Estimating added value as an indicator of school effectiveness in the context of educational accountability often occurs using test or examination scores of students. This study investigates the possibilities for using scores of educational positions as an alternative indicator. A number of advantages of a value added indicator based on…

Contending that justice experiences at school transmit messages about the wider society and affects students' attitudes and behaviour, we investigated the effects of students' sense of distributive and (school) procedural justice on their sense of belonging to school and on their social and institutional trust. The study was carried out…

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,…

The concept of scaffolding refers to temporary and adaptive support, originally in dyadic adult-child interaction. It has become widely used, also in whole-class settings, but often in loose ways. The aim of this paper is to theoretically and empirically ground a conceptualisation of whole-class scaffolding so that it remains close to the origin…

This paper explores the possibilities for pedagogy inherent in the reading practices which emerged from an extra-curricular graphic novel reading group set up in a Scottish secondary school. The research is presented within the framework of the new literacy studies and its focus on "practices" and "events" but, more…

This article is based on research undertaken between 2009 and 2012 into the former Labour government's extremely ambitious "Building Schools for the Future" (BSF) Programme and its withdrawal by the Coalition government. The project, which utilises analysis of policy documents, case studies in six local authorities (LA) and…

Teacher effectiveness research now informs the rationale of much Australian education policy aimed at redressing student under-achievement. The approach draws a "straight line" between teacher practice and student outcomes, "controlling" for and ultimately dismissive of other possible influences. The paper calls into question…

This paper aims to explore the relationship between religious identity, acculturation strategies and perceptions of acculturation orientation in the school context amongst young people from minority belief backgrounds. Based on a qualitative study including interviews with 26 young people from religious minority belief backgrounds in Northern…

Northern Ireland has achieved political stability and its devolved government is now tackling public policy issues neglected during periods of sectarian violence. Notwithstanding the prevailing political optimism, one legacy of the conflict is a deeply divided society. This is particularly manifest in the education system where around 90% of…

In the UK, changes to the higher education system have increased the range of stressors experienced by students above those traditionally associated with the transition to university. Despite this, there is little qualitative research examining how students experience and cope with the adjustment to university. The experience of the transition was…

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…

While there is a wealth of literature on radical adult "popular" education for change, most of it looks forward and speculates on the educational processes best able to help "the oppressed", "excluded" or "disadvantaged" become critically-aware "subjects" of social change. Within a critical…

Family policy was a key component of the "New" Labour government's family, social and education policy, and a wide range of family focused initiatives and interventions designed to "support" families and improve individual, family and social outcomes were introduced. The post-May 2010 coalition government's family…

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…

This article responds to that by Hinchliffe and Jolly, published in an earlier issue of this journal, exploring graduate identity and employability. Their article espousedly draws upon the conceptualisation of graduate identity, as formulated by this present author. This article argues that Hinchliffe and Jolly have given insufficient attention to…