This research aimed to investigate the starting school transition by exploring how the transition from home and/or nursery was being understood, interpreted and experienced by school staff, parents and children. Furthermore, it aimed to explore the discourses that surround the transitional experience and gain an understanding of how they may impact upon the daily experience. It found that the parents and children socially constructed the transition using the discursive notion of a ‘good’ school child (Thornberg, 2009) which was understood to represent one who is able to follow the rules, carry out the work and listen to adults. Additionally, the parents appeared to be drawing on a number of discourses (e.g. ‘good’ parents and ‘pushy’ parents) that impacted upon their overall experience of the transition and which also impacted their understanding of what the concept was about. This is because the discourses meant that the parents were peripherally positioned (Davies and Harré, 1990; 1999) within the child’s transitional experience, even though they are positioned within the wider schooling discourse as being equal partners (DfE, 2010b; 4Children, 2015). During the transitional experience, three discursive practices were observed that helped the children understand what a ‘good’ school child was and how he or she was being constructed. These were the three R’s of transition: the use of school routines, school rules and the reduction of the children’s rights. These disciplinary tools (Foucault, 1982) were used in a manner in which they shaped the children’s behaviour and expectations of the schooling experience. Finally, these tools also allowed the children to be positioned and repositioned (Drewery, 2005) in a variety of ways. These positions were related to the ‘good’ school child notion entwined with this transition. However, the use of agency (Devine, 1998; James, 2011) in the uptake or refusal of these positions was also observed meaning the children had a choice in the position they were given by others or which they produced for themselves. The research concludes by suggesting that the social construction of the transition by families and individual schools and their communities needs to be considered when anticipating the support required for this transition. Attention needs to be paid to the positioning of the parents and their ability to offer support to their child’s experience and also to the positions made available within the classroom for the children to take up. A number of suggestions are made that will assist the overall experience stemming from the starting school transition.

This thesis is the product of qualitative ethnographic research conducted over ten months. It considers the implications of adopting a dominant discourse of 'Rights' as a framework for guiding both the policy and practices of a large state primary school in England. More than this, it interrogates how ‘Rights' (and ‘Respect' with which it is conventionally coupled) link to, and inform, subordinate discourses of ‘Equality' and ‘Diversity'. Guided by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) ‘Rights Respecting Schools' (RRS) initiative, these four values of rights; respect; equality; and diversity are highlighted as pivotal in shaping the lived experiences of everyday schooling amongst children, parents, teachers, support and ancillary staff. My work involves applying theorizations of post-structuralism to problematize these values within this environment. I operationalize discourse analysis to make sense of my ethnographic data in a manner which I attribute to Laws (2011). I do this, in order to scrutinise some everyday occurrences of school life, acknowledging that they can be understood in many different ways, ‘all and none of which can be seen as ‘true'' (Laws, 2011, p.15). Like Laws, I acknowledge that what I wish to achieve is a way of reading aspects of school life and what goes on there, in new and different ways in order to see things what may have been overlooked or taken-for-granted previously. The purpose of my research is ‘not to unravel and find a truth or even many truths'. It is ‘to trouble, to deconstruct the operations of dominant discourses' (Laws, 2011, p.15) in order to generate new ways of seeing, being and understanding. Applying a range of theoretical lenses enables me to strike a note of caution concerning the all too appealing and apparently transparent quality of rights, respect, equality and diversity within the institution of the school. My reading of these rights discourses suggests that the RRS policy text shapes school practices, in very particular ways. Some school subjects describe these as productive of an ‘ethos' that is: ‘happy', ‘carefree' and ‘joyful'. Such positive accolades are attributable to a schooling genealogy that long pre-dates the introduction of the RRS. The rights discourses tend to promote a regulative, procedural rationale of a ‘consensus' (Rancière, 2004) of schooling. This works to produce an idea of ‘common sense' value (Hall and O'Shea, 2013). It cloaks difficulties and contradictions implicit within fundamental assertions of ‘rights', especially foreclosing any claim of them as inherently ‘political', despite protestations of their power to ‘transform'. Disjuncture, diversity and difference are difficult to deal with institutionally. The discourses produce particular regimes of truth which means that certain ways of doing and saying can be ruled in, and others out. Expectations of the enactment of a ‘Ubiquitous Rights Respecting' school subject (as either adult or child) are demanding and contradictory, whilst, at the same time, the constitution of the ‘Rights Respecting Citizen' is imagined as: either, ‘adult' who is already ‘prefigured'; or, ‘child' who is, ‘Yet-To-Be'. However, the performative qualities of the rights, respect, equality and diversity discourses present moments of ‘dissensus' (Rancière, ibid) which leave traces. I suggest that these generate the possibilities for a (re)imagining of ‘common sense' refracted as ‘good sense' (Hall and O'Shea, ibid) that offer, not (another) manifesto for democratic schooling, but sources of insight which may enrich attempts to use initiatives like RRS as schools' guiding frameworks.

