A series of questionnaire surveys were conducted during 2004-2007 to explore teacher perception of 'stress in teaching' within the Scottish context. Study 1 comprised Secondary Teachers (N=400); Study 2 comprised Student-Teachers (N=197) and Study 3 comprised Inductee Teachers (N= 16). The main aims of the surveys were to explore (I) the extent to which Teachers perceive the profession as stressful; to examine (ii) the relationship between perception of stress in teaching and well being and identify (iii) factors which impact on perception of teaching as stressful. 'Stress' was conceptualised as a 'psychological state' (Cox & Ferguson, 1991) that could manifest itself at a physiological, psychological and behavioural level. The study was underpinned by an interactional model of stress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). This model places the teacher, their appraisal of demands and their own personal and professional resources, at the centre of the stress process. Data was gathered by means of survey questionnaires which included a range of validated instruments such as the General Health Questionniare-30 (Goldberg, 1978); the Glasgow Symptom Checklist (Mahmood, 1999) and the Placement Concerns Questionnaire (Murray-Harvey, 1999). To place the concept of'stress in teaching' within the Scottish context an additional range of instruments were designed to measure stress in teaching (Stress in Teaching Scale), general student stress (Stress in Students) and coping with stress in teaching (Coping with Stress in Teaching). In addition, Postgraduate Students (N=22) participated in semi-structured interviews following their final placement experience (2006). This group were followed into the induction year and completed questionnaires and email interviews during the time of the induction. Overall findings indicated that 92 per cent of Teachers, 79 per cent of Student Teacher and 31 per cent of Inductee Teachers perceived the profession as 'quite' to 'very stressful. Teachers perceived the 'Teaching Learning Interface' and in particular 'indiscipline' as a significant source of stress. Student Teachers cited 'Performance Evaluation'; 'Managing Workload' and 'Class Management' as 'stressful'. In contrast to fully fledged teachers, Inductee Teachers did not find any aspect of teaching such as 'Work Overload'; 'Professional Ethos'; 'Teaching Learning Interface' or 'Perceived Support' as stressful. Perception of stress in teaching and perception of well being varied significantly in relation to current role, age, years of teaching experience and level of study within Initial Teacher Education. One out of every two Middle Managers and Postgraduate Students perceived teaching as 'very stressful'. Moreover, during the course of this study both groups reported changes in well being which would warrant therapeutic intervention. This was especially apparent in relation to feelings of "Personal ineffectiveness' such as 'being unable to make decisions'. In contrast, when the Postgraduate cohort made the transition into, and though, the induction year they perceived teaching as significantly less stressful, and reported significantly less changes in normal levels of well being. In the case of Middle Managers, Postgraduate Students and Inductee Teachers differences in perception of stress in teaching were explained by the interaction between the demands of teaching such as 'Work Overload' and the 'Teaching Learning Interface', and a range of additional factors. For Middle Manager the impact of 'change' and issues pertaining to 'Professional Ethos' and 'Perceived Support', played a key role in their perception of teaching as stressful. Issues of efficacy associated with status of the PGDE course and others' expectations impacted on the Postgraduate Students' perception of teaching as stressful. The Inductee Teachers' perception of teaching as 'not stressful' was attributed to being situated in an 'enabling' professional context in which their personal and professional growth was generally supported. However, it is interesting to note that as Inductee Teachers perceived the 'Teaching Learning Interface' as significantly less stressful they also perceived teaching, as significantly less stressful. Within education there are growing concerns regarding teacher retention and recruitment. Therefore, it is concerning that within this Scottish context a significant proportion of middle managers and postgraduate students perceived teaching as very stressful and in addition experienced significant changes in well being that would normally be associated with a clinical population.

