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This study investigated an under-researched source of measurement error in high-stakes examinations, namely mistakes in examination papers (e.g. multiple-choice questions containing more than one correct answer). Such mistakes (henceforth errors) are important, as they can undermine students’ performance in the examination, while also eroding public confidence in the examination system. In light of this, this study sought to understand what gives rise to such errors. To this end, it drew upon in-depth interviews with 36 assessment professionals with knowledge and experience of the examination paper construction process. Through illuminating the demands of the paper construction process and the characteristics of the people who are involved in it, this investigation identified a number of ‘active’ and ‘latent’ human failures that can lead to errors in examination papers. The article argues that, to minimise the risk of error in examination papers, efforts to ‘adapt’ people to the demands of the paper construction process should be carefully combined with efforts to adapt the paper construction process to people requirements. Apart from contributing new knowledge to the field, the study’s findings have also practical implications: examination providers can use them to optimise their paper construction processes to enhance the quality of their assessment instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a reflection upon the research findings of Rebecca Allen and Anne West in relation to religious schools in London. While welcoming this contribution to the systematic study of faith schools (a neglected area of empirical inquiry), the paper argues that the use of 'religious schools' as a unitary category is problematic for the analysis. It also suggests that certain historical and cultural contextual knowledge is required when analysing the characteristics of different categories of religious schools. This response is intended to be helpful for future researchers into the different types of faith school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the authors discuss various reports within the special issue on topics including teacher education, professional development, and research that emerged from a joint inquiry by the organizations the British Educational Research Association (BERA) and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce (RSA).

A response by to a letter to the editor about the article "Religious schools in London: school admissions, religious composition and selectivity" is presented.

In England, Pupil Premium Plus is additional funding to help address the educational attainment gap experienced by looked after children. This paper explores the experiences of virtual school heads and designated teachers (n = 140) as they access Pupil Premium Plus-related information, guidance and training to support their practice; navigate the complexities of the Personal Education Plan (PEP) process; and measure the impact of Pupil Premium Plus-funded interventions. We explain professionals' experiences using insights from social practice theories, and argue that the process of supporting the educational outcomes of looked after children via Pupil Premium Plus is made up of context- and audience-dependent 'social practices'. When the social practices are aligned, virtual school heads and designated teachers may be effectively able to support looked after children, whereas barriers may emerge when social practices become disjointed. We conclude this paper by arguing that for Pupil Premium Plus to support educational outcomes of looked after children effectively, professionals need to reflect on their own cultures and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of higher education, universities have remained largely closed off spaces for disabled students. This paper examines how, and why, it has largely been in the last fifty years that these students have slowly been able to enter universities as the sector has made incremental improvements to enable the entry of students from different disability backgrounds. The paper aims to assess the positive steps universities have taken towards more inclusive practices for disabled students, while also using data sourced from a survey of disabled students studying in the Global North to consider what actions might increase equitable practices in university classrooms. Disabled students highlight that for all of the advances and support they receive, so often it is the fundamental elements of classroom inclusion that are still being overlooked, and subsequently, are creating barriers in even the earliest steps into their university careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fair access protocols (FAPs) are intended to ensure all schools in a local authority (LA) area take collective responsibility for ensuring pupils struggling to access an in-year school place are quickly admitted to a school. Every LA must have a FAP which, once agreed, can be used to direct schools to admit pupils. This is somewhat against the fragmentation of local education systems seen in the academies agenda. This paper considers the role of FAPs in facilitating inclusive local education systems by exploring the reintegration of students from alternative provision (AP) to mainstream school. The data on which this paper draws were collected as part of an England-wide research project which drew on nationally published datasets, administrative data from freedom of information (FOI) requests, and survey data from 64 professionals working in AP. The extent of FAP use varies widely as do rates of reintegration. Likewise, there is both evidence suggesting that FAPs can play a significant role in facilitating strategic coordination, and that they have limited power/influence to ensure reintegration. These findings suggest that achieving inclusive local practice requires a shift towards an underlying logic of cooperation in the education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when there are renewed expressions of concern about how our societies are organised and the health of our democracies, this paper focuses on the role of education in a democracy. Informed by John Dewey's and Martin Buber's accounts of what it is to be educated, and Homi Bhabha's concept of third space work, the paper presents the case for a progressive education for democratic citizenship. Adopting an ethnologically-informed approach, the paper provides an in-depth look at two Catalan and two English schools, focussing on the ways in which they look to provide a democracy enabling education. The findings reveal how and why mutual cooperation, collaboration and dialogue in relationships are key elements in the modelling of an education for democratic citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from two studies of publication patterns in leading English, German, European and US journals of education. The studies were funded by the German Research