Bullying is a social phenomenon that impacts girls and boys inside and outside of school at both primary and secondary school age and is recognised as a social problem both by academic researchers and in the ‘real world’ by the media and by anti-bullying charities. Although bullying is a widely used concept there is no universal definition. Research on bullying has been conducted over the past four decades looking at various aspects from prevalence and severity to coping strategies and effectiveness of interventions. Studies have also considered specific types of bullying and sex differences but these studies do not consider the full variety of types of bullying boys and girls use or which ones are the most upsetting to experience. Most of the studies on girls’ bullying have been conducted in secondary schools; less attention has been given to tweenage girls. This research redressed this imbalance. It began from the position that it is important for adults to listen to tweenage girls’ views as they may have different understandings of bullying compared to adults and this may have policy implications. It assumed that girls were experts on bullying that happened to girls their age in their school. Weekly research lunch club sessions were used with 32 tweenage girl research advisers/assistants from three primary schools. Together we listened to tweenage girls’ views of bullying broadly through developing and administering questionnaires, conducting group interviews and designing anti-bullying resources to be used in their schools. In addition, I conducted one-off focus groups with 11 teenage girls as a comparison to consider age differences in girls’ views. I argue that this research revealed that both girls’ bullying and using pupil research to engage with tweenage girls’ views on this topic was messy and complex. While relational aggression between girls was reported to be most prevalent and severe, focusing on this alone does not reflect the full extent of the behaviours used in girls’ bullying. Both the tweenage and teenage girls’ views on bullying, coping strategies and anti-bullying interventions were similar and were only subtly different in the detail. The research decisions were influenced in an ongoing process by the wants and expectations of the girls, the schools and the researcher and changed through the prolonged interactions during the research. I also argue that ethical practice was an ongoing process and using pupil research created further ethical dilemmas. Although pupil research with tweenage girls on girls’ bullying was challenging and messy, this research gives an example of how it is a viable, successful way to engage with pupils on this sensitive topic. The use of girls’ free time at lunchtimes showed how pupil research positioned as an extra-curricular activity enabled marginalised voices to be heard and was beneficial for the girls, the schools and the researcher involved. This research suggests ways in which school based anti-bullying policies and practices might be more nuanced to take account of the variety of experiences, understandings and preferences for intervention that exist if they engaged in pupil research. There has been little discussion of the issues of the messiness of research and the ongoing nature of ethical practice in either the pupil research literature or methods texts generally for researchers to refer to. I suggest that it would be useful for others to share their messy experiences of pupil research and the ongoing ethical issues they encounter to enable future researchers to be somewhat prepared and confident in responding to the challenges they may face in their own research.

This thesis investigates the impact of computers and interactive whiteboards on the teaching of Design and Technology in Key Stage 2. Their use within education is having an influence upon the curriculum. Various investigations into the impact of Information and Communication Technology have been undertaken but these have principally involved CAD and CAM work within Key Stages 3 and 4 Design and Technology. Very few studies have looked at Design and Technology in the earlier key stages or the impact upon teaching and pupils at Key Stages 1 and 2. The literature review focuses on four key areas surrounding the research investigation: Computer Aided Learning; Cognition regarding the relationship of problem solving and higher level thinking; Pedagogy and its relationship to the use of computers in the teaching of Design and Technology and a review of the Design and Technology guidelines and the related issues regarding their implementation. The research is based upon both qualitative and quantitative methodologies employing multiple sources of data collection. Quantitative data was collected through a survey of all primary schools in two Yorkshire Local Authorities. The qualitative data produced the basis for in-depth individual semi-structured interviews with a sample of Design and Technology Co-ordinators. The semi-structured interviews then formed the foundation for a focus group interview of Local Authority officers. Use has been made of an evidence trail which examines other sources of evidence such as conference papers, HMI, QCA, Ofsted and DfES reports. The main findings indicate that the core subjects of the National Curriculum are taking the vast majority of teaching time. A broad and balanced curriculum is therefore no longer being maintained in the schools studied. The evidence revealed that teachers were becoming familiar with the use of computers in the classroom. They understood the skills involved in using computers but were still uncertain as to the most suitable pedagogy. The majority of teachers who responded to the questionnaire and the semi-structured interviews, the Local Authority officers and some government departments regard the New Opportunities Funded (NOF) training as being a disappointment due to its over-ambitious aims and lack of pedagogical content. The introduction of interactive whiteboards (IWB) was initially viewed by teachers as another element of ICT to teach. However these have now been well received. Those teachers involved in the study are finding it difficult to find time to either keep pace with or develop their ICT skills. This is reflected in teachers’ limited use of computer programs. This is in direct conflict with the findings of Ofsted, which found that teachers were now using a broader range of programs. Please note that the term Local Education Authority no longer exists as a statutory body. Throughout this thesis the term Local Authority is used instead.

