The number of teaching assistants (TAs) employed in schools across England is steadily increasing (Department for Education, 2015). Due to limited information on this large workforce, the ‘Deployment and Impact of Support Staff’ (DISS) project was undertaken (Blatchford et al., 2008). Concerning findings from this project have influenced further research and informed advice for changes for TA practice and deployment. Although pupils are the key stakeholders of TA support there is limited research gaining their perspectives on this area (Cajkler et al., 2007), particularly for secondary school pupils. In this study, a mixed method design underpinned by a strength-based perspective was used to investigate secondary school pupils’ perspectives on TAs. Findings suggest that supporting pupils with their learning was perceived to be a primary aspect of the TA role, in addition to several other forms of support across multiple contexts. Strategies to support learning, communication, personal characteristics and working within a context to meet the needs of the pupil, were perceived to contribute to effective TA practice and deployment. TAs were also perceived to have a positive impact on pupils’ learning and wellbeing. These findings contribute to the existing literature and have implications for research and professional practice.

This research explored the effect of adult interactive style on the spontaneous communication of children with autism. It focused on the frequency of children’s communication, the functions of their communication, the methods they used and the impact of four different school activities (i.e. sensory room, snack time, soft play and 1:1 work) on their communication. Theoretically, the study drew upon the transactional model of child development and the social model of disability. It was an action research study having a mix of quantitative and qualitative data which took place over an eighteen month period. The study was conducted within an Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) class in a specialist school for pupils with autism. Six children and three members of staff took part. The researcher developed a set of principles in conjunction with the staff which formed the basis for the Adult Interactive Style Intervention (AISI). The findings showed that staff increased their use of the AISI principles over time and all children considerably increased the frequency of their spontaneous communication, their communicative functions and methods. In the follow-up phase, twelve months later, it was found that these changes had been maintained in both children and staff.

This research project explores which forms of early teacher learning (ETL) are most effective to secure the retention, motivation, commitment and job satisfaction of new entrants to the teaching profession in the United Kingdom (UK). It was inspired by concern over the high drop-out rate of teachers new to the profession expressed by Michael Gove (UK Secretary of State for Education) in The White Paper “The Importance of Teaching” (2010). A survey methodology was used and the method was that of semi-structured interviews with twenty teachers from three secondary schools in the West Midlands of England. It was found that ETL was effective when interactive, shared, school based, well mentored and related to teaching in the classroom. It was also found that effective ETL took place when teachers were learning through their engagement in projects, responsibility roles and extra-curricular activities. It was further found that this was so because such activities developed professional identity; self-efficacy; a psychological contract with the school and mastery of the craft of teaching. Links to the processes of acculturation, assimilation and actualisation were indicated. The significance of this research project is that it points to strategies which can help retain new entrants in the profession.

Volume one comprises of two parts. Part one is a critical literature review which discusses the research into bullying in schools. There is a particular focus on the nature and prevalence of homophobic bullying and the use of homophobic language within the school environment and the impact of this on young people who are subjected to this type of abuse. Part two is an empirical paper based on the research project conducted by the author during her training on the Applied Educational and Child Psychology Doctoral programme. The research investigates the use of homophobic language within a single secondary school from the perspective of young people. The research is a two part study, where both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods are utilised. The overall results highlight that young people who use remarks and language that are homophobic often perceive these remarks and language as banter amongst peers and are not always aware of the emotional distress this can cause to young people who are vulnerable to this form of bullying.

This biography tells the life story of a secondary school English coursebook in Kenya following market liberalization (1998) and curriculum review (2002). In ELT, Gray (2007, 2010) first applied the ‘circuit of culture’ model to global English coursebooks; in contrast, I examine the case of a single local publication. The textbook has been described as a politico-economic, socio-cultural, and curriculum product. I focus on it primarily as a curriculum product and delink the circuit of culture from its original application in textbook studies in the service of a sociocultural perspective. I posit that the model has the explanatory power to capture the various research focuses that textbook studies may take. The circuit of culture has five processes or ‘moments’: representation, identity, regulation, production and consumption. Following preliminary work, my ‘journey’ begins in the representation moment, using Littlejohn’s (1992, 1998) framework for materials analysis. In the regulation moment, I interview three participants linked to the curriculum development body (KIE). In the production moment, I interview four authors, the editor and the publishing manager of the selected coursebook. In the consumption moment, I interview sixteen teachers who are or have been users of the materials. Four of the teachers participate in classroom observation and their learners respond to a questionnaire. Finally, I build a key identity statement about the coursebook, pooled from the findings in each moment. I reposition the identity moment and posit its centrality at the core of the circuit. Spurred by insights on innovation in English language education, I support the strengthening of ‘feedback loops’ across moments, and the recognition of the consumption moment as the zone for promoting dynamism and synergy in textbook development. This can (ideally) result in curriculum products and practices capable of overcoming challenges of interpretation and transition, while promoting good practices across moments.

