VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Deep transfer learning with Bayesian inference

Since the deep learning revolution, a general trend in machine learning literature has been that large, deep models will consistently outperform small, shallow models. This trend, however, comes with the drawback of ever-increasing compute requirements, with many recent state-of-the-art results requiring resources well out of reach of all but the top industry labs. Such issues raise very real concerns with regards to the democratisation of machine learning research, and left unaddressed could ultimately lead to more power and wealth being concentrated in the institutions which are able to invest extremely large sums of money into their AI research programs today.
Transfer learning techniques are a potential solution to these issues, allowing large, general models to be trained once, and then reused in a variety of situations with minimal computation required to adapt them. This work explores novel algorithms and applications of transfer learning in domains as diverse as hierarchical reinforcement learning, generative modeling, and computational social science. Within the hierarchical reinforcement learning domain, we present an algorithm that allows for transfer between options (i.e., temporally abstracted actions) over separate but similar tasks. In the generative modeling domain, we present an algorithm for reusing existing invertible generative models on new data without incurring any extra training cost. Lastly, in the computational social science domain, we show that knowledge can be transferred from human-designed models in order to detect malicious activity targeting a ranking algorithm.
The common thread between all of the algorithms presented in this thesis is that they are inherently Bayesian. We argue that the Bayesian paradigm naturally lends itself to transfer learning applications, in that Bayesian priors can serve as adaptable, general models which can be transformed into task-specific posteriors through the process of inference.

Keywords: deep learning
Bayesian inference
machine learning
reinforcement learning
probabilistic programming
generative models
simulation-based inference
transfer learning
Advisor: Torr, P
Child protection, the family and the welfare state, 1933-1970

This thesis is a study of child protection services between 1933 and 1970, with a focus on the activities of two local authorities, Birmingham City Council in the Midlands, and Westmorland Council in the north-west of England. This thesis explores the arguments articulated by senior policy makers, social workers and the parents of children placed in state and voluntary care to better understand the policies, practices, and experiences of those associated with the care system. It is argued that the efforts of both central and local government officials, tasked with protecting children’s wellbeing, were often resisted by a public whose support was considered vital to keeping children safe. Acts of resistance often arose because of contrasting assessments of how best to support looked after children. Many of the practices endorsed by the state were informed by psychological principles. During the 1930s psychology was treated with scepticism by the public. In the aftermath of the Second World War, however, parents increasingly drew, selectively, on the work of psychological thinkers when opposing the practices of government social workers. By drawing upon the private correspondence of local authority staff, alongside government papers and articles published in both the national and local press, this thesis makes a substantial contribution to histories of the family and the welfare state in mid-twentieth century England. It also challenges the assumption that the public only began to take a concerted interest in child neglect following the ‘discovery’ of battered babies in the early 1960s.

Keywords: Welfare State
History
Battered babies
Children
Birmingham
Westmorland
Foster Care
Childhood
Child Protection
Advisor: Pooley, S
Supporting students with special needs in virtual and hybrid inclusive classrooms: Perceptions and practices from the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, public school students with special needs in the United States were legally entitled to individualized support in the least restrictive environment deemed possible, which for some, meant inclusion in mainstream classrooms. Although the literature on inclusion in physical classrooms is extensive, research on inclusive digital education in virtual and hybrid spaces is lacking. This study investigates how teachers attempted to engage in inclusive pedagogical practice in digitally mediated classrooms. In doing so, it provides novel insights into the perceived academic and social impacts of these pedagogical changes on the educational experiences of students with special needs. Grounded in the theoretical framework of inclusive research, this mixed methods study elevates the voices of students with special needs, their teachers, and their parents through interviews and a survey to illustrate how inclusive education was interpreted and delivered over the course of pandemic. Situating the study at the nexus of digital equity and inclusive special education, the research discusses the multidimensional digital divide that disproportionately affects students with intersecting marginalized identities, such as those in this study’s sample. Ultimately, the research addresses broader questions about the conflicting values in inclusion, the variability of inclusive practice, and the challenging considerations for designing and delivering inclusive special education in virtual and hybrid learning spaces.

