VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Peer sex education in China’s higher education: A peer educator’s perspective

Peer sex education (PSE), as an effective approach to deliver knowledge and skills to young people, has been adopted in Chinese higher education institutions to complement the insufficient school-based sex education in China. Most existing studies in the field focus on university-led PSE in China’s higher education, while the contribution of student-led PSE has received little attention. To bridge the gap in literature, this qualitative study set out to examine PSE in China’s higher education, especially student-led peer sex education, through the lens of peer educators. Using semi-structured interviews with 14 peer educators from five Chinese higher education institutions, this study investigated peer educators’ ways of engagement in PSE, peer educators’ motivations, and the benefits and challenges of PSE in China’s higher education as perceived by peer educators.
The findings show that peer educators engage in PSE in China’s higher education by covering a comprehensive list of topics, including those not addressed in university-led PSE. By adopting participatory and learner-centred pedagogy, peer educators empower students through both formal and informal activities. Organised in the form of student associations run independently by students, student-led PSE has a strong community spirit and more freedom than university-led PSE. Peer educators are responsible for accessing resources, self-training, and evaluation by themselves. Results show that intrinsic motivations stemmed from personal experience and self-identity constitute the main driving force for peer educators to participate in PSE. Specifically, peer educators are motivated by their interest in sex education and the aspiration to improve sex education in China and promote equal rights for women and LGBTQ+. In terms of the benefits of PSE, evidence shows that both students and peer educators benefit from increased knowledge and skills and the community support brought by PSE, while peer educators also enhance their transferrable skills and have a sense of achievement. By accommodating LGBTQ+ students and raising the public’s awareness of equal rights, PSE also contributes to the overall sociocultural environment. Meanwhile, peer educators encounter challenges on the individual, organisational, institutional, and cultural levels. As noted by the participants, the limited capacities of peer educators and organisational issues can negatively influence the quality and sustainability of PSE, while strict control by the institution and cultural barriers largely restrict the scale and impact of PSE. The findings of this study imply that joint efforts by stakeholders in different sectors and the change in social attitudes towards sex education and relevant topics are required to ensure the effectiveness and sustainability of PSE.

Keywords: CIE2021
CIE
Higher education
China
Peer sex education
Interviews
Advisor: Chankseliani, M
What does success mean to you? Perceptions from across the English education system

What it means to be successful, both in life and in education, is an essentially contested concept, characterised by diverse, varied and often conflicting definitions. Trying to prescribe a single idea of educational success is at best naïve and at worst damaging, both to individuals and to systems. In particular, overly prescriptive definitions of success, including those prescribed by systems of assessment and accountability, engenders a form of education which is not easily distinguished indoctrination.
This study explores the multidimensional phenomenon of educational success and its intersections with educational-assessment and identity-construction by examining how success is defined and determined. It investigates the diversity of individuals’ perceptions and examines the consequences of tensions and contradictions in these perceptions. The research was exploratory and participatory, consisting of a photo-voice project and intensive interviews with 30 participants from across the English education sector: 13, pupils, 7 teachers and 6 policy-makers. Data was analysed inductively, drawing on constructivist grounded theory, to construct two main themes.
The first theme examines the roles of systems of assessment and accountability as mediators of extrinsic and intrinsic definitions of success. It investigates how definitions of success vary at different levels of the education system and illustrates the controlling influence of externally defined definitions of success. The second theme explores the time-dependent nature of educational success as pupils co-construct their identities and negotiate their own definitions of success. This theme reveals the exploratory nature of becoming independent and emphasises the need for a degree of self-direction in education.
The thesis concludes by suggesting the importance of allowing an element of uncertainty in education as a fundamental aspect that enables education to be emancipatory rather than indoctrination.

Keywords: Participatory methods
Perceptions of success
Qualitative research
CIE
Grounded theory
Englans
Assessment
Interviews
Photo-voice
CIE2021
Advisor: Baird, JA
The dynamic relationship to learner autonomy and control of high school teachers in Iran

Different educational systems take different approaches to student learning. Some put the learner at the centre of education and define educational objectives based on their needs, while others condition students through controlling approaches to follow predetermined instructions and gain predetermined results.
These approaches are not absolute, and teachers who interact directly with students perceive and practice within a range of controlling and autonomy-supportive values. As qualitative studies show, teachers in different contexts, influenced by various institutional and behavioural factors, define and practice learner autonomy and control differently.
There is a need to develop a deeper understanding of how teachers balance learner autonomy and control within an educational system. In this study, I look at the ways teachers balance student autonomy and control by investigating aspects of their identities. I search for teachers’ personal opinions, their teaching strategies, and the external factors that impact their decisions, in order to identify how they balance learner autonomy and control.
For this purpose, I undertake semi-structured interviews with 24 female Iranian teachers, to gather in-depth information from their perspectives. Using a qualitative methodology allows me to successfully model the ways in which teachers balance student autonomy and control. I find six ways in which teachers strike this balance, by positioning their personal views against what others expect them in Iran's educational system. This study leads to a methodological contribution to the ways teachers interact with the power imposed from institutional factors in the broader macro system and the power they impose on students to balance autonomy and control.

