The Hilltop 1-28-1972

This document created through a generous donation of Mr. Paul Cottonhttps://dh.howard.edu/hilltop_197080/1038/thumbnail.jp

Marketing post sixteen colleges: a qualitative and quantitative study of pupils' choice of post sixteen institution

The thesis concentrates on both the supply and the demand sides of the post sixteen education market place. On the supply side, the study examines four key issues - responses to competition; changes in the performance of colleges; the effect of the market on social inequality; and the possibility of bias and manipulation in marketing information.Firstly, on the supply side, the marketing undertaken by one sixth form college is examined alongside quantitative data from college records, (retained over a period of twelve years.) Data are analysed to determine patterns and trends in the profiles and qualifications of students entering the college throughout the period when a niche marketing strategy was emerging.On the demand side, qualitative research data were collected through a series of interviews with twenty five fourteen to sixteen year olds, in a multisite study. Analysis concentrates on the decision making processes and strategies emerging during the period when students selected among post sixteen colleges.The study concludes that firstly, the potential to manipulate information about colleges is increased in a culture of markets and competition. Colleges need to evaluate and gain feedback on the success of promotional communications through marketing research, to monitor the development of the college's reputation, as well as to identify new markets. Secondly, markets have the potential to allocate resources by socioeconomic class. Colleges seeking to reduce inequalities in post sixteen education and training need to ensure that a number of niche markets are identified, appropriate to local need and labour market conditions, to accommodate a range of decision makers in the market. Thirdly, the findings suggest that sixteen year olds are rarely able to give coherent reasons for selecting colleges until they are exposed to the marketing and promotional information provided by colleges. The findings emphasise the importance of effective promotion and public relations, to ensure that positive and accurate marketing information is entering the marketing and choice cycle.Finally, a 'Typology of Decision Makers' is developed to summarise the decision making behaviour of sixteen year olds. The study concludes with a 'Marketing, Choice and Communications Input-Output Model', which highlights the significance of 'psychological defence mechanisms', and reinforcement strategies', in the decision making processes employed by sixteen year olds when selecting among post sixteen colleges

Challenging representations:constructing the adult literacy learner over 30 years of policy and practice in the United Kingdom

This article addresses the question, How do changes in policy discourses shape public representations of literacy learners and the goals of adult literacy education? It examines specifically how the agency of adult literacy learners is constructed. We carry out a critical discourse analysis of two key adult literacy policy documents from the U.K.: the manifesto A Right to Read (British Association of Settlements, ) and Skills for Life: The National Strategy for Improving Adult Literacy and Numeracy Skills (Department for Education and Skills, ). We describe the overall structure and genre of the documents and analyze the semiotic resources in the texts to explore the discursive shaping of adult literacy learners. Our analysis shows that, while a functional discourse of individual deficit is prominent throughout the texts, each document expresses it differently. A discourse of rights and participation in the earlier text changes to a discourse of social inclusion, conditional on duty and responsibility and narrowed to the sphere of paid employment. The profiles of individual learners are heavily framed by the dominant discourses of literacy and education that constitute the texts. We argue that the discursive shifts we trace in these national documents relate to wider changes in notions of social disadvantage, rights and citizenship, and the emergence of literacy as a key indicator of progress. Our analysis demonstrates the powerful ways in which policy documents articulate relationships between national and transnational literacies

Visions of the End in Interwar British Art

The cessation of hostilities to the Great War with the signing of the Armistice on 11 November 1918 brought the largest and most devastating war hitherto known to an end. It was meant to be the “War to End War”, yet a little over twenty years later in 1939 it was eclipsed by the devastation of the Second World War. The shadow of war loomed over the intervening years, which were marked by pronounced speculation on where human society was going; for every prophet of doom anticipating collapse into degradation, animosity, and self-annihilation there was a contrasting viewpoint awaiting the move towards a better new world. Further, these assessments often overlapped. This thesis examines the impact of apocalyptic ideas within British art in the interwar years. It looks at painting, drawings, prints, and sculpture, addressing the use and development of apocalyptic concepts during the period 1918-1939, and explicitly relates contemporary anxieties and apocalyptic evocations with Christian apocalyptic narratives. Interwar British society at large identified with Christian traditions, either as products of a Christian education and state, or through belief. The Apocalypse is central to Christian hope. The project surveys this under appreciated aspect of the period in order to recognise the influence of Judeo-Christian apocalyptic traditions. The apocalyptic orientation, both in its religious and secular forms, has been recognised as a manifestation arising from anxiety in the contemporary context. This thesis reveals a British permutation of a general (European) trend