Tesi sul tema "Humanities and Social Sciences"

This study seeks to present a comparative analysis of metadiscoursal features produced in CLIL lectures and seminars offered in the fields of Soft Sciences and Hard Sciences. As for the methodology, the data were retrieved from several research instruments: audio-recorded interviews, transcripts of CLIL seminars and lectures, observation rubrics, students’ questionnaires and placement tests. The findings in the area of Soft Sciences indicate that the linguistic devices found in teacher discourse seem to be more predominant in the fourth-year module delivered in the History degree. It has also been illustrated that metadiscoursal features are more numerous in Hard Sciences, where communicative exchanges occur at a higher rate. This investigation sheds some light on the relevance of interpersonal markers in multilingual practices delivered in higher education. Evidence may be used in future teacher training programmes in order to support meaningful CLIL experiences.
Este estudio pretende presentar un análisis comparativo de los rasgos metadiscursivos producidos en las clases y seminarios AICLE ofrecidos en las áreas de Ciencias Blandas y Ciencias Duras. En cuanto a la metodología, los datos se obtuvieron a partir de varios instrumentos de investigación: entrevistas grabadas en audio, transcripciones de seminarios y conferencias AICLE, rúbricas de observación, cuestionarios y pruebas de nivel.Los hallazgos en el área de Ciencias Blandas indican que los recursos lingüísticos encontrados en el discurso del profesor parecen ser más predominantes en el módulo de cuarto curso impartido en la licenciatura de Historia. También se ha puesto de manifiesto que los rasgos metadiscursivos son más numerosos en Ciencias duras, donde los intercambios comunicativos se producen en mayor proporción. Esta investigación arroja algo de luz sobre la relevancia de los marcadores interpersonales en las prácticas de interacción multilingüe que se dan en la educación superior. Las pruebas pueden utilizarse en los futuros programas de formación del profesorado con el fin de apoyar experiencias significativas de AICLE.
Programa de Doctorat en Llengües Aplicades, Literatura i Traducció

This dissertation presents a new tool for exploratory text analysis that attempts to improve the experience of navigating and exploring text and its metadata. The design of the tool was motivated by the unmet need for text analysis tools in the humanities and social sciences. In these fields, it is common for scholars to have hundreds or thousands of text-based source documents of interest from which they extract evidence for complex arguments about society and culture. These collections are difficult to make sense of and navigate. Unlike numerical data, text cannot be condensed, overviewed, and summarized in an automated fashion without losing significant information. And the metadata that accompanies the documents – often from library records – does not capture the varied content of the text within.

Furthermore, adoption of computational tools remains low among these scholars despite such tools having existed for decades. A recent study found that the main culprits were poor user interfaces and lack of communication between tool builders and tool users. We therefore took an iterative, user-centered approach to the development of the tool. From reports of classroom usage, and interviews with scholars, we developed a descriptive model of the text analysis process, and extracted design guidelines for text analysis systems. These guidelines recommend showing overviews of both the content and metadata of a collection, allowing users to separate and compare subsets of data according to combinations of searches and metadata filters, allowing users to collect phrases, sentences, and documents into custom groups for analysis, making the usage context of words easy to see without interrupting the current activity, and making it easy to switch between different visualizations of the same data.

WordSeer, the system we implemented, supports highly flexible slicing and dicing, as well as easier transitions than in other tool between visual analyses, drill-downs, lateral explorations and overviews of slices in a text collection. The tool uses techniques from computational linguistics, information retrieval and data visualization.

The contributions of this dissertation are the following. First, the design and source code of WordSeer Version 3, an exploratory text analysis system. Unlike other current systems for this audience, WordSeer 3 supports collecting evidence, isolating and analyzing sub-sets of a collection, making comparisons based on collected items, and exploring a new idea without interrupting the current task. Second, we give a descriptive model of how humanities and social science scholars undertake exploratory text analysis during the course of their work. We also identify pain points in their current workflows and give suggestions on how systems can address these problems. Third, we describe a set of design principles for text analysis systems aimed at addressing these pain points. For validation, we contribute a set of three real-world examples of scholars using WordSeer 3, which was designed according to those principles. As a measure of success, we show how the scholars were able to conduct analyses yielding otherwise inaccessible results useful to their research.

Over the past 14 years, working independently and with other original thinkers, I have produced works that have on two fronts contributed to the evolving understanding of ethnic relations in contemporary Britain. The first is around social/community cohesion, media and representation as well as counter-terrorism policy as explored through the social sciences. The second domain covering the same themes is couched within the humanities, in particular, the production of literary fiction.

Bibliometric measures for evaluating research units in the book-oriented humanities and social sciences are underdeveloped relative to those available for journal-oriented science and technology. We therefore present a new measure designed for book-oriented fields: the â libcitation count.â This is a count of the libraries holding a given book, as reported in a national or international union catalog. As librarians decide what to acquire for the audiences they serve, they jointly constitute an instrument for gauging the cultural impact of books. Their decisions are informed by knowledge not only of audiences but also of the book world, e.g., the reputations of authors and the prestige of publishers. From libcitation counts, measures can be derived for comparing research units. Here, we imagine a matchup between the departments of history, philosophy, and political science at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney in Australia. We chose the 12 books from each department that had thehighest libcitation counts in the Libraries Australia union catalog during 2000â 2006. We present each bookâ s raw libcitation count, its rank within its LC class, and its LC-class normalized libcitation score. The latter is patterned on the item-oriented field normalized citation score used in evaluative bibliometrics. Summary statistics based on these measures allow the departments to be compared for cultural impact. Our work has implications for programs such as Excellence in Research for Australia and the Research Assessment Exercise in the United Kingdom. It also has implications for data mining in OCLCâ s WorldCat.

The dissertation examines the entrepreneurial process in the soft sciences field. Since the main difference between hard and soft sciences is in the codification of knowledge, the understanding of why and how a soft science finding can be traded might open the doors to new kinds of entrepreneurship. After the global crisis of the last decade, many disequilibrium situations have arisen. In particular, in the Western World, it has involved the personal and societal spheres where iniquity and injustice conditions have spread. An increasing attention to ethical themes, joint with environmental problems, led to a diffusion of social entrepreneurship in all its facets. So, after framing cultural and educational entrepreneurship inside commercial and social entrepreneurial concepts, the dissertation shows the main frameworks developed by academics and scholars on these specific fields. Two cases of academic entrepreneurship in humanities and social sciences are presented to support these theoretical frameworks. By a side they emphasize the differences between academic startups and spin-offs, while on the other hand they provide cues for an examination of the commercialization of products developed starting from low-codified knowledge.

This thesis problematises the symbolic centrality of 'memory' in American intellectual culture. It critically examines the claim of cultural studies' work to have transformed memory and, with it, the understanding of subjectivity from a space internal to the individual, to a process emerging in the space of social interactions. I suggest that much current work in cultural studies is constituted through the appropriation of 'the psychological', as this domain has been established in the social sciences, despite cultural studies' explicit denunciations of such social scientific legacies. I claim that this appropriation, in fact, continues the process of domestication of psychoanalytic concepts of subjectivity, a process initiated in the domain of the American social sciences in the immediate post war years. To support this claim, I consider the earlier (1950s-1960s) investments of cognitive psychologists, sociologists and psychoanalysts in 'memory' as a retrospective construction of a past experience according to present contingencies. I focus on how these disciplines have conceptualised the forces shaping what is remembered, and how such conceptualisations reveal particular assumptions about social relations, about temporality and about the limits between self and other. To this end, I explore the links between the methodologies employed in work on the psychology of memory, child development and the sociology of communication, and the models of subjectivity that have been produced in these fields. In addition, I turn to the more recent employment of 'social memory' as a key term in American cultural history (1980s-1990s). Starting with the claim that social memory studies have taken the place of work on social reproduction, I explore the interdisciplinary exchanges that have informed this substitution. In particular, I claim that sociological, anthropological and psychological understandings of memory have effected a reshaping of the terrain of the psyche away from the psychoanalytic conceptualisation of the unconscious and use the work of psychoanalyst and philosopher Jean Laplanche to illuminate the political and epistemological stakes of such a reshaping.

Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) is one of eight mandated learning areas in the Australian Curriculum and its adaptation for Western Australian (WA) schools, the Western Australian Curriculum and Assessment Outline. This learning area has undergone considerable change over the past 20 years, with little accompanying research. In 2000, a single case study examined lower secondary students’ (Year 8 to Year 10) attitudes to a previous version of the curriculum that used different nomenclature, Social Studies, in one metropolitan co-educational Catholic Education Western Australia (CEWA) school (Thiveos, 2000). The results of that research established that students valued and were moderately positive towards Social Studies; however, their liking for the subject area declined by 13.3% over the course of lower secondary schooling. At that time, Social Studies was ranked eleventh out of 14 school subjects and its low status was attributed to teacher-centred delivery of the curriculum and limited learning activities (Thiveos, 2000). Those results are now outdated and do not take into account the multitude of curricular, pedagogical and assessment developments over the two decades since, therefore motivating the current research. This mixed methods research investigated lower secondary students’ (Year 7 to Year 10) perspectives towards the HASS learning area and identified the factors influencing those perspectives at three metropolitan co-educational CEWA schools. One of the participating schools was also the original case study in the historical research, allowing for comparisons with the current research. The two other schools enlarged the sample of students that enabled generalisation of the findings to other, similar CEWA schools. A survey of 1,425 lower secondary students involved the completion of a Student Perspectives of Humanities and Social Sciences (SPHASS) questionnaire that measured their perspectives of teaching and learning in HASS, the frequency of learning activities in HASS and the status of HASS and other school subjects by means of subsequent descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. Students’ feedback in semistructured focus group interviews with each year level at the three sample schools, in combination with their responses to two open-ended questions in the SPHASS questionnaire, were coded to identify emergent themes in the data. Analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data measured overall responses across the three CEWA schools, with a particular focus on gender (male and female) and age (year level) differences. The findings revealed a positive perspective towards teaching and learning in HASS at the three CEWA schools; however, this declined by 3.8% from Year 7 to Year 10. HASS was ranked the eighth most popular subject out of 15 surveyed, and of the four mandated HASS subjects (Civics and Citizenship, Economics and Business, Geography and History), History was the most preferred and Civics and Citizenship the least preferred, with students signifying a negative view of the subject. Furthermore, there were significant differences in students’ liking for HASS based on gender (male and female) and age (year level), with males and Year 8 students the most positive, and Year 9 students the least positive. The inclusion of Year 7 students in secondary school had a positive impact on students’ perspectives of HASS, contradicting the findings of earlier research (Moroz, 1995) and signalling a much-improved status for the HASS learning area. Students considered the HASS classroom a positive learning environment; valued and considered HASS useful; were positive about their abilities and success in HASS; and indicated strong parental support for the learning area. The centrality of the teacher was a major finding of this research. Students had positive views of their HASS teachers; however, were more enthusiastic about interactive, collaborative and studentcentred pedagogical approaches in lessons. Despite recent reforms to the HASS curriculum, advancements in digital technology and the endorsement of 21st century pedagogical practices, teachers at the three CEWA schools appeared to rely upon teacher-centred pedagogical practices, particularly the use of textbooks. Although the integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) was more prevalent in HASS classrooms compared to two decades ago, it became evident that teachers missed opportunities to integrate digital technology effectively and meaningfully into student learning. This research concluded that curriculum, teachers, the learning environment, students and parents were all factors that influenced students’ perspective of HASS at the three CEWA schools. The insights gained have significant implications for administrators and teachers at these schools and beyond, to decision makers in other education sectors and school contexts. To impact and improve students’ perspectives of HASS further, this research found that teacher practice, and particularly the choice of student-centred teaching and learning activities, is necessary.

