The study investigated the perceptions of children and parents relating to the Forest School initiative. The aims of the research were to explore children’s and parents’ perceptions of Forest School and consider the potential influence Forest School can have on children’s learning and development. The study explored these views within a setting that had implemented the Forest School initiative at a whole primary school level for a number of years. A qualitative approach was taken and the study used thematic analysis of key concepts and codes. Emerging themes were drawn from children’s and parents’ comments and main themes were identified. The study found that children were able to communicate the fun, excitement and enjoyment they had experienced when talking about Forest School as an initiative. Children conveyed a caring attitude and respect for nature and the outdoor environment and that it was important for them to look after their surroundings. Parents expressed that they valued the initiative and that supporting their children’s education at home was important. However, they felt that children took the Forest School initiative for granted and perhaps saw it as a privilege. In relation to children’s learning, a key theme was children’s apparent enthusiasm and desire to learn. The Forest School experience enabled children to develop and reinforce a multitude of key skills. With regard to children’s development, references were made to a growing sense of awareness and maturity. Concepts of trust and responsibility were conveyed with some reference to a growing sense of freedom being afforded to children as they get older. Further research could seek to establish which professionals are aware of the existence of Forest School and gain their perceptions of its potential benefits. Also, further exploration focusing on the difference in Forest School experiences between the Foundation Phase and Key Stage 2 could provide interesting results. This takes into account the perceived impact the Forest School initiative appears to have contributed to, in relation to the children’s and parents’ perspectives and the context of this study.

Whilst outcomes for Children Looked After have extensively been discussed (Millward, Kennedy, Towlson, & Minnis, 2006; Rees, 2012), and the importance of school in the lives of these children acknowledged (Greig et al., 2008), less attention has been paid to the views and experiences of teachers of Children Looked After (Goddard, 2000). It is accepted that Emotional Labour (Hochschild, 1983) is commonplace in the teaching profession (Isenbarger & Zembylas, 2006) but no research has investigated how, and to what extent, teachers experience Emotional Labour during interactions with Children Looked After. The literature review explores research relating to outcomes for Children Looked After and the role of adults in supporting this group of children. The concept of emotion in the teaching profession, teachers’ experiences of emotional management and conceptualisations of Emotional Labour theory are also explored. Fourteen Key Stage Two teachers of Children Looked After participated in the current study by completing semi-structured interviews with a researcher. Results indicate that participants experience Emotional Labour during interactions with Children Looked After and that this may be mediated, to a degree, by factors including role constructions, perceptions of support and self-perceived role facilitators such as perceptions of a professional duty. Findings are discussed in relation to the need for Educational Psychologists to understand better the impact of Emotional Labour on teachers of Children Looked After. Correspondingly, the provision of supervision and systems level support for teachers of this group of children are explored.

This research aimed to establish the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based intervention facilitated by a trainee educational psychologist and a class teacher, with a class of Year Four children. The study took a pragmatist approach to research, whereby a mixed method approach was considered the best way to address the study’s research questions. The Year Four children in a mainstream primary school participated in a six week mindfulness-based intervention, with activities from ‘60 Mindful Minutes’ (The Nurture Group Network, 2014). Quantitative data were collected and analysed in relation to the children’s social and emotional well-being, levels of mindfulness, and observable behaviour (peer relationship difficulties, prosocial behaviour, conduct problems and hyperactivity and inattention) at four time-points. Qualitative data was collected at follow-up: the class teacher was interviewed and the children were asked to provide written feedback. Both the quantitative and qualitative data indicated that the children became more “mindful” after completing the intervention. Additionally, positive effects for their social and emotional well-being were found. The intervention was well-accepted by the children and their class teacher, and evidence was found at follow-up for the maintenance of mindfulness practices. The findings provide positive implications for practice, in regards to educational settings and educational psychologists.

This thesis is formed from two papers: a systematic literature review and an empirical research study. The first, a systemic literature review, explores and critically discusses the current research into acculturation, specifically research into acculturation approaches adopted by children of minority groups and their families and perceptions of the majority host group. It further considers research focusing on minority group members of Muslim faith. It critically explores the effect of acculturation approaches on prosocial adaptation in children and on academic achievement or school success. The second, an empirical research study, explores the acculturation approaches adopted by children of Muslim faith from four different Arab ethnicities (Somali, Saudi, Yemeni and Libyan), as well as their perceptions of the approach to acculturation adopted by their families and White British peers. Prosocial adaptation and academic progress was also explored in order to identify any correlations between the approach to acculturation and adaptation. This small exploratory study did not find any relationship between the approach to acculturation (of self and outgroup) and prosocial adaptation and academic achievement. However, findings tentatively suggest that children of Libyan and Yemeni ethnicities adopt less co-evolved approaches to acculturation and also perceive their families and White British peers to ascribe to less co-evolved approaches to acculturation. It also found positive correlations between resilience and academic progress and between age and level of isolation and loneliness. Limitations of this exploratory study are discussed and recommendations made for further research. Implications for the practice of educational psychology are presented.

