This thesis is a case study about learning from experience in a primary school. The enquiry applies a psychoanalytic idea in an educational context. The focus arose from Bion’s idea: ‘Container-contained’ (Bion, 1962) which proposes that the capacity to think is emotionally rooted in our first relationship, which informs the qualities of our subsequent ‘learning relationships’ (Youell, 2006). Within a psychosocial, interpretivist framework, research questions ask: How does the learning that children bring to school affect their relationships and learning? How can school provide flexible-enough containment for thinking and learning from experience? What have I learnt about learning from experience? As a researcher/mentor, an interpretation of Bick’s (1964) clinical observational method was deployed to generate data, including written-up observations of four case study children who communicated their stories of everyday events in school during mentoring sessions. An auto/biographical approach complementarily composed part of the methodological bricolage. The inductive method supported evolution of a relational approach to mentoring, permitting reflexive interrogation of the observational texts. Interviews with teachers and parents added a biographical dimension. Mentoring took place during half-hour, weekly, individual mentoring sessions with children over two terms. Findings confirmed that children brought early experiences of learning to school which affected relationships and posed barriers to learning. The research method provided a subjective tool for making unconscious qualities of relationship in the transference and countertransference between researcher, children and adults at an institutional level, explicit. RefIexive interrogation illumined the interrelationship between researcher and children’s learning. Findings showed a need for flexible boundaries for supporting children’s self-efficacy and personal agency, and teacher’s learning about learning, when school is seen as a ‘container’. Findings confirmed the need for time and space for children and adults to reflect on experience in school, towards fostering emotional well-being and the capacity to think and learn.

This thesis is an account of an action research project undertaken in a Greek primary private school. The project aimed at personalising the students’ learning with the use of ICT. The project ran for three consecutive school years and involved students (twenty-six in year 1, sixteen in year 2, and fifty-one in year 3) and, their parents (in years 1 and 2). The students were eight-years old when the project started. The focus of the innovation concerned the teaching and learning of English as a Foreign Language. The project was an attempt to create a partnership with students and to offer opportunities for students to make choices in their learning. In year 1 teaching methods, including argumentative processes, learning task design and assessment processes, were re-designed and students were encouraged to engage in collaborative learning. All these changes were sustained in year 2 and the use of ICT, including online discussion, was introduced to enhance and extend collaboration and learning. The use of on line ‘chat’ was extended to parents as a way of communication with school. All these innovations were sustained in year 3 and further exploration of students’ and parents’ perceptions of learning with technology carried out. Action research is employed as a methodological approach in this study. In particular, the study reports on cycles of implementation and reflection carried out over three years. A variety of methods were used. Diaries were selected to record situations, questionnaires to access the perceptions of the children and parents, and chat logs and interviews used to explore these perceptions in greater depth. The mix of methods enabled comparison and contrast not just between data derived by different methods but by different sources as well, i.e. parents and children. The main theoretical concepts explored in this thesis are Personalised Learning, ICT use, and Collaboration. This research project sees Personalised Learning as the ‘focal innovation’ and ICT use as embedded within personalisation. Collaboration is considered a fundamental construct in both personalisation and the embedded use of ICT. This thesis asks whether personalisation is a coherent concept and whether it can be sustained with the use of ICT. It finds that personalised learning can offer a coherent organising principle for pedagogic reform, and can be defined by its concern for collective co-production of knowledge, student voice, assessment for learning, learning-to-learn strategies, and student centeredness. Personalised learning and ICT are recognised as a good match and personalised learning is seen to need ICT in order to be sustained. However, innovation requires time and evaluation of outcomes is value laden. The thesis finds action research to be an appropriate methodology for curriculum reform.

