Cultural citizenship and its implications for citizenship education: Chinese university students’ civic experience in relation to mass media and the university citizenship curriculum

A growing body of research has argued that university citizenship curricula are inefficient in promoting civic participation, while there is a tendency towards a broader citizenship understanding and new forms of civic engagements and citizenship learning in everyday life. The notion of cultural citizenship in this thesis concentrates on media practices’ relation to civic expression and civic engagement. This research thus argues that not enough attention has been paid to the effects of citizenship education policy on students and students’ active citizenship learning in China. This thesis examines the civic experience of university students in China in the parallel contexts of widespread adoption of mass media and of university citizenship education courses, which have been explicitly mandatory for promoting civic morality education in Chinese universities since 2007. This research project raises significant questions about the meditating influences of these two contexts on students’ perceptions of civic knowledge and civic participation, with particular interest to examine whether and how the notion of cultural citizenship could be applied in the Chinese context and whether it could provide certain implications for citizenship education in China. University students in one university in Beijing contributed to this research by providing both quantitative and qualitative data collected from mixed-methods research. 212 participants contributed to the questionnaire data collection and 12 students took part in interviews. Guided by the theoretical framework of cultural citizenship, a central focus of this study is to explore whether new forms of civic engagement and civic learning and a new direction of citizenship understanding can be identified among university students’ mass media use. The study examines the patterns of students’ mass media use and its relationship to civic participation, and also explores the ways in which mass media shape students and how they interact and perform through the media use. In addition, this study discusses questions about how national context, citizenship tradition and civic education curricula relate to students’ civic perceptions, civic participation and civic motivation in their enactment of cultural citizenship. It thus tries to provide insights and identify problems associated with citizenship courses in Chinese universities. The research finds that Chinese university students can also identify civic issues and engage in civic participation through the influence of mass media, thus indicating the application of cultural citizenship in the wider higher education arena in China. In particular, the findings demonstrate that students’ citizenship knowledge has been influenced by their entertainment experiences with TV programs, social networks and movies. However, the study argues that the full enactment of cultural citizenship in China is conditional with regards to characteristics related to two prerequisites: the quality of participation and the influence of the public sphere in the Chinese context. Most students in the study are found to be inactive civic participants in their everyday lives, especially in political participation. Students express their willingness to take part in civic activities, but they feel constrained by both the current citizenship education curriculum in universities and the strict national policy framework. They mainly choose to accept ideological and political education for the sake of personal development rather than to actively resist it, however, they employ creative ways online to express civic opinions and conduct civic discussion. This can be conceptualised as the cultural dimension of citizenship observed from students who are not passively prescribed by traditional citizenship but who have opportunities to build their own civic understanding in everyday life. These findings lead to the conclusion that the notion of cultural citizenship not only provides a new mode of civic learning for Chinese students but also offers a new direction for configuring citizenship in China. This study enriches the existing global literature on cultural citizenship by providing contemporary evidence from China which is a developing democratic country, as well as offering useful information for Chinese university practitioners, policy makers and citizenship researchers on possible directions for citizenship understanding and citizenship education. In particular, it indicates that it is important for efforts to be made to generate a culture of authentic civic participation for students in the university as well as to promote the development of the public sphere in the community and the country generally.

Staff and students co-creating curricula in UK higher education: exploring process and evidencing value

