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Errors that occasionally manifest in examination papers and other educational assessment instruments can threaten reliability and validity. For example, a multiple choice question could have two correct response options, or a geography question containing an inaccurate map could be unanswerable. In this paper we explore this oft-neglected element of fairness. We adopt the theoretical position that assessment instrument errors stem from different types of human failure, which in turn stem from system-level failure. We then explore how the term 'error' is used in conceptually different ways, potentially engendering confusion in academic discourse. We analysed error incident records from an international assessment organisation to develop a taxonomy of assessment instrument error types. Our taxonomy covers errors that manifest in assessments in all school subjects. We used it to develop an approach to process analysis for any system of checks applied during the later stages of instrument construction. This facilitates subsequent evaluation of the psychological causes of failure. The taxonomy and process analysis approach have applications in analysing types and rates of errors in different educational assessment instruments, in systemically comparing the demands and efficacies of alternative construction processes, and as structural and communication tools in qualitative research on error culture.

Improving the academic and social outcomes of boys -- specifically boys from low-SES backgrounds -- remains of international importance. With this in mind, research continues to document the ways in which relational learning is integral for the well-being of students, specifically those students in disadvantaged school contexts. This paper focuses on relational learning as an important resource that marginalised young men draw upon, informing their future orientation towards higher education beyond their compulsory schooling. Within studies of men and masculinities, the affective turn has recently played a significant role in how we understand men as relational. Focusing upon a cohort of boys from some of the poorest urban regions in Australia, the paper addresses how their affective relationships with teachers contribute not only to their conception of themselves as learners but also their general well-being, confidence and aspirations. Through highlighting two trends in the data -- "Teacher as Persistent Nurturer" and "Teacher as Supporter" -- the research presented extends two lines of inquiry. First, understanding student-teacher relationships in disadvantaged educational contexts and, second, the importance of positive student-teacher relationships for working-class boys who have historically disengaged from their education.

Schools now face considerable pressure to be using educational data to inform decision-making and become more efficient. Key to this rise of the 'data-driven' school is the increased use of digital technologies -- with computer-based data processing fuelling hopes for the technology-driven 'smart schooling' and a general 'datafication' of education. Against this background, the present paper explores the realities how data-work is taking place within individual schools with the aid of digital technologies. In particular, it draws on empirical data generated from in-depth ethnographic studies of digital data practices within three secondary schools in the Australian state of Victoria. Using concepts from the sociology of numbers, the paper takers these empirical findings to develop productive and relational accounts of the predominant ways that data work was being carried out within these schools. In contrast to the idea of 'Big Data', schools were most often found to be engaging in small-scale, improvised forms of spreadsheet work. The paper considers the social, cultural and political reasons underpinning schools' reliance on such forms of 'small data' -- particularly in contrast to the more sophisticated, automated and continuous forms of data analysis that are now available.

This paper assesses the explanatory power of a perspective arguing that school social segregation enhances social inequalities in political engagement because of the distinct effects that concentrations of adolescents of disadvantaged backgrounds in educational settings generate. It tests this argument with data of the 2000 Civic Education Study among Upper Secondary students and uses intentions to participate and political competences as outcomes to represent political engagement. Social inequalities in political competences turn out to be greater in states with the most segregated systems, but social disparities in intentions to participate are unrelated to the level of segregation. The paper argues that policy makers should consider creating a more integrated school system if they seek to reduce social inequalities in "informed" political participation.

Many secondary schools sort students into 'ability'-based classes, but research shows that streaming students by ability is inequitable and does not improve student academic results. There has been little qualitative research that considers students' experiences of streaming, with none that compares students' experiences in classes that are streamed against the same students' experiences in other classes that are mixed-ability. The research in this paper explains student experiences of differences between their streamed and mixed-ability classrooms, including the perceived influence on their educational outcomes. The study is unique because the results project the voices of 25 Grade 10 secondary school students from three Western Australian public schools, 19 of whom had recently experienced transitions between streamed and mixed-ability grouping contexts. The findings offer new knowledge that begins to explain how different class grouping strategies are experienced differently by students. Contrasts made by the students in their teachers' provision of learning opportunities, learning aspirations, and learning environments between streamed and mixed-ability classes are discussed. The findings highlight how educational outcomes were shaped by the schools' grouping choices and the associated differences in teachers' expectations and provision of opportunities to learn. The results are of interest to educators making decisions about ability-grouping practices.

Many scholars argue that the practice of educational tracking exerts a distinct effect on young people's political engagement. They point out that students in academic tracks are becoming more politically engaged than those than those in vocational ones, and suggest that this may be due to differences across tracks in the curriculum, pedagogy, peer environment or student self-confidence. The current paper aims to investigate whether tracking is related to political engagement through any of these four mechanisms. It uses survey data collected among students in the final year of upper secondary education in France and employs a stepwise multilevel analysis to explore this question. It finds little differences between tracks in the curriculum and in pedagogy relevant for political engagement. Students in academic tracks nonetheless express a stronger commitment to vote than those in vocational ones. This difference between tracks disappears when the social composition of the school population is taken into account, suggesting that the peer environment is the primary mechanism driving the effect of tracking in France. However, in contexts with greater variation between the tracks in curriculum and pedagogy, the latter may well be equally or more important mechanisms.