At present the most powerful and influential groups in education see the solution to matters of educational concern as mainly falling within the province of an educational research which is fundamentally scientific. This thesis sets out to examine whether this assumption can be substantiated and, in the possible scenario that it cannot, to look at an alternative form of educational research. It begins with the philosophical arguments which support the view that educational research, where it is empirical, should be mainly scientific and continues by looking at what contemporary educational researchers have said about the nature of educational research. The role philosophy of education might take in this context is also examined. The thesis continues by looking at the prescribed methodology of educational research and examines the philosophical assumptions of such a methodology. It continues by looking at the major assumption of scientific endeavour which is that it is nomological. The conclusions drawn from the aforegoing are that, for various philosophical reasons, the notion that educational research can be founded on scientific method and applied through a process parallel to engineering is fallacious and needs to be reviewed. A review of the philosophical situation with regard to understanding human beings as would be necessary to understanding them in an educational context is undertaken in the fourth chapter. This marks the beginnings of an alternative, non-scientific, framework for educational research. A case is made for the thesis that individual actions are understood properly against a background of information which includes beliefs, intentions and historical circumstances. Consideration is then given as to how this might be put in such a way as to be of practical use in the deliberation of how to tackle educational issues. The final chapter outlines how a possible substantive piece of educational research might look.

There has been subtantial academic concern over what is deemed to be the negative implications of the recent "reinvestment" phase of federal research funding (1999 to 2008). For the social sciences and humanities, however, nuch of this concern is not substantiated with any actual data. This thesis examines five of these proposed theses (or "fears") and finds that only one can be supported by actual evidence. The remaining four concerns are thus premature or erroneous. The first thesis centers around total dollar funding amounts and argues that federal funding is either dwindling for the social sciences and humanities or has decreased in proportion to other disciplines. Using publicly available data this is found to be false and in conflict with the actual trends occurring during this period. The second thesis argues that federal funding initiatives specifically target business or industrial-related research, to the detriment of the public good. This fear is qualified and then dismissed through an analysis of private sector R&D expenditures, commercialization activity, and new initiatives developed during this period. Related to the above, the third thesis posits that federal funding has become "targeted," or directed away from basic research and towards specific (applied) fields of federal interest. Using public data this is shown to be false. Thesis four constitutes the only fear which is substantiated in this analysis. Scholars have argued that recent funds have cultivated a certain level administrative control over the direction of faculty research, primarily for the purposes of increasing funding success. This trend is examined in detail in chapter 3 using interview data with research officials at Canadian institutions. The final thesis argues that the value of social sciences and humanities grant success is growing for both universities and faculty and has led to a corresponding increase in competition, hierarchy, and differentialization between Canadian institutions. After examining this argument in chapter 4, this hypothesis is found to be in serious need of qualification. The work concludes by noting that the net effects of funding fluctutations on research activity for these disciplines are much less pervasive than most scholars recognize. It also argues that greater intellectual rigor is needed if future publications actually expect to help academics understand changes on this issue. Quantitative and qualitative changes in research funding do have serious implications for the research activity of the disciplines at large. Unfortunately, to date, these implications have neither been well described nor accurately represented by the scholars devoted to their exposition.
Il y a eu une inquiétude académique substantielle concernant ce qui est conçu comme des implications négatives sur la phase récente de 'ré-investissement' du financement federal pour la recherché (1999 à 2008). En ce qui concerne les sciences sociales et les humanités, cependant, cette inquiétude n'est pas appuyée par des véritables données. Cette thèse examine cinq de ces cas proposés (ou 'craintes') et découvre qu'un seul peut être appuyé avec des véritables preuves. Les quatre autres inquiétudes sont donc prématurées ou erronées. Le premier cas entoure les montants totaux de dollars finacés et soutient que le financement fédéral est soit à la baisse pir les sciences sociales et les humanités ou a baissé en proportion avec les autres disciplines. En utilisant des données disponibles au public, cela est faux et en conflict aves les tendances actuelles durant cette période. Le deuxiéme cas soutient que le financement fédéral cible spécifiquement la recherche des entreprises ou reliées aux industries, au détriment du bien public. Cette crainte est qualifiée et ensuite écartée par une analyse du secteur privé, des dépenses de recherche et développement, des activités de commercialisation et des nouvelles initiatives développées durant cette période. Reliée au cas précédent, le troisième cas avance que le financement fédéral est devenu 'ciblé' ou est dirigé ailleurs qu'à la recherche de base et vers des domaines spécifiques (appliqués) qui intéressent le fédéral. En utilisant les données publics, cela est faux. Le quatriéme cas établit la seule crainte que est appuyée dans cette analyse. Les érudits ont argumenté que les fonds récents ont cultivé un certain contrôle au niveau administratif sur les directions des recherches des facultés, surtout dans le but d'augmenter les réussites du financement. Cette tendance est examinée en détail dans le chapitre 3 en utilisant des données d'entrevues avec les directeurs de recherche aux ainstitutions canadiennes. Le cas final veut que la valeur de la réussite des octrois pour les sciences sociales et les humanités s'améliore pour les universitiés et les facultés et a mené à augmentation correspondante dans la compétition, l'hiérarchie et la différentiation entre les institutions canadiennes. Après avoir examiné cet argument au chapitre 4, cet hypothèse a un besoin sérieux de qualification. Le travail conclut en notant que les effets nets des variances dans le financement sur les activités de recherche piur ces disciplines sont beaucoup moins pénérants que les érudits le reconnaissent. Il soutient aussi qu'une plus grande rigueur intellectuelle est requise si les publications futures vont aider les érudits à comprendre les changements dans ce domaine. Les changements quantitatifs et qualitatifs dans le financement des recherches ont des implications sérieuses sur l'activité de recherche en général. Malheureusement, jusqu'à date, ces implication n'ont été ni bien décrites, ni bein représentées précisément par les érudis dévoués à leur exposition.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore implications of a necessary presupposition of a theory of the person in the aims of Personal and Social Education (PSE), with the aim of furnishing a conception of the person which retains a significant concept of personal agency in light of constraints on action. From the position that the concept of the person as agent is central to the aims of PSE, it is argued that given the tension between the conception of the person as autonomous and recognition of the plasticity of persons, the justification of the unity of persons suggests itself as a relevant and useful approach. This is held to provide a means of approaching issues of personhood which are central to the concerns of PSE and which also provides important insights into the some issues of agency. It is argued in the second chapter that the relation between a theory of personal identity and the aims of PSE which presuppose such a theory is best understood as one of interdependence. From this position, it is argued that the conception of the person as potentially autonomous does not necessitate acceptance of a strict identity or non-reductionist theory of personal identity. It is argued, on the grounds of internal coherence and the ideals evident in discussions of PSE, that the alternative, a continuity theory is preferable. In the fourth chapter the issue of constraints on the concept of the person and their effect on the acceptability of theories of personal identity is addressed. It is argued that certain constraints lead to the rejection of reductionism with respect to persons but do not affect the acceptability of a continuity theory or its importance. The argument supports the view that the concept of personal identity and the concept of the person are indeterminate and allow a qualified form of social ascriptivism. Implications of the conception of the person which has been argued for, are illustrated and explored in the fmal two chapters, where the discussion focuses on the use of students' autobiographical writing in PSE. The argument is made that the conception of the person argued for in the previous chapters has advantages over that contained in the traditional understanding of autobiography. Consideration of narrative and its role in making sense of experience leads to supplementation and refinement of the conceptualisation of the person advocated.

The main concern of this research is to study the influence of class power, culture and ideologies on educational policies, access and practices in the context of the changing political, economic and social policies of Egypt during the modern period. In order to study that, the thesis works on two levels, theoretical and empirical. The theoretical level presents the historical, methodological and theoretical broad context for the empirical study. This includes the study of the following: 1.- The economic and political situation in Egypt, 2.- State power and social class formation, and 3.- The system and policies of education in Egypt. The empirical study is concerned with study of the following subjects: 1.- Cultural and ideological perspectives of members from different class positions, 2.- Class perspectives on general educational issues, 3.- The ways in which 1 and 2 influence the distribution of educational opportunities for members from different class positions, and 4.- Differences between and within social classes concerning the above points.