The research study investigates the spiritual dimension in the personal and professional lives of primary headteachers. The term ‘spiritual’ is interpreted widely to include its religious and nonreligious forms and to leave open the possibility of a variety of readings. The two research questions that give focus to the study are: 1. What is the nature of the spiritual dimension in the personal and professional lives of primary headteachers? 2. Is there a discernible connection between such a spiritual dimension and headteachers’ work in primary schools? Data were gathered through biographically-focussed case studies of six primary phase headteachers leading faith and community schools in England. Data-gathering procedures included biographical interviews, observations and scrutiny of documentation. The research study identifies three descriptive characteristics of the spiritual dimension: 1. that it is refracted through a range of relationships, which for some headteachers may include a relationship with the divine; 2. that it is given expression through headteachers’ dispositions and attitudes, perhaps informed by a consciousness of the divine or deep sense of human interconnectedness; and 3. that these dispositions and attitudes are fluid and layered, holding within them the potential for the profundity and intensification that distinguishes the term from the moral, personal or social aspects of primary headteachers’ lives, though they are related. The spiritual dimension, in this context, is associated with personal being and becoming, rather than the exercise of professional skills and know-how. What may be seen as spiritual activities, such as prayer or deep reflection on questions of purpose and meaning in life, seem to bring not just resilience or resolve to primary headteachers, but also affirmation of their work, particularly their care for their schools’ communities. The research study’s findings add to the growing understanding of the spiritual dimension of school leadership and offer a biographical contextualisation that has had more limited attention in studies of spirituality and headship. They appear to normalise the place of the spiritual in heads’ professional work and therefore to legitimise the language of the spirit in the discourse of school leadership.