Access to tertiary education is a challenge for many people from refugee-backgrounds. In Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), resettled refugees are entitled to access education alongside other New Zealanders, and NZ's resettlement policy material recognises education as a key pillar of resettlement. However, refugee-background students are not recognised as 'priority learners' in education policy, so educational institutions are not required to report on refugee-background students' educational access or outcomes. At all levels of the education system, teaching and support practices for refugee-background students vary widely. Many barriers hamper refugee-background students' access to and success in tertiary education. However, refugee-background students are also necessarily-skilful border navigators. In this paper, we share data from an in-progress participatory action research project based in southern NZ that involves collaborating with refugee-background students at the secondary-tertiary education border. After describing the project, its rationale, and our theoretical framework, we draw on insights from seven of the students to illustrate how students represented educational navigation in NZ: as a resistance project, a subterranean project, and a relational project. We conclude by suggesting some implications from our study for research, policy and practice in education.

This study undertakes a decolonial reading of the Zimbabwean history curriculum as an exemplar of how knowledge and pedagogy could be reframed as the basis for curricular justice in a global imaginary that is predicated on the epistemic hegemony of the Global North. The study which is framed as a conceptual research article introduces and argues for undoing "historicide" as a heuristic within the broader scope of the epistemic decolonial turn. The Zimbabwean history curriculum, as a unit of analysis, is referenced to exemplify entrapment within the Cartesian paradigm of knowing, despite the country's political independence. The argument developed is that history curricula that do not interrogate the geography and biography of knowledge entrench the hegemonic narrative of the coloniality of power and by extension colonial historiography. The paper suggests that the way out of the epistemic quandary that pervades the Zimbabwean history curriculum entails re-envisioning curricular practices in ways that ensure the emergence of a pluriverse in which we reclaim, restitute and legitimate our knowledges and histories, and affirm our ontological densities as equal to those of the Global North.

It is not uncommon for randomised trials in education to have the performance of sample members in national examinations as their primary outcome. In many cases, examination results are available as summary measures only. Taking the example of GCSE examination results in England, this paper shows that using summary measures of an underlying score or mark, such as exam grade, complicates the design of trials and can lead to underpowered studies. Simple simulations are used to explore the consequences of powering trials to detect a difference assuming grade or summary measures are the only outcome metric available, where the effects of an intervention are primarily captured in the unknown mark or score distribution. The analysis draws on data that relate the entire distribution of marks in English language and mathematics examinations to grades. Recommendations are made in order to address this problem.

This paper explores the association between children's difficulty in moving to secondary school and their family background. School transition difficulty is associated with a range of poor outcomes in young people, but studies have rarely taken a fully longitudinal perspective or looked in detail at inequalities in transition processes. This perspective can unpack the long-term processes behind any inequalities in such difficulties. We use longitudinal data from the Growing Up in Scotland survey to model school transition difficulty at age 12 using ordinary least squares regression models. We adopt a multidimensional approach to social background, taking account of social class, parental education, and household income. All three dimensions, especially income, are associated with school transition difficulty. This social gradient is not explained by differences in the home learning environment, school engagement at primary level or cognitive development in early to middle childhood. Results show the limits of agency-based measures, like school engagement and home learning, in explaining inequality and children's disadvantage in school. Results also show the importance of adopting a multidimensional approach to family background when analysing inequality in education, regardless of the outcome.

The broad, contested notion of vulnerability is one of the areas of education in which concerns with the mental health and wellbeing of young people come together. This paper examines the theoretical and socio-political development of the 'vulnerability Zeitgeist' in recent years and the extent to which it has been applied to both young people and teachers in schools. We outline how the instrumental and negative views of vulnerability, which dominate policy discourse, run counter to the more expansive and ambivalent understandings familiar from sociological and psychoanalytic theory and use two cases drawn from studies undertaken in England and Germany to highlight their deleterious effects. Our analysis suggests that a more relational and collaborative approach, which explores vulnerability from the perspectives of both teachers and students, is necessary to improve support for the most vulnerable young people. We suggest that there are benefits to focusing on the vulnerability of young people and teachers, which research has until now examined separately, together conceptually and in practice to help to build trust and change attitudes to mental health and wellbeing in schools.

Children undergo significant changes as they enter secondary school, a time during which their social and academic self-concept is fluid and the pressures to adjust and show positive attitudes and behaviours are intense. Utilising data from the Millennium Cohort Study (Waves 4 and 5) the purpose of this study was two-fold: to examine longitudinal changes in academic self-concept, self-esteem and school attitudes in pre and mid adolescents through the lenses of gender and SES; and to trace the unique and cumulative effects of SES, gender and parenting on academic self-concept, self-esteem and school attitudes in 14-year-olds. The findings showed that academic self-concept, self-esteem and positive school attitudes decreased considerably between the ages of 11 and 14, and that girls rated themselves lower in self-esteem and school attitudes than did boys. The observed drop in academic self-concept was sharper in 14-year-olds from economically less well-off families. Parent behaviour and practices and the home learning environment contributed significantly to 14-year-olds' school attitudes, self-esteem and self-concept. These findings have implications for developing school policies that support self-esteem especially during the first years of secondary education.