Las interacciones entre los agentes del sistema de innovación son una pieza clave para el fomento del intercambio de conocimiento, los procesos de aprendizaje y el proceso innovador. El análisis de las interacciones entre universidades y organismos públicos de investigación (ciencia) y los agentes del entorno social (sociedad) ha recibido una gran atención en la comunidad científica, entre otras razones, porque los resultados de estas interacciones pueden tener implicaciones en el diseño de las políticas de ciencia e innovación y en la gestión de la organización. En esta tesis se analizan las interacciones entre los investigadores del área de ciencias sociales y humanidades (CCSSHH) y los agentes sociales, dado que es un colectivo que ha sido escasamente estudiado desde esta perspectiva y presenta características específicas respecto a otros ámbitos científicos. Los tres estudios que componen la tesis abordan aspectos diferentes del tema objeto de estudio y se basan en datos empíricos obtenidos mediante encuestas y entrevistas realizadas en el Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). El primer estudio pretende averiguar si la utilidad del conocimiento producido en las CCSSHH es menor que en las STEM (acrónimo inglés para ciencia, tecnología, ingeniería y matemáticas), tal como los enfoques de las políticas científicas al uso parecen presuponer al establecer medidas basadas en indicadores difíciles de aplicar a este colectivo (licencias de patentes, contratos de I+D con empresas, creación de spin off). El análisis empírico realizado muestra que los resultados de las investigaciones en CCSSHH no son menos útiles que los de las STEM porque, en ambos casos, hay agentes sociales interesados en ellos. Sin embargo, se aprecia que el tipo de mecanismo de colaboración varía entre áreas del conocimiento, al igual que el tipo de agente social con el cual los investigadores interactúan. Las empresas predominan entre los agentes sociales con los cuales colaboran los investigadores de las STEM mientras que los de CCSSHH colaboran con un grupo más variado de agentes sociales (i.e. administraciones, organizaciones no gubernamentales, etc.). El segundo estudio explora en qué medida los grupos de investigación del área de CCSSHH se relacionan con una variedad de agentes sociales mediante cauces no formalizados. Para ello, se realizan dos análisis complementarios (cuantitativo y cualitativo). Los resultados obtenidos ponen de manifiesto que la mayoría de las relaciones no se formalizan institucionalmente, lo cual significa que la institución no las identifica, registra o valora. Sin embargo, la participación en este tipo de colaboraciones informales, que no tienen necesariamente una contrapartida económica, resulta atractiva por su coste relativamente bajo (en términos económicos y de tiempo), por la ausencia de condiciones restrictivas (p. ej. derechos de propiedad, confidencialidad) y por la existencia de beneficios intangibles para el investigador. El tercer estudio analiza en qué medida los grupos de investigación de CCSSHH interactúan con su entorno mediante diferentes actividades de transferencia de conocimiento (TC) ¿consultoría, investigación contratada, investigación conjunta, actividades de formación e intercambio de personal¿ e identifica los determinantes de cada una de ellas. Los resultados indican que las actividades de TC más frecuentes son la consultoría y la investigación contratada, mientras que el intercambio de personal representa una actividad marginal entre las analizadas. El estudio de los factores que determinan la participación en estas actividades de TC muestra que considerar el potencial uso social de los resultados desde el principio aumenta la participación de los grupos de investigación en todas las actividades de TC analizadas. En conjunto, los tres estudios permiten concluir que la investigación en CCSSHH produce conocimiento y resultados que son de interés para la sociedad. Sin embargo, se diferencian de otras áreas científicas en los mecanismos de interacción predominantes y en la variedad de agentes sociales con los que interactúan. Estas conclusiones pueden tener utilidad práctica para el diseño de políticas destinadas a fomentar el amplio conjunto de interacciones identificadas, para la mejora de las prácticas de gestión y para tratar de evaluar las citadas interacciones mediante indicadores capaces de recoger el amplio espectro de mecanismos identificados en esta tesis.
Interactions among agents in the innovation system are critical for the promotion of knowledge exchange, learning processes and the innovation process. The analysis of interactions between universities or public research organisations (science) and social agents (society) has received great attention in the scientific community because, among other reasons, the results of these interactions can have implications for the design of science and innovation policies and organisation management. This thesis analyses the interactions between researchers in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) and social agents. The SSH community is a collective that has been little studied from this perspective and presents particular characteristics as compared to other scientific fields. The three studies included in the thesis address different aspects of the topic and are based on empirical data obtained through surveys and interviews conducted in the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). The first study explores whether the knowledge produced by the SSH is less useful than that produced in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), as science policy seems to presume when establishing measures based on indicators (patent licenses, R&D contracts with companies, creating spin off) that are difficult to apply to the SSH community. The empirical analysis shows that SSH research outputs are no less useful than those from STEM because, in both cases, there are social agents interested in them. However, the preferred type of collaborative mechanism varies across fields, as does the type of agent with whom researchers interact. Firms are the prevailing type of agent collaborating with STEM researchers whilst SSH researchers collaborate with a varied group of social agents (i.e. government, NGOs, etc.). The second study explores the extent to which SSH research groups engage with a variety of social agents through non¿formalized collaborations. To do this, two complementary analyses (quantitative and qualitative) are conducted. Results show that most of the collaborations are not institutionally formalized, which means that the research organisation does not identify, record or value them. However, engagement in these informal collaborations, that do not necessarily have an economic counterpart, are attractive due to the relatively low cost (in time and economic terms) of many such activities, the absence of restrictive conditions (e.g. IPR, confidentiality) and other intangible benefits accruing to the researcher. The third study examines the extent to which SSH research groups interact with social agents through different knowledge transfer (KT) activities ¿consultancy, contract research, joint research, training and personnel mobility¿ and identifies the determinants of each. Results show that the most frequent KT activities are consultancy and contract research, while personnel exchange is a marginal activity among those analysed. The study of the factors determining the engagement in these activities shows that consideration of the social uses of the research outputs from the beginning enhances research groups¿ engagement in all the knowledge transfer activities analysed. Overall, the three studies support the conclusion that SSH research produces knowledge and outputs that are of interest to society. However, differences from other scientific fields are found in terms of the prevalent type of interaction mechanisms used and the variety of social agents with whom interactions are established. These findings may have practical utility for the design of policies aimed at encouraging and enhancing the range of interactions, for improving managerial practices and for the assessment of these interactions through indicators able to capture the type of interactions identified in this thesis.
Olmos Peñuela, J. (2013). Science-Society interactions in the social sciences and humanities:empirical studies of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/31653
TESIS
Premiado

The ultimate goal of the thesis is the construction of a text, appropriate for student use, on South Africa's social and spatial formation. The first part of the thesis is the most lengthy. It is a sophisticated account of South Africa's historical geography since 1652. This is written in an academic style, not for students, but for a learned readership, and contains some original insights. In itself, it represents an innovative contribution to the literature on South Africa's social development. The second part is a review of existing texts on South Africa's history and geography, written purposefully for students. These texts are subjected to a critique with content and coverage being the main criteria. The third part is an investigation of theoretical issues concerning the relationship between readers, particularly student readers, and texts. It seeks to formulate guidelines for the writing of a student text and the devising of learning activities which are appropriate for learners. In a brief conclusion, attention is paid to the ways in which the original aims have been manifested in a student text, included in the thesis as an appendix. Although this text is another lengthy treatment of South Africa's social and spatial formation, this time it is written for an intended student readership. It draws on the content deemed appropriate in the sophisticated text of Part One, seeks to overcome the weaknesses identified in current student texts in Part Two, and is written in a style, appropriate for students, suggested by Part Three. It also contains student activities devised in the theoretical context introduced in Part Three. The text is deemed to be a significant advance on previously published History and Geography educational materials.

Depuis 1989, le nationalisme est progressivement redevenu un thème discursif majeur dans les espaces publics et politiques européens. Le nationalisme s'est alors " banalisé " (selon l'expression de Michael Billig), reléguant le complexe des histoires sociales à de simples altérités culturelles. Les tensions sociales et symboliques ainsi produites trouvent leur origine commune dans les discours nationalistes centrés autour de l'Etat et des institutions nationales. Percevant une remise en cause en présence d'altérités multiples, il apparait que le discours dominant sur les identités nationales œuvre à reproduire une continuité de valeurs et des histoires nationales traditionnelles. Cette étude transversale a pour but de présenter une analyse sociale-historique de l'endurance des imaginaires nationaux et du paradigme moderne d'exclusion qu'ils entretiennent. En élaborant un cadre théorique sous la forme d'un système ouvert (Edgar Morin) pour exprimer les relations complexes entre les textes, l'idéologie et l'imaginaire social (Cornelius Castoriadis), le but de la thèse est l'analyse de la dynamique de promotion, d'expression et de contestation symbolique - des négociations de signification sociale - des imaginaires nationaux. C'est dans ce cadre que, à travers l'étude de textes exprimant certaines de ces négociations, que sont articulées la formation et la consolidation des imaginaires nationaux britannique, français et polonais pendant la période moderne. L'analyse est ensuite centrée sur des discours de dirigeants politiques britanniques, français et polonais entre 2004 et 2009, mis en contraste par l'analyse de textes de la culture populaire contemporaine.

Issues of instruction and assessment at community colleges are influenced by the high percentage of classes taught by adjunct faculty. In 2014 for the Virginia Community College System, part-time instructors comprised 70.3% of instructional faculty. This dissertation describes the instruction and assessment technique choices of adjunct instructors in humanities and social sciences at five Virginia community colleges, identified through survey, interview, and observation data, and what influences instructors in this study make choices about what techniques to use. Profiles of observed instructors provide examples of specific instructor experiences. Four themes are identified: 1) personal dedication of instructors; 2) instructors’ practice of teaching how they learned; 3) constant revision of courses taught; and, 4) limited availability of collegial interaction or professional development opportunities. With the increasing importance that adjuncts play in providing undergraduate education, understanding how these instructors teach and assess student learning informs college practices in decisions about using adjuncts, appropriate professional development, and processes for hiring and evaluation.

This research study investigates the similarities and differences in assessment policy, perspectives and practices in relation to student learning, desirable graduate outcomes and lifelong learning (LLL) in two departments with similar disciplines: Sociology and Social Policy and English Studies of the Midlands University (MU) – UK and Sociology and English Linguistics and Literature of the Ho Chi Minh City University (HCMU) – Vietnam. The study’s conceptual framework was developed from research literatures on assessment, mainly David Boud’s framework of sustainable assessment or assessment for longer term learning, as the framework for data analysis. The methodology is a comparative case study, and the methods include using semi-structured interviews with 22 staff in both cases, four student focus groups, an action-based intervention at the English department of the HCMU, and document analysis. The similarities and differences across the comparative cases are explained on the basis of the economic, socio-cultural and HE contexts, while Boud’s framework is reframed theoretically and operationally for these contexts, and as a guide to improving practices. The data shows that although more elements of Boud’s framework were found in the MU than the HCMU, assessment in both cases was an imperfect realisation of this framework. The argument is made that this framework can offer a good vision for the two cases to aim at in terms of changes in their assessment perspective and practices, but the framework itself should also be reframed with contextual and cultural features of assessment, as well as the development of human capabilities and functionings in order to encompass a fuller range of educational goals. It is concluded that above all assessment should support not only learning at university but also expansive rather than reductive LLL.

Bibliography: p. 109-112.
The field of coastal management in South Africa, and the discourses which construct and are constructed by it, are in transition. Emerging front a history of a narrow scientific approach with goals related mainly to environmental conservation, coastal management has in the 1990s become far broader and more orientated towards socio- economic development. This forms part of a wider transition in the social practice of environmental management under South Africa’s new democratic government, in which environmental goals have begun to be pursued in the context of broader social and economic aims. This mini-thesis explores the shift which has occurred in coastal management policy and practice over the past decade, analysing representative samples of the discourse of coastal management policy. The use of a critical approach to discourse analysis enables an understanding of the power relations and ideological forces at play, both within the policy discourses and in the broader social practices of coastal management and policy formulation of which they are a part.

This study examines teachers’ conceptions of essential knowledge in the humanities and social sciences, commonly referred to as "social education", in the middle years of schooling. Social education has long been a highly contested area of the curriculum in Australia. In Queensland, social education comprises the integrated learning area of Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE). However, the new Australian Curriculum marks a return to discipline-based study of history and geography. This phenomenographic study addresses a perceived lack of understanding in the current research literature in Australia of the nature of middle school teachers’ professional knowledge for teaching the social sciences. Teachers are conceptualised in this study as curriculum makers in the classroom and, as such, their conceptions of essential knowledge are significant. Shulman’s (1986, 1987) theory of teachers’ knowledge forms the theoretical foundation of the study, which is contextualised in Federal and State education policies and the literature on the middle phase of schooling. Transcripts of interviews conducted with a group of thirty-one Queensland middle school teachers of SOSE were subjected to phenomenographic analysis, revealing seven qualitatively different categories of description. Essential aspects of knowledge for social education emerging from the study were: (1) discipline-based knowledge; (2) curriculum knowledge; (3) knowledge derived from teaching experience; (4) knowledge of middle years learners; (5) knowledge of integration; (6) knowledge of current affairs; and (7) knowledge invested in teacher identity. The three dimensions of variation that linked and differentiated the categories were: (1) content; (2) inquiry learning; and (3) teacher autonomy. These findings are presented as an outcome space where the categories are grouped as knowledge of the learning area, knowledge of contexts and knowledge of self as teacher. The results of the study suggest that social education teachers’ identity and knowledge of self are critical aspects of their knowledge as curriculum makers. The results illustrate that the professional and personal domains intersect, extending Shulman’s (1986, 1987) original theorisation of teachers’ knowledge into the personal arena. Further, middle years teachers’ conceptions of essential knowledge reveal a practice-based theorisation of knowledge for social education that fits the goals of middle schooling. The research concludes that attention to teacher identity in teacher education and in-service professional development has considerable potential to grow teachers’ knowledge in the social sciences and enhance their capacity for school-based curriculum leadership.

