http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/67 2026-10-15T14:32:37Z http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6813 Title: Exploring children’s resettlement from custody to community and the educational psychologists contribution Authors: Allen, Elizabeth Abstract: This thesis explores the perspectives, processes, and practices at the centre of children’s resettlement from custody to the community, and how Educational Psychologists (EPs) currently, or could contribute. It contains four chapters: a systematic literature review (SLR), a bridging chapter containing an ethical and methodological critique, an empirical project, and a reflection on the personal and professional implications of conducting the research. Chapter 1: What are young offenders lived experiences and perceptions of resettlement from custody to community? This SLR explores young offenders’ (YOs’) lived experiences and perceptions of the resettlement process transitioning from custody to the community. I adopt a metaethnographic approach to synthesising six, selected papers. The six studies included were conducted in England and Wales, to reflect the youth justice system context relevant to this. Through the translation and synthesis of themes, four third-order constructs were identified, which represent a new interpretation of the findings. Third order constructs indicated complex (often contradictory) beliefs about desistance, frequently influenced by external factors. The review also highlighted the social needs of YOs, including the mixed experiences of autonomy, a need for belonging and shared experience, and a lack of social capital. Relationships with professionals were also identified and consisted of varying degrees of emotional support, whilst practical support was commonplace. Finally, the ongoing resettlement needs of YOs were identified, informed by mixed experiences of coordinated care and a sense of purpose post-release. This construct highlighted the importance of meaningful, timely and collaborative pre-release planning. I conclude by highlighting the complexity of constructs and themes and propose viewing them within an eco-systemic framework. Chapter 2: Bridging chapter: An ethical and methodological critique This chapter bridges between the SLR and empirical project in chapter 3, providing an ethical and methodological critique of the research process. I begin by reflecting on my professional biography and how this influenced my axiology and the direction of the research. I outline my philosophical orientation and developing critical constructivist philosophical stance. I subsequently justify maintaining a qualitative methodology and propose methodological coherence in my choice of method and data analysis. Finally, I explore researcher positionality, reflexivity, the ethics process, and pertinent ethical considerations surrounding collaboration and participation and power in research. 4 Chapter 3: Supporting the Resettlement of Children from Custody to Community: A Group Exploration of Process, Practice, and Educational Psychologists’ Contribution The purpose of this research was to explore the experiences and perceptions of youth justice (YJ) professionals who support the resettlement of children from custody to community, and to consider how Educational Psychologists (EPs) can support in this sparsely researched area. Using an interpretive, qualitative methodology, three focus groups were held with eleven professionals working at a local youth offending team (YOT). The data was analysed using a combined critical and reflexive approach to thematic analysis (TA). Findings highlight five themes, including: Working within a risk-focused system, challenges of shifting dominant narratives, resource constraints hinder transitions, impact of role demands on wellbeing, and opportunities for connection. The chapter concludes by discussing implications for YJ practitioners and EPs. Chapter 4: A personal and professional reflection This chapter is a personal and professional reflection of the research journey that explores the implications of conducting this research. I begin by discussing how navigating uncertainty and aligning with a critical constructivist (CC) philosophical orientation was a turning point in this research. Relevant to this position, I reflect on language, discourse, and research as a form of resistance, highlighting the impact and influence on my practice as a TEP and future EP. Description: D. App. Ed. Psy. Thesis 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6804 Title: Conversational Turn Timing: The Effects of Prosody and Pragmatic Context in Production and Perception Authors: Hoogland, Damar Abstract: This thesis examines the production and perception of turn-transition timing in spontaneous conversation, focusing on the role of speech timing and pragmatic context. Study 1 addressed the claim that turns are timed precisely, typically after pauses of ~200ms, through a systematic review of turn-timing distributions from 25 studies. All studies operationalised turn timing as the time between the end of one turn and the start of the next, but most did not provide acoustic-phonetic definitions of turn boundaries. Turn timing distributions had high kurtosis and were generally right-skewed, with central tendency measures clustered between 0-500ms. Means of task-oriented conversations (e.g., map tasks) were distributed more widely than free conversations. Study 2 tested the perception-action entrainment hypothesis (Garrod & Pickering, 2015; M. Wilson & Wilson, 2005) that higher speech rates should correlate with faster turn timing, by analysing local and global speech rate as predictors of turn timing in question-response sequences from 17 spontaneous conversations in Dutch and English using linear regression model selection. Contrary