This article examines the effects of education system types and characteristics on changes in the distributions of literacy and numeracy skills during the upper secondary phase of education and training. Whereas there is a substantial literature on system effects on skills during the primary and lower secondary phases of education, much less has been written about these effects in relation to the upper secondary phase. This article reports on research using quasi-cohort data for 15-year-olds in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and 18- to 20-year-olds in the Survey of Adult Skills to test the effects of a range of system indicators on changes in skills distributions during the upper secondary phase. Consistent with some dominant theories, our difference-in-difference analysis identifies a range of system characteristics associated with skills inequality reduction in upper secondary education and training, which relate to 'system standardisation' and 'parity of esteem', and which can explain why some 'system types' are more effective than others in reducing skills inequality.

Private tutoring is part of the everyday life of hundreds of thousands of students all around the world, and its prevalence is growing. However, despite a proliferation of research on private tutoring, little is known about the role that school plays in shaping the phenomenon. This study investigates school-related factors that may affect private tutoring attendance in maths and German using two German nationwide samples of Grade 10 students (over 15,000 participants in total). These factors are: teacher support in the classroom, classroom management, teacher collaboration with the teacher body and teacher-family communication. We also verified the role of various individual factors, including student helplessness and the subjective task values. Two-level logistic regression analyses did not confirm the role of school-related factors. However, private tutoring attendance was affected by student helplessness, subjective task values, past school achievement, cognitive ability, gender, mother tongue and type of school attended, although the pattern of results differed between subjects. The results highlight the role of motivational factors behind the decision to take private tutoring, which has been rarely inquired into, and the remedial nature of private tutoring. They also show that school contribution to the decision remains elusive, at least for maths and German.

Literacy skills are essential if students are to access knowledge and achieve academic success in middle school science. A key difficulty with interpreting literacy practices in any discipline is the problem of conceptualising what constitutes literacy. Our study contributes new understandings to the discipline of science where there are ongoing debates concerning the meaning of literacy and confusion regarding what constitutes essential literacies in the field. Our scoping review first identifies how literacy in middle school science is conceptualised in empirical studies published between 2006 and 2019 and, second, addresses a significant gap in understandings by identifying how dominant discourses inform practice. Specifically, our findings show the dominance of a narrow conception of literacy in the science classroom relating to skills-based pedagogic instruction. Based on our review, we conclude that the field of science requires a broadening of what constitutes literacy, and engagement with New Literacy Studies which focuses on literacy as a social practice closely interwoven with student identities.

Dialogic education advocates varied forms of interactional management by teachers. In the context of whole-class discussions, teachers are encouraged to both prompt student involvement through direct mediation, and "step back" to give students a greater sense of agency and responsibility for turn-taking when appropriate. However, it is methodologically challenging to capture the relation between teacher-student and student-student interactions through dialogue in whole-class contexts. One perspective that is especially designed for exploring complex relations in social networks but not as commonly used in dialogic education is social network analysis (SNA). Drawing on 35 whole-class discussion episodes derived from lower secondary classrooms in Norway, this study uses SNA to explore interactional patterns. Methodologically, the study provides novel examples of how SNA can be used both alone and in conjunction with the indicators of interactional productivity to describe the relation between teacher-student and student-student interactions in whole-class discussions. Empirically, a key finding is that an increase in students responding directly to each other in a student-to-student fashion is associated with a reduction in the distribution of productive interactions through dialogue. Theoretically, the study directs attention to the complexities and tensions inherent in key models and concepts in dialogic education.

The abilities of citizens to make themselves heard and listen to each other are essential for the functioning of democratic societies. Schools are practice grounds for these citizenship competences. This study investigates whether students' experiences with voice in school are related to their attitudes towards voice (contributing and listening democratically), and how a democratic school culture affects this relation. Overall, 5297 students, from 240 classrooms, in 81 Dutch secondary schools, participated in the study. Results of multilevel analyses revealed that students' voice experiences at school, their own and those of their classmates, are positively related to students' attitudes towards contributing and listening democratically. This relation is not affected by a democratic school culture. These findings underline the relevance of opportunities to practice voice at school for all students and of the social nature of practicing voice. More generally, this study illustrates the importance of understanding schools as practice grounds for citizenship.

This article analyses the mechanisms that contribute to differences in educational choice in the transition from the second to the third stage of secondary education in Flanders, a highly tracked educational system. The study programme chosen in the eleventh grade, besides being quite predictable from the educational position in the tenth grade and school performance, is also affected by social class, ethnic background and gender. Using data gathered from pupils, their parents and their teachers, this study (N = 4389) tests a broad range of factors put forward by rational action theory, cultural reproduction theory and the Wisconsin status attainment model. As proposed by rational action theory, relative risk aversion affects educational choice. However, it does not explain the SES effect. Pupils' academic self-esteem and their time perspective do have some potential to explain SES differentials in educational choice, as hypothesised by rational action theorists, and as can be expected from cultural explanations for educational inequality as well. In addition, expectations of significant others (parents, as well as teachers) are important predictors for subsequent educational choice and explain part of SES differences. Finally, classic cultural indicators of the parental home do not seem to affect educational choice beyond their effects on performance.

