The paper commences with a theoretical exposition of the current UK government's policy commitment to the idealised notion of the Big Society and the social capital currency underpinning its formation. The paper positions this debate in relation to the rural and adopts an ethnographically-informed methodological approach to provide an…

Although many studies have focused on the importance of school composition for student achievement, there is still no consensus on "whether" school composition matters to student achievement, and, if so, "why". Therefore, the present study investigates the association between school composition and mathematics achievement at…

This paper uses data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) to examine house moves that take place in the pre-school years, focusing on families who move for the education of their children. We present results showing that education- related house moves do indeed occur in the pre-school years with particular types of parents making these…

A programme of resources and activities relating to "Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning" (SEAL) has been rolled out nationally to primary and secondary schools in the UK, but we know little about how variations in the implementation of this work relate to key indicators of school success. In the present study, a team of experienced…

In 2000-2002 an innovative early years curriculum, the Enriched Curriculum (EC), was introduced into 120 volunteer schools across Northern Ireland, replacing a traditional curriculum similar to others across the UK at that time. It was intended by the designers to be developmentally appropriate and play-based with the primary goal of preventing…

There is an established body of evidence indicating that a pupil's relative age within their school year cohort is associated with academic attainment throughout compulsory education. In England, autumn-born pupils consistently attain at higher levels than summer-born pupils. Analysis here investigates a possible channel of this relative age…

This article draws on a study which investigated the interpretation and use of Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) in primary schools in the UK (the authors gratefully acknowledge Studentship funding from the Economic and Social Research Council for this study). The paper focuses on school staff members' perceptions about the…

Children's emotional and behavioural difficulties are the result of multiple individual, social and contextual factors working in concert. The current paper proposes a theoretical framework for interpreting students' emotional and behavioural difficulties in classrooms, by taking into consideration teacher-student interactions,…

Based on a descriptive phenomenological research design, this study investigated Turkish elementary school students' experiences in learning social studies via objects in museums. After students visited four different museums during the teaching of three thematic units at sixth grade level, their lived experiences were elicited. Purposeful…

Over a decade ago the UK government launched its gifted and talented education policy in England, yet there has been very little published research which considers how schools and teachers are interpreting and implementing the policy. By seeking the views of the gifted and talented co-ordinators (For ease of reference, the term gifted and talented…

English education policy-makers have targeted classroom time as a key area for regulation and intervention, with "brisk pace" widely accepted as a feature of good teaching practice. We problematise this conventional wisdom through an exploration of objective and subjective dimensions of lesson pace in a corpus of 30 Key Stage 2 literacy lessons…

This article presents a critical case study of an inner city state school that for a decade (1940s-1950s) attracted the interest of a wide contingency of educationalists, policy makers, researchers, artists and various press and film media. It has been argued that if we are to progress "social alternatives" in education, researchers need to…

The Model of Interpersonal Teacher Behaviour (MITB) provides a widely acclaimed framework for studying the student-teacher interaction. However, the consistently weak psychometric properties of the instruments designed to measure the MITB in educational contexts other than the ones for which the MITB was originally developed, indicate the need for…

Drawing on research investigating the impact of health imperatives around obesity, diet and exercise on the actions of teachers and pupils in schools, this paper offers a reflexive account of the relationships between the "noise" of obesity discourse in the public domain, policies forged to tackle health issues and the realities of teaching in…

Behaviour in schools is an emotive topic and one of enduring political interest and sensitivity. The media often portrays schools as violent and dangerous places and young people as ever more unruly. This paper explores findings from a recent large-scale national study on behaviour and focuses on the data from primary and secondary school students…