Association and conducted by an international team of researchers. All papers published in 14 selected journals between 2001 and 2010 were analysed in terms of their author profile, their methodological approach and their thematic focus. The analyses resulted in publication patterns for the selected journals and at an aggregated level for the four geographic areas in which journals are published, highlighting many similarities, but also distinct differences. As far as the differences are concerned, the lower share of female authors and the relative low proportion of papers drawing on empirical research in German journals are noteworthy. For US journals, the comparatively low importance of papers drawing on the international research discourse seems to be particularly important. Based on an analysis of related studies in this field the paper demonstrates a degree of alignment of publication patterns with disciplinary traditions and formation processes in the field of education. However, the trend analysis provided also shows that some of the traditional boundaries of education as an academic discipline are in a state of flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from Ireland's national longitudinal study of children, this paper employs a capabilities approach to disability to understand how individual characteristics as well as home and school environmental factors at age 9 relate to academic and socio-emotional outcomes of students with special educational needs (SEN) at age 17. Results suggest that young people with SEN register both lower average scores and make less academic progress between the age of 9 and their national lower secondary examination, with the exception of young people with a physical SEN. Both home and school environmental factors at 9 years have long-term associations with the academic outcomes of young people with SEN, after controlling for individual characteristics and prior academic achievement. Home and school environmental factors had less consistent associations with the socio-emotional outcomes of young people with SEN. By using rigorous nationally representative longitudinal data, this paper offers a more holistic understanding of the development of young people with SEN. The paper also provides important evidence that a more inclusive approach for supporting students with additional needs, their parents, and their schools is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past 20 years have seen the steady 'datafication' of school systems – i.e. the rendering of key aspects of school practice into data that is digitally collected, processed and circulated. In contrast to assumptions of 'data-driven' schools as sites of more efficient and automated forms of data work, this paper examines the extensive human labour that now supports data production within schools. Drawing on in-depth interview data generated within three Australian secondary schools, the paper explores three distinct stages of data production involving the increased labour of teachers, school leaders, administrative and technical staff, parents and students. These findings highlight how the production of digital data within schools is associated with heightened levels of human labour – from formally recognised activities to less visible infrastructural maintenance and 'repair' work. The paper concludes by discussing how 'school data' corresponds with broader tensions relating to school working conditions, occupational cultures, employment relations and worker organisation. Rather than being a source of more efficient and machine-led work with data, the increased prevalence of digital data seems to perpetuate some of the less desirable features of schools as workplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of capital has risen in prominence within educational policy and practice in the UK since Ofsted introduced cultural capital into its inspection processes in 2019. At the same time, fractured discourses exist across different types of capital – one of which concerns capitals that are negative in constitution and/or impact. This paper addresses both through: A systematic literature review of these negativities (in social, economic, and intellectual capital) and a thematic analysis of these papers, leading to the derivation of a definition of negative capital. An evaluation of the merit of negative capital via its compatibility with Bourdieu's concepts of social field, social field homology, habitus, and hysteresis. The application of negative capital to a range of examples from educational practice and theory, including a challenge to Ofsted's use of cultural capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of social justice has been regularly addressed in many published papers in mathematics education research, particularly after 2000, when the discipline took a more explicit socio-political turn. However, there does not appear to be a consensus as to what the term designates and includes. This paper is a systematic review of the empirical studies published from 2000 until the middle of 2019 that explicitly address social justice from the perspective of practising mathematics teachers and/or teaching. More specifically, we examine (a) how social justice is conceptualised in the identified studies, (b) what specific issues are investigated and methodological approaches employed to do so, and (c) the main key points that arise from their empirical findings. Implications and suggestions of how the field can move forward are discussed at the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher professional autonomy is important to teachers' work satisfaction, efficiency, well-being, and empowerment. However, it cannot simply be defined as freedom from control because it is relational and contextual. In this paper, we examine the relationality and contextual sensitivity of teacher professional autonomy at 'Newstall' College, a senior secondary government school in Australia. The paper draws on a larger study that examined the social justice implications of school autonomy reform in four Australian state education systems. Newstall College was one of the five case study schools included in this study. Findings generated through in-depth interviews with eighteen staff members (including teachers, professional staff, the deputy principal and the principal) are presented that examine teacher professional autonomy. Conceptualising teacher autonomy as relational and contextual, the paper provides insight into the ways in which teacher autonomy was enabled at this school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve education performance at home, countries cross nationally policy-borrow from jurisdictions ranked highly in international league tables. This paper examines a practical example of one such instance of policy borrowing, Teaching for Mastery (TfM). Over a six year period, interviews were conducted with teachers working in primary schools in the East Midlands region of England. The focus of these