This dissertation uses a case study approach to investigate teachers' beliefs about the nature of reality (ontology) and knowledge (epistemology) within an International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program environment. The study explores the possible impact of these beliefs on teachers' approaches to teaching. An interest in teachers' perspectives regarding the nature of reality and knowledge emerged during modular work associated with a Professional Doctorate in Teacher Education with the University of Nottingham. The final modular assignment, prior to the onset of the research stage, involved a consideration of the effect that perceptions of reality, knowledge and truth have on a researcher's philosophy of research. Due to an increased awareness of the impact that these beliefs have on my own philosophy of research, I became interested in how similar beliefs might impact the personal philosophies and pedagogies of teachers. I chose to explore the beliefs and practices of teachers at the International School of Amsterdam (ISA), the school environment in which I work. The study is positioned within the constructivist-interpretive research paradigm. It therefore allows for the emergence of a holistic and contextualized understanding of teachers' beliefs and practices. In choosing this approach, I hoped to explore whether a consideration of teachers' beliefs could play a role in the design of future professional development opportunities at ISA. The research study involved the generation of teacher profiles for each of three respondents, who are all experienced international school teachers. The respondents teach Science, English Literature, and Spanish to middle year students at ISA, which is a private and well-established IB school that offers all three IB programs through English to the children of expatriates as well as to local Dutch children. Within this teaching environment curricula and assessment are concept and process oriented, and teachers are encouraged to incorporate constructivist approaches into their personal pedagogies. The generation and comparison of the teacher profiles helped to uncover the respondents' beliefs and practices in a comprehensive way. Each teacher was observed on several occasions and these observations were followed by lengthy conversations and semi-structured interviews that occurred over an extended period of time. During the follow-up discussions, teachers' ideas and preferences were aligned with contemporary literature that explores possible links between teachers' ontological beliefs, their epistemological beliefs and their teaching practices. The findings of the research indicate that the blends of constructivism preferred by individual teachers mesh well with their ontological beliefs and their epistemological beliefs. The universal concepts they were drawn to, their impressions of the nature of learners, and their view of the learning capacity of groups all seem to connect with their beliefs. The findings suggest that there is a need to take teachers' ontological and epistemological views into account when considering and designing professional development opportunities. These findings contribute to areas of research that explore the impact of teachers' ontological and epistemological beliefs on teaching practice. They also provide direction for further discussion, exploration and research.

This study examines the recent educational reform initiatives in North Cyprus with particular emphasis on (1) building head teachers' capacity to lead instructional development and organisational improvement, and (2) improving the system capacity to support head teachers in the effective undertaking of their roles. The study frames the current domain of headship in North Cyprus within the external system infrastructure in which head teachers operate, illustrates the national framework for building head teachers' capacity to lead, and looks at how the existing opportunities for leadership capacity building can be enhanced, along with the system infrastructure, to provide a context within which the enhanced capacity can be realised. The study employs a mixed-method design with an inductive drive, where the qualitative paradigm has a dominant and the quantitative has a supplemental status. Surveys, qualitative interviews, and documentary analysis were used to answer the research questions the study explores. Findings clearly show that the case of North Cyprus is an instance of 'vernacular globalisation'. Implemented in a very 'glocal' context in response to very particular problems, the reforms are influenced by local histories and narratives of the nation as much as by such global imperatives as the heightened need for up-skilled citizens. The study reveals that head teachers operate within a highly centralised system, which lacks infrastructure, a strong focus on teaching and learning, and credible monitoring and evaluation systems. It is common for heads to spend a significant amount of time dealing with bureaucratic and operational matters, and questions of instruction and professional development seem to be beyond their remit. This is a condition that needs to change. There are also significant problems with the professional development opportunities for head teachers that must be addressed. Keywords: Educational Reform, Educational Change, Educational Leadership, Capacity-Building, Education Policy