Ce rapport d'Habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR), qui comporte un volume de texte et un volume d'annexes, s'énonce dans un champ le champ pluridisciplinaire, d'où l'obtention d'un double diplôme (HDR : Sciences du langage & Sciences de l'éducation). Il est centré sur l'étude du langage humain et traite en synergie des données de la linguistique générale, de la psychologie et de la neuropsychologie cognitive, des sciences de l'éducation, de la didactique des langues en particulier. Ces domaines sont abordés d'un point de vue théorique, descriptif et pédagogique. Au plan scientifique, ce rapport rend compte de notre expérience professionnelle, de nos publications et de nos travaux de recherche, dans une construction structurée en un document unitaire. La première partie, théorique, brosse en trois chapitres, un tableau général de ce que peut être le langage et la communication, en reliant les plans strictement linguistique et neuropsychologique. Afin de rendre compte de la complexité de cette faculté spécifiquement humaine et classée parmi les fonctions cognitives d'ordre supérieur, nous avons dû aborder la question des émotions, de l'attention et de la mémoire. Un large recours aux illustrations facilite la lecture de ce développement. La seconde concerne les grandes caractéristiques du langage normal et pathologique - dans une orientation plutôt historique et descriptive -, puis la rééducation. Les trois premiers chapitres sont centrés sur deux grandes pathologies de la communication ; Le premier, plutôt historique, évoque les premières rencontres des linguistes et des psychologues ou neuropsychologues, autour de l'aphasie. Ensuite, nous présentons l'aphasie et l'autisme, dans les chapitres 2 et 3. La problématique générale de la réadaptation, dans le premier cas, et de la médiation, dans le second, nous amène à la question fondamentale d'une didactique adaptée que nous traitons dans les deux chapitres suivants. Au chapitre 4, nous proposons une corrélation forte entre pathologie du langage et didactique des langues - que nous abordons d'abord d'un point de vue historique, elle est six fois millénaire - et son utilisation pour la réadaptation du langage. Le dernier chapitre de cette seconde partie en découle directement : nous y posons le problème de l'erreur et de l'évaluation, dans ce contexte. La troisième partie comporte trois études de cas. L'aphasie mixte de Marie, trouble du langage acquis à la suite d'un accident vasculaire cérébral (AVC), est caractéristique et complexe car il s'agit d'une atteinte comportant des traits de l'aphasie de Wernicke et de l'aphasie de Broca : types pathologiques aujourd'hui bien décrits d'un point de vue linguistique. La seconde étude de cas concerne Kayle, un enfant de cinq ans porteur de troubles envahissants du développement, avec des traits autistiques et une régression mentale. Par opposition au cas précédent, le sujet, un enfant, se situe dans le cadre d'une ontogenèse pathologique du langage. En outre, nous évoquons une atteinte plus globale, psychiatrique, avec retard mental. Le dernier cas étudié est celui d'Éléonore, adolescente infirme motrice cérébrale (IMC), mais d'intelligence normale, qui élabore son projet de vie. Très intéressée par les langues - l'espagnol en particulier -, elle veut devenir traductrice. Nous avons mis en place un préceptorat, en concertation avec ses enseignants de langues (d'anglais et d'espagnol) et de français. La DISCUSSION-SYNTHESE nous ramène à une problématique linguistique plus générale sur le langage, issue de notre expérience de l'étude et de l'analyse de corpus, et qui concerne les universaux fonctionnels langagiers, en relation avec la logique. Quel substrat structurel sous-jacent au langage, dans la communication ? Dans ce développement, nous abordons la problématique d'une logique binaire et d'une logique des prédicats à un ou plusieurs arguments, présentes conjointement dans le langage, et l'hypothèse de leur lien ontogénétique. Cette Discussion-synthèse débouche sur une brève conclusion et ouverture.

This thesis examines the evolution of the discourse of social science. It does this by using the theoretical and analytical tools of systemic: functional linguistics combined with a model of discourse developed by the author based on the work of Foucault, Lemke, Gee, Bourdieu, Halliday and Martin. The discourse of social science is first analysed synchronically, using current undergraduate textbooks from sociology, economics and political science as data. The characterisation of the discourse is based in the work of Wignell, Martin and Eggins and Eggins, Wignell and Martin on the discourses of science and the humanities. The origins and evolution of social science are then analysed, beginning with the work of Thomas Hobbes in the mid seventeenth century and extending up until Max Weber in the early twentieth century. It is argued that social science is a discourse distinct from both science and the humanities but that its Characteristic features have resulted from a synthesis of features of the discourses of science and the humanities. It is argued that, like science, social science is a technical discourse but that its technicality results from the reconstrual of an already abstract 'world' into a technical one. This reconstrual, it is argued, resulted from the discourse of the physical sciences being imported into discussions of the social in the mid seventeenth century. It is further that, over time, technicality became increasingly a feature of the discourse, both ideationally and textually. Having analysed the discourse the thesis also considers the social factors which have contributed to its evolution in a particular direction.

La mesure de l'urbanisation en Europe de 1800 à 2010 permet de préciser les caractères du monde urbain souvent avancés pour identifier le continent. Les données inédites de la base Europolis portent sur 10 000 agglomérations urbaines de plus de 10 000 habitants issues de l'exploitation de 250 000 unités locales qui rendent compte de l'ensemble du peuplement en Europe (Russie et Turquie comprises). L'évolution de la population est retracée pour 22 séries décennales de 1800 à 2010. L'analyse d'un grand nombre d'indicateurs met en évidence la tendance à la dispersion de la population dont rendent compte le grand nombre de petites agglomérations, l'absence de très grandes agglomérations, le caractère récent de l'urbanisation, ou la réunion d'agglomérations dans de vastes entités urbaines que conforte encore l'expansion spatiale actuelle. Le morcellement du phénomène urbain fait écho à la division politique du continent. Dans le modèle proposé, trois dynamiques de peuplement, finage, maillage et treillage, sont associées à trois modes d'appropriation et de contrôle de l'espace relatifs à trois formes d'institutions qui se sont épanouies en Europe au cours de l'histoire, l'Église, l'État moderne, l'empire. Les trois structures de l'espace se combinent à travers les échelles et le temps. Elles permettent ainsi de comprendre l'impact des formes de peuplement héritées sur la répartition de la population ainsi que les décalages dans l'évolution de l'urbanisation en Europe alors que le continent connaît une croissance démographique et urbaine inédite au cours des deux derniers siècles. Les discontinuités du peuplement sont confortées, tandis qu'elles coïncident ou au contraire défient les frontières nationales. La concentration urbaine favorisée par l'État a été nuancée par cette tendance à la dispersion, l'instabilité politique et les guerres. Trois structures supranationales se distinguent : la dorsale et la transversale Est-Ouest se fondent sur des régions de fortes densités de villes, et oppose un foyer de peuplement fondé sur un réseau ténu d'agglomérations urbaines à un espace oriental polarisé par quelques grandes concentrations urbaines.

Comment expliquer les variations du niveau de don dans des pays comparables ? Dans tous les pays industrialisés, la crise économique des années 1980 a favorisé la recherche d'alternatives à l'État providence en incitant les organismes du Tiers secteur à jouer un rôle accru dans un partenariat pour la définition et la mise en œuvre des politiques publiques. Parmi les organisations du Tiers secteur, les fondations philanthropiques offrent un cadre juridique qui permet aux personnes qui le souhaitent de réaliser des actes de générosité en affectant une partie de leur fortune personnelle, sous forme de don, à des fins d'intérêt général. Le don peut être ainsi considéré comme une expression concrète de la coopération entre les citoyens en vue du bien commun. Tous les pays démocratiques essaient d'en favoriser le développement. Les explications classiques de la variation de niveau du don entre pays développés ne prennent pas en considération le don comme un fait social. Nous soutenons que le niveau du don dans une société ne peut être expliqué par la somme des dons individuels qui répondent chacun à des motivations personnelles mais bien par ce qui constitue son substrat social : l'état de la société dont la cohésion est déterminée à la fois par la présence de capital social et la représentation des identités. A la différence du capital humain qui regroupe les compétences, les qualifications et les connaissances des individus, le capital social peut être compris comme " l'ensemble des relations, des réseaux et des normes qui facilitent l'action collective ". Le capital social fait ainsi référence aux relations que les individus établissent entre eux au sein des réseaux sociaux ainsi qu'aux normes de réciprocité qui naissent de ces relations. L'hypothèse du don comme variable dépendante de l'état de cohésion sociale ouvre la voie à cette recherche doctorale axée d'une part sur le niveau de capital social dans les pays économiquement développés et d'autre part, sur la signification du don comme mode de représentation de l'identité. Elle contribue à définir les contours théoriques du capital social en mettant en évidence les liens étroits qui unit ce concept au don et par là, à la construction des identités. Cette analyse de la relation entre don, capital social et identité a des implications directes pour la recherche dans le champ de la société civile. La société civile est présentée sous deux perspectives différentes. La première, de tradition nord-américaine, associe le Tiers secteur à la condition exclusive du " non profit". La seconde perspective, de tradition européenne, retient l'idée d'une économie sociale hybride composée d'entreprises et organisations qui relèvent à la fois des secteurs marchand et non marchand. Ces entreprises et organisations de l'économie sociale sont des structures entremêlant dans leurs actions une pluralité de logiques économiques. En se fondant sur l'analyse de Polanyi sur l'encastrement de l'économie et ses différentes formes d'intégration, associée à la logique maussienne du don, nous tentons d'éclairer la dimension socioéconomique, voire politique des initiatives de l'économie sociale. L'économie sociale peut ainsi être appréhendée comme une " économie du don ", comprise comme économie plurielle. Par ailleurs, la Nouvelle sociologie économique propose à la fois une analyse réticulaire de l'économie qui se fonde entre autre sur la présence et la densité des liens interpersonnels et une analyse culturelle de l'économie qui relie les marchés aux valeurs. A partir de là, il devient possible d'appréhender l'économie sociale comme une " économie du capital social ", entendu comme facteur organisationnel et générateur de sens.

