The article addresses the widespread claim to make educational research more relevant for practitioners, policy makers, potential users and stakeholders, and proposes a problematisation of the notion of "useful knowledge". The article illustrates the conceptual, instrumental and legitimative relevance of knowledge and highlights empirically the…

This article presents findings from a comparative study of sources of educational disadvantage of immigrant children across 18 OECD countries, which is based the data from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The findings show that disadvantaged family background and lack of host-country-specific cultural capital account…

This article analyses educational inequalities related to socioeconomic status (SES) in 12 Eastern European countries that participated in the International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006. Economies and educational systems of these countries have undergone critical transformations since the fall of communism. The authors' analyses, using data…

This article analyses how Finnish parents of sixth graders in a comprehensive school act in the local "school markets" of the case city. The parents' subject positions as choosers are reflected on and explored in relation to the discourses and resources they use when discussing their school choices. The data were gathered in 2009 by administering…

"Images & Identity" was a two-year curriculum development project in which citizenship and art educators in the Czech Republic, England, Ireland, Germany, Malta and Portugal collaborated on the production of teacher education materials. The article begins with a critical analysis of educational policy for European citizenship and of the potential…

Learning to argue is an essential objective in education; and online environments have been found to support the sharing, constructing, and representing of arguments in multiple formats for what has been termed Argumentation-Based Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (ABCSCL). The purpose of this review is to give an overview of research in…

This paper reviews the literature on the effects of feedback provided to teams in higher education or organizational settings. This review (59 empirical articles) showed that most of the feedback applications concerned "knowledge of results" (performance feedback). In contrast, there is a relatively small body of research using feedback conveying…

Spoken words have always been an important component of traditional instruction. With the development of modern educational technology tools, spoken text more often replaces or supplements written or on-screen textual representations. However, there could be a cognitive load cost involved in this trend, as spoken words can have both benefits and…

The aim of this article is to review cross-disciplinary accumulated empirical research on one-to-one computer projects in school settings as published in peer-reviewed journals between 2005 and 2010, particularly the results of teacher- and pupil-oriented studies. Six hundred and five research articles were screened at the abstract and title…

This article explores the social processes and outcomes associated with a school-linked, community-based program that successfully engages Latino parents and children in a low-income school community. Framed by an ethnographic, embedded case study design, the authors collected data from 32 Latino parents. The findings detail parents' experiences…

Colleges and universities retain Native American and Latino college students at lower rates than other ethnic groups even when culturally based services, financial assistance, and support are provided. College teaching and conceptions of learning have yet to evolve on a widespread basis toward culturally diverse epistemologies and practice. This…

Ethnic economies promote interclass contact among East Asian Americans, which facilitates the exchange of information and resources through social capital networks. However, low-income Korean Americans are more likely than low-income Chinese Americans to take SAT prep, although both communities have extensive ethnic economies. In the analysis of a…

The present research examines the developmental outcomes of elementary-aged students engaged in student voice efforts. Using a case study of fifth-grade girls, the authors compare their experiences to research examining secondary school. The authors find marked similarities in the growth of agency, belonging, competence--the ABCs of youth…

Students' ability to evaluate emotionally challenging situations and identify effective strategies for managing emotions in themselves and others was negatively related to poor classroom social behavior across three studies. These studies, involving 463 students from two Spanish high schools and one American university, examined indicators of…

Over the past three decades, American high school students' course taking has rapidly intensified. Between 1982 and 2004, for example, the proportion of high school graduates who earned credit in precalculus or calculus more than tripled. In this article, the authors investigate the consequences of mathematics curricular intensification for social…