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Introduction: This is a qualitative study, using a constructivist grounded theory approach. It considers what active older people do with their time and why; and what influences their engagement in particular activities. Methods: Fourteen active older people, in the 'third age', completed diaries for up to 14 days, looking at what they did, and their thoughts and reflections on this. The inclusion criteria for the study was that they be retired from their job/career and consider themselves to be independent in their daily life activities. The data was analysed using a constant comparative approach advocated in grounded theory analysis, producing a detailed exploration of the diarists' engagement and motivations, further analysis and memoing leading to a grounded theory modelling of occupational balance for active older people Results: Of the fourteen diarists, eleven completed the full 14 days, with three completing 7 days of the study. The diarists' ages ranged from 60 to 94, with seven in the 60-69 age range and seven in the 70+ age range. In total 175 diary sheets and 156 in-depth reflective sheets were completed, giving 331 documents for analysis. Six themes emerged from the data, which were interconnected and overlapping, these were: Social Participation and Sociability, Elements of Doing, Contexts for Doing, Influences on Engagement in Doing, Elements of Planning Pacing and Pausing; and Continuity and Belonging. Looking at these as a gestalt enabled the theorising of a concept model of occupational balance in the third age. This model states that Occupational Balance is a multifaceted concept, which requires the subjective evaluation of their own occupational pattern by an individual, to consider whether the occupational experiences engaged in, as a panorama, provide a state of favourable balance of certain properties on a set of continuums, relating to meaning and motivations as well as actual engagement. Occupational Balance is dynamical; with all continuums in a state of possible flux across time. For people in the third age, it is proposed that these properties are: social relatedness; enjoyment; autonomy; planning of occupational pattern; physical activity; challenge; competence; and life-tense perspective. Conclusion: This is a new way to consider occupational balance, and its properties, for active older people. The model reflects that balance is a multifaceted concept, including the meanings and motivations for engagement as well as actual doing. The consideration of occupational balance as dynamical; with all continuums in a state of possible flux across time, where the continuums are not from positive to negative, has not been previously considered. This model has implications for occupational therapy practice in the health promotion arena, where further research is needed into its possible use as therapeutic tool.

This thesis takes a novel approach to critiquing the age of criminal responsibility in England & Wales by evaluating whether teaching practices in schools educate children on this responsibility, before and after reaching the minimum age of ten. It aims to critique the law by questioning whether children, regardless of age, can be held to such a legal standard, without receiving the necessary exposure to such information through mainstream curriculum subjects. To explore this, interviews were conducted with a sample of teachers who teach children between the age of 7-14 in schools, around the North-East of England. These interviews critically explored the topics and teaching practices presented by teachers in relation to the age of criminal responsibility. The curriculum content as discussed by teachers was investigated by conducting a document analysis of the key curriculum documents on subjects such as Personal Social Health Economic Education, British Values, Citizenship, Religious Education, and Children's Human Rights Education. The data collected was used to explore the role of the education system in teaching children about the age of criminal responsibility and to examine the extent to which it prepares them for this responsibility as seen with other minimum age limits. This study aims to highlight how the national and school curriculum provides limited education to children on the age of criminal responsibility. Therefore, this thesis questions whether it is fair for children to be held criminally responsible at the age of ten, without being given the opportunity to develop their knowledge and understanding of the law through education.

Legal education in England and Wales has faced some significant challenges in recent years, among them being Brexit, regulatory changes introduced by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and Bar Standards Board (BSB) in terms of qualification as a legal practitioner, and most significantly the COVID-19 pandemic ('the pandemic'). These events have all challenged the purpose, content and currency of LLBs today. Considering these circumstances, this doctoral research analysed legal education stakeholders' views about LLB provisions, and it examined LLB provisions across England and Wales. The primary research tool was an online survey that collected data from legal educators, legal practitioners and those involved in one or both of the aforementioned to identify necessary skills for employment within and outside the legal sector today. The skills identified were not law specific. A content analysis of 107 LLB provider websites ('LLB curricula review') and a narrative review of literature were used as supporting research tools to identify how LLB providers have adapted their LLB offerings in light of the pandemic in 2021-2022, and to identify approaches currently used to develop these transferable skills. This research proposes pathways to scaffold and develop the necessary transferable skills to better equip law graduates for employment within and outside the legal sector in the post-pandemic working environment.

