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2. Autonomous Schools, Achievement and Segregation. Discussion Paper No. 1968
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London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom), Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), Natalie Irmert, Jan Bietenbeck, Linn Mattisson, and Felix Weinhardt
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We study whether autonomous schools, which are publicly funded but can operate more independently than government-run schools, affect student achievement and school segregation across 15 countries over 16 years. Our triple-differences regressions exploit between-grade variation in the share of students attending autonomous schools within a given country and year. While autonomous schools do not affect overall achievement, effects are positive for high-socioeconomic status students and negative for immigrants. Impacts on segregation mirror these findings, with evidence of increased segregation by socioeconomic and immigrant status. Rather than creating "a rising tide that lifts all boats," autonomous schools increase inequality
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- 2023
3. What Is Wrong with Franchise Provision? HEPI Debate Paper 36
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Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) (United Kingdom), Nick Braisby, Ian Harper, and Damien Page
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Franchised provision of higher education has been under the spotlight in recent times. Without shying away from the challenges faced by those delivering successful franchise arrangements, this paper shows how important franchising can be in extending access to higher education. The authors explain what protections need to be in place to ensure franchise arrangements work out for students. They end with clear recommendations to encourage more collaboration between franchisors, franchisees and regulators, such as the Office for Students.
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- 2024
4. University of Northampton: Waterside Story. HEPI Debate Paper 35
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Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) (United Kingdom), Nick Petford, Robert Griggs, and Terry Neville
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In this HEPI Report, Nick Petford, Robert Griggs and Terry Neville explore the rationale and development of the University of Northampton's Waterside Campus, one of the UK's most ambitious university relocation projects. They conclude with a series of lessons learned.
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- 2024
5. Neoliberal or Not? English Higher Education. HEPI Debate Paper 34
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Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) (United Kingdom), Roger Brown, and Nick Hillman
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This HEPI Report includes two contrasting views on recent higher education policies and alternatives to the status quo. In Part One, Roger Brown argues neoliberal policies have damaged English higher education in recent decades -- and continue to do so. He says neoliberalism has many adverse effects, including 'increased stratification, the commodification of learning and (for some groups) reduced participation'. In Part Two, Nick Hillman questions if it actually makes sense to paint recent reforms as neoliberal and suggests a wholly different approach might not bring the benefits that many people expect to see. Furthermore, he argues that supply-side reform has not yet gone far enough. [Foreword by Chris Husbands.]
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- 2023
6. Learning with Treescapes in Environmentally Endangered Times. Occasional Paper Series 50
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Bank Street College of Education, Samyia Ambreen, Kate Pahl, Samyia Ambreen, Kate Pahl, and Bank Street College of Education
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Issue #50 of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, "Learning With Treescapes in Environmentally Endangered Times Learning with Treescapes in Environmentally Endangered Times," is intended to be hopeful. Articles in this issue contribute to the envisioning of new practices and to an architecture of knowledge to waymark a more sustainable route into the future. Trees are vital for the present and future health of the planet, its inhabitants, and ecosystems. They store carbon and breathe out oxygen. Their leaves filter dangerous pollutants. Their branches provide shade and a shelter for a myriad of other beings, allowing diverse species to thrive. They provide cooling, control erosion, and filter water. Articles in this issue include stories from teachers and their students about learning with trees, and descriptions of how engagements with trees can transform research and ways of thinking, feeling, and being. Across multiple pieces, authors reflect on how connecting with trees facilitates greater connection among humans and between humans and the more-than-human occupants of our planet.
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- 2023
7. Intersectionality in Education: Rationale and Practices to Address the Needs of Students' Intersecting Identities. OECD Education Working Papers. No. 302
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Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (France), Directorate for Education and Skills, Samo Varsik, and Julia Gorochovskij
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Intersectionality highlights that different aspects of individuals' identities are not independent of each other. Instead, they interact to create unique identities and experiences, which cannot be understood by analysing each identity dimension separately or in isolation from their social and historical contexts. Intersectional approaches in this way question the common classification of individuals into groups (male vs. female, immigrant vs. native etc.), which raises important implications for the policy-making process. In education, analyses with an intersectional lens have the potential to lead to better tailored and more effective policies and interventions related to participation, learning outcomes, students' attitudes towards the future, identification of needs, and socio-emotional well-being. Consequently, as elaborated in this paper, some countries have adjusted their policies in the areas of governance, resourcing, developing capacity, promoting school-level interventions and monitoring, to account for intersectionality. Gaps and challenges related to intersectional approaches are also highlighted.
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- 2023
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8. Indicators of Inclusion in Education: A Framework for Analysis. OECD Education Working Papers. No. 300
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Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (France), Directorate for Education and Skills, Cecilia Mezzanotte, and Claire Calvel
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Calls for increased monitoring and evaluation of education policies and practices have not, so far, included widespread and consistent assessments of the inclusiveness of education settings. Measuring inclusion in education has proven to be a challenging exercise, due not only to the complexity and different uses of the concept, but also to its holistic nature. Indeed, measuring inclusion implies analysing a variety of policy areas within education systems, while also considering the different roles of the system, the school and the classroom. This paper discusses the application of the input-process-outcome model to the measurement of inclusion in education, and key indicators that can be adopted by education systems and schools to this end. It makes considerations relevant to policy makers when designing indicators to measure inclusion, such as the extent of their application, the constraints related to data disaggregation and the relevance of intersectional approaches to inclusion.
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- 2023
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9. Economic Benefits of Meeting the Ambitions Set out in the Schools White Paper
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Department for Education (DfE) (United Kingdom)
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This government's Levelling Up mission for schools is that, by 2030, 90% of children will leave primary school having achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, up from 65% in 2019. In addition, this white paper sets an ambition to increase the national GCSE average grade in both English language and in maths from 4.5 in 20193 to 5, for all secondary school pupils by 2030. In this report it is estimated the economic returns associated with achieving these ambitions. To achieve the Levelling Up mission, around one in four pupils will need to make sufficient improvements in Key Stage 2 (KS2) attainment by 2030 to reach the expected standard. It is estimated that the size of the attainment improvement will need to be equivalent to 0.87 of a standard deviation, or around 10 months of progress.
