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Our understanding of school building design in relation to its effects on learning is surprisingly underdeveloped. This is due to the complex nature of the environments, the lack of consensus about the criteria for their pedagogical assessment, and attendant methodological challenges. By using theoretical concepts from developmental psychology and evolutionary approaches to both education and the perception of the physical environment, this study explored how the design of secondary school buildings affects pupils’ appetites for learning and promotes innovative pedagogical practices. The principal purpose of this research was to establish the characteristics of a learning-sensitive architectural design. The research tool employed the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) conducted through a digital app. It collected images of the pupil participants’ surroundings and information about their school related experience in situ – by sampling the participants’ thoughts and feelings as they occurred and in the environment within which they occurred. Over a course of a week in each case study, a total of 79 Year 7 and 8 pupil participants in four urban secondary schools in England recorded 1091 momentary responses reporting their experience of their motivation, school activity, and their immediate physical environment. The procedure collected both quantitative and qualitative data recording the effect of the pupils' perception of the school environment on their momentary motivation, as well as an assessment of the congruence between the buildings and the pedagogies they host. The study found that the perceived quality of the school environment has a lasting impact on pupils' momentary motivation and that a significant amount of variation in intrinsic motivation is momentary and context specific. These findings have potential implications for architects and educators concerned with enhancing and supporting learning through the design of school buildings.

This thesis investigates school leaders' experiences of Christian education ethos development in their schools, using interpretative phenomenological analysis. It comprises two studies. The first focuses on a secondary headteacher, new to headship, in a recently opened Christian Free School. The second focuses on a long-serving primary Church Academy headteacher. I use creative data-collection methods in both studies to elicit a small group of pupils' views of their education within the school's ethos. I concluded that both headteachers experienced tensions in developing a Christian education ethos because of external pressures that limited their autonomy. The headteachers' values were important in defining the vision for their schools' education ethos, but both encountered challenges in their deployment. The Free School headteacher faced challenges from the governing body when negotiating a vision focused on excellence, justice and learning in a Christian manner. By contrast, the governing body's vision implied a focus on Christian nurture and education about Christianity. The Academy headteacher experienced challenges in his conceptions of Church education from the Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools inspector, which ultimately realigned his approach to education ethos development. I compared the data sets of leaders with those of pupils. I concluded that there was congruence between the headteachers' intended school ethos and the pupils' experienced ethos. Despite the headteachers experiencing internal struggles with their leadership identity, the pupils' data indicated they understood the headteachers' values. They seemed persuaded that the headteachers' values were in their best interests. These values helped them understand what their schools stood for and the expectations placed on them. It led to a powerful sense of belonging. The thesis contributes new knowledge by developing significant insights into the complexities of headteacher leadership of Christian education. Such insights are not easily obtainable through other methodologies. Furthermore, the thesis develops a practical methodology, which school leaders can adapt to investigate the influence of their vision and espoused values on pupils' school experiences.

This mixed method study sought to explore the perceptions of key stakeholders in education, on the role and contribution of ICT in Scottish secondary schools towards generic skills development among pupils for post school transitions. The timing of this study coincided with a period characterised by contextual pressures globally, marked with technology changes, youth unemployment and curriculum reviews. A review of literature was conducted systematically to evaluate the explicit permeation of ICT in Scottish schools. A sequential mixed method design was adopted for the two phased study commencing with a convenience sampling technique for the first phase, involving 1364 upper secondary school pupils from all eight schools, 64 teachers and the 17 employers in one local Council in Scotland. A purposive sampling technique was applied to select two sample schools for the second phase, based on best use and practices of ICT. Questionnaires were administered online and in person at the first phase, followed by a semi structured interview at the second phase. SPSS was used for descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and one way Anova, while Nvivo 10 software was used for thematic analysis from the interview transcript. The study offers a framework for personalisation starting with identification of pupils’ ability and ICT skill level at inception classes, followed by a personalised learning design incorporating pupils’ interest, ability and post school destination. The study also proposes separate roles for teachers and policy makers in order to maintain teachers’ autonomy, as policy makers’ interference has been identified to have an impact on teachers’ professionalism, effectiveness and confidence necessary for imparting generic skills in pupils. A series of recommendations are provided for future research, including a longitudinal evaluation of generic skills acquired from individual school subjects through the upper school years to post school destination, to ascertain effective transfer and sustainability of generic skills.

