Teachers' decisions in classroom reflect their underlying thoughts and feelings about their students. Based on this assumption, this study aimed to identify teachers' thoughts and responses in relation to students with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD). The study was carried out in two stages. The first stage aimed to identify the emotional and behavioural difficulties which teachers perceived as problematic, and the degree of prevalence of these in their current classes. A sample of 170 Greek elementary teachers completed a Behaviour Inventory, asking for their ratings of the severity and prevalence of a list of emotional, conduct and mixed behaviour problems. It was found that teachers were mostly concerned about emotional and mixed problems and perceived the conduct and mixed problems as more prevalent. Based on their responses, 20 teachers were interviewed in depth about their views on EBD, providing information for the second stage of the study. The second stage aimed to explore teachers' causal attributions, cognitive and emotional responses and coping strategies with EBD children, and propose an integrating model that could explain their actions towards them. Three hundred and ninety one teachers completed an Attribution Inventory, presenting vignettes with the emotional, conduct and mixed behaviour problems from the first stage. It was found that teachers perceived school factors as causal of EBD, expressed their sympathy for EBD children, perceived themselves as responsible, self-efficacious and inclined to help, and used and suggested as effective supportive techniques to handle them. It was also found that teachers' causal attributions predicted their emotional and cognitive responses. Perceptions of their own self-efficacy and responsibility, of the remediable nature of EBD, and their feelings for the EBD children predicted their intentional behaviour. Intentional behaviour, in conjunction with perceptions of effective coping strategies, eventually predicted their actual behaviour. Teachers' background factors, studied in both stages, did not relate to their perceptions of emotional and behavioural difficulties. This study is discussed in terms of its contribution to our understanding of teachers' perceptions of and decisions about emotional and behavioural difficulties, with relevance to teacher trainers and policy makers. 2

This thesis discusses a case study of a psycho-spiritual retreat programme comprising an eclectic bricolage of technologies of self, ranging from the contemplative, to the artistic and the psychotherapeutic. It explores the possibility that such practices can be understood as a Foucauldian care of self, enabling teachers to participate in a radical reflexivity around subjectivity. It is argued that such reflexivity, whilst not directly concerned with teachers' professional identity, is transformative within their professional practice. Evidence to substantiate this hypothesis is sought in semi-structured interviews with participating Spanish and Mexican teachers. These interviews explore the teachers' understandings of their 'before', 'during' and 'after'. What had they experienced? How had it affected their understandings of themselves? How had these new understandings affected the ongoing construction of their identity as teachers? Interview data is organized and analysed through three complementary areas of problematization; Questions of Purpose, Questions of Order, and Questions of Performance. Evidence in and around these fields is embedded in a debate around subjectivity, teacher identity and education informed by thinkers of becoming including Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze and Britzman. Assessment of the value of the experience is also made using the psycho-spiritual referents of the retreat programme itself, as elaborated by its founder Claudio Naranjo. The empirical-theoretical analysis of narrative evidence poses questions about the established limits of traditional teacher development opportunities and of the 'service' oriented paradigm of professional ethics. The care of the self as a radical reflexivity, in which the teacher examines their constitution as human beings, might provide 'a way out' for teachers stuck uncreatively in their own historical subjectivities and the dominant educational paradigms. In such a way concrete examples of radical reflexivity in action could usefully contribute to debates occurring around alternatives in teacher identity discourse.

Many studies on teachers' lives have concentrated on the stressful aspect of such lives, listing what makes them stressful. This case study prefers to concentrate on teachers' lives and explore what makes teachers' resilient in these stressful situations. Although resilience in children has been well researched, resilience in adults, and teachers in particular, remains under researched. This study seeks to contribute to the understanding of the factors that enable teachers to develop and sustain resilience in their working lives. It includes reflecting on the school setting as well as outside it, in order to understand further the factors that develop and sustain resilience in teachers throughout their career. The study concentrates on the stressful lives of teachers in an inner city disadvantaged school. A multi-method approach was adopted. A questionnaire was first used to map the territory, followed by interviews with ten teachers who volunteered for the study and that the Principal identified as resilient. The role of recalling critical incidents in their teaching careers was also used in the data collection process. The findings show that while the role of colleagues, students, family and friends is important in developing and sustaining resilience, the role of the Principal is pivotal. Recommendations are identified for developing and sustaining resilience within the school organisation. The study adds to our understanding of the complex working lives of teachers and contributes to the debate on retention and teacher effectiveness.