interviews was to explore informants' experiences of enacting TfM and their analysis of the UK government's motives for undertaking this borrowing. Applying Baudrillard's ideas around hyperreality and image to these data indicated two key themes: 1) TfM discourses masked crucial aspects of the original policy, with the result that 2) TfM became non-relational to the original and thus hyperreal. The paper suggests strategies that might mitigate against policy becoming hyperreal and concludes that government must carefully consider its motives for engaging in the borrowing process from the outset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As EdTech industries grow in reach and power it is imperative to motivate conditions for ethical challenge and contestation, always remaining attentive to the kinds of education futures that dominant imaginaries of technology foreclose. In this paper, we explore how the multiple lenses of reparations, sovereignty, care and democratisation can offer resources for envisaging alternative sociodigital futures of education. We identify how these ideas can disrupt dominant EdTech modalities, exploring how they foreground different kinds of educational relationships and priorities for education/social justice. The paper explores examples of how sociodigital futures-in-the-making have begun to materialise in a range of locations and how they urge new agendas for research, redesign and regulation in relation to EdTech. Whilst the power of the EdTech industry can be overwhelming, we suggest that critiques work from a position of abundance: there are always already many ways to radically reimagine sociodigital futures of education. We argue for the importance of recognising, surfacing, and working with these potentialities in ongoing debates about EdTech precisely to keep the future of education open. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the entanglement of affects that occurred during a short episode at a science museum. The episode involved a small number of children and a teacher who had come to the museum in the context of a school field trip. It took place inside an exhibit called 'Hmong House', which reproduced various components of a traditional house of the Hmong people. A key aim of this paper is to trace, via the microethnographic analysis of a brief video recording, an affective journey meshing mathematical tessellation and Hmong shamanism. In addition, we elaborate on ways in which disparate themes, such as tessellation and shamanism, became interwoven in the life of those visiting the Hmong House at the time. The episode of the Hmong House may inspire other activities in which students or visitors, with life trajectories partially rooted in Indigenous cultures, can share practices that are foreign to other students. The most important qualities of these activities, we suggest, are the respectful dignity with which they are demonstrated and engaged with, and the freedom to undertake interdisciplinary journeys – without subjection to artificial disciplinary boundaries – in which improvisation and surprising turns are expected and ever-present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, Indigenous and local understandings of the role of storytelling for children (nthanu) are contrasted with the didactic understandings of children's stories that permeate the formal education frameworks of Malawi; frameworks which are deeply entangled in a colonial and (post)colonial history. For Chitonga speakers, the majority of whom live in rural communities along the northern lakeshore of Malawi, nthanu form a crucial part of what might be considered 'education' – as core components in the construction of the social-self, these oral stories play a critical role in the onto-epistemological formation of the young person. This storytelling is seen as marginalised by formal school systems. Through thick ethnographic material, the paper shows how people who are part of the ethno-linguistic group of the Tonga understand the role of story-telling for children as creating ontological notions of what it means to be human, to live in this world, and the sociality of being human that is seen as necessary for living a good life. In an examination of villagers' fears about the disappearance of their stories, the paper locates the tensions between the literacy-oriented use of stories in formal schooling and the socio-ontological importance ascribed to stories in local learning modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how the commitment of senior leadership teams to student voice is not necessarily shared by teachers. As part of a wider study, this paper presents qualitative data generated through interviews with school staff in one Irish post-primary school with a strong culture of student voice to illustrate the discrepancy that can exist between senior leaders and teachers in terms of how they embrace, enact, and experience student voice. Student voice customs can be rhetorical, perhaps even exaggerated by some, and peripheral to others, and positions on student voice are often determined by positions in the school hierarchy. As student voice remains considerably underdeveloped in Irish post-primary schools despite Irish education and most Irish schools becoming replete with student-centred discourses, this paper provides one possible way of making sense of the current state of play. More broadly, it points to how different actors work on and with student voice in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schoolteachers' well-being is considered an important factor for the functioning and efficacy of school systems around the globe and as a major driver of school development. Evidence suggests that teacher well-being can benefit from tailor-made intervention programmes. Thus, scientifically tested well-being programmes are of great interest for individual teachers (e.g. from a self-help perspective) as well as for school administrators and policy makers (e.g. to offer systemic support). The present paper provides a review of 29 peer-reviewed research papers that focus on interventions fostering well-being in teachers. The results show that a wide range of interventions and measurement approaches have been used and reported. Critically, few studies have used a rigorous methodological approach. On the basis of the review, it can be concluded that the field is still in its formation phase. Interventions as well as the scientific study of such interventions are quite novel in this context. Therefore, four major recommendations for advancing the scientific study of teacher well-being interventions are proposed, including conceptual advances and developments in the design, dissemination and study of interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses papers in the issue on topics including impact of curriculum choice on the social aspects of education in Great Britain, choice of subject and assessment method in Northern Ireland and Wales, and effect of education on labor market.

