The research reported in this study is located in a major curriculum reform programme commissioned by the Cypriot government and introduced into all public primary schools in September 2011. The study has a specific focus on teacher professional identity in changing times, not least through examining how teachers engage with an external intervention. The study identifies and deploys conceptual tools to examine how and why teachers have been positioned through this reform, and how there is a need to recognise their role as architects and key agents to curriculum reform policies. This research uses a case study approach and operates on three levels. At the micro level, I report on four primary school teachers’ professional lives utilising multiple sources of evidence. At the meso level, I locate these four teachers into a wider context by reporting on data collected from 308 questionnaires distributed to teachers in 29 schools before the implementation of the reform programme and a year after. Finally, at the macro level I report on the national policy context by looking at documents and interviews with two purposively selected curriculum coordinators. Research data revealed that teachers’ professional identity and its underpinning constructs such as emotions, job satisfaction and professional commitment, autonomy, and confidence were constantly challenged and negotiated within the changing educational setting. Contextual and professional factors were found to affect to a great extent teachers’ identity. The unfolding of the research findings derived from the three levels of this research and the use of Foucauldian governmentality as a theoretical lens led to the exposition of the power relations embedded in teachers’ professional lives and contributed to the further analysis of teachers’ identity within educational policy. The case is made that the complexity of professional identity needs to be taken into account by reform designers because teachers are the ones who embrace, reinterpret and develop such efforts. The way and degree to which teachers understand, adjust, perceive and enact on reforms are affected by the extent to which these innovations interact with and challenge existing identities. This research project examines how policy interplays with practice as well as how teachers in a highly centralised system experience and respond to changes in their professional lives, what constitutes, shapes, supports and undermines their practice, thus, making a contribution to the evidence and theory base for the educational policy field. The study enriches the international literature on professional identity and fills in the gaps with respect to teachers’ professional identity at a time of system wide change at a national level in Cyprus. Finally, there is a methodological contribution as it concentrates on primary teachers and utilises methods which are not widely used as the majority of undertaken research is based mainly on surveys and interviews and focuses on secondary teachers.

Phonemic awareness has been identified as an essential precursor to reading. Many children suffer from a condition called central auditory processing disorder. Students suffering from this disorder have difficulty distinguishing between phonemes. This study was conducted to determine the effectiveness for developing phonemic awareness skills in early readers by using a computer program designed to enhance the phonemic awareness skills of students. During the 2001-2002 school year, students located at two Kingsport elementary schools were administered the Brigance Comprehensive Inventory of Basic Skills pretest and posttest. Based on the results of the pretest and posttest data, it was determined that there were no significant differences between students receiving the specialized phonemic awareness training as compared to a probabilistically equivalent group of students never having received the specialized phonemic awareness training.

This mixed-methods replication study was conducted to develop further understanding of the professional perceptions of educational leaders as to the fairness and impact of Race to the Top reforms concerning teacher evaluation and compensation on student achievement and growth. Graduate students in education and educational leadership from a target university were selected to complete an electronic survey to collect quantitative and qualitative data for analysis. Quantitative results from the electronic survey revealed limited diversity in professional perceptions of the five identified components of RTTT based upon professional classification or percentage free and reduced lunch population at the school sites where assigned. Among the identified RTTT components, the component that provided for the use of school- or team-level VAM scores as part of the evaluation and compensation system was consistently viewed as the least fair and least impactful by respondents. Analysis of the qualitative data revealed a number of themes that effected respondents' professional perceptions of the RTTT initiative. The use of a value-added model in RTTT reforms, the variables considered by the model, and communication and implementation problems associated with the reforms were the central areas of concern among survey respondents. This study provided follow-up data to Windish's 2012 study and showed a negative general trajectory of the professional perceptions of educational leaders related to this high-profile, national educational reform effort.

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