The teaching and learning of English as a foreign language has a long tradition within the Mexican Education System. However, it has been widely recognised that this endeavour has been unsuccessful for the most part. This inquiry looks at three interrelated fields in education and in TESOL — academic transfers, language-in-education policy and planning, and students’ and teachers’ perceptions — in order to answer the following question: How can transfer between secondary and preparatory school be made more effective? A qualitative instrumental ethnographic case study, descriptive in nature, was undertaken with a focus on developing a detailed picture of how the main stakeholders in EFL teaching and learning in Mexican state schools perceive the transfer process of students moving from secondary to preparatory education. Two phases of fieldwork were carried out in secondary and preparatory schools in Xalapa, Veracruz. Semi-structured interviews, official documents, transcripts, and field notes were the main sources of data. 7 EFL teachers, a secondary school co-ordinator, a head of a secondary school, and 14 core students making the transfer from secondary to preparatory education participated in this investigation. The findings of this study suggest that a first important step forward to improve the EFL transfer experience within the state school sector is to move away from the top down approach to language-in-education policy making that has prevailed for such a long time. This investigation has also identified that there is a disjunction between policy-makers’ rhetoric and what in actuality is feasible to implement in real classrooms given the contextual constraints that teachers and students have to face. It has also illustrated some of the most salient issues hindering the EFL teaching and learning in state schools. The outcomes of this study suggest some obstacles that could be addressed by people who are most directly concerned with EFL policy and its implementation in the public sector. It also provides a greater understanding of the issues to be addressed in further research.

Language teacher cognition research has been a growing area of research interest in recent times. However, the majority of studies of teacher cognition in relation to teacher change have focused on pre-service and novice, rather than experienced teachers. Additionally, most research has been carried out in contexts other than the public secondary school EFL settings where most English education goes on in the world. The present study aims to redress this tendency by deeply investigating the beliefs and practices of three experienced Thai EFL teachers working in a public secondary school in Thailand. Also investigated are the sources of their beliefs and how these have developed over time throughout the teachers’ lives. Using a range of methods including semi-structured interviews, stimulated recall, classroom observation, Snake interviews, repertory grid interviews and research diary, the present study focuses on Thai EFL teachers’ beliefs concerning appropriate methodology, a notion of importance both at the macro level of educational change and at the micro level of individual classrooms, where teachers can be viewed as key change agents. Adopting a personal construct theoretical perspective, the study reveals that the teachers’ beliefs and practices have been particularly informed by their core constructs, which have deep roots in their personal biographies and are tightly tied to their sense of self. Furthermore, the findings cast light on the extent to which individual teachers may or may not change according to their core constructs. These results carry important implications for those involved in change management, teacher education, and teacher cognition research.