Cette thèse avait pour principal objectif d'explorer le caractère normatif de trois besoins dits fondamentaux : le besoin d'évaluer, le besoin de cognition et le besoin de clôture. Pour atteindre cet objectif, il nous a fallu dans un premier temps une validation rigoureuse des trois échelles de mesures habituellement utilisées : Need for Cognition Scale, Need to Evaluate Scale et Need for Closure Scale . Dans cette perspective, trois études distinctes relatives à ce processus de validation ont été effectuées. Une version française épurée pour chacune des échelles a été établie (partie 2, chapitres 1, 2 et 3). Puis à la manière dont cela est réalisé dans les travaux portant sur la normativité de l'internalité, nous avons eu recourt aux paradigmes des juges et d'identification pour tester notre hypothèse de normativité des besoins en vue de poser les premiers jalons d'une conception socio-normative des besoins. Selon le paradigme des juges, les résultats obtenus montrent que les individus évaluent mieux les individus manifestant une forte adhésion aux besoins d'évaluer, de cognition ou de clôture. En revanche, si le paradigme d'identification confirme nos hypothèses de normativité des besoins d'évaluer et de cognition, il manque à apporter un soutien évident à l'hypothèse de normativité du besoin de clôture

This study analyses ‘Gifted and Talented’ (‘G&T’) identities in post-16 education, exploring ‘G&T’ identity construction processes and how students manage ‘G&T’ identities once labelled as such. Bourdieu’s work, social constructionism and identity theorising are used to analyse how ‘G&T’ labelling processes, arising from government policies, located within family, peer and school institutional cultures impact on students’ identities, and their responses to identification. Constructionist critical-realist epistemology is used, with data drawn from semi-structured interviews conducted with 16 post-16 students; 16 e-mailed questionnaires with their parents; and three e-mailed questionnaires with GATCOs (‘G&T’ Co-ordinators), from three schools in Eastern England. Eight follow-up informal couple-interviews were conducted with students and their parents. My data analysis of ‘G&T’-students’ subjectivities shows ‘G&T’ identification has repercussions affecting self-esteem, confidence levels, and other aspects of identity constructions. I identify varied ways in which ‘G&T’ post-16 students actively construct ‘G&T’ identities in family and school cultural contexts, using peer-subcultures to manage ‘G&T’ roles, and show how school institutions differ in ‘G&T’ emphasis. Students display agency in ‘choosing’ routes through their ‘G&T’-journeys, on a continuum ranging from ‘conformity’ through to ‘resistance’. Through my analysis of rich qualitative data, some consequences for students of ‘G&T’-identity construction are revealed to be: fear-of-failure, perfectionism, bullying, eating disorders, stress; as well as confidence, pride, motivation and satisfaction. I argue that what is constructed and identified as ‘G&T’ is the result of social class based cultural capital, as the middle-classes access ‘G&T’ provision disproportionately. I conclude that ‘G&T’ policies function as neoliberal educational differentiators, in further separating the advantaged from the disadvantaged, entrenching class divisions. Recommendations include inclusive, personalised provision for all students. Students, parents and teachers revealed how differentiation within classrooms is as necessary as provision allowing for meeting the ‘like-minded’ e.g. through vertical tutoring, leadership programmes and establishing ‘learning communities’ within schools. I argue that school and family cultures need to ‘scaffold’ developing identities of post-16 students ensuring their potential is reached in academic, confidence and identity domains. The label of ‘G&T’ is not needed in order to achieve these aims of ‘gifted’ education for all students to at least sometimes feel like they are ‘fish in water’.

The 1829 Act of Emancipation was designed to return to Catholics the full rights of citizenship which had been denied them for over two hundred years. In practice, Protestant mistrust and Establishment fears of a revival of popery continued unabated. Yet thirty years earlier, in Regency Brighton, the Catholic community although small seemed to have enjoyed an unprecedented degree of tolerance and acceptance. This thesis questions this apparent anomaly and asks whether in the century that followed, Catholics managed to unite across class and nationality divides and establish their own identity, or if they too were subsumed into the culture of the time, subject to the strict social and hierarchical ethos of the Victorian age. It explores the inevitable tension between 'principle' and 'pragmatism' in a town so heavily dependent upon preserving an image of relaxed and welcoming populism. This is a study of the changing demography of Brighton as the Catholic population expanded and schools and churches were built to meet their needs, mirroring the situation in the country as a whole. It explains the responsibilities of Catholics to themselves and to the wider community. It offers an in-depth analysis of educational provision in terms of the structure, administration and curriculum in the schools, as provided both by the growing number of religious orders and lay teachers engaged in the care and education of both the wealthy and the poor. The evidence for this is based on evidence drawn from on a wide range of primary sources material relating to Catholic education in the nineteenth century. It shows, too, how this disparate Catholic body, both religious and secular, was subject to a number of significant ii national and international influences which had a profound effect in formulating a distinctive Catholic presence.

Les perspectives dites des " cliniques de l'exil " se présentent souvent, dans la littérature psychopathologique et clinique, comme une clinique de ce qui a été perdu, dont le sujet se voit séparé de force. Une clinique de l'objet perdu donc, perçu comme manque ; cette perte est le plus souvent posée comme douloureuse et pensée comme détermination d'un état mélancolique. Or la clinique freudienne de l'objet perdu insiste sur sa construction, son avènement comme toujours déjà perdu et invite à saisir l'exil comme modalité de la séparation d'avec le Wohl primordial. C'est une séparation nécessaire pour advenir comme sujet de l'énonciation. Lacan pointe pour sa part une logique des exils au pluriel. Nos patients d'origine " étrangère " indiquent comment l'exil et le recours à une langue étrangère sont élevés au rang de symptôme et donc à accueillir et soutenir en clinique. Cette clinique " de la vie quotidienne " enseigne que l'exil implique la question de la filiation. Se pose ainsi la question du père. De la tuchè du père, quel automaton ou quelles inventions subjectives pour trouver une place dans le monde ? Cette clinique nous ouvre à des considérations qui nous font relire la littérature de manière renouvelée et repenser la " clinique de l'exil " en " clinique de l'exilé ".

First year Humanities and Social Science students’ experiences of engaging with written feedback in a post- 1992 university This thesis examines students’ experiences of engaging with written formative feedback in a post-1992 university. A body of literature on ‘engagement with feedback’ in higher education presents the student as somehow lacking the motivation to engage with feedback. The principles of a feminist methodology were adopted in an attempt to present the underrepresented views of students on the issue of their engagement with feedback. Participants were from two first year undergraduate modules which provided formative feedback on assignments. Qualitative research methods were used: 24 semi-structured interviews, 50 reflective writing documents and 83 questionnaires were collated for open-ended responses and descriptive patterns. Following an analysis of this data, an innovative model was developed. The ‘Student perspective on engaging with feedback model’ was based on the three phases students moved through when engaging with feedback, which was influenced by the type and style of feedback they required at different stages of their transition. This transition involved a period of liminality (a state of betwixt and between) as individuals waited to go through a rite of passage, which often led to students finding themselves in ‘stuck places’ and experiencing feelings of ‘being wrong’. The model demonstrates how firstly, students used the feedback as a ‘sign’ to confirm their learner identities. Secondly, students used the feedback to improve. They valued a personalised dialogue to enable them to do this successfully. Thirdly, they focused on future-orientated feedback, relating to employability and grades. These findings provide the basis for recommendations to HE tutors suggesting that changes to assessment practices and feedback comments may be beneficial for first year undergraduates as they navigate their transition to learning in higher education. First year Humanities and Social Science students’ experiences of engaging with written feedback in a post- 1992 university This thesis examines students’ experiences of engaging with written formative feedback in a post-1992 university. A body of literature on ‘engagement with feedback’ in higher education presents the student as somehow lacking the motivation to engage with feedback. The principles of a feminist methodology were adopted in an attempt to present the underrepresented views of students on the issue of their engagement with feedback. Participants were from two first year undergraduate modules which provided formative feedback on assignments. Qualitative research methods were used: 24 semi-structured interviews, 50 reflective writing documents and 83 questionnaires were collated for open-ended responses and descriptive patterns. Following an analysis of this data, an innovative model was developed. The ‘Student perspective on engaging with feedback model’ was based on the three phases students moved through when engaging with feedback, which was influenced by the type and style of feedback they required at different stages of their transition. This transition involved a period of liminality (a state of betwixt and between) as individuals waited to go through a rite of passage, which often led to students finding themselves in ‘stuck places’ and experiencing feelings of ‘being wrong’. The model demonstrates how firstly, students used the feedback as a ‘sign’ to confirm their learner identities. Secondly, students used the feedback to improve. They valued a personalised dialogue to enable them to do this successfully. Thirdly, they focused on future-orientated feedback, relating to employability and grades. These findings provide the basis for recommendations to HE tutors suggesting that changes to assessment practices and feedback comments may be beneficial for first year undergraduates as they navigate their transition to learning in higher education. First year Humanities and Social Science students’ experiences of engaging with written feedback in a post- 1992 university This thesis examines students’ experiences of engaging with written formative feedback in a post-1992 university. A body of literature on ‘engagement with feedback’ in higher education presents the student as somehow lacking the motivation to engage with feedback. The principles of a feminist methodology were adopted in an attempt to present the underrepresented views of students on the issue of their engagement with feedback. Participants were from two first year undergraduate modules which provided formative feedback on assignments. Qualitative research methods were used: 24 semi-structured interviews, 50 reflective writing documents and 83 questionnaires were collated for open-ended responses and descriptive patterns. Following an analysis of this data, an innovative model was developed. The ‘Student perspective on engaging with feedback model’ was based on the three phases students moved through when engaging with feedback, which was influenced by the type and style of feedback they required at different stages of their transition. This transition involved a period of liminality (a state of betwixt and between) as individuals waited to go through a rite of passage, which often led to students finding themselves in ‘stuck places’ and experiencing feelings of ‘being wrong’. The model demonstrates how firstly, students used the feedback as a ‘sign’ to confirm their learner identities. Secondly, students used the feedback to improve. They valued a personalised dialogue to enable them to do this successfully. Thirdly, they focused on future-orientated feedback, relating to employability and grades. These findings provide the basis for recommendations to HE tutors suggesting that changes to assessment practices and feedback comments may be beneficial for first year undergraduates as they navigate their transition to learning in higher education.

Les organismes vivants utilisent des ressources pour vivre, croître et se reproduire.Derrière ce lieu commun se cache une théorie importante en Ecologie : la théorie desTraits d'Histoire de Vie (voir Stearns 1992, par exemple). Selon cette théorie, lesindividus optimisent l'utilisation de ressources limitées (ressources alimentaires,habitat, mais aussi partenaire sexuel entre autres) afin de maximiser des traits telsque la croissance, la survie ou la reproduction. Dans le cadre de la théorie de lasélection naturelle, les individus favorisés sont ceux qui adoptent les stratégiesd'acquisition des ressources les plus efficaces dans un environnement donné. Ceconcept très simple est extrêmement puissant pour comprendre l'écologie et lavariété des stratégies adoptées par les espèces, les populations ou les individus.Cette théorie est d'ailleurs centrale en Ecologie Evolutive (Stearns 1992).