The premise of this thesis is that the role of the first steps in reading in courses for Young Learners of English (YL) at the beginner stage is a neglected area, with anomalies centred around the fact that ‘words on the page ’are often treated as if they were facilitative from the outset for language work in areas such as speaking while very little support is offered to children as to how to decode these words. Chapter 1 (Introduction) traces the rapid spread of YL teaching worldwide and considers the preparation of teachers for their roles. Materials are discussed as an important source of support and structure for teachers and a case is made for a focus in the main study on systems and rationales for early reading found among teachers themselves or evidenced in published materials. Chapter 2 (Literature Review) discusses relevant issues for systematic support for YL in their first steps in reading English. Areas discussed are: Teacher Cognition, Sociocultural inductions to reading, Orthographic Depth, Phonology, research on reading development across languages and influences in the YL world of established early reading methods for English native-speaking children. Chapter 3 (Research Methodology) justifies the decision to investigate the area via two main studies: (1) questionnaires and in-depth interviews with EYL professionals and (2) close analysis of course materials. It is argued that the qualitative stance of the former is not in conflict with the more objective and quantitative handling of course material data since both are appropriate ways of focusing on the same issue. A third, small-scale, study of the publishing experiences of curriculum experts and materials writers is justified and described. Chapter 4 (Findings) reports and integrates the findings of both main studies and summarizes the findings from the study with curriculum experts and materials writers. Main findings are that EYL professionals tend not to put linguistic considerations high in their priorities for decision-making and that materials analyzed had an underlay in the Alphabetic Principle but were dominated by ‘ABC’ ordering of Reading-Focal items and included activities which tended not to promote pattern-seeking or other behaviour likely to lead to ‘self-teaching’. Chapter 5 (Discussion) discusses the significance of the findings of the two main studies and uses the results of the third study to add balance to the materials analysis study. Limitations of, and reflections on, the research are discussed. Chapter 6 (Conclusions) draws implications for professional education, pedagogy and materials illustrated by examples in the Appendices. Claims are made for the contributions of the study that (1) it opens up discussion on an area of YL teaching which has been neglected both in the research literature and in practical materials creation (2) through the use of in-depth interviews it allows a voice for EYL professionals which has not been heard before (3) the concepts of Reading-Focal versus Vehicular language in YL course materials are claimed as new and useful, leading directly (4) to procedures and analysis tools which can be used with any set of YL materials. Directions for further research building on this thesis are indicated.

The study investigated parental involvement in children’s learning in Cypriot primary schools. It aimed to describe and analyse processes of policy-making and capture meanings, interpretations and reported practices of major stakeholders through document analysis, survey and interviews with élites, teachers, parents and children. The policy trajectory framework of Bowe et al. (1992) identified three interactive contexts influencing the stages of development, interpretation and enactment of policy. The adoption of this framework as a tool of analysis, contributed to the significant findings of the study. Indeed, investigation of the parental involvement policy-to-practice process provided the opportunity to identify both facilitating factors and obstacles restricting its development. Overall, the study identified the sheer political challenge associated with setting up a new educational system, translating new ideas and conceptions into an agreed text and practical challenges related to lack of professional teacher development in parental involvement, as well as ideological tensions related to relinquishing traditional professional boundaries set by teachers and psychological barriers associated with perceived threats from parental interference. The study indicated that the Cypriot educational system is in the early stages of developing parental involvement policy. It identified a weak interaction between policy contexts. The absence of mechanisms for transmitting new policies to practitioners, lack of guidance on implementation or monitoring of this process allowed headteachers and teachers to determine the type and extent of parental involvement practised. Even though findings indicated that there was an implicit recognition from teachers, parents and children of Cypriot parents’ central role in their children’s education and development, there was a lack of explicitly promoted parental involvement practices. The mismatch between policy intention, text and practice allowed the emergence of a dominant parent group whose disproportionate influence through Parent Associations seemed to be derived from the particular social and cultural capital background they occupied.

Over the last 30 years, research has consistently found that children in public care (LAC), in general, have low educational attainments. The research has tended to be from a social work standpoint with the focus on achievements at secondary school, In contrast, this study is from an education perspective and concerns the educational attainments of primary school LAC. This in-depth classroom-based research examines potentially modifiable aspects of social learning and behaviour in the education of LAC in order to generate hypotheses that can be subsequently tested. An investigation was carried out into the social perceptions of LAC, and their social perceptions of self, in the context of their mainstream primary school classrooms. The purposive sample consisted of 15 LAC aged five to 11 years, in 15 classrooms, in 11 mainstream primary schools, in one local authority. A total of 372 children and 59 school staff participated. A case study design employing mixed methods was used to ascertain and analyse sociometric status (SMS), locus of control beliefs (LCB) and self-esteem (S-E). The 15 LAC and their classmates completed two sociometric tests set in the context of the playground and the classroom, and two psychometric measures, PPNSIE (Nowicki-Duke, 1973) and B/G-STEEM (Maines & Robinson, 1983). School records were used to evaluate the children’s academic attainment, and school staff were consulted regarding the LAC’s SMS, LCB and S-E. The main non-directional hypothesis emerging from the empirical data is that there are complex relationships between the SMS, LCB, S-E, and educational attainment of LAC. Two additional factors became apparent from the findings. These were the varied emotional well-being of the LAC, and difficulties concerning language development. The findings of the case studies highlight the uniqueness of the 15 individual LAC in their specific classrooms and schools. This data calls into question the helpfulness of stereotyping other than for Governmental and local authority policymaking. For the class teacher, the value and practical methods of identifying specific social learning difficulties open to modification within individual LAC, and other ‘vulnerable children’, have been demonstrated.

