Peter Blatchford is Professor in Psychology and Education at the UCL Institute of Education. His main area of interest is social developmental processes in school settings. He has published 15 books and over 100 peer reviewed papers. He has directed large scale research programmes on the deployment and impact of support staff in schools (DISS), the educational effects of class size differences and pupil adult ratios (CSPAR), collaborative group work (SPRinG) and projects on grouping practices in schools, school recess/breaktimes, and the educational experiences of children with Special Educational Needs in primary and secondary schools. He is currently engaged in a three year Leverhulme funded Major Research Fellowship. Recent books include: Blatchford, P., Russell, A., and Webster, R. (2012) Reassessing the Impact of Teaching Assistants: How Research Challenges Practice and Policy. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge; Kutnick, P. and Blatchford, P. (2014) Effective Group work in Primary School Classrooms: the SPRinG approach. Dordrecht: Springer; Blatchford, P., Pellegrini, A. and Baines, E. (2016) The Child at School: Interactions with Peers and Teachers (2nd Edition). Routledge.

Tina Hascher is a professor of Education Science at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She graduated from studies in Psycholinguistics, Psychology and Special Education at the LM-University in Munich, Germany. Then, she did her PhD-Studies as a fellow of the Max-Planck-Institute for Psychological Research in Munich and finally, her Habilitation at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Afterwards, she held academic positions at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), Bern (Switzerland), Salzburg (Austria), before she returned to the University of Bern in 2013. Her research interests lie in emotions and motivation in school, well-being and health education as well as teacher education.