Background: Bullying is a widespread problem in schools. Although several effective school-based bullying intervention programmes have been developed to reduce bullying and victimisation, it has rarely been investigated whether intervention programmes are also effective in helping bully-victims. Purpose: This study investigates the effectiveness…

Background: Education systems rely on both teacher and test-based assessments. Where these assessments are used for summative purposes particularly, it is important to understand why, and for which groups of students, teachers' assessments may produce different results from test-based assessments. Purpose: This paper assesses whether the…

Background: Out-of-field teaching (generally defined as a situation where teachers are appointed to areas or phases of learning for which they have no formal qualifications) is an international phenomenon that can impact on the educational experiences of students. Teachers in rural and difficult to staff schools are frequently appointed…

Background: Education is a key variable for reaching individually and socially desired outcomes. Specifically, school grades are important admission criteria for higher education and job positions. Nowadays, in countries committed to equal opportunities, girls obtain better school grades than boys, but the reasons why girls outperform boys are not…

Background: The paper plots some shifts in educational policy between 1988 and 2009 in England that launched the rhetoric of a "gender gap" as a key political and social concern. The rhetoric was fuelled by a rise in the importance of quantification in technologies of accountability and global comparisons of achievement. A focus on boys…

Background: This paper will empirically investigate female education in Luxembourg from a historical perspective. A special focus will be laid on the question of how women in Luxembourgian society were constructed as female "citizens", even though they were, rather, considered as a homogeneous category limited to a private sphere…

Background: Professional development is widely recognised as crucial to an organisation's success so the time devoted to it needs to be used well. Finding time for training and development is frequently noted by school staff as a barrier preventing them from taking up developmental opportunities. The focus of this paper is on a specific time…

Background: Educational neuroscience is a relatively new discipline. However, many obstacles persist in delaying the success of an interface between neuroscience and education. One such major obstacle has been the spread of neuromyths. Purpose: The main aim of this study was to verify whether Portuguese teachers are susceptible to misinterpreting…

Background: The growing interest among researchers concerning how to use assessment to enhance students' learning as well as to improve instruction provided the impetus for this review of teachers' assessment activities related to homework. Purpose and method: The purpose was to bring together and critically examine the evidence in a way…

Background: This paper was prepared to address the issue of whether current levels of public expenditures on education are cost-effective in countries with widely differing average levels of education. Purpose: The paper examines the role of education in economic growth from a theoretical and historic perspective, addresses why education has been…

Background: Political devolution occurred in the UK in 1998-99, following many years in which some degree of policy administration had been devolved to the four nations. Since devolution, all four countries of the UK have pursued increasingly divergent education policies. This is true in England in particular, where diversity, choice and…

Background: While current investments in school improvement occur in the context of the worldwide economic downturn, in the South African context, there is in addition widespread disparity in education provision and attainment related to pre-democracy race-based patterns. Despite the education sector receiving the largest national annual budget…

Background: In a context of significant educational change and financial constraint, this paper explores ways to develop teacher learning. A recent review of teacher education ("Teaching Scotland's Future: Report of a review of teacher education in Scotland," Donaldson 2011) coincided with two factors impacting on teaching and learning in…

Background: Teacher education in Scotland has developed its own trajectory for many years and this distinctiveness appears to have increased since the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. Teachers' pay and conditions were addressed in 2001 by the agreement "A teaching profession for the 21st century." This agreement led to a number of…

Background: The labour market for classroom teachers in England is a mixture of free-market capitalism and state workforce planning, interlaced with ideological and political interventions such as the introduction of new routes into teaching and the capping of class size. Purpose: The article examines the relationship between the teacher labour…