This paper explores levels of achievement amongst boys who attended a selective school in Birmingham, UK through consideration of their attainment, social background and ethnicity. It seeks to answer three main questions. Firstly, to what extent does academic attainment vary between students from different socio-economic groups and ethnic…

E-reading devices such as The Kindle have rapidly secured a significant place in a number of societies as at least one major platform for reading. To some extent they are part of the overarching move towards a fully digitised world but they have a distinctiveness in being deliberately "book-like". Teachers generally have some suspicion…

There is a significant body of research supporting the notion that teachers are the single most important school-based resource schools have to lift student achievement, and many principals and policymakers are aware of the need to retain good staff. This study used a large sample of Australian teachers in primary and secondary government and…

This study attempted to determine whether the level of experience affected sources of stress, coping responses and emotional experience in primary school teachers. The first aim was to identify sources of stress and to evaluate coping strategies using the questionnaire of Graziani et al. ("Journal de Thérapie Comportementale et…

Recognizing the negative outcomes associated with experiences in bullying at school, educational researchers, school officials, and policy-makers have called for more rigorous research on bullying in school. Research on bullying behavior in school has primarily been examined using quantitative methods. Mixed methods research in the field of…

This paper examines the influence of gender, educational attainment and family-related variables on the academic aspirations of students aged. Using data from the Academic Achievement Assessment in Andalusia (Spain) during 2006/2007 and from a questionnaire answered by 3963 students and 3842 families, we obtained information about students' test…

E-learning occupies an increasingly prominent place in education. It provides the learner with a rich virtual network where he or she can exchange ideas and information and create synergies through interactions with other members of the network, whether fellow learners or teachers. Social network analysis (SNA) has proven extremely powerful at…

To achieve its aim of deepening understanding of the complexities of learning in Further Education (FE), the Transforming Learning Cultures in FE (TLC) project developed a model of learning as a cultural activity. The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of taking a cultural view, not of learning, but of the research itself. The…

Despite the importance of motivation in understanding the development and practices of reading, problems persist in how motivation-related constructs are defined and investigated. This article reports a concept analysis of how 12 terms have been used in current reading research. Selection criteria resulted in the identification of 92 data-based…

Ogbu and Simons' thesis, based on the Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance that Black immigrant students academically outperform their non-immigrant counterparts and that achievement differences are attributed to stronger educational commitment in Black immigrant families, was examined. Two hypotheses, based on data from the Progress…

Recommendations for practice are routinely included in articles that report educational research. Robinson et al. suggest that reports of primary research should not routinely do so. They argue that single primary research studies seldom have sufficient external validity to support claims about practice policy. In this article, I draw on recent…

Given the long history of effect size (ES) indices (Olejnik and Algina, "Contemporary Educational Psychology," 25, 241-286 2000) and various attempts by APA and AERA to encourage the reporting and interpretation of ES to supplement findings from inferential statistical analyses, it is essential to document the impact of APA and AERA standards on…

Promoting students' critical thinking skills is an important task of higher education. Colleges and universities have designed various instructional interventions to enhance students' critical thinking skills. Empirical studies have yielded inconsistent results in terms of the effects of such interventions. This meta-analysis presents a synthesis…

Research has been carried out on students' epistemological development in higher education for at least 50 years. Researchers on both sides of the Atlantic have converged on accounts that describe students' epistemological development in terms of a sequence or hierarchy of qualitatively distinct stages or positions. The rich qualitative data…

Evidence-based practice in education entails making pedagogical decisions that are informed by relevant empirical research evidence. The main purpose of this paper is to discuss evidence-based pedagogical approaches related to the use of Web 2.0 technologies in both K-12 and higher education settings. The use of such evidence-based practice would…