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This microgenetic inquiry examines the emotional experience and meaning-making processes of a group of girls attending a mainstream secondary school on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Students come to the classroom with a baggage of prior experiences and it is the teacher's job to build on these experiences in order to instil confidence in the students to learn. Using a sociocultural approach, this investigation delves into the Vygotskian concept of perezhivanie or 'past emotional experience' and the role affective factors have in learning. Throughout this inquiry it is shown that the elusive phenomenon of perezhivanie can be grounded in evidence within the classroom setting. It provides an understanding of students' emotional life and recognises its importance within the learning context by examining the expression of students' inner feelings through their semiotic activities during lessons and their reflections on this activity after lessons. Through the use of film and photo stills students' semiotic mediation and meaning-making are investigated, discussed and evaluated analytically. Students' voices are solicited through a series of conversational interviews. This investigation argues that, by attending to the role of perezhivanie at individual, group and whole class levels, students can be helped to engage better in the lesson and to maximise learning process. By recognising and understanding in greater depth this historically under-researched Vygotskian concept, appropriate pedagogical approaches and experiences may be developed within collaborative teaching and learning.

This research explores the views of adolescents about mental health promotion in secondary schools. Gaining views of young-people about issues that affect them (Ofsted, 2005a) provides moral and legal benefits for individuals, organisations and the wider democratic community (Badham and Wade, 2005). There is limited research in this specific area (Roose, Yazdani and John, 2003). Background and rationale for this research reflect reports that 10% of young-people experience a mental health 'disorder' (Palmer, 2005). Adolescence being a particularly vulnerable phase demonstrated by statistical increases in mental health problems (National Children's Bureau, 2004): especially depression, anxiety, psychosis, eating and behaviour disorders (Goodyer et aI, 2009). To decrease numbers of young-people with mental health problems a need arises for promoting mental health as preventative initiatives. Schools are highlighted as organisations needing to promote healthy outcomes (Department for Education & Schools, 2004) including mental health promotion. A flexible design, using self-contained focus group methodology explores views of 26 adolescents (81 %) male and (19%) female: from a variety of cultural backgrounds and vulnerable groups. A funnel approach structured the five focus groups, each consisting of between three- eight adolescents (12-19 years). They were asked semi-structured questions in an informal, child-centred environment (Morgan, Gibbs, Maxwell and Britten, 2002). 4 A Grounded Theory analysis of the focus group material enabled the categories to emerge. The grounded theory is being developed into a whole school mental health promotion audit tool to enable these adolescent views to be heard in the future. The research concludes that in order for secondary schools to promote mental health, society and school communities need to provide active listening cultures and an inclusive ethos to embrace mental health promotion at a variety of levels. A need arises for adults to have knowledge and understanding of adolescent identity and development and to know the importance of relationships reflected in attachment theory.