This aim of this qualitative research study was to suggest an initiative for promoting professionalism in English language teaching of primary teachers, who work in rural small schools in Thailand. This study was conducted in two phases; Phase I and Phase II. By adopting convenience or opportunity sampling, ten primary teachers in one educational service area office volunteered to take part in this study. Grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 1998; Newby, 2010) was adopted for data analysis. In Phase I, data were collected from semi-structured interviews and from supplementary data sources (i.e. research journals and classroom observations). The results suggested that (1) teachers’ inadequate knowledge of English, (2) their difficulty in using the English textbooks available, (3) a problem with materials and equipment, (4) students’ knowledge of English, (5) teachers’ heavy workloads, and (6) the impact of national examinations on regular classroom learning were factors contributing to their difficulty in teaching. Moreover, the results suggested that INSET programmes failed to promote their professionalism in English language teaching, and the teachers’ comments on those programmes also provided valuable implications for the design of the professional development programme in Phase II.Exploratory Practice (EP) (Allwright & Lenzuen, 1997) was adopted as a theoretical framework for the proposed programme in Phase II. For qualitative case study research, two cases of teachers in doing EP projects were selected for in-depth investigation. Data were collected from focus group interviews and semi-structured interviews and from supplementary data sources (i.e. research journals, classroom observations, teacher diaries, recorded discussions, and documents). The results suggested that these teachers gained similar benefits from their experience in Exploratory Practice. First, Exploratory Practice helped them to gain a better understanding of their classroom context. Second, it helped them to design more appropriate lesson plans, materials, and activities for teaching their students more effectively. Third, it increased their confidence in their ability to teach. Fourth, it influenced them to increase their confidence in speaking. The teachers also had positive attitudes towards English, and higher motivation to improve themselves and sustain their professional development in English language teaching. The results also suggested that group discussions supported the teachers in preparing their project plans. These findings suggest that Exploratory Practice was useful for promoting the professional development in English language teaching of two primary teachers and it is possible that Exploratory Practice could have benefits similarly for others in this context and similar contexts where teachers work under similarly difficult circumstances.

Using exemplars from selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa, this article considers trends in curriculum reform and the related policy challenges. Particular attention is paid to aspects of the curriculum that affect quality. These include aims and objectives, moves towards outcomes-based education, new areas of concentration in response to social changes, the balance between subject-disciplinary- and learning-area-based approaches, the challenges of effective pedagogy, the move towards assessment for learning, curricular interventions that affect inclusion and equity positively, and the centrality of teachers in improving learning.

