The present study investigates the differential affects of learner proficiency on the provision and noticing of recasts. Noticing was measured by uptake, which was defined as a learner's response to a recast and by learners' stimulated recall comments. The participants were adult Arabic ESL learners in a low and high proficiency class. It was found that the high proficiency group was provided with a greater incidence of recasts and were also provided with predominantly more long and complex recasts than the low proficiency group. It was also found that when learners produced uptake, both proficiency groups largely understood the corrective intent of the recast. Both proficiency groups demonstrated high levels of noticing recasts and the high proficiency learners demonstrated greater levels of noticing linguistic forms than the low proficiency learners. This was attributed to the high proficiency learners' risk-taking behaviour, increased attention to form and heightened metalinguistic awareness. It was suggested that low proficiency learners were less receptive to recasts than high proficiency learners because recasts exceeded the low proficiency learners' processing limits and attentional capacity. This study supports earlier findings that claim that recasts are more beneficial for high proficiency learners.

At present radical changes to the operational working practices of educational psychologists in the UK are planned, and these are due to be implemented in law commencing 2014. It is anticipated that these changes will impact significantly on the role and service delivery models adopted by educational psychologists. For example, there is an expectation that educational psychologists will work more closely with health and social care colleagues, and will provide support for children and young people from birth to 25 years of age (DfE, 2012). The practice of consultation as a model of service delivery is currently coming under scrutiny in terms of how suitable this practice is, as well as the relevance to the future changes of education, health and social care operating collectively to provide support services for children and young people.

Poor educational outcomes for children in care have been consistently reported. Within this vulnerable group, adolescent girls in care have been highlighted as of particlar concern. Resilience levels have often been linked to outcomes for children in care. Two aims were identified for this Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) research: to explore the educational experiences of adolescent girls in care and to assess whether different levels of resilience had any impact on these. Fourteen participants were involved in the initial quantitative sampling phase of the research to assess their levels of resilience using the Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents (RSCA, Prince-Embury, 2007). Levels of resilience were found to be low across the group with few exceptions. The three participants with the highest levels of resilience and the three with the lowest were selected for interview for the second qualitative phase of the study. The six interviews were analysed using JP A and three superordinate themes emerged: 'Adverse experiences', 'Developing identity in the face of adversity' and 'Importance of others'. Findings were linked to existing theory to enhance understanding of participants , experiences. The implications of the findings were discussed in relation to Educational Psychology practice in working systemically to promote positive outcomes for vulnerable groups.

This study is based on a mixed methods examination of an intervention programme designed to support children at risk of social exclusion during their transfer from primary to secondary school. The study has two main aims; to gain insight into the impact of the project on the experiences of children who are considered vulnerable at the primary to secondary school transfer stage. Second, the study explores issues of evaluation more generally. In the English context there remain concerns about anxiety on transfer between schools and a measurable “dip” in attainment. The first chapter provides a contextual framework for the empirical work that follows. It highlights a gap in what is known about the transfer of vulnerable children who may be more at risk of facing difficulties at the point of transition. It also illustrates the lack of in-depth evaluation of small scale projects designed to ameliorate school transfer risks. A mixed methods approach, examining quantitative outcomes and drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews with children, parents, and teachers was designed to meet the two main aims of this study. The second chapter outlines the methodology and methods that were deployed. The study then turns to document the findings from the study; one strand explores data related to the students’ attainments and attendance as well as their behaviour during the period of the intervention project. A second strand explores the perceptions of the participants and key stakeholders about the project and its outcomes. The study concludes that more guidance on the use and evaluation of targeted support for vulnerable children is needed to supplement current national policy and practices for primary-secondary school transfer.

This paper reviews some of the literature in the field of humour and laughter that is relevant to child and educational psychology. It will consider methodological and epistemological features of research in what is a diverse and complex body of work. The paper will take an historical perspective and will examine the development of research paradigms over time as well as looking at the contribution of different disciplines and research perspectives. Conclusions from the literature review are considered in the context of educational psychology professional practice. A particular focus will be the DfES guidance document: Excellence and enjoyment, the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning.

