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This article presents a systematic review of a substantial body of literature that considers the ways in which the concept of teacher identity has been used to understand and explore teachers' professional lives. The aim of the review was to go beyond the limitations of specific areas of teachers' practice to explore the broad and rich field of teachers' professional lives. Drawing on 412 articles from 2000-2021, the review demonstrates the growth in teacher identity research, particularly since 2010. Results from the review are categorised into seven thematic groups that span key areas related to teachers' professional lives: (1) Models and frameworks of professional lives; (2) Narratives of professional lives; (3) Becoming a teacher; (4) Contexts; (5) Communities; (6) Change, transition and conflict; and (7) Subject specialisms. The review reveals gaps in teacher identity research, such as: few research studies from Global South countries; a limited number of studies focusing on non-core curriculum subjects, including arts, history, geography and physical education; fewer studies focusing on primary school and early years teacher identities; and a divide between identity scholarship and research, and policy and practice. The article concludes with a call for teacher identity research to be expanded and broadened with the aim to facilitate the progress of identity work in scholarship, policy and practice.

Purpose: Responding to research reporting low-levels of teacher wellbeing in England, policy makers have begun to implement strategies to support wellbeing. Given the recent introduction of such policy, this exploratory study describes the wellbeing support being offered to teachers, and perceptions of its impact on wellbeing. Method: A purposeful sample of ten schools (primary and secondary) in Greater London beginning to offer wellbeing support was selected and fifteen teachers were interviewed. Findings: Teachers describe a range of wellbeing support strategies being implemented in their schools and report, in some cases, activities designed with good intentions can harm their wellbeing. We apply the capabilities approach to analyse the interviews and argue wellbeing support should be matched to the needs of recipients and support should increase teachers' freedoms to act, rather than simply mitigating in the moment feelings of stress. Limitations: Findings of this small-scale study cannot be generalised to other contexts.

This paper explores and charts the reasons why some primary school headteachers in "disadvantaged" London schools remain in post at a time of rising rates of attrition of school leaders and headteachers. Instead of exploring the reasons why headteachers are quitting their posts in urban schools, this study examines the retention issue from an alternative perspective by understanding what factors encourage headteachers to stay. Findings suggest that the London headteachers are fueled by their commitment to principles of social justice and demonstrate this by providing stability and security for the children and staff in their schools.

Informed by the ideology of 'deliverology', performance measurement has become a core component of how English schools are held accountable for the quality of their provision. A wealth of research conducted in diverse national contexts where this approach has been influential has suggested that the unintended harms it generates -- including a widening of inequalities, a test-driven pedagogic culture and a narrowing of the curriculum -- may be outweighing its benefits. In an attempt to circumnavigate such perverse effects, the performance measures used in England have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, giving them a "prima facie" plausibility that has led to them being welcomed by some progressive educators as a means of increasing access to high-status knowledge for disadvantaged students. This paper uses data from a survey of English school teachers to interrogate this plausibility. The analysis suggests that when we drill down into the daily life of schools and its underlying logic it becomes increasingly difficult to be comfortable with the progressive defence of the performance measures currently in use; and that, far from improving educational quality, the measures themselves, and the wider deliverology framework with which they are associated, are in certain fundamental respects incompatible with quality improvement.

Grouping pupils by attainment is frequently practised in primary schools yet is associated with detrimental effects for middle- and lower-attaining children. Drawing on a mixed methods study, we find that attainment grouping practices at key stage 2 in primary schools are seldom straightforward. Although grouping by attainment appears to be the dominant form of grouping, the language used by teachers to talk about their classroom practice suggests a varied and sometimes complex picture. We explore how school leaders and teachers justify their grouping practices and conclude that primary school educators endeavour to strike a balance between their concern for the child and the need to respond to the demands of testing and assessment. In the wake of new reforms to primary education, the findings in this study are significant and timely in providing a picture of the types of grouping currently being carried out in primary schools across England.

This paper returns to a long-standing theme in education research, the ways in which 'contextual factors impact on what schools do, as well as directly on what pupils achieve' (Lupton, 2004, 4). Drawing on a project designed to explore the early effects of reforms to national examinations, the curriculum for 14-16 year olds and school accountability measures in English secondary schools, this paper considers the perceptions and experiences of teachers currently charged with enacting these reforms specifically in the light of their situated school realities in three different settings. A case is made for a contextually sensitive approach towards policy making and policy enactment that takes account of some of the more nuanced distinctions among schools' contextual positionings.

