In this article we explore Australian policymaker perspectives on the quality assurance of career development (CD) programmes in schools. We found that Australian policymakers are concerned about the quality of CD provision in schools and have a wide range of approaches that they deploy to ensure and assure quality at the school level. Quality…

Bayesian methods seem a natural choice for combining sources of evidence in meta-analyses. However, in practice, their sensitivity to the choice of prior distribution is much less attractive, particularly for parameters describing heterogeneity. A recent non-Bayesian approach to fixed-effects meta-analysis provides novel ways to think about…

Research on the question of creative benefit accompanying dyslexia has produced conflicting findings. In this meta-analysis, we determined summary effects of mean and variance differences in creativity between groups with and without dyslexia. Twenty studies were included (n = 770 individuals with dyslexia, n = 1,671 controls). A random-effects…

Background and purpose: Compassion and human connection are core social work values and as such they inform our interventions in all settings. It is generally recognised that young people need love and positive attention to thrive, but residential care provision often focuses on the more practical physiological and safety needs of young people.…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Northampton changed its usual mode of delivery from face-to-face to online. This may have involved less adjustment than in other institutions as, pre-pandemic, the university already made use of active blended learning using its virtual learning environment. To capture the student voice concerning…

In this paper we seek to understand how structural, contextual and institutional conditions influence the construction of individual agency in career development policy. We focus on responsibilisation, the process by which responsibility for outcomes is transferred from the state to the individual, through a combination of policy actions and the…

The growing shift toward online learning has brought new expectations for teachers, including skills needed to combine content knowledge with engaging pedagogical strategies that leverage the affordances of technology. As a result, online pedagogy has become increasingly relevant in modern-day schools. The challenge is understanding the nature of…

The COVID-19 pandemic brought new tensions in determining how to enact representations of the professional and personal selves alongside digital technologies. In this paper, we explore those tensions as entangled enactments of agencies and identities related to simultaneous mothering and scholaring. Drawing on Barad's agential realist framework,…

Principals who engage in wellness strategies can both enhance their holistic wellness and leadership abilities. These strategies may include engaging in physical activity, seeking personal counseling, having a sense of purpose, and maintaining professional and personal relationships and support systems (Visger, 2016). However, like principals,…

Some words have more than one translation across languages. Such translation-ambiguous words are harder to learn, recognize, and produce for individuals across the language learning spectrum. Past research demonstrates that learning both translations of translation-ambiguous words on consecutive trials confers an accuracy advantage relative to…

Instructional coaching in schools has historically operated as both a professional role and as a strategy used to support teachers. While the work of instructional coaching was already shifting in response to educational trends and political pressures, the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic brought additional challenges and opportunities. The…

Background: Many parents with learning disabilities find themselves locked in a struggle with child protection authorities to retain custody of their children. This struggle is one against deeply entrenched prejudices as well as social arrangements that often deprive parents of needed resources. This in-depth case study explores the contours of…

Universal screening in reading is a common, and often required, practice in early elementary school. Computer-adaptive screening tools, such as "Istation's Indicators of Progress-Early Reading" (ISIP-ER), are often chosen for this purpose in schools. In our present study, we examine the validity evidence between the ISIP-ER in…

Purpose: Complex rice systems (CRSs) are polycultures of plants and animals that enhance ecological processes contributing to sustainable and profitable farming systems. However, the contextual management complexity can hamper adoption, despite the large long-term benefits that CRSs offer. This paper aimed to provide a method that encourages…

An innovative mixed-methods approach to exploratory focus group design is presented using a case study conducted with smallholder rice farmers in Vietnam. Understanding human decision-making under the uncertainties of a complex and changing social and environmental context requires a flexible yet structured and theoretically grounded approach.…