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This study was conducted as part of the Scottish Teachers for a New Era project. It sets out to explore the perception of teachers and student teachers about mentoring in the classroom and the extent to which the mentoring relationships are collaborative. Literature review was done systematically to explore the state of research in mentoring as related to initial teacher education. Consequently, mentoring is described as a collaborative endeavour aimed at professional development of both supporter teachers and student teachers in the study. With the conception of mentoring as a collaborative endeavour between teachers and student teachers in the study, a critical constructivist theory was considered suitable to achieve the goals of collaborative mentoring in this study. A mixed methods approach involving quantitative and qualitative strategies was employed to collect and analyse data for the study. Questionnaires as quantitative instruments were used to collect data about mentoring experiences from B.Ed. 3 and B.Ed. 4 student teachers (n= 130) and their supporter teachers (n=145). Interviews and case studies were the main qualitative instruments used to understand and complement the quantitative results in this study. Interviews were conducted with the same cohorts of student teachers (n=7), their supporter teachers (n=6) and university tutors (n=6) involved in students’ placement supervision while case studies were conducted in 4 schools. Findings point to a range of mentoring situations, from apprenticeship to constructivist strands and that expectations of mentoring are also influenced by the apprenticeship and constructivist theories. From the data, it also became clear that the mentoring relationships enacted in this study are not entirely collaborative. Some of the challenges to collaborative mentoring include time, differences in teachers’ and tutors’ values, personality clashes inflexibility and difficulty with stepping back. However, the findings indicate that the challenges to collaborative mentoring are not insurmountable. Co-planning of lesson-ahead, active learning, better communication and reciprocal arrangements between university and schools and national policy among others, can facilitate the enactment of collaborative mentoring relationships in the classroom. Based on the findings, some implications for mentoring practice in the initial teacher education context are highlighted. For example, supporter teachers need to see mentoring as a process through which mutual learning can take place between them and student teachers for improvement in the professional practice. Also, student teachers need to be well-disposed to learning and internalising ideas from others either through feedback, co-planning or collaborative teaching with supporter teachers in the classroom. Key words: Collaborative mentoring, critical constructivism, mixed methods approach, supporter teachers and student teachers.

This qualitative research studies a group of sixteen Chinese high school teachers to explore Chinese teachers’ perceptions of professionalism as well as changes in teaching. These teachers were all graduates from Master of Education (Ed.M.) programme in a Chinese university. They differed in many aspects including teaching experiences, schools they were working for, personal histories. These teachers’ work and lives were analysed based on data generated from three rounds of semi-structured interviews. Themes emerging from the interviews suggested that it was Chinese teachers’ professional conscience that had mostly affected their sense of professionalism, and there were changes both in teachers’ perceptions and actions in teaching after their graduation from Ed.M. This research contributes to a better understanding on Chinese teachers’ professional lives by identifying professional conscience as the core of Chinese teacher professionalism. The meanings of professional conscience suggest that Chinese teachers’ perceptions of professionalism share similarities to that of teachers’ in the West. The fluctuations of professional conscience through teachers’ lives has challenged stereotypes of teachers in the Chinese society.

