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This piece of work consists of three parts; a systematic literature review, bridging document and research article. The systematic literature review investigates the effectiveness of school based peer mentoring initiatives on the academic, social/emotional and behavioural outcomes of mentees. The review explored nine studies with the majority demonstrating significant short term effects for mentees related to at least one outcome. One of the studies explored long term effects for mentees but gave no evidence of significant gains for long term outcomes. The results of the review highlighted the need for further exploration of peer mentoring interventions in UK schools and specifically revealed a gap relating to the benefits and experiences of peer mentors. The bridging document explains the rationale for the research focus, methodology, method and data analysis. Ontological, epistemological and methodological perspectives are discussed and ethical principles explored. The research explores how peer reading mentors can be supported in their role using Video Interaction Guidance. A case study method was used to explore how VIG could support two peer mentors work with their mentees over six peer mentoring sessions. Three films of each peer mentor were taken and three shared review sessions were transcribed. Pupil view templates were used to further explore the reflective dialogue of the peer mentors after video shared review sessions. The themes that emerged from the data were reflecting and evaluating self, attunement and body language, video as a learning tool, mentor skills and collaborating. The findings suggest that VIG was valued by the peer reading mentors and the types of learning they experienced are discussed with reference to future research recommendations.

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This case study investigates the attitudes of a mixed sample of twenty Year Eight pupils taken from two schools towards the influences they perceive at work in their lives and how these affect their ambitions for the future. It has employed predominantly qualitative research methods and has adopted an inductive approach to analysing the data from both questionnaires and interviews in order to interrogate how the pupils' experiences of school were utilised and how these experiences were perceived to be of use in constructing pathways towards potential ambitions. The pupils' attitudes have been considered in the light of active and passive consumption debates as these relate to Bourdieu's theory of habitus and de Certeau's theory of tactics. The findings from the sample in this research indicate a fairly broad spectrum of attitudes, with ambitions amongst the boys seeming to be more prone to the influence of habitus than amongst the girls at this stage. There was evidence also of fairly unpredictable and unexpected consumption practices to satisfy personal desires. However, while school was enjoyed on the whole, there were few indications of a clear conceptual connection in the minds of the pupils between specific curriculum subject learning and particular ambitions, although generic skills, such as literacy and social skills, such as 'making friends' were considered useful for the future. If the findings from this research are not exceptional, then there is a danger that many young teenagers may not perceive as relevant much of what they learn in school from day-to-day and may consequently become demotivated and disengage from the process. It may be advisable to create greater transparency as to the use and value of curricular content at the point of delivery in the classroom.

Tracing the development of my thinking and professional practice from the late 1980s to the present day, this thesis uses the auto/biographic method developed at CCCU by Linden West (e.g. West, 2004), in combination with a personal, reflexive dialogic hermeneutic redolent of the epistemological approaches of liberation theologians in the 1970s and 1980s, to evaluate critically the influence of five illustrative moments on the generation of new knowledge. The thesis argues that demonstrable learning gains were made when particular factors came together in these autobiographical moments. The insertion of the slash "/" in auto/biography denotes the self-directed reflection on these narratives, carried out systematically in order to derive meaning from them. The process of critical reflection on the narratives interwoven with reading around epistemology, the self and (information) technology, led to a framework emerging. Within the illustrative moments there appear to be four factors that, in combination, cause learning to occur: need, knowledge, networks and the application of newly-acquired knowledge in a new context or setting. Phonically, the framework can be argued to be N4. I argue that in the 21st Century, especially where what is to be learned is something technological, learning most likely occurs when all these factors are present. Recognising this to be a personal phenomenon I adopt the term auto/pedagogy to describe it since I believe that learning is a personal commitment to changing the state of one's being.

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Education, and adult education in particular, has been historically related to issues of citizenship, and social inclusion, and this study embraces the adult education discourse of citizenship, in which the learner is viewed as a social actor and education as a key process to claiming and re-defining membership in society. The study, drawing from research on eight second language classes in Glasgow and Athens, where in-depth, semi-structured interviews with both tutors and students were conducted, takes a Critical Social Research approach. It concentrates on the ways in which the second language classes can be a catalyst for migrants’ social involvement. Furthermore, it explores the impact of pedagogic traditions and socio-political factors on the outcomes of the educational experience. These classes took place within diverse organisations, which consisted of a Further Education college, a single-ethnic group community centre, a charity organisation and a migrants’ campaign organisation in each country respectively. The use of comparison between Glasgow and Athens is an interesting one, since there is a similar recent experience of sudden demographic change, but different political cultures and adult education traditions. The findings of the study make a contribution both in relation to the ways in which educators can endorse socio-political involvement and in relation to the wider cultural influences on pedagogy. It is, thus, shown that students’ social participation largely depends on the educators’ utilization of non-formal methodologies, extra curricular activities and, most importantly, their willingness to broaden the scope of the curriculum. Furthermore, it is demonstrated how the established educational culture in a country has an overarching impact on the educators; perception of their role and their pedagogical approaches.

The thesis problematized and critiqued Educational Psychologist-Client relations in order to understand and explore the processes by which Educational Psychologists (EPs) constructed themselves as ethical professionals. This was both a personal and professional journey because the thesis critically examined EPs’ professional identities while being an exercise in personal professional identity work. The author was therefore both researcher and researched. The methodology adopted a post-structuralist bricolage approach that appropriated aspects of Self-Study (S-S), Action Research (AR), and Autoethnography with a Foucauldian approach to data analysis. This was a strategic move intended to disrupt the dominance and authority of methodology. The four research cycles included: (1) an analysis of the write-up of a meeting with a 14 year old pupil (hereafter M), (2) a textual analysis of the Health Care Professions Council’s Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics (HPCSCPE, 2008), (3) an analysis of a Focus Group (FG) discussion with nine EPs working within an Educational Psychology Service (EPS) and (4) a synthesis of the findings from the first and third cycles of research. Only the results of the fourth cycle were presented in the main body of the thesis. Three discursive themes with relevant subthemes were identified: (1) the problematic ethical relationship with the client, (2) the appropriation of ethical rhetoric and (3) the strategic presentation of the Educational Psychologist. The results suggested that ethics was a useful tool to examine EP-Client relationships and that the trials and dilemmas experienced during these encounters spoke to the discursive formation in which EPs worked. A wide range of ethical traditions and theories were employed rhetorically by EPs to warrant and legitimize positions and practice. The thesis radically challenged both the discourses of choice and the EP as the sole source of ethics in everyday micro-ethical encounters. EPs’ identities were argued to result from micro-processes in Education Psychology practice which entangled standards and ethics in EPClient relationships. Finally, problematizing the author’s practice opened up a space to have a different relationship to his practice.