Student engagement in learning and teaching is receiving a growing level of interest from policy makers, researchers, and practitioners. This includes opportunities for staff and students to co-create curricula, yet there are few examples within current literature which describe and critique this form of staff-student collaboration (Bovill (2013a), Healey et al (2014), Cook-Sather et al (2014). The competing agendas of neoliberalism and critical, radical pedagogies influence the policy and practice of staff and students co-creating curricula and, consequently, attempt to appropriate the purpose of it in different ways. Using case-based research methodology, my study presents analysis of staff and students co-creating curricula within seven universities. This includes 17 examples of practice across 14 disciplines. Using an inductive approach, I have examined issues relating to definitions of practice, conceptualisations of curricula, perceptions of value, and the relationship between practice and institutional strategy. I draw upon an interdisciplinary body of literature to provide the conceptual foundations for my research. This has been necessary to address the complexity of practice and includes literature relating to student engagement in learning and teaching, conceptual models of curriculum in higher education, approaches to evidencing value and impact, and critical theory and radical pedagogies. The study makes specific contributions to the wider scholarly debate by highlighting the importance of dialogue and conversational scholarship as well as identifying with participants what matters as well as what works as a means to evidence the value of collaborations. It also presents evidence of a new model of co-creating curricula and additional approaches to conceptualising curricula to facilitate collaboration. Analysis of macro and micro level data shows enactment of dialogic pedagogies within contexts of technical-rational strategy formation and implementation.

Learning to construct our identities over the life course: a study with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults in Scotland

To date, adult educational research has had a limited focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) adults and the learning processes in which they engage across the life course. Adopting a biographical and life history methodology, this study aimed to critically explore the potentially distinctive nature and impact of how, when and where LGBT adults learn to construct their identities over their lives. In-depth, semi-structured interviews, dialogue and discussion with LGBT individuals and groups provided rich narratives that reflect shifting, diverse and multiple ways of identifying and living as LGBT. Participants engage in learning in unique ways that play a significant role in the construction and expression of such identities, that in turn influence how, when and where learning happens. Framed largely by complex heteronormative forces, learning can have a negative, distortive impact that deeply troubles any balanced, positive sense of being LGBT, leading to self- censoring, alienation and in some cases, hopelessness. However, learning is also more positively experiential, critically reflective, inventive and queer in nature. This can transform how participants understand their sexual identities and the lifewide spaces in which they learn, engendering agency and resilience. Intersectional perspectives reveal learning that participants struggle with, but can reconcile the disjuncture between evolving LGBT and other myriad identities as parents, Christians, teachers, nurses, academics, activists and retirees. The study’s main contributions lie in three areas. A focus on LGBT experience can contribute to the creation of new opportunities to develop intergenerational learning processes. The study also extends the possibilities for greater criticality in older adult education theory, research and practice, based on the continued, rich learning in which participants engage post-work and in later life. Combined with this, there is scope to further explore the nature of ‘life-deep learning’ for other societal groups, brought by combined religious, moral, ideological and social learning that guides action, beliefs, values, and expression of identity. The LGBT adults in this study demonstrate engagement in distinct forms of life-deep learning to navigate social and moral opprobrium. From this they gain hope, self-respect, empathy with others, and deeper self-knowledge.

Towards an understanding of Pakistani undergraduates’ current attitudes towards learning and speaking English

The English language has an important place in Pakistan and in its education system, not least because of the global status of English and its role in employment. Realising the need to enhance language learning outcomes, especially at the tertiary level, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan has put in place some important measures to improve the quality of English language teaching practice through its English Language Teaching Reforms (ELTR) project. However, there is a complex linguistic, educational and ethnic diversity in Pakistan and that diversity, alongside the historical and current role of English in the country, makes any language teaching reform particularly challenging. I argue, in this thesis, that reform to date has largely ignored the issues of learner readiness to learn and learner perceptions of the use of English. I argue that studying learner attitudes is important if we are to understand how learners perceive the practice of learning and the use of English in their lives. This study focuses on the attitudes of undergraduate learners of English as a foreign language at two universities in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan in Pakistan. These provinces have experienced long struggles and movements related to linguistic and ethnic rights and both educate students from all of the districts of their respective provinces. Drawing on debates around linguistic imperialism, economic necessity, and linguistic and educational diversity, I focus on learners’ perceptions about learning and speaking English, asking what their attitudes are towards learning and speaking English with particular reference to socio-psychological factors at a given time and context, including perceived threats to their culture, religion, and mother tongue. I ask how they make choices about learning and speaking English in different domains of language use and question their motivation to learn and speak English. Additionally, I explore issues of anxiety with reference to their use of English. Following a predominantly qualitative mixed methods research approach, the study employs two research tools: an adapted Likert Scale questionnaire completed by 300 students and semi-structured interviews with 20 participants from the two universities. The data were analysed through descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis, with each set of data synthesised for interpretation. The findings suggest that, compared with the past, the majority of participants hold positive attitudes towards learning and speaking English regardless of their ethnic or linguistic backgrounds. Most of these undergraduate students do not perceive the use of English as a threat to their culture, mother tongue or religious values but, instead, they have a pragmatic and, at the same time, aspirational attitude to the learning and use of English. I present these results and conclude this thesis with reference to ways in which this small-scale study contributes to a better understanding of learner attitudes and perceptions. Acknowledging the limitations of this study, I suggest ways in which the study, enhanced and extended by further research, might have implications for practice, theory and policy in English language teaching and learning in Pakistan.

