Over the last 10 years the system for training further education (FE) teachers in England has been the subject of almost continuous government reform. Following a critical Office for Standards in Education report in 2003, a new set of standards and associated regulations were introduced in 2006 by the then Labour Government to replace the earlier…

Major curriculum and assessment reforms in Australia have generated research interest in issues related to standards, teacher judgement and moderation. This article is based on one related inquiry of a large-scale Australian Research Council Linkage project conducted in Queensland. This qualitative study analysed interview data to identify…

In this article we examine how 19 students in creative arts disciplines in two universities experience work in not-for-profit and public sectors. We explore the notion of transfer from university education and suggest that "creative transfer" is taking place, often in more than one direction. Students draw on their life-wide experiences as they…

This article begins by outlining the UK Government policy context, offering a brief critique before moving on to summarise recent research into "quality" in the early years. The main body of the article locates the perspectives of early years practitioners within this context, drawing on data from an Economic and Social Research Council-funded…

This study examines the evolutionary function of children's pretence. The everyday, cultural environment that children engage with is of a highly complex structure. Human adaptation, thus, becomes, by analogy, an equally complex process that requires the development of life skills. Whilst in role play children engage in "mimesis" and recreate the…

Early school-leaving exerts substantial costs on the individual and society. The literature indicates that quitting school early is predicted by an enmeshed group of indicators including academic and behavioural difficulties in school, deprived economic background and disengagement with the educational process. The attitudes and background of a…

This paper introduces a Gini-type index for measuring "attainment equity" in schools; that is to say, how far a school (or group of schools) is from having a "fair" proportion of its examination success attributable to a fair proportion of its student population. Using data from the National Pupil Database, the Index is applied to more than 20,000…

Previously we showed how we measured pedagogy and revealed its association with learning outcomes of sixth-form college mathematics students. In this project we followed a similar approach to the study of university transition. We particularly sought to identify the students' perceptions of the transitional experience, and measure the association…

This paper proposes a theoretical model to explain trainee withdrawal and persistence within higher education (HE) based initial teacher training (ITT). Within ITT, attrition and persistence are under-researched and under-theorised, thus providing the rationale for this study. Within HE more broadly, a number of models have been proposed, most…

The spatial turn has been marked by increasing interest in conceptions of space and place in diverse areas of research. However, the important links between place and identity have received less attention, particularly in educational research. This paper reports an 18-month research project that aimed to develop a theory of place-related identity…

This paper critically analyses the neo-liberal discourse informing global education policy and practice. We use postcolonial theory to deconstruct the contexts for global educational partnerships, highlighting how issues of power and representation are central to their development and the learning that takes place within them. Teacher development…

School integration (desegregation) was introduced in Israeli junior high schools in 1968 with the aim of increasing educational equality and decreasing (Jewish) ethnic divides. While never officially abandoned, a "de facto" retreat from this policy has been observed since the early 1990s, despite the voluminous research that revealed its positive,…

This paper describes two parallel research programmes exploring educational practice/praxis. The first, including a theory of "practice architectures", aims to contribute to contemporary practice theory that views practice from the perspective of a spectator. The second aims to contribute to an emerging (practical philosophy) tradition of…

This paper presents a description of the background characteristics and attainment profile of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) in England, and of those missing a value for this variable. Free school meal eligibility is a measure of low parental income, widely used in social policy research as an individual indicator of potential…

The authors critique the mechanistic notion of aspirations running through much research and policy-making on educational and vocational outcomes. They present a performative model, with individuals drawing on limited social resources to express aspirations within constrained contexts. This argument is illustrated by discussion of the findings of…