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- 2022
10. The Impact of Emerging Technology in Physics over the Past Three Decades
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Binar Kurnia Prahani, Hanandita Veda Saphira, Budi Jatmiko, Suryanti, and Tan Amelia
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As humanity reaches the 5.0 industrial revolution, education plays a critical role in boosting the quality of human resources. This paper reports bibliometric research on emerging TiP during 1993-2022 in the educational field to analyse its development on any level of education during the last three decades. This study employed a Scopus database. The findings are that the trend of TiP publication in educational fields has tended to increase every year during the past three decades and conference paper became the most published document type, the USA is the country which produces the most publications; "Students" being the most occurrences keyword and total link strength. The publication of the TiP is ranked to the Quartile 1, which implies that a publication with the cited performance is a publication with credibility because the publisher has a good reputation. Researchers can find the topics most relevant to other metadata sources such as Web of Science, Publish, and Perish.
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- 2024
11. Repositioning Corrective Feedback to a Meaning-Orientated Approach in the English Language Classroom
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Robert Weekly and Andrew Pollard
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The practice of Corrective Feedback (CF), which is situated within a Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Paradigm, is currently positioned towards an accuracy-orientated delivery based on native speaker norms. This is despite the recognition in different areas of linguistic research that there is considerable variation in the way that English is spoken around the world. This paper argues that the epistemological assumptions and methodological approaches to investigate CF within an SLA paradigm have various underlying weaknesses that undermine research findings. These findings purport to provide support for an accuracy-orientated CF in the English classroom. However, it is suggested in this paper that a meaning-orientated CF would be more reflective and beneficial for students given the transformative changes that have occurred to English over the past 30 years. This perspective is discussed in relation to one teacher's approach to CF who participated in a larger project which examined CF conducted in a British-Sino University.
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- 2024
12. Catching up on Lost Learning Opportunities: Research and Policy Evidence on Key Learning Recovery Strategies. OECD Education Working Papers. No. 292
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Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (France) and Minea-Pic, Andreea
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Climate change and natural disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic, and geopolitical shocks have increasingly disrupted school education around the world in recent years. Whether leading to school closures, school destructions or repeated interruptions in students' learning experiences, these external shocks have translated into lost learning opportunities for students. In this context, education systems face heightened pressure to become ever more resilient, enhance the efficiency of public spending and address emerging learning gaps. This working paper highlights key education strategies for helping students catch up on lost learning opportunities and bridge learning gaps, based on a review of research and policy evidence from OECD and non-OECD countries. It examines a range of academic strategies to address learning gaps, including: (1) adapting instructional strategies and pedagogies to individual needs; (2) extending and adapting the time of instruction; and (3) providing curricular flexibility and enabling fluid learning pathways within the school system. It provides research evidence on the effectiveness of such strategies, together with examples of their large-scale implementation and cost-effectiveness considerations. While this paper presents programmes of general interest for all countries, a separate policy brief targets learning recovery strategies for students in Ukraine.
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- 2023
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13. Managing Student Transitions into Upper Secondary Pathways. OECD Education Working Papers. No. 289
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Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (France), Directorate for Education and Skills and Perico E Santos, Anna Vitoria
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Many factors influence students' experiences in upper secondary education and beyond, including upper secondary curricula, programme design and support for students. But a good transition from earlier levels of education is the first, essential step in a successful journey through upper secondary education and into further education and/or employment. The design of transition systems can mitigate existing inequities in education, but it can also accentuate them. Transitions can also influence student well-being. They can have either a negative impact, for example through highly competitive systems that can be stressful for students and narrow their development, or a positive impact, for example by helping to construct young people's sense of agency and ability to make informed decisions about their future. This paper looks at how countries manage students' transition into upper secondary education and the main policy implications of each transition point and how they can influence student outcomes.
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- 2023
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14. A Framework for Developing Student-Faculty Partnerships in Program-Level Student Learning Outcomes Assessment. Occasional Paper No. 53
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National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, Curtis, Nicholas, and Anderson, Robin
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In her April 2010 NILOA paper, "Opening Doors to Faculty Involvement in Assessment," Pat Hutchings called for institutions to involve students in assessment, citing the potential to increase faculty engagement. In Curtis and Anderson (2020), the first author interviewed numerous partnership experts in both the United Kingdom and the United States regarding student-faculty partnerships and the extent to which students currently engage in the assessment process. Findings from the study make it clear that there currently exists little student-faculty partnership in assessment at the program- or system-levels. Combining existing research on partnership and the expert responses from the Curtis et al. study, we present a framework, based on prototyping, for developing student-faculty partnerships in program-level student learning outcomes assessment.
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- 2021
15. Situating 'Self' Somewhere in Between: Ethnic and National Identity of Three Generations of Turkish Cypriots Living in the United Kingdom
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Lale Güvenli and Feyza Bhatti
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Despite their prolonged history of immigration to the UK, studies on Turkish Cypriots' acculturative processes have been scarce. Utilizing 20 semi-structured interviews with three generations of Turkish Cypriot immigrants living in the UK, this paper explores the acculturation processes of Turkish Cypriots by focusing on their sense of self, ethnic and national identity delineations. How do they identify themselves, and what do their identifications suggest about their acculturation? In an attempt to contribute to the empirical studies on the acculturation and identity of "other white" immigrant groups, we argue that there exists a bi-cultural/multi-cultural self with varying degrees of closeness to the host country, as well as hyphenated (British Cypriot), multi-hyphenated (London Turkish Cypriot) and travelling identities that are constructed through experience, time and place. Although there exist some intergenerational differences, it can be said that Turkish Cypriots have been open to the idea of integration starting from the first generation and, in general, have high acculturation, which was evident from the narratives of how they situate themselves within the ethnic and national identities.
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- 2024
16. Investigating Teachers' Professional Learning from Participation in a Literacy Book Study Group
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Geraldine Magennis-Clarke
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This paper examines a literacy book study group as a potentially useful vehicle for the delivery of teacher professional learning in a primary setting. A small group of teachers, in conjunction with a university lecturer, participated in weekly workshop sessions centred around a chosen literacy-based text. The goal of this project was to provide practitioners with a safe space in which to examine, reaffirm and extend their current knowledge base and classroom practices with the intention of engaging with ideas that may be unfamiliar or potentially daunting. At the core of its design, was the desire to provide 'grassroots' professional learning opportunities which recognise and honour the participants' professional acumen and in turn, build their confidence. Data was gathered via the creation of voice files in response to a short post-project questionnaire. This was supplemented by the on-line discussion threads that took place during each weekly workshop session. Overall, the study was found to be affirming while also bringing a sense of welcome camaraderie from across various schools. Encouragingly, it was found that the ideas explored were authentically-applicable to the classroom without the weight of extraneous paperwork or arduous study commitments.
