Search

Recent years have seen the emergence of a 'pedagogical role' for teaching assistants (TAs) in response to government policy initiatives in the areas of supporting inclusion, dealing with teacher stress and workloads and the implementation of National Literacy and Numeracy strategies. TAs have seen the range of activities associated with their role grow as a result but not uniformly and TA roles have been characterised as ranging from "dogsbody" to "mobile paraprofessional". In 2005 the status of Higher Level Teaching Assistant (HLTA) with an explicitly pedagogical role (Including whole class teaching) with associated "professional" standards was introduced. In response to these developments, Higher Education (HE) has become increasingly involved In providing accredited work-based learning for TAs.

Research in multilingual education and biliteracy has, over the last 30 years, increasingly questioned the monolingual bias while celebrating multilingualism as an asset for language acquisition. This study is located within the above paradigm shift, guided by the need to study multilinguals for who they are rather than as flawed forms of a monolingual native speaker. Based on the theoretical hypothesis that multilinguals have a multi-competence (Cook, 1991) - i.e., knowledge and use of two or more languages - that enables them to explore their language resources strategically, this study uses Hornberger's continua of biliteracy framework (1989, 2003b) to better understand how multilingual children draw from their potential cross linguistic reservoir of abilities when learning to read in two or more languages simultaneously. This study focuses on the child's perspective by giving voice to ten-year-old children. It is guided by their unique insights about the cognitive and social complexities underlining their concurrent reading acquisition in a multilingual context. This research also investigates factors that may facilitate or hinder their experiences of learning to read. Using a case study approach that inscribes itself in the interpretivist paradigm, this study has been carried out in the Mauritian context which presents a fascinating and specific multilingual set-up. The chosen context is interesting for the biliteracy field as contrarily to most researched contexts, the child's first exposure to reading usually takes place in his/her L2 and L3 concurrently, with no basics acquired in his/her L1. Findings from the study highlight the importance of recognising children's agency in developing biliteracy alongside the role of family, teachers, or other stakeholders. Another key contribution to knowledge focuses on the importance of exploring multilingual children's Dominant Language Constellation (Aronin, 2016) in their concurrent reading acquisition, and therefore argues for a fluid and multidirectional rapport between languages of the multilingual child's DLC for lexical access and meaning making of texts. Findings also highlight how colonial and monolingual legacies are embedded in multilingual children's 'knowledge' about languages and thus impact on their own representations of these languages and hence their reading confidence in the latter languages.

Over the past two decades the proportion of older prisoners has increased dramatically from 7% to 17% of the total prison population in England and Wales. This is problematic, as their needs are holistically different to their younger counterparts and prisons are not designed for issues associated with older adulthood. An increase in human frailty, disability and dependency has exposed problems within the local and national prison systems, and this has raised numerous financial and managerial issues for prison administrators. These issues are set against a backdrop of reduced funding, overcrowding, increasing violence, increasing self-harm and suicide. The aim of this study is to contribute to new understandings that can mitigate the effects of an increasingly ageing and infirm population by developing the amount and quality of peer caregiving - namely, low-level, preventative peer social support. The research was undertaken in a Category B UK prison with a higher-than-average proportion of older prisoners. The study investigates the factors that explain the current situation, inhibit the processes of peer caregiving and other factors that might promote better caregiver/receiver relations in a prison setting. Data was collected using mixed qualitative methods (participant observation and interview). The related literature was reviewed, and ethics of care, criminological theories of personal development and theories of social learning were used as theoretical frameworks to analyse the data. Analysis enabled the clustering of quotes, observations and researcher notes into the following emergent themes: 1. Immediate precarity and longer-term risks. 2. Expressions of care in prison. 3. Caregiving and personal development. 4. Learning to peer care. 5. Purpose and power: working relationships, official guidance, leadership. Prisoner peer caregiving is identified as a relatively new discourse and practice that is in tension with better-established discourses and practices of security, control and managerialism. The current situation is explained in terms of dominant discourses and practices and neo-liberal imperatives in the fields of health and social care and justice. Developing models of horizontal care, supported by social forms of learning, are recommended as contributing to improving peer care practice in prisons.