This thesis is motivated to harness UK children’s enthusiasm and energy on using social software to connect with each other. The overarching research aim of this thesis is to investigate how social software can cultivate children aged 11 – 14 as a community of learners out of school, in order to support their education. Two key issues: informality of out-of-school learning and transitions of learning practices across home and school, are identified as research challenges. Community of Practice is proposed as the theoretical construct to open up and provide useful coverage to respond to these two challenges. In five case studies, various methodologies are utilised to investigate the actual uses that children make of social software as well as to explore the networked dynamics within a community that mediate the fate of technology. First, UK children’s use of a nationwide homework message board in two subjects: Maths and English is investigated. Findings suggest that seeking for help is the prevailing concern expressed by the children, when they confront their private study out of school. A strong emotional tone is evoked in the board, which sustains children’s co-participation as a community. Second, whether and how an online whiteboard can support children’s GCSE Maths exam revision with a teacher during out-of-school hours is explored. Findings shed light on the difficulty in nurturing a community of learners through social software and .the role of a teacher’s online presence out of school. The third study explores how a group of students and a teacher are cultivated as a learning community across classroom (physical) and a social networking site (virtual). Findings suggest that the informality of socio-emotional chat, content production and identity construction helps to identify the non-academic dimension of being a learner within a community. In order to cultivate a learning community, it is suggested that children should be supported to form a community that will function better in the class rather than just being put into continuous tuition hours with extra teacher support out of school. Findings also discover the benefit to access a teacher via multiple communication channels. Furthermore, in an attempt to illuminate the underlying networked dynamics in a social software-supported community, Chinese children using a homework message board is investigated. Findings suggest that the specific emotional tone revealed in the UK message board is related to the UK children’s particular perspectives in learning and knowledge. Finally, interviews with two cultural groups of children: English and Chinese are conducted, in which the children mapped their in-school and out-of-school activities and their personal preferences of technologies. Findings suggest that the fate of a supportive technology must be judged with a firm grasp of the learning culture that it is implemented.

The central argument of this thesis is that a sociocultural approach, based on Vygotsky’s work, allows embracing simultaneously both the individual and the social aspects of emotions. The thesis comprises two parts. Sociological and psychological literatures about the study of emotions are reviewed to show the difficulties that these disciplines have faced in accounting for both the physiological and the cultural aspects of emotions simultaneously. In the first part of the thesis, I build an all-embracing historical psychological approach that pulls together aspects of Vygotsky’s work in order to overcome those difficulties. In so doing, my investigation of what emotions ‘are’ has changed to acknowledge the need to investigate what emotions ‘do’ in social contexts and interactions. The study of emotions, I argue, needs to avoid their separation from the context in which they emerge to overcome the separation of individual and social aspects of emotions. The second part of this thesis consists of an exploration of the necessary traits for an adequate sociocultural study of emotions in the classroom. This involves the analysis of emotions as they feature within pedagogic practices that take place in four classrooms, through a detailed examination of video-recorded microsituations. Three foci are constructed to discuss situated emotions: context, social practice and microhistory. The empirical study offers the basis for two conclusions. First, through the data analysis I show diverse ways in which teachers accompany, encourage and ‘contain’ or ‘regulate’ emotions as part of the interactions that take place in classrooms. Second, I offer an outline of a sociocultural approach to the study of emotions which does not separate their individual and social aspects. Finally, I discuss some of the implications of this study for teachers’ practices and for future research.

The thesis presents empirical studies and reviews that support a shift from traditional classroom practices in the Primary school to those based in a teacher-child partnership developed through negotiation. The opening Chapter looks at the ontology of the contemporary classroom of the Primary school. It holds that reasons for the presence of largely directive practices can be found in teachers background and training and in society's dependent model of childhood. This focus is continued in Chapter Two in respect to research into motivational processes. Chapter Three presents two empirical studies looking at the nature of the directive classroom and the types of strategies that children use to cope with this phenomena. In Chapter Four negotiation is examined across a variety of domains, developing in Chapter Five a model of a negotiating classroom and examining the extent to which it can be said that children negotiate. Chapter Six presents three studies concerned with children's negotiating behaviour, the detailed nature of child-teacher classroom negotiating interaction and a sociometric perspective examining how children prefer to organize themselves. Study Six presents transcripts of negotiations between teacher and child with interpretive commentary. Chapter Seven follows a class examining the effects on children's academic performance while moving from a directive to a negotiating environment. Chapter Eight presents a study combining three classroom components to create eight classroom environments. It highlights poor independent teacherchild agreement on the elements within the classroom organization that produce the best / worst match on different criteria. It also outlines data indicating poor agreement between In-situ and later questionnaire data collection methods. Chapter Nine suggests that individuality of the child is a persistent theme throughout, particularly in types of curricular interaction and behaviour and that a movement is needed toward developing the negotiating philosophy into traditional classrooms.