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- 2024
17. Bibliometric Analysis of Environmental Literacy in Sustainable Development: A Comprehensive Review Based on Scopus Data from 2013 to 2023
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Ariyatun Ariyatun, Sudarmin Sudarmin, Sri Wardani, Sigit Saptono, and Winarto Winarto
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The review article presents an analysis of the literature on environmental literacy in sustainable development. By utilizing techniques to examine multiple documents published between 2013 and 2023, including citation analysis, co-authorship analysis, subject area analysis, and keyword analysis, this study aims to provide valuable information and insights into the research landscape surrounding environmental literacy and its contribution to promoting sustainable development. A systematic search was conducted to gather several scientific articles, conference papers, and publications from the Scopus database from 2013 to 2023. The findings of this analysis shed light on authors, influential institutions, and active research groups that contributed to the study of environmental literacy and sustainable development. This comprehensive review offers an understanding of the state of research in this field while identifying areas for further exploration and research gaps. The insights gained from this study can be highly beneficial for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to advance knowledge and take action toward promoting literacy's role in sustainable development. This analysis is a foundation for advancing our understanding of literacy's significance while emphasizing its vital role in sustainable development efforts.
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- 2024
18. Creative Education or Educational Creativity: Integrating Arts, Social Emotional Aspects and Creative Learning Environments
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Galit Zana Sternfeld, Roni Israeli, and Noam Lapidot-Lefer
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This paper examines the interplay of creativity, education, and the expressive arts. We begin by presenting a narrative literature review focusing on the use of artistic tools to promote creativity, self-expressiveness, and meaningful aspects of emotional and social learning. This review reveals strong connections between the different components of this interplay, and a special attention is given to the use of arts to promoting creativity and meaningful learning. We then propose the Empowering Creative Education Model (ECEM), which aims to provide a practical framework for employing artistic tools in each of the model's four developmental circles: I, Us, Educational and Community. Each of the four circles includes unique aspects of personal development.
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- 2024
19. Exploring Academic Perspectives on Immersive Scheduling in a UK University
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Rebecca Turner, Debby R. E. Cotton, Emily Danvers, David Morrison, and Pauline E. Kneale
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This study examined how academic staff responded to a cross-institutional change initiative to integrate immersive scheduling into the first-year undergraduate curriculum. Immersive scheduling, also referred to as block or compressed delivery, sought to create a supportive first-year experience, to ease students' transition to university. Adopting an immersive approach is associated with considerable change as academic staff adapt their practice to accommodate the compressed time frame of modules and embrace learning and assessment methods associated with this delivery format. In this study, we undertook semi-structured interviews with 17 academics who were leading the development and delivery of immersive modules or supporting the teaching and learning initiative. Our data indicated that academics played a significant role in the acceptance or rejection of the vision for immersive scheduling. Acceptance was reliant on academics recognising value in the vision, and this varied depending on the extent to which it resonated with local practice. In some cases, the move to immersive scheduling represented a valued opportunity to update pedagogic and assessment practices. However, in other contexts, academic resistance led to dilution of key elements of the vision, with compliance rather than innovation being the outcome. This study also highlights the value of using a combination of module delivery formats to mitigate recognised drawbacks associated with immersive delivery. We conclude this paper by proposing recommendations to support the future development of immersive scheduling in higher education institutions.
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- 2024
20. Understanding Engagement in Intensive Learning: From Fuzzy Chaotic Indigestion to Eupeptic Clarity
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Reilly A. Dempsey Willis and Paulo Vieira Braga
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This paper is framed by Nick Zepke's, Vicki Trowler's, and Paul Trowler's concept of student engagement being "chaotic", suffering from "indigestion" and "fuzziness". This study was conducted at a UK higher education institution that recently moved to a "block and blend" delivery approach. We investigated what students and staff think engagement looks like in an intensive block and blend learning context. Data were gathered from students and staff via an online survey, which consisted of both scaled and open-ended questions. Findings are synthesised in an elemental map, providing a comparison of students and staff perceptions of engagement. Specifically, students and staff thought engagement in an intensive block and blend context entailed participation and active learning; a mindset that included enthusiasm, interest, focus, and enjoyment; timely completion of assessments; relationships with peers and tutors; doing more than required, such as completing extra readings; and accessing help and support. Participants also identified attendance as an indicator of student engagement and determined that the university has a responsibility to create learning environments to foster student engagement. Overall, the study findings point to elements of student engagement that may be designed into intensive block and blend learning environments. These approaches are also relevant to other similar intensive learning contexts.
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- 2024
21. Student and Faculty Perceptions of Summative Assessment Methods in a Block and Blend Mode of Delivery
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Paulo Ricardo Vieira Braga, Carmen Maria Ortiz Granero, and Ellen Buck
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The recent increase in the number of higher education institutions adopting block teaching has prompted questions about the appropriateness of assessment methods that were commonly used in a semesterised delivery model. This paper explores student and faculty perceptions of summative assessment methods in a block and blend mode of delivery at a higher education institution in the United Kingdom. In this study, we used a convergent mixed methods approach to explore student and faculty perceptions of different assessment methods as accurate evaluations of learning using surveys, combining Likert-type and open-ended questions. The findings highlight how traditional, single assessment methods occurring at the end of a block were perceived as less accurate in evaluating learning when compared to multiple smaller assessments that occur throughout a block. The thematic analysis revealed the latter was perceived as allowing for a broader range of skills to be evaluated while simultaneously facilitating effective workload management and timely feedback. These outcomes indicate the need for assessment redesign that considers the characteristics of a block and blend mode of delivery and illuminates the shared perception of students and faculty that multiple smaller assessments are more accurate evaluations of learning. Further research with larger, more diverse samples, accommodating for different fields of study, could further our understanding of effective assessment methods and inform our practice in a block and blend mode of delivery.
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- 2024
22. A Half Century of Progress in U.S. Student Achievement: Ethnic and SES Differences; Agency and Flynn Effects. Program on Education Policy and Governance Working Papers Series. PEPG 21-01
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Harvard University, Program on Education Policy and Governance, Shakeel, M. Danish, and Peterson, Paul E.
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Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the first to assess consistency of results by agency. We find results vary by agent, but consistent with Flynn effects, gains are larger in math than reading, except for the most recent period. Non-whites progress at a faster pace. Socio-economically disadvantaged white, black, and Hispanic students make greater progress when tested in elementary school, but that advantage attenuates and reverses itself as students age. We discuss potential moderators.