The teaching of reading English in a foreign language in Libyan universities: methods and models

This study focuses on the learning and teaching of Reading in English as a Foreign Language (REFL), in Libya. The study draws on an action research process in which I sought to look critically at students and teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Libya as they learned and taught REFL in four Libyan research sites. The Libyan EFL educational system is influenced by two main factors: the method of teaching the Holy-Quran and the long-time ban on teaching EFL by the former Libyan regime under Muammar Gaddafi. Both of these factors have affected the learning and teaching of REFL and I outline these contextual factors in the first chapter of the thesis. This investigation, and the exploration of the challenges that Libyan university students encounter in their REFL, is supported by attention to reading models. These models helped to provide an analytical framework and starting point for understanding the many processes involved in reading for meaning and in reading to satisfy teacher instructions. The theoretical framework I adopted was based, mainly and initially, on top-down, bottom-up, interactive and compensatory interactive models. I drew on these models with a view to understanding whether and how the processes of reading described in the models could be applied to the reading of EFL students and whether these models could help me to better understand what was going on in REFL. The diagnosis stage of the study provided initial data collected from four Libyan research sites with research tools including video-recorded classroom observations, semi-structured interviews with teachers before and after lesson observation, and think-aloud protocols (TAPs) with 24 students (six from each university) in which I examined their REFL reading behaviours and strategies. This stage indicated that the majority of students shared behaviours such as reading aloud, reading each word in the text, articulating the phonemes and syllables of words, or skipping words if they could not pronounce them. Overall this first stage indicated that alternative methods of teaching REFL were needed in order to encourage ‘reading for meaning’ that might be based on strategies related to eventual interactive reading models adapted for REFL. The second phase of this research project was an Intervention Phase involving two team-teaching sessions in one of the four stage one universities. In each session, I worked with the teacher of one group to introduce an alternative method of REFL. This method was based on teaching different reading strategies to encourage the students to work towards an eventual interactive way of reading for meaning. A focus group discussion and TAPs followed the lessons with six students in order to discuss the 'new' method. Next were two video-recorded classroom observations which were followed by an audio-recorded discussion with the teacher about these methods. Finally, I conducted a Skype interview with the class teacher at the end of the semester to discuss any changes he had made in his teaching or had observed in his students' reading with respect to reading behaviour strategies, and reactions and performance of the students as he continued to use the 'new' method. The results of the intervention stage indicate that the teacher, perhaps not surprisingly, can play an important role in adding to students’ knowledge and confidence and in improving their REFL strategies. For example, after the intervention stage, students began to think about the title, and to use their own background knowledge to comprehend the text. The students employed, also, linguistic strategies such as decoding and, above all, the students abandoned the behaviour of reading for pronunciation in favour of reading for meaning. Despite the apparent efficacy of the alternative method, there are, inevitably, limitations related to the small-scale nature of the study and the time I had available to conduct the research. There are challenges, too, related to the students’ first language, the idiosyncrasies of the English language, the teacher training and continuing professional development of teachers, and the continuing political instability of Libya. The students’ lack of vocabulary and their difficulties with grammatical functions such as phrasal and prepositional verbs, forms which do not exist in Arabic, mean that REFL will always be challenging. Given such constraints, the ‘new’ methods I trialled and propose for adoption can only go so far in addressing students’ difficulties in REFL. Overall, the study indicates that the Libyan educational system is underdeveloped and under resourced with respect to REFL. My data indicates that the teacher participants have received little to no professional developmental that could help them improve their teaching in REFL and skills in teaching EFL. These circumstances, along with the perennial problem of large but varying class sizes; student, teacher and assessment expectations; and limited and often poor quality resources, affect the way EFL students learn to read in English. Against this background, the thesis concludes by offering tentative conclusions; reflections on the study, including a discussion of its limitations, and possible recommendations designed to improve REFL learning and teaching in Libyan universities.

