TEACHER SUPPORT An exploration of the concept of teacher support, investigating how secondary comprehensive school teachers perceive their classroom needs and define the support required to fulfil their professional role. DIANA WILSON Through a combination of narrative and ethnographic research methods, this research explores how secondary comprehensive school teachers perceive their professional role and define the support which they need to fulfil their role in the context of their classroom work. Building on research into the professional lives of primary school teachers carried out by Nias (1989) and Woods et al. (1997) and on the work of Poppleton and Riseborough (1988, 1990, 1991), I argue from the data that secondary school teachers have a dual commitment to the communication of subject and to the individual needs of pupils. A perceived inability to fulfil successfully this dual role within the constraints under which they are working causes teachers profound stress and distress, and may lead to distorted behaviour and confrontational situations. I explore the disjuncture which occurs when the gap between the self which the teacher strives to project (the conative self) and the professional persona which pupils and colleagues perceive (the apparent self) becomes too great. Support is defined as provisions which facilitate the expression of the conative professional self. The literature on teacher support and the perceptions of fieldwork participants suggest that collaborative initiatives based on shared values and purposes offer potential for fruitful development. This is also explored in the context of a whole school discipline system and a small self-help group. Ambivalent attitudes towards both collaboration and support are uncovered.