to the hypothesis, faster questions predicted slower turn timing, while shorter final syllables predicted faster turn timing. Polar questions were answered faster than open questions, and relevant responses were initiated earlier than non-relevant responses. Moreover, speech-timing variables did not significantly explain turn-timing variance when these pragmatic variables were included. Not all turns are ‘on time’. Study 3 created a perceptual ‘timeliness’ variable from participant ratings of responses from Study 2. Speech rate predicted turn timing only for responses judged ‘timely’, which were earlier after slower questions. Timeliness judgements depended on both inter-turn pause duration and question-final syllable length, suggesting that the usual pause-based operationalisation of turn timing may not capture perceived turn timing. These findings do not support entrainment hypotheses, emphasise the importance of pragmatic factors in conversational turn timing, and suggest that perceptually-validated operationalisations of turn timing are needed. Description: PhD Thesis 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6745 Title: A Social Semiotic Analysis of EFL Students’ Multimodal Composing: The Use of Modes, Remaking of Signs, and Semiotic Awareness Authors: Jantasin, Pattaramas Abstract: In a word full of multimodal communication, Contemporary communication rarely relies solely on spoken or written form of language, but is increasingly made with multiple modes, e.g. writing, audio, and image. This prompts a call for educators to rethink literacy in language classrooms. Despite a growing interest in multimodality in L2 contexts, the investigation of students’ multimodal composing and semiotic awareness remains underexplored, particularly in the Thai EFL context. This study examines multimodal composing activities of Thai university students in one EFL classroom, drawing on multimodal social semiotics (Bezemer and Kress, 2016) and multiliteracies (Cope and Kalantzis, 2009), to understand three aspects: the multimodal design of the students’ produced texts, the remaking of signs, and their semiotic awareness while composing multimodally. The students’ multimodal texts produced as part of an L2 multimodal composing project—short summaries, digital posters, and oral presentations of their innovative product—were analysed using social semiotics to gain insights into the first two aspects. Background questionnaires, recordings of planning and composing processes, and interview responses were collected to understand the context and reasons for their semiotic choices, enriching the social semiotic analysis. The recordings and interviews were also deductively and inductively analysed to explore emerging semiotic awareness. The analysis of two focal cases reveals that Thai EFL students were able to produce expressive multimodal texts, and multimodal composing fostered their semiotic awareness even without any training on multimodal meaning-making. However, material, contextual, and social factors were found to crucially shape the students’ semiotic choices, the meaning represented in the texts, and the extent of their semiotic awareness. The findings underscore the need to recognise the critical roles of diverse representational modes, influencing factors, and semiotic awareness for more powerful and accurate communication. The study presents a conceptualisation of the complexity of L2 multimodal composing and offers pedagogical implications to enhance language learners’ semiotic repertoire and awareness to meet the evolving communicative demands of the world. Description: Ph. D. Thesis. (Integrated) 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6730 Title: Beyond PISA: The ecology of high achieving science students in Estonia Authors: Vitty, Laura Abstract: As the highest-ranking European nation in the OECD’s PISA, this thesis explores factors contributing to the high performance of Estonian students in science. With academic research on optimal performance pointing the spotlight at the Asian greats and Finland, Estonia has received little research attention. The current study explores the relative contributions of individual factors, the school microsystem, the family microsystem and the family-school interaction mesosystem in supporting student achievement in science. A critical realist research philosophy and ecological systems theory as a conceptual framework underpin the mixed methods research design. Firstly, exploratory factor analysis of the quantitative PISA 2018 dataset for Estonia is conducted. This is followed by thematic analysis of transcripts from a series of nine narrative interviews conducted with high achieving science students living in Tallinn, Estonia. Individual factors found to be prevalent in high performing Estonian science students are intrinsic motivation, resilience and active agency. Family role models, cultural capital and socioeconomic status are predictors of success related to the family microsystem. The school microsystem described by successful Estonian science students is one that embraces co-construction, learner centred and competency-based teaching with a somewhat informal approach. In the family school interaction mesosystem, the renowned Estonian television series Rakett69 is found to have a powerful influence on student aspirations, alongside the family and school support of student participation in both national and international competitions. Recommendations for education stakeholders are made, including an argument for reducing stratification in educational systems and shifting from a performance-oriented focus on examination results to a goal oriented system that values what students are able to do with their knowledge. Description: Ed. D. Thesis. 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z