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- 2021
23. Singing from the Same Hymn Sheet? UK Policy Responses to the NEET Agenda. SKOPE Research Paper No. 130
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University of Oxford (United Kingdom), Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE), Maguire, Sue, and Keep, Ewart
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This paper provides an overview of government policy on young people who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) across the four UK nations. The paper argues that policy in England on this topic is less well-developed and coherent than in the other UK nations, and that the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic will serve to amplify the negative impacts of a set of underlying changes that have been taking place in the youth labour market and in employers' recruitment and selection practices. In addition, the paper notes that in much of the activity directed at reducing those with NEET status has been funded through the EU's European Social Fund and that uncertainty now clouds the continuance of these schemes, and that in England government has increasingly relied on the charities to help fill gaps in outreach and provision.
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- 2021
24. The True Returns to the Choice of Occupation and Education. Discussion Paper No. 1746
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London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom), Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), Clark, Andrew E., Cotofan, Maria, and Layard, Richard
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Which occupations are best for wellbeing? There is a large literature on earnings differentials, but less attention has been paid to occupational differences in non-pecuniary rewards. However, information on both types of rewards is needed to understand the dispersion of wellbeing across occupations. We analyse subjective wellbeing in a large representative sample of UK workers to construct a measure of "full earnings", the sum of earnings and the value of non-pecuniary rewards, in 90 different occupations. We first find that the dispersion of earnings underestimates the extent of inequality in the labour market: the dispersion of full earnings is one-third larger than the dispersion of earnings. Equally, the gender and ethnic gaps in the labour market are larger than data on earnings alone would suggest, and the true returns to completed secondary education (though not to a degree) are underestimated by earnings differences on their own. Finally, we show that our main results are similar, and stronger, for a representative sample of US workers. [Funding for this report was provided by an Écoles Universitaires de Recherche, EUR (University Research Schools, EUR) grant.]
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- 2021
25. Generation COVID: Emerging Work and Education Inequalities. A CEP COVID-19 Analysis. Paper No. 011
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London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom), Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), Major, Lee Elliot, Eyles, Andrew, and Machin, Stephen
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The purpose of this brief paper is to present initial findings from the recently collected London School of Economics and Political Science-Centre for Economic Performance (LSE-CEP) Social Mobility survey, which was undertaken as part of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) project 'Generation COVID and Social Mobility: Evidence and Policy'. These are the first results from a project that is producing a detailed assessment of COVID-19's impact on education and economic inequalities and offering an assessment for the longer term consequences for social mobility in the UK. Alongside the survey findings, the authors have also analysed economic and education outcomes of individuals in April 2020 in the Understanding Society (USoc) national household panel data. Before the pandemic, younger generations were already facing declining absolute social mobility and real wage decline (Elliot Major and Machin, 2018, 2020a). Education inequalities were also widening. Here new findings are presented on inequalities in the workplace and the classroom that have emerged following the pandemic.
- Published
- 2020
26. Reforming the UCAS Personal Statement: Making the Case for a Series of Short Questions. HEPI Debate Paper 31
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Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) (United Kingdom), Fryer, Tom, Westlake, Steve, and Jones, Steven
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There are increasing calls for the UCAS personal statement to be reformed. These calls are based on the claim that the current personal statement gives unfair advantages to more privileged applicants within higher education admissions. While this topic has attracted political attention, there is much about the personal statement that remains unknown. Of the evidence that does exist, it suggests that applicants from under-represented backgrounds face larger challenges with their personal statements, and that this results in fewer offers from more selective higher education providers. However, there has been less attention on understanding applicants' perspectives and the specific challenges they face in writing their UCAS personal statement. This report offers two new pieces of evidence to address this gap: (1) By analysing 164 personal statement drafts from 83 applicants from under-represented backgrounds, this report outlines the challenges applicants face when writing a UCAS personal statement. Particular challenges were found on including an appropriate academic discussion, with 83 per cent of drafts failing to supply an evidence-based opinion about a topic in their subject area. Similarly, applicants struggled to organise their statement in an effective way, with 35 per cent of applicants struggling in at least one draft to write with cohesive paragraphs; and (2) Surveys and interviews with under-represented applicants. The applicants describe three main challenges in writing their statements: (a) the opening paragraph; (b) meeting the character limit; and (c) knowing what would impress the admissions tutors. Applicants tell of the large toll of the personal statement, with some spending 30 to 40 hours on it, which requires sacrifices in both their studies and their wider lives. Combining this new evidence and the existing literature, the report then assesses the case for reforming the UCAS personal statement by considering its compatibility with Universities UK and GuildHE's "Fair admissions code of practice." Four options for reform are considered, and it is argued that a series of short-response questions is most compatible with the "Fair admissions code of practice." To be compatible, these short-response questions should assess 'baseline' suitability for a course rather than being used to distinguish between applicants that demonstrate competencies above this. The report concludes with three example short-response questions, arguing that these have considerable potential to increase fairness in higher education admissions. [For the related policy note, see ED630778.]
- Published
- 2022
27. COVID-19 -- Potential Consequences for Education, Training, and Skills. SKOPE Issues Paper 36
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University of Oxford (United Kingdom), Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) and Keep, Ewart
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The main focus of the paper is on youth unemployment and wider transitions into work, but it also has some thoughts on adult unemployment and re-training. This paper is founded upon a basic assumption -- namely that if the public money available across the United Kingdom to support measures around skills and unemployment is finite, then targeting those most at risk and defining which kinds of measures are the most cost-effective will be important. The information already available (Wilson et al, 2020) suggests that it is known which sectors, occupations, localities and kinds of people will most likely be hardest hit by the coming recession. The main issues will be deciding: (1) What groups to prioritise, which interventions will work best and most cost-effectively, and also which can be delivered to swiftly address the immediate problems liable to emerge as the furlough scheme is wound down and school, college and university leavers hit a disrupted labour market; and (2) what additional measures will be needed in the longer term as some groups experience extended periods of unemployment.