An investigation of the relationship between the components of tumour microenvironment, signal transduction pathways and outcome in breast cancer

Breast cancer, the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer in women, is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the western world. Well-established risk factors of breast cancer are mostly related to women’s reproductive history, such as early menarche, late first pregnancy and late menopause. Survival rates have improved due to a combination of factors, including better health education, early detection with large-scale use of screening mammogram, improved surgical techniques, as well as widespread use of adjuvant therapy. At initial presentation, clinicopathological features of breast cancer such as age, nodal status, tumour size, tumour grade, and hormonal receptor status are considered to be the standard prognostic and predictive markers of patient survival, and are used to guide appropriate treatment strategies. Lymphovascular invasion (LBVI), including lymphatic (LVI) and blood (BVI) vessel invasion, has been reported to be prognostic and merit accurate evaluation, particularly in patients with node negative tumours who might benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy. There is a lack of standard assessment and agreement on distinguishing LVI from BVI despite the major challenges in the field. A systematic review of the literatures, examining methods of detection and the prognostic significance of LBVI, LVI and BVI, was carried out. The majority of studies used haematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and classical histochemistry to identify LVI and BVI. Only few recent studies used immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining of the endothelium lining lymphatic and blood vessels, and were able to show clear differences between LVI and BVI. The prognostic significance of LBVI and LVI was well-documented and strongly associated with aggressive features of breast tumours, while the prognostic value and the optimal detection method of BVI were unclear. Assessment and prognostic value of LBVI on H&E sections (LBVIH&E) was examined and compared to that of LVI and BVI detected using IHC with D2-40 for LVI (LVID2–40) and Factor VIII for BVI (BVIFVIII) in patients with breast cancer including node negative and triple negative patients (n=360). LBVIH&E, LVID2–40 and BVIFVIII were present in 102 (28%), 127 (35%) and 59 (16%) patients respectively. In node negative patients (206), LBVIH&E, LVID2–40 and BVIFVIII were present in 41 (20%), 53 (26%) and 21 (10%) respectively. In triple negative patients (102), LBVIH&E, LVID2–40 and BVIFVIII were present in 35 (29%), 36 (35%) and 14 (14%) respectively. LBVIH&E, LVID2–40 and BVIFVIII were all significantly associated with tumour recurrence in all cohorts. On multivariate survival analysis, only LVID2–40 and BVIFVIII were independent predictors of cancer specific survival (CSS) in the whole cohort (P=0.022 and P<0.001 respectively), node negative (P=0.008 and P=0.001 respectively) and triple negative patients (P=0.014 and P<0.001 respectively). Assessment of LVI and BVI by IHC, using D2-40 and Factor VIII, improves prediction of outcome in patients with node negative and triple negative breast cancer and was superior to the conventional detection method. Breast cancer is recognised as a complex molecular disease and histologically identical tumours may have highly variable outcomes, including different responses to therapy. Therefore, there is a compelling need for new prognostic and predictive markers helpful of selecting patients at risk and patients with aggressive diseases who might benefit from adjuvant and targeted therapy. It is increasingly recognised that the development and progression of human breast cancer is not only determined by genetically abnormal cells, but also dependent on complex interactions between malignant cells and the surrounding microenvironment. This has led to reconsider the features of tumour microenvironment as potential predictive and prognostic markers. Among these markers, tumour stroma percentage (TSP) and tumour budding, as well as local tumour inflammatory infiltrate have received recent attention. In particular, the local environment of cytokines, proteases, angiogenic and growth factors secreted by inflammatory cells