Bullying is a considerable problem among school students, and school-wide positive behaviour support interventions are regarded as helpful in addressing it. One approach is the CATZ Cross-age Teaching Zone anti-bullying intervention. The present study assessed the social validity of the CATZ anti-bullying intervention among a sample of 9-15-year-olds in a pre-post experimental design (N = 817, of which 546 experienced CATZ). Overall, participants expressed moderately positive views of the CATZ anti-bullying intervention, and these became significantly stronger following direct experience of it. Among participants who experienced the CATZ anti-bullying intervention, social validity ratings predicted a greater willingness to engage in it in the future. Alongside the extant data for its effectiveness, our findings support the wider use of the CATZ anti-bullying intervention in schools, and suggestions for how this might be brought about are discussed.

This paper returns to a long-standing theme in education research, the ways in which 'contextual factors impact on what schools do, as well as directly on what pupils achieve' (Lupton, 2004, 4). Drawing on a project designed to explore the early effects of reforms to national examinations, the curriculum for 14-16 year olds and school accountability measures in English secondary schools, this paper considers the perceptions and experiences of teachers currently charged with enacting these reforms specifically in the light of their situated school realities in three different settings. A case is made for a contextually sensitive approach towards policy making and policy enactment that takes account of some of the more nuanced distinctions among schools' contextual positionings.

There is widespread concern about the shortage of secondary school teachers in England. Recruitment to initial teacher training regularly fails to meet its intake targets. The secondary school pupil population is increasing. Teacher vacancies have risen, and more teachers are reportedly leaving the profession prematurely. Despite considerable investment in a wide range of initiatives, costing millions of pounds, the government has acknowledged that it has been unable improve the situation substantially. This paper presents time-series analyses of official data and documentary analyses of government publications. These suggest that teacher shortages are partly created by government policies themselves - including flaws in the selection system, and school funding system, the official extension of the education and training leaving age, and increases in the number of small schools. It is difficult when planning for teacher supply to anticipate the impact of such varied policy changes years ahead. Consequently, estimations of the numbers needed to be trained are hardly ever accurate. This paper suggests a reconsideration of the current selection processes for initial teacher training, independent review of the Teacher Supply Model, and a long-term approach to teacher supply planning, considering other policy changes in a more coordinated way.

The purpose of this review study was to conduct a thematic exploration of prior studies related to the transition between primary and secondary school. The aim of the paper was to discover (1) the extent of earlier research, (2) how earlier research thematises social and emotional issues, and (3) suggestions of those studies concerning how to improve schools. Searches were conducted across four international databases of peer-reviewed research to identify articles published in the last decade on the topic 'transition between primary and secondary school'. Articles related to social and emotional issues were further selected, and thematic analysis was conducted on the selected 29 articles to identify the topical focus. This review study draws attention to the importance of understanding challenges related to the transition between primary and secondary school. Overall, the analysed studies indicate that this is an important focus for educational research. Key issues related to support and wellbeing/bullying have emerged, which clarify the importance of further research in this field. The present study may also contribute to increasing awareness among policy makers and school leaders of the challenges related to the transition between primary and secondary school.

The analysis uses a unique series of surveys of school students in Scotland, covering the whole of the second half of the twentieth century, to investigate whether educational reforms can reduce inequalities of educational progress and attainment, and the role of school history in mediating these intentions. This period included the policy reforms that ended selection for public-sector schools between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s. Information on school attended enables the analysis to investigate whether and how the histories of schools interact with national policy. The main conclusions are that inequality of attainment and progression fell throughout the half century, but that the change was slow. Although policy may have created the conditions under which this equalisation took place, it probably was not its main cause, and the ways in which policy had its impact was modified by schools' histories. The paper also illustrates the ways in which a series of surveys can be used to understand social change, and the compromises which have to be made to achieve comparability over a long period of time.

Post-transformational neoliberal reforms in the Czech Republic have established a competitive quasi-market, in which -- at the lower-secondary level -- academic-track schools (grammar schools or gymnasia) compete for students in the regular-track schools. These reforms have also brought a rise of shadow education (private supplementary tutoring) provided by individuals and private companies. Even public schools are sometimes providers of shadow education. The study explores gymnasia principals' motivations to provide paid courses to prepare students for entrance examinations to their study programmes and the challenges they experience in doing so. The findings are drawn mainly from semi-structured interviews with principals and other school management members in eleven gymnasia. The study conceptualises such courses as a 'double-edged sword'. First, because it serves as a 'weapon' that academic schools use in the quasi-market competition to attract more (high-achieving) students from regular track schools, and second, because it may have both positive and negative consequences (e.g., for equity in education), depending on the conditions of its provision. The paper contributes to a wider scholarly literature by expanding the understanding of ways schools behave in the competitive educational quasi-markets and by opening a new branch of shadow education research.

Using a mixed-methods approach, this paper investigates current views within society about what civic knowledge is important for students leaving secondary education. We combined questionnaire data from a representative national sample with data from a multiple-case study among several focus groups of stakeholders with various roles in society. The results show that there is broad consensus in society about the civic knowledge that is important for students, consistent with civic knowledge conceptualisations as used in common standardised measurement instruments. The data also show a different appreciation of the different aspects of civics. In particular, themes related to solidarity, democracy and civic empowerment and their relevance were seen as a prerequisite for successful participation in society. Themes that are less prominent in the lives of adolescents or less important for understanding other civic topics were seen as relatively less important. Moreover, although equal civic knowledge for all students was considered desirable in principle, the stakeholder groups differentiated between groups of students in terms of interests, educational track and their expected future role in society. Social inequality between students was not problematised. This calls for further research into desired levels of civic knowledge for different educational groups.