L'analyse économique forestière repose sur des modèles d'ordres biologique, économique et social, et, en particulier, sur des modèles de dynamique de peuplement, de prix et de décision. Le couplage de ces modèles entre eux permet d'apporter des réponses à des questions économiques variées sur la gestion des peuplements forestiers. Cependant, cette démarche n'est généralement appliquée qu'à une seule structure de peuplement forestier (équienne ou inéquienne) et plus souvent à la structure équienne. Cette thèse a pour objectif de construire et de coupler des modèles intégrant ces trois aspects, de manière à simuler et optimiser la gestion des peuplements forestiers en présence de risque catastrophique, quelle que soit la structure de peuplement (équienne, inéquienne ou en transition). Cette thèse étudie successivement les modèles de dynamique d'arbres et de peuplement, de prix et de décision en situation risquée et structure équienne ou inéquienne. Elle les articule ensuite pour constituer un modèle théorique d'ensemble susceptible de s'appliquer, moyennant une calibration appropriée, à différentes essences dans différentes régions. Un exemple de fonctionnement vient illustrer les analyses théoriques dans le cas du hêtre dans le Nord-Est de la France et donner une idée des résultats potentiels à l'échelle du peuplement et de l'arbre. Les illustrations à l'échelle du peuplement consistent à étudier le cas des peuplements régulier et irrégulier, et le cas de conversion de l'un à l'autre, en présence ou en absence de risque.

La théorie économique aborde généralement le brevet comme un droit exclusif temporaire portant sur un produit ou un procédé, et conférant de ce fait un profit de monopole à l'innovateur. Cette approche permet notamment de mettre en évidence le rôle incitatif du brevet, qui permet de rentabiliser à posteriori les investissements nécessaires à l'innovation. Elle ne permet cependant pas de rendre compte correctement de la réalité des brevets dans de nombreux secteurs, où : - un produit donné peut être couverts par un grands nombre de brevets (c'est le cas d'un microprocesseur, d'un téléphone portable ou d'un kit de diagnostic génétique) - les différents brevets couvrant ce produit peuvent appartenir à différents innovateurs, ayant chacun créé ou amélioré des composants du produit. Ce cas de figure est de plus en plus fréquent dans la plupart des industries contemporaines, et constitue notamment la norme dans des industries très innovantes comme les semi-conducteurs, les équipements de télécommunication, l'informatique ou les biotechnologies. Un rapport de la Federal Trade Commission américaine publié en 2003 rappelait par exemple que plus de 90 000 brevets américains liés aux microprocesseurs étaient alors détenus par plus de 10 000 entités, tandis qu'environ 420 000 brevets liés aux semi-conducteurs étaient détenus par environ 40 000 entités . Les économistes ont jusqu'ici principalement mis l'accent sur les coûts statiques (de recherche d'antériorité, de négociation, de licences, de litige) induits par la fragmentation et la dispersion des brevets. La thèse vise à dépasser cette analyse en éclairant la façon dont les entreprises instrumentalisent le brevet dans un contexte de fragmentation de la propriété industrielle, et en montrant comment ces stratégies fondées sur les brevets affectent in fine la dynamique de la concurrence et de l'innovation dans les industries concernées. L'approche adoptée est théorique, et consiste à utiliser les outils analytiques de la théorie des jeux pour étudier des situations d'interactions entre détenteurs de brevets dans un secteur donné. Les méthodes de modélisation utilisées permettent à la fois d'expliquer les comportements observés dans la vie des entreprises, et de tirer des conclusions quant-à leur impact positif ou négatif sur la concurrence et l'innovation. La thèse est structurée en trois parties et cinq chapitres. Partie 1: L'économie du droit des brevets La première partie est consacrée à l'analyse économique du système de brevets, c'est-à-dire l'ensemble des règles et institutions qui constituent le droit des brevets. Le premier chapitre s'appuie sur la littérature économique pour passer en revue l'ensemble de ces règles et leurs fonctions économiques respectives. Il met en évidence les variables de commandes accessibles au régulateur soucieux de promouvoir l'innovation, ainsi que les prescriptions qui s'y attachent. Est notamment discutée la capacité des règles uniformes qui forment le droit des brevets à s'adapter de façon efficace à des contextes d'innovation différents. Cette démarche est appliquée successivement à des innovations de coûts et de valeurs différents, à des innovations cumulatives (développées les unes à partie des autres), et au problème de la défense des brevets devant les tribunaux. Dans tous les cas, il est montré que la protection conférée par le brevet n'est pas définie directement en termes économiques, ce qui confère au système une plus grande souplesse d'adaptation à différents contextes d'innovation. Le second chapitre porte sur une loi spécifique de la législation du brevet, à savoir le test de "non évidence" qu'une invention doit satisfaire pour justifier l'octroi d'un brevet. Cette règle a une influence importante sur le degré de fragmentation des brevets, et in fine sur l'efficacité des investissements en R&D. Un modèle théorique est présenté pour démontrer qu'une application sévère du test permet de limiter des effets négatifs d'une fragmentation excessive de la propriété industrielle. Le modèle décrit les stratégies d'investissement de deux entreprises cherchant à développer un produit commercialisable composé de deux innovations complémentaires. Dans ce cadre le test de "non évidence" est considéré comme sévère si seul le produit final est brevetable, tandis que chaque élément complémentaire serait brevetable séparément en cas d'application moins sévère du test. L'application d'un test sévère permet de limiter les coûts induits par la fragmentation des brevets, mais elle réduit par ailleurs le bénéfice lié à la publication du brevet, qui consiste à éviter la duplication des coûts de R&D en révélant au concurrent qu'un élément a déjà été développé et protégé. Bien qu'une exigence sévère de non évidence puisse occasionner des coûts de duplication, car les petites innovations ne sont ni brevetées, ni rendues publiques, le modèle montre que le fait de déterminer un seuil minimum de non évidence est un moyen efficace de limiter les coûts associés à la fragmentation des droits. Partie 2. Brevets et persistance des entreprises dominantes La seconde partie s'inscrit dans le débat classique en économie sur le lien entre innovation et structure de marché - la question étant de savoir si l'innovation facilite la persistance des entreprises en place ou si elle favorise au contraire l'émergence de nouveaux concurrents. Dans le cadre de la thèse, la question posée consiste à savoir si l'instrumentalisation des brevets profite plutôt aux entreprises dominantes déjà en place ou bien à l'entrée de nouveaux concurrents sur le marché. Cette question est traitée à travers deux chapitres: le chapitre 3 est une revue de la littérature, le chapitre 4 présente un modèle théorique. La revue de la littérature est menée dans un cadre théorique unifié, dérivé du modèle fondateur développé par Arrow (1962) pour étudier comment l'innovation affecte la structure du marché. Les brevets et les stratégies fondées sur les brevets sont introduits dans ce cadre afin d'observer comment ils influencent la capacité des entreprises dominantes à renforcer et préserver leur position face à de nouveaux entrants. Cette approche révèle que l'introduction des brevets et des stratégies d'obtention de licences dans la théorie traditionnelle de l'innovation tend à inverser le résultat standard selon lequel l'innovation favorise l'émergence de nouveaux compétiteurs plutôt que la pérennité des entreprises dominantes. Le résultat standard repose sur le fait qu'un nouvel entrant a plus à gagner en innovant, car il pourra ainsi récupérer une partie du chiffre d'affaire de l'entreprise en place qui, elle, ne profite de l'innovation qu'à la marge. Dans ce contexte, les brevets permettent néanmoins à l'entreprise à place de préserver sa position en rachetant à l'entrant potentiel son innovation (brevetée) à un prix supérieur à ce que l'innovateur aurait pu en tirer en l'exploitant lui-même. En effet une telle opération permet d'éviter la dissipation des profits à l'échelle du secteur suite à l'entrée d'un nouveau concurrent. De plus un leader technologique peut préserver son avance en accordant des licences à ses concurrents, qui auront dès lors moins d'incitation à investir en R&D pour rattraper ou dépasser le leader. La revue de la littérature montre enfin que ces résultats sont renforcés lorsque la propriété intellectuelle des innovations est fragmentée. Le modèle présenté dans le chapitre 4 approfondit la question de la persistance des entreprises dominantes grâce aux brevets lorsque la protection des innovations est fragmentée. Il montre que lorsque l'innovation est cumulative, une entreprise dominante est en mesure de préempter un brevet susceptible de permettre le développement d'une innovation drastique (qui rend économiquement obsolètes toutes les autres technologies du marché) également brevetable. Si un brevet "amont" donnant un droit sur l'innovation "aval" est mis aux enchères (par exemple par un laboratoire de recherche), l'entreprise dominante en place proposera un montant supérieur à ce qu'un nouvel entrant serait prêt à payer. En effet le modèle montre que le montant que les firmes peuvent proposer pour le brevet "amont" dépend de leur pouvoir respectif de négociation, dans le cas ou le brevet "amont" appartiendrait à une entreprise et le brevet "aval" à une autre. Comme la firme en place réalise un profit même si l'innovation n'est pas commercialisée, elle a un pouvoir de négociation plus grand et peut ainsi préempter des brevets de base qui pourraient déboucher ultérieurement sur des innovations capitales. Le modèle montre par ailleurs que dans certains l'entreprise dominante n'aura pas intérêt à exploiter les brevets ainsi acquis. Partie 3. Les brevets bloquants et les investissements en R&D La troisième partie est constituée d'un unique chapitre. Un modèle théorique y est développé pour étudier les incitations qu'ont des firmes concurrentes à utiliser leurs brevets respectifs pour se bloquer mutuellement. Le modèle permet également d'examiner l'opportunité pour les entreprises de signer des accords de licences croisés avant d'investir, et d'évaluer l'impact de tels accords sur l'efficacité de la R&D. Le modèle décrit deux entreprises symétriques qui investissent en R&D pour développer de nouveaux produits. Les entreprises opèrent indépendamment l'une de l'autre, de sorte que leurs produits, bien que parfaitement substituables, sont différents et protégés par des brevets différents. Le modèle tient cependant compte du fait que les revendications des brevets peuvent déborder les limites des innovations concernées, de sorte que les entreprises peuvent s'en servir opportunément pour bloquer le produit développé par leur concurrent. Ce modèle met en lumière le comportement de "passager clandestin" des détenteurs de brevets, qui tendent à réduire leurs propres investissements en R&D en espérant pouvoir s'approprier les profits de leur concurrent. Dans un tel contexte où le pouvoir bloquant des brevets induit une diminution des investissements, les accords de licence signés avant de développer de nouveaux produits peuvent favoriser la concurrence. Lorsque les brevets ont un faible pouvoir de blocage, le modèle permet de conclure que ces accords de licences freinent néanmoins la concurrence car elles permettent aux entreprises de s'entendre sur le niveau de leurs investissements de manière à réduire le risque d'une confrontation sur le marché du produit. Le modèle montre également qu'il peut être dommageable pour le progrès social que les tribunaux diminuent l'étendue des droits conférés des brevets. En effet cela incite les entreprises à établir des accords ex ante, qu'ils soient favorables ou non à la concurrence. Le modèle permet enfin de saisir comment les entreprises sont incitées à accroître leur pouvoir de blocage en ajoutant de nouveaux brevets à leur portefeuille. Il prédit notamment que les entreprises vont utiliser cette stratégie dans des domaines où le développement de nouveaux produits est relativement aisé, afin de réduire l'intensité de la concurrence de la R&D. Dans ce cas, les stratégies d'équilibre des brevets nuisent au profit si le coût de dépôt de nouveaux brevets est peu élevé. Au contraire, les entreprises ne sont pas incitées à se lancer dans de telles stratégies si la R&D est déjà coûteuse et incertaine, Ce qui explique par exemple pourquoi les entreprises sont -relativement- moins portées à accumuler de vastes portefeuilles de brevets dans des industries pharmaceutiques ou chimiques.