Using the symbolism of what we consider to be a ‘Sisyphean continuum’, in this paper the Anglosphere countries of Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and Australia are grouped to strategically reveal the shared challenges Indigenous peoples encounter in racial-colonial education systems. Fittingly, parallels are drawn between the punitive loop the mythical figure Sisyphus was doomed to. For Indigenous peoples bound up in dominant educational spaces, the barrage of racial-colonial institutional tools and mechanisms, enduring racism and cultural assimilation, the absence of collective achievement, the lack of Indigenous representation (e.g. personnel or knowledge), in parallel with sustained inter-generational advocacy, aptly mirrors the exhaustive punitive loop of Sisyphus. Guided by theoretical bridges synergising Indigenous and Western qualitative research techniques, three commonly repeated challenges (1. Deficit thinking; 2. Institutions; 3. Curriculum) are the focus of this paper. These themes are drawn from a broader study that sought the wisdom of sixteen Indigenous experts from across the Anglosphere. Our paper’s findings recentre the cycling educational challenges Indigenous peoples encounter and draw attention to the urgent need to turn towards and embrace marginalised voices and knowledge paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long-established literature has found that anxiety about testing is negatively related to academic achievement. Yet there remains some debate as to whether this is simply due to less academically able pupils being more likely to develop education-related anxiety issues. This paper presents new evidence on this matter, focusing upon how test anxiety – as measured by five questions included in the PISA 2015 survey – is related to the grades 15/16-year-olds achieve in England's high-stakes GCSE examinations. I find little evidence that teenagers with low or high levels of test anxiety achieve lower GCSE grades than pupils with average levels of test anxiety. Thus, in contrast to much of the existing literature, no clear relationship between test anxiety and examination performance is found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since a nationwide reform of pre-primary education in 2010, Ethiopia has experienced a massive expansion of pre-primary enrolment that increased tenfold in six years. Our paper aims to assess the distribution of early literacy outcomes between children who attended preschool and those who did not and explore how that distribution has changed throughout the reform and by factors such as gender, location, and parental literacy. We find an overall increase in the achievement gaps associated with pre-primary participation between 2010 and 2016. There are also differential patterns in the learning gaps over the reform, with a particular disadvantage for rural students and a relative advantage for students with parents who are not literate. This study suggests that understanding a fuller picture of learning inequality is critical to designing policy to leave no one behind aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on historical sources and publication records in the early 20th century, we suggest that Vygotsky's recognition of the 'paradox' in human learning and his conceptualisation of advanced thinking were largely influenced by Stanislavski's work in theatre. In this paper, we offer some evidence for this argument on Vygotsky's nascent system of concept development, which ultimately expanded the notion and process of education in modern society. We then provide our informed speculation on the ways in which Vygotsky might have constructed the zone of proximal development model as an integral part of concept development. We conclude our discussion with practical illustrations of creating ZPD in 21st century classroom contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the challenges facing a national evaluation of an early years intervention programme, Sure Start Children's Centres (SSCCs), that was implemented across England in the first decade of the 21st century. The paper describes the rationale for the evaluation's mixed methods research design and the ecological theoretical approach adopted. It investigates the SSCC policy aim of combatting the 'impact' of multiple disadvantage on outcomes for families, parents and children. Based on a clustered sample (2,600 families) it provides evidence of statistical effects for different user groups, including non-users. It points to the complexities in evaluation in non-experimental interventions where there was an emphasis on services to meet local needs and where families could choose which services to access and change patterns of service use over time. The paper synthesises findings and considers how complex, volatile and uncertain environments affected SSCC provision, particularly linked to a change of