Keywords: CIE2021
Teachers' perception
Interviews
Iran
Learner autonomy and control
Qualitative research
High school students
CIE
Advisor: Feinstein, L
Elucidating the cis-regulatory logic of Runx1 during developmental haematopoiesis

The study of dynamic gene expression during development utilises model differentiation systems. The haematopoietic system is one of the archetypal differentiation systems and many model gene loci used to shed light on basic mechanisms of transcriptional regulation are important haematopoietic genes. In this project I set out to uncover transcriptional regulatory mechanisms of the gene Runx1. Runx1 is a transcription factor important for the development and function of the haematopoietic system. In particular, Runx1 is required for haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) generation during embryonic development. HSCs are born during an endothelial-to-haematopoietic transition (EHT). Runx1 is expressed during, and is absolutely required for, EHT and the birth of HSCs. Previous work in the lab established that Runx1 exhibits complex transcriptional regulation during EHT; Runx1 has two alternative promoters and several haematopoietic enhancers have been identified.
Using cutting-edge chromatin assays I interrogated cis-interactions within the transcriptional regulatory domain of Runx1 when it was expressed at low and high levels. Capture-C showed that interactions between Runx1 promoters and the haematopoietic enhancers previously identified were more frequent in haematopoietic cells compared to undifferentiated mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs). Increased Runx1 transcription was associated with an apparent increase in the hallmarks of loop extrusion, suggesting that the two might be causally related.
Next, I set out to investigate whether functional redundancy exists between the haematopoietic Runx1 enhancers. Distinct upstream regulators of the enhancers that were identified suggested that they might not have entirely overlapping functions. While using CRISPR/Cas9 in mESCs to delete endogenous Runx1 enhancers and test their functional requirements, I uncovered interesting caveats about common genome engineering practices. Functional characterisation of enhancer-deleted mESCs differentiated in vitro to haematopoietic cells indicated that partial enhancer redundancy may exist.
Finally, I investigated a potential mechanism of Runx1 alternative promoter choice involving CTCF/cohesin. I identified tissue-specific and ubiquitous CTCF binding sites in the Runx1 domain that were capable of acting as insulators in vitro. Cell type-specific binding of CTCF upstream of each of the Runx1 promoters was correlated to DNA demethylation and promoter activity. CTCF binding was seen upstream of a signifcant proportion of active promoters genome-wide, suggesting that modulating CTCF binding close to promoters, possibly via DNA methylation, may be a widespread transcriptional regulatory mechanism.

Keywords: cohesin
chromatin conformation capture
loop extrusion
CRISPR/Cas9
hematopoiesis
Runx1
tiled-C
CTCF
Advisor: de Bruijn, M
Hughes, J
South African maths teachers’ perceptions about estimation, practice, and praxis

This research project explores how the often-under-taught mathematical skill of estimation can be a useful tool in helping young South Africans grow into ‘future leaders’. The paper argues that in a socio-economic landscape which is defined by inequality and under-education, the skill of estimation, when taught well, has the potential to greatly benefit the lives of young and old. Serving as foundational research for further intervention studies, this research project explores nine maths teachers’ perceptions about the skill of estimation and their adapted teaching practice and praxis according to these perceptions. Inductive analysis of data from interviews, a WhatsApp group, and a focus group reveal that estimation is an undeniably important mathematical skill. Taught in maths classrooms, estimation is perceived to be a transferable life skill which can assist with problem solving and contextualisation of information. Findings from this research project further reveal that despite teachers’ uncertainty about estimation, they find it important to adapt their teaching practices to better integrate the skill into their classrooms. Teachers’ adaptive praxis is aligned with critical maths education literature and provides preliminary data for widespread teaching interventions in South Africa. These conclusions contribute to global dialogues about the importance of estimation and provide reasons to believe that South African teachers are willing to change their teaching praxis to better serve the ‘future leaders’ they teach. This research project aims to lay the foundation for further research and resultant interventions in South African maths classrooms.