In this thesis, teacher professional growth is conceived as complex, relational, adaptive and recursive, comprising processes of learning and development. Teacher learning is considered an ongoing, everyday process of building on experience through interpretation, integration and application. Teacher development is viewed as a continuous, longer-term process of journeying, more outward-facing to encompass professional knowledge, practice and status. Professional growth unfolds within one or more organisational contexts that mediate the external conditions of an educational system currently dominated by performativity. Teacher practice-based inquiry is explored as a vehicle for professional growth. Suggested critical aspects of teacher professional growth are intended purpose, enacted opportunity and lived response, considered intertwined or complex and employed as an interpretive framework. Six secondary teachers have participated in this study, through recorded conversational accounts of professional growth and twenty written accounts of their practice-based inquiries. Unravelling purposes, opportunities and responses in this material suggests categories of description and variation that together form a possibility space, for both interpreting past experience and projecting future potential. Teacher practice-based inquiry offers an expanded space of possibilities for professional growth. This study utilises the theoretical perspectives of complexity thinking and participatory inquiry, complemented by agential realism, enactivism and relational being. Together, these trans-disciplinary approaches challenge representationalist ontologies and epistemologies, embracing axiology, and positioning researcher and participants as part of the phenomena to be studied. A recurring theme is complicity, mutually adaptive change, between teacher and learner, leader and teacher, teacher and context, and researcher and research. The contribution made by this thesis is a re-working of conceptualisations of teacher professional growth, combining identity, experience, learning and development, in a continual and complicit process of being and becoming, sustained through a sense of belonging. The resulting possibility spaces offer exemplary knowledge and tools for re-thinking teacher professional growth as a complex adaptive process.

This study investigates how a UK Secondary School introduced inquiry as a form of teacher professional development and focuses on the levels of engagement by the teachers in this type of development activity. The approach taken in this investigation centres on a qualitative case study focusing on a deep understanding of teachers’ beliefs, conceptions and experiences of inquiry engagement. Data was collected over an academic year by interviewing nine teachers and a senior member of the school leadership team at different stages throughout the academic year; by observing teachers in some of their classes and the staffroom; and by collecting internal documents and external public reports related to the school and the inquiry programme. The data was analysed using thematic coding which facilitated the identification and comparison of significant themes across all data sets. Findings from the research reveal that despite the school’s attempts to engage teachers in inquiry, the latter found it challenging to do so due to various factors. The analysis reveals the emerging factors of the conceptualisation of inquiry, availability of resources and ownership of the inquiry initiative and the impact of school culture on teachers’ inquiry engagement. The question of the appropriateness of inquiry as a form of professional development and the way it is facilitated in school emerges as a key theme. The study claims three main contributions to the field of teacher inquiry. Firstly, it proposes incorporating a micropolitical perspective of the school culture to investigate the realities of teachers’ inquiry work. The study argues through empirical illustration that such a perspective is likely to provide us with invaluable insights necessary to understand teachers’ conceptualisation of inquiry and their inquiry engagement. Secondly, this study proposes a categorisation of various types of teachers’ inquiry engagement. Such categorisation is likely to help us understand how and why teachers engage in inquiry and therefore the best ways to facilitate this type of professional development. Finally, the current study advances a framework illustrating various processes, interacting factors and main considerations in the context of inquiry as a form of professional development for teachers. The framework explains how teachers respond to an inquiry programme and the conditions that facilitate their inquiry engagement or otherwise. This contribution has practical implications for schools and practitioners interested in undertaking inquiry as a form of professional development. It is argued that the practical implications are likely to improve the planning and implementation of inquiry programmes in schools.