This study explores ways in which the experiences of long-serving teachers within three inner city schools can improve our understanding of factors that influence teachers to remain in the profession. The research is situated within a socio-political climate where there are concerns about teacher attrition in general and where the issue of teacher retention is perceived to be particularly acute in challenging schools. The thesis challenges the prevailing discourses surrounding inner city schools and the teachers who work in them by turning to the voices of experienced teachers and exploring their reasons for remaining in these schools. The research was conducted with twenty long-serving teachers within a qualitative research paradigm employing semi-structured interviews. The design of the research was influenced by Goodson's concept of the 'Valhalla of voice' (2003). The analyses of these data comprise a 'bricolage' approach, blending thematic analysis with a discourse analysis of the teachers' use of conceptual metaphors. The theoretical underpinnings for these analyses were inspired and guided by the data generated. Tonnies' concepts of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft (2001) have been influential and the thesis identifies locational and relational ties as important factors in motivating teachers to commit to working in challenging schools and the communities they serve. The study suggests that a more informed understanding of community context and of the 'funds of knowledge' (Gonzalez, Moll and Amanti 2005) that exist within that community enhances the experiences of teachers working within the community. Analysis of the metaphors used by the teachers provides insights into how they form their professional identities and respond to the demands of teaching in challenging schools. The study shows that dominant discourses around challenging schools and the teachers who choose to work in them need to be questioned and that there is not one homogenised way in which teachers experience their work. The study thus calls for policy-makers and researchers to find ways of recognising and valuing teachers' individual strengths and commitments in order to support retention in the profession.

Stober, Wildflower and Drake (2006) call for coaches to 'begin integrating evidence from both coaching-specific research and related disciplines, their own expertise, and an understanding of the uniqueness of each client ... into a coherent body of knowledge that applies to and guides coaching'. This study does this by looking into the work of the Nottinghamshire Solution Focused Coaching team and how teacher coachee view effective coaching. Q-methodology (Stephenson, 1953) is a Quali-quantalogical technique able to describe in detail the range of views around a topic. This research used Q-methodology to examine teacher views on effective Solution Focused Coaching with EPs. By-person factor analysis of the Q-sorts of 27 teachers suggested 3 different viewpoints on effective Solution Focused Coaching (SFC) and some key ideas held in consensus across the views. The viewpoints were found to differentiate across three themes; whether coaching involved developing action plans; where the goals for coaching emanated from; and the coachee's engagement with the confidentiality offered. The consensus statements showed a preference for a focus on strengths, skills, and what is helping at present; of receiving strength-based feedback; and on identifying elements of goals being in place. Working with client strengths has been highlighted in the therapy outcome literature and the study is theorized with reference to this and the concept of "therapeutic alliance". It is suggested that effective SFC might involve the EP constructing a "coaching alliance" and combining this with a focus on client strengths to provide a foundation for SFC. The descriptions of the viewpoints, and consensus ideas, are offered as resources for exploring the practicalities of such an approach. Whilst being the semantic and subjective products of human thought, the views operant in the study can be said to be "as real, as substantial, and as difficult to get around as any thing the natural world puts in our way" (Watts, 2007). Such a linguistic turn is expanded upon through exploration of educational psychology as social construction. Suggestions are made about how EPs could interpret social constructionism in their practice.

This study examines culturally diverse groups, teams formed by home students and international students completing group tasks in Higher Education, referred to as mixed groups. This investigation differs from previous studies, and hence contributes to the existing knowledge in the field, in that it combines observational data and the use of Activity Theory as an analytical framework for furthering our understanding of group dynamics and task completion of mixed groups. This research addresses four research questions: what are students' experiences of mixed group work? What are the group dynamics in mixed groups? How do students mediate during mixed group work? What factors influences task completion in mixed groups? The study is based upon two group case studies, consisting of a non-assessed written group task and an assessed group presentation. Both case studies involved postgraduate students within the same British university. Qualitative analysis of observation and interview data revealed that students had different experiences of their group work, even among co-workers. Few group interactions were related to discussing cultural issues, highlighting the limitations that mixed group work may have in fostering internationalisation. The group dynamics described include students' interactions around: achieving a common understanding of the task, sanctioning members and conflicts regarding tool use. Both home and international students mediated in task completion in the following ways: a) acting as sources of knowledge, b) helping other members to understand the activity, and c) helping others use and learn about artefacts required in the completion of the group task and other university activities. Factors that appeared to influence mixed group work (MGW) included international students' self confidence in their spoken English, familiarity, students' positioning of self and other colleagues, expected roles, task and assessment design, and students' engagement in clarification during task completion. Some of these findings are consistent with existing literature. Finally, Activity Theory (AT) as an analytical framework was found to be useful.