Accessing and presenting the views of children and young people is considered one of the key roles of educational psychologists, however professional experience and a wide range of research has suggested the general absence of the pupil voice within education (Fielding, 2001). Critical examination of the way in which pupils and learning are constructed within education highlighted how current preferred constructions place pupils in a passive role and how this inhibits active pupil participation and therefore genuine professional consultation. This research set out to examine whether the use of teaching might be an effective way for educational psychologists to genuinely consult with pupils about their understanding of their own learning and their experience of school. Building on previous work which explored a number of different models of pupil participation, I selected teaching as a different way of consulting with pupils as teaching is a way of both drawing on and embedding professional consultation within everyday classroom practice. The process, based on an action research method, was to consult with pupils about their understanding of learning in their last year at primary school and at the time of the transition between primary and secondary school. I worked with three year 6 classes in three primary schools and followed them through to their secondary school during their first term in year 7. As a way of undertaking a dialogue about learning in school, I offered the pupils psychological information about a range of learning strategies, which they could consider and develop for themselves over a series of four sessions within the spring and summer term at primary school. I revisited the pupils' understandings of these learning strategies,their own learning and their experience of moving from primary to secondary school through three focus group sessions with the pupils in their first term at secondary school. The analysis of the research material arising from the work with pupils focused on the pupils' own words or records as a way of making their voice more audible. This analysis, using grounded theory, led to a number of emerging theories about pupils' understanding of their learning within school and their experience of transition between primary and secondary school. These theories suggested that the pupils were unused to any active consideration of learning and that their overriding view of school was one of resignation to `schoolwork'. The most important feature of school for the pupils was that of relationships and networks of support. I examined whether teaching was a useful process for professional consultation with pupils in relation to previously considered models of pupil participation. In so doing I suggested there is a mismatch between models of pupil participation and the reality of pupils' everyday experience of learning in school. I suggested, from the research, that pupils were afforded little opportunity to actively participate within school. I drew on activity theory (Engestrom, 1999) as a useful framework for analysing these mismatches. This framework suggested that the predominant construction was of pupils as passive recipients of learning and that the focus on learning outcomes actively inhibited the development of pupil participation. As educational psychologists, we were caught in these constructions. I went on to suggest that much of the psychological theory and models of practice, both professionally and research based, upon which educational psychologists draw or are expected to draw, could be seen as similarly limiting pupil participation. In conclusion I considered the implications of this research for the professional practice of educational psychologists in developing effective ways of genuinely consulting with children and young people. I suggested that educational psychologists needed to bring their own constructions of pupils and learning to the forefront of their practice. I proposed a model for professional consultation with pupils. This model of pupil participation and pupil empowerment is based on `activity theory' and suggests that genuine professional consultation with pupils requires an examination of how pupils and learning are constructed within the educational setting alongside consideration of appropriate tools and techniques of consultation. These tools and techniques might usefully include teaching, providing this was coupled with a careful consideration of the subsystems influencing pupil participation.

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The achievement of African-Caribbean boys in UK schools has been a cause for concern for decades, and there is still considerable evidence that they are not achieving as well as their contemporaries. This study seeks to listen to the voices of students themselves in order to fathom pedagogical approaches that engender educational success for Black male students. The study has been inspired by American literature that focused on successful pedagogy with African-American students. Recent trends within the UK have moved schools closer towards proscribed practices within classrooms, and the 'behavioural objectives' approach has assumed hegemonic authority. This study uses a philosophical typology from Hannah Arendt to critically examine the nature of pedagogy in secondary schools, and suggests an approach in `action' pedagogy that would bring greater success to Black male students. My students' discussions produced three key factors for such success: caring teacher-student relationships, going beyond the curriculum; feedback and 'push': and teacher expectations; they also produced characteristics of a prototype of a successful teacher for such young men. These ideas were combined with Arendt's to produce two types of pedagogy: labour and action. The latter is suggested as most helpful to Black male students, with its emphasis on agency for students and teachers; dialogue and coconstruction of knowledge; and creativity and diversity in the curriculum that values students' cultures, by both ethnicity and age. The conformity and accommodation demanded by a labour pedagogy, typified by the current technicist agenda, is unlikely to see many Black male students thrive. The importance placed on student-teacher relationships, at the heart of action pedagogy, will need teachers to pay as much attention to the values and attitudes that they convey towards young Black males as they might to the competences of their lesson plans and behaviour management strategies. Professional dialogue will be needed to help teachers handle the ambiguities of 'cool' adolescent behaviour and the call for care and encouragement in learning, but teachers and young Black male students can find creative paths to academic success and personal development through action pedagogy in UK secondary schools, where they have so often stumbled and failed along the way.

Objective: Emphasis is often placed on the negative psychological effects of boarding school on children under the age of 11, yet a literature review revealed that there has been little research into effects on boarding school adolescent males. Therefore the aim of this study was to begin to explore the meaning attributed to the experience of being an adolescent male in a boarding school focusing on the psychological effects of boarding and its impact on their individual experience of relating. Method: Six ex-pupils of a male boarding school were recruited. Participants were interviewed using a semi structured audio-recorded interview, covering early attachment experiences, school experiences and post school relationships. Interview data were qualitatively analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to study participants' experience from 'their perspective. Participants also rated themselves on an attachment questionnaire. Results: Five super-ordinate themes were identified: "Family tradition"; "coping through self - reliance"; boarding school male identity; "ease through etiquette v dis-ease in relationships"; "elucidation through process of past and present". Conclusions: The findings of this study highlight 1) the potential significance of how caregivers, pastoral and teaching staff relate to the male adolescent in an all-male boarding school. 2) that separation from father may be a key factor for the boarding school male adolescent. 3) that more research may be needed on how all-male boarding schools and the gender balance of their staffing impact on alumni's ability to relate to women.