This study was designed to explore primary teachers’ perceptions of group work as a way of teaching English in public sector primary schools of Punjab. In particular, the study attempted to ascertain how primary teachers view group work, whether they think it may have benefits and/or drawbacks if implemented as a way of teaching English in the primary classroom and what are their perceived impediments to implementing it in public sector primary schools of Punjab To explore the aspects stated above, I adopted a mixed methods qualitative approach for the research. Twenty participants from eight primary schools of District Jhang were selected for data collection. The participants were given questionnaires and data collected from questionnaires provided a baseline to decide what to further investigate in the interviews. The questionnaire responses guided me to further investigate participants’ understanding of group work in terms of it as (1) a way of teaching English (2) the perceived benefits and/or drawbacks of implementing group work in primary English classroom, and (3) factors that may impede the implementation of group work as a way of teaching English. To analyse the data obtained by questionnaires and interviews, I adopted a hybrid deductive/inductive thematic analysis. The initial analysis of participants’ responses suggested that participants had a flawed understanding of group work. Participants’ responses further suggested that physical layout and teaching practices as perceived by the participants were traditional or teacher-centred and that current settings in primary schools were unlikely to support group work as a teaching methodology. The analysis also informed that participants perceived a number of factors in the current primary school settings which may not support group work as a way of teaching English in public sector primary schools of Punjab. These factors included conditions in primary school, poor supply of teaching resources, flawed teacher training, lack of teacher autonomy among others. Moreover, the analysis of participants’ responses suggested that primary teachers work in difficult conditions which do not encourage them to reflect on their teaching and adopt different ways of activity-based learning. During the later stages of thematic analysis, an underlying theme of professional identity began to unfold, which was found compelling due to its relationship with teachers’ apparent lack of interest in initiatives to try to change the current status of classroom layout and use various methodologies of teaching English in primary classroom. The emergence of this theme changed the focus of the thesis, as it was clear that lack of agency, confidence and autonomy were the key to the teachers’ reluctance to engage with new pedagogical practices. It is clear from the findings that for participants to feel enabled to adopt more activity-based methodologies such as group work, changes to their working conditions, better training opportunities and greater teacher autonomy in decision making, both collegiately and regarding pedagogy, are necessary. In addition, teachers’ poor perception of their professional roles and responsibilities needs to be enhanced through purposeful teacher training. If these changes are put in place, teachers may become more motivated and willing to try new approaches in their classrooms. However, after conducting this research, I consider that introducing such changes in the primary school settings in Pakistan would be a laborious, time-consuming and expensive process. In the present scenario, it would be necessary for the head teachers to provide teachers greater opportunities to reflect on their classroom practices and discuss issues with colleagues. In addition, primary schools could engage researchers and student-teachers from local universities and training colleges to work together with primary teachers to ensure that teachers have the chance to have a a broader sense of a variety of teaching approaches and how they may be implemented with support.

While research provides evidence for the educational and social value of bilingual children using and learning their home language, it also suggests approaches which support such additive bilingualism are not a common feature of English primary schools. This study sheds light on practitioner perspectives with regard to their bilingual pupils’ learning and use of their home language, the repertoires they employ when discussing their bilingual pupils’, and the extent to which practitioner talk promotes or undermines additive bilingualism. The study is based on a multi-method collection and analysis of data, consisting of a review of practitioner talk in existing literature, practitioner survey and discussion groups, and pupil survey and discussion groups to explore pupils’ perceptions of teacher perspectives. The study identifies key repertoires which represent positions both for and against additive bilingualism, and also describes how particular repertoires can support or undermine additive bilingualism depending on the starting point of the conversation. Quantitative analysis indicated differences in perspectives in relation to practitioners’ stage of career and the key stage they worked in. Structuration theory was drawn on to explain resistance to suggestions to change in practice, and make links between practitioner discourses and those in society more broadly.

