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An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss articles in the issue on topics related to Scottish education including the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), teacher collaborations in science and religious education, and outdoor education.

In the light of the Scottish Government's commitment to the principles enshrined in the Christie Commission and developing approaches worldwide to public administration, this article considers the forces at work and the major arguments for suggesting the need for increased and enhanced participation by parents in educational decision-making and school governance by focusing on the early 1980s. This was another period when participative democracy and partnership between lay-persons and public ofticials was widely supported at a theoretical level but often met resistance on the ground. An analysis of the responses to the abortive School Council consultative exercise of 1984 conducted by the Scoftish Education Department (SED) is oftered. The period before the emergence of Michael Forsyth as Education Minister in the Scoftish Office in Mrs Thatcher's era as UK Prime Minister is reviewed. Forsyth's controversial proposals for the establishment of School Boards that caused such consternation among the educational establishment and parents have subsequently been replaced by Parent Councils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alan Milburn, the Chair of the Government's Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission recently highlighted the role of education in progressing social mobility in Scotland; 'In my view it's a grave social injustice that only one in forty pupils from Scotland's most deprived households...got three As in their Highers in 2011, compared to one in ten across all income levels'. An analysis of the data on school leavers in Scotland also points towards a considerable inequality in access to higher education in particular. This paper reports on a research and development project that progressed the provision of intergenerational mentoring for young people from communities experiencing social and economic disadvantage. The findings affirm the role of research in such innovation and indicate that intergenerational mentoring offers a process, long awaited, through which young people can gain access to the different forms of social and cultural capital that are implicitly essential for progression into higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the frequency and nature of outdoor learning provision in Scoftish schools, with specific attention paid to teachers' approaches to learning outdoors, and it considers what further support and professional development teachers need to progress their practice. This enquiry is timely as limited data has been gathered over the past ten years (see Higgins ei ai. 2006 and Mannion ei ai. 2007) and little is known about how the policy document Curricuium for Exceiience through Outdoor Learning and associated Education Scotland support has influenced outdoor learning provision. Ouestionnaires were administered to primary and secondary schools (n=90 returns) across four local authority areas. The results indicate that secondary schools are keen to develop outdoor learning provision and they need support to do so. Also, there is an increased use of school grounds as a context for learning within the primary school sector. In light of these findings and recent developments within national education, recommendations are made for both in-service and pre-service teacher training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational research in Scotland has a very distinguished history and has made a major contribution in several aspects of methodology, not least in the relationships between researchers, policymakers and practitioners. The paper considers the Scottish contribution to the development of educational research past, present and future and the significance of interactions at three levels - the UK, European and global. Against the backdrop of the forthcoming Independence vote, it is argued that the historic distinctiveness of educational provision in Scotland - both before and after devolution - has been a significant benefit to the research community here. However, there are some internal dependencies that may need active nurturing, if the benefits of this independence are to be sustained. Furthermore there are critical elements of interdependence, at all three levels, which will be important in pursuing an aspiration to maintain research of the highest quality that will support learners and teachers in the years ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the education remit presented by the Scottish Parliament's Education and Culture Committee between February and July 2013. Topics include the national qualifications for the educational initiative Curriculum for Excellence, an educational research study conducted by the Centre of Educational Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, and the implications of cyber-bullying.

This research note argues that emerging research on poverty and education in Scotland needs to adopt a longer-term focus. Drawing on the work of Glasgow Caledonian University's Caledonian Club, it reflects on evidence that one-third of parents who consider that their primary and nursery school children will not attend university when they are older also perceive that the cost of a university education will be a barrier to participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognition that the United Kingdom has increasingly become a multi-cultural and multi-faith society has raised questions about the place of church schools or schools with a religious character within the state-maintained sector. The issue was given particular focus by the Runnymede Trusts report Right to divide? Faith schools and community cohesion published in 2008. In response to this challenge, the present study examines attitudes toward religious diversity among 1,012 students attending Catholic schools and 1,518 students attending schools without a religious foundation in Scotland (13- to 15-years of age). Employing a multilevel linear model to allow for the fact that students were nested within schools and after controlling for individual differences in personality and religiosity, the data demonstrated that students attending Catholic schools held a more positive attitude toward religious diversity, compared with students attending schools without a religious foundation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is written in response to a recent report on a review of teacher education in Scotland undertaken by Graham Donaldson (2011). In particular it questions the recommendation that engaging teachers in professional enquiry and research-informed teaching is the way forward for developing the professional capabilities required of "21st Century teachers". The report reflects an increasing emphasis in the literature on school effectiveness and improvement of the need to further teachers' professional learning and a pedagogic pressure for them to adopt constructivist approaches to teaching that are based on research evidence about how children and young people learn best. Practitioner research is seen by policy makers as an important strategy for achieving these objectives. This article, based on a series of empirical studies, sets out to identify some of the issues revealed by the attempt to use practitioner research as a vehicle for affecting classroom practice within the context of a policy initiative to support the development of accomplished teaching. It argues that, if such a strategy is to be effective, it is important to conceive of it in systemic terms and to confront the challenges involved in developing the sets of networked relations that will be essential if such a strategy is to prove worthwhile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary efforts to reconceptualise the teaching profession in Scotland as seen with the Donaldson (2011) Review of Teacher Education, the McCormac (2011) Review of Teacher Employment and the GTCS (2012) Review of Professional Standards are aligning themselves to certain principles. Among them, is the core principle that leadership should form an integral feature of the role of every qualified teacher. Teacher leadership is premised on a distributed perspective on leadership. However, defining leadership, distributed leadership and teacher leadership proves problematic. So too does the identification of the expectations and responsibilities related to discrete and complementary roles within school hierarchies within the suite of revised professional standards. This article takes as its focus the problematic nature of distributed leadership. It reports on a study exploring a distributed perspective on school leadership through three headteacher case studies conducted in Scottish primary schools. It draws from a sequence of in-depth, semi-structured and narrative style interviews conducted with each headteacher, as well as from a semi-structured questionnaire and sociometric analysis conducted with staff. The article reports on six themes emerging from an analysis of the findings. The sixth dominant theme is discussed in detail. To a large extent, distributed leadership was found to be in the gift of the headteacher, actively encouraging, enabling and facilitating distributed leadership at individual and whole staff levels. Implications are drawn for educational leadership in relation to contemporary Scottish policy developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]