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This article explores the circumstances in which individuals become secondary school teachers in England and France. Using a social constructivist theoretical framework, it specifically considers how national contexts play out in this decision. The findings presented in this paper draw on a corpus of 60 interviews with a sample of teachers based in English and French secondary schools. They show that national frameworks remain relevant to an exploration of teachers’ identities and cultures, as French and English interviewees draw on distinctive reasons to explain why they became secondary school teachers. While becoming a teacher is often thought of as a ‘vocation’ or as the result of ‘intrinsic’ factors, this paper highlights the role of national contexts, as well as of gender and social class, in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Much comparative research into education-related beliefs has exploited questionnaires developed in one culture for use in another. This has been particularly the case in mathematics education, the focus of this paper. In so doing, researchers have tended to assume that translation alone is sufficient to warrant a reliable and valid instrument for cross-cultural research, prompting concerns that a number of necessary equivalences are unlikely to have been addressed. In this paper, we consider the nature of these equivalences before examining the literature of a different field, healthcare research, to synthesise an approach to instrument adaptation that is pragmatic but rigorous. Finally, we demonstrate how this pragmatic approach, incorporating extensive cognitive interviews, enabled us to adapt and refine a mathematics-related beliefs questionnaire, developed in Flanders, for use with students aged 14–15 in England and Spain. Analyses indicate that the instrument so developed is multidimensional, reliable and cross-culturally valid. Some implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Education reform is increasingly based on emulating the features of ‘world-class’ systems that top international attainment surveys and, in England specifically, East Asia is referenced as the ‘inspiration’ for their education reforms. However, the extent to which the features identified by the UK Government accord with the situation within East Asia is problematic. This paper examines the relationship between the English representation and the ‘reality’ of East Asian education systems, using school autonomy as an illustrative example. We focus on Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, which are cited extensively to legitimate policies providing greater autonomy for schools in England. We argue firstly that the English representation has been largely discursive and inaccurate; has failed to recognise the variations across the region; and has been selected to endorse the Government’s ideological preferences. Secondly, the scope, form and nature of school autonomy vary markedly, and are operationalised in each society in ways reflecting the prevailing sociopolitical priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses how the impact of international student achievement studies and the recent economic crisis in Europe are influencing the development of educational policy transfer and borrowing, from East to West. This is contrasted with education reform movements in East Asia, which have long legacies of borrowing from so-called ‘progressive’ discourses in the West. England and Hong Kong are used as case studies. Since 2010, England’s coalition government has prioritised its determination to look to jurisdictions like Hong Kong to inspire and justify reforms that emphasise traditional didactic approaches to teaching and learning. In contrast, Hong Kong’s reforms have sought to implement practices related to less pressured, more student-centred lifelong learning, without losing sight of strengths derived from its Confucian heritage culture. Conclusions highlight factors that underpin English interest in Hong Kong education policy, values and practice and point to the need for further attention to be given to these multidirectional and often contradictory processes by researchers concerned with the study of policy transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Utilizing mixed methodology, this paper investigates the relationship between self-esteem and academic achievement for young adolescents within two Western cultural contexts: the United States and England. Quantitative and qualitative data from 86 North American and 86 British adolescents were utilized to examine the links between self-esteem and academic achievement from the beginning to the end of their academic year during their 11th-12th year of age. For both samples, quantitative results demonstrated that fall self-esteem was related to multiple indicators of later year academic achievement. While country differences emerge by the end of the year, math appears to have a consistent relationship with self-esteem in both country contexts. Qualitative analyses found some support for British students' self-perceptions as more accurately reflecting their academic experience than the students from the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following remarks about the nature and significance of values and values education, generally and more specifically in China, England, Mexico and Spain, we explain the methods used to analyse official policies that apply to moral education, citizenship education and character education. We find similarity across the documents regarding five values-related themes: justice and the rule of law; harmony and tolerance; diversity and non-discrimination; international understanding; and equality. These themes emphasise understanding and knowing, with limited consideration of implementation and privileging of dominant values and contextually relevant considerations. We suggest that across countries there are attempts to develop personally responsible citizens and that further work is needed on how these documents are interpreted in practice by educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 2009 to 2011, a team from the Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies carried out a mixed-methods study of young people in England and Singapore. With regard to civic attitudes, the study showed that there was a greater sense of political self-efficacy and collective (school) efficacy in Singapore than in England. In addition, the group in Singapore scored higher on future voting relative to the group in England. Further, while both political self-efficacy and collective (school) efficacy were correlated with future voting in England, only the latter was correlated in the case of Singapore. For some, the results may seem counter-intuitive. The article reflects on these results, particularly those relating to democratic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the views of 'immigrant-background' children on their own linguistic and cultural 'differences' within the different educational contexts of primary classrooms in France and England. With the increase in and changing composition of immigration in Europe, the integration of populations from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds has become a central issue for European societies. Whilst most studies in France and England tend to focus on immigrant children in secondary schools, this study looks at immigrant children at primary level, in an attempt to 'hear their voices' and explore their perceptions and experiences, in a comparative perspective. Findings based on focus group interviews and participant observation in an English and French classroom, suggest that despite contrasting models of integration, the way 'immigrant-background' children mediate 'difference' as part of their identities as pupils present similarities between the two countries. There remain, however, strong differences between the two national classrooms, which could be attributed to the different contexts and approaches to multicultural differences in France and England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the restructuring of education in England and Spain. Against a presumably homogeneous global streamlining of educational systems according to competition-driven goals, the comparison of teachers' work-lives and professional knowledge evidences a variety of experiences under-represented in discourses on global restructuring. Our argument highlights how in England political reforms have worked their way deep into the working lives of professionals, giving rise to a 'managerial' model of professionalism, whereas in Spain reforms are more loosely coupled with teachers' work, favoring a 'social service'-oriented model. However, despite the different professional ideals, teachers uniformly stressed the challenges they face were predominantly due to broader social transformations for which policy reforms provided few if any remedies. Our study emphasizes the variety of educational reforms and teachers' experiences in the European context and argues further educational change should be bound to the historical trajectory and the concrete needs of the professionals in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]