This research investigates the mentoring needs and experiences of students on a part-time distance learning secondary PGCE in England and Wales. A case study of post-16 teaching was conducted on a sample of English students and mentors over a six month period, during which challenge was problematised as a mentor strategy. five research instruments were developed and used iteratively to generate qualitative data revealing student perceptions about post-16 teaching and mentor responses. The study reveals significant problems for student teachers as they learn to teach post-16, which were confirmed by mentors. First, that mentoring in relation to post-16 is inconsistent. What support is given varies greatly, and there is only limited evidence of challenge being used in a context which appears to warrant it as a training strategy. Second, and as a consequence, students feel underprepared at the end of the 11-18 PGCE for the demands of post-16 teaching. This is because mentors focus their training in areas other than post-16, reflecting the lack of attention to post-16 teaching in the Standards. Third, students invariably possess a false preconception of post-16 teaching, which mentors have not always been able to challenge. Little attention is given to effective post-16 teaching strategies in the lieterature, and mentors have shied away from discussing the contentions nature of the English canon post-16. fourth, students and mentors describe the demands of learning to teach post-16 differently to pre-16. the main issue is the need for students to be trained to differentiate their subject knowledge by effective teaching strategies, particularly in the divide between Year 11 and Year 12. The results impact on my own professional practice as a teacher educator, and illuminate more effective models of post-16 mentoring. The study concludes that a shared discourse about learning to teach post-16 needs to be in place. Challenge could then be used by mentors to develop student teacher professional thinking and classroom practice post-16. If students were consistently trained to teach post-16 more effectively, it is possible that pupils would benefit, leading to improved results.

Scarce in the academic literature exploring the experiences of teachers within school environments specialising in the education of special educational needs children and disabilities are accounts from teachers working within SLD/PMLD schools. In light of this gap in scholarship, this study examined nine teachers’ ecological narratives and explored their influence upon curriculum decisions and consequent pedagogic practices in the context of a naturalistic setting within four SLD/PMLD schools. Three purposes framed this investigation. Firstly, to gain an in-depth understanding of how the pedagogic beliefs and identities of SLD/PMLD teachers are constructed within the framework of the school-espoused curriculum. Secondly, how teachers’ practices emerge as functions of individual ecologies, beliefs and identities through autobiography and thirdly how these teachers’ identities, ecologies and practices in turn, re-shape the enacted-curricular. Bronfenbrenner’s (1979; 1989; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998) ecological theories were considered as a conceptual framework that stood behind this work, but as personal ‘special’ pedagogical narratives unfolded, their influence became less formal in encapsulating how teachers constructed the curriculum as a situated pedagogic experience so local narrative frameworks were utilised. Data sources included multiple individual interviews to enable ecological constructs to unfold, classroom observations, personal writing, research notes and other salient material. Dialogue between the researcher and participants ensured the rigour of the study. Experiences both personal and professional were used as a key to unlock participants’ lives with multiple opportunities to critically assess portrayals. Analysis of data revealed that teacher knowledge and personal ecologies were encapsulated both within conscious, internally and externally justified opinions and unconscious un-reflected intuitions, submerged within the identities of the teachers and their students. Whilst the importance of individual teachers’ micro-ecologies as being unique was apparent in the context of current research in inclusive and specialist education, teachers’ voices seemed to be heard and listened to only by those working within SLD and PMLD settings, both through choice and almost benign acceptance. Political macro-structures of inclusion were juxtaposed to micro-ideals of inclusive pedagogy and whilst ecological constructs impacted greatly, pedagogic practice emanated ultimately from personal belief and identity; in essence, these teachers were the curriculum. At a time of profound change in Inclusive Education, this study contributes to deficient and under-theorised notions of SLD/PMLD teachers’ narratives and practices. More critically, this thesis makes a significant and original contribution to scholarship concerned with the narration of pedagogic inclusion and how its teacherly embodiment may foster inclusive classrooms.

This study explores student teachers' perceptions of child-adult relationships, and their orientation to a teaching style. Twenty-nine stories of childhood by education students were analyzed for the child's perception of adults, using a framework developed from attachment theory and Baumrind's parenting styles. Adults in the stories were allocated to the authoritative, authoritarian, or permissive group. Previous to their writing of stories, students' perceptions of adult-child relationships were collected through two projective type exercises. Using the above theories, a table was designed to represent three t`eaching styles: secure-authoritative, avoidant-authoritarian, and ambivalent-permissive. Data from the exercises were analyzed for students' unconscious and conscious orientation to teaching style. Results from both sets of data were compared. Ten stories (Appendix 1) and corresponding projective exercises are discussed in the analysis. Summaries of stories are provided within the analysis chapter for ease of reference. Results showed connections between childhood relationships with adults and teaching style orientation. A child's relationship with adults founded on authoritativeness matched projective results, which suggest an authoritative teaching orientation style now. Similar matches were found for authoritarian parenting and teaching orientation, and permissive parenting and teaching orientation. A small fourth group designated "dis-orientated" by attachment theorists was not found, but a sample story (Appendix 2) from an earlier collection, is briefly discussed. Results imply that the dilemma of whether to provide theory or practice first in education courses, or of how much theory is appropriate, may be solved if students' own childhood experiences are used to develop their understanding of child-adult relationships and their potential influence on teaching orientation. Such stories offer a strong foundation for student teachers to begin their study of education theories, and could help students develop self-understanding and empathy for children. Key words: childhood narratives, projective techniques, teaching style.

