Background: The government is keen for young people to remain in some form of education or training, at least until the age of 18. The government believes that the FE sector is central to transforming the life chances of young people and adults and to the prosperity of the nation (Department for Education and Skills, 2006). At present, the field of educational psychology is mainly funded by local authorities (British Psychological Society, 2009; Neville, 2009) and organised to address the needs of children and young people with the profession largely limiting itself to school age contexts. Research indicates that there are very few school and Educational Psychology Services around the world with a service that incorporate post-school aspects (Jimerson, Oakland, & Farrell, 2007; MacKay, 2009). The past 30 years have witnessed tremendous growth in training research, particularly in the last decade. There is now a wealth of research indicating that investing in teacher learning and professional development improves the quality of teaching. Research on the impact of CPD in education has also looked at the professional development of support staff, models of professional development (Starkey et al., 2009) and the range of initiatives in - iv - professional development to support school improvement (Van Kraayenoord, 2003). A review of the literature has found very little research into the area of post school Educational Psychology Services. Hellier (2009) reported that the provision of post school Educational Psychology Services is a new field of practice. Aim: The main aim of this study was to explore the perceptions and views of staff, from a specialist further education college, who had taken part in meetings to determine whether there is an impact on staff development by analysing their how they talk about the process and how they felt participating in the meetings. Method: Qualitative research methodology was adopted and a Grounded Theory approach was used. Focus group interviews were conducted with two groups of staff who had participated in Professional Development Group meetings to gather their views and opinions of the intervention. A semistructured interview schedule was used to guide the focus group interviews. The focus group interviews were transcribed and Strauss and Corbin’s (1990) Grounded Theory approach was adopted to analyse the data. Findings: The findings from this study indicate that the Professional Development Groups could be described as Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) which support Conversational Learning (Baker, Jenson, & Kolb, 2002). The findings also identify the conditions needed to support Conversational Learning. Implications of the results of this study, plus reflections regarding the research process are also discussed. - v - Keywords: teacher support groups, professional development, grounded theory, adult learning, conversational learning.

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This thesis looks at the influences on the academic career paths of new lecturers over a period of their first five years of employment in higher education. It is based in one single post-1992 university. An analysis offitty-three critical incidents articulated by seventeen early career academics reveals an individualised lived experience, showing the influence of teaching, the post-graduate certificate in learning and teaching, peers, research and publishing, and the institution to varying degrees. These five influences are linked to three role identities: the teacher, the educationalist and the academic. It is suggested that for these early career academics, there is little evidence of strong collegial and disciplinary structures and that relations with students and the teaching arena are much more central in defining the academic's everyday existence. It is also suggested that there is no automatic assumption of an academic role identity and that the transition from appointed lecturer to 'academic' is a step change rather than a progression.

This study was aimed at providing a better understanding of academic socialisation. Informed by a biographical research approach, the study explored the career experiences of 12 professors from 12 academic departments at a UK university through a series of indepth, semi-structured qualitative interviewing interviews, documentary analysis and a literature review. It set out to highlight how the academics in the study reflexively construct their academic identities and to provide some answers to the question: What is the history of how people have come to be professors? This study suggests that the transformation of these individuals' identities as academics was the outcome of active participation in various communities of practice throughout their careers. Academics continuously learn to position themselves within the various communities of practice that they choose to participate in. The professors' career stories reveal how they make sense and negotiate their identities as academics through accommodating with the power relations, ideology, cultures and ways embedded within the communities of practice of which they are members. Instead of looking at academics as passive participants, the findings provide evidence of individuals' voluntarism and agency in constructing their academic identities. This study contributes to the continuing discussion on academic socialisation through describing the experiences of academics moving through different stages in their careers. The in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interviewing approach offers a fuller appreciation of the challenges and opportunities involved in academic socialisation. Demystifying the career experiences of academics may benefit others in academia in navigating their future career undertakings.

This thesis investigates the experiences of internationalisation among academics from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, focusing on the role of internationalisation in the construction of academic identity, practice and approaches to university reform. The research is situated in the context of profound policy and ideological change in higher education systems in this region during the transition period, and in a wider discussion of global trends in higher education. The study adopts a qualitative and biographical approach, drawing on data from life story narratives elicited in interviews with twenty individual academics. Thus, the thesis presents an alternative look at internationalisation conceived not as an institutional policy but as individual experience responsible for the formation or reformulation of academic identity, values, dispositions and academic practices. The concept of individualisation is used as the main theoretical tool through which experiences of internationalisation can be studied and understood as elements of individual life story. The findings of this research concern the different ways in which a novel and hybrid or multiple set of academic identities and practices have been constructed on the basis of significant internationalisation experiences among academics located in particular (and partially shared) historical and policy contexts. Among the interviewed academics, internationalisation is found to be a very productive tool in the shaping of academic identity, practice and attitude towards university reform, which is reflected through a specific individualised life story.