Research has shown, with respect to the learning of mathematics, that whole class interactive teaching, its form and function, is a complex phenomenon. Teachers develop and exploit pedagogical strategies, which they believe are effective either in engaging their children in mathematical learning or in presenting mathematics to learners. Such strategies, whether later shown to be effective or not, are typically assumed to develop during periods of teacher education or through practice after qualification. Alongside these assumptions is the belief that teachers who are enthusiastic about and have a secure subject knowledge with respect to mathematics will evoke similar enthusiasm, confidence and competence in their learners. However, observations during my years as a teacher educator have led me to conclude that trainee teachers, even those with similar qualifications, frequently behave very differently when put in front of children. Such differences confound the naïve assumption, for example, that similar enthusiasm and confidence will yield similar patterns of teaching practice. Thus, what primary teachers do and why they do it has vexed me for a number of years. I have wanted to know, in particular, what makes teachers teach differently during whole class episodes, not least because my experiences as both teacher and teacher trainer have led me to believe that it is during these periods that teachers induct their children into those mathematics-related beliefs and behaviours that will determine the extent to which they enjoy and engage meaningfully with the subject. Addressing such questions demands an appropriate methodological stance. Consequently an exploratory case study of six teachers, two during a first, essentially pilot phase, and four during a second, was undertaken. All teachers, to facilitate understanding of how exemplary practice differs from one person to another, were considered, against various criteria, as effective. The pilot enabled me to evaluate not only the effectiveness of extant frameworks for analysing classroom behaviour but also my skills as an interviewer and observer of classrooms. The second phase, drawing on what had been learnt during the first, was more open in that existing frameworks were abandoned in favour of allowing the data to speak for themselves rather than being constrained by others’ conceptualisations of effective teaching. Both phases, to examine teachers’ underlying beliefs about mathematics and its teaching, their classroom practice, particularly during whole class episodes, and their rationales for their actions, were addressed by means of a battery of data collection tools. Teachers’ backgrounds and underlying beliefs about mathematics and its teaching were examined through preliminary, life history, interviews framed by a loose set of questions derived from the literature. Interviews were video-recorded. Teachers’ classroom actions were captured by means of a tripod-mounted video camera placed discretely in their classrooms, augmented by a wireless microphone worn by the teacher and a separate, static microphone to capture as much of the children’s talk as possible. Finally, teachers’ rationales and explanations for their actions were examined through the use of video-recorded video stimulated recall interviews. All recordings, whether of classrooms or interviews, were transcribed for later analysis. Analysis during the first phase drew extensively on pre-existing frameworks. While they were helpful in identifying both similarities and differences in teachers’ beliefs, actions and rationales, it became clear that they failed to capture the subtleties and nuances of meaning embedded in the high quality data yielded by the approaches adopted. In so doing it became clear that while data collection approaches were appropriate, analyses needed to be more open in order to allow the data to give up the depth and complexity of their stories. During the second phase, while it was acknowledged that this was not a grounded theory study, analysis drew extensively on the coding strategies of the constant comparison procedures of grounded theory. This approach to analysis yielded results previously unknown in the literature. Quite unexpectedly two groups emerged from the data. Significantly, each was underpinned by teachers’ experiences as learners of mathematics and whether the enjoyment they had gleaned from those experiences was instrumentally located or relationally located. The first group, identified as the mediators, having been engaged, in various ways, with mathematics and derived pleasure from relational experiences expected their children to experience mathematics similarly. Their teaching was based on a desire to develop, in collaborative ways, a deep conceptual knowledge that would form the basis for later procedural skills and, significantly, problem solving. Teachers in the second group, identified as the mediated group, having derived pleasure from their procedural successes as children, saw mathematics and its teaching as skills-based. Their classroom actions and commensurate rationales were focused on surface learning and the replication of the pleasure they had experienced when young. Interestingly, the beliefs of both groups and, to an extent, their classroom actions were independent of any training they had received. The Mediators showed different signs of professional independence and autonomy. They had a clear articulation of their warranted principles and were able to exploit these in the ways that mediated the constraints within which they worked. Moreover, and this presents substantial implications for teacher education, teachers in the Mediated group, exhibited few signs of professional independence; their actions being constantly mediated by the constraints, whether institutional or governmental, within which they worked. They had few articulated principles around which they based their teaching. These differences permeated all aspects of their work.

This thesis contributes to an understanding of why children in urban Ethiopia and elsewhere go to school by accounting for children in one Ethiopian city’s own explanations of! their educational participation, and examining the factors shaping these understandings. The findings demonstrate that, for children in this context, education was both an indicator of a ‘good’ childhood, and the route to social adulthood. Children in Hawassa wanted to go to school in order to become good workers, good people and good national! citizens. Their motivations for going to school often overlapped with dominant arguments for the expansion of education, but went beyond the narrow economic instrumentalism of the human capital approach and challenged the neoliberal individualism that has underpinned much work on human capabilities. The thesis therefore asserts the important contribution that children can make to debates about the purposes of education. However, it also demonstrates that children’s explanations of their schooling were constrained by the discourses and understandings available to them. It argues that children had largely internalised a deficit model of childhood and education that inhibited the expansion of their critical capabilities In demonstrating the constraints upon children’s understandings, the thesis also demonstrates that educational participation in Hawassa was not solely the outcome of children’s rational evaluation of the costs and benefits associated with going to school. However, it does not instead present attendance as resulting from compulsion or normativity. Rather, it argues that going to school was an act of agency that arose from children’s ultimate human concerns, and was constrained and enabled by external ‘generative mechanisms’(Bhaskar 1978). These mechanisms included discourses about the morality and power of education, economic structures rendering school attendance necessary for the achievement of desired indicators of adulthood, and government strategies seeking to minimise civil conflict and dissent.