The manner in which teachers teach is generally acknowledged to be controlled by various schemata which encapsulate all of what they "know" about teaching. The purpose of this study was to explore the nature and extent of the schemata of pre-service teachers in an effort to gain insights into the reasons why they behave as they do in the classroom; and from this to gain further insights into ways to improve teacher training. The study was based on in-depth case studies of four pre-service English language teachers in Singapore. Data collected included all of the lesson plans which they prepared during the 10-week practicum; transcriptions of four lessons observed by the supervisor-cum-researcher; and extensive textual information arising out of journals, pre- and post-conferencing of lessons, and interviews. Findings indicated that pre-service teacher behaviour during the practicum is largely a function of five major schemata related to their view of pupils, subject, methodology, school environment, and teaching in general, all of which influence individual teaching style. Classroom dilemmas may be seen as arising out of value conflicts which may exist between these various schemata. The research also revealed that lessons are structured as a goal-driven hierarchy comprising five levels of increasing pedagogical abstraction. The topmost level or (1) lesson agenda, representing the basic overall objective of the lesson, subsumes lower levels corresponding to (2) lesson phases which comprise basic instructional functions such as focusing, clarifying, reviewing, etc. (3) phase segments which represent the sequential steps involved in effecting a lesson phase; (4) segment chunks which comprise teaching cycles or other topic-related groups of speech acts; and finally (5) speech acts as the most primitive elements of classroom discourse. In addition to the planned elements of a lesson, various unplanned lesson interrupts occur during presentation of the lesson due to the need to maintain class control, make repairs to faulty instructions or explanations, give advice, or engage in informal interactions with the pupils. The manner in which preservice teachers handle these impromptu elements of a lesson is a major reflection of their "teaching style". At a more detailed level of analysis, classroom discourse parameters may be assigned to each speech act to characterise it in terms of teacher/class interaction, type of speech act, focus or aspect, degree of continuity with other parts of the lesson, and the teaching aids and materials being utilised at the time. Statistical analysis of these discourse parameters provides useful insights into other aspects of "teaching style". The above findings have various implications for teacher training methodology. Recognition of the role of schemata can help to promote self-awareness on the part of student teachers as to the nature of the factors which influence their teaching style. Explicit recognition and definition of the five pedagogical levels of the lesson hierarchy, development of a typology of lesson phases and interrupts, and a means of carrying out in-depth analysis of classroom discourse at the speech act level provide the teacher trainer with useful tools for the observation, evaluation, and discussion of pre-service teaching behaviour.

The thesis examines the related concepts of teacher knowledge, professionalism and identity through the lens of teacher research, and in the context of a teacher-research network. The mechanism for exploration was through teacher voice. As the research unfolded, what was revealed was that accessing teacher voice presented a major obstacle as teachers struggled to articulate their own views on knowledge, professionalism and identity, in part because there seemed to be no language to discuss such concepts. The question of discourse thus became a key theme. The research methods developed to address this issue include a card sort as a way of addressing the teacher silences: this approach revealed that teachers were able to engage with ideas around knowledge, professionalism, identity and research when given a language in this way. However, what emerged was far from a cohesive narrative but rather diverse and at times contradictory accounts of associated teacher beliefs and values. Faced with inconsistency and paradox, a new theoretical lens of post-modernism was used to explore the fragmented and splintered narratives which had emerged, and a different account of knowledge, professionalism, identity and research is offered.