This study is a classroom linguistic ethnography with a Year 4 class of 18 students, aged 9 years, in a village primary school in bidialectal South Eastern Cyprus. The research methods include a year of participant observation, in-depth interviews and fieldnotes. The study applies Hornberger’s (1989) theoretical framework of the biliteracy continuum for a critical perspective on the way this Greek Cypriot community reflects hierarchical views of Cypriot Dialect, (CD) and Standard Modern Greek, (SMG) in academic contexts which involve both linguistic varieties. The study analyses translanguaging and literacy practices in classroom talk to focus on students’ collective efforts when negotiating meanings of texts, helping them to jointly construct knowledge (Garcia, 2009; Creese & Blackledge, 2010). The analysis shows that, regardless of negative views of CD, children and teacher use CD as a learning resource. The students draw on all their available linguistic resources to understand and construct knowledge through types of talk, such as exploratory talk (Mercer, 2000; 2004) enacted through translanguaging practices. Evidence showed that learning through translanguaging can be both cognitive, such as understanding the pedagogic task, as well as social and cultural, based on and embedded in, the way students shared their ideas and reasoned together.

This research examines the relationship between primary postgraduate (PGCE) students’ conceptions of geography, knowledge and pedagogy and their development as teachers of primary geography over two years – the primary PGCE course and the first year of teaching. The methodology is essentially qualitative and based on the principles of grounded theory. Personal Construct Theory (PCT) has also informed the choice of research techniques, PCT being seen to be appropriate for a research project that aims to access and therefore examine a range of alternative constructions. Concept mapping was used at the beginning and end of the geography component of a PGCE Primary course to elicit all students’ conceptions of geography, teaching and learning. Analysis of the concept maps from the whole cohort (n=79) show that primary students’ conceptions of geography are generally rather simplistic and reflective of the descriptive-rich and scientific persuasions identified by Barratt Hacking (1996). Only a few students’ maps reflected environmental or humanistic/welfare persuasions. The concepts maps were also sorted into four categories from most sophisticated to least sophisticated conceptions of geography. It was noted that of the eight students in category one (most sophisticated) only one had a geography degree. A sample of 11 students was then interviewed (using a stimulated recall technique (Calderhead 1986)) about their conceptions using the elicitation data as a stimulus for the discussion. This enabled the researcher to both probe students’ conceptions in greater depth, and to validate initial analysis of the elicitation data. Finally, three students – one a geographer (with a geography degree) and the others non-geographers – were observed teaching geography and interviewed directly after the observations on three occasions over the two years. A coding system was developed from all the data, and was then used to analyse the interviews using Microsoft Word index and cross-referencing functions. These analyses, along with elicitation data, formed the basis of case studies of the development of three students as geography teachers over two years. A model for beginning teacher development in the field of primary geography is then proposed.  The model emerged from interpreting and synthesising the evidence from the three case studies, and through the use of the constant comparison technique (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The model is applied to the series of lessons observed for each case study providing an overview of their development as teachers of primary geography. Comparison of the three cases over two years shows some startling similarities as well as some differences in their development. It seems that each of them, whether they held a geography degree or not, discounted the geographical knowledge they have gained from life experiences as a valuable base to work from, despite the relevance of this knowledge to their teaching. It also seems that each of them, when observed during their PGCE course, were most likely to draw on their memory of geography lessons from when they were a pupil as a model to inform their teaching. As the two years progressed, and their pedagogical knowledge developed, they began to replace these early experiences with ones more suited to effective teaching – that is, their more recent experiences as teachers.  Of the three beginning teachers, only David, who had a geography degree, developed to become an effective geography teacher during the research period. However, it is considered that, for the majority of primary teachers, the most that can be expected is that they will develop into effective teachers of primary geography because it is unlikely that they would have opportunities to develop the depth of subject knowledge required to be an effective geography teacher. The thesis concludes by offering some thoughts for the development of primary geographical education. It proposes that primary geography could be usefully conceptualised as ‘everyday’, or ‘ethno-‘geography, that is a geography that recognises and seeks to address the ‘false split between practical, everyday knowledge and abstract, theoretical knowledge’ (Frankenstein & Powell, 1994). This is a geography that explicitly values the geographical knowledge that we all build up from everyday experiences in the world and that, in conjunction with the development of a geographical imagination, might form the basis of a primary geography framework.