Keywords: Hybrid teaching and learning
CIE2021
CIE
Inclusion
digital learning technology
Mixed methods research
Learning disability
Covid-19 distance learning
SEN, Special Education Needs
Inclusive research
Digital equity
Inclusive special education
Special education
Advisor: Winters, N
Teacher perspectives on the implementation of the competency-based curriculum in Kenya

This mixed methods study was conducted to explore teacher views on the implementation of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) in Kenya, specifically the support availed to them. The study employed a closed-ended Likert scale questionnaire, open-ended interviews and a written test, which was used for triangulation. Purposive sampling and snowballing sampling techniques were used to recruit 53 teachers who participated in the study. The data was analysed through thematic analysis process, and the use of deductive and inductive coding processes.
The study revealed that teachers were positive that professional development programs helped them to implement the CBC in classrooms. However, when the professional skills and capabilities of the said teachers were tested objectively, a majority of them fell short of satisfying the minimum quality standards. The data further revealed that, while an adequate number of textbooks were availed to facilitate teaching and learning, the quality of textbooks was substandard. Further, there was inadequate Information Communication Technology infrastructure and laboratories to support teaching and learning activities. Schools were understaffed, thus, teachers handled heavy teaching workloads and large class sizes. There was also the view that school leaders had built a culture of fear in teachers and did not offer them guidance or motivation. Nevertheless, teachers were satisfied with the peer support they received. Parental support to teachers and learners was also of concern as a motivating factor for teaching and learning. Finally, teachers felt that the support they received from the Teachers Service Commission and the Kenya National Union of Teachers, which is the national teachers trade union, was inadequate.

Keywords: CIE2021
Open ended interviews
Mixed methods research
Written test
Teachers
Curriculum reform
Competency-based curriculum
CIE
Closed ended questionnaire
Policy implementation
Advisor: Johnson, D
Trauma and education in Lebanon: A decolonial perspective

This dissertation explores the experiences of Lebanese educators between October 2019 and June 2021, a period of sustained disruption and hardship. Academic and professional literature about trauma in educational spaces originated in Western contexts, limiting its applicability in Lebanon, which suffers from volatile political, economic, health, and security conditions. Through a series of 17 semi-structured interviews conducted in May and June 2021, educators in Lebanon recounted their personal and professional experiences during a period of political unrest, economic collapse, the global COVID-19 pandemic, and the explosion of the Beirut port.
Findings illuminate the tensions between Western and Lebanese assumptions about trauma and its treatment. Through a decolonial lens, the ways in which Lebanese educators manage stress and trauma in their students are discussed, illuminating the importance of locally-embedded knowledge, such as shared experiences and communal resilience. This study demonstrates that local discussions of trauma in education evade dominant discourses of clinical trauma psychology, including Trauma Informed Education (TIE). Educators draw on locally embedded knowledge to generate their own framework for managing trauma in their classrooms. This study’s empirical and methodological advancements are transferrable to other contexts of education during periods of prolonged disruption.

Keywords: CIE
Qualitative research
Lebanon
International
Interviews
Education
Decolonixation
CIE2021
Beirut
Critical theory
Trauma-informed education
NVivo
Trauma
Psychology
Comparative
Decolonial
Arabic
Thematic analysis
Advisor: Gearon, L
Examining the characteristics of behavioural, cognitive and emotional aspects of self-regulation and their associations with academic achievement among Chinese preschool children

Self-regulation is an important determinant of children’s concurrent and long-term developmental outcomes. In recent decades, research has consistently provided robust evidence regarding its associations with academic achievements. However, less or even no research has attempted to explore different aspects of self-regulation (including behavioural, cognitive and emotional) in a single study. The current study aimed to provide a comprehensive profile of a sample of Chinese children’s behavioural, cognitive and emotional self-regulation by investigating their characteristics in relation to gender and age, examining their associations with numeracy and literacy outcomes, and testing the moderating effects of age and gender on these associations. Results showed that girls outperformed boys in behavioural and emotional self-regulation, while these advantages only emerged at later stages during preschool. Although K2 children were older than K1 children, they failed to show any advantages on behavioural and emotional self-regulation. A closer inspection revealed different developmental trajectories of girls’ and boys’ self-regulation. Moreover, all aspects of self-regulation uniquely and significantly contributed to Chinese children’s numeracy and literacy scores. Neither age nor gender moderated these associations. Chinese children’s characteristics of self-regulation in terms of gender differences and developmental patterns were discussed in the context of the wider literature. The findings also emphasised the significance of self-regulation in preschoolers’ academic outcomes. Implications and limitations of the current study were discussed.