L1 grammar teaching worldwide often takes the form of traditional grammar teaching with decontextualized parsing exercises and rules of thumb. Some researchers have proposed enriching such forms of grammar teaching by relating traditional grammatical concepts to underlying metaconcepts from linguistic theory. The merits of such an approach have become apparent in recent intervention studies, but the question remains how teachers perceive such forms of grammar teaching, which is of particular importance for curriculum development. The present study investigated Dutch teachers' beliefs in focus groups and a national survey (N = 127). It is found that Dutch language teachers see important benefits of a metaconceptual approach to grammar teaching, particularly as a means to improve students' grammatical understanding. However, results also indicate that while teachers may see clear pedagogical and conceptual advantages of working based on underlying metaconcepts, their own teaching practice appears to be much more traditional. This discrepancy is explained by assuming that contextual factors have a restraining effect on what teachers can or want to do in reality. Once such contextual factors no longer play a part, teachers' views tend to be much more geared towards a metaconceptual approach. The paper concludes with some implications for future research.

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the drivers of English Language Competence (ELC) in a representative sample of European adolescents. School factors -- such as English instruction time and English onset -- are found to play an important role, especially in countries whose official languages are more distant from English. However, schools do not fully compensate for disparities in ELC. Gender, parental education and parental socioeconomic status are strongly associated with students' ELC. Particularly, girls and children from more privileged social backgrounds show systematically higher ELC, even net of school factors and reading ability in their own country language. The role of family background is stronger in countries with languages that are more distant from English, suggesting that family resources are needed more when the skills are more difficult to acquire elsewhere. Finally, informal English exposure through media and cultural products is strongly and positively associated with ELC. This holds true in countries with both high and low linguistic distance from English, suggesting that schools should promote more informal English learning to increase overall ELC and reduce social disparities.

This paper reports on a study that looks at the micro-processes of teacher learning in a language teacher professional community in China. Following the tradition of ethnomethodology, teacher learning in this paper is conceptualised as interactional accomplishment of negotiation of practice through talk. Based on a purposively selected discourse sample, this paper illustrates the trajectory of how the differences in the understandings of creativity among a small group of language teacher educators (or 'teachers' thereafter) were taken up, talked through and finally resolved (or not). The research demonstrates that teachers' tacit knowledge was distributed among individual members of the professional community where different pedagogical understandings existed. The micro-analysis also shows that teachers' talk created a dialogic space for the participants to externalise and mobilise their tacit knowledge for negotiation. Implications are drawn which point to the importance of creating opportunities for teacher collaboration and teacher talk as part of professional development.

A compositional effect is when pupil attainment is associated with the characteristics of their peers, over and above their own individual characteristics. Pupils at academically selective schools, for example, tend to out-perform similar-ability pupils who are educated with mixed-ability peers. Previous methodological studies however have shown that 'phantom' compositional effects can arise purely from measurement error. Through simulations using English National Pupil Database data, this paper demonstrates that moderate rates of measurement error in baseline scores can produce a systemic bias in value-added ('Progress') scores that favours higher ability pupils. This bias is large enough to explain the ostensibly superior performance of selective 'grammar' schools that is seen in the English data and create an appreciable bias across the school performance distribution. This paper describes how such biases can arise from 'regression attenuation' and discusses the more general methodological implications of the results. The paper concludes that the consequences of baseline measurement error on school value-added scores is greatly mitigated by controls for school-level prior attainment, but that the English 'Progress' value-added measures, as they do not control for prior attainment at school-level, are seriously biased and that the observed 'grammar school effect' is likely to be largely or wholly spurious.

In the school curriculum, some subjects tend to be regarded more highly than others. Various accounts have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. Most of them draw attention to the nature of different subjects and the type of knowledge that these promote. While such epistemological narratives help to illuminate the origins of the curriculum hierarchy, they are limited in their ability to point to directions for addressing it. Drawing on empirical data concerning an increasingly unpopular A level subject, namely Design and Technology, this paper exposes a number of additional factors eroding the status of lowly regarded subjects. These factors capture more tangible aspects of the issue, introducing a more practical and concrete perspective into a debate which, to date, has been largely theoretical and abstract. The paper reconceptualises the curriculum hierarchy, arguing that its perpetuation is linked to issues relating to the definition, or 'brand', of subjects. Against the backdrop of this conceptualisation, it proposes a framework which offers a complementary explanation for the existing subject hierarchy alongside tools for levelling the playing field within the curriculum.

While the importance of considering the wide variation among language learners has been brought to the forefront in recent years, the impact of such individual differences on the process of second or foreign language writing has been largely neglected. This paper aims to explore the ways in which individual students develop and transfer strategies within and between foreign language (FL) and first language (L1) writing. A two-phase intervention of strategy-based instruction was conducted primarily in the FL German classroom, and later also in the L1 English classroom of a Year 9 (age 13-14) class in a secondary school in England. This paper draws on in-depth qualitative data from writing tasks and stimulated recall interviews. A range of students' trajectories through the intervention were evaluated and four distinct writer 'profiles' were identified: the strategic writer, the experimenter, the struggling writer and the multilingual writer. Both the development and transfer of strategies for these students were shown to be influenced by a complex and dynamic range of factors such as the learner's proficiency level, their level of metacognitive engagement with the task, their attitude towards writing and their strategic use of other languages in their repertoire.