Keywords: Mathematics
High school
Estimation
CIE
South Africa
Mixed methods research
CIE2021
Focus Group
Semi-structured interview
Advisor: Skilling, K
Exchanging ginger for chilli?: The social ecology of a world bank-funded higher education project in Sri Lanka

Internationally funded education projects in the majority world are a rich field of study, which intersects multiple disciplines from education to economics to postcolonial studies. As a former colony, currently a low-middle income country, Sri Lanka has been at the receiving end of these funds – grants and loans – for years. While there is much criticism against such international funders imposing a new imperialism on the majority world, there is also literature that represents the international funders as helpful actors. In this dichotomy what is less present are the voices of those from the majority world countries and their narratives. This study explores the social ecology of academics working on a World Bank-funded project in the higher education field in Sri Lanka. Adopting a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach, it uses interviews to uncover theories emerging from the data. The emerging theories are two: one explores the concept of trust and notes that the lack of trust in one’s government, State, and State systems catalyse the academics to be open to help from international organisations like the World Bank; the second is based on the concept of obligation and identifies that associative political obligation to the education system drives the individuals, thus prioritising short-term practicalities over long-term ideologies. These two theories help both explain the social ecology of academics, as well as complicate the existing understanding of the internationally funded projects in the majority world. In situating these two emergent theories in the larger literature, this study suggests that the World Bank should be represented more dynamically; to truly capture the nature of the World Bank, this study suggests it be approached as an epistemic actor and/or a theorist, who permeates multiple facets of social ecology.

Keywords: Social ecology
Funding
CIE
CIE2021
Interviews
Qualitative research
Higher education
World Bank
Constructivist grounded theory
Sri Lanka
Advisor: Gearon, L
Can integration be achieved through schools?: School approaches to managing student diversity in the United States and Germany

Given that a large proportion of immigrants today are school age, the public and governments alike assume that schools will be sites where integration will happen. However, how this integration will occur and whether education policies and school-level initiatives facilitate social cohesion is not yet clear. Focusing on California and Berlin as examples of politically left-leaning states that receive immigrants in substantial numbers, this international and comparative study seeks to determine whether schools are a site where integration of immigrants is taking place. Through 16 qualitative interviews with teachers in Berlin and California, this study examines school-level policies and initiatives aimed at facilitating integration using an original conceptual framework. The data provides insights into how teachers in Berlin and California reflect on school-level policies and initiatives in thinking about the potential of the school as a site for integration. This study reaches three primary conclusions: (1) school-level policies and initiatives consider diversity a positive, but do not extend so far as to facilitating a new culture that productively operationalizes the diversity of immigrant and non-immigrant students; (2) California and Berlin do not differ substantially in their goals for integration, as characterized by the conceptual framework; and (3) the integration process in schools is highly dependent on micro-interactions among teachers, school culture, and students, which are often not in alignment with state-level integration efforts.

Keywords: Assimilation
United States
Immigration
CIE2021
Germany
CIE
Integration
Language policy
Interviews
Qualitative research
Policy analysis
Advisor: Robinson, N
Evolutionary ecology through the lens of adaptive inactivity

I develop the notion of Adaptive Inactivity as a lens through which to view diverse problems in evolutionary ecology. That is, I demonstrate there is utility in questioning whether certain phenomena exist simply because it is best to not do something else. This is done as follows: i) I show that sleep as a behaviour is in and of itself adaptive, in contrast to vital function hypotheses of sleep that assume a priori that it is the side effect of other necessary processes. ii) I prove that, contrary to intuition, collecting information in order to make decisions will not always on average lead to increases in fitness. iii) I revisit seminal studies of risk and highlight the fact that subjects and experimentalists, stemming from issues related to finite-time inference, will rarely agree on the specifics of an experimental set-up. I consider the need for caution in the strength of conclusions we draw from these experiments. Further, I suggest that in practice, organisms may deal with incorrect inferences by in-built biases i.e. continue to make mistakes but in a useful way. iv) I explore reproductive inactivity and the rarity of grandmothering. Contrary to an objection of the Grandmother Hypothesis, I show that due to a grandparent-grandoffspring conflict akin to well studied parent- offspring conflicts, it is a life history we should expected to be rare. v) I apply reproductive conflict models to indirect conflict cases between post-fertile females. I derive a theoretical maximum human lifespan in natural fertility populations as a function of age at first reproduction and test this using data from four groups.
New methods for F-18 radiolabelling