This thesis discusses how assessment data are used to support the learning of pupils aged four to seven years in four Kent primary schools. The sample was 451 pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2; the researcher collected and analysed quantitative data from pupil attainment on school entry – either as Baseline Assessment or the Foundation Stage Profile – and from results in reading, writing and mathematics at the end of KS1, both as SATs and Teacher Assessment. These data were triangulated with qualitative data collected from a semi-structured questionnaire, classroom observations and interviews with the Reception class practitioners. The author – a head teacher with many years’ experience of primary schools and the Early Years – outlines recent and current government policy and links these to assessment theory and existing practice in the four schools studied. She identifies some possible influences on attainment and looks at how value-added data are currently used as measures of pupil performance. The three research questions look at whether benchmark data can be used to predict future achievement, the educational implications of using value-added data as measures of pupil performance, and whether benchmark data can be used to support learning in the primary classroom. The findings led the researcher to conclude that accurate prediction from prior attainment is not possible at the present time and that contextual value-added data are only useful when other variables are taken into account. However, the findings showed that benchmark data – when used formatively – can be useful in supporting pupils’ learning. This study will help head teacher colleagues to look at data in a fresh way, and to identify and target the needs of individual pupils to optimise their performance from the beginning of the Foundation Stage to the end of Key Stage One.

This thesis evaluates the effectiveness of peer mediation programmes in 3 primary schools in Birmingham. It investigates whether the ‘Iceberg’ system of peer mediation training, and the setting up of a peer mediation service, can reduce bullying, and have an effect on the self- concept of Year 5 pupils. The literature review section of the study reviews existing literature concerning peer mediation, humanism in education (humanistic values underpin the mediation process) behaviour management in schools and bullying. These are all areas that are revisited as part of the empirical research. The empirical research has a quasi-experimental research design which uses both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The experiment was set up to answer the main research questions as objectively as possible, given the author’s existing wider involvement in this area of work. Pre-test and post-test measures include pupil questionnaires and interviews with teachers and headteachers. The positivist framework of the main experiment, however, proved to be somewhat restrictive in answering some interesting new questions which emerged as a result of the programme not being implemented as planned in 2 of the experimental schools. The findings suggest that peer mediation can be used as a strategy to reduce bullying and improve pupil feelings of empowerment and self-esteem provided it forms part of a wider strategy to empower pupils and improve their personal and social skills. The difficulties of carrying out an experiment in a school setting, however, make the results inconclusive and more research is recommended in order to understand the links between peer mediation, humanistic practices in the classroom, and the apparently central role of the headteacher

The present thesis explores main issues regarding school bullying, based firstly on an extensive literature and research review, and secondly on a research study which took place within a period of two academic years, in Nicosia, Cyprus. The study aimed to explore and compare bullying experiences among pupils with learning difficulties (LDs) and typically developing (TD) pupils as match controls, and identify whether learning disabled pupils are bullied on a higher frequency or severity compared to their non-disabled peers. Types of bullying (verbal, physical, and particularly relational) and several factors underpinning these, were investigated. The study also aimed to explore school staff’s views and experiences regarding bullying, and to examine gender and age issues regarding the experiences of the sample in bullying. In addition, it aimed to examine bullying mental health effects on the victims, with a particular focus on its relational type. Lastly, a survey with 620 pupils from the sample schools, aged 9 to 12 years, was conducted to investigate the nature of bullying across the whole population of pupils in these schools at these ages. The sample included six primary inclusive schools located in Nicosia, a number of pupils who participated in the bullying survey (n=620), 12 pupils with LDs and 12 TD pupils aged 9 to 12 years as the main focus groups, and six head teachers and 37 teachers from the sample schools. The data collection tools included the Life in School Questionnaire (LIS) to examine generally the bullying experiences of the samples, the Reynolds Bully Victimization Scales to examine involvement in physical and verbal bullying, and specifically involvement in relational aggressive incidents and mental health effects on the victims. Also, semistructured interviews were conducted to explore in depth the samples’ experiences regarding bullying in their schools. The results showed that similar numbers of pupils with and without LDs reported victimization and generally no statistically significant differences were found when comparing the two focus groups. The interviews, on the other hand, identified interesting factors underpinning the LD pupils’ victimization were identified, and important data regarding bullying in Cypriot primary schools were collected.

