said to have potential for advancing our theoretical understanding of the interdependence of the linguistic, cognitive, and affective components of the teaching-learning process.

This dissertation is an attempt to map contradictions faced by the student in his/her experience of literary study. These contradictions coalesce around an apparent struggle between proponents of difference in critical theory and forces of regulation in educational politics. In mapping the tensions arising from the ideological struggle between differing cultural values, which are both represented in and conditioning forces around literatures and forms of study and assessment, this dissertation locates the interests and values most effective In defining the identity of literary studies at the present time. Through this, the possibility for different understandings of the practice and experience of literary studies is argued. The Introduction asks the preliminary question, "what is the function of theory in literary study? " and surveys a range of responses to establish the debate in which this project participates. In Part One, Chapter One, theories of deconstruction are explored as both powerfully influential in the field of literary study, and suggesting the possibility for an open-ended process of reading as distinct from more determinately organised forms of study. Chapter Two and Chapter Three theorise an Idea of the individual as a located subject through theories of postmodernity and subjectivity, in order to develop this understanding of reading in relation to other important theories and as an effective practice. Part Two addresses the cultural context within which these theoretical concerns are located, and resultant ideological tensions. Chapter Four deals with the specific location and practice of literary studies In the educational establishment, and moves towards a consideration of the larger questions of the political regulation of education in Chapter Five. Part Thre4 Chapter Sb4 places in tension the issues dealt with in Parts One and Two. The conclusions explore this situation in terms of the possibility for forms of literary study which activate the radical potential of critical theory in an increasingly rationalised environment, to provoke readings of critical value for students.

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This thesis derives from a qualitative study of the process of change in higher education in the ten years since the 1987 White Paper Meeting the Challenge, with particular reference to the impact of three initiatives associated with the concept of vocationalism, namely Enterprise in Higher Education (EHE), Higher Education for Capability (HEC) and National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ/GNVQ). The research is based on interview and documentary evidence drawn from four universities - Middlesex; Hertfordshire; the Open University; and Sussex - in five subject/disciplines - two broadly vocational - Business Studies; Electrical Engineering -, and three largely non-vocational - Biology/ Environmental Science; History; and Sociology. The purpose of the study is to illuminate the process of change in the context of policy implementation research. There are four levels of analysis - the individual member of staff; the subject group or department; the university as an institution; and at the system level, the Employment Department (ED) (now OfEE) which has acted as an agency of change in HE. A simple model is developed, analysing the response of individuals in terms of 'enthusiasts', 'capers' and 'doubters'. The responses of subject groups to EHE, HEC and NVQ/GNVQ are examined, with particular reference to curriculum change and different interpretations of vocationalism. At the institutional level, the EHE model of change is revealed as neither exclusively top-down nor bottom-up, but as deriving largely from the influence of change agents in the middle of the organisation, and from the availability of small scale funding as an incentive to innovation in teaching and learning. At the system level, ED strategy, based on selective project funding, is shown to be powerful and effective, principally because it offers opportunities for the assimilation and ownership of change at a" three levels - individual, subject discipline, and institutional. HEC has had less impact on the four universities in an operational sense but the concept of Capability is important in normative terms. This contrasts with evidence of widespread ambivalence in universities towards competency-based education and training, at least at the higher levels, although the Open University's VQ Centre has been influential in facilitating and supporting VQ developments at the OU. As an essay in contemporary history, the thesis is concerned with the analysis of the change process in the context of time and place. As a contribution to grounded theory, it also draws on classic force field analysis and innovation research to illustrate the phenomenon of incremental change, especially when the potential exists for the interpretation and ownership of change by academics themselves.