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Abstract We report the results of a randomized trial (N = 337) examining the effectiveness of a daily audio-guided MBI in raising academic achievement in 16 volunteer classrooms across two socio-demographically diverse United States primary schools. The study's findings were that, over the intervention period, improvements in Math scores, Social Studies scores and Grade Point Averages (GPA) were generally higher for students in intervention classrooms. However, confidence intervals were wide and there was pre-existing variability between schools and grades, resulting in few significant differences as a result of the intervention and generally low effect sizes. Through a careful discussion of the study's results, the paper contributes to theory by generating a comprehensive agenda for follow-up research. The study also contributes to practice by reporting on the effectiveness of technology-enabled mindfulness training because participating teachers seemed able to implement the intervention with almost no further training or need for hiring external mindfulness experts. Highlights • In an RCT the hypothesized link between mindfulness training and attainment was examined. • Pre-recorded audio-guided mindfulness training was used as the daily school intervention. • Some promising results were found for Social Studies, GPA, and especially Math scores. • The lack of consistent statistically significant benefits resulted in a detailed research agenda for follow-up work. • It seems feasible to embed technology-based mindfulness in schools without extensive teacher training or external experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Notwithstanding the importance of metaphors in organizational research, this paper recognizes that few empirical studies examining the multiple metaphors elicited by stakeholders (for instance, teachers, administrators and managers) in the context of IS/IT implementation within an educational setting have been conducted. Using a total of 30 in-depth interviews carried out within a further and higher educational college in the United Kingdom, the broad aim of this paper is to examine the metaphors produced from organizational members in their accounts of IS/IT implementation. The analysis reveals a number of dominant metaphors that feature in IS literature on which participants drew—journey, military, machine, bodily/illness, sports and religion—as well as a number of additional, novel metaphors not widely acknowledged within IS literature, namely nautical, horticultural and child-like metaphors. The paper proposes that practitioners and managers should be aware of the multiple metaphorical expressions members of an organization use as it may help to clarify the tensions arising during IS/IT implementation. Furthermore, an exploration of these metaphors generates fresh insights into implementation practices, which may otherwise go unnoticed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the relationship between entrenched beliefs about language (‘language ideologies’) and the linguistic system, and considers how conflicts between propositional and procedural knowledge about language have an effect upon the way in which language is regulated within society. It examines the epistemological foundations for drawing a distinction between language ideology and the linguistic system, and discusses the way in which the conflicting influences of these two aspects of language behaviour create the framework by which language is regulated in both academic and institutional contexts. Drawing upon critical insights provided by theoretical work in linguistic anthropology, and combining these with a philosophical consideration of language behaviour, the paper poses the question of whether there is a fundamental interdependency between patterns of entrenched belief about language and the nature of language itself. It then examines the implications of such a question for our understanding of the role that language plays in the lived experience. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The paper explores the incidence of over and under education and the effect on earnings for immigrants and natives who hold UK qualifications, drawn from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey 1993–2003. The paper also compares earnings penalties associated with over and under education across immigrant and minority ethnic groups for men and women. The results show that compared to Whites, Black African, Other Non-White and Indian men are more likely to be over-educated, whilst for women it is Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi''s who are more likely to be over-educated. Estimating earnings equations shows significantly large over-education penalties for South Asian immigrant and native men, as well as White immigrant men, Black women and White UK born women. However, there are large returns to occupational skills for some minority ethnic and immigrant groups, over and above the returns to qualifications. It is suggested that these groups may therefore find it easier to find a suitable job for their UK education level if higher or further education programmes for immigrants were combined with occupational specific training. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Numerous economic studies have shown a strong positive correlation between health and years of schooling. The question at the centre of this research is whether the correlation between health and education represents a causal relation. This paper uses changes in compulsory schooling laws in the United Kingdom to test this hypothesis. Multiple measures of overall health are used. The results provide evidence of a causal relation running from more schooling to better health which is much larger than standard regression estimates suggest. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper considers whether there is value in introducing student teachers to schools of different ethos as part of their initial teacher education. A 2-year study of undergraduate post-primary student teachers at a university college in Northern Ireland reveals that encounters with schools of different ethos can help student teachers to understand differences between schools and their visions of education, as well as correcting misunderstandings and challenging stereotypes. It is argued that as a result of experiencing diverse examples of ethos, student teachers may also be helped to understand the complexity of schools as organisations and to position themselves and their professional practice within wider debates about the aims of education and schools as communities of practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Ideologies of education and of teaching are complex and layered, and they contain macro-social, institutional as well as micro-ideological levels. Building on cases from the UK and South Africa, this paper argues that notions of ‘professionalism’ among teachers display such ideological layering, and that such notions are heavily invested with interests that transcend the operational or institutional scales. In the case of the UK, we discuss the way in which a teacher described her experience of taking a degree course, exposing a rift between individual, experiential knowledge and institutional, organisational knowledge, characteristic of the large-scale transformations of the educational field in the UK. In the South African case, we show how a white teacher instructing black township children deploys images of the disciplined body that derive from the Apartheid ‘old order’. In both cases we see that views of professionalism are infused with micro-ideological, practical beliefs as well as with macro-ideological social and political views. In terms of the implications of our line of argument for teacher education we conclude that student teachers should be taught explicitly about the discourses by which teaching is constructed so that they are able to reflect more critically on their professional practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The National Languages Strategy, published in the UK in 2002 offers all primary school children an entitlement to learn a Modern Foreign Language (MFL) by 2010. The supply of adequately trained teachers is one of the key determinants of the success of this initiative. This paper presents findings from a study involving 18 teacher education institutions offering a primary MFL specialism, focusing particularly on the preservice teachers’ confidence in their own subject knowledge. A compulsory component of the specialism is a month of practicum abroad and this article explores the potential benefits and difficulties associated with this experience, as reported by the preservice teachers through questionnaires and focus groups. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In recent decades, the traditional perception of academic writing as an objective and impersonal endeavour solely devoted to conveying factual information has given way to a view that sees it as an interactional enterprise laden with personal preferences and cultural influences. With this shift in the understanding of the nature of academic writing, authorial voice and stance have become a major focus for research in applied linguistics. This paper investigates the extent to which Turkish doctoral students of literary studies differ from their counterparts in British universities in terms of the use of the self-mention markers in their doctoral dissertations. To this end, having its spark in Hyland's idea of interactional metadiscourse, this study compares the self-mention markers and their collocates in the Turkish and UK corpora comprising 100 doctoral dissertations, using a corpus-assisted lexical analysis method. The results show that there is a statistically significant difference between the doctoral students at Turkish and British universities in the use of the self-mention markers. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the surrounding context of those markers (i.e. collocational patterns) seems to diverge to a great extent when the corpora output is compared. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the possible causes of this difference and suggestions for further studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]