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Recent worldwide trends in curriculum policy have re-emphasised the role of teachers in school-based curriculum development. Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence is typical of these trends, stressing that teachers are agents of change. This paper draws upon empirical data to explore school-based curriculum development in response to Curriculum for Excellence. We focus on two case studies – secondary schools within a single Scottish local education authority. In the paper we argue that the nature and extent of innovation in schools is dependent upon teachers being able to make sense of often complex and confusing curriculum policy, including the articulation of a clear vision about what such policy means for education within each school. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scotland's rich heritage in the field of science and engineering and recent curricular developments led to major investment in education to equip pupils with improved scientific knowledge and skills. However, due to its abstract and conceptual nature, learning science can be challenging. Literature supports the role of multimedia technology in addressing the difficulties associated with science learning. This paper reports on a two-phase investigation that explored the impact of multimedia resources situated in a national e-learning portal to (1) assist generalist and specialist science teachers' teaching practices and (2) stimulate pupils' interest, encourage engagement and improve overall science learning experiences. Our research also investigated how portal resources facilitated and/or acted as barriers for teaching and learning. Findings from our research affirm that multimedia technology has transformed science learning; with these resources accessible through a national portal, radically different learning experiences ensued. These findings raise serious implications for teacher education and professional development in ensuring that teachers acquire sound science content and pedagogical knowledge as well as practical strategies for utilising technology-rich environments, as this is likely to become the norm. Harnessing the fullest potential that information and communication technology, multimedia and e-learning portals can offer starts by addressing these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments across Europe have been encouraged by the European Union (EU) to take measures to upskill their workforce to ensure growth and social inclusion. Low-skilled workers are particular targets and learning providers and employers are expected to provide learning opportunities for them. However, research shows that those with low skills often lack confidence and require support to engage in learning. This paper examines an European Structural Funds (ESF)-funded course aimed at developing soft skills in low-skilled employees through a course developed by a Scottish college. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with learners from two cohorts of the course to examine their experiences and gains from the course. Learners’ accounts demonstrate benefits from the course but workplace culture impacted on the level of gains. The paper questions the ability of one-off courses to deliver the aims of policy and suggests more coordinated and sustained effort is required. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ (CfE) guidelines and associated learning experiences and outcomes have been developed following a national debate on the purposes of education in Scotland. The recent development shifts physical education's (PE) role in Scottish education, changing from contributing to the ‘Expressive Arts’ area of the curriculum, to one central to the newly created curriculum area of ‘Health and wellbeing’ in the CfE. This paper provides an analysis of the broader policy context at national and global levels examining the policy developments for PE in Scotland situating them within a globalised discourse emphasising concerns about ill-health and obesity within society. Drawing on the work of Bowe et al., the paper examines the context of production and the context of influence that has contributed to the recent development of ‘Health and wellbeing’ within the CfE. It is argued that the role for PE and the focus on schools promoting daily physical activity within the CfE masks the complexity of addressing the issues of health and well-being. In conclusion it is highlighted that in the interpretation and implementation of policy there will be further issues for PE and as yet unknown consequences for the context of practice and pupils' experiences of PE in Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The restructuring of teachers' work in Scotland, under the reforms of both the New Right and the New Left, has not exhibited the starkness and radical edge evident in the history of reform in England. This paper argues that the professional context of Scotland's teachers has changed, if perhaps in a Caledonian form, under the action of the same forces that have been altering the educational landscape south of the border and internationally. While comparisons with England tend to place Scotland in a more favourable light in relation to the recasting of the professional context of teachers, there is a danger of overstating the social democratic virtues of policy-making and educational reform under New Labour. Three examples are discussed by way of illustrating the performativity climate within which Scotland's teachers now work: the use of development planning, quality indicators and statistical monitoring; the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc. Act 2000; and the agreement on pay and conditions of employment for teachers following from the McCrone report (McCrone, G. A Teaching Profession for the Twenty First Century (Edinburgh, SEED, 2000)). We conceive the role of the teacher as being essentially malleable: what is expected and desired of teachers is susceptible and sensitive to the historically and politically contingent. The paper argues that the professional context of Scotland's teachers has been restructured by the same reform imperatives manifest internationally across education systems. However, the form and constitution of restructuring in Scotland can only be illuminated in relation to the interaction and compromises of such reform imperatives within the national political climate and policy-making process. The paper concludes that this vernacularization of international trends goes some way towards accounting for a distinctive Caledonian form of 'modernization'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the key periods, players and events which have contributed to the shaping of the current landscape of teacher education in Scotland. Starting with the Wheatley Report and the formation of the General Teaching Council (Scotland) in the 1960s through to the most recent Donaldson Review of Teacher Education, we examine ebb and flow amongst GTCS, government, colleges of education and universities. Following its own trajectory, Scottish Education resisted and rejected policies emanating from an ‘English’ ideology, capitalised on respect for and influence of the GTCS, and successfully moved teacher education’s base from autonomous colleges to high-status universities. At the core of teacher education in Scotland is the continuing desire for partnership-working amongst key stakeholders: local and national government, GTCS, schools, teacher education institutions, teaching unions, parents and pupils. A teaching profession of trained graduates, underpinned by university-led subject study, is now moving steadily towards Masters-level professional learning for all. Although having faced some troubled episodes, this period has also been characterised by remarkable stability and consensus and, although still tackling the improvement agenda suggested by the recent Donaldson review, teacher education in Scotland has retained a high degree of public and political trust. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In January 2012, Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond announced a radical measure that would see every Scottish school student study a Scottish text from a prescribed list. In 2010, Michael Gove announced that ‘Our literature is the best in the world’ and that every pupil should study particular authors. The ‘cultural heritage’ model of English is increasingly dismissed by teachers and students However, it is this ‘cultural heritage’ model which is preserved in the discourse of politicians. This paper explores the role that literary heritage texts play in the discourse of education policy in the context of devolution in twenty-first century Britain and considers the drivers and differences which can be seen in England and Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the new proposed changes in the conditions of awarding the Scottish Leaving Certificate in the filed of education. According to the author, the proposed changes in the conditions of award of the Scottish Leaving Certificate would at once bring it more closely into line with the recommendations of the Advisory Council on Education in Scotland and with the General Certificate of Education in England. The changes, reportedly, involve the issue of a certificate to pupils who leave school around the age of sixteen after completing four years of secondary education, by the institution of papers at a lower level than those taken usually in the fifth year. Scotland, like England, is faced with the problem of early leaving. Recent figures published by the Secretary of State show that 56% of pupils leaving five-year courses of senior secondary education do so before reaching the age of sixteen, without completing even four years of the course. It is proposed to institute advanced level papers designed for pupils who have completed the university requirements in their fifth year, and who remain for a sixth year at school. The effect of the new proposals would, supposedly, be to encourage the extension of Sixth Form work, which has never flowered so freely in Scotland and England.