This paper advances the discourse on school-university partnerships by considering the challenges of implementing a project to support the professional development of teachers through the use of video-mediated lesson observation within such a partnership network. The project discussed here was initially established by teacher-educators and located in the secondary sector of a school-university partnership in England. It offers an interpretive framework for analysing school-university partnerships. The impact of this project was limited due to asymmetric power relations. The effectiveness of partnership working is discussed by considering the degree of congruence between the perspectives of and division of labour between both school-based mentors and teacher-educators and those factors identified in literature as supporting effective partnership working. The findings point to effectiveness being compromised when power and control are located within one community resulting in school-based mentor disengagement and the project aims only being partly fulfilled.

Girls tend to outperform boys in reading tests, while they usually lag behind boys in mathematics. However, the size of the gender gap varies to a great extent between countries. While the existing literature explains these differences as being mainly due to cultural factors, this paper explores whether this cross-country variation is related to educational policies like tracking, grade retention, and individualised teaching practices. The gender test score gap is analysed in mathematics, reading and science using the PISA 2012 dataset. Multilevel models are used in the estimation. The results suggest that the extent of the gender gap is indeed associated with certain characteristics of the various education systems. First, applying a difference-in-differences estimation method, it was found that early tracking has a direct effect on the gender gap in test scores, in favour of girls. Second, suggestive evidence shows that more student-oriented teaching practices also benefit girls relative to boys, both between and within countries, and within schools. Finally, grade retention is correlated with the gender gap, though there is further evidence suggesting that this correlation is very unlikely to represent a causal effect.

Increasing and diversifying participation in science remains a key educational policy concern for governments across the world. "Science capital" has been proposed as a useful theoretical lens that can explain patterns in science aspirations among young people aged 11-16 -- but to date it has not been explored in relation to educational outcomes among older age groups. This paper reports findings from a new survey of 7,013 17/18 year old English secondary school students. It replicates and extends previous findings, showing that among older students, levels of science capital remain patterned by gender, ethnicity, cultural capital and science set. Comparison of effect sizes with previous findings from a younger cohort also reveal that, overall, levels of science capital seem to decrease with age. However, the proportion of students with 'high' science capital remained stable while the proportion of those with 'low' science capital increased. Analysis also revealed a small but significant increase in the proportion of boys with high science capital. Findings confirm that science capital relates to outcomes at age 17/18, with high science capital students being relatively more likely to be pursuing post-compulsory STEM qualifications and routes. Implications for educational policy and practice are identified, particularly with regard to goals of diversifying and increasing science participation.

Children are generally encouraged to tell adults about bullying. Although telling can be effective in ending bullying, adults do not necessarily respond in a way that is helpful. Previous research has rarely included victims' own thoughts and feelings regarding what adult actions and reactions are experienced as positive and helpful, and which are experienced as negative and unhelpful in managing bullying situations. This paper reports on interviews with bullied youth, with the overall aims of describing adults' responses to bullying from the victimized youth's perspectives and discussing how the youth experienced these responses. The analysis comprised grounded theory, emphasizing the victimized youth's points of view. When adults became aware of bullying, they responded in three ways; verbal, physical or avoiding/ignoring. Responses that included increasing adult presence were typically experienced as helpful, as were responses whereby the youth felt adults listened without blaming the victim for the bullying or, listened without excusing the behaviour of the youth that bullied. No response was depicted by the participants as unambiguously helpful although when adults avoided or ignored the bullying it was never helpful.

This paper discusses a research project which sought to find out about young people's views on fairness in education in English schools. Fairness is an everyday term, which in policy hides multiple and contradictory positions across the political divide. In education, we find a policy context that focuses on distributional justice and equality of opportunity but also on principles of freedom and choice. This paper argues that engaging with how young people understand fairness contributes to models of social justice in education. Focus group data and written statements on fairness from approximately 80 young people aged 16-18 from five very different English schools were analysed. Students' primary concerns, absent from educational policy, were the themes of relational justice and stakes fairness, which are eclipsed by current recourse to distributive justice and meritocratic ideals. We argue that a focus on the lived experience of fairness is therefore necessary to widen the discourse about what is fair in education and to reinvigorate public debate about the values on which our education system is based.

This paper investigates the transitions to secondary and to tertiary education. As a new contribution to prior scholarship, it focuses on the role of self-perceived ability (self-assessment), which might impel pupils to make costly efforts in education now, in order to have an uncertain payoff later on. The paper builds on the assumption that while making educational decisions, especially low-educated families overemphasise ability relative to effort. Therefore, there is a need to identify the factors that contribute investing effort in education. It will be revealed that self-assessment might be such a factor in educational transitions. It especially helps the offspring of low-educated parents to reach their potential and to opt for college-bound secondary tracks. The paper concludes that it would be useful to concentrate more on how "effort" is influenced by parental background, since our knowledge is still limited about this kind of influence.