Inclusive education, a relatively new education system, provides an environment for both non-disabled and disabled children to interact and to understand each other. The purpose of this study was to investigate relevant key stakeholders’ voices and opinions by means of interviews, observations, focus groups and parental surveys. It started from providing a general background of Taiwan’s history and education to the investigating of current implementation of social policies and primary inclusive education in Taiwan. In conducting the study, an investigation into inclusive education in Taiwan was undertaken, specifically the implementation of inclusive education in primary schools in Tainan region. This study obtained a great deal of information from a wide range of stakeholders: perspectives on inclusive policies were obtained by means of interviews. Non-disabled and disabled children’s daily school life and interactions among other children and teachers were recorded via observations and focus groups whilst data gathered through parental questionnaires provided parents’ opinions, reactions and responses. Starting from the pursuit of human rights in Western societies, the focus then shifted to the context of Taiwanese society. More and more attention on the issue of human rights and disadvantaged groups’ rights are paid and in general, the notion of all human beings are equal is rooted and sprouted in Taiwanese culture. The results showed that, in general, professionals believed that inclusive education was basically positive for both non-disabled and disabled children. Inclusive settings provide an environment for both non-disabled and disabled children to share their experiences so that when children grow up, they would have positive attitudes towards each other. However, some professionals were concerned about the consequences of locating disabled pupils, especially pupils with behavioural disorders, in mainstream schools. In most cases, pupils with physical impairments are more easily accepted than those with behavioural disorder ones. It is still not easy to break the barriers, such as people’s inherent notions towards disadvantaged groups, the reality that some behavioural disorder pupils are aggressive and teachers’ time might be spent more on special need pupils, in such a complicated social system. With regard to learning in inclusive settings; both non-disabled and disabled pupils, in general, felt comfortable or did not feel too much difference in the inclusive classroom. The study highlighted that, in most inclusive classrooms, both non-disabled and disabled pupils could be accepted by each other; and in some cases, non-disabled and disabled pupils liked to be located in the inclusive classroom. Parents, however, had more diverse opinions than in any other stakeholders. Inclusive education, though less than half of total respondents had heard before, was deemed basically good to both non-disabled and disabled pupils and in general, it will become future mainstream. Still, some parents, especially those whose children had been located in an inclusive classroom and had bad experiences, were strongly anti-inclusion. Their primary concern was to protect their own children. Quality of education was also their concern because some parents deeply believed that teachers’ time and attention are sometimes drawn to pupils with special educational needs. In conclusion, key stakeholders viewed inclusive education as a means of providing an environment for both non-disabled and disabled pupils to study and to share their experiences. There may however, be a need to re-think the real role of inclusive classroom because many people merely think of locating both non-disabled and disabled pupils in the same environment as inclusion instead of thinking the moral issue or equality for all when they hear about the term inclusion. This study investigated what key stakeholders’ opinions and responses were when discussing about inclusion. This study also concluded by suggesting and offering some of the main issues needing further consideration: issues related to the resources, shifting people’s impression towards disadvantaged groups and the paramount aim of inclusion. All of which are considered to be important for future implementation of inclusive education. The study concludes by a reflection on the findings in a broader context of Chinese thinking and addresses current Taiwanese education system with reference to Taiwanese culture.

This collection of articles and the book are a product of one piece of research on the careers of women in teaching. The research began with a statistical analysis of the career characteristics of women and men in teaching in one educational authority using data collated from Teachers' Service Cards. Then the research focused on women in primary teaching. Career history interviews were conducted with twenty-five married women who were headteachers of primary or infant schools from two educational areas of an English midlands county. The data for the research consisted of the Teachers' Service Cards, the interview material, together with DES official statistics on Teachers in Service. The articles appear in the order they were published. The first article contains an examination of material from the Teachers' Service Cards. Articles two, three and four are analyses of aspects of the women head teachers subjective careers based on the interview data. The fifth article examines aspects of the local labour market for primary teachers using the interview data. The sixth article argues that the use of career history material can make a significant contribution to sociological understanding about careers. The seventh article uses official statistics to explore the effects of the wider contexts of expansion and contraction on primary teachers careers. The book represents an attempt to bring together the themes and issues in the articles and to develop them further.

Writing is the act of putting thoughts into visible print, a means of articulating and refining one's thinking and a means of communicating such thinking to others. In the past twenty years, a growing number of research studies have been concerned with elucidating the mental faculties, routines and sequences involved as people compose messages in writing representing thoughts in forms which they hope will be mutually understood by intended targets of the communication. Such research has been useful in illuminating ways in which writers can express themselves, and be taught to express themselves, in ways suitable to the task in hand. The bulk of such research has been concerned with English, and it seems to be presumed that the outcomes of such studies carry relevance for languages other than English. Equally, it seems to be presumed that the findings pertain to composers using English when it is a second language of state or a foreign language. This thesis explores in a modest way the validity of these presumptions using as subjects primary school age children from Hong Kong. The study is hence concerned with English, the world's premier international language, and Chinese, the world's most commonly used language. The thesis presents research into the composing processes in English and in Chinese employed by 18 primary school pupils in Hong Kong. It offers an in-depth study of the key subprocesses of generating, transforming, pausing and revising. The research was exploratory in nature and sought to gather evidence which might throw light on what happens when primary school pupils in Hong Kong compose in Chinese and in English. The strategy employed was a multiple case study approach. Subjects were asked to write two scripts, one in Chinese and one in English. Although the mother tongue of all the subjects is Cantonese, a dialect of Chinese, in school they are required to write either in Modem Standard Written Chinese or in English, the second language of Hong Kong. The subjects were given set tasks, either to write in a narrative or an expository style. The methods used to gather evidence and data were composing aloud and transcribing their utterances, video and audio-recorded observation, text analysis, on-task observational notes, cued-recall interviews and retrospective reports. The subjects' reflections were cued by being shown the video recordings.