government and austerity policies after 2010. The paper identifies lessons learned, explores implications for future early years interventions in uncertain times, and proposes alternative approaches to evaluation (a realist approach based on mixed methods and theoretically driven models) where randomised experimental designs are inappropriate for the evaluation of certain complex policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy cycles are initiated via a variety of context-bound causal drivers. In situations where systemic reform is desired, agenda-setting is vital to this process. This paper examines ‘The National Discussion on Scottish Education’, which was a sequence of stakeholder engagements promoted as a listening exercise to enable policy agenda-setting for a period of education reform. By considering key elements of the context of education reform in Scotland, the design of the stakeholder engagement process, the published outcome of the process, and by reflecting on the purposes underpinning these, this paper examines the conceptual bases upon which the National Discussion and the Vision Statement that arose from it were founded. The intention to create a vision that was both consensual and compelling was challenging to realise in practice. However, the focus on communitarian values evinced through the Vision Statement offers a helpful orientation for future policymaking and professional practice in education, suggesting the important interrelationship between vision and values for agenda-setting in policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we deploy data collected through a Q study with educators in south-west England. The mixed methodology involved the two stages of forced choice statement sorting by educator participants and subsequent factor analysis. Through abductive analyses, four views regarding aspirations and young people in peripheral communities are identified. Of these, only one viewpoint, named 'acknowledge the barriers to finding employment', aligns with taken for granted narratives on encouraging school students to pursue careers in the knowledge economy, with transition to higher education being the acknowledged pathway to flourishing futures. Three further viewpoints are identified and discussed. The paper contributes new insights to understanding educational landscapes in peripheral places through employing a novel approach, that of Q method, to illuminate educators' lived experiences in such communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1966 the photographer Martine Franck was commissioned by Life International to document the experiences of children in a new library in Paris. The visual essay she produced illuminated the materiality, the design and the children's use of the space. In Birmingham, a recent unconnected research project, 'Libraries in Women's Lives', captured women's childhood memories of libraries. The women's 'spatial stories' (de Certeau, 1984) offer reflections on libraries in different times and places. Strikingly though, their accounts resonate with Franck's images of the library in Paris. This paper brings image and narrative into conversation with spatial theory to make sense of these similarities, and to explore responses to library space. This paper is a comment on the materiality of the library. It reveals the haptic and visual pleasures of these sites. Through this attention to memory, the research suggests a different starting point for debates around the future of libraries. It argues that looking to the past might be a good way of thinking about the libraries of the future. Further, and by virtue of attending to the visual alongside writing on spatial theory, this research comments on the relationship between representations of space in image and in text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a rich set of student background characteristics to estimate the value added of second-level schools in Ireland. We show that there is a considerable degree of reranking of schools when we move from analysing raw outcomes to value added; in many cases the best performing schools in raw terms are not the best in value-added terms. We show that, contrary to popular perception, fee-paying schools do not add higher value than other schools. A simulation exercise suggests that if parents chose the best value-added school from among the set of feasible schools, then this reallocation of students has the potential to increase academic achievement substantially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discusses the education in Great Britain. It raised on the public opinion if education in Scotland can survive alone or Great Britain can survive without Scotland during the Scottish independence referendum debate on September 2014. The authors explores the distinctive history, principle, and current policies of each country based on the papers they are written.

