An aspect of assessment which has received little attention compared with perennial concerns, such as standards or reliability, is the role of judgment in marking. This paper explores marking as an act of judgment, paying particular attention to the nature of judgment and the processes involved. It brings together studies which have explored…

School-based programmes developed to promote social and emotional well-being aims to reduce the risk of academic failure and other negative outcomes, such as antisocial behaviour and mental health problems. This article maps the British political trajectory from understanding the importance of social and emotional well-being, to delivering…

Historical amnesia besets the consensus that Britain faces an unprecedented "crisis of childhood", and of child well-being. Drawing on evidence about changing uses of instruments and measures of well-being over time, this article explores and critiques claims about historical change and trends over time that are central to the imagined crisis of…

Developments in American policy, research and professional development to promote social and emotional learning in schools have drawn on work carried out by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), encouraged by the popular and political catalyst of Daniel Goleman's work on emotional intelligence. Based on CASEL's…

Religious education (RE) is under serious political and professional pressure to justify its existence and, for some, positive psychology seems to offer a more compelling route to well-being. In response, this article establishes a case for the inherent value of the subject whilst showing that the well-being of pupils, in the broader sense of…

In this paper, I explore the enhancement agenda, which aims to enhance well-being nationwide and particularly among young people. Although it is said by its proponents to embody the ideas of Aristotle, I argue that its true theoretical underpinning is the polarised thinking of positive psychology. The sharp distinction between positive and…

It is difficult to challenge a strong consensus that governments must intervene in a worsening crisis of emotional and psychological well-being. The article relates rising estimates of problems and corresponding calls for intervention in educational settings to the increasingly blurred boundaries between a cultural therapeutic ethos, academic…

This paper suggests ways in which philosophy as a discipline and practice offers the possibility of a richer account of well-being than currently informs policy initiatives in this area. Sources derived from philosophy--and particularly moral philosophy--support a shift away from understanding well-being as something grounded primarily in the…

Charles Dickens famously satirised the rationalism and mechanism of utilitarian educational ideas through the figure of Gradgrind in "Hard Times". Even in the nineteenth century there were very few people, in reality, who would have agreed that the education of children should be a matter of purely intellectual, rather than emotional, instruction.…

This paper, based on ESRC-funded research work in four case study schools, explores the "pressures" to "deliver" which bear upon English secondary schools in relation to GCSE performance. It further illustrates the ways in which pressure is transformed into tactics which focus on particular students, with the effect of "rationing" education in the…

One hundred and twenty students successful at entering four of the most famous French "grandes ecoles" ("Ecole Normale Superieure" Ulm, Polytechnique, HEC, Sciences Po) were questioned about their institution's image. We focus on how the prestige of these institutions in the French society played a role in students' attraction and contributed to…

General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and General Certificate of Education (GCE) grading standards are determined by Awarding Bodies using procedures that adhere to the Code of Practice published by the regulator, Ofqual. Grade boundary marks (cut scores) are set using subject experts' (senior examiners) judgement of the quality of…

Studies about metacognition, intelligence and learning have rendered equivocal results. The mixed model assumes joint as well as independent influences of intelligence and metacognition on learning results. In this study, intelligence was measured by standard tests for reasoning, spatial ability and memory. Participants were 13-year-old school…

This paper reports on parental involvement as experienced by a group of elite secondary school pupils in learning English vocabulary on the Chinese mainland. It highlights the variety of strategies that Chinese parents adopted to support, sustain and enhance these pupils' efforts to learn English vocabulary. They functioned as critical agents…

This paper reports on a study that clarifies the nature and scope of the challenges experienced by primary school teachers in Swaziland when using Continuous Assessment (CA) as a tool to improve teaching and learning. Through the use of classroom observations and stimulated recall interviews, we sought to understand the significance of the choices…