Keywords: CDE2021
Self-regulation
CDE
Numeracy
Quantitative research
Chinese children
Secondary data analysis
Literacy
Advisor: Siraj, I
The relationship between children’s narrative retelling and other aspects of language skills

Background & Aim: Oral language skills are a critical foundation for educational success. Oral language skills are typically assessed with standardised tests involving diverse measures with highly constrained responses (e.g. CELF receptive vocabulary and sentence repetition subsets). Another measure of language skill that is typically absent from standardised tests is narrative retelling, where a child hears a story and is required to retell it. The aim of the current study is to investigate the correlation between children’s narrative retelling and other aspects of oral language skills.
Methods & Procedures: The study involves secondary data analysis based on a sample of 600 children aged between 37 and 58 months. Exploratory factor analyses were performed to examine the factor structure of measures of oral language and narrative retelling ability. Correlations and hierarchical linear regression analyses were used to assess the relationship between variables.
Results: There was a strong correlation (r =.681, p <.01) between narrative retelling and other aspects of oral language skills. Oral language skills are a strong predictor of children’s narrative retelling after controlling for demographic measures (ΔR2 = 0.344). Moreover, age, gender, and English as an additional language (EAL) made further contributions to the prediction of narrative retelling (p < 0.05).
Conclusions: Language is a unitary factor. Standardised measures of oral language skill appear to reflect a unitary trait which is strongly correlated with a measure of oral narrative retelling. It appears that oral narrative retelling is potentially a useful measure of children’s oral language skills.

Keywords: CDE
Oral language skills
Correlation
Exploratory factor analysis
CDE2021
Standardized language tests
Hirearchical linear regression
Narrative reading
Advisor: Hulme, C
What changes after exposure to stories that challenge conventional gender-stereotypical activities and emotion expressions - An exploratory study with a four-week pre-shool intervention

The present exploratory study aims to explore how stories that challenge gender-stereotypical activities and gender-stereotypical emotion expressions modify four-year-old urban Chinese preschool children’s 1) knowledge and attitudes on these target activities and emotion expressions, 2) playmate selection on same-sex peers preferring these target activities, and 3) peer perception of these target emotion expressions. A theoretically and methodologically rigorous quasi-experimental storytelling intervention with a cluster-randomized design was implemented on 39 four-year-old urban Chinese preschool children from a kindergarten in Shenzhen, China. Child participants were randomly assigned, in class units, to receive sixteen 20-minute story sessions with stories that either challenge (intervention group) or align with (control group) gender-stereotypical activities and gender-stereotypical emotion expressions for four weeks. At the same time, they were pre- and post-tested through a 15-minute individual assessment on measures of 1) sex-role discrimination, egalitarian sex-role model, and sex-role flexibility of gender-stereotypical activities and gender-stereotypical emotion expressions, 2) stereotyped playmate selection, and 3) stereotyped peer perception. Overall, although the Rank ANCOVA showed that differences between child participants in the intervention group and the control group were insignificant for all measures, analysis of general patterns and cases of matched pairs revealed nuances of 1) trends of alteration, or 2) resistance of alteration, for each measure. Therefore, a longer storytelling intervention is needed for better understanding these nuances. Additionally, Spearman’s Correlation revealed how knowledge and attitudes were related differently for gender-stereotypical activities and gender-stereotypical emotion expressions. These results together offer 1) theoretical insights into, for example, development of gender stereotypes with different social significance, and 2) practical insights into, for example, practices of gender equality education in early education.

Keywords: Shared book intervention
Kindergarten
CDE
Preschool
Stereotypical knowledge
Gender attribution
Stereotypical attitude
Activity
Gender consciousness
Gender stereotypes
CDE2021
Intervention
Exploratory study
Peer nomination
Storybook
Emotion expression
Playmate selection
Verbal task
Individual assessment
Early childhood development
Advisor: Nag, S
Write or wrong; An analysis of Thai children’s writing samples