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- 2020
28. GES App -- Supporting Global Employability Skills from the Perspectives of Students, Staff and Employers
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Sobah Abbas Petersen, Maria Iqbal, Alan Williams, and Gavin Baxter
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Global Employability Skills are skills that students acquire during their study period, that are in addition to their academic knowledge and skills, and that would help in their careers. As students continue their university journeys, they often overlook or underestimate the importance of developing Global Employability Skills that employers may consider important for their jobs. In this paper, we present a mobile application, the GES App, designed to help students recognize, document, and articulate their skills to their prospective employees. The GES App is designed to stimulate university students to reflect upon their experiences and assess the skills they may develop outside of their formal university studies. This paper presents how such an app could support students plan their careers and develop their Global Employability Skills that would make them more attractive to their future employers. A use case scenario is described to illustrate the role the GES App could play, from the perspectives of students, staff, and employers. [For the full proceedings, see ED639391.]
- Published
- 2023
29. Neo-Nationalism and Universities in Europe. Research & Occasional Paper Series: CSHE.7.2020
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University of California, Berkeley. Center for Studies in Higher Education and van der Wende, Marijk
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The European Union is likely the most far-developed cross-border public space for higher education. The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the European Research Area (ERA) both span an even larger number of countries including associate and partner countries of the EU. Based on shared European values, such as academic freedom, cross-border cooperation, and mobility, these policy frameworks have been developed in Europe over the last decades and with much success. HE systems in this area are thus well-positioned to benefit from cross-border mobility and collaboration but may at the same time face a certain loss of control over HE, for instance with respect to access due to the cross-border flows of students. This seems to make them vulnerable to populist tendencies and neo-nationalist politics seeking to inhibit the free movement of students, scholars, and data. Such tendencies have never been completely absent on the "old continent" but resurged over the uneven outcomes of globalization, the effects of the global financial and consequent Euro crisis, and the refugee crisis. Meanwhile, the impact of the coronavirus crisis is still by and large unknown. Populist tendencies seem now to be turning against the EU, with its freedom of movement for persons (i.e. open borders) as one of its cornerstones and are therefore of concern for the HE sector. Countries such as the UK, Switzerland, Denmark, and the Netherlands have a different position in the European landscape but are all struggling with the complexity of combining the virtues of an open system with constrained national sovereignty. Sovereignty is required in terms of steering capacity in order to balance access, cost, and quality, i.e. the well-known "higher education trilemma." In open systems this is challenged by the "globalization trilemma", which states that countries cannot have national sovereignty, (hyper)globalization and democracy at the same time. How are the EU, its Member States, and the HE sector responding? Will the Union stay united (i.e. Brexit)? Are the legal competencies of the EU in HE strong enough? What about the many European university associations, leagues, and networks? And what do the millions of (former) Erasmus students have to say?
- Published
- 2020
30. Perspectives on the Year Abroad: A Selection of Papers from YAC2018
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Research-publishing.net (France), Salin, Sandra, Hall, Damien, Hampton, Cathy, Salin, Sandra, Hall, Damien, Hampton, Cathy, and Research-publishing.net (France)
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This volume draws together a selection of papers from YAC2018, the first meeting in the annual Year Abroad Conference series, which took place at Newcastle University in September 2018. The contributions collected here examine some of the opportunities, gains, and challenges the Year Abroad brings for both students and staff. They are presented around the five broad themes around which YAC2018 was organised: mental health, year abroad preparation, student perception of the year abroad, year abroad assessment, and employability. This volume will be of interest to academics and professional services staff involved in the preparation, administration, and management of the year abroad. [Newcastle University and the School of Modern Languages in particular provided organisational and financial support in the preparation of the event.]
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- 2020
31. The Inclusion of LGBTQI+ Students across Education Systems: An Overview. OECD Education Working Papers. No. 273
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Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (France), McBrien, Jody, Rutigliano, Alexandre, and Sticca, Adam
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Students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex or somewhere else on the gender/sexuality spectrum (LGBTQI+) are among the diverse student groups in need of extra support and protection in order to succeed in education and reach their full potential. Because they belong to a minority that is often excluded by heteronormative/cisgender people, they are often the targets of physical and psychological harassment. Such discrimination can place them at risk for isolation, reduced academic achievement, and physical and mental harm. This paper provides a brief history of how the LGBTQI+ population has often been misunderstood and labelled in order to understand challenges faced by students who identify as a part of this population. It continues by considering supportive educational policies and programmes implemented from national to local levels across OECD countries. Finally, the paper considers policy gaps and discusses policy implications to strengthen equity and inclusion for LGBTQI+ students.
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- 2022
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32. Could Universities Do More to End Homelessness? HEPI Debate Paper 30
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Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) (United Kingdom) and Hurst, Greg
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Applications to local authorities for homelessness assistance per head are significantly higher in university towns and cities in England compared with areas without a university (1,428 per 100,000, compared with 1,007). Rates of households living in temporary accommodation are more than twice as high (475 per 100,000, compared with 218). The prevalence of rough sleeping is more than three times greater (13 per 100,000, compared with 5). Similar patterns are found in Scotland and, to some degree, in Wales. In this Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) Debate Paper Greg Hurst, a former Education Editor at The Times, calls on universities to do much more to tackle homelessness in a variety of ways. [Foreword written by Mary Stuart.]
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- 2022
33. Key Competences in Initial Vocational Education and Training: Digital, Multilingual and Literacy. Cedefop Research Paper. No 78
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Cedefop - European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training
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Key competences are important for personal development, employment, integration into society and lifelong learning. They are transversal and form the basis for all other competences. Acquiring key competences is possible through various learning pathways, including vocational education and training (VET). However, little is known at the European level of how VET supports the key competence development. This research paper investigates three key competences: digital, multilingual and literacy. It analyses the extent to which they are included in initial upper secondary VET in the EU-27, Iceland, Norway and the UK, as well as national policies supporting their development since 2011. It focuses on four areas of intervention: standards, programme delivery, assessment and teacher/trainer competences.
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- 2020
34. Inequalities in Student to Course Match: Evidence from Linked Administrative Data. CEP Discussion Paper No. 1647
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London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom), Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), Campbell, Stuart, Macmillan, Lindsey, Murphy, Richard, and Wyness, Gill
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This paper examines inequalities in the match between student quality and university quality using linked administrative data from schools, universities and tax authorities. We analyse two measures of match at the university-subject (course) level, based on student academic attainment, and graduate earnings. We find that students from lower socio-economic groups systematically undermatch for both measures across the distribution of attainment, with particularly stark socio-economic gaps for the most undermatched. While there are negligible gender gaps in academic match, high-attaining women systematically undermatch in terms of expected earnings, largely driven by subject choice.
