We address the key aim of this special issue through a focus on teachers' self-reflection, in particular the construction and integration of personal and professional identities, drawing on data from two studies. The first is a case study of a male nursery teacher (from a study by Warin) which examines how dissonance is experienced in identities concerning status and gender and how it is resolved through a synthesis of class teaching with fathering. The second harnesses survey data (from the Teacher Status Project) of 'nearly qualified teachers' about to embark on their professional lives, and of practising teachers, in which we focus on their reasons for becoming a teacher, exploring discontinuities between actual and desired teacher identities and the transformations that take place over time. The data from the two studies emphasize the importance of 'technologies of the self' in order to develop teacher self-awareness. We support a shift in interpreting the meaning of reflective practice towards an emphasis on teachers' reflexive practice. We recommend that teachers be given opportunities and strategies for the active creation of expanded narratives of self, and identify examples of how this might be achieved.

Ethnographic case studies of nine British working class children were conducted in order to investigate learning from the perspectives of the families. The research aim was to study children learning outside school in situations that were not specifically set up with learning in mind; in social contexts where learning was not an obligation or purpose and was therefore incidental and non-self-conscious; and to study children learning in the company of adults who were not professionals. This article does not offer a universal portrait of these children's learning, but a particular way of seeing and interpreting it. The children's home learning is fuelled by social and emotional dimensions. There are multiple competitors for children's attention in any given learning opportunity, and children are not necessarily learning what adults think they are. The children in the study transform the outcomes of their opportunities for learning into learning about their experiences of the human condition.

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