Pupils' behaviour can affect teacher morale, attrition, and exclusions. Teachers' efficacy beliefs can serve as a protective factor against stress and burnout. This study examined a possible association between teachers' collective efficacy (CE) beliefs and exclusion rates, and whether student-teacher relationships (STRs) affected CE beliefs and…

Despite evidence for the importance of playtime for children, the use of the withdrawal of playtime is a sanction that is used throughout schools in the UK. In light of this, there have been recent arguments highlighting the need to explore alternatives to this sanction in order to protect opportunities for playtime. This exploratory action…

This exploratory study adopted a mixed methods methodology, a critical realist ontological stance and a constructionist epistemological position to consider how special educational needs coordinators and pastoral managers in mainstream high schools understand the relationship between problem behaviours and language development. Semi-structured…

Behavioural difficulties, whether externalising or internalising, concern educational policy makers, practitioners and educational psychologists (EPs). The present configurative systematic literature review (SLR) aims to explore EPs' representations of their behaviour management practices and application of psychology within behaviour work, in…

Research shows that Looked After Children (LAC) may experience emotional instability which can reduce their capacity to engage with education. This study evaluates an attachment based therapeutic Theraplay® intervention designed to bridge the gap between the emotional well-being of LAC and their engagement in education. Twenty LAC between the ages…

This article details a mixed methods study designed to examine the impact of a group process consultation model in helping staff manage challenging behaviour in the nurture group setting. It relates to two geographical clusters of staff, including teachers and teaching assistants, running 11 nurture groups in a major metropolitan area in the UK,…

Promoting mental health and well-being for children and young people in the UK has attracted increasing prominence in recent years and has been a focus for government strategy within health and education. Training and practice in educational psychology has increasingly focused on developing skills and expertise to provide therapeutic support…

This article considers how a framework for understanding group and organisational behaviour, systems-psychodynamics, can be utilised by educational psychologists taking up an organisational consultancy role to work with schools as whole systems. It outlines the three main theories that constitute a systems-psychodynamic perspective and considers…

Whilst outcomes for looked after children (LAC) have been extensively discussed, less attention has been paid to the experiences of teachers of this group of children. It is accepted that Emotional Labour (EL) is commonplace in the teaching profession but no research has investigated how, and to what extent, teachers experience emotional labour…

The transition to secondary school is considered difficult for children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), yet there has been little strength-based investigation of positive experiences of this population and the types of support they value most in managing anxiety about transition. The current article presents a qualitative exploration of the…

Questions of how best to support both children's emotional well-being and behaviour in schools are pervasive. The efficacy of an intervention planning tool to support internalising and externalising emotional needs and promote early intervention was explored in a small-scale case study. Adults were trained in two primary schools to carry out the…

This study evaluated the efficacy of preschool Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS), an early years curriculum designed to improve children's social and emotional competence, and reduce problem behaviour. Fifty-seven children aged three to four years took part in the study over one academic year. The control group (Group 1) received…

Every day nearly 900 children will be excluded from UK schools for disruptive behaviour and almost one-third of this population has a diagnosed mental health disorder. Exclusion from school is the endpoint of most schools' sanction-based behaviour management policies. This exploratory study investigated staff opinions for using a communication and…

This action research project considered whether significant improvements in child and young person behavioural and emotional mental health could be achieved using school-based play workers as opposed to qualified therapists. This was seen as being an important practice question as access to qualified play therapists was severely restricted with…

This paper explores how educational psychologists working in a training/consultative way can enable teachers to manage challenging pupil behaviour more effectively. It sets out a rationale which encourages schools to embrace a group based teacher peer-support system as part of regular school development. It then explores the usefulness of the…