This ethnographic study was initiated by the concern that elementary art education is an endangered subject, not only marginalised but expendable. This concern was based on informal conversations with pre- and in-service teachers and observations during pre-service teacher evaluations in elementary schools in Ontario, Canada. From these conversations and observations, it seemed that the emphasis in elementary schools is on core subjects with anything else deemed to provide balance alongside initiatives to improve literacy, numeracy, character, and inclusion. The school day is teeming with subjects and initiatives and the resulting crowded curriculum may be affecting teaching and learning in non-core subjects, such as art, negatively. In addition to such external issues are individual challenges faced by generalist teachers with little or no background in visual arts. These teachers’ lack of comfort with art might, I surmised at the start of this study, impede the effective planning, implementation, and assessment of art education. To understand what impacts art education, specifically visual arts instruction, I used a variety of interpretive enquiry methods to interrogate what makes art in elementary schools a vulnerable if not an expendable subject. Initially seeking to find out if art was expendable, I went beyond this to explore perceptions of teachers on teaching art through a localised small-scale study involving 19 elementary teachers in two school boards in north-eastern Ontario. I conducted interviews, recorded observations, and read related documents to answer my research questions, which were as follows: Why is art education important, or not, for students, educators, parents, and other stakeholders? Is art jettisoned in favour of implementing other policies and curricular subjects? Do teachers use other programmes and initiatives as an excuse not to teach art? How do teachers feel about teaching art? Is art expendable? Nussbaum’s (1997) capacities (critical self-examination, connectedness with the world, narrative imagination, scientific understanding) provide the theoretical framework for the study, support the analysis of the state of art education, and help defend its importance at the elementary level. Possible barriers to effective art education (history, policy, practice, economics, geography) and how they may affect learners’ ability to connect with the capacities through visual arts instruction are also analysed and discussed. Through this study, I found that elementary art education is threatened in the participants’ schools for a number of reasons including external issues (minimal attention to, inconsistent delivery of, and poor funding for the mandated art curriculum; a high focus on literacy, numeracy, and other initiatives) and internal issues (discomfort with teaching art; wide range of concepts of art). The study concludes with concerns regarding overall problems with miscommunication and disconnection that threaten effective elementary art education. Recommendations for addressing external and internal issues, and these overall problems are outlined, along with plans to improve art education in pre-service teacher education, in-service practice, and the world beyond the classroom.

The purpose of the current research was to explore teachers’ experiences of working with selectively mute children in primary and nursery school settings. In particular, participants’ experiences were organised into the concepts, thoughts, feelings and behaviours and whether there were mediating factors which influenced the kind of experiences teachers had. The research also explored if these experiences changed and developed over time. The design was a semi-structured interview technique. The sample consisted of 20 primary and nursery teachers in England and Wales who had previous (N= 9) and current experiences (N= 11) of working with a selectively mute child. The data were coded using Nvivo software and analysed using Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The data indicated that thoughts consisted of teachers’ causal attributions for the development of Selective Mutism, their expectations, their perceptions of the selectively mute child, their parents and siblings, and their perceptions of their professional role and that of the educational psychologist (EP). Frustration and anxiety were the most frequently cited feelings and therefore it may be argued that working with a selectively mute child is a stressful experience when teachers are uncertain of the best course of action and when they feel unsupported. Teachers’ behaviours consisted of the strategies they used to communicate with the child and to enable the child to access the curriculum. Thoughts, feelings and behaviours changed and developed over time. Several factors were identified which served to mediate teachers’ experiences including levels of teacher-child attachment, levels of pupil and parental engagement, the context and involvement from outside agencies.