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This paper reports a study of Scottish secondary students perspectives concerning academic difficulties experienced in the first year of the Senior Phase which corresponds to their final year of compulsory schooling (age 15-16). Transition and trajectories throughout Senior Phase have gained further significance due to substantial changes experienced in schools with the development and implementation of Curriculum for Excellence, which in this stage emphasises pathways and support for national qualifications reformed in 2012. The findings are discussed alongside the relationship between course choices and the Scottish upper secondary curriculum, mainly concerning the curricular principles of flexibility, personalisation and choice.

Background: The measurement of equality is often difficult for groups who are weakly defined or poorly represented in official datasets. Social statistics are an essential component in rights recognition and advocacy because they make protected groups of persons visible and reveal the extent of their inequalities in comparison with population norms. Aims and objectives: This paper examines how disabled persons have been included, or not, in EU statistics used for evidenced-based policy - for example in the European Semester process concerning Member States' employment and social policies, or in monitoring compliance with international human rights standards under the UN CRPD. Methods: Over a period of a decade we mapped and disaggregated disability data from the main European social surveys, examining the availability and limitations of different sources to answer various policy questions. Findings: The analysis produced indicators revealing stark inequalities between disabled and non-disabled persons but raised challenging questions about data quality, reliability and comparability. This revealed tensions in engaging the trust of policymakers in less familiar, or less reliable, data concerning minority groups. Discussion and conclusions: Despite limitations of precision, imperfect statistics often retain a strong expressive function in human rights promotion. Greater investment is needed from governments and statistical authorities to strengthen disability equality data and indicators concerning marginalised rights holders.

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

The proposed Curriculum for Wales 2022 presents a bold new vision for curriculum, teaching and learning. Together with its focus on four key purposes, it affords substantially more flexibility and autonomy to teachers and schools, positions learners as central to curriculum decision making, promotes active forms of pedagogy and twenty-first-century skills and reduces specification of curriculum content. Like other 'new curriculum' examples around the world, it brings with it a complex set of interacting curricular elements, with challenges including curriculum design capability and the agency required of those working with the curriculum. In this article, we discuss challenges and opportunities for this curriculum reform in light of international curriculum experience. In particular, we highlight the need for attention to the accountability, professional learning and social network context necessary for the realization of national curriculum aspirations in Wales.

This paper explores school level determinants of curriculum narrowing in the senior phase of secondary education, under the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). It presents findings from an analysis of longitudinal administrative education data (2011-2017), and Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) data on subject enrolments for Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework National 5 level qualifications, undertaken by 14-15-year-old students in year 4 of secondary education (S4) in Scotland. The data are aggregated at the level of schools and linked with Scottish School Census data that provide information about school characteristics (in terms of their size, number of qualified teachers, socio-economic composition, etc.) and school area characteristics. We used descriptive methods of statistical data analysis and multilevel regression modelling, in order to explore the variations between schools in: (a) number of subject choices; and (b) configuration of subject enrolment and to identify factors responsible for these variations. Our findings show that the senior phase curriculum is becoming narrower. There is trend since 2013, the year when new qualifications under CfE were introduced, for fewer subjects to be taken in school year S4 for level 5 National Qualifications. Yet, the size of this reduction has not been uniform, but has varied between schools of different characteristics, between areas with different level of deprivation and between local authorities across Scotland. The findings show that the SES composition of school intake has a strong association with the number and configuration of subject entries. A larger reduction in the number of subject entries for National 5 level qualifications took place in schools in more deprived areas, as well as in schools with a larger number of students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, schools where the proportion of pupils with additional learning support needs was higher, and schools with poorer staff-student ratios. We also found that the number of subject entries was smaller in schools where the overall number of subjects offered for National 5 level qualifications was smaller. Furthermore, we found that schools in areas of higher deprivation and schools with larger numbers of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds had smaller proportions of young people enrolled in Sciences and Modern Languages, and a larger proportion of pupils enrolled in Vocational subjects.

