The transition from training to practice and the early years of their career have been considered to be a major influence on teachers' professional behaviour. This transition may be particularly difficult in Malta because of the lack of professional support provided to teachers in their beginning years of teaching. The first section of the thesis traces the historical context of teacher education in Malta. A description of the Maltese system in the context of models of teacher education is followed by a review of the major issues in initial teacher education. The first years of teaching and the problems encountered by beginning teachers are discussed in the section dealing with the transition from training to practice. A case is made for the role played by perceptions of preparation and competence in teacher efficacy. The second section of the thesis investigates the relationship between the training experience and teaching competence as viewed by intending and beginning teachers. The relationship between perceived levels of preparation and competence is determined through a survey conducted amongst the whole population of final year students and recent graduates of the B.Ed. (Hons) degree course run by the Faculty of Education of the University of Malta. Teaching skills included in the survey are those which deal with the teaching of specific subject areas of the school curriculum, general teaching skills specific to the classroom situation and those which involve wider pastoral and interpersonal skills. The interplay between perceptions of preparation and competence for both student and beginning teachers is examined. The beginning teachers' competence in the teaching skills specific to the classroom situation and the teaching of the subject areas of the school curriculum is closely related to their preparation. Those skills which involve wider pastoral and interpersonal skills seem to stem more from their classroom experience than from the preparation they have received. Perceptions of preparation change with increasing experience, as does teachers' sense of competence in different aspects of the task. There was, however, little evidence for a 'Curve of Disenchantment'. A typology of the perceived competence of beginning teachers is identified. In the third section of the thesis a small observational study of the recent graduates of the teacher education course who were teaching in Primary schools, is presented. It demonstrates that the typology of perceived competence of the larger survey work is useful in distinguishing between teachers with different patterns of teaching behaviour. This study showed that a high level of perceived competence was related to certain patterns of classroom behaviour known to foster achievement gains in pupils. In the light of the findings on preparation and competence, suggestions for further research and for ways of supporting beginning teachers are put forward.

The digital media play an increasingly pervasive and influential role in children’s lives (Rideout & VJR Consulting, 2011). However, whilst there has been extensive investigation into the media use of this age--‐group in the USA and western Europe, there has been little research on the media use of children under the age of 6 in Taiwan. Therefore, Phase 1 of the study began by conducting an online survey (n=535) in order to situate the work undertaken in Phase 2. The results showed that TV dominates the media use of young Taiwanese children. Opinions differ regarding the effects of TV viewing on young children. Some child development specialists warn of the dangers of too much viewing, especially for infants (Christakis, 2008). However, more programmes are designed specifically for young children and many aim to support their learning. Evidence has shown that TV can have a positive impact on learning (Wright, Huston, Scantlin, & Kotler, 2001). The key issue is the extent to which children engage with the programme. The literature into children’s learning from media content indicates that the child’s engagement with the programme is strongly related to their understanding of the programme content (Calvert, Strong, Jacobs, & Conger, 2007). However, little is known about how parents can support their child’s engagement by co--‐viewing children’s TV programmes with them. Therefore, Phase 2 of the study aimed to explore in--‐depth this particular link between parental scaffolding and child engagement. Adopting a social constructive paradigm and using case study methodology, the researcher gathered video recordings of thirteen parent/child dyads of 3--‐ to 5--‐year--‐olds co--‐viewing the same episodes of two animated educational television programmes in natural conditions. In the analyses, measures of children’s engagement and thematic coding of the scaffolding behaviour of the parent were used to deductively and inductively analyse video recordings of the home observations. The findings indicated that there is a positive association between the child’s engagement and the level of parental scaffolding. It is suggested that dissemination of the findings from this study could help parents to understand and appreciate the value of parent--‐child co--‐viewing of educational children’s television programmes and promote children’s learning from the programmes.