The long-term objective behind the research presented in this thesis is the improvement of ILEs and particularly those components that take into account students’ behaviour, as well as emotions and motivation. In related research, this is often attempted based on intuition, theoretical perspectives, or guided by results from studies in the isolation of a research lab. In this thesis, an attempt is made to inform the design of adaptation and feedback components by collecting and analysing as realistic data as possible. Guided by the belief that qualitative data analysis results can be enriched by employing statistical and machine learning techniques, the focus of this research is to investigate (a) key aspects of students’ behaviour and their relation to their learning and (b) how their behaviour could be employed to predict students’ affective and motivational characteristics. The first step is to gain an in-depth understanding of students’ behaviours in ILEs when they interact on their own time and location, rather than during a study where the social dynamics are different. Based on results, components of an ILE are redesigned and two Bayesian models are machine-learned; one that predicts when students need help in answering a question and one that predicts if their interaction with the system is beneficial to their learning. In the next step, machine learning is employed in order to derive predictive models of students’ affective and motivational states based on their interaction with ILEs. This is achieved by deriving decision trees based on a dataset of students’ self-reports collected during replays of their interaction. In addition, in order to take tutors’ perspectives into account, two different approaches are followed: The first attempts to elicit tutors’ inferences while they are watching replays of students’ interactions. This was not entirely successful. In the second approach, decision trees are derived from a dataset of tutors’ inferences collected during one-to-one computer-mediated tutorials.

Children’s ability to understand the thoughts, feelings and intentions of other people, is an essential skill for their social interactions with peers and family members. Research has shown that although most young children will have developed a ’theory of mind’ or ability to ’mentalize’ by the time they are around four or five, there are individual differences in children’s understanding of their social relationships. This thesis explores two alternative models of children’s social cognitive processes that are thought to underlie their social interactions and uses a measure of peer popularity as an indicator of how they are functioning in their social world at school. Research findings from the perspective of children’s theory of mind and attachment theory have been significant in shaping our understanding of social cognitive processes and individual differences in social competence. However, because research on these constructs derives from largely separate research perspectives, it is not clear what connections there are between these two models of social cognition, or if their influence on children’s social competence is distinct or overlapping. Participants were primary school children, ranging from 3- to nearly 8-years-old and were assessed in two main studies at different time points to investigate these alternative models of children’s social cognitive processes. The results from study 1 indicated that the coherence of the attachment representations measure (MacArthur Story Stem Battery) namely ’story organisation’ was strongly and directly associated with peer acceptance but that the link between theory of mind and peer acceptance was indirect. In study 2, measures of attachment-related representations were found to be associated with theory of mind skills at baseline and follow up, but this was no longer significant once verbal ability was controlled for. Children’s disciplinary attachment-related representations were found to be associated with teacher-rated problems amongst peers. Also, positive attachment-related representations were found to be associated with teacher-rated pro-social behaviour. Theory of mind, as expected, was found to improve with age and performance at baseline was associated with later performance on these tasks. Verbal ability was found to be significant in children’s performance on theory of mind tasks in all studies. findings in this thesis raise interesting questions about what narrative coherence means in children’s descriptions of their attachment relationships. How this relates to children’s verbal skills, conversations within the family and the way children conceptualise relationships in general is worthy of more detailed study. Clinical implications are drawn from the findings, particularly in relation to the recent developments in Mentalization Based Treatment interventions and the findings lend some support for the use of this intervention with children with poor attachments.

Aim: The main aim of this research was to explore what educational psychologists and school staff who have had experience of consultation understand effective consultation to be and to identify which key behaviours led to a view of effectiveness. Current literature in the area of effective consultation suggested several key behaviours such as questioning, directive versus collaborative approaches and question type as important aspects of a consultation being viewed as effective. However, due to the contradictory findings in these areas, more research was needed to establish which key behaviours led to the consultation being viewed as effective by both the educational psychologists and the school staff. Method: A three phase methodology was employed. Phase One used 109 questionnaires to school staff and 11 questionnaires to educational psychologists to establish what educational psychologists and school staff believed the key aspects of an effective consultation to be. Phase Two used eight video recorded consultations (three were later excluded) in which structured observations were used to establish which key behaviours occurred during the consultations. These observations were then correlated with the key aspects identified in Phase One in order to establish which behaviours were associated with both school staff and educational psychologists’ views of consultation. Finally Phase Three used 16 questionnaires, 8 5 to educational psychologists and 8 to school staff, following taking part in the video recorded consultations, to establish what else could be done to make consultations more effective in the future. Results: Phase One of the research identified four key aspects of an effective consultation. These were advice/way forward; achieves aims; impact/change and explores issues. These key aspects were correlated with the observed behaviours to evaluate the effectiveness of the consultations. Phase Two established that question type and amount of time spent talking were important aspects of an effective consultation. The number of questions asked was not seen as an important aspect in consultations being viewed as effective. A strong correlation was found between the rating of effectiveness of the consultation and the exploration of issues, a key aspect identified in Phase One. Phase Three identified other aspects of consultation which could be used in the future to make consultations more effective. These were more time for the consultations; involving other staff; a multi-agency approach and good interpersonal relationships. Discussion: Several features of a consultation, such as the content and key behaviours used within consultation were identified. These aspects were deemed by both educational psychologists and school staff as being key elements which led consultations to be viewed as effective. The features of content and key behaviours which were identified, suggest that if these aspects were included within a 6 consultation it would help improve the school staff and educational psychologists view to become more favourable and therefore the consultation to be deemed as more effective. Conclusions: The distinctive contribution this research has made is to the field of evaluating consultation as a method of practice for educational psychologists. The research has led to several key features which practitioners can implement into their practice with the aim of them becoming more effective consultants.