This study examines four aspects of teaching Chinese in English primary schools – participants’ motivations, teachers’ backgrounds and subject knowledge, the teaching of Chinese and participants’ experience – and potential relationships between them. Building on a previous survey of Chinese teaching in English primary schools (CILT 2007), it provides a more detailed picture of teaching and learning Chinese and has important implications for practitioners and policy makers. Five case studies were conducted in four English primary schools to investigate the teaching and learning of Chinese. Mixed methods were used to collect data, including a structured questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, lesson observations and field notes. The findings suggest strong relationships between teachers’ backgrounds and their subject knowledge. These impact upon their teaching as a result of their priorities and preferences in teaching Chinese pinyin, characters, culture and language. This study identifies gaps in different aspects of teachers’ subject knowledge, informing government that the training of future teachers of Chinese should involve either training English primary class teachers in Chinese or equipping Chinese heritage teachers with primary pedagogical skills. Pupils’ motivations and experience suggest that the former may be more successful, as teachers’ pedagogy seems to outweigh their knowledge of Chinese in motivating and maintaining pupils’ interest. The content of Chinese teaching is unregulated and hotly debated. Pupils’ opinions and experiences of very different teaching styles suggest that Chinese culture and written characters should be included in teaching Chinese. However, this finding has implications for teacher training and pupil study practices. In addition, this study suggests that pupil expectations constrain teachers’ teaching, and that head teachers play a very important role in the development of Chinese teaching in schools. This study informs government that there is an urgent demand for appropriate guidance for primary teachers of Chinese, as current governmental guidelines are unsuitable for and unused by teachers.

Globalisation along with dramatic increases in immigration, have led to increased levels of diversification in modern societies. The rapid change of the Cypriot society to a multicultural and multilingual one has resulted in the presence of a multitude of additional languages in Cypriot primary classrooms, reinforcing the concern for the education of pupils whose first language is other than the dominant language of the country. As a primary school teacher I am concerned in developing an effective pedagogy that can support these pupils’ additional language learning. Thus, the specific action research project at the heart of this research examines how educational drama can be used to facilitate the acquisition of Greek as an additional language by ethnic minority pupils in a Cypriot primary classroom. Throughout this thesis language learning is understood as a social construct, a continual, negotiated exchange of meanings, between the child and the environment, drawing on social theories of language that stress the overarching importance of cultural and social interactions for second language learning. Guided by theory, this research argues for the inter-relationship between social and linguistic processes and how specific drama strategies enable both one and the other. Evidence from this research suggests that a dramatic context that reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity of the classroom has a positive effect in GAL students’ affective variables, and particularly the socio-cultural factors and the personal variables within oneself, as well as the affect on L2 learning of the reflection of that self to other people. Illustrative drama schemes, developed throughout the project, together with concrete examples of children’s work are provided to represent more clearly how living contexts and fictitious worlds can be created within which the different functions of language can be identified and developed. At the same time unconventional and anxiety-reducing strategies for assessing second language learning are presented.

This thesis is an exploratory study that examines the potentiality of teaching phonological awareness, which is a precursor to early reading development in English, in conjunction with letter and simple word reading instruction in Japanese elementary school English education. It is an attempt to answer a question of how letters could be introduced into it without placing too much burden on children. Comprehensive literature review argues that learning to read English requires multiple levels of phonological awareness which Japanese children seem unlikely to develop fully in their L1 acquisition, and that a more enhanced outcome of instruction would be achieved if phonological awareness is taught together with letters and applied for early reading. Two main tools are adopted in this study. The questionnaire survey for 398 elementary school teachers elucidates not only the current elementary school practices but also their beliefs and principles in terms of letter and early reading instruction, both of which are essential for understanding the field but very few studies have investigated: Many teachers present children with letters in English classes but the focused instruction of letters or early reading tends to be avoided considering possible demand for children or due to the teachers’ lack of knowledge and skills for teaching them. Furthermore, from the discussion of the both qualitative observation and qualitative assessment data obtained through the intervention in a Japanese elementary school, the following is revealed: (1) The children show L1-specific characteristics in phonological processing of English such as adding a vowel after a consonant or segmenting after a consonant-vowel combination. (2) The difficulty of phonological awareness tasks for them was slightly different from that for English-speaking counterparts. (3) The children could develop the higher-level phonological awareness skills such as phoneme deletion and substitution through the instruction and have favourable attitude toward it. Thus, this study demonstrated the teachability of phonological awareness and its learnability for Japanese children as well as its importance in English reading acquisition. Finally, some implications not only for classroom practices but also for teacher training are drawn suggesting the necessity of future introduction of it with letters and early reading into Japanese elementary school English classrooms.