Using data on the patent portfolios of UK universities, the paper compares the levels of patenting activity (filings), success (grants) and quality (patents with commercial co-assignees and patent citations) at Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish institutions. Patent activity, per researcher, in Wales is on a par with that in Scotland and about twice the rate in Northern Ireland, but the numbers of researchers relative to population in Wales and Northern Ireland are around half of the number in Scotland. Patent quality indicators are less favourable to Wales, while both activity levels and conversion of applications into grants are poor in Northern Ireland. It is suggested that greater cross-university collaboration in Wales and Northern Ireland would help improve performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, education in Scotland has been viewed as a national service that is locally administered. This research casts new light on that relationship between the Scottish Executive and local authorities by drawing on evidence from an evaluation of the implementation of the additional support staff element of the Teachers' Agreement which determined not only teachers' pay structure but also established the professional conditions under which they would work. The paper identifies how local authorities and schools spent the grant aid on staff and equipment, how many additional support staff were appointed, and what impact they were reported to be having on teaching and learning. Information was gathered from a postal survey of all 32 Scottish local authorities and a random sample of 267 schools, and also from interviews held in six case study schools. The findings show that: all the grant aid could not be accounted for, the target number of support staff was not achieved, and their deployment and impact varied across local authorities and schools. By way of conclusion it poses the question: 'Was the money well spent?' [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.

