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This paper reports on our participatory multi‐faceted community‐wide intervention to change gender perceptions and encourage support for girls' education to improve their school attendance and performance. The intervention involved community and education stakeholders in implementing a context‐specific multi‐faceted intervention to improve opportunities for girls in 123 primary schools in the rural Wolaita Zone, Ethiopia. We implemented a repeated‐measures quasi‐experimental design in a sample of 30 schools (15 project and 15 control schools) to evaluate the intervention's effectiveness. Over 3 years we assessed gender perceptions of a cohort of 750 Grade 6 girls, their parents and teachers in project and control schools. In addition, participative group discussions were conducted with various stakeholders. In project schools, we recorded significant changes (e.g., provision of sanitary pads, counselling, tutorial classes and community involvement). Teachers and parents reported improved gender attitudes and support for girls' education; while girls' self‐esteem scores and educational aspirations increased. The findings showed a change in community perceptions of the value of girls' education and some evidence of increased equality in gender perceptions. We concluded that these systemic changes marked the start of a long‐term change process. This intervention showed the value of a participatory approach in a systemic community intervention. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we report on our use of a participatory research methodology to consult with children in the UK on how to improve pupil well-being in secondary schools, framed within the wider social policy context of healthy schools. We worked with children on the selection of our research methods and sought to voice the views of children to a local education authority to improve the design of school environments. The consultation process ultimately failed not because the children were unforthcoming with their views on either methods or on well-being in schools, but because of difficulties in how their views were received by adults. We show how the socio-economic, cultural and political context in which those difficulties were set might have led to the eventual break down of the consultation process, and we draw out a number of possible implications for consultative and participatory work with children in school settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses a gap in the literature by developing a theory that bridges lesson study and self-efficacy Since self-efficacy has been linked to student achievement, the theory is important as an explanatory mechanism linking lesson study to student achievement. The theory was developed using grounded theory based on primary source data primarily from planning and debriefing meetings. The theory demonstrates that lesson study is linked to self efficacy through a content continuum which implies that issues from pedagogical content knowledge to deeper conceptual matters can be addressed. It also implies that constraints arising in lesson study are most frequently limitations ofpedagogical content knowledge which can be mitigated by a community of practice that provides appropriate resources and subject expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]