and stromal fibroblasts has identified crucial roles in facilitating tumour growth, and metastasis of cancer cells through lymphatic and/or blood vessel invasion. This might help understand the underlying process promoting tumour invasion into these vessels. An increase in the proportion of tumour stroma and an increase in the dissociation of tumour cells have been associated with poorer survival in a number of solid tumours, including breast cancer. However, the interrelationship between these variables and other features of the tumour microenvironment in different subgroups of breast cancer are not clear. Also, whether their prognostic values are independent of other components of the tumour microenvironment have yet to be identified. Therefore, the relationship between TSP, clinicopathological characteristics and outcome in patients with invasive ductal breast cancer, in particular node negative and triple negative disease was examined in patients with invasive ductal breast cancer (n=361). The TSP was assessed on the haematoxylin and eosin-stained tissue sections. With a cut-off value of 50% TSP, patients with ≤50% stroma were classified as the low-TSP group and those with >50% stroma were classified as the high-TSP group. A total of 109 (30%) patients had high TSP. Patients with high TSP were old age (P=0.035), had involved lymph node (P=0.049), Her-2 positive tumours (P=0.029), low-grade peri-tumoural inflammatory infiltrate (P=0.034), low CD68+ macrophage infiltrate (P<0.001), low CD4+ (P=0.023) and low CD8+ T-lymphocytes infiltrate (P=0.017), tumour recurrence (P=0.015) and shorter CSS (P<0.001). In node negative patients (n=207), high TSP was associated with low CD68+ macrophage infiltrate (P=0.001), low CD4+ (P=0.040) and low CD8+ T-lymphocytes infiltrate (P=0.016) and shorter CSS (P=0.005). In triple negative patients (n=103), high TSP was associated with increased tumour size (P=0.017) high tumour grade (P=0.014), low CD8+ T-lymphocytes infiltrate (P=0.048) and shorter CSS (P=0.041). The 15-year cancer specific survival rate was 79% vs 21% in the low-TSP group vs high-TSP group. On multivariate survival analysis, a high TSP was associated with reduced CSS in the whole cohort (P=0.007), node negative patients (P=0.005) and those who received systemic adjuvant therapy (P=0.016), independent of other pathological characteristics including local host inflammatory responses. Therefore, a high TSP in invasive ductal breast cancer was associated with recurrence and poorer long-term survival. The inverse relation with the tumour inflammatory infiltrate highlights the importance of the amount of tumour stroma on immunological response in patients with invasive ductal breast cancer. Implementing this simple and reproducible parameter in routine pathological examination may help optimise risk stratification in patients with breast cancer. Similarly, the relationship between tumour budding, clinicopathological characteristics and outcome was examined in patients with invasive ductal breast cancer (n=474), using routine pathological sections. Tumour budding was associated with several adverse pathological characteristics, including positive lymph node (P=0.009), presence of LVI (P<0.001), and high TSP (P=0.001) and low-grade general peri-tumural inflammatory infiltrative (P=0.002). In node negative patients, a high tumour budding was associated with presence of LVI (P<0.001) and low-grade general peri-tumural inflammatory infiltrative (P=0.038). On multivariate survival analysis, tumour budding was associated with reduced CSS (P=0.001), independent of nodal status, tumour necrosis, CD8+ and CD138+ inflammatory cells infiltrate, LVI, BVI and TSP. Furthermore, tumour budding was independently associated with reduced CSS in node negative patients (P=0.004) and in those who have low TSP (P=0.003) and high-grade peri-tumoural inflammatory infiltrative (P=0.012). A high tumour budding was significantly associated with shorter CSS in luminal B and triple negative breast cancer subtypes (all P<0.001). Therefore, tumour budding was a significant predictor of poor survival in patients with invasive ductal breast cancer, independent of adverse pathological characteristics and components of tumour microenvironment. These results suggest that tumour budding may promote disease progression through a direct effect on local and