Shared decision-making (SDM) arose as one of the most popular themes associated with the school restructuring 'movement of the late 1980s. It is widely considered to be an effective way to improve the quality of education through engaging stakeholders at the school level in school decision-making processes. The rationale underlying SDM has always been that better educational decisions can be made if those closest to the students are involved in the process. Yet, despite its popularity as a theme on the reform agenda of many countries, studies carried out in other countries reveal that implementing SDM as a management strategy has often proved to be problematic. In Egypt, evidence from previous research shows that SDM is seldom practised in Egyptian schools. However, there is no empirical investigation into why this is the case. In the meantime, SDM is being promoted as part of the current decentralisation movement in Egypt. Given the ambiguity surrounding the area of SDM in the Egyptian context, it remains unclear whether implementing such a policy in Egypt's schools will be successful or not. Hence this study constitutes an attempt to unravel this ambiguity. It examines barriers that might impede successful implementation of SDM in Egyptian schools. It seeks an in-depth understanding of these barriers by exploring the perceptions of eighty-five research participants from nine general secondary schools in Damietta governorate. Therefore a qualitative research design was chosen for the study where individual interviews were used as a primary data collection method. Document analysis was also employed to gain further understanding of some issues under investigation. The findings indicate that many factors interact and hinder the engagement of school staff with SDM processes. Centralised control was perceived by many participants as the most powerful impediment to SDM. While not surprising, this finding is disconcerting, given the prominence of devolution and community participation in the current educational reform debates. Centralised control was perceived to hinder SDM in two ways. First, it prevents stakeholders at the school level from making decisions that they regard as significant to them. Second, it encourages head teachers to adopt autocratic decision- making approaches in schools. The study also reveals that the culture prevailing in the visited schools is not favourable to SDM. Unwillingness to engage with the process arose as a major cultural barrier. Head teachers' unwillingness seemed to be triggered by concerns over accountability. Teachers' unwillingness was strongly linked with concerns about poor work conditions and the consequent involvement of most teachers in private tutoring as an alternative to compensate for their low salaries. Other cultural barriers include lack of interpersonal trust, unfamiliarity with SDM practices, fears of potential involvement problems and the perception of seniority as a prime requirement for decision-participation. Besides determining the barriers to SDM, the study also explores the extent to which recent structural changes (Le. Training and Evaluation Units and Boards of Trustees, Parents and Teachers) endorse SDM within schools. The data reveals that the impact of these innovations on SDM is generally insignificant. The study concludes that under the existing organizational and cultural conditions, SDM may not be appropriate as a form of management in Egyptian schools.

The process of becoming a professional in an educational setting is, arguably, unique and may be distinguished from all other professions, as those who decide to take up this role have had substantial previous experience during their own schooling. It is the impact of this earlier experience that forms the basis of this thesis. In particular, it explores how individual subjectivities interact with the objective reality of professional practice in educational settings. Previous research has identified the tensions and complexities within this process and this exploration is expanded here by using a synthesis of psychoanalytic group theory, a sociological understanding of the social construction of reality and a recent adaptation of critical theory that emphasises the role of recognition in forming relations to the self. A series of narratives, representing an earlier life story and the more recent experiences of professional development in an educational setting, are collected from professionals early on in their career to provide rich data on the encounter between subjectivity and the facticity of education. These narratives were analysed using a gestalt methodology, the Narrative Process Coding System and 'future-blind' panels. Continued comparison of the data enabled an education biography for each participant to emerge and also revealed two main findings. The first confirmed that patterns of relating to educational settings as a pupil were replicated later in the context of developing a professional role. It is argued that this represents a transferential relationship with the structures and processes of education. Secondly it was found that themes of agentic behaviour and responses to the reality of educational settings provided a commonality between the education biographies of all the participants. A discussion of these themes within two case studies and a wider application to the other participants provides an empirical understanding of the objectification of a profeSSional practice. These two main themes also offer a unique synthesis of psychoanalytically informed social defences, recognition theory and how a facticity of professional practice may emerge. Finally it is argued that the collection of life story narratives from trainees or profeSSionals early in their career provides a simple and efficacious technique to engage in meaningful and reflexive professional development dialogue. Ultimately this research seeks to move the present standards and competency focused approach to developing a professional practice to a more nuanced and realistic one that considers how individuals encounter and respond to an objectified professional world. ------------------------

The aim of this thesis is to expand the understanding of the situation of male secondary school head teachers in Saudi Arabia in terms of their job satisfaction. This is particularly important in view of the small number of studies which have investigated head teachers' job satisfaction generally, and within the Saudi educational context in particular. This study employs a sequential exploratory strategy using a mixed methods approach. Drawing on five focus group interviews with 25 male head teachers, and semi-structured interviews with 20 male head teachers in the city of Jeddah the sample of the study, the data generated were used to identify the factors producing job satisfaction and causing dissatisfaction.