The research focuses on the analysis of the self-perception patterns present among Spanish adolescents. The investigation of this topic is carried out by means of the development of a methodology adequate to deal with the shortcomings of existing approaches. The theoretic approach consists in the consideration of those adolescents —thirteen and fourteen years old students— as autonomous social agents who define their own personal strategies in a dynamic of interactions with their environment. This view of students as autonomous social agents is refined through the concept of a self-perception system which draws on some basic notions of systems thinking and cybernetics. Some self-perception systems show similarities which indicate the presence of distinct self-perception patterns. The detection and characterization of those patterns is the main aim of this research. The empirical basis of the research is provided by essays written by 116 students belonging to four state schools in Madrid. Those schools are located in four different socio-economic areas of that city. The common topic of the essays was "How do you see your life as a youngster, as a middle age person and as an elderly person?". The analysis of the conceptual content of those essays produces the specific concepts used by each individual. These data are then processed by means of a methodology called socio-semantic analysis, which combines Q-analysis and Multidimensional Scaling. The outcome of this methodology is a set of socio-semantic maps in which concepts and individuals appear located according to their socio-semantic distances. The interpretation of those maps allows for abstract different patterns of self-perception in the sample: profession centred pattern, a family centred pattern and a dual or conflictive pattern, which is characteristic of some girls. The sociological significance of the notion of self-perception patterns stems from the fact that the considerations of the specific patterns that are at work in a given social environment —in this case an educational environment— may be instrumental in explaining the behaviour of the agents acting within those environments.

This research is based on a study of the relationships and interactional processes which construct and maintain ‘popularity’ in secondary school. The study adopts an ethnographic approach, including group discussions, observations, and visual methods, in a secondary school in central England. The core argument is that ‘popularity’ is socially constructed within relationships, and this thesis develops a notion of ‘relational popularity’. In doing so, this study addresses three questions. Firstly, given the postmodern abandonment of the fixed self and critiques of the individualist focus of research, how can ‘popularity’ be understood from the framework of ‘relational beings’, and what impact does this have on the idea of ‘popularity’? Secondly, what micro-level ‘popularity’ work do students engage in to both construct and position themselves and others as ‘popular’? Finally, how does this conception of ‘popularity’ alter understandings of what the day-to-day experiences of ‘popularity’ in secondary school may be like? These questions are addressed through the analysis of rich interactional data produced through group discussions with year 9 students (aged 13-14). After discussing an analysis of popular and unpopular social groups, meanings and usages of ‘popularity’, the dominance of ‘the popular girls’, and in-group control and dominance processes, the notion of ‘relational popularity’ is seen to open avenues for more nuanced understandings of ‘popularity’. As such, the thesis argues for the need for more micro analyses of interaction in relation to ‘popularity’ in schools, to support key research which writes about the role of societal discourses in ‘popularity’. The thesis concludes that ‘popularity’ is not the achievement of popular individuals, but a collective achievement through ‘relational being’. Since ‘popularity’ is not something that anyone can achieve alone, this thesis argues that ‘popularity’ is not something that you are, or something that you do, ‘popularity’ is something that relationships do. The thesis demonstrates that within the schooling context multiple understandings of ‘popularity’ exist, and claims to ‘popularity’ are continually challenged and contested, which can alter understandings of ‘popular’ students and allow a consideration of areas of difficulty and vulnerability for students considered ‘popular’ (and ‘unpopular’). The conclusion draws together the theoretical, methodological and practical significance of this more nuanced understanding of popularity for further research and practice.