The great hope of dialogical pedagogy such as the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI) as advocated for by practitioners of philosophy for and with children (P4C) was to cultivate critical thinkers who would be guided by epistemic and moral virtues in their engagement with one another in an effort to uncover truth. And, further, that those democratic citizens could then take these newly honed skills out into the public square and enact good decision-making in their lives. The focus on equality and inclusion, with a respect for diversity of thought and opinion, guided a sense that every participant should feel as though they 'belong', and were free to engage in dialogue with others as equals. And yet, the question about how we might ensure the CoPI is a space in which everyone can meaningfully contribute is forefront in my mind. In this paper, I will focus on what might limit dialogue by explicating three main issues which I call 'paying lip service', 'existing power dynamics' and 'the transfer problem'. I will see if I can respond to these in order to ultimately affirm the role for dialogical pedagogy to support radical listening and genuinely inclusive dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the extent to which the implementation of a complex educational reform in Ethiopia was associated with changes in mathematics test scores for Grade 4 pupils from 2012–13 to 2018–19. During this period, while mathematics teachers’ educational qualifications and teacher content knowledge in mathematics improved, students in 2018–19 achieved, on average, lower test scores in mathematics than those in 2012–13. However, they also showed, on average, greater progress in mathematics test scores. Progress in mathematics test scores over the school year was associated with teacher content knowledge, but the magnitude of this association was larger in 2018–19 and was especially important for weaker students. The key to reconciling these paradoxical findings is to recognise that the reforms that underpin these improvements in school quality may well be working in multiple ways, changing the composition of the student body who attend school as well as increasing the amount of learning that takes place in the classroom, particularly among disadvantaged students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ethnoracial ‘majority-minority’ was introduced to describe changing population demographics where racial or ethnic groups traditionally in the majority have become a numerical minority. Despite their increase in recent years, very little is known of how hidden curricula manifests in these settings. Hence, this study sought to interrogate the hidden curriculum of race at an Occupational Therapy school with a majority-minority student-educator population in London, England. We conducted a secondary analysis of qualitative data from a larger action research project. The main data source was derived from two group interviews involving 11 racially minoritised student participants, and thematically analysed through a hidden curriculum lens. Trustworthiness of the analysis was enforced through crystallisation. The hidden curriculum of race was identified as embedded within (1) formal learning, (2) the null curriculum, (3) the informal curriculum, and (4) administrative structure and functioning. It is underpinned by pervasive colour-evasive racial ideologies which perpetuate health and workforce inequities. This paper concludes that majority-minority population demographics are insufficient to mitigate the impact of wider societal norms of oppression on hidden curricula. Thus, concerted and collective efforts involving all professional stakeholders are needed to embed intersectional, critical race-conscious approaches throughout formal learning across the academic curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small rural schools have often been characterised as being at the heart of their communities. However, there is no clarity on what that means nor on the perceived meaning of 'community' within this context. The findings of the Small School Rural Community Study focused on the relationship between small rural schools and the communities they serve within the post-conflict context of Northern Ireland's religiously divided schooling system. Using survey data and qualitatively derived data from this three-year study, we explore the ways in which community is understood and conceptualised by school principals, staff, parents, pupils and community members, in five case study areas. Similarly to another research study, our findings suggest that community can be conceptualised as having four key dimensions: people; meanings; practices; and spaces. The study found that a range of 'community practices' happened in school and around school, and that these practices had attached meanings, with schools helping to develop a sense of belonging and pride in the community, sometimes even a sense of 'shared space'. Drawing on these key dimensions, the paper provides a theoretical framework of 'community' to expand our understanding of school-community relations and the potential value of small rural schools beyond simply the educational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014 the International Journal for Academic Development (IJAD) issued a call for papers for 'Beyond learning and teaching: Extending the frontiers of academic development'. Though it was never published, the conceptual and definitional opacity that this special issue was expected to address, along with prevalent epistemic parochialism, remain problematic for academic development scholarship, and this article focuses on them. The article incorporates a critique of the field's scholarship within a conceptual analysis of academic development that culminates in presentation of the author's original conceptual model of the componential structure of academic development. Academic development scholarship, it is argued, is poised at a crossroad; its epistemic development is dependent upon its adopting a wider focus and agenda that its critical scholars are calling for, to diffuse the mainstream focus on teaching and learning. Mainstream scholarship is ripe for epistemic expansion into neighbouring fields, to encourage academic developers to shift their focus from what it is they do, to what they do is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International development higher education is a distinct space in a vibrant and growing field of higher education studies. This paper examines international development higher education scholarship to highlight its thematic, disciplinary, methodological, and analytical eclecticism. At the heart of international development higher education is the assumption that the world can be made better by the human effort invested in higher education. This paper offers a novel conceptualisation of the ways in which higher education's contributions to development can be understood. The bulk of the existing literature essentialises higher education's role in the advancement of human capital and the modernisation of societies. In contrast, anti-essentialist understandings can include various conceptualisations of how higher education can contribute to the realisation of human rights and capabilities to pursue the freedoms people value. A