This study was conducted to look at some cognitive (working memory and field dependency) and attitudinal factors which relate to learning and teaching mathematics. The purpose was to suggest ways that might help to improve students’ performance in mathematics. A multi-step strategy was used to examine the relationship between these variables and learning mathematics. The first and the second steps focussed on the students and the third step looked at the mathematics teachers and inspectors ideas about learning and teaching mathematics. This research has investigated the influence of working memory capacity and field dependency on mathematics achievement. The working memory space and the degree of field dependency were measured for 1346 school students aged between 14-16 years from public schools in Kuwait. The Digit Backward Test was used to determine working memory space, and the Group Embedded Figure Test was used to measure the degree of field-dependency for the students, both these tests have been used widely and their validity is assured. However, absolute measurements were not important in this study, as rank order was all that was required. In order to investigate the correlations between performance in different topics in mathematics and the working memory space and field dependency, mathematics tests were developed where some questions had high working memory demand and others had very low working memory demand. Furthermore, in order to investigate which versions of tasks will lead to improved mathematics performance, some questions were presented as symbolic tasks; others were presented as visual tasks; some of them presented as abstract tasks and others related to life. This study also explored the attitudes of the students towards mathematics in the following areas: the importance of mathematics as a discipline; attitudes towards learning mathematics; confidence in mathematics classes; the relationship between attitudes and achievement; activities in mathematics classes, and opinions about mathematicians. The perceptions of mathematics teachers and inspectors were investigated to see the extent to which their views related to the findings from work with students. A sample of 25 mathematics teachers and 4 mathematics inspectors was selected randomly and they were interviewed to compare their views. This step involved semi-structured interviews which offered an opportunity to focus on some key areas as well as giving freedom for the teachers to expand their views. The results indicated that field dependent students with low working memory capacity perform badly in mathematics. This might be attributed to their inability to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant items, with consequent working memory overload. Evidence shows that the way the questions or the problems are given to the students is very important for the students to understand and to succeed in solving them. Complicated shapes or long involved text are both more likely to produce overloading of the working memory space. Therefore, the study recommends that teachers should organise their material with great care in order that students are not penalised for some personal characteristic over which they have no control. This study also showed a clear evidence of a decline in attitudes with age and the excessively overloaded curriculum was a likely reason along with the perceptions that some topics were irrelevant. Furthermore, this study reflects the crucial role that the mathematics teacher plays in the formation of student attitudes towards mathematics. Thus, aiming to develop positive attitudes towards mathematics including confidence, enjoyment and an appreciation of it as a powerful tool should be parallel with the acquisition and the understanding of mathematics concepts and skills in mathematics education. Finally, the interviews show that there is no agreement about the objectives of mathematics education in Kuwait between those who decide the syllabuses (mathematics inspectors) and those who are going to teach these syllabuses (mathematics teachers). When the issue of the purpose for mathematics education is agreed, then it may be possible to consider what topics might further these aims most fully. In fact, teachers are involved daily in the teaching processes and they know the population of their students very well. Thus, their views about the syllabuses should be taken into consideration and they should be involved in the process of deciding the syllabuses. The study has major implications for the development of mathematics education in Kuwait but many of the findings will be widely applicable in other educational systems.

This is a study to investigate English Language Teaching (ELT) in Iran as well as the extent of its compatibility with communicative pedagogy. It has been accepted that language is more than a simple system of rules. Language is now generally seen as a dynamic resource for the creation of meaning. According to the advocates of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), it is generally accepted that there is a need to distinguish between learning that and knowing how. In other words, there must be a distinction between knowing various grammatical rules and being able to use the rules effectively and appropriately when communicating. In 2007, the first Iranian national curriculum for teaching foreign languages was being developed by a team who was working under the supervision of the Ministry of Education based on CLT. Considering the extent of compatibility of the curriculum with CLT was felt to be important in evaluating the degree of success in achieving the goals of CLT. There were also efforts taken into consideration in order to consider the ELT in Iran from other perspectives. To do so, since the current programme and textbooks had been designed prior to introducing the new curriculum; therefore, it was felt necessary to consider them as well. In order to investigate the situation, varieties of research instruments were applied in order to collect valid and reliable data. These instruments were mainly composed of a review of literature, a desk based analysis of the curriculum, administering questionnaires as well as conducting interview sessions. The questionnaires were mainly distributed among English language teachers and the interviews were conducted with some authors of the curriculum, textbooks and English language teachers. The analysis and interpretation of the collected data suggested that while the newly designed curriculum document is to a great extent compatible with communicative pedagogy, the materials being used by teachers, as well as the current ELT programme, are mainly structurally based and cannot be considered as communicative. The thesis goes on to discuss some of the implications of these findings both for ELT in Iran and for future research.

This is a study of the teaching of other faiths at a traditionally oriented Muslim independent school in Britain. Traditional Muslim schools have gained a high profile for two reasons: Firstly they are founded upon the most traditional and orthodox of Islamic teachings which some fear may promote extremism and separatism. Secondly they provide the training for the next generation of religious leaders so the understanding and attitudes that are inculcated in their students can be expected to influence many in the Muslim community. The background to the study uncovered medieval scholarship that is rich in examples of the objective study of other faiths but also highlighted a contraction of the traditional syllabuses in the post-colonial period that has left traditional scholarship narrow and devoid of critical enquiry. The case study used semi-structured interviews with the staff and management to reveal the current curriculum and examine the attitudes of the staff and management towards the teaching of other faiths. The findings were that while the school’s ethos is very positive, the school is currently not engaged in any explicit teaching of other faiths. The root cause of this was found to be the failure of the school to establish any policies relating to either curriculum or pedagogy for the teaching of RE. This failing was then compounded by the appointment of an unqualified and inexperienced teacher for RE who did not share the positive vision of the management. The study also highlighted the lack of any established pedagogy for religious education rooted in orthodox Islam.