This research explores curriculum making by teachers and offers a nuanced way of understanding these practices through the concept of reflexivity. The study draws from a collective case study of teachers in an online focus group, in order to identify and analyse diverse thinking on the curriculum making by teachers from Scotland and Wales. A WordPress® page was set up to generate both synchronous and asynchronous discussions over a period of five weeks to discuss curricular issues. Six teachers from Scotland and three teachers from Wales participated in the discussions. Data collection tools comprised iteratively designed interview questions and an Internal Conversation Indicator (ICONI), for indicating participants' dominant mode of reflexivity. Data were analysed thematically, drawing from Margaret Archer's theoretical constructs relating to reflexivity and internal conversation. Data analysis suggests that reflexivity provides a useful lens for understanding teachers' particular approaches to curriculum making. The research suggests that curriculum making practices can be understood, at least partially, in relation to different modes of reflexivity. Further research is needed to substantiate these arguments and provide a richer picture of curriculum making.

This paper forms the first part of research into the phenomenon of curriculum narrowing within Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). It presents findings from a preliminary analysis of publicly available data -- Scottish Qualifications and school leavers' attainment data, aggregated by local authorities. Our findings show that the senior phase curriculum is becoming narrower. Fewer subjects are being taken in school year S4 for levels 4 and 5 National Qualifications. Yet, we found that the phenomenon of curriculum narrowing is more nuanced and complex than has been claimed. Attainment at SCQF levels 4-6 has risen since the introduction of the CfE and new national qualifications. The increase in the SCQF level 6 qualifications was particularly noticeable in more deprived local authorities. We acknowledge that the coarse grained nature of the available data makes our findings provisional; further phases of this research will address this through analysis of school level data.

Scotland is one of several countries to have recently implemented a new national curriculum to highlight 21st century educational priorities. Teachers have been mandated to follow the new curriculum guidelines, known as Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), since the fall of 2010. The purpose of this study was to use a phenomenological lens to investigate how Scottish secondary science teachers are experiencing their work of curriculum development, including daily lesson design and more broadly, curriculum mapping within the context of reform (Remillard [1999], "Curriculum Inquiry," 29: 315-342). We probed seven science teachers' experiences to create both a composite profile of conscious thoughts about curriculum design and individual profiles that highlight interactions between the curriculum mandates, beliefs, and agentic orientations. The study indicated that changes to curriculum development required accepting new cognitive commitments including: (i) analyzing the CfE document to discern the most significant principles underlying change; (ii) reflecting on the ways that science teacher curriculum development is a problem-solving endeavor; (iii) undertaking the complex processes of curriculum mapping, from primary school all the way through national qualification exams; and (iv) recognizing that the epistemological frame for students' science learning has changed and providing opportunities for students to create and apply knowledge. Two significant findings include the unpacking of these cognitive activities as part of a transformation toward a new epistemology of pedagogy, and the assertion that official curriculum documents can promote change, albeit with caveats concerning individual beliefs, agentic orientations, and possibilities for agency within school contexts.

The interest in teachers' discourses and vocabularies has for a long time been studied under the rubric of knowledge, most notably teachers' professional knowledge. This interest can be traced back to Shulman's distinction between different kinds of teacher knowledge and Schwab's interest in the role of practical reasoning and judgement in teaching. Within the research, a distinction can be found between a more narrow approach that focuses on teachers' propositional or theoretical knowledge and a more encompassing approach in which teachers' knowledge is not only the knowledge for teachers generated elsewhere, but also the knowledge of teachers. This is the 'stock of knowledge' gained from a range of sources and experiences, including teachers' ongoing engagement with the practice of teaching itself. In this paper, we focus on the role of teachers' talk in their achievement of agency. We explore how, in what way and to what extent such talk helps or hinders teachers in exerting control over and giving direction to their everyday practices, bearing in mind that such practices are not just the outcome of teachers' judgements and actions, but are also shaped by the structures and cultures within which teachers work.