holistic understanding of university contributions to development would encompass all of the essentialist and anti-essentialist, as well as post-foundationalist ways of looking at this important but empirically elusive link. The paper suggests to delink development from 'international' and reframe development as 'glonacal', thus allowing scholars and practitioners to be less bound by nation-state borders, and more conscious of the local nuance and the global connectedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of university systems across the planet over the last fifty years has led to the emergence of a new policy assemblage – 'global higher education' that depends on the collection, curation and representation of quantitative data. In this paper I explore the use of data by higher education policy actors to sustain 'epistemic coloniality'. Building on a rich genealogy of anticolonial, postcolonial and feminist scholarship, I show how decolonial theory can be used to critique dominant global higher education imaginaries and the data infrastructures they depend on. Tracing the history of these infrastructures, I begin with OECD's creation of decontextualised educational 'indicators'. I go on to track the policy impact of global university league tables owned by commercial organisations. They assemble and commensurate institutional data into rankings that become taken-for-granted 'global' policy knowledge. I end by exploring the policy challenge of building alternative socio-technical infrastructures, and finding new ways to value higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The December 2008 special issue of the Oxford Review of Education provided a review of education policy during Tony Blair's tenure as Prime Minister. This paper forms a response to the ten contributions to that special issue and discusses some of the issues raised in them. While a few positive aspects of education under New Labour were identified in the special edition, it focused more on the failures of New Labour than its achievements. A common theme to emerge from the papers included the government's pursuit of neo-liberal market policies at the expense of its professed commitment to social justice. While accepting that the government's failure to tackle the differences in educational outcomes between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils constitutes a major failing, the present author argues that significant achievements, such as early years provision, were neglected in the special issue. He also discusses the electoral considerations facing New Labour and the personal role of Tony Blair in determining policy. The paper goes on to consider whether New Labour's education policy has changed since the departure of Blair and identifies some hints of a potentially more progressive approach developing under Brown. It concludes by suggesting that contributing towards a debate about alternatives to Blairite policies should now become a priority for the 'educational establishment'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to examine the case for a focus on place-based drivers of inequalities in educational attainment among secondary school students in Scotland. Using desk-based sources, it provides an account of the post-2015 policy episode around improving educational attainment among children from disadvantaged areas. This started with the Scottish Government claiming that its 'defining mission' was to 'close the gap' but the place-based focus of policy was soon dissipated and the legislation that intended to be the flagship of reform was shelved. The paper shows that international evidence prompts a need for the impact of disadvantage based on place to be factored into approaches to schooling and provides a regretful account of its insecure traction in Scottish policy. It argues that a serious weakness of the case for place in Scotland is the underlying evidence base and concludes by suggesting how existing data sources could be used more effectively and by outlining some alternative policy approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the connections and disconnections between teacher education policy and research, and considers future opportunities for teacher education research by rethinking the notion of evidence as it is conceptualised in current policy debates. Historically, teacher education was positioned as a training issue, then as a learning issue, and more recently it has been framed as a policy problem requiring significant reform. By analysing the influences on current teacher education policy, this paper argues that we are now in a second stage of the 'teacher education as a policy problem' phase. Teacher education is now a politically constructed and ideological policy problem and the associated discourses of evidence are contributing to disconnections between teacher education research and policy. Drawing on findings from a large-scale longitudinal study investigating the effectiveness of teacher education that highlighted the complex and non-linear processes of learning teaching and doing teaching, I argue that singular thinking about the purpose of teacher education as only preparing teachers must be problematised. I suggest that calls for evidence, that are so prevalent in current policy, must be interrogated and reframed if compelling and convincing connections between teacher education policy and research are to be realised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way in which young people's post-school intentions and pathways reflect their social background has been the subject of a good deal of research. However, much less attention has been paid to social differentiation in the amount and kind of career guidance information received by young people and its role in reinforcing or ameliorating social differentiation in transitions. This article contributes by examining the extent to which sources of information and guidance activities vary by social background and school social mix and the consequences of this variation for intentions to go on to higher education. The paper draws on data from a large-scale longitudinal study of young people in Ireland, the Growing Up in Ireland study. It finds that young people from more advantaged backgrounds are much more reliant on their parents as a source of information and advice, reflecting access to insider knowledge of the educational system, and are more likely to pay for private guidance services. In contrast, young people from less advantaged backgrounds and those attending schools with a concentration of working-class students are more reliant on school-based sources of information, though these resources are insufficient to boost their chances of making the transition to higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on life history interviews, this paper seeks to explore the lives of a group of eight teachers, all with working experience in England, who self-identify as committed to a more socially just education system. Drawing on Levitas' Utopia as method, this article examines these teachers' perspectives on and practices around social justice in education, such as aiming to eradicate exclusion policies and processes, and organising with like-minded colleagues. We also explore the significant professional and emotional labour