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- 2019
35. Empowering Individual Workers through Skills -- A New Labour Project Revisited. SKOPE Research Paper No. 129
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University of Oxford (United Kingdom), Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) and Keep, Ewart
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This article explores the efficacy and cost effectiveness of New Labour's skills-based policies to help low paid workers adjust to the pressures generated by globalisation, of which the leading example was Train to Gain (T2G). It also analyses the more general issue of how, why and under what circumstances education, training and skills can help imbue low paid workers with greater bargaining power within the labour market.
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- 2019
36. Widening the High School Curriculum to Include Soft Skill Training: Impacts on Health, Behaviour, Emotional Wellbeing and Occupational Aspirations. CEP Discussion Paper No. 1630
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London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom), Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), Lordan, Grace, and McGuire, Alistair
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From 2020 the health and relationships aspects of Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education will be compulsory in UK schools for adolescents. However less is known about how it can be taught in an effective manner. We examine, through a randomised trial, the impact of an evidenced based health related quality of life (HRQoL) curriculum called "Healthy Minds" that ran in 34 high schools in England over a four-year period. We find robust evidence that "Healthy Minds" positively augments many physical health domains of treated adolescents. We also find some evidence that "Healthy Minds" positively affects behaviour, but has no significant impact on emotional wellbeing. We find notable gender effects, strongly favouring boys. We also present evidence that "Healthy Minds" changes career aspirations, with those exposed to treatment being less likely to choose competitive work and more likely to choose work that involves "people-skills". Overall our work illustrates the potential for later childhood interventions to promote HRQoL and develop the career aspirations of adolescents.
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- 2019
37. Bibliometric Analysis of Studies on Teacher Resilience
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Nurtaç Üstündag-Kocakusak and Ruken Akar-Vural
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This study aimed to reveal general landscape of research on teacher resilience, employing descriptive and bibliometric analyses. Descriptive analyses were performed utilizing Web of Science's internal system, while bibliometric analyses were executed through the VOSviewer program. Web of Science Core Collection was used as a data source. Citation analyses of publications, authors, and journals, as well as co-authorship, co-citation, and common word analyses were conducted. The research reveals a timeline of publications, indicating a notable surge in 2006, and a substantial increase in 2021. The countries with the highest number of publications on teacher resilience, in descending order, are the United States of America (USA), Australia, the United Kingdom (UK), and the People's Republic of China (PRC), according to the research findings. Authors such as Gu, C. Day, S. Beltman, C. Mansfield, and A. Price emerged from the citation analysis. Based on the results from the co-citation analysis, C. Day and Q. Gu were identified as the most frequently co-cited authors. The co-occurrence analysis of keywords highlighted key terms like resilience, teacher education, early career teachers, teacher candidates, professional learning, school leadership, and COVID-19. The findings were contextualized within the existing literature, leading to recommendations for future research. [This paper was published in: "EJER Congress 2023 International Eurasian Educational Research Congress Conference Proceedings," Ani Publishing, 2023, pp. 591-611.]
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- 2023
38. The Changing Nature and Role of Vocational Education and Training in Europe. Volume 7: VET from a Lifelong Learning Perspective: Continuing VET Concepts, Providers and Participants in Europe 1995-2015. Cedefop Research Paper No. 74
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Cedefop - European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, Department for VET Systems and Institutions (DSI)
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This research paper is one in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18). The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of how CVET is conceptualised in various international level policy documents and how it is referred to across countries. It discusses national conceptions of CVET, the providers, participation by IVET graduates in non-formal education and training (NFE), and participation of adults in VET education institutions in European Union Member States, Iceland and Norway. The paper describes how the provision of CVET by different types of provider has changed over the past two decades, discussing the main drivers of this change and speculating about possible future trends. One of the main findings is that there are many dominant conceptions of CVET across Europe and the use of this term is not consistent, sometimes not even within countries. [The research was carried out by a consortium led by 3s Unternehmensberatung GmbH, led by Dr Jorg Markowitch; the consortium includes the Danish Technological Institute, the Institute of Employment Research (University of Warwick), the Institute of International and Social Studies (Tallinn University) and Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) in Germany is supporting the project as a subcontractor.]
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- 2019
39. Reduction of Socio-Economic Diversity through Standardisation of Language: Reflections and Challenges
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Norley, Kevin
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Could the standardisation of language narrow disparities in achievement in education amongst people of different social class, and within and across ethnicities and genders, and could this have implications for injustices and inequities in wider society? In analysing socio-economic diversity through the lens of its correlation with language, this paper examines how the standardisation of language could be used as a means to reduce such diversity. It examines links between the standardisation of language, and the reduction of inequalities between socio-economic groups, in regard to achievement in education. It also examines the correlation between language and social class, and propensity towards being a perpetrator and/or victim of hostility and violence, as well as their relationship with health and life expectancy etc. The paper further examines the effect of the use of technology and teaching methods on the acquisition of knowledge, and how this impacts upon children of different social class within the learning environment. In order to help address some of these questions, an auto-ethnographic methodology is adopted with the aim of being able to explore, and reflect upon, personal experience, and to be able to weave greater understanding and connections between apparently disparate factors related to diversity, all through the lens of language and its relationship to aspects of culture relating to social class. Amongst its conclusions, the paper argues that the standardisation and enhancement of spoken language would narrow the disparities in academic achievement between socio-economic groups. The paper also argues that in order to challenge inequitable power structures which have arisen from historical injustices, then rather than concentrating on underrepresentation of groups of people within high status positions in society, the focus of diversity should be directed towards challenging the over representation, in a range of settings, of groups of people within low status positions in society.
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- 2023
40. Immigrant Minority Languages and Multilingual Education in Europe: A Literature Review
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Elizabeth Pérez-Izaguirre, Gorka Roman, and María Orcasitas-Vicandi
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Immigrant minority (IM) languages have a significant presence in certain European regions. Nonetheless, these languages are not usually included in the school curriculum. This paper aims to analyse the studies published between 2010 and 2020 considering IM languages in multilingual European education contexts. The method included a search of academic papers published in the databases ERIC, Web of Science and Scopus, which yielded 42 studies. The studies were analysed by considering: (1) the demographic characteristics of the countries where the studies were conducted, (2) the sociolinguistic or psycholinguistic focus of the papers in relation to the European country, and (3) the characteristics of the bi-multilingual education programme including IM languages. The results indicate that: (1) the demographic characteristics of the country are not strictly related to the number of studies published, (2) most studies have a sociolinguistic approach even though many studies analyse both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors, and (3) only seven multilingual education programmes including IM languages were described in these papers. We conclude that there is a lack of research focusing on IM languages in educational settings and discuss how addressing these gaps could create opportunities for building equitable multilingual communities in Europe.