This thesis reflects the voices of 9 to 10 year-old primary school children in Iran and England. The findings were collected from 81 Iranian pupils within five single-sex primary classrooms and 41 English pupils in two primary classrooms. The study is mainly focused on Iranian pupils and their views. However, since all the terms used in this study originated within the Western education system, it was prudent to undertake the study in England too. It aimed to deepen understanding of the concepts as well as to have a better reflection on my findings in Iran. In order to listen to the voices of pupils, two methods of data collection were applied: participant observation and individual semi-structured interviews. As a participant observer, I facilitated six hours of workshops with each classroom adopting the community of enquiry as my pedagogical method. The selected stories of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ were used as a ‘springboard or trigger’ to facilitate the classroom inquiry. The findings suggest that the stories of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ may enable children’s voice in four ways. First, stories engaged children in discussion on topical issues that matter to them. Second, they open up space for imaginative journeys and help children to ‘go visiting’ different views of story characters. Third, these stories contain astonishment which may foster children’s imagination. Finally, they nurture moral reasoning by picturing moral dilemmas. The findings also revealed that building of a reciprocal relationship between teacher/pupils and pupils/pupils is required when giving voice. In addition to this, it was recommended to transform a classroom into a shared space where all the children can be seen and heard.

This thesis investigates the potential of the arts, and drama in particular, to contribute to the personal, social and emotional well-being of primary school children. It is based on a six-month fieldwork in two educational institutions in Cyprus; a Primary School and a Youth Theatre. I conducted a series of drama workshops with 46 children aged 6-13, in order to examine whether and how their engagement with drama led to benefits associated with the following aspects of their well-being: Happiness and pleasure; sociability, social skills and skills of working with others; self-esteem, self-confidence and sense of achievement; beauty; and children’s voice. I have decided to focus on these, among many others, because when recent official reports in the UK and Cyprus suggested that the well-being of children is under threat, they translated the phenomenon into terms that fall into these categories. Additionally, while looking at the data generated during my fieldwork, I realised that they pointed strongly to these directions. The recent interest with well-being has led governments in the UK and Cyprus to invest in the designing and implementing of special educational programmes that aim to help children develop their social, emotional and behavioural skills. These programmes are Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) in the UK, and Social and Emotional Education (SEE) in Cyprus. Yet a number of critical reports have pointed out that the very programmes designed to address the well-being of children, are actually posing the risk of undermining it. These criticisms focus on their ‘target-driven’, ‘management-by-objectives’ approach, that has been evaluated as having had little substantial impact on student welfare. In my thesis, I will argue for an alternative understanding of children’s well-being; one that can be achieved in a more natural, organic way, through their participation in drama and the arts, and through their taking pleasure in aesthetic experiences. I will mount my argument using practical evidence from my research, which made use of the methodologies of ethnography, case study and reflective practice, and which implemented the methods of participant observation, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires, practitioner’s journal, and drama conventions as research tools. However, it is important to note that the approach of addressing well-being through drama and the arts is not without its problematic aspects. It invites a different set of challenges and implications to those of SEAL and SEE, some of which conflict with general pedagogical approaches. For example, my findings suggest that youngsters flourish on a personal, social and emotional level when they are allowed to engage with horror fiction and boisterous play. These are areas that teachers and parents might understandably perceive as crossing the boundaries of what is permissible and what is not within a classroom context. Whereas I am not denying that these approaches involve certain risks, in my thesis I propose a classroom pedagogy that can help deal with these challenges. As it will become evident throughout my thesis, issues relating to the correlation of drama to the personal, social and emotional growth of children are not technically straightforward. It is a multi-layered and more complex relationship than what the immediate responses to it might be. What I hope to have achieved is to have unpicked some of the complex issues and limitations arising from this relationship, and to have offered certain pedagogical suggestions that can make flourishing through participation in drama and the arts possible for students.