This thesis argues that Donald Winnicott's theory of transitional space and play casts new light upon the ontological dimensions of students' experiences of transition within Higher Education. Winnicott enables the illumination of the different ways that students might react, cope and personally develop when faced with similarity, difference and change, demonstrating this can have powerful influences upon the facilitation and hindrance of individuals’ transitions. The qualitative case study, conducted at a Russell Group University, involves an in depth exploration of eight second-year undergraduate Biological Science students' transitional journeys during their study of one module. The students' study included designing their own experiments, working with others, presenting orally, analysing their data and individually writing a scientific report, as part of a creative group project. I argue throughout this thesis that this module invited learners to engage in adult, transitional academic play spaces. Here, learners had the freedom to risk putting him or herself into relation with sameness, uncertainty, difficulty, challenge and change. The study reports that the potential and enjoyment of transition, as Winnicott proposed, might be only fully realised when the conditions are 'good enough' in the mind of the learner. This involves achieving a delicate balance between firstly, the provision of a teaching and learning environment that provides the freedom and opportunities to engage with transition and secondly, the capacities of students to engage with change which might include, toughness, resilience and a will to learn. In the light of the empirical findings it is argued that students' transitional journeys are both idiosyncratic and complex and students emerge in different ways. It is found that at this stage in their degree study all students required the sensitive support of teaching staff in order to have the confidence to engage within transitional space.

The 21st century is considered an era of information explosion. Information and communication technology is developing fast and penetrating into everyone's life and daily living. Governments of countries all over the world have invested huge amounts of money into the development of ICT in teaching and learning over the past 20 years. The Hong Kong government, with no exception, has invested huge sums of money alongside the declaration of initiatives for implementing the use of ICT into teaching and learning. However, the progress is still lagging behind the expectation despite the money and human resources invested. The implementation involves not only the introduction of a tool in changing classroom practice and pedagogy, but also a paradigm shift. The complexity of change, as Fullan (2001) describes it, is far beyond people's expectations. This multi-phase single case study on the implementation of using ICT in teaching and learning in a secondary school in Hong Kong attempts to look at the process of change through the lens of Activity Theory (Jonassen & Rohrer-Murphy, 1999). It is argued that Activity Theory, as a dynamic and evolving body of thought, is a suitable framework for analysing change by describing and comparing the components of the system, the focal school, at different phases, in order to understand the change process or development. The concept of contradiction which is the driving force for development is given serious consideration in order to more fully understand teacher change. By presenting the focal school as a chronological series of activity systems at the three phases, comparisons of the components, subject, object, outcome, tools, rules, division of labour and community are studied, using the framework suggested by the Activity Theory. A thorough analysis of the relationships between the components helps to capture a holistic view of the activity system and the change process. Factors that might have facilitated or inhibited the change are identified along the way and interpreted in order to better understand the cultural and historical factors that have caused the present situation. An Activity Theory analysis of the contradictions that have driven development at different phases helps to reveal the change process and factors affecting the implementation.

In this project I explore two teachers’ experiences, as ‘key informants’, of educational technology in a UK inner-city comprehensive school. I examine the meditational role of technology in these teachers’ activities and suggest that such an examination can improve what we understand about educational technology at the school. I discuss how technology is socially shaped and therefore not neutral, and of technologically mediated change being ecological change (Postman, 1992). I examine discourses of ‘techno-romanticism’ which locate technology as a transformational panacea for educational challenges - discourses which seemingly ascribe technology its own agency. This thesis challenges such viewpoints, and the technological hegemony they support, by examining technology not as state-of-that-art but as the ‘state-of-the-actual’ (Selwyn, 2010a). The project was an in-depth examination of the experiences of two key informants using a case study, ethnographic research design, with interview and observational methodologies generating qualitative data. I have positioned the project as both critical in its examination of technology, and sociocultural in its epistemology – in particular drawing on Sociocultural psychology (Wertsch 1991) and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as the theoretical framework, and ‘activity theory’ (Engeström, 1987b, 1999a) as the analytical lens. The analysis has two stages – the first being a ‘grounded theory’ (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) coding and categorisation of contextual data; the second the modelling of activity systems, and the identification of contradictions and conflicts in those systems. My analysis is of the key informants’ experiences, provides a reading of how technology mediates not just the ‘what’ of these teachers’ activities, but also the ‘how’ and ‘why’. I challenge the dominant discourses and assumptions of the inevitability of technological improvement. In doing so, I call for the educational technology research community to be both sympathetic toward what technology means for these teachers’ professional identities, and critical of overly technocentric school environments.