Traditional university education promoted a separation between theory and practice. This divide, which is particularly prominent in the teaching of law, together with the dominance of the doctrinal approach in legal education, risks giving students the impression that the study and practice of law is mainly concerned with rules and principles. This thesis commentary seeks to challenge this approach by arguing that philosophy can inform both legal education and professional legal practice. It will be demonstrated that philosophy can play a role in developing students' ability to engage in reflective practice, expand legal ethics beyond the codes of professional conduct, and promote feelings such as compassion and empathy. In other words, a holistic approach, underpinned by philosophical theories, can allow educators to address the aims of legal education. It will also be argued that Clinical Legal Education (CLE) is an optimal methodology for teaching philosophy in action.

This work, published over a four-year period, focusses on the accessibility of non-molestation and occupation orders under Part IV of the Family Law Act 1996 and Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs) under Part Three of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. The collection addresses three questions (i) To what extent are non-molestation orders and occupation orders accessible to victims of domestic abuse? (ii) How is the accessibility of these orders impacted by societal crises such as Covid-19 and what lessons can be learned for future crises? (iii) To what extent is the new DAPO likely to be a more accessible form of protection than non molestation and occupation orders? The work is both retrospective, analysing the impact of key reforms on accessibility (i.e., the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO)) and forward looking, exploring how the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 may facilitate access to remedies by reforming the law on special measures and introducing a new protective order. The work is also timely in charting a pathway for the future of the family court as decisions are being made about the extent to which the Remote Access Family Court (RAFC) will be retained, even after pandemic-related reasons for its use no longer apply. The work combines doctrinal and empirical research and draws on qualitative and quantitative data from four separate projects. A range of voices are represented in the data including legal practitioners, professionals supporting victims of domestic abuse and victims themselves. The central conclusion reached is that the accessibility of protective orders has been undermined by wider family justice reforms which have taken place over the last decade as part of austerity measures and which have reduced the accessibility of the family courts more generally. Whilst it was intended that legal aid should be preserved for victims of domestic abuse, the restrictive means test has resulted in large numbers of victims being ineligible for public funding. This has had the impact of both deterring some victims from pursuing protection and increasing the number of victims who appear as litigants in person. The work highlights that litigants in person can experience barriers at all stages of the court process and these barriers may reduce a victim's prospects of securing protection. In relation to the rates at which orders are granted, the research shows that whilst non-molestation orders are granted generously, the odds are stacked against victims to secure occupation orders - a trend which has been exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although there was a sustained increase in applications for non-molestation orders and occupation orders in the first year of the pandemic, suggesting that the transition to the RAFC has not impeded victims' access to protective orders, the pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing barriers for litigants in person. Notwithstanding, the research also identifies benefits of the RAFC in safeguarding victims' safety and wellbeing, indicating there is value in retaining remote hearings in some circumstances beyond the pandemic. Whilst prima facie the new DAPO is set to offer a more accessible form of protection (both because of the availability of third-party applications and because the legal requirements to secure an order are lower than the existing criteria for occupation orders), there is a need for thoughtful implementation to ensure that existing problems are not simply transferred across to the new regime.

This doctorate explores concepts of professional identity within the context of teaching in the law clinic- a form of practice- based teaching, but one which pushes the boundaries of the concept in that clinical supervisors operate both within the reality of live client casework, as legal professionals, as well as in the context of the Higher Education environment. Transition is a recurring theme, and I examine the pressures created by the need to transition from legal professional to a role combining teaching and learning expertise, where real world experience is valued, to occupying a space in academia. Through my experience as Director of the Northumbria law clinic, the Student Law Office, I examine the intersection of praxis and research, and how practitioners can create a community of practice which can in its turn provide a 'safe space' for their further evolution into research-active academics - or at least a safe platform for launching into the unfamiliar world of research. I reflect on the challenges of this journey through liminality, the temporal and recursive nature of this transition, and in doing so, provide a unique insight into the model of clinical supervision at Northumbria University Law School.