Contemporary higher education policy in England requires universities to involve undergraduate students as partners in decision-making at the institutional level and at the course level. Furthermore, seeking to engage students as partners in academic governance is stated as a criterion by which degree-awarding institutions are assessed by the Office for Students. Working in partnership with students is now measured by the quality mechanism of the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) and is included as a major agenda across other political narratives within higher education.

Professionalism is an important issue for FE policymakers in post-16 education because of its established links to competence, morale and staff continuity. This study examined concepts of professionalism in the English further education sector, how it is strengthened or weakened, and the implications this has for workforce planning and management. The study adopted a Bourdieusian framework which explains social phenomena such as professionalism in terms of three capitals (social, economic, cultural). These capitals operate dynamically in a social structure (field) and generate potentialities for social thought and action (habitus). The study utilised a survey comprising quantitative and qualitative forms of enquiry to investigate both structural and attitudinal aspects of professionalism. The survey contained six sections: demographics, employment, subject knowledge, work relationships, motivation and professionalism. Perceptions of professionalism were measured using a revised 15-item version of the Hall professionalism scale (1968) based on adaptations by Wimmer (2007) and Scailes (2003). Measures of cultural, social and economic capital were also constructed. An online survey was sent out to teachers, managers and curriculum support staff working across the sector with 461 useable responses collected. The achieved sample reflected the sector profile in terms of gender, ethnicity and background, though the average age was slightly higher in the achieved sample. The quantitative data was analysed using descriptive and inferential methods including exploratory factor analysis, regression, ANOVA and correspondence analysis. Professionalism was affected by key respondent demographics and occupational position. Professionalism was also found to be statistically significantly related to the distribution of capital (cultural, social and economic). A typology highlighted the way in which the three capitals were distributed in the sample. The data yielded three overarching themes for FE professionalism: expertise, service and organisational compliance. Respondents’ location in the FE hierarchy determined which of these themes were perceived as dominant. Of the three themes, expertise was the most important variable differentiating scores on professionalism and work status, but to function as capital it must be recognised by others. This study has demonstrated that professionalism is a more nuanced concept than previous studies have suggested. In FE, notions of professionalism vary across the FE field according to job role, committee membership, trade union membership, teaching load and incidences of non-specialist teaching. The findings establish a relationship between people’s position in the field and the way capital is distributed. There is also further evidence, in line with recent analyses by Lobb (2017) and Donovan (2019), that professionalism in FE is being challenged by persistent managerial pressures.

This thesis examines how a focus on mathematical awareness can be harnessed to enable lower attaining primary school pupils to make mathematically valid and productive contributions to mixed attainment pair working. In this thesis, mathematical awareness refers to the detection of relevant mathematical features or relations and is posited as a necessary but not sufficient condition for mathematical reasoning. Literature indicates that prevailing 'ability' group structures in the primary mathematics classroom operate to the detriment of lower attainers in terms of their mathematical progress and their self-image. Whilst there are indications that mixed attainment groups benefit the lower attainer through access to the thinking of their higher attaining partners, this area is not well researched. Existing research does not address the independent contribution that lower attainers make to such mixed groupings. A separate body of research identifies the development of authority relations in such mixed groupings which can disadvantage lower attainers. Drawing on the methodology of Education Design Research, three experienced primary class teachers worked with the researcher to design and enact a classroom-based intervention which promoted mathematical awareness through task structure, the use of enactive representation, teacher emphasis and teacher questioning. Video recording captured the action and interaction of two mixed attainment pairs in each classroom over the course of one preliminary and three research lessons. Each pair of pupils comprised one pupil operating above, and one operating below, age-related expectations. Data analysis focused on critical sequences from within the data corpus in which changes in observed behaviour enabled inference of a new awareness. The thesis contributes evidence of lower attaining pupils' mathematical contribution to mixed attainment pairs: the focus on awareness was associated with lower attainers' awareness of mathematical structure making significant contributions to task progress. The focus on awareness had a more limited impact on lower attainers' contributions through awareness of mathematical property. Awareness pathways for each lower attainer reveal how the focus on awareness was also associated with changes in the nature of pair interaction. Findings indicate that this was instrumental in enabling lower attainers' mathematical awarenesses to impact on task progress. The thesis concludes that the focus on awareness supported the provocation of structural awareness and shifted the focus of the task from solution finding to noticing, enabling more equitable engagement.