This paper draws on a three-year critical ethnography which interrogated intersections of social class, school and identity in an urban Irish community. The focus here is on the psycho-spatial disidentifications, inscriptions and class fractioning enacted throughout the school and community of Portown by a cohort of succeeding students from this predominantly working-class community. This paper makes a significant contribution through a unique focus on the intersections between class, schooling and identity in the Irish context. Themes based around perceived distinction and differences serve to highlight the effects of pervasive neoliberal philosophies pertaining to the commodification of education and competitive individualism. Some participants in the study engaged in identity work enacting escape and difference from their working-class community as artefacts of success. An angelicisation of the middle-class habitus is engaged throughout as the participant identities are wrought from their experiences of school and community actions, interactions and perceptions. The central concern here is the interplay between social mobility, social class and student identity in an Irish urban environment.

This study reports on the adaptation and outcomes of a teacher professional development (TPD) programme in a rural Zimbabwean secondary school. The programme incorporated Open Educational Resources (OER), specifically OER4school materials, that were provided via tablet computers for teachers and students. A mixed-methods case study was employed to explore teachers' perceptions, knowledge, experiences of interactive learning and teaching in relation to this TPD, as well as their perceptions and experiences of the role and value of using technology to support student learning. Video data from structured lesson observations were triangulated with teacher post-lesson interviews and thematically coded. The interviews indicated that all teachers demonstrated a change in mindset and a clear understanding of interactive teaching methods. However, the structured observations revealed that only half of the teachers were using these interactive methods. Teachers also emphasised the value of OER and tablet technologies in improving lesson planning and making classroom learning more authentic. The use of technology, as both a TPD medium and as a classroom tool, showed potential to enhance the quality of TPD and teacher quality. Yet more specific teacher development to support the interactive use of technology within the classroom would be beneficial.

Practice-oriented educational research is renowned for its impact, both in educational practice and research. Yet, existing studies on the impact of practice-oriented educational research reflect a proliferation of ideas on what impact is, can or should be. This study aims to contribute to an in-depth understanding by establishing a theoretically informed and empirically substantiated conceptualisation of the impact of practice-oriented educational research. Based on current literature, a tentative conceptualisation in the dimensions scope, nature and progress, representing the who, what and when of change, is proposed. The tenability and completeness of this conceptualisation is subsequently investigated in a qualitative empirical study. Based on interviews, individual reflections and small-group discussions, the impact of 10 purposefully selected practice-oriented studies in secondary STEM-education in the Netherlands is compared to the tentative conceptualisation of impact. This results in an empirical substantiation and extension of the tentative conceptualisation. The presented conceptualisation of impact of practice-oriented educational research in terms of "scope," covering educational practice and research within the context of a study or beyond, "nature," including conceptual, instrumental and symbolic change, and "progress," comprising sustainability, timeframe, and stability of change, can facilitate and focus discussions, considerations and analyses of the impact of practice-oriented educational research.

The fields of science and literacy education continue to be shaped by pervasive gender inequality. Previous research has documented how the formation of a 'science identity' is contingent on access to science capital while research in literacy education continues to highlight how boys struggle in their literacy acquisition. Despite a robust scholarship on gendered literacy practices and gender in STEM subjects, to date, there has been little investigation of the relationships between boys' science identity/ies and their literacy practices. We draw on a case study of 24 middle school boys living and learning in two different regions (e.g. metropolitan, rural) where we focus on how boys conceive of themselves as learners in two curriculum areas: science and literacy. Bridging multiple areas of scholarship (e.g., science literacy, science identity, boys in schooling), we concentrate on the participants' "self-belief in science" and "self-belief as readers" and consider the way they inform each other in reference to place. The implications of our study concern how the "science literate boy" comes to be in reference to the construction of discursive performances of science masculinities and how they are maintained alongside literate identities.

The advantages and disadvantages of ability grouping for student achievement are strongly contested, with studies presenting different results. However, much of this research has focused on class-level or subject-level ability grouping. Relatively less research has focused on school-level ability grouping. More importantly, the role of teacher support has often been neglected in the ability grouping literature. The aim of this study was to shed light on the under-investigated area of school-level ability grouping, with teacher support examined as a crucial theoretical mechanism. We examined whether teacher support plays a mediating and/or moderating role in terms of how school-level ability grouping is related to student achievement in English and mathematics. The participants were 554 Hong Kong secondary students from the high- (Band 1), medium- (Band 2), and low- (Band 3) ability groups. The results indicate that students from high-ability groups enjoyed greater levels of teacher support, which partly explains their higher levels of achievement. This finding supports a mediation mechanism. Moreover, the results also provide support for a moderation mechanism. When students in low-ability groups received high levels of teacher support, they were able to achieve as much as students in the high-ability groups, in English but not for math.

In 2010, the Department for Education in England decided to reform the vocational qualifications offered in secondary education (i.e., for 14-18 year olds) in order to increase their rigour and status. They set out new criteria that vocational qualifications needed to meet, which changed their nature in fundamental ways (e.g., content, assessment structure, grading and progression requirements). At a time when the reforms to vocational qualifications are settling in, it is important to understand their impact on student engagement in vocational education and, also, how the new categories of vocational qualifications help students progress through education. This research aimed to obtain an up-to-date view of progression from vocational qualifications to post-16 education. Using national data, we investigated whether students with different programmes of study and different vocational qualifications in lower secondary school were equally likely to progress to post-16 education and, if they progressed, what routes and qualifications they took. The research outcomes suggest that, although vocational routes do not close students' options, progression to post-16 education was affected by the proportion of vocational qualifications they took pre-16. More research is needed to find out the reasons behind this association, including whether this may reflect previous experiences with vocational education.