This thesis looks at the ways in which teachers enact change in learning and teaching, how, in doing so, they draw upon internal and external resources and how they make use of tools to re-imagine the potential of each learning situation. It also looks at how this process is supported by collaborative work with university researchers, drawing upon a decade of my work as a researcher at Newcastle University and a range of different research projects across diverse sites of learning in England, from nurseries and primary and secondary schools, to Further Education colleges and community learning projects. These projects, funded by (amongst others) the Nuffield Foundation, The Learning and Skills Development Agency, the Campaign for Learning and UK government departments and agencies, were all focused on discrete questions and outcomes, with specific reports and papers as their outputs. What links them is my own experience of working as a researcher, the connections and questions that formed in my mind as I followed the funding from project to project. In this respect, the thesis is a reflection of one kind of professional learning by an academic researcher: in contrast to a single focused investigation, this work reflects the development of themes across contexts and cumulatively over time. The professional life of the researcher is centred on the evaluation of change. Initiatives in pedagogy and curriculum are introduced either by central government or in response to local circumstances and my task as a researcher has been to co-construct with the change agents (teachers and other professionals, parents and learners) a sense of three things: what was supposed to change; whether or to what extent the change has occurred and finally to understand how it happened, looking at the potential for such change to translate to other contexts. In these respects, my career has had a unity and coherence, both in terms of the process of my work and of the goal: to shed light on learning and ways to improve learners’ experiences. However, an explicit awareness of this core unity is disturbed by the realities of project work: limited funding and short timescales; the difficulty of designing projects to meet the competing agendas of practitioners and funders; the realities of university life and short term contracts for researchers which mean that projects are selected not because they support an emerging understanding of theory or practice but because they guarantee jobs for another six months. Moreover, the professional researcher is not mistress of her own fate but is reliant on a series of alliances with tenured academic staff. This can be blessing or curse – most alliances have elements of both – since the focus of a project must be negotiated, leading to increased complexity and a sense that one’s work does not fit together and the opportunities that working together bring for new ideas and perspectives, leading to a sense that increased complexity means that one’s work does fit together. The work that I present here is the fruit of these alliances: to borrow from Stenhouse, I generated this knowledge for myself but not by myself. The structure of this commentary is a necessary fiction which makes a much more coherent story than real life offered. I did not set out to know what I know now and at any given time I was only fleetingly aware of the underlying meaning of each piece of work in relation to all the others. In other words, in this commentary I am offering a narrative of discovery which is not a Quest but a reflection on a Voyage (Booker, 2004). I went without a map and was driven by the winds and the sea. This is what I learned while I was out there. The thesis will elaborate on three main themes:  How I have come to understand the development of a ‘change agent’ identity : looking at some of the affordances and constraints for innovative teachers working at the margins of their professional roles, working with parents and other professionals or exploring new perspectives on learning  How I have come to understand the scaffolding of the change process: an investigation of the use of enquiry tools (Dewey, 1938) as epistemic objects (Knorr Cetina, 2001) which both enable teachers to enact change and to gain new perspectives on their practice as the change unfolds.  How I have come to understand the role that I have played in this: a slow process of recognition, that I was an agent for creating space for teachers to engage with their questions, that I myself was part of a complex and contradictory system of university funding and objectives and that my navigation of this is important for our growing awareness of the interdependence of practitioner-university partnerships and ‘working space’ (Leat, 2006) for all participants. The publications submitted with this commentary draw on both empirical research and systematic review to support a view of professional learning and change that takes account of learning theory, social and cultural context and the complexity of real classrooms. Throughout the text, these publications will be referenced with this notation [1].