The aim of this study was to explore how teachers use language in Chichewa medium and English medium mathematics teaching in standards 3 and 4 of selected primary schools in Zomba, Malawi. Chichewa is a local and national language whereas English is a foreign language yet the official language in Malawi. Chichewa is a language of instruction in standards 1to 4 whereas English is used from standard 5. Both Chichewa and English are subjects of study from standard 1. Issues investigated included: teacher understanding of the use of Chichewa or English in mathematics teaching; teachers' knowledge and use of mathematics vocabulary in Chichewa and in English; and teacher use of language in mathematics lessons. In this thesis, I develop a sociolinguistic approach to a study of teachers' perceptions and uses of language in mathematics teaching. I demonstrate how we can represent these perceptual structures using sociolinguistic tools and principles, which I use to study how 40 mathematics teachers linguistically organise and structure their teaching of mathematics. I adopt the position that teaching is fundamentally a language activity based on classroom communication activities which are fundamentally sociolinguistic in character, that sociolinguistic structures are dynamic and rational, yet exhibit a level of stability which results in diverse teacher dispositions gelling into conflicting tensions. I develop a theoretical base and iteratively explore this, evolving a description of how we might model what I call the sociolinguistic orientation of mathematics teachers. I construct theoretical, conceptual and methodological frameworks to enable me to study some of the underlying relationships among the tensions, teacher predispositions and the sociolinguistic environment in the classroom. I draw on a constructivist approach to mathematics education founded in Piagetian and Vygotskian theories and in particular draw on the concepts of coping strategies (Edwards and Furlong, 1987) to deal with the dynamics of classroom communications (Hills, 1969) which result in tensions in the use of language in mathematics teaching Pimm, 1987; Adler, 2001}. I begin by educationally, professionally and linguistically locating myself before moving on to looking at how we can understand communication in the mathematics classroom, the role of language in mathematics education with emphasis on bilingual mathematics education. I examine theories for understanding the interplay and interrelationship among teaching, communication, language use, and mathematics and bilingual classroom. Thereafter I look at the sociolinguistic roots of mathematics education in the Malawi Education System, identifying those areas where the current language policy in education does not consider the role of language in mathematics education. I draw heavily on sequential focus group discussion, interviews, tests and classroom observations and construct a perceptual model for the sociolinguistic orientation of 40 mathematics teachers towards use of Chichewa or English, and explore how these perceptions relate to the actual use of language in bilingual mathematics classrooms. To increase the validity of the data and findings, I used methodological and data triangulation. The findings of the study suggest that the sociolinguistic orientation of mathematics teachers relates to the linguistic nature of mathematics (the desire to teach the technical language as opposed to the ordinary language that pupils will easily understand), mystifying language policy in education (the inconsistency of language policy), dynamic classroom discourse (the multi-functions of language in the classroom) and inconsistent source of language for use in mathematics teaching (different competencies in language for teaching and learning among teachers, pupils and instructional materials). In addition, I illustrate how the teacher sociolinguistic orientation depends on whether the language of instruction is L1 or L2 which rest ideologically on code switching between Chichewa and English as well as marked difference in the patterns of language use between Chichewa and English medium mathematics lessons. The findings of the study can increase our understanding of the dynamics of mathematics classroom discourse by not only identifying more tensions in the use of language hut also the sources of these tensions. These might pave the way to find remedies to reduce the linguistic tensions in mathematics education. These findings imply that teachers need to be trained and supported in the use of language if they are to improve the teaching of mathematics. It is recommended that a programme he developed to train and orient teachers in the use of language in mathematics teaching, and to produce appropriate instructional materials that would assist teachers and pupils to use language effectively in mathematics.