This thesis presents the findings of a multi-site case study, which explored the inclusion of primary school children in rural Cross River State, Nigeria. The research engaged specifically with the experiences of thirty 11-16-year-olds from diverse identities, drawn from primary 5 classrooms in three public primary schools sited in different rural locations within the state. In so doing, it adopted pupil presence, participation and achievement (PPA) as a conceptual framework of inclusion to examine whether education is genuinely for all primary age children within the research sites. The study was set within the context of the outcome of the 1990 Education for All (EFA) conference, which promoted universal access to education for all primary age children worldwide. As such, the investigation considered how far the selected primary schools were able to guarantee equal access, participation and achievement of all pupils under Nigeria's national education policy. It used the PPA framework to identify the drawbacks to pupil inclusion at school and to recommend measures for addressing the obstacles experienced by some learners. Qualitative data were generated via documentary analysis, observations and interviews in schools directly featuring children. Relevant data pooled from the three sources were organised and analysed thematically based upon an interpretivist perspective. Thus, analysis of data was informed by the social constructivist theory. Data analysis indicates that current provision enables schools to allow access for nearly all children. However, despite the good intentions of national policy, girls, children from minority tribes, Muslims of Hausa/Fulani origin, and children with learning difficulties and those with impairments were vulnerable to marginalisation and exclusion within the contexts of their schools. Looking through the lens of social constructivism, the thesis strongly links the disadvantages confronting the children to limited pupil voice. The situation limited the opportunity for pupils to share their perspectives about the ways such issues as gaps in national education policy and in-school factors, including classroom practices, religious attitudes, grade repetition and social interactions were affecting their inclusion in the context. Out-of-school factors were also found to have an influence, although the study did not investigate these directly. The thesis concludes by drawing out the implications and making recommendations for reforms in policy, practice and research in favour of pupil voice within Nigeria, to promote inclusion in schools. Consideration is also given to possible implications for other developing countries.

This study is concerned with those pupils registered as having 'special educational needs' within mainstream schools and also those who attend special schools of non normative designations and seeks to explain the over - representation of white working class boys amongst such populations. The processes of identification and subsequent allocation to non normative special categories are argued to be both class and gender biased and to represent the placement of pupils so identified along a continuum of exclusion, being an indication of their failure in conventional terms. An approach is developed which attempts to make the link between such failure and wider social and educational processes, viewing schooling as a form of cultural politics and seeing such politics as being intimately linked to wider structural relations. To this end the work of Pierre Bourdieu is employed. The aim of the research is to test and also to develop Bourdieu's theories of social and cultural reproduction and particularly his concept of habitus and its gendered embodied nature, as a means of illuminating the processes involved in the generation of these differential outcomes. The study takes the form of qualitative in-depth semi structured interviews with teachers from eight schools, five special and three mainstream, in order to generate detailed contextualised knowledge of the processes by which pupils may have been identified as having special educational needs within mainstream schools and then possibly allocated to special schools and of the assumptions perceptions and understandings of those teachers in special schools at the 'receiving end' of these processes. The resultant data is analysed using a conceptual framework provided by Bourdieu's theories. The study is placed within the context of the recent history I politics of special educational practices through a consideration of legislative and other developments of the past twenty years or so which are argued to have led to an increase in exclusionary pressures despite the rhetorical emphases throughout most of this time firstly on Integration and latterly on inclusion.

This thesis details a 3 year evaluation study of the effectiveness of the WHSA intervention in changing health promotion policy and practice in school, and in influencing health-related attitudes and behaviour of pupils. The study design was quasi-experimental and was conducted in 10 intervention and 5 control schools, all from the secondary sector. It involved pupils, teachers, support staff, parents, school governors, health promotion officers and education advisers, using a range of quantitative and qualitative tools. The Award process, which is linked to 9 Key Areas of health, lasted 15 months. The Key Areas cover curriculum, wider community, a smoke free school, healthy food choices, physical activity, responsibility for health, health promoting workplace, environment and equal opportunities and access to health. Changes in school health promotion were assessed by audit: pupils' health-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviour through self-administered questionnaires and focus group interviews; and attitudes and perceptions of staff, parents and governors from semi-structured interviews. Observations of the school environment and a health education lesson, and policy and curriculum reviews were also carried out. The results showed that audit scores for all areas, except physical activity and taking responsibility for health, increased in intervention schools, indicating positive changes in health promotion processes. Pupils' knowledge, high at baseline, remained unchanged. Positive effects on smoking uptake and drug use were seen but little change in physical activity and healthy eating. Older girls made more progress in all areas. Parents and non-teaching staff supported school health promotion strongly, perceived many benefits of the Award and wished to be more actively involved. Triangulated results from research tool confirmed these findings. The thesis traces the growth of health education in the UK and the development of the healthy schools concept locally, nationally and internationally, and explores the constraints and facilitating factors for schools striving to become health promoting. It discusses the implications of the findings of this study for future healthy school projects, including the national healthy school scheme, and makes a number of key recommendations.