Classroom relationships create the socio-cultural context that influences children's learning dispositions. Children contribute to the plurality and richness of discourses in this context, but the class-teachers take the lead roles in selecting and guiding the discourses of interactions and relationships they share with children. The framing of the curriculum to provide sensitive classroom discourses of inclusion encourage children's involvement and support their 'social identities'. Through "active" participation, the 'habits of mind'(Katz and Raths, 1985) and the 'participation repertoires' (Carr, 2001) of the socio-cultural context strengthen children's 'learner identities' to influence their learning dispositions. Children's discourses reveal an awareness of their teacher's sensitivity, responsiveness to their needs and the stimulation of their learning. Their relationships with peers, contribute to their sense of belonging, well-being, involvement and participation. Teachers' perspectives and pedagogic practice reveal contradictory notions of children as "active" or "passive" learners. The discourses of the National Curriculum and directives contribute to these contradictions and are interpreted by these teachers as constraints to practice. Classroom discourses that offer autonomy to children are most prevalent in small group situations where they can be "active" learners who take responsibility for their learning. Welsh cultural discourses related to National Identity and language in the Welsh medium school provide stabilizing influences in children's education at a time of change, when "commodification" discourses have entered the classroom arena. The discourses of "commodification" are more apparent in the newly established English medium school, but its provision of innovative educational experiences ensure children's involvement and participation. The study was based on exploratory, qualitative, interactionist research in two case-study primary classrooms in Wales, one English medium, and the other a Welsh medium school. The methods were in-depth interviews with head-teachers and class- teachers, classroom observations during lessons, writing activities and focus group discussions with children.

This study explores how vocational teachers in English Further Education (FE) colleges maintain and develop their subject and occupational expertise. Actor- Network Theory (ANT) is used to offer an alternative conceptualisation of vocational teachers' continued professional development (CPD) as it enables the complex networks and relations between the various actors of CPD to be mapped. In particular, this approach makes visible the alternate and competing worlds of CPD that teachers and their employing colleges inhabit. A three stage inductive mixed method research approach, congruent with ANT was taken. The first stage involved a questionnaire survey of teachers in order to begin to map the territory. The second stage involved interviewing a sample of respondents to the questionnaire, to elicit their views and perceptions. The third stage 'followed the actor' of CPD so as to understand how teachers, on the ground, maintain and develop subject and occupational expertise. Through the application of ANT concepts of multiple worlds and realities, the different worlds teachers engage with to develop occupational expertise emerged. By following the actor of teacher CPD activities two things were made explicit. First, three key drivers for teachers were identified: a) passion for subject or occupational area; b) maintaining occupational currency; and c) improving teaching and learning. Second, the mechanisms that teachers use and the networks they engage with outside of their employing organisation became apparent. It is through the different conceptualisations produced by the alternate worlds that barriers to CPD emerged. Nevertheless, it is evident that teachers act with agency and, despite the barriers identified, work hard to maintain their subject and occupational expertise. They do this in spite of, not because of organisational approaches to their professional development.

This study examines the educational aspects of counselling in a major branch of progressive education, in which they appeared predominantly, but not entirely, as central and inseparable functions of teaching between 1921 and 1970. The development of these mainly non-specialist aspects of counselling is set into the context of the gradual growth of counselling as a specialist activity in education more generally throughout the present century. Relationships between the specialist and non-specialist approaches to counselling over the five decades mentioned above are examined in detail. To aid the identification of counselling within educational thought and practice, a wide range of modern literature on specialist counselling is first surveyed, and a number of priorities common within it are defined. Differences of opinion within the field of specialist counselling are also examined, both through the literature and with reference to recent empirical research in Britain on the role concepts of counsellors. These lead to suggestions that an 'open-system' orientation describes major differences of viewpoint among specialist counsellors, and that the evolution of the specialist counselling movement can be interpreted in major respects by a gradual change in its relationship to the problem-centred aspects of counselling. Using these priorities and perspectives, the earliest expressions of thought in the New Education Fellowship are intensively examined, to clarify the presence, extent, and importance of counselling priorities within them. The stability of these priorities, and their interaction with other areas of thought and achievement in education, including that of the separate development of counselling as a specialist movement, is then examined throughout the history of the Fellowship from 1921 to 1970. Main findings are that many priorities common to modern counselling, appeared as central and important aspects of educational thought at the inception of the New Education Fellowship in 1921, where they were seen as intimately associated with teaching roles; that these priorities were stable in the history of the Fellowship, tending to re-emerge apparently spontaneously at different times; and that this pattern of stability contrasts with a changing pattern of priorities within the specialist counselling movements elsewhere in education. These and other findings, and their implications, are discussed in a closing chapter.