Young children’s imaginative play about death and violence is contentious and under-theorised, often approached in normative terms where the play represents the source of or solution for wider ‘social problems’. In contrast, this study offers insights into the complex and shifting social ecology of death/violence play in one London-based nursery and clarifies the processes through which inequitable sociospatial relations are renewed, reworked, and even transformed in such activity. Utilising a critical ethnographic approach informed by critical realism and the social studies of childhood, the study engaged with children’s and adult educators’ perspectives and practices over a period of 1½ years through semi-participant observation, interviews, and multivocal video revisiting. The initial data chapters offer an analytic description of the setting, arguing that contradictory discursive, institutional, and material relations serve to render children’s death/violence play as ‘matter out of place’, paradoxically considered partially recuperable in relation to (boys’) development. The subsequent data chapters, informed by materialist feminist perspectives, point to the way imaginary characters became mobile resources for some children whilst inequalities serve to inscribe characters, including the monstrous, on others. The chapters point to the identifications players made with characters and narratives through a process of intense dialogic embodiment, in the process renewing sociospatial relations linked to normative heterosexuality, hegemonic masculinity, propertied relations, and flexible selves. This thesis, however, contends that ludic activity offers possibilities for overturning the status quo and enacting new social imaginaries. In the study setting, the death trope served as a generative metaphor to provoke caring touch, opening up social relations beyond economic calculation and gendered and generationed aspects of care. Play, it is argued, is a site of struggle, one that can offer a space of ethical-political engagement and radical potential, with implications for pedagogical projects concerned with equality and social transformation.

Children from families which do not share the language, culture or social class of the teacher are often viewed as 'disadvantaged' when they enter school. It comes as no surprise to teachers when these children experience problems in beginning reading in the classroom. The teachers' expectations are backed up by statistics showing that children from 'non-school-oriented' backgrounds are less likely to succeed at all stages in their school careers. Explanations for lack of progress are sought in the children's linguistic, cultural or cognitive deficiency or, most recently, in their inexperience of narrative and literature from home. Within this framework, children from 'non-schooloriented' backgrounds who step quickly and easily into reading in school can be explained only as 'exceptions' whose progress is beyond the teachers' control. In this study, I examine the origins of the teachers' beliefs. Using the example of two children from 'nonschool- oriented' families who make very different progress in early reading lessons as a starting-point, I question the validity of explanations grounded in the deficit of the child and the home. I then propose a new focus of attention; the interaction between teacher and child and their negotiation of the reading task during group and individual lessons. Through ethnographic and ethnomethodological approaches to studying the interaction between a group of children, their families and the teacher during the first eighteen months in school, I argue that a child's early reading progress does not depend upon entering the classroom from a 'school-oriented' home but an ability to engage in a specific pattern of dialogue and turn-taking with the teacher during early reading lessons. Ultimately, it depends upon the child being able to negotiate a joint interpretation of the reading task with the teacher.

The English government is significantly expanding the number of free nursery places for two-year olds; but little is known about what sort of training and professional development might help early years practitioners to offer appropriate styles of early education and care for such young children. This thesis explores a project to offer professional support and development to eight early years practitioners working with two-year olds in a highly socially disadvantaged area in London. The project began with the participants being trained to use a structured child observation tool, and developed through fortnightly group meetings over a three-month period. These provided an opportunity for the participants to engage in dialogue and critical reflection about their data. The data were interpreted using a qualitative research methodology drawing on grounded theory and constructivist grounded theory. Evidence from the study suggests that the participants developed skills in “keen observation” (Dalli et al. 2009), and that they used the data they had gathered to develop their understanding of the children’s learning. The findings from the research increase the visibility of the practitioners’ theories: in particular, their theory that their work enables the children to act more autonomously in the nursery settings. Both the methodological approach used and the small size of the sample mean that no generalisations can be made from these findings. However, widely-held assumptions that early years practitioners are lacking in the capacity to reflect on and theorise their work are not supported by this research. Future studies might continue to make practitioners’ own theories about their work more visible, in order to explore them more deeply. This would enable the further development of approaches to training which engage with and enrich the practitioners’ own thinking.