This study shows how multisensory techniques, which have been used in other learning situations, have been used successfully in teaching English as a foreign language. This thesis discusses the problems faced by pupils with learning disabilities (L.D.) and why their difficulty in learning English as a foreign language is such a barrier to their progress in a world where English has become the global language. It also discusses the various methods used to teach a foreign language. A detailed description of the multisensory learning technique is given and its application to language acquisition, writing and spelling. A discussion of the history of reading is followed by chapter on reading instructions for learning disabled pupils. An outline of a remedial lesson is also given. In conclusion, a number of case histories are described in some detail to illustrate the problems faced by L.D. pupils and their struggle to overcome them successfully through use of multisensory teaching techniques.

This study was designed to determine the relationships between three variables in fifth- and sixth-grade classroom verbal interactions. These variables include sex of teacher, sex of pupil, and approval/disapproval interactions between teacher and pupil.

The purpose of this study was to relate Paul Tillich's concepts of love, power, and justice to teacher-pupil interaction. Three categories were used to indicate the relationship: (1) the formation of the self-concept of teachers and of pupils, (2) the teacher-pupil relationship, and (3) the learning process.

There are three purposes of this study: (1) to determine the degree of interaction between pupils and student teachers and teaching effectiveness as rated by pupils; (2) to determine the significance of difference of pupil ratings between those who express "more" and those who express "less interest" in the course taught by the student teacher whom they were asked to rate; and (3) to study other variables such as sex, age, and achievement in order to show how they relate to pupil and student teacher interaction.

The purpose of this study is to make an investigation of the achievement records and personality status of a matched group of pupils in the Lake Dallas elementary school to determine what effect, if any, participation or non-participation in the school's hot lunch program has on grade progress and disposition of the pupils. Attention is given to individual studies of pupils and to outcomes of instruction.

The major purpose of the study is to reveal, by means of comparison, the extent to which the Town Group of pupils and the School Bus Group of pupils of the elementary grades (fourth to seventh inclusive) of the Decatur, Texas, Public School are adjusting to the problems and conditions which confront them in the Decatur school and community, and the extent to which they are developing a normal, happy, and socially effective personality.

It is the purpose of this thesis to determine the science interests of the pupils of the North Elementary School of Odessa, Texas, during the school year of 1940-1941.

This thesis is a comparison and result evaluation of arithmetic, handwriting, spelling, and reading goals by students in the second grade at Sam Houston Elementary School in Denton, Texas.

This study attempted to ansewer, among other issue, the following questions: Did out of the home employement of the mother have any effect upon the child? If it had any effect, could it be determined and measured in such a manner as to draw reasonable conclusions?

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the size of class in eighth grade general mathematics affects the achievemnt of pupils in the class.

There was a time when people could go West and become empire builders; when there was little competition, but the resources which nature provided so abundantly no longer exist in their vastness. Pioneers and adventurers have skinned the cream of these luxuries. It is necessary now for science and its cohorts to substitute skill, knowledge, and training for the vagrancies of chance and its dependence upon fate. There was a time when a boy raised on a farm had to stay on the farm; there was no city where he could find work. There was a time when the village mechanic could never be anything but a mechanic. There was little opportunity for travel, to see and learn things. Today, education and facilities for learning are open to all. Men are no longer born to their life work; they discover it for themselves. It has not been long since the field of vocational choices that first existed in America was exceedingly limited. Now there are nearly three thousand types of occupations. Many of our occupations are subdivided into different classifications. Great numbers of these are of the type which require little training. However, skill and training are demanded more by employers as time progresses. So that today, the boy or girl who has a high school education finds himself qualified to enter higher types of employment, and better able to succeed.