distant invasion into lymph nodes and lymphatic vessels. Therefore, detection of tumour buds at the stroma invasive front might therefore represent a morphologic link between tumour progression, lymphatic invasion, spread of tumour cells to regional lymph nodes, and the establishment of metastatic dissemination. Given the potential importance of the tumour microenvironment, the characterisation of intracellular signalling pathways is important in the tumour microenvironment and is of considerable interest. One plausible signalling molecule that links tumour stroma, inflammatory cell infiltrate and tumour budding is the signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT). The relationship between total and phosphorylated STAT1 (ph-STAT1), and total and ph-STAT3 tumour cell expression, components of tumour microenvironment and survival in patients with invasive ductal breast cancer was examined. IHC of total and ph-STAT1/STAT3 was performed on tissue microarray of 384 breast cancer specimens. Cellular STAT1 and cellular STAT3 expression at both cytoplasmic and nuclear locations were combined and identified as STAT1/STAT3 tumour cell expression. These results were then related to CSS and phenotypic features of the tumour and host. A high ph-STAT1 and a high ph-STAT3 tumour cell expression was associated with increased ER (P=0.001 and P<0.001 respectively) and PR (all P<0.05), reduced tumour grade (P=0.015 and P<0.001 respectively) and necrosis (all P=0.001). Ph-STAT1 was associated with increased general peri-tumoural inflammatory infiltrate (P=0.007) and ph-STAT3 was associated with lower CD4+ T-lymphocyte infiltrate (P=0.024). On multivariate survival analysis, including both ph-STAT1 and ph-STAT3 tumour cell expression, only high ph-STAT3 tumour cell expression was significantly associated with improved CSS (P=0.010) independent of other tumour and host-based factors. In patients with high necrosis grade, high ph-STAT3 tumour cell expression was independent predictor of improved CSS (P=0.021). Ph-STAT1 and ph-STAT3 were also significantly associated with improved cancer specific survival in luminal A and B subtypes. STAT1 and STAT3 tumour cell expression appeared to be an important determinant of favourable outcome in patients with invasive ductal breast cancer. The present results suggest that STATs may affect disease outcome through direct impact on tumour cells, and the surrounding microenvironment. The above observations of the present thesis point to the importance of the tumour microenvironment in promoting tumour budding, LVI and BVI. The observations from STATs work may suggest that an important driving mechanism for the above associations is the presence of tumour necrosis, probably secondary to hypoxia. Further work is needed to examine the interaction of other molecular pathways involved in the tumour microenvironment, such as HIF and NFkB in patients with invasive ductal breast cancer.

Essays on educational production functions in England

Despite the expansion of the literature on the implications that different inputs have on the educational outcomes of students, empirical research has so far lacked the full capacity to provide unequivocal findings. Essentially, this deficiency is mainly attributed to two main factors; the lack of reliable data and the lack of full dimensionality in the theoretical model adopted to explain such data (Levaččićć and Vignoles, 2002; Knoeppel, Verstegen, and Rinehart, 2007). This dissertation aims to fill those gaps by first building a unique large dataset that covers all aspects of the educational process and second by adopting an integrated theoretical model and advanced quantitative methodological approaches to analyze it. With the fulfillment of such aim the dissertation manages to fill some of the gaps identified in the Education Economics literature related to the relationships between the cognitive and affective educational outcomes of English adolescents on one hand and three main inputs representing each of the three indentified factors in the theoretical model on the other hand controlling for other possible heterogeneities. Specifically, the thesis examines the effect of school process inputs in Chapter 2, family structure as a key family background input in Chapter 3 and finally religion and religiosity as a key adolescent’s personal input in Chapter 4.