Most philosophers of education assume that the main aim of education is to endow pupils or students with ‘personal autonomy’: to produce citizens who are reflective, make rational choices and submit their values and beliefs to critical scrutiny. The underlying assumption is Socratic: that the unexamined life is not worth living, and that goods and forms of perception that cannot be articulated or rationally justified are not worthy of our consideration. The unstated assumption is Plato and Aristotle’s: that the good life is the life of the philosopher and politically active citizen. It is assumed, moreover, that all pupils should be so educated on egalitarian grounds. In this thesis, I dispute these assumptions. I argue that the good life should not be conceived in exclusively ‘intellectualist’ terms but that an ordinary life - an ‘unexamined’ life - is also worth living; that central to the good life in all its forms is the engagement in worthwhile activities or ‘practices’; and that the best way to prepare pupils for their engagement in these practices is to cultivate a range of moral and intellectual virtues. Instead of foisting on all pupils a universal academic curriculum that produces little more than ‘a smattering of knowledge’, I argue that pupils might (1) cultivate the intellectual virtues through early specialisation in at least one subject, academic or practical, that has the characteristics of a practice, (2) develop the capacity to make practical judgements through a study of rhetoric and the stories of human experience of the humanities, and (3) cultivate certain moral virtues through challenging activity and service learning outside the classroom.

This thesis explores ways in which practice teachers facilitate student learning on the Specialist Community Public Health Nursing programme. The knowledge they draw on and pedagogic practices they employ in the placement area seem obscure and difficult to articulate and, as a result, tend to be marginalised. A mixed methods approach is adopted drawing on three forms of data collection: semi-structured interviews, a questionnaire and practice teachers’ summative comments on student portfolios. Twenty practice teachers from one university were interviewed and practice teachers’ comments in student portfolios in the same university were scrutinised. The information from the interview data informed the third data collection method, a questionnaire sent nationally to 115 practice teachers in 12 English universities. It aimed to establish whether views expressed in interviews were more generally applicable. The findings offer fresh insights into, and interpretation of teaching practice and the knowledge relied on. Learning in the practice placement becomes an amalgamation of complex professional knowledge, client narratives, and cultural artefacts. These become appropriated and reconfigured as new professional knowledge. This process may result in different acts of translation of the day-to-day realities of each practice teacher rendering the approach person-bound and context specific. The thesis concludes that drawing upon the above process the practice teacher’s individual approach to teaching and learning develops and then (having assessed the context within which she is working) she engages to help with students’ learning by using a mixture of formal knowledge and knowledge developed from practice. A model of responses and relationships has been developed involving complex professional knowledge and pedagogic processes. The study, therefore, sheds light on learning in the practice placement.

This thesis presents the first in-depth ‘home international’ comparison examining England’s and Northern Ireland’s policy processes with regard to making sex and relationship(s) education a statutory component of their national curricula for secondary schools. Drawing on policy network analysis, advocacy coalition and political decisionmaking literature more broadly, this study focuses on how policy actors in both regions conceptualise the debate around sex and relationship(s) education. It extends the ‘values in sex education’ discussion and focuses on the specific values informing policy discussions, as well as those embedded within/excluded from relevant policy texts, and the centrality of power around who or what groups are influential in shaping policy. Informed by a social constructivist epistemology and utilising a mixed method, case study design, this study’s data include Northern Ireland Assembly and Westminster Parliament Hansard transcripts, relevant legislation and statutory policy texts, and semi-structured interviews with 32 elected representatives, civil servants, third sector representatives, academics and local school practitioners. Employing thematic and content analysis to each text, a framework was created for both the England and Northern Ireland cases to determine how policy actors in both countries approach sex and relationship(s) education and the values driving policy development arguments. Cross-case comparisons indicate that SRE policy-making in England is primarily made through a closed, ‘top down’ policy strategy with the authoritative power of the ruling government overshadowing the perceived reputational power of those within the larger SRE policy network. Meanwhile Northern Ireland adopts a more open, partnership sharing, ‘ground up’ policy strategy toward RSE with relatively little influence from Members of the Legislative Assembly within the policy-making process. This study’s findings offers a new conceptual framework for understanding the different factors that shape the sex and relationship(s) education policy-making systems within both countries and provides a tool for possible policy learning in these countries more widely.

In the 1980's a dramatic increase in graduate and school leaver unemployment in Morocco, raised the question of the relevance of education. Education was often blamed by policy-makers and employers for graduate unemployment and for the mismatch between supply and demand observed in the labour market. In this context, the state launched a reform of vocational training aimed at developing the vocational and practical training supposedly needed by the private sector and the economy. But the reform has failed to meet its objectives. Why ? This general problem is explored through three broad research questions: 1. To what extent does vocational training policy address 1-ne problem of youth unemployment in Morocco? 2. What are the socio-economic factors which affect and determine employment/unemployment of vocationally trained graduates in Morocco? 3. To what extent does evidence from the Moroccan labour market confirm or modify a segmented approach to vocational training and labour market recruitment? The field work for this research consisted mainly of an extensive documentary search on the educational and vocational training systems and the Moroccan labour market, and two case studies using primary data on training systems and recruitment in two contrasting segments of the labour market. These were agricultural schools and employment in large-scale private sector farming and a training centre for educational planners and school advisors and civil service employment. Chapter 1 presents the problem and a literature review of the relationship between education and work. Chapter 2 proposes a segmented framework to the Moroccan Labour market. At this stage of building knowledge on the Moroccan labour market, the segmented framework suggested in this thesis appeared relevant to the employment of vocationally trained graduates. Chapter 2 also presents the rationale and working propositions for the research. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the educational and vocational training systems, and the labour market and employment in Morocco respectively. Chapter 5 presents the method and techniques used in the field work. Chapters 6 and 7 present case studies of graduates from agricultural schools and the agricultural segment of employment: and educational planners and school advisors and their related employment. Chapter 8 supplements the two case studies with a survey of recruitment agencies and newspaper announcements. Chapter 9 synthesises the findings of the research, and draws some theoretical implications. Overall the thesis suggests that job prospects are limited and that an adequate understanding of relations between education, training and the labour market requires an appreciation of the context within which those relations occur. Three aspects of that context are highlighted: (i) general economic trends affecting job creation; (ii) attitude of employers; (iii) variations between segments of employment in (i) and (ii).

Technology permeates education’s discourses and practices, and further dialogue between philosophy of education and philosophy of technology is urgently needed. This thesis attempts to do this by engaging critically with the thought of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler in order to show that both education and technology are processes of human formation (Bildung). Heidegger’s philosophy of technology underlines the way technology conditions human action and thus allows for an investigation of the constitution of the human being. At the same time, Heidegger’s philosophy maintains certain essentialist elements that make it unresponsive to the digital technologies that increasingly form our milieu. In matters of technology the nature of nearness is always at issue, and digital technology accelerates the changes that occur in this respect. For this reason, and notwithstanding Heidegger’s achievements, it is necessary to challenge his account in certain respects. Through a deconstruction of Heidegger’s theory, I attempt to show that thinking and technology intertwine in his critique of metaphysics. In fact, thinking and technology function according to presuppositions about image (Bild), imagination (Einbildungskraft) and education (Bildung), and both inextricably involve metaphorisation in various ways. In this thesis, I analyse the notion of metaphor either as passive or active transfer of the self. The role of image, as I have already noted, is very important for this process, and it is for this reason that Heidegger’s distinction between ‘representative’ image and ‘originary’ image becomes very important for this investigation. For Heidegger, the possibility of originary image opens up the path towards a nontechnologically mediated truth (alētheia) that offers true nearness to things, whereas representative image condemns thinking to uncritical repetition and existence to a state in which everything is equally far and equally near. This discussion and the specific chain of notions (Bild, Einbildung, Bildung) offers a new way into the investigation of those current digital image-technologies that purport to afford us nearness to things and people. It examines their effects on thinking and imagination, and education’s role in relation to these developments.

This thesis describes, analyses, and explains the problems of equality of access to, and provision of formal education, particularly higher education, in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China between 1949 and 1987. It contrasts the central governmenes constitutional assurances of equality in education for all ethnic groups, both the non-Han indigenous majority and the rapidly increasing immigrant Han-Chinese minority, with the reality of their implementation. This contrast and the inequalities in education resulting from it constitute the central theme of the thesis. The concepts of equality and inequality, ethnicity, assimilation and cultural diversity in education are first considered. The question as to where the root of the problem of access to higher education lies, whether in the outcome of higher education admission practices, or in the shortage of supply from lower down the system, is then examined closely. The question is addressed through the use of indicators of equal access to education; equal provision of educational facilities; equal prospects of survival; and success in progression from one level to another. These in turn are analyzed in terms of several dimensions including culture, religion, demography and geography. The investigative method followed is essentially a historical analysis of statistical data, supplemented by an analysis of policy documents, political statements, and literature, and informal interviews. The findings of the thesis are that, in spite of a nationally declared policy of equal access to education for all its ethnic groups, Xinjiang belies its official title of being Uighur and autonomous; and that attempts at assimilation to the Han through local language reforms, a nation-wide unified curriculum, political education, and the imposition of Standard Chinese have been to the detriment of the non-Han and have caused grave inequalities. The thesis concludes with suggestions on how these inequalities can be reduced and the interests and identities of the non-Han protected.

This thesis is concerned with post-primary education in West Ham 1918-39, with particular reference to secondary education. The realities of local educational experience are set against a background of educational acts an economies. The economic difficulties of the 1920s and the Depression of the 1930s were keenly felt in West Ham despite the efforts of the predominantly Labour council to mitigate poverty. A gap sometimes existed between the educational opportunities Labour councillors wished to provide and those they were able to provide. Generally a pragmatic approach was taken and certainly a secondary education was not seen as essential for all. Chapter One outlines West Ham's pre-1918 history and growth with reference to local politics and immigrant and religious groupings. West Ham's interwar history is told in greater detail. Chapter Two relates the difficulties encountered by the West Ham Education Committee in its decision to establish compulsory continuation schools, not least from the parents of West Ham. West Ham was one of the few areas in the country which succeeded in implementing compulsory continuation education albeit for a limited period. A section on technical education is also included in this chapter, although detailed treatment is hampered by a scarcity of records. Chapter Three examines West Ham's secondary school scholarships in the context of the national situation. West Ham's higher elementary/central school scholarships are subjected to the same scrutiny. Each of West Ham's secondary schools shared a broadly similar curriculum and ethos. Chapter Four highlights these similarities but also points out differences. Of the five interwar secondary schools, two catered for girls, one for boys and two were mixed. Two of the secondary schools were Catholic institutions, although both accepted non-Catholic pupils. Three of the schools were aided and two municipal. A section is included on West Ham's higher elementary/central schools but records are less full than those for the secondary schools. Chapter Five compares and contrasts West Ham's interwar secondary school system with that in East Ham, its sister borough. Chapter Six discusses both the economic and cultural factors underlying local attitudes to post-compulsory schooling. The main conclusions drawn relate to these attitudes which militated against any easy acceptance of such education as necessarily beneficial.

