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In recent years there has been growing concern that the emphasis schools place on academic attainment has impacted negatively on children's mental well-being in the UK. In a bid to address society's growing concern for the mental well-being of children, the government has introduced policies into schools aimed at enhancing social and emotional development. Socio-cultural theory suggests children's development is mediated through interpersonal communication which signposts towards specific ways of behaving. This paper explores whether variation in the extent to which schools place a stronger emphasis on social aspects of learning, or academic attainment, results in variation in interpersonal communication. Findings suggest the organisational structure at the whole school level impacts on micro-interactions at the classroom level and that these differences do result in variation in expected ways of behaving. Analysis of school discourse provides a means for exploring the link between school context and students' social and emotional development. The development of approaches to emotional and behavioural disordersIn mediaeval times behavioural abnormalities were considered to be part of the divine plan for mankind; stigma in relation to mental illness was practically unknown. However, the Reformation brought a splitting of the Christian world, a breakdown of values and a search for a scapegoat (Fink and Tasman 1992). Individuals displaying signs of behavioural abnormalities were now considered to be possessed by demonic spirits. The consequent 'witch mania' was the start of a relationship between stigma and mental illness (Mora 2006), a stigma which still exists today. In the late 1800s the scientist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) de-demonised hysteria by demonstrating that 'demonic possessions' were in fact a variety of hysteria (Blum 1977). Scholars of Charcot included names such as Pierre Janet, William James and Sigmund Freud and by the mid 1890s, driven by a desire to discover the cause of hysteria, Freud and Janet both reached the same conclusion -hysteria was a psychological phenomenon (Haule 1986). Breuer and Freud (1895/1955) published their first paper on the psychoanalysis of hysteria, shortly after which Freud coined the term 'anxiety neurosis', a term which covered milder anxiety states. Freud's psychoanalytical approach to emotional behavioural disorders reigned until the mid-twentieth century.With a general disillusionment of psychoanalytic theories a number of other approaches to emotional and behaviour disorders emerged throughout the twentieth century. These included behaviourism (e.g., Watson 1930), humanism (e.g., Maslow 1943), biological (e.g., *