This narrative inquiry explores a beginning teacher's counter story experiences in a high-needs secondary school in rural China. The study examines storied data culled from interviews, observations, and digital photos and videos of the participant's daily life. The research intent was to discover how the participant teacher lived counter stories with his students and teacher colleagues amid the competing and conflicting dominant narratives inside and outside the school. The study discusses how teacher reflection, 'intelligent rebellion', and teacher community are related to a teacher's sense of self and construction of counter stories. This research provides local, national and international insights into teacher retention and development in a professionally challenging rural school landscape.

This article focuses on the importance of highlighting students' role as informal leaders and their efforts to take on active roles in decision-making processes. Students' involvement in such roles entails an imperative process for the development of school inclusion. Contemporary literature has repeatedly focused on the multiple roles student voices play in, and the ways they impact on, the processes of school change and improvement. However, the ways in which students themselves interpret their roles as informal leaders, through the initiatives they take on, have not been explored, especially in environments characterised by cultural pluralism. Our research examines the ways in which thirty-six students from four Greek secondary schools with a highly-diverse cultural profile undertake deliberate acts to develop into equal co-producers of a new pedagogical decision-making agenda reinforcing inclusion. The results of our research bear multiple implications for both the levels of educational policy and school practices.

In the academic year of 2004-2005, the Spanish region of Madrid began to implement a bilingual educational programme (MBP hereinafter) in state schools. One of the objectives of this programme was to make the study of a foreign language (English) accessible to students from economically disadvantaged families who cannot afford private foreign language classes. Our study aims to evaluate whether students from a disadvantaged socio-economic background really do have the same probability of participating in the MBP as their more privileged peers. The analysis use the PISA 2015 database which corresponds to the representative sample of the Community of Madrid in Spain, with added administrative information supplied by the Madrid Regional Ministry of Education concerning the identification of bilingual and non-bilingual schools. Using these data, we estimate a logit model directed at identifying which factors explain the choice by students of whether to attend a bilingual state school. The results obtained reveal that the probability of attending a bilingual school is higher for students belonging to socio-economically and culturally better-off households. This suggests that the MBP could be fostering segregation within the state education sector in Madrid.

The curriculum is often the target of reform and governments use a range of accountability measures to ensure compliance. This paper examines the decisions schools in England make regarding history provision, in a period of curriculum change, and the potential consequences of these decisions. Drawing on a large, longitudinal data set, of primary and secondary material, the study examines the relationship between the number of students entered for public examination in history in England and a range of situated and material factors. The data suggest that particular measures of accountability are effective in shaping school decision-making, but the type of school, socio-economic nature of the school intake, and students' prior attainment are also important factors in understanding the decisions made. This does result in an inequitable access to history education; this inequity exists between different types of schools and socio-economic areas, and is also evident within schools where students with low prior attainment are less likely to be allowed to study history.

In the design and development of new school buildings, areas equipped with state-of-the-art technology and large, flexible spaces intended for collaborative teaching and learning are becoming increasingly common. This is in line with an understanding that this kind of learning environment reflects the contexts for work young learners are likely to meet and that such contexts enhance their learning experiences. By exploring teachers' thinking about the Inspiring Learning Space created in one school in Scotland, this paper explores how the space has invited teachers to consider their pedagogies in new ways, as well as some of the obstacles that have problematised their use of the space. Findings show that one of the key successes of the space has been in raising consciousness amongst teachers in relation to the ambitions and expectations of a skills-focussed curriculum, whilst allowing those who have chosen to use the space to explore the most meaningful and effective ways to engage learners there.

The goal of this paper was to examine the relation between teachers and students and between students on societal involvement in Dutch secondary schools. As such, we studied the role of parents on adolescents' societal involvement and to what extent positive teacher-student and student-student relationships reduced differences in societal involvement due to parental background differences. To estimate this cross-sectional multilevel analyses, a rich combination of datasets from the Netherlands was used, encompassing 4,128 15-year-old students in 58 schools in 2010/2011. The results showed that teacher-student relations and student-student relations were positively associated with societal involvement. The level of societal involvement differed between students' from households with lower incomes, level of education and employment, even though parenting styles seemed unrelated to societal involvement. Students from higher educated parents were found to benefit more from these positive relationships with teachers. This advantage arguably amplifies the differences in societal involvement between students with lower and higher educated parents. Future studies can give further insight into the role of classroom interrelations using additional longitudinal data or focus on more qualitative observations to explore the role of classroom interrelations and their influence on developing societal involvement.

Transferring to another school or leaving the educational system altogether has considerable consequences not only for the student who makes the decision to leave, but also for the students who stay behind. This paper aims to investigate the effects of secondary schools' mobility and dropout rates on the levels of school engagement in the persistent student population, drawing on peer effect research in engagement and dropout literature. Multilevel analysis was carried out on data collected in 2015 from 1577 non-mobile students in 25 Ghentian (Belgium) schools, who participated in the International Study of City Youth-project (ISCY). The findings suggest that schools get caught up in a vicious circle, in which higher in-mobility rates bring about lower levels of behavioral engagement in non-mobile students, making those students in turn more vulnerable for negative educational decisions like dropping out or changing schools.