This submission comprises an Integrative Statement and four of my publications. They consist of one book, two journal articles and a report, which are listed below: A. Improving Induction: Research Based Best Practice B. Accountability and Responsibility: 'Rogue' School Leaders and the Induction of New Teachers in England C. Induction Rites and Wrongs: The 'Educational Vandalism' of New Teachers' Professional Development D. From Self-Evaluation to School Improvement: The Importance of Effective Staff Development Together, these form the basis of my application for the award of the degree of PhD by publication. They form an extended body of applied educational research and evaluation. My work has always had a close focus on the application of knowledge and evidence derived from research and evaluation to changing policy and practice. My initial interest was with the induction of newly qualified teachers. This developed into a wider concern with early professional development and teacher development more generally, culminating most recently with research into the training and development of the whole school workforce rather than just teachers. The Integrative Statement attempts to show the coherence of my published work and demonstrate my 'deep and synoptic' 1 understanding of the professional development field. The research question that the statement addresses is, 'What needs to be taken into account when considering how professional development makes a difference?' An analytic framework is used to explore the publications' contributions to considering how professional development is conceptualised, how it is led, how it works and how its impact is evaluated. A new model is proposed that shows how staff development makes a difference.

Teacher professionalism is a concept with a contentious history. In the midst of wider research debates concerning professionalism, however, less attention has been paid to the processes in which professionalism is discursively constructed. This thesis attempts to explore the conflicting notions of de/re-professionalisation and is mainly about the investigation and identification of the recurring and salient discourses of teacher professionalism in England since the 1980s. By addressing the changing power relations between teachers and the state, this thesis aims to examine closely the ways in which contemporary teachers have been made and remade via education policy centred on discourses of professionalism. This is done by examining policy and practices of both teacher education and school management. Through a discourse analysis of policy documents and data from 18 interviews this thesis argues that a new sense of performative professionalism in England has been produced via a neoliberal education policy that rests on the discourses of practicality, standards and management. A practical-based mode of teacher formation, standards-driven policies and systems of managerial control in schools work together inter discursively and produce new ways of being professional. Specifically, the 'making up' of new teachers with particular performative dispositions and sensibilities is facilitated by an interplay of heterogeneous powers, which involves assembling. different forms of power - sovereign power, disciplinary power and governmentality in complex and subtle ways. 'New' teachers are technical experts operating within a delimited space of autonomy and expected to follow directives; concurrently, they are framed as having 'freedom' and made 'responsible' for performance outcomes. Teachers are disciplined and empowered simultaneously within this dual transformative process. Moreover, professionalism is a discursive technology, which turns teachers into agents of governmentality who produce the human capital needed by the economy and serve the interests of capital. Teachers are made docile and productive at the same time.

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This thesis is a story and the research that underpins it is intended as a significant contribution to an under-researched body of knowledge concerned with the pedagogical encounters of trainee teachers in the English Lifelong Learning Sector. The research emerged from my interest in the values and individual dispositions that trainee mature teachers bring with them to the teaching role from myriad lived and vocational experiences, why those values are held and how they are embodied in pedagogical acts in the sector. Yet the particular nuances of the sector, imbued as it is with governmentally and institutionally-inscribed politics, tensions and contestations axiomatic of the neo-liberal agenda that drives the sector, surface in trainees’ sites of practice and threaten to expunge their values from them. Therefore, as an Initial Teacher Educator in the sector, I have an emancipatory interest in attempting to make sense of these sites of political struggle in order to better prepare future generations of teachers for the sector. Data collection included questionnaire responses from 156 second year trainee teachers, 81 of whom were observed teaching and subsequently engaged in dialogue in order to examine what occurs in the transaction between dialogue and pedagogy in relation to their sites of teaching practice as a critically reflexive emancipatory endeavour. Here, the political and critical theoretical works of Jacques Rancière were central in attempting to interpret how trainees’ perceived values and discourses sit alongside the realities and sites of pedagogical practice as concepts that can be worked with, rather than simply identified. The findings of the research amount to a plethora of shifting individual identities, localised political acts and the emergence of new political subjectivities which sometimes work in powerful ways to both unsettle reified sectoral norms and occasionally allow the voice of otherness to be heard. In doing so, the thesis builds on much of the available literature and research in the sector and offers teacher educators tangible ways in which they can engage and work with trainees’ potential for personal and pedagogic skill growth.