There is evidence to suggest that age (natural maturation and informal experience) and schooling (formal instruction at school) have differing effects on the development of cognitive skills between the ages of 5 and 7. There is also evidence that children who start learning how to read later in childhood make faster progress than those who start earlier in childhood. However, previous studies on reading development have typically confounded age with length of schooling. The current thesis investigates the separate role of each on the development of early literacy and related skills by comparing matched groups of children differing in either exposure to formal reading instruction or chronological age. Two longitudinal studies are presented, with seven key findings. Chapter 2 presents a cross-sectional study (n = 93) comparing a group of later-schooled 7 year olds with two control groups at the beginning of their first year of reading instruction (earlier-schooled ‘reading controls’ and earlier-schooled ‘age controls’). First, it was shown that vocabulary and short-term verbal memory skills developed with age, not schooling. Second, it was found that phoneme awareness can develop in the absence of formal reading instruction, and that this was more likely to happen in older than younger children. Chapter 3 presents a longitudinal study (n = 61) following the progress of the first two groups from chapter 2; a group of Steiner-educated 7 years olds (later-schooled group) and a group of standard-educated 4 year olds (earlier-schooled group) during their first two years of formal literacy instruction. Results showed that the older age and superior reading-related skills of the first group did not lead to faster progress in reading, and in fact this group showed worse progress in spelling. The good progress of the earlier-schooled group was attributed to more consistent and high quality phonics instruction. By comparing the predictors of reading and spelling in the two groups presented in chapter 3, chapter 4 showed that the skills underlying literacy development were similar in older and younger beginning readers, but that instructional emphasis on letter-sound knowledge in the earlier-schooled group reduced its power as a predictor. Chapter 5 used mediation analyses to show that letter-sound knowledge led to phonological awareness, which in turn led to reading in the earlier-schooled children, an effect which was attributed to the method of synthetic phonics instruction administered to these children. No significant mediation was shown in the later-schooled group. Chapter 6 presents a longitudinal study (n = 45) of the first two years of schooling in a standard school using the cut-off design. Results revealed that a dynamic measure was more effective than a static measure for measuring phoneme awareness in young children. Finally, there was an effect of both age and schooling on the development of phoneme awareness and early reading and spelling skills. These studies demonstrate that age-related factors in addition to schooling play a significant role in the development of reading-related skills. However, although there was evidence of an age effect on literacy skills during the first year of standard schooling (chapter 6), there was only limited evidence of such an effect over a larger age range (chapter 3). In conclusion, it is suggested that concerns that age 4-5 is too early to learn to read are unfounded, and that a delay in school entry age will not necessarily lead to benefits in the acquisition of reading.

Emotions have been found to be intertwined with many aspects of the learning process (Hinton & Fischer, 2010; Linnenbrink, 2007; Meyer & Turner, 2006; Pekrun, Frenzel, Goetz & Perry, 2007). For some children emotions appear to have a debilitating effect on their effort, persistence and problem-solving and can lead to task avoidance and self-defeating behaviours (Linnenbrink, 2007; Tyson, Linnenbrink-Garcia & Hill, 2009). The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the impact of a four-week whole-class intervention designed by the researcher to promote pupils’ emotion regulation in the classroom. The study uses a social cognitive framework (Bandura, 1986) and draws on theory and research in the inter-related fields of appraisal theories of emotion (Frijda,1986), the control-value theory of achievement emotions (Pekrun, 2006; Pekrun, Frenzel, Goetz & Perry, 2007), implicit theories of ability and achievement goal orientation (Dweck, 2000; Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Pintrich, 2000), the dual-process model of self-regulated learning (Boekaerts, 2011) and the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998; 2002). The research took place in two London primary schools with 166 Year 5 pupils (mean age 10.4 years) and four class teachers. For the quantitative part of the study, a non-equivalent groups pre and post experimental design with a waiting list control group was used. The qualitative part of the study involved questionnaires completed by 113 intervention pupils and the four class teachers. Inferential statistical analysis revealed a statistically significant effect of time on intervention pupils’ incremental theory of ability, mastery goal orientation and use of the cognitive reappraisal strategy. The perceptions of pupils and teachers of the impact of the intervention were explored using thematic analysis. The findings from both phases were merged to answer the overarching research question. Implications for educational psychologists and educators are discussed and suggestions for future research are made.

This study examines four restorative justice (RJ) conferences which took place during one term in an urban primary school. Although there is much research on the effectiveness of RJ, there is apparently no research to date which looks at the workings of RJ in terms of how it is co-constructed in situ by the participants. This study uses conversation analysis (CA) to document and inspect how the conferences work. Findings demonstrate the potential of CA to generate rich information about the mechanics of RJ conferences in schools and are used to suggest that this type of analysis on a larger scale could contribute to greater understanding of why such a highly verbalised intervention works, despite the likelihood that pupil-participants may be at an elevated risk of speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). It is also suggested that teacher talk has great potential to support children’s communication skills during RJ conferences, by using and shaping talk to encourage pupil reflection on psychological states. As such it may be one of the few interventions to address SLCN and behaviour simultaneously.

Working on What Works (WOWW) is a solution-orientied classroom management programme which targets both teachers and students, aiming to improve behaviour and relationships within the classroom (Berg and Shilts, 2004; 2005). The intervention is delivered over 10 weeks with the support of a WOWW coach. It centres on complimenting, goal setting and scaling. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the impacts of WOWW when it is adapted from a whole-class intervention to a small-group intervention. The small group in the present study were five children in Year 2 with internalising and/or externalising behaviour difficulties, as identified by their class teacher. The research employed a case study design to explore the effects of the adapted WOWW intervention on the children's behaviours and to investigate participants' perceptions of WOWW. The study used both quantitative and qualitative measures, including classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, questionnaires and ranking and rating activities. Previous research on WOWW is limited, but indicates positive effects on teacher confidence and teacher perceptions of student behaviour. The findings of the current study suggest positive trends following the adapted WOWW intervention; the children's on-task behaviour increased while the teacher's ratings of their inattention, aggression/disruption and anxiety all decreased. Perceptions of the intervention were positive and the teacher commented on the significant impact WOWW had on the group of children. The findings support previous WOWW studies and suggest its possible utility as a classroom intervention.