This thesis arises from a personal conviction that education transforms not only the intellect, but can inspire a change of heart and values, towards the betterment of self and society, and that the process of mentoring offers this transformational potentiality. Hence, the concept of mentoring is examined and expanded beyond that of the traditional mentor, to "developmental relationships" which recognises the different significant individuals that could potentially influence the development of a mentee. This notion forms the basis of the construction of a mentoring model in this thesis. Situated within the diploma in Business & Social Enterprise at the Ngee Ann Polytechnic of Singapore, the research adopts the qualitative case study approach. The aim of the study is to explore in an evidenced fashion the feasibility and efficacy of constructing a mentoring model based on developmental relationships; this could, I argue, enable students from the course to integrate formal learning with experiences encountered beyond the classroom setting. Social entrepreneurial traits were highlighted as some of the desirable attributes of a graduate from the course, which could be nurtured by the proposed network of developmental relationships. The thesis discusses findings from focus groups and interviews conducted with management, faculty, students and business partners (particularly social entrepreneurs), that would help shape the construction of the model. I conclude by reviewing the ways in which the proposed mentoring model offers a unique multi-dimensional mentoring approach, capable of being implemented in a flexible manner, to accommodate a diversity of learners.

This dissertation investigates teacher motivation in a language-teaching department of a Japanese university. The main objective is to contribute to the overall understanding of the nature of teacher motivation. It is hoped that this understanding will be enhanced by two further objectives: firstly, to show how teacher motivation can be dependent on the teaching context, and secondly, to relate teacher motivation to the work/market/status categorisation proposed by David Lockwood (1989).

Education policy in England requires student teachers to demonstrate effective teaching of early reading, including systematic synthetic phonics, in order to qualify. However, central monitoring of student teacher satisfaction in initial teacher education (ITE) indicates that some students feel inadequately prepared to teach reading as they enter the profession. Furthermore, recent policy changes to ITE on postgraduate routes have increased time in schools and reduced time in the university. In this challenging climate, little is known about how student teachers develop knowledge, understanding and practice for teaching early reading whilst moving between the different learning environments of schools and university and how they adapt to the first term as newly qualified teachers (NQTs). This research used a longitudinal, collective case study design involving seven lower primary (3–7 years) postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) students enrolled at one university in the East Midlands of England. Semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and documentary analysis with the students and their teacher mentors were used to gather data from entry onto the course to the participants’ first term as qualified teachers. A conceptual and analytical framework, developed using activity theory, provided an original and innovative way of examining the complex interplay of influential factors within and between schools and the university. Conceptualising ITE as the product of multiple activity systems identified important tensions between the goals and expectations of schools and the university and the potentially unexamined impact of institutional responses to policy on becoming a teacher of early reading. The findings indicate that student teacher progress was constrained or facilitated by key elements of the activity systems involved which highlight implications for university organisation, mentoring and whole school participation. Recommendations from the research include a new continuum of teacher development and an ideal activity system for ITE and induction for early reading.

Teacher gaze is central to learning, yet research in this area has been limited to Western and laboratory settings. Moreover, within these contexts, only attentional (i.e., information-seeking) gaze has been investigated so far. The research presented in this thesis aimed to extend existing literature by identifying culture-specific (UK and Hong Kong) patterns of expert teacher gaze in real-world classrooms, and going beyond attentional gaze to communicative (i.e., information-giving) gaze. Participants were n= 40 secondary school teachers with 20 (10 expert; 10 novice) from the UK and 20 (10 expert; 10 novice) from Hong Kong. All consented to wearing eye tracking glasses while teaching a class. Gaze proportion, duration, efficiency, flexibility and sequences were measured and analysed. The strategic consistency of the way in which teachers used gaze was also assessed, as was the relationship between measures of gaze and teachers’ interpersonal behaviour. In both cultures, expertise in teaching was demonstrated by giving students priority, that is, higher proportions and longer durations of teacher gaze directed towards students. Gaze flexibility was also a sign of expertise in both cultures, as was strategic consistency. Cultural differences also emerged in what constituted expert teacher gaze. Expertise specific to the UK was shown through teachers looking less at teacher materials and through strategic consistency. Expertise specific to Hong Kong was shown through looking less at non-instructional non-student targets and by gaze flexibility. Teacher interpersonal style (i.e., agency × communion) and teacher agency increased as non-student attentional gaze decreased and as non-student communicative gaze increased; and teacher communion was significantly related to attentional but not communicative gaze.