Background information: During the late 1970s and the early 1980s, West Germany witnessed a reversal of gender differences in educational attainment, as females began to outperform males. Purpose: The main objective was to analyse which processes were behind the reversal of gender differences in educational attainment after 1945. The theoretical…

Background and purpose: The interest in raising the competence of teachers through networks and network activities is increasing. This article is based on the voices of four newly qualified teachers who give us the opportunity to listen to experiences in authentic surroundings. The purpose of this article is to gain better insight into the type of…

Background: Assessment grades are "estimates" of ability or performance and there are many reasons why an awarded grade might not meet a candidate's expectations, being either better or poorer than anticipated. Although there may be some obvious reasons for grade discrepancies, such as a lack of preparation or under-performance, there are a number…

Background: Although on-demand testing is being increasingly used in many areas of assessment, it has not been adopted in high stakes examinations like the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and General Certificate of Education Advanced level (GCE A level) offered by awarding organisations (AOs) in the UK. One of the major issues…

Background: This article engages with the tradition of educational transitions research, particularly with its attempt to evaluate the effect of exogenous variables on educational attainment. The study revisits a number of hypotheses that have attempted to explain the changing patterns of such effects throughout students' educational career,…

Background: The matter of teacher knowledge in the curriculum subject of English is not simple. Certainly it is not easy to delineate what its "content knowledge" should be and how this relates to other aspects of teacher knowledge. In the context of education policy in England, at a time of change when the nature of the subject and its pedagogy…

Language shift is the process whereby one language becomes increasingly lesser used in place of the use of another language. In Scotland, language shift is occurring for Gaelic, as English takes its place for a variety of functions in the home and wider community. Extensive literature has argued the important role that education can play in the…

This paper, based on some findings of a wider three-year study, sets forth the issue of languages used and taught in education as a dimension of inequality and highlights its implications for widening participation and access in the multilingual context of Pakistan. The paper takes secondary education in private and government schools in Pakistan…

Rendering visible African immigrants' shared and differing experiences of civic learning and action, the authors present findings from in-depth semi-structured interviews with second- and 1.5-generation African immigrants in New York City. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework of African immigrant identities constructions and civic…

After-school community-based spaces are often recognized in political and educational discourse as institutions that "save" and "rescue" Black youth. Such rhetoric perpetuates an ethos of pathology that diminishes the agency of youth and their communities. Through ethnographic research with 20 youth workers at a college…

Human activities such as inequitable and unsustainable production and consumption of earth resources cause "environmental problems." There is need to develop research and innovative techniques towards public understanding of these environmental problems and sustainable development. This paper contains the first edition of…

The declining trend in the positive reading attitude of students' has concerned scholars. This paper aims to apply a 3-level hierarchical linear model to analyse how inductive instruction and resources influence both students' positive and negative attitudes towards reading. Approximately 470,000 15-year-old students, and their school…

The authors investigated the effects of an intervention developed to enhance student motivation in the first years of secondary education. The intervention, based on future time perspective (FTP) theory, has been found to be effective in prevocational secondary education (T. T. D. Peetsma & I. Van der Veen, 2008, 2009). The authors extend the…

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…

In Sweden, and in most other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, post-16 education is a general requirement to succeed in adult life. By the late 2000s, after about two decades of policies for student choice and publicly funded free schools, students' results in the Programme for International Student…