The Mauritian Education system is a highly elitist and examination-oriented system where teachers in state secondary schools enjoy complete autonomy in the selection of their teaching methods. Despite education policies recommending learner-centred teaching (LCT) for a more inclusive, integrated and holistic approach to education (NCF, 2009, p. 7), most secondary education teachers generally use teacher-centred teaching (TCT) methods even after having learned LCT in professional teaching courses. In this study I examine how 30 professionally trained teachers from eight state secondary schools in Mauritius understand LCT and how they implement it in class. I also explore why those teachers choose this approach and which skills they think are necessary for effective LCT. This qualitative study uses a social-constructivist approach. It was carried out in two phases. In the first phase I looked into teachers’ understandings of LCT and in the second phase I observed teachers enactment of LCT in their classrooms. Data gathering tools were questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, class observations and debriefing sessions. The findings point towards two perspectives of LCT: the first perspective is a cognitive perspective, which is more achievement-oriented, and the second one is an emancipatory perspective, which focuses on re-engaging learners with their studies. The study also shows that their work contexts, their beliefs and the pressure of an exams-oriented system shape teachers’ understanding of LCT and in its actual form LCT in Mauritian schools is only partially learner-centred with a mix of LCT and TCT. The main contribution of this thesis is the acknowledgment of the kind of LCT that teachers can achieve without any form of support and the potential of our teachers in transforming our classrooms with authentic and effective forms of LCT provided continuing professional development and school support become regular features of our education system.

This study investigated how academic mentoring in two secondary schools in England could support personalised learning. The focus was limited to academic mentoring of year 11 students by members of staff, which aimed to improve academic performance. Academic mentoring was one of the strategies used after the introduction of school accountability measures such as league tables and school targets. School accountability is based upon the policies that are believed to have consequences for educational attainment. The overall picture from literature was that mentoring is difficult to define for specific contexts and is linked to many positive outcomes for mentors and mentees. However the link between achievement and mentoring is problematic due to the limited evidence and the complex interplay between different factors. With the introduction of personalised learning in schools, a new and additional dimension to mentoring was provided besides the enhancement of exam performance. The definition of personalised learning was imprecise and this provided schools with the flexibility to develop initiatives to meet their own needs and context. Despite the research on school based mentoring and its potential outcomes, little was known about how mentoring could support personalised learning beyond the advice and guidance suggested by different models of personalised learning by Hargreaves (2004a) and the DCSF (2008b). This was partly due to the lack of shared understanding of ‘personalised learning’ and which activities could be classified under this term. The aim of the study is to explore how academic mentoring can support personalised learning. The sub-aims are: 1. How do students and staff understand the purpose of mentoring? 2. How does academic mentoring help students achieve their targets? 3. How does mentoring work effectively for different types of students? 4. How do staff understand personalised learning? 5. What might a mode of mentoring look like to support personalised learning? This study adopted a qualitative approach in two case study schools. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with students, of differing abilities and gender, and in groups and individually, at the beginning of the mentoring programme and near the end to identify any changes or similarities in their responses regarding mentoring. Staff completed a questionnaire initially to inform the sample choice then semi-structured interviews were conducted regarding their understanding of the mentoring programme and personalised learning. Interviews and documentation were analysed using NVivo 8 software to identify themes in participants’ responses. An analysis of student and staff interviews, relevant documentation and a staff questionnaire yielded insight into the participants’ definition of mentoring, activities and perceived outcomes of mentoring, the logistics of the mentoring programme, and staff perceptions of personalised learning. The findings of this study suggest that personalised learning and mentoring are poorly understood concepts, but any suggested definitions tended to be context specific. The personalised learning agenda tends to be better understood at the senior leadership level as they are responsible for the integration of the policy into their school. The role of mentor is not viewed in isolation from the other roles a teacher inhabits. However a pre-existing relationship between the mentor and mentee was viewed as the foundation on which to build a successful mentoring relationship. The mentoring outcomes suggested by participants goes part way to preparing students for personalised learning, however there needs to be a consistent approach to ensure that students develop the necessary characteristics to enable them to take responsibility for their learning and progress.