In this paper, I will begin by charting some of the conceptions of mental health in young people today, paying particular attention to recent mental health education policies in England. I will focus on the concept of 'resilience' as central to these policies, and how this represents an impoverished understanding of mental health, what it means to…

This paper reflects on tensions and challenges in encouraging and enabling students to foreground their personal emotional material in the learning process, while this process itself remains embedded in the neoliberal subjectivities of the university, wider social contexts and the individual selves. We explore our teaching on a final year…

Previous research has revealed how mature students are more likely to drop out of university education, achieve poorer degree outcomes and have greater family, financial, caring and work commitments to contend with than their younger peers. In response to calls for further empirical work on mature students' university experiences and informed…

In this paper we reflect on our experiences teaching human geography across two modules that pedagogically centre student reflexivity through content that has potential to be dis-comforting. Drawing upon student experiences on two final year option modules, relating to social and spatial exclusion and "race", ethnicity and multiculture,…

Loneliness in childhood and adolescence is currently measured using questionnaires and checklists. The most used questionnaires for youth are psychometrically limited, partly due to the absence of the young person's voice from the measurement development process. Given this gap in the literature, the current study explored primary-school aged…

The secondary school transition is considered a critical life event by practitioners and researchers alike, and the challenges presented by the pupils during this transition continues to be high-profile in educational, social and political contexts. This study focused on Year 7 pupils aged 11 to 12 years old in their first year of secondary…

This paper details a small-scale research project that explores the student transition into higher education (HE), delivered in a further education college (FE), and considers whether the requirements of transition at this level impacts on emotional wellbeing. As such, it aims to contribute to the growing body of research on HE-in-FE from the…

Working with pupils who are on the edge of exclusion is not an easy job; in fact, it is more than just a job. This study investigates the emotional involvement of educators (teachers and mentors) working with pupils who have been permanently, or are at risk of being, excluded from mainstream education This article presents different forms of…

Student-mothers who study vocationally related higher education programmes are a relatively under-researched group. Specifically, there is a paucity of research into the emotions that these learners experience. This article discusses a qualitative investigation that examined the emotional narratives that a group of vocational student-mothers…

This article argues for a turn in early years policy towards more serious attention to the emotional dimensions of nursery organisation and practice. The article describes three developing bodies of research on emotion in nursery, each taking a different theoretical perspective. The central argument of the article is that these three bodies of…

This paper raises questions about social and emotional learning (SEL) as a facilitator of all children's social, emotional and behavioural skills. Drawing on qualitative data, in the form of group and individual interviews with a range of primary school and early years staff members across four case studies, the findings indicate that children's…

This paper explores the emotional experiences of elementary school inspections, from the appointment of the first State school inspectors in 1839 to 1911 when Edward Holmes, the retiring chief inspector, signposted the prospects of a new era in elementary education. The paper is arranged in two parts: the first provides an outline of the origins…

This paper explores the value of writing journals for both students and teachers beyond English lessons and without insistence on evidencing writing progress. Keeping a journal or undertaking regular reflective writing is an unfamiliar experience for some students, and schools may offer limited privacy for writing. Used in a comprehensive school…

Nursery experience is now common for young children and their families. Questions of quality have focussed mainly on safety and early learning. The roles of subtle emotional processes in daily pedagogic interactions have received surprisingly little attention. This paper discusses the Tavistock Observation Method (TOM), a naturalistic method of…

In 2010, a PhD scholarship afforded me an interruption from my teaching role in UK Further Education (FE). Because of my interests in enhancing teaching and learning, I chose to investigate the emotional aspects of lesson observations. Previous studies focused on lesson observations within schools or universities, but my research centred…