The main aim of this research was to investigate how children's collaborative storytelling could be scaffolded through technologically mediated resources and how these resources can be made more effective by scaffolding around them. The benefits of providing children with resources, encouraging them to construct their own representations and to interact with each other while they make their story were investigated with respect to the quality of their subsequent storytelling. The first piece of work presented in this thesis is a qualitative case study aimed at exploring how the collaborative storytelling task could be resourced with and without technology, as well as the effectiveness of scaffolding around the technology through adult guidance, and whether the potential benefits could be maintained once the additional guidance was withdrawn. Although the study found that the (technology mediated and non-technological) resources provided did not support for children's engagement in discussion and storytelling, providing scaffolding around these resources was effective at promoting discussion and good collaborative storytelling. Specifically, adult guidance designed to encourage children to articulate their story ideas through questions was shown to benefit children's engagement in discussion and the quality of their collaborative storytelling. Moreover, the children continued to engage in discussion and to produce well structured, rich and coherent stories once the additional guidance was withdrawn. The second study presented in this thesis was of an experimental nature. It built on the findings from the case study by employing more structured resources as well as making the task more ecologically valid for the children through the introduction of a real audience and the matching of the participants with familiar peers (i.e., school mates). The study investigated the benefits of encouraging children to construct their own representations by comparing a task where children were presented with pictures they could manipulate and a task where children were encouraged to construct their own dynamic drawings over these pictures. The study found that children's collaborative stories were longer when the children were encouraged to construct their own dynamic drawings. The stories were also qualitatively better, as they contained more structural elements and were richer in style. However no differences were found between the stories in the two tasks with respect to extent to which children were able to build coherently on each others' contributions. This is argued to have been due to the fact that little shared understanding was established among the children about their collaborative story as a result of a lack of engagement in interactive discussion. The third study was also experimental in nature, and it investigated the benefits of complementing children's construction with scaffolding specifically aimed at encouraging them to discuss their story as this was being made. The study compared a task where children making a story together were encouraged to construct their own dynamic drawings with a task where they were also required to use a set of question prompts to discuss their ideas. It was found that when they were required to engage in reciprocal questioning, the children discussed their story more. The quality of the children's collaborative stories was also better when the children were supported through question prompting. Not only were the stories longer, but they also contained more structural elements and were richer in style. Moreover, when they were telling their stories, the children built more coherently on each other's contributions. Finally, a correlation was found between the number and type of questions asked by the children while they were making their stories together and the quality of the stories produced. These findings suggest that the engagement in discussion combined with the construction of dynamic drawings encouraged children to articulate and elaborate on their story ideas, therefore enabling the production of longer and better stories. Also, the children's engagement with each others' ideas may have facilitated the establishment of a shared understanding about the collaborative story, thus making it possible for children to build on each others' ideas during storytelling.

Teacher motivation can be conveniently interpreted within a framework of motivation theories that are related to the fulfilment of needs (Herzberg, 1968, Maslow, 1954, McClelland, 1961). This thesis argues that mid-career teachers’ motivation is context-specific and relates to the fulfilment of teachers’ needs. Grounded in phenomenology and drawing on semi-structured interviews with twelve mid-career teachers, six headteachers, and six focus groups with thirty-eight students in six lyceums in Cyprus, this qualitative study presents the factors that can motivate secondary teachers with 11 to 20 years of teaching experience to become (more) active in their schools. These factors which constitute the key findings of my study and the contribution of my study to the field of teacher motivation are: the ‘moderators’: recognition, inspection for evaluation, personal life, and experience; and the ‘needs motivators’: satisfaction, collaboration, fairness, and decision making. The ‘moderators’ may determine the extent to which teachers’ ‘needs motivators’ are fulfilled. This study makes a significant contribution to policies designed to enhance leadership practices related to the motivation of mid-career teachers.