Teacher education in the UK is undergoing a period of active development. In order to identify the rationale offered for change and the direction of travel this article reports a textual analysis of two key policy texts recently published in England and Scotland: the English Schools White Paper The Importance of Teaching (Department for Education, 2010a) and Teaching Scotland's Future (Donaldson, 2011). These influential documents are explicitly relevant to the study of teacher education in transition, specifically the extent to which policy formation is premised on different forms of deliberation, different models of professionalism and different visions of a socially just education system. The analysis presented here is 'critical' in the sense that it interrogates the claims made in policy language and explores their constitutive effect. Key themes include the construction of 'partnership/collaboration' and 'professionalism' within these texts and how the 're-conceptualisation' of both is informed by different sets of interests and values. Whilst the focus here is on teacher education, this analysis raises wider questions about the relative health of the public sphere in different jurisdictions of the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the findings, from a systematic review of international literature, of the existing research into the transition to secondary school of children with additional support needs, which happens for most children at around 11–12 years of age in Scotland. It brings an original contribution to the existing literature through its focus on the holistic transition experience of this group of children. From an initial 52 texts that met the inclusion criteria, further scrutiny led to the identification of only 22 empirical studies published in the last 15 years which contained findings meeting the review objectives. Transition is an ongoing process; however, only five studies were longitudinal. There remains a paucity of international literature to inform good practice in a consistent manner, and a need for further longitudinal, qualitative research to support the development of inclusive education internationally. Implications for educational policy include personalisation of this school move. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

For the past decade, I have been observing, researching and reporting on a group of Scottish further education lecturers and schoolteachers, who, through their trade union activities, have had a significant impact on their colleagues’ engagement with post-compulsory education and professional development. They are members of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) and are unpaid lay volunteers who are trained and accredited as Union Learning Representatives (ULRs). They have a specific remit of advising and guiding colleagues in all matters relating to post-compulsory education and professional development. The article will detail how from very humble beginnings this group has become an indispensable element of the Scottish education system. It will show how these ULRs, many of whom had not been involved in trade union or political activism, are now regarded as experts in the field of post-compulsory education and professional development. They regularly work with key stakeholders such as the Scottish Government, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education and local authorities, and hold major positions within the EIS and on the General Teaching Council for Scotland. They have evolved as leaders within their institutions, the EIS and the Scottish education system more by accident than design. These developments indicate that they may well become key players in the construction and implementation of future local and national post-compulsory education and professional development policy. The article will be underpinned by the academic concepts of ‘wounded learners’, ‘organic intellectual growth’ and ‘emerging teacher leaders through professional development engagement’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 explores the important role played by higher education in broader skills and economic development policies in England and Scotland. It places the often divergent policy experiments and structural developments in these two countries' higher education systems within an international policy context and explains why England and Scotland are often tackling common problems and challenges in different ways. Scotland's retention of a centralised funding system for higher education, its enthusiasm for a closer integration of higher education with other forms of skills creation and its emphasis on skills utilisation are all leading to greater divergence from England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on political issues surrounding special education in Great Britain as of June 1, 2014. Topics discussed include the use of shared education in Northern Ireland, individual development plans (IDPs) in Wales, and the passage of the Children and Young People Act in Scotland.

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]

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]

The article explores the history of Catholic education in Scotland. Emphasis is given to the historical significance of the Bonnybridge School Case of 1922-1929. Topics discussed include the establishment of a national system for elementary education, school financing in the Education Act of 1918, and state control of religious schools. Other topics include the education policy of the Education Committee of Stirlingshire County Council, anti-Catholicism, and Presbyterian control of local schools.

This presidential address argues that there is a pressing need in the UK to build educational research capacity at system level and to do so collaboratively. It advances three main arguments for doing so. These are (i) the increasing concentration of research resources; (ii) the dangers of increasing separation of research and initial teacher education; and (iii) the complexity of the links between research, policy and practice. Drawing on evidence about research quality and on demographic trends of academic staff in education departments, it illustrates one approach to collaborative capacity building in Scotland, the Applied Educational Research Scheme. It concludes by drawing attention to the nascent Strategic Forum for Research in Education as an important forum for monitoring the health of educational research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article argues that there are global pressures for modernization of the education workforce that produce broadly similar policy responses and pressures on the teaching profession. It suggests, however that these 'travelling' policies are mediated by the 'embedded' practices and cultures of different systems to produce particular 'local' versions of policy. These contribute to tension between decontextualized agendas for modernization and embedded practices and cultures. Recent policy developments in work organization, pay, professional development and career progression for the teaching profession may provide illuminating examples of the co-existence of 'travelling' UK policy and 'embedded' (Scottish) policy and may also provide evidence of growing policy divergence. Such inter-UK policy divergence is significant in itself and also helps to identify the circumstances and resources that sustain mediation of, or resistance to, 'travelling' policy in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]