Self-determination is described as an innate predisposition to experience choice, develop our competencies and interact within our social environment. Nourishing self-determination empowers young people to achieve goals, be autonomous and feel socially connected. This is key in today’s society where youth unemployment and poverty are high, students from low economic backgrounds continue to experience lower academic success and deprivation is successive within families. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) emphasises the importance of satisfying basic underpinning psychological needs for life-long psychological growth and wellbeing. The three papers depict the research journey undertaken to explore the application of SDT in work to support young people. The systematic review focuses on interventions that develop self-determination. A quantitative approach was taken to synthesise the findings from eight papers. The papers suggest interventions targeting specific skills increased young people’s self-determination. However, the majority of studies used small sample sizes and narrow quantitative outcome measures over a short timeframe. Chapter 2 is a bridging document providing philosophical and theoretical context to explain how the systematic review led to the empirical research. Critical reflections on research methodology and researcher reflexivity are also explored. Chapter 3 presents the empirical research. The systematic review highlighted a gap in how young people’s underpinning psychological needs are met systemically. Eleven participants from a multi-agency service took part in an Appreciative Inquiry to explore their work with young people. Theory driven data analysis was applied to identify how young people’s needs are met. Findings indicate that professionals work in a variety of ways to meet underpinning needs of autonomy and competence. Further development into meeting needs at the systemic level and more ways to meet young people’s relatedness needs may be required. The research also highlighted that developing the self-determination of young people and professionals by simultaneously meeting their underpinning psychological needs may be effective.

In this study I have combined elements from the fields of creativity (Craft, 2002) and dialogic pedagogy (Wegerif, 2010) to explore to what extent creative thinking was developed in a series of Community of Enquiry sessions (Higgins et al., 2001; Lipman, 2003) held with a class of 19 children, aged five to seven. The procedures of this Community of Enquiry were based on Lipman’s (2003) Philosophy for Children programme, although the aim of the sessions was to encourage dialogue and thinking skills in a wider sense rather than engagement with ‘recognisably philosophical’ (Gregory, 2007: 60) issues. The data, which mainly consist of the transcripts from 17 Enquiry sessions and field notes, were gathered while I was working with this class as both the class teacher and Community of Enquiry facilitator. Using a case-study approach and an interpretivist framework (Thomas, 2009), I carried out two complementary types of discourse analysis. In the first analysis, based on a Grounded Theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) approach, I categorised all 541 pupil contributions according to degrees of perceived creative thinking and other relevant elements, such as responsiveness to previous comments. In the second analysis, based on Conversation Analysis methods (ten Have, 2007), I investigated within eight of the enquiries how interactive processes, including those involving myself, related to elements of pupils’ creative thinking. Among the findings were a general rise in the quality of creative thinking as well as in the quantity and sophistication of pupil interaction. Evidence was found that the ability to disagree was a new form of expression for the pupils, whereas both collaboration and the opportunity to express disagreement were found to correlate with creative thinking categories. Processes were also identified in which ideas which had initially appeared to have been generated by individual children were, in fact, socially constructed. However, using a sociocultural perspective (Wells, 1999), relatively large power differences within this Community of Enquiry were also identified, and in six mini-case studies the Community of Enquiry was found to be an easier forum for the expression of creative thinking for some pupils than for others (Lefstein, 2006). I also explored some of the complexities related to facilitating this Community of Enquiry. My conclusions include implications for theory, practice, policy and research.