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- 2024
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41. Digital Wellbeing -- A Review of the JISC Guidance from the UK and Vietnam
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Scott Foster, Trang Ly Thien, Anna Jayne Foster, Thi Hanh Tien Ho, and Sarah Knight
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Purpose: The aim of this paper is to contribute to the discussion of wellbeing within the university education system by outlining the key issues and benefits and recognising future research on digital well-being for students. The JISC Digital wellbeing paper highlights the many positive and negative impacts associated with digital wellbeing. This paper explores how some of these features have been considered within institutions within the UK and Vietnam and highlights the emerging research in one Vietnamese institution in relation to student wellbeing, where digital wellbeing was identified as a key concern. Design/methodology/approach: This is a technical review article which summarises key guidance for organisational digital wellbeing and then reflects on the application in the UK (a developed economy) and in Vietnam (one of the fastest growing economies). This is the first time a review has been conducted from the perspective of different countries. There are two aspects to digital wellbeing, individual and the social or organisational perspectives. Findings: The JISC Digital wellbeing paper highlights the many positive and negative impacts associated with digital wellbeing. This paper explores how some of these features have been considered within institutions within the UK and Vietnam and highlights the emerging research in one Vietnamese institution in relation to student wellbeing, where digital wellbeing was identified as a key concern. The context of digital wellbeing within higher education is then discussed drawing similarities between the UK and Vietnamese student experiences whilst acknowledging the limitations of current research within the field. Originality/value: Many institutions have seen a rise in the number of wellbeing challenges, and there are few examples of specific initiatives aimed at addressing digital wellbeing challenges for their stakeholders. Existing research on students' wellbeing is predominately focused on undergraduate students and does not differentiate between undergraduate and postgraduate students, nor between masters, doctoral and professional level students and does not explore the impact of digital wellbeing discretely; this is an area which would benefit from future research.
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- 2024
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42. Former Young Mothers' Pathways through Higher Education: A Chance to Rethink the Narrative
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Kyla Ellis-Sloan
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This paper draws attention to how markers of adulthood linked to education and employment form an influential social narrative and argues that these help to construct teenage motherhood as problematic. Social policies, informed by this narrative, reinforce the idea of a "correct" path through education and into employment from which young mothers deviate and must be realigned to. This paper draws on a sample of former young mothers who had largely progressed into higher education and sheds light on how their pathways were possible and what challenges they encountered. It therefore joins others in challenging common conceptualisations of teenage motherhood as inevitably leading to educational failure. This paper seeks to open a further avenue to this debate however, in that it questions the wisdom of utilising predetermined markers of success to measure the achievement of young mothers. As the accounts discussed here show, a later data collection point enables us to see how "outcomes", but also priorities, change. Furthermore, by highlighting stories of pride and joy outside of markers of adulthood, it also encourages us to reflect on the effects of a normative social narrative which depicts divergence as failure. The paper therefore seeks to strike a note of caution in the ways in which we define success.
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- 2024
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43. Inclusion for STEM, the Institution, or Minoritized Youth? Exploring How Educators Navigate the Discourses That Shape Social Justice in Informal Science Learning Practices
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Emily Dawson, Raj Bista, Amanda Colborne, Beau-Jensen McCubbin, Spela Godec, Uma Patel, Louise Archer, and Ada Mau
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Understanding equitable practice is crucial for science education since science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and STEM learning practices remain significantly marked by structural inequalities. In this paper, building on theories of discourse and situated meaning developed by Foucault, Gee, and Sedgewick, we explore how educators navigated discourses about social justice in informal science learning (ISL) across four UK sites. We draw on qualitative, multimodal data across 5 years of a research--practice partnership between a university, a zoo, a social enterprise working to support girls and nonbinary youth in STEM, a community digital arts center, and a science center. We identify three key discourses that shaped social justice practices across all four practice--partner sites: (1) "inclusion" for STEM, (2) "inclusion" for the institution, and (3) "inclusion" for minoritized youth. We discuss how educators (n = 17) enacted, negotiated, resisted, and reworked these discourses to create equitable practice. We argue that while the three key discourses shaped the possible meanings and practices of equitable ISL in different ways, educators used their agency and creativity to develop more expansive visions of social justice. We discuss how the affordances, pitfalls, and contradictions that emerged within and between the three discourses were strategically navigated and disrupted by educators to support the minoritized youth they worked with, as well as to protect and promote equity in ISL. This paper contributes to research on social justice in ISL by grounding sometimes abstract questions about power and discourse in ISL educators' everyday work.
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- 2024
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44. Responding Well to Spiritual Abuse: Practice Implications for Counselling and Psychotherapy
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Lisa Oakley, Kathryn Kinmond, and Peter Blundell
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This paper presents the findings of a survey exploring people's understandings and experiences of Spiritual Abuse (SA) in a Christian faith context. The online survey was completed by 1591 individuals from the UK, 1002 of whom identified as having experienced SA. Inclusion criteria were: membership of the Christian faith, being or having been, a Church attender or member of a Christian organisation and having heard of the term SA. Participants detailed features of an effective response to disclosures of SA, many of these are directly relevant to counselling and psychotherapy practice. The findings echo calls in previous research for including discussions of religion and faith in training and CPD for counsellors and psychotherapists. Finally, the paper suggests the establishment of a network of counsellors with training and knowledge about SA.
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- 2024
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45. 'I Feel Like the Wicked Witch': Identifying Tensions between School Readiness Policy and Teacher Beliefs, Knowledge and Practice in Early Childhood Education
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Louise Kay
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This paper critically examines the tensions arising between Reception teachers' professional beliefs and knowledge, and the school readiness agenda in England. It scrutinises how the increasing academic expectations placed on children to ensure they are 'ready for school' may conflict with teachers' understanding of how young children learn, their pedagogical philosophies and classroom practices. In this paper, cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) is utilised as a methodological and analytical framework, specifically harnessing Engeström and Sannino's work on 'manifestations of contradictions'. This theoretical lens is applied to elucidate the specific contradictions that surface at the policy-practice interface and to explore how teachers navigate these conflicts and tensions. Data were gathered through interviews with two Reception teachers and analysed to identify four distinct contradiction categories: dilemmas, double binds, critical conflicts and conflicts. The findings make a critical contribution to ongoing debates about the implications of the school readiness agenda on teacher beliefs, professional knowledge and the impact on children. Furthermore, this paper extends an original contribution to the practical application of CHAT in Early Childhood Education (ECE) research and emphasises the utility of identifying linguistic cues as an effective strategy to reveal contradictions in textual data, thereby furthering understanding of policy--practice tensions in ECE.