Thai is an alphasyllabic orthography and a tonal language with a non-linear arrangement of written vowels. The current study aimed to explore children’s Thai writing development through an error analysis of existing writing samples. An additional aim investigated the associations between the children’s Home Language and Literacy Environment (HLLE) and errors from the writing samples. The sample consisted of 31 Thai- English bilingual and multilingual children between 8-11 years of age from international schools across Thailand. The children’s writing samples were examined on factors that make up the translation processes of writing (transcription and text generation) including measures of word count, number of ideas and spelling errors. A spelling coding scheme was created to capture the different error types. Thai is a scriptio continua, which means that it has no spaces between words, so space knowledge is also important in Thai knowledge development.
All writing samples were examined for word count and spelling errors and a subset of the writing samples were analysed for idea units and space knowledge. Results showed a significant difference between more-skilled and less-skilled spellers for both word count and spelling errors. On average, more-skilled spellers wrote twice as many words than the lessskilled spellers and less-skilled spellers made more errors on all segments in a word (consonants, vowels, tones) compared to more-skilled spellers. In line with previous literature on Thai spelling development, more spelling errors were made for consonants followed by vowel and tone errors. Results indicate a positive relationship between idea production and word count, suggesting that children who have higher orthographic knowledge can divert their resources to the text-generation processes of writing. Further inspection is needed to understand the writing processes of a scriptio continua language.
As for the association between the HLLE and the child’s writing samples, correlation analysis showed a significant moderate correlation between the child activities in Thai and average word count, suggesting that the child independent activities in the home are associated with the productivity of writing. Results from the parents’ report on their child’s knowledge of Thai aksharas suggested that children have more difficulty writing, recognizing and spelling low-frequency aksharas than high-frequency aksharas. Finally, the current research highlights the insights of the home environment in association with Thai writing development but acknowledges the limitations and the need for future research.

Keywords: CDE2021
Language environment
Writing development
Mixed methods research
CDE
Home literacy
Error analysis
Bilingual
Advisor: Nag, S
Nuptial journeys: A cultural history of wedding travel in selected Habsburg unions ca 1450–1550


Using the case study of Habsburg trans-European wedding alliances between 1450 to 1550, and drawing upon a significant reservoir of sources, this thesis shows that transfers of princely brides(grooms) were not an inconsequential side effect of weddings but were an ideal channel through which to negotiate the social status of dynasties, serve monarchical splendour and memory, prepare elite individuals for their new role and integrate them into their new environment, interact with foreign individuals and form relationships with them. Chapter One looks into logistical aspects and finds that planning and execution expressed the dynastic-political expectations of splendour and social standing of both wedding parties. Chapter Two examines the massive group of people accompanying the prince(ss), that was to serve her/his everyday needs but also to ameliorate the prince(ss)’s transition and project her/his and the dynasty’s social standing. Chapter Three addresses the staging of ceremonies, growing over time, which was an occasion to prolong the wedding festivities and to connect with the sacred sphere. Chapter Four looks into the marital transition and dissects the acts of separation and incorporation. Their phased progress and volatility points to the fact that the journey exceeds the anthropological concept of rites of passage. Drawing upon the empowering effect of liminality, Chapters Five and Six argue that the princesses engaged in preparation for their future role, participated in decision-making on the way, and used the journey to build relationships via gift-giving. Chapter Seven deals with the afterlife of the transfer in panegyric literary compositions and, by pinpointing the recurrent motifs of triumphalism and travel danger, it asserts that the voyages were an ideal instrument for dynastic memorialisation and propaganda. In general, this thesis questions the scholarly categories of ritual, festival, and ceremony, since these fall short of precisely defining the complex phenomenon of bridal journeys.

Keywords: early modern
medieval
Habsburg
nuptial journeys
memory
marriage rites
princely weddings
festival
Advisor: Nowakowska, N
A critical study of the poetry of Al-Farazdaq

Hammām ibn Ghālib, known as al-Farazdag, was born in Kāẓimah, a seaside village near Baṣrah about the year 20 A.H. (642 A.D.). He belonged to the Banū Mujāshi' section of the Tamīm tribe, and his family included a number of men who were famous in pre-Islamic life. The poet's father, Ghālib, was famous for his generosity; he was specially remembered for two feats of mass slaughter of camels. His grandfather, Ṣa'ṣa'ah, was known as 'life-giver to infanticides' for his work in ransoming many victims of this practice. Al-Farazdaq was proud of his ancestors of whose glories he frequently boasted; but neither their noble birth nor their deeds were sufficiently exalted to justify the poet's boastful challenge to Mu'āwiyah:
Continued in thesis ...

Keywords: poetry
Hammām ibn Ghālib
Al-Farazdaq