This article seeks to explore how teachers develop tolerance and respect within an inclusive school in Northern Ireland. Drawing on interviews and observation of 18 teachers, it will be shown that teachers' own personal values and assumptions exert a defining influence on the school ethos. It will be argued that if teachers are not accorded the…

The article is concerned with values education in schools in the light of the requirement for schools to provide for the spiritual, moral, cultural and social development of children and in the light of wider discussions regarding 'spirituality' in (post) modern society. The authors focus on Living Values, a programme developed as a way of…

School Effectiveness (SE), as a research paradigm and, more widely, as a set of political practices in school management and development, is examined in terms of the concept of 'reductionism'. The article serves to systematise an ongoing critique of Effectiveness by Ball, Morley, Fielding, Slee, etc. Building upon studies by the biologist Steven…

This article explores some of the theoretical underpinnings of radical approaches to student voice and examines a number of practical issues we need to address if we wish to move towards a more transformative future. The framework within which the notion of voice is explored and critiqued falls primarily into two categories. The first,…

Sociocultural researchers have claimed that students' learning of science is a discursive process, with scientific concepts and ways of reasoning being learned through engagement in practical enquiry and social interaction as well as individualized activity. It is also often claimed that interacting with partners while carrying out scientific…

The study set out to investigate the impact of the official endorsement of 'interactive whole class teaching' on the interaction and discourse styles of primary teachers while teaching the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies. In both strategies, interactive whole class teaching is seen as an 'active teaching' model promoting high quality…

This article reports on the emotional impact of Threshold Assessment on teachers and schools. Using data from an ESRC funded project, 'The impact of Performance Threshold Assessment on teachers' work' (ESRC R000239286), we seek to contribute to a growing literature on teachers' emotions by sharing some of the insights gained from 76 interviews…

The increasing demand for research-based evidence in the development of policy and practice presents the research community with new opportunities and challenges. We are still troubled by accusations of poor quality and lack of impact. A national research policy, designed to respond to these criticisms, has emerged recently which promotes a 'big…

This article investigates the forming of student teacher identities in initial teacher education. By analysing student narratives of school experiences the article argues that although reflective, reflexive and critical discourses are helpful interrogatory tools, they presuppose a prior subjectivity which fails to acknowledge the idea that it is…

Collegiality was cited in the post-McCrone Agreement as a vital quality for a professional teaching force in Scotland in the twenty-first century. The Agreement directed schools to henceforth operate more collegially and it was anticipated that this recommendation, alongside the new two-tier promotion system, would facilitate the transformation of…

This article considers the emerging method of design experimentation, and its developing use in educational research. It considers the extent to which design experiments are different from other, more established, methods and the extent to which elements of established methods can be adapted for use in conjunction with them. One major issue to be…

The officially reported impressive rises in standards in mathematics and English in primary schools since 1995 are challenged. The article looks at the increases from four different perspectives. First, the general pattern of change is considered. Secondly, the statutory test data are compared with the results from several different studies. These…

Research on parental involvement in educational 'choice', as well as in educational processes more generally, has highlighted clear disparities between the close and active involvement of mothers and the more distant role of fathers. While this article does not question the broad patterns identified by such studies, it does suggest that, in some…

Ethnography derives from traditional anthropology, where time in the field is needed to discern both the depth and complexity of social structures and relations. Funding bodies, seeking quick completion, might see ethnographies as unlikely to satisfy 'value for money' criteria, in spite of the rewards to be gained from time-consuming 'thick…

The search for improved understanding in cross-cultural contexts is resulting in a correspondingly high increase in cross-cultural studies in diverse fields and disciplines. Globalization, economic universalism and internationalization of technology, as well as increased international mobility, immigration and relocation accelerated by the…