that goes into such kinds of work towards a socially just education system, and the satisfaction that comes from 'making a difference'. Their perspectives also provide insight into what a vision of socially just education might look like for those in the teaching profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contribution to a body of scholarship that examines teaching as a form of learning, the paper addresses a central question: What can be learnt from organised mobilisation to educate in communities eager to strengthen their unique biocultural heritage? The question is explored through an examination of two grassroots education projects in Latin American provincial locations rich in history. Studied ethnographically over a period of fifteen years from the point of view of the educators who run them, these two projects offer a unique opportunity to examine the formation and the mobilisation of value in education. I show how popular education and agroecology methods are used in both cases to face socio-ecological conflicts and refocus developmental tensions. I conclude with a short reflection on UNESCO's 2020 approach to education and its vital role in radically reconfiguring humanity's place and agency on planet Earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the result of an inter-university educational innovation project developed between the University of La Laguna (Spain) and the Autonomous University of Baja California (Mexico). Students from both institutions, studying at the equivalent level to become future primary education teachers, analysed the way in which primary school textbooks approach the topic of heritage in the Canary Islands and in Mexico. Flipped classrooms and project-based learning were the main teaching methodologies, culminating in a final assignment: a written report by students. The results enable us to re-evaluate the knowledge transmitted through textbooks in the light of this history, and their facilitation in teaching and learning processes, with attention to their epistemological biases. Several topics were highlighted as core concerns in the use of textbooks for teaching heritage: the need to question the role of the textbook in the teaching process, and the importance of Indigenous heritage when teaching and holistic concept of heritage. In outlining the inter-university teaching project, the article also shows how the analysis of textbooks in both contexts, and their subsequent comparison, has made possible a reformulation of how students of education in the Canary Islands and Mexico are taught to teach history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher autonomy has been a topic of growing interest over recent decades. However, what teacher autonomy means remains work in progress. Drawing from existing conceptualisations, which consider teacher autonomy as a multidimensional and context-dependent phenomenon this paper presents an analytical device applicable in international comparative studies. The conceptualisation is presented in the form of a matrix, which distinguishes different domains and levels of teacher autonomy. A sample of existing research is then utilised to demonstrate how the matrix can assist in cumulative knowledge building. The article demonstrates how the matrix can be applied, in particular, to empirical comparative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan's Punjab province has witnessed numerous education reforms in recent years. Many of these reforms have been aimed at improving the well-documented low levels of learning by focusing on improving teaching quality. The rhetoric suggests that government schools, particularly those in rural areas with a more disadvantaged pupil base, are especially ineffective at imparting learning. This paper seeks to investigate whether children in rural Punjab are learning literacy and numeracy over the course of a year, and if so, are some pupils progressing more than others. Using recently collected data, it finds that children in our sample are making progress. Variation in progress is found to be greater within schools rather than across them. The competence and qualifications of a teacher also makes a significant difference to a child's academic progress. The paper further finds differential progress for rich and poor students within schools, suggesting an important role for education policy to put in place targeted support towards those from disadvantaged backgrounds to ensure improvements in their learning keep pace with their peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an important cross-national study of 15-year-olds’ academic knowledge and skills. Educationalists and public policymakers eagerly await the tri-annual results, with particular interest in whether their country has moved up or slid down the international rankings, as compared to earlier rounds. In 2015 a major change was implemented in PISA, with the introduction of computer-based assessment. This has the potential to reduce comparability of PISA test scores across countries and over time. We investigate this issue using PISA 2015 field trial data for three countries: Germany, Sweden, and Ireland. We show how, if left unaccounted for, the change to computer-based testing could limit the comparability of PISA test scores. We then describe the methodology the study organisers have used to account for such mode effects. Our key conclusion is that although the adjustment made is unlikely to overcome all the potential challenges of switching to computer-based tests, it represents an improvement over the alternative of making no adjustment at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the construction and practice of the purposes of teacher education in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) and Taiwan. The paper begins with a brief overview of contemporary issues underlying the education system in both countries. It then investigates the underlying assumption of student achievement before moving on to reconceptualise the purposes of education, and consequently, teacher education with the aims of remedying existing social and cultural gaps in both societies, as well as laying the path for a more diverse society for all. Underpinned within a social constructivist paradigm, the qualitative study explores how teacher education can, and needs to be, more equitable and responsive to the learning outcomes of students – in terms of diversity and difference – in Aotearoa NZ and Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a further exploration of the phenomenon of historic country houses repurposed as private schools. In a previous paper it was shown that 55 English private schools within the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference and the Girls' Schools Association are partially housed within former country houses. This paper investigates some of the possible motivations for schools choosing to occupy such redundant country houses. There are a number of obvious reasons, such as their availability at low cost with appropriate facilities that could be readily used by the schools, but in some cases, it was found that the country house's historic associations with arts, culture, and learning were a particular motivation for repurposing into schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]