Much research has been undertaken on the impact of control techniques on workers but little has been done in professional organisations. This research critically explores the impact of these methods on teachers using a framework differentiating beween the 'schooling' of new entrants into a self-disciplined positioning within the discourses of the New Professional, as well as the subsequenVsimultaneous disciplining of themselves (and others) through the use of observation, bureaucracy, culture, and output when working in schools. The research takes place in two successful and oversubscribed secondary schools, catering for pupils between the ages of 11 and 18. The arrival of new Heads and perceived weaknesses in management systems in both schools has driven reorganizations and restructurings along with increased monitoring of teacher practice with the aim of improving student results. The study shows the manner in which new entrants to the teaching profession are 'schooled' into the acceptance of increased monitoring and observation due to the need to gain Qualified Teacher Status. This process continues when employed in schools through the use of hierarchical observations, examinations and normalizing judgments by senior managers to try and maintain self-disciplined professional teachers. Senior staff aim to ensure staff remain situated within the discursive boundaries of the new professional focusing on students' results. These controls ensure that practice in the classroom meets the demands for the performative nature of education in English schools. Although the discourse of the professional is potent and pervasive, alternative discourses are available to teachers and this research surfaces and explores these possibilities. It is concluded that teachers in state schools are having their identities constructed for them through a professional discourse and through managerialist practices of discipline and control.

This study explored lecturers' conceptions of teaching and pedagogical actions in a polytechnic in Singapore and was set in a constructivist knowledge framework.

This small-scale multiple case study is an investigation into the perceptions of primary school teachers in the Northeast of England regarding the impact of training in Thinking Skills interventions. This study also outlines a research that examined the views Portuguese primary school teachers have on teaching thinking in a primary school setting. It attempts to identify teachers' views on how teaching thinking can ultimately improve children's attainment. It also aims at ascertaining the influences, limitations, and pedagogical implications that affect the way teachers perceive their professional development. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, non-participant observations and analysis of documentary evidence. Data was collected from 14 English teachers and seven headteachers, and 10 Portuguese teachers, all with different professional experiences. A small group of English children were also interviewed in order to obtain their views on "Thinking lessons". Models of professional development were analysed to investigate how teachers' professional needs are met by existing policies and how teaching thinking slots in. Questions were raised about the impact the theoretical principles of Thinking Skills programmes had on practical teaching and classroom dynamics. The report concludes that the training received by the English participants was considered to be valuable and to make a substantial contribution towards the improvement of the teaching and learning processes in their classrooms. It also shows that there is scope for improvement in Portuguese primary schools, as teachers propose ways in which the implementation of Thinking Skills interventions might be approached. Findings were analysed qualitatively in relation to the relevant literature and inferences were made on the data obtained. Conclusions also raised issues for further consideration.

This practitioner-based, mixed methods research explores the influence of parenthood on teacher identity; the challenges involved in combining the roles of teacher and parent, and the benefits of being a teacher-parent. Its original contribution lies in the combination of teacher-as-researcher perspective, its in-depth approach to an issue only fleetingly alluded to in policy literature, and its emphasis on providing a balance of male and female voices. The aim of the research is to provide a framework which may inform future policies at local and national level and to provide practical advice and guidance for teacher-parents on maximising wellbeing and effectiveness in their dual role. The research investigates the factors, at micro, meso, and macro level that affect teacher-parent identity as discussed in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory (1979), and seeks, through a pragmatic approach, to identify school policies that are – or could be – effective in promoting the wellbeing and performance of teacher-parents. The data is collected through an innovative and contemporary combination of research methods: focus groups at three maintained secondary schools in the London area, questionnaires, and ‘netnography’. Online discussion groups provide a wider context for the initial findings. Ethical factors, such as the role of power and hierarchy within the schools, the multiple roles of the researcher, and the issue of informed consent when dealing with sensitive information relating to minors and colleagues, have been taken into account and are critical to the integrity of the research. This study concludes that, with the right combination of self-belief, pragmatism and support, it is possible to effectively balance teaching and parenthood, and that the benefits that being a parent brings to teachers can and should be nurtured by schools. The study offers a number of recommendations as to how individuals, schools and policy makers might further improve the wellbeing, effectiveness and career progression of teacher-parents.