Collaborative group work in the primary classroom is considered to hold academic and social benefits for pupils, in providing opportunities for them to develop thinking through interaction with others. It is widely recognised, however, that teachers find it challenging to incorporate group work into classroom practice because of the difficulties pupils often experience with this form of learning. The aim of this research is to explore psychoanalytic theory as a way of thinking about the emotions, both conscious and unconscious, that might circulate in the group and affect the ability of group members to achieve the explicit task that has been set. I present four case studies of group work, involving children in a Year 5 class; each study illuminates aspects of the emotional difficulty children might experience, for example, the tensions of belonging to a group, the frustrations of learning with others and the anxieties that might be stirred. I argue that teachers and educational leaders would benefit from attending to the emotional significance of group learning, rather than invest in the ‘fantasy’ that suggests affect and cognition can be kept separate in encounters with learning and with others.

A key finding from the research into school effectiveness is that children's educational progress is highly dependent on effective teachers (Darling-­‐Hammond, 2000; DEST, 2005; NCQT, 2011). But, the literature into teacher effectiveness offers less literacy-­‐specific evidence. Nonetheless, successful literacy learning in Grade 1 is crucial as it has long lasting consequences on children's literacy development (Riley, 1996, 2007; Tymms et al., 2009), thus making the effective teaching of literacy an important focus of investigation. Researchers have also raised the issue of the inter-­‐relationship of effective teaching and the context within which it takes place (Hopkins and Reynolds, 2001; Campbell et al, 2003). Within the specific context of Cyprus there is a paucity of evidence into teachers' literacy practices in correlation with the insights from the effectiveness research. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate this particular context and use the insights offered in order to illuminate thinking about effective literacy teaching practice. In order to do so, it draws upon relevant bodies of literature, to identify the features of effective literacy teaching in Grade 1 classrooms. By using these teachers as a lens into teaching practices, the study explores what these teachers do and also how the omissions in their practice compare with the literature in the field, as well as what they do differently and which has not, as yet, been widely recognised. In addition, the study examines what teachers report they rely on and how they claim to have learned their practice. The study is located within a qualitative -­‐ interpretive paradigm, using thematic coding to deductively and inductively analyse classroom observations and interview data from fifteen teachers who were deemed to be effective. The findings offer an agenda to re-­‐consider both the content and pedagogy of effective literacy teaching in Grade 1. Also, the implications that arise for programmes of Initial Teacher Education and Continuing Professional Development are addressed.

The current study examines the pupil, classroom and school level characteristics that influence the attainment and the progress outcomes of young Maltese pupils for mathematics. A sample of 1,628 Maltese pupils were tested at age 5 (Year 1) and at age 6 (Year 2) on the National Foundation for Educational Research Maths 5 and Maths 6 tests. Associated with the matched sample of pupils are 89 Year 2 teachers and 37 primary school head teachers. Various instruments were administered to collate data about the pupil, the classroom and the school level characteristics likely to explain differences in pupil attainment (age 6) and pupil progress. The administered instruments include: the Mathematics Enhancement Classroom Observation Record (MECORS), a parent/guardian questionnaire, a teacher questionnaire, a head teacher questionnaire and a field note sheet. Results from multilevel analyses reveal that the prior attainment of pupils (age 5), pupil ability, learning support, curriculum coverage, teacher beliefs, teacher behaviours and head teacher age are predictors of pupil attainment (age 6) and/or pupil progress. Residual scores from multilevel analyses also reveal that primary schools in Malta are differentially effective. Of the 37 participating schools, eight are effective, 22 are average and seven are ineffective for mathematics. Also, in eight schools, withinschool variations in teaching quality, amongst teachers in Year 2 classrooms, were also elicited. Illustrations of practice in six differentially effective schools compared and contrasted the strategies implemented by Maltese primary school head teachers and Year 2 teachers. A discussion of the main findings as well as recommendations for future studies and the development of local educational policy conclude the current study.

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