Chapter 1 – Introduction briefly introduces the fundamental principles of positron emission tomography (PET). The different isotopes commonly employed in PET are compared, before examples of fluorine-18 (F-18) radiotracers are presented. Various concepts in F-18 radiochemistry are then discussed, including methods for the production of F-18. Key developments in methods for 18F-labelling small molecules are then presented. Finally, the aims of this thesis are summarised.
Chapter 2 – Palladium-Catalysed C–O Cross-Coupling and Applications in 18F-Radiochemistry presents the optimisation and scope of a palladium-catalysed C–O cross-coupling between aryl halides and fluorinated alcohols to prepare fluorinated alkyl aryl ethers. Application of the reaction in 18F-radiochemistry is also presented, including a novel radiosynthesis of [18F]trifluoroethanol, and subsequent palladium-mediated cross-coupling with aryl bromides.
Chapter 3 – Preparation of [18F]Selectfluor from [18F]Fluoride presents work aimed at preparing [18F]Selectfluor bis(triflate) from [18F]fluoride. This research comprises studies of the synthesis of [18F]xenon difluoride from [18F]fluoride, and subsequent reaction with monoquaternised 1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane salts to afford [18F]Selectfluor bis(triflate) and related F-TEDA reagents. The characterisation of [18F]Selectfluor bis(triflate) and a preliminary application of the reagent are also described.
Chapter 4 – 18F-Fluorodecarboxylation for Preparing 18F-Labelled Geminal-Difluoro Compounds presents the preliminary investigations into use of [18F]Selectfluor bis (triflate) and [18F]xenon difluoride for the 18F-fluorodecarboxylation of α-fluorinated carboxylic acids to prepare 18F-labelled geminal-difluoro compounds. The development of a more efficient method using [18F]fluoride and a manganese mediator is then presented, along with a preliminary reaction scope.

Keywords: Electrophilic fluorination
Cross-coupling
F-18
Fluorine
decarboxylative fluorination
Radiochemistry
Radiolabelling
Advisor: Cookson, R
Blakemore, D
Gouverneur, V
Characterisation and application of an ebola virus glycoprotein pseudotyped influenza virus (E-S-Flu)

Ebola virus (EBOV) is a single-stranded RNA virus from the Filoviridae family. It is a biosafety level 4 pathogen, and infection causes fatal haemorrhagic fever in humans, yet no approved vaccines or therapeutics are available.
We describe a new EBOV surrogate, E-S-FLU, a single-cycle Influenza virus pseudotyped (coated) with the EBOV glycoprotein (GP). E-S-FLU does not contain any genetic information from EBOV, and encodes enhanced green fluorescence protein as a reporter that replaces the Influenza virus hemagglutinin. It can thus be handled in biosafety level 1 containment for laboratory analysis. We show that E-S-FLU mimics wild-type EBOV during the process of cell entry. Infection of cells by E-S-FLU was dependent on the Niemann-Pick type C1 protein, the wellcharacterised receptor for EBOV entry at the late endosomal/lysosomal membrane. In addition, known small molecule entry inhibitors that blocked wildtype EBOV infection in vitro blocked E-S-FLU with similar potency.
We employed E-S-FLU to screen a library of 1,280 pharmacologically active compounds for inhibition of virus entry. We identified 215 inhibitory compounds with very dispersed targets. The majority of the inhibitors shared a cationic amphiphilic feature, and this had the strongest correlation with specific inhibition of E-S-FLU infection, regardless of the pharmacological group of the drugs.
The two-pore channels 1 and 2 (TPC1/2), and acid sphingomyelinase (ASM), both localised in the lysosomal membrane, have been proposed as candidate drug targets. To test this, we knocked out the corresponding genes from HeLa cells using the CRISPR/Cas 9 technique. We showed that EBOV-GP dependent infection by E-S-FLU was not affected in TPC1/2 or ASM deficient HeLa cells, and concluded that these proteins are not required for EBOV infection.
Our results suggest that the most effective cationic amphiphilic drugs act by concentrating in the lysosome, and by binding and destabilising the GP, and intercalating in the lysosomal membrane, may interfere directly with the fusion function of the EBOV-GP.

Keywords: pseudotype
CRISPR
small molecule inhibitors
drug screening
ebola
calcium channel
lysosome
Advisor: Townsend, A
Symmetries as a guide to the structure of physical quantities

The aim of this thesis is to extend the success of a novel strategy for the interpretation of symmetry-related models — sophistication — to contemporary physical theories’ internal symmetries. In order to do so, I propose that a theory’s quantities possess a certain structure. The problematic underdetermination of symmetry-related models arises when we attribute too much structure to the fundamental quantities.
The advantage of sophistication is that it enables a realist interpretation of symmetry-variant quantities, which often figure in the scientific explanation of physical effects. I illustrate sophistication with two case studies: one of mass in Newtonian Gravitation and one of gauge quantities in the Aharonov-Bohm effect. On the traditional approach, symmetries are seen as a guide to superfluous theoretical structure. The alternative I offer demands a reconceptualisation of symmetries as playing a more positive role, namely as a guide towards the structure of physical quantities.
This thesis is approximately 65,000 words long.

Keywords: structure
gauge
symmetries
philosophy of physics
invariance
quantities
underdetermination
Advisor: Caulton, A
Read, J