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- 2024
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46. Unpacking the Functions of Institutions in an Emerging Diaspora: Hungarian Weekend Schools in the UK
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Attila Papp Z., Eszter Kovács, and András Kováts
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The paper outlines the functioning of Hungarian weekend schools in the United Kingdom, which are key institutions in emerging diaspora communities. The paper interprets Hungarian weekend schools in two paradigms: it approaches them as diaspora institutions, and also as Anglo-Saxon supplementary schools. One of the paper's main conclusions is that, in addition to the manifest functions of Hungarian weekend schools (e.g., preservation of national identity, mother-tongue education, community engagement), latent functions are also essential, such as the psychological need of belonging to a community, the support of children's educational attitudes, the consciousness of bilingualism, the enhancement of social capital, and integration into the host community. Thus, weekend schools are not only sites for knowledge transfer, but they also provide space for the institutionalization of diaspora as cultural community-building institutions.
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- 2024
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47. Experiential Learning in Physical Geography Using Arduino Low-Cost Environmental Sensors
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Reagan Helen Pearce, Michael A. Chadwick, and Robert Francis
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Transmission teaching which centres around traditional lecturing discounts the variety of different learners and individual aptitudes. Physical Geography as a discipline has historically provided a range of teaching methods beyond lecturing which embrace field and laboratory activities, frequently adapting new research technologies to further student learning. While technological trends are increasing the demand for Geography graduates with GIS, modelling, or programming skills, Geography lecturers should remain open to using other technological advances as teaching tools. Using an example of low-cost environmental sensors, this paper demonstrates how technologically-focused exercises can effectively solidify a range of geographical skills through experiential learning. Using Kolb's Experiential Learning Model to identify the key learning processes, we compare low-cost environmental sensor training to the UK's current Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education's (QAA) Geography benchmarks. We also consider the practical applications of this technology as a learning tool for Physical Geography. In comparison with a student evaluation, this paper provides an initial basis to support additional qualitative investigations into the learning outcomes of independent, technology-based learning activities.
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- 2024
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48. 'I Danced on the Road to the Macarena Song Which Felt a Bit Naughty': Affective Entanglements and the Wayfaring Pandemic Child
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Yinka Olusoga
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This paper applies a posthumanist lens, informed by the work of Hollett and Ehret and of Ingold, to consider children's playful affective entanglements with the human and the more-than-human during fluctuating periods of social distancing in the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this refracting theoretical lens, I (re)examine a selection of play and leisure experiences of an emergent subject -- the pandemic child -- during the national U.K. lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. Via a national online, qualitative survey, children and families were invited to share examples of their play and leisure experiences during the pandemic to the Play Observatory, a U.K. research project that ran from 2020 to 2022. These survey contributions provide portals through which to (re)consider children's connection, participation and emergent becomings, attuning analytical attention towards children's affective place-event entanglements during pandemic times. A posthumanist (re)telling of children's Play Observatory contributions demonstrates how children were imbricated in constantly emergent affects, meanings, becomings and potentialities, that waxed and waned, intensified and dissipated, transcending the physical locus of lockdown. This paper contributes to the field by unsettling discourses of rupture, loss and deficit that have tended to dominate public and policy discussions of children's experience of lockdowns. It contributes to ongoing, collective attempts to interrupt policy responses to the pandemic that centre individualising practices of curriculum 'catch-up' and fail to invite into the debate consideration of the potential richness of experiences and events encountered by the pandemic child outside of the strictures of normal schooling and curriculum.
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- 2024
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49. Innovation from Necessity: Digital Technologies, Teacher Development and Reciprocity with Organisational Innovation
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Howard Scott and Matthew Smith
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This paper outlines how digital technologies support innovation in teaching and learning the English language across Palestinian Higher Education Institutes. A European project collaborated to build staff capacity in knowledge and skills, shown here through the redesign of curricula, pedagogical training, the design and implementation of interactive textbooks, the creation of language labs, helping to develop expertise in creating and utilising Open Educational Resources (OER) and significantly, the development of individual agency as a form of OER. In this paper, we draw on three years of data to present a model for teacher innovation showing how digital innovation is firstly "personal at a practitioner level" and shaped by need, before becoming driven by "collaboration at an organisational level" with like-minded colleagues. Shared practice at this level can lead to community discourse through practitioner networks, which in turn can lead to dialogue initiating instances of "organisational change". This resonates with literature which shows innovation has three outcomes: "originality" (practitioner-based agency); "scale" (going beyond the site of creation) and "value" (how this produces benefits for others). We perceive that the resulting capacity-building extends beyond the redesign of curricula mentioned to professional enrichment, collegiality through cascading innovation to other areas, and enhanced practitioner agency.
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- 2024
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50. Bringing Clarity to the Leadership of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: A Systematic Review
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Päivi Kinnunen, Leena Ripatti-Torniainen, Åsa Mickwitz, and Anne Haarala-Muhonen
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Purpose: The study aims to investigate the state of higher education (HE) leadership research after the intensified focus on teaching and learning (TL) in academia. Design/methodology/approach: The authors clarify the use of key concepts in English-medium empirical journal articles published between 2017 and 2021 by analysing 64 publications through qualitative content analysis. Findings: The analysed papers on leadership of TL in HE activate a number of concepts, the commonest concepts being academic leadership, distributed leadership, educational leadership, transformational leadership, leadership and transformative leadership. Even if the papers highlight partly overlapping aspects of leadership, the study finds a rationale for the use of several concepts in the HE context. Contrary to the expectation raised in earlier scholarship, no holistic framework evolves from within the recent research to reveal the contribution that leadership of TL makes to leadership in HE generally. Research limitations/implications: Limitations: Nearly 40 per cent of the analysed articles are from the United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK), Australia and Canada, which leaves large areas of the world aside. Implications: The found geographical incoherence might be remediated and the research of leadership of TL in HE generally led forward by widening the cultural and situational diversity in the field. Originality/value: This research contributes to an enhanced understanding of the field of leadership in TL in HE in that it frames the concepts used in recent research and makes the differences, similarities and rationale between concepts visible.
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- 2024
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