Conservativism has gained significant influence on education-policy making and debates about education in many Anglophone countries. While conservative educational governments have advanced some neoliberal governance trends, they have also introduced characteristic neoconservative education elements, notably in the area of curricular content. This article focuses on the impact of conservative ideology on curriculum and assessment policies in English secondary education and specifically explores schools' first reactions to the introduction of a policy initiative that is emblematic of neoconservatism, the English Baccalaureate. The empirical discussion relies on a mixed methods study on the reception of the latest assessment and curriculum policies in English secondary schools. The findings suggest that the current reforms are transforming school subject hierarchies, resource allocation across subjects, and what counts as knowledge in English secondary schools, and introducing a new culture of subject--and by implication, teacher and student--'worth'.

This paper explores the implications of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) for secondary school physical education (PE) departments and their teachers. The EBacc is a key performance measure that is published annually for each school, which privileges a particular set of traditional academic subjects, and in doing so, marginalises other subjects, including PE. At the same time as responding to this performance measure, secondary schools in England are required to respond to a wider set of policy reforms and innovations. This can sometimes result in overlap, collision and policy clash. For example, while PE is being sidelined and PE staffing reduced by the EBacc, there is national concern surrounding issues of fitness, health and well-being that schools are expected to address and which are often traditionally seen as the responsibility of PE departments. A reduction in their staffing will inevitably have consequences for their ability to respond in meaningful ways to such non-academic policy imperatives. Drawing on a study of the impact of recent curriculum and accountability reforms in English secondary schools (Neumann, E., Towers, E., Gewirtz, S., & Maguire, M. 2016. "A curriculum for all? The effects of recent Key Stage 4 curriculum, assessment and accountability reforms on English secondary education." London: National Union of Teachers), this paper presents evidence of the marginalisation of PE and PE teachers' ensuing concerns about their job security. It also explores changes that have been made to the PE curriculum in an attempt to make the subject more academically demanding and considers what this means for PE teachers and their students. The authors conclude that if PE is going to contribute to broader fitness, health and wellbeing agendas, then there is an urgent need for a renewed debate -- that reaches beyond PE communities and constituencies -- about what PE is for, why it is important and how it can be better supported.

This article considers the ways in which a group of postgraduate students position themselves in a multicultural classroom at one university in the UK. Research indicates that postgraduate students actively negotiate and renegotiate their learner identities and belonging in the context of higher education environments and develop new subject positions. The study examines students' constructions of their own identities as learners and considers their changing identities from the perspective of agency. Our data collected from focus groups and one-to-one interviews with students prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, comprise a large proportion of non-UK/EU students, amongst whom Chinese students are the single largest constituency. Findings show that students' experience of learning is constitutive of the identification work they do during lectures and group-work to position themselves as participants of HE, and in the process, practice othering of students belonging to non-traditional participants in UK higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of teacher attrition, there is a significant body of literature on why teachers leave high-needs urban schools and particularly why beginning teachers leave their schools and the profession. However, there is little research on the reasons why experienced teachers leave the teaching profession. This paper examines this subject by considering whether teachers experience an "identity crisis" in their careers which prompts them to leave. Drawing on identity theory, data from a single case study of an experienced urban teacher are taken from a wider qualitative research study carried out in London, England. The case is made that decisions to leave or stay in a school are contingent on a number of personal, professional and situational factors related to the teacher's identity. The article concludes that one way to understand why long-serving teachers leave the profession is to examine aspects of their teacher identity and explore how a crisis in professional identity can contribute towards teacher attrition. In the light of this alternative approach towards understanding attrition, at the very least, supportive structures can be put in place to encourage more teachers to stay and contribute to the success and well-being of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The article focuses on the complexity of defining and measuring teacher effectiveness. Topics include the importance of good teaching; conceptualizations of teacher effectiveness and the rhetoric of school effectiveness; and the challenges of measuring effectiveness. The also discussed about who defines effectiveness and how it is measured and suggests that supporting educated and reflective teachers in their professional development may be part of the solution.