This chapter considers the close interrelationship between theatre and cinema during the First World War. As well as looking at key examples of plays which were adapted into films such as The Better ‘Ole (1917) it looks at the relationship between the two modes of popular entertainment, emphasising, for example, how film screenings often incorporated or were incorporated into live performance, and how the two industries shared business practices. The chapter examines the economics and practices of cinema exhibiting, drawing parallels to the regional theatre circuits. It argues for the role of government-endorsed films such as The Battle of the Somme (1916) in establishing the respectability of cinema and demonstrates how from 1917 cinema could shift to being more of a source of entertainment: a shift which threatened the theatre industry. It examines this competition through a focus on the growth of the ‘Super film’ and through attention to the dominance of American films on British screens. The chapter ends with a focus on post-war films. Through discussion the factual war films produced in the 1920s, as well as the fictional dramas, it highlights the ways in which post-war cinema became a means for mediating memory on the war.

0 Introduction

In this chapter, we investigate the hypothesis that exceptional stress properties of English are under-represented in a systematic fashion.

What does under-representation mean here? It means that some phonological property occurs less often than expected. For example, in a sample of 19,528 English words, we find 3949 words with trochaic stress (σ´ σ˘ ) and 1416 words with final stress (σ˘σ´). On the assumption that both patterns should be equally likely, the latter class is clearly under-represented with respect to the former and a statistical comparison confirms this: χ2(1, N = 5365) = 1195.916, p < 0.05, Cramér's V = 0.472.

If we assume feet in English are generally trochaic, as argued, for example, by Hayes (1981), and assume the general framework of Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993; McCarthy and Prince 1993b), then in the case of a disyllable with final stress, its markedness could stem from the fact that the initial syllable is unfooted (Parse-σ) or it could stem from the fact that a monosyllabic foot is built (FtBin): σ˘ [σ´ ]. Both constraints would be violated by the winning candidate.

If we assume that it is avoidance of unfooted syllables that makes iambs marked and less common, then this predicts that forms like σ˘σ´σ˘ should also be under-represented; if what is driving the under-representation of σ˘σ´ is avoidance of monosyllabic feet, then no such prediction is made about forms like σ˘σ´σ˘. Interestingly, when we turn to three-syllables words, the facts confirm that it is monosyllabic feet that are avoided, not unparsed syllables. Forms like σ˘σ´σ˘ are much more frequent (1233) than words like σ`σ´σ˘ (159).

This is consistent with the general claim of Input Optimization (Hammond 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017) and thus provides an argument for that framework. The claim there is that input representations are skewed so as to reduce phonological complexity, the rank and number of violations exhibited by winning candidates. This chapter offers a statistical analysis of the distribution of exceptional stress in English, demonstrating that the distribution can be unified by assigning a penalty to constraint violations commensurate with the rankings of the constraints.

In Chapter 3 we looked at the ways in which learning theory could provide a lens on the use of digital technology but this is not going to be helpful if technology itself is not being taken up very much in schools, colleges or universities in the first place. In fact, there is an often-reported paradox: technology seems to offer considerable benefits to teachers and learners, teachers are generally keen, or say they are keen, on using it and learners seem motivated by using it so why does technology seem so little used in practice? We turn to looking at ways in which researchers have tried to explain this ‘paradox’. The chapter is divided into five sections:

• • Listing the factors: an under-theorised approach

• • What do we know about school leadership and school reform?

• • Activity theory (a framework on practice)

• • Ecological approaches

• • Theories compared

Listing the factors: an under-theorised approach

When computers were first being introduced in schools, at least into those educational systems which could afford them, understanding the take-up of technology did not seem such a difficult issue. The problem was primarily one of access: there were more teachers wanting to use the machines than machines available. As access grew so would use in the classroom. Research could still be carried out, but this was more about mapping the use of particular tools, for example, showing how to support the revising and editing of writing using a word processor, how to organise groups when working on Logo, how to make use of databases and spreadsheets for interrogating large sets of data and so on. Yet as access grew there were still problems with adoption and it was being noted that computer use by teachers was sporadic and tended to be used for ‘supplementary activities’. Moreover, those supporting computers in education had long argued their use would lead to changes in teaching methods and in ways of accessing information (for example, Watson, 2001). However, such a transformative impact was difficult to detect.

There were then two problems about take-up: technology was not being used enough and technology was not being used as intended.

In Chapter 1 we saw that theory was a multi-faceted concept but carried within it a common idea: theory abstracted from the data in order to explain what was happening and why it was happening. Moreover, a theoretical explanation was expected to contribute to a discourse about technology and learning, and make justifiable, critically aware claims backed up with content knowledge and knowledge of research methodology. This was helpful, but I did not explain how researchers might go about the work of developing theory and, more specifically, how they might move from describing to explaining what they had found. This gap is addressed in this chapter, which looks at theorising. It is divided into three sections, which cover:

• • Describing and explaining: how do they differ?

• • Does theorising require another way of thinking?

• • Is theorising making it up?

Describing and explaining: how do they differ?

What are researchers doing when they are theorising and how does theorising look different to other kinds of research reporting? To address these two questions I begin by focusing on the difference between describing and explaining set out in Chapter 1: describing is about what happened while explaining is about why it happened. Both are core to research output, and the differences between them can be subtle. For example, statisticians talk of descriptive statistics (in contrast to inferential statistics) not only when they categorise data but when they explain by drawing attention to associations between variables, say, in the form of scatter plots or statistical tests. Moreover, qualitative researchers differentiate between thin and thick description. Thin description describes actions as they appear on the surface, while thick description covers the meaning of actions and represents a theoretical contribution in its own right. For example, the discussion of routines in Olson (1988) might be thought of as an example of thick rather than thin description.

It seems then that categories are helpful in drawing attention to different kinds of reporting and the approach I take here is to differentiate between basic, interpretative and analytical description and between narrow and wide types of explanation (see Table 2.1).