The research presented here considers the role of the teacher of reading in the child's first year of school. It was undertaken in an attempt to find out more about how teachers go about teaching children to read. The research was inductive in design and adopted an ethnographic methodology. The research was undertaken in two parts with five teachers in all providing case studies of practice. In the first part. the roles adopted by three Reception / Year One teachers were examined and the literacy tasks they provided for children were analysed. The results of this study led the researcher to question a) the focus of the classroom observation on predetermined aspects of practice and, b) the omission of the teachers themselves from discussion of their practice during the duration of the research. The secondp art analysesth e largelys pontaneousli,t eracyr elatedr esponsesm adeb y two further Reception / Year One teachers to the children in their classes and the comments these teachers made about their thoughts and actions in interviews after the teaching sessions. The findings include an analysis of the layers of concern that appeared to influence teachers in their interactions with children about literacy. Examination of these interactions also suggested ways in which teachers may adopt procedures that go some way towards compensating for the differences between home and school learning that have been identified by other researchers. These findings led to the development of a model of practice which shows teachers to be acting in both reactive and proactive ways. This view of practice led the researcher to question models of initial and inservice training for teachers of reading which are based on proactive models.

Prompted by the Labour government's proposal to introduce education on family relationships into the National Curriculum, this research project was set up to investigate how teachers portrayed 'family' within the classroom and the reactions that children had to the images that were presented. The intention was to highlight any problems that might arise from including 'family' into the formal curriculum. The fieldwork was conducted in three primary and three secondary schools. Two of each of the schools were located in the West Country and the remaining two, in order to give some ethnic and cultural balance to the project, were in the West Midlands. A total of sixteen teachers and forty children were involved. In each school, three topics or lessons that concerned 'family' were observed during the course of one academic year; this was followed by interviews with the teachers, to ascertain their intentions within the lesson, and with the pupils, to gain their reaction. Final interviews with each of the children encouraged them to reflect on what they had learned about 'family' during the year. Government documents concerned with family education suggest an agreement on the values on which family should be based and appear to regard family as an uncomplicated concept. The data collected, however, indicate that 'family' is regarded by teachers as a complex and sensitive subject that should be approached with caution. In addition pupils show a variety of reactions to the lessons, ranging from anger and distress to ready acceptance. The project's contribution to knowledge is therefore to demonstrate some of the complexities that are involved in teaching about 'family' and to inform one aspect of the ongoing debate on values education within Britain.