There is a consensus of academic opinion that for approximately 100 years stretching from 1688, the date of the 'Glorious Revolution', to the onset of industrialisation England enjoyed relative stability, the condition being attributed to political pragmatism. The purpose of this thesis is twofold; to document the educational developments that characterized the period and to examine their effect, nature and scope, about which historians sharply disagree. The principle that in any age education is a social tool whose practical possibilities rest on people's assumptions determined the strategy of pursuing four main lines of enquiry. These form thematic chapters, the contents of which are briefly summarized as follows: 1. Provision; the Church of England's supervisory role; incidental management of schools. 2. The curriculum and teaching methodology employed in the various scholastic institutions. 3. A survey of scholars in attendance at elementary schools, grammar schools and academies. 4. A consideration of the teaching force with sections on religious attitudes, financial standing and professionalism. Although the study has a national dimension its distinct regional focus is intentional because the bulk of surviving records relate to a locality, enabling its educational system to be largely reconstructed. The Peterborough diocese proved to be an eminently suitable choice being both the setting for educational diversity and extremely rich in source material. The evidence which accrued was not used merely to illustrate what is already known; rather, it made possible more realistic interpretations of the macro situation than hitherto. It is argued in the conclusion that education neither stagnated nor regressed. The principal finding is that the classical tradition of the grammar schools and the universities gradually lost ground to Dissent with its insistence on science and 'the relief of man's estate'. Consequently, new ideas were enterprisingly translated into commendable practice.

This research explores the concept of race in the construction and penetration of educational arrangements for Afro-Caribbean children. Existing research during the 1960s and 1970s on multiculturalism fails to acknowledge the educationai mandate offered by the coercive power of race in the construction of Afro-Caribbean children's identity ln schools. In this thesis, the concepts of disconnection, reconstitution, affirmation and contested legitimacy provide a theoretical framework for understanding the educational marginalisatlon of Afro- Caribbean pupils. Part I establishes the context of marginalisation through competing conceptions of race. The concept of disconnection Is applied to review formulations of race which endow it with an all-embracing power so that it neutralises all other ideological forces. Part I provides the framework for examining the scope of race in defining the educational agenda and the mechanisms for disseminating racial forms of education. Part II and Part III trace the mechanisms which promote the objectification of race in education. It examines the early context of the racial objectification in education policy for children of New Commonwealth origin drawing upon the literature on race and official government reports to assess the impact of the politicization of race in education. The concept of reconstitution is used to analyse the dominant cultural deficit models which serve as an explanation of the position of Afro-Caribbean pupils in the education system. Reconstitution refers to the process by which race is converted into culture and the stigmatisation of culture is used to explain the under achievement of Afro-Caribbean children in school. In Part III the concept of affirmation is also developed in an empirical analysis of LEA policy documents in the early 1980's, which aim to institutionalise particular racial forms of education. Part IV addresses the nature of the consensus, contestation and legitimation of racial forms of education. The politics of LEAs are examined in terms of their attempts to structure new modes of consensus through multiculturalism and anti-racism. The debate between multicultural and anti-racist education and the challenge of the New Right are analysed using the concept of contested legitimacy.

This thesis examines the implementation of the policy for English-medium education in government-run schools in Bhutan, a small multilingual developing country in the eastern Himalayas. It identifies factors influencing its effective implementation, plus policy and practice measures to improve learning outcomes for students. It takes as a theoretic framework an approach known as ‘content and language integrated learning’ (CLIL). This involves integration of language and subject teaching. The study addresses the following research question: How can implementation of Bhutan’s policy of English-medium education be enhanced? Data to address these questions were gathered through a literature review, key informant interviews, focus group discussions and classroom observations. The study also draws on personal experience. The findings reveal that implementation of Bhutan’s policy of English-medium government-run education could be significantly enhanced. Students are not attaining control over English at desired levels of schooling; classroom practices favour didactic teaching-learning approaches; teachers’ tend to teach toward terminal examinations and adhere to traditional teacher and student roles; and subject teachers do not consistently support students’ English language development. The study also found that many stakeholders, including policy-makers, teachers, curriculum developers and teacher trainers lack awareness of the concept of language-related disadvantage in education and approaches for more effective second language-medium teaching and learning. This includes a lack of language-sensitive classroom practices in both language and subject classes. These findings highlight the need for teachers to make different methodological choices inside classrooms. To do this, teachers should become skilled and confident in the use of classroom practices which support students’ English language learning. Key stakeholders, particularly policy-makers, teachers and teacher educators, must understand and accept the need for further policy and practice measures to support language-sensitive teaching-learning approaches for English-medium education in Bhutan. The implications of these findings for policy, practice and future research are further elucidated.

This thesis focuses on three main areas of interest in ecumenical education. First, there is the historical and political context, without which the whole discussion would lack anchorage in the real situation. The evolution of Church schools within the national system of education in Britain has a direct relevance to the story. Secondly, questions concerning the nature and purpose of Church schools, both Anglican and Roman Catholic, in this country have concentrated the minds of Church leaders and educationists, particularly against the background of new curriculum developments and of financial stringency. Out of this discussion arise questions concerning the real possibilities for closer ecumenical cooperation in education between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches in Britain, in the light of ecclesiastical directives to do together whatever is possible and permitted. The atmosphere has been changed following the Second Vatican Council and the exchange of visits between Pope John Paul II and Archbishop Runcie of Canterbury in 1982 and 1989. The third area for consideration is the possibility of ecumenical schools in which cooperation is more than amicable coexistence but takes a concrete institutional form: how do the converging discussions within the two communions on matters of theology, religious education, and the essential purpose of having Church schools at all, relate to the realities of educational practice at the 'chalk-face'? To try to illuminate these problems, two case studies have been selected from the various joint Anglican/Roman Catholic schools across the country, each evolving in its own peculiar environment. One was created by the amalgamation of an Anglican girls' and a Roman Catholic mixed secondary school in suburban Surrey; the other was integrated from its conception in the polarised community of Belfast. The contrasts reflect different historical, cultural, educational and ecclesiastical traditions between England and Northern Ireland. The similarities arise in that Lagan at Belfast adopted ideas implemented at Redhill where relevant to the Irish situation. The aim of the thesis has been to identify the key processes by which ecumenical education became more than just a hypothetical dream but rather a viable option for the future.

This thesis is about the changes a particular LEA implemented to funding for pupils with Statements of SEN in the light of a funding crisis affecting the whole LEA in 2003. It disproves the case that the Authority was making and which was even being made in academic literature, that SEN funding was imminently out of control. Instead it shows the deep-seated effect of neoliberalism on special education. It also argues that the Authority’s call for greater inclusion was used rhetorically to justify the funding changes and that inclusion became a means to move pupils with Statements who were educated outside the Authority back into schools within the Authority. It shows that changes in funding Statements marked a change in emphasis regarding decision-making about writing Statements – considerations about funding became more important than considerations about the best educational interests of the child. Finally, it argues that funding pupils with Statements was politically determined, not mainly financially driven, and that such funding became dependent on the number of pupils with Free School Meals and other indications of ‘deprivation’, rather than being based on the actual number of pupils with Statements per se. This, it argues, caused conflict amongst schools and, crucially, also calls into question how SEN and inclusion are themselves defined. This thesis is relevant to present debates about special education because the Coalition government is developing a new SEN Code of Practice and is implementing changes using similar arguments to those discussed in the thesis – the present government is claiming that there is a funding crisis, that ‘proxy measures’ should be used to count the incidence of SEN and that the ‘bias’ toward inclusion should be removed.

The thesis is about class relations, gender relations, and the relations between these analytically separable systems of social differentiation. A method of articulation is developed which focusses particular attention on the complexities of the connections between class and gender relations. It is argued that these complexities are constituted in the coherencies, incoherencies, contradictions, tensions and ambiguities between and within these categories of relations. These are explored within the production and education contexts, as well as in the context of the relationship between these two sets of social institutions. Basically this method explores the moving, informing and shaping of the structures of class and of gender relations by each other. The method of articulation, proposed in the thesis, is based on a structuration process approach. Analysis centres, in the first instance, on the differences and similarities between substantive expressions of gender relations and between substantive expressions of class relations. Analysis then proceeds to examining the pattern in which certain forms of gender, and certain forms of class, subordination/superordination, coincide. In other words, analysis explores a distinctive category of relations, constituted by emergent patterns at points of interconstitution of these analytically separable sets of relations. In short, this method analyses the structures of class and of gender relations as working on and through each other. This is conceptualized as structural agency. Connections between structural agency and human agency are explored as a component of the articulation of class and gender relations. The empirical focus of the thesis is a specific sphere of 'women's work and education'. That is, inter-connections between class relations and gender relations are explored by using the proposed method of articulation to analyse reproduction of secretarial labour power within education and the mechanisms which connect this vocational education with secretarial production. Secondary source data on secretarial labour processes are re-analysed through the method of articulation developed in the thesis. A major source of original data on secretarial education is a comparative case study of relevant courses in two sharply contrasting colleges. This case study compares in detail the institutional structures, cultures and processes of an elite private secretarial college with the procedures adopted in equivalent courses in a state college of further education. Articulation analysis of secretarial education indicates that both class and gender relations are reproduced in this sphere of vocational education. The perspective developed in this study suggests that challenges and confrontations, by secretarial teachers, students and workers, in respect of the class and gender constraints which they experience, contribute towards reproduction of these systems of social inequalities. As such, this study engages with those existing conceptual frameworks, and those analyses of the reproduction of secretarial labour power, which suggest that reproduction of class and gender relations is exclusively or primarily a feature of the acquiescence and accommodation, of relevant constraints on action, on the part of women students, teachers and workers in gender specific areas of education and work.

The aim of this research is to discuss the issue of transnational knowledge flow, with special reference to the transmission and transfer of studies, doctrines and ideas of British educational foundation disciplines into post-1970s Taiwan. These disciplines are philosophy of education, history of education and sociology of education. The key question is how and why it was that British educational foundation disciplines were introduced into Taiwan largely and widely from the 1970s. By analysing official documents and publications and interviewees’ testimonies, some research findings are explored. First, Taiwan’s National Scholarship Programme for Overseas Study played an important role to improve the knowledge borrowing and employing of British philosophies of education and sociologies of education into post-1970s Taiwan, while it did not have the same influence on the history of education. Second, Taiwan government lasted to support this scholarship for postgraduates to study overseas in educational foundation disciplines from the mid-1970s to the 1980s, while these grantees eventually changed to other educational subjects. After this period, more and more educationalists attained their doctorates on foundation disciplines in the UK since the 1990s, which produced the intensive academic exchange again between British and Taiwanese educationalists. Third, for Taiwanese educational philosophers, British Analytic Philosophy had its significant influence on the development of Taiwan studies of philosophy of education over these past forty years. For Taiwanese educational historians, they always had interests in some issues British educational historians were concerning. For Taiwanese educational sociologists, they attempted to recontextualise British educational sociologists’ theories and perspectives into Taiwanese educational settings, including research and practices. Fourth, on the process of the dissemination and transfer of British educational foundation studies into post-1970s Taiwan, Taiwanese educationalists criticised and reflected on this trend that borrowing and employing Western educational ideas into Taiwanese context is a suitable way or not.