With the growing interest in school improvement and target setting this study focused on one route to greater effectiveness, that of school-based self-review and evaluation. Much has been said about the differential effectiveness of schools and comparisons made with pupil levels of attainment internationally. However, little advice, at a practical level, has been offered on how to achieve this greater effectiveness. This study looks at current practice in school-based self-review and evaluation, its impact on school culture and how this translates into classrooms. It undertakes a survey of all Essex secondary schools looking at their current involvement in self-review and evaluation and their plans for future work in this area. Three case studies are then reported, to show the practical impact of self-review and evaluation using quantitative and qualitative methodology. These aim to provide applicable information for schools. Many of the challenges and successes will be readily accessible to practitioners. The findings reflect an increase in self-review and evaluation in the majority of schools and suggests the positive effect this has on the culture of the schools. Where schools are actively involved in self-review and evaluation this helps create the learning institution required for genuine effectiveness. Finally, practical advice is given to the stakeholders in education about their role on this process.

This thesis seeks to raise awareness of the pervasive heteronormativity of Maltese culture and on the effects that exclusionary practices may have on gay students and teachers. The culturally-saturating influence of the Roman Catholic faith in Malta, and the effects of a vigorously heterosexist society are chief elements which discourage Maltese homosexual educators from presenting their true sexuality to students, their parents, and teacher colleagues; in this and other related socio-cultural ways, Maltese gay teachers have thus been rendered an invisible presence in their schools. The study investigates the significance of being a gay teacher in contemporary Maltese culture through a set of narratives which reveal how five teachers construct and negotiate their personal and professional identities. The thematically-driven narratives themselves are made ‘transgressively’ (St Pierre, 1997) from an artistic re-casting of interview data as composite fictional accounts; in this way, the identities of the actual participants are invisible, whilst the issues that characterise their lives can be dramatically foregrounded. Each of the fictionalised narratives is followed by a critical deconstruction which both locates the story in the context of the literature and features the reflections of the interviewees themselves on the re-working and re-presentation of their life accounts. The accounts themselves tell of suffering and exclusion, of ambiguity but also of success; of experiences which are heavily conditioned by the sexuality of these teachers and by the context in which they are situated. The study concludes with an anticipation of the further research and of the developments in education policy which are needed if Maltese institutions are to realise the national commitment to inclusive cultures of schooling.

This thesis investigates the influence that teacher professionalism has, at an Independent Secondary School, on formal and informal mentoring of new teachers. It attempts to elucidate the extent to which experienced teachers see mentoring their new colleagues in the classroom embedded within their own professional conduct and development. Data is collected through interviews and a focus group. A Corbin-Strauss grounded theory methodology is adopted to develop a substantive theory of mentoring practices within an Independent Secondary School setting (Corbin and Strauss, 2008). The analysis is organised with the assistance of the software QSR NVIVO 9. Analysis of the data is done through a Conditional Relationship Guide which reveals four processes: A Culture of Support that stimulates Professional Development, which in turn encourages Professional Engagement, providing a platform for Bespoke Mentoring; together with evidence of a supportive culture. These processes are placed on a Reflective Coding Matrix as described by Scott (2004). The Reflective Coding Matrix helps to visualise the properties, processes and dimensions of the core category of Teacher Professionalism within an Integrated Culture. All the work of analysis is then integrated through writing a story line that interprets and refines the theory, illustrated by a Conditional Matrix. The emerging conclusions have implications for how qualified and unqualified teachers should be supported within their first years of teaching, as well as the nature of the ongoing support they provide for their colleagues and receive themselves, throughout their teaching careers. Professional recommendations call on Induction coordinators or teachers in charge of the mentoring structure at a school to take more of a pervasive role in the employment, integration and mentoring support of new teachers. This original contribution to the current body of mentoring research may be transferrable to other Independent and State Schools.