The new Secondary Curriculum (implemented in 2008) saw greater emphasis on creativity within the National Curriculum for England. Since this term has been boldly stated, how have teachers and pupils responded to it in the classroom? This study draws on responses from a range of pupils in different Key Stages (2 (pupils aged 7-11), 3 (pupils aged…

This paper attempts to identify leadership practices of school principals as they engaged in exploring and exploiting possibilities in and around the school contexts to develop school capacity for change. Based on interview data of school principals, this paper shows that the capabilities of school leaders to perceive and exploit situated…

Two departments in a secondary school in England participated in "lesson study" projects over a five-month period to explore its usefulness as a vehicle for professional development. Through a cycle of two research lessons, conducted separately in each department, teachers identified challenges that inhibited the learning of their…

Commitment to an activity forms an essential part of the talent development process, yet little is known about the reasons why young people commit to dance training. The aim of this study was to investigate the factors that affect young dancers' commitment to a selective dance talent scheme. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19…

"Effort" and "ability" (understood as potential, intelligence or achievement) are concepts widely used in the everyday language of schooling in Britain but each term lacks clear definition of its use in the school context. Meanwhile, the assessment of effort, alongside that of achievement, remains widespread. This article…

This paper summarises the key findings of a research project into the identity, position and ethos of jointly sponsored church academies. The research sought to investigate how joint church academies are situated within the field, how they relate to existing academies and the maintained church school sector and how they articulate their vision and…

The allure of using data to improve performance is a source of tremendous activity in the education field today. "Data use" has spurred a wide variety of reforms at all different levels of the education system, ranging from infrastructure augmentation to state databases, to district dashboard systems that collect and display an array of…

This report is about one of two phases in an investigation into associations between student engagement in classroom learning and the classroom learning environment. Both phases applied the same instrumentation to the same sample. The difference between the phases was in the measurement approach applied. This report is about application of the…

The issue of academic integrity in cheating on exams and plagiarising in writing is not a new one. All schools need to address this problem and some more than others. In the L2 context, the issues become more complex as non-native students need to adhere to the "culture of learning" of a Western model of academic integrity if they are to be…

In the fall of 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a three-year project proposed by the International Baccalaureate (IB) to demonstrate the feasibility of increasing the participation of minority students and students in poverty in its Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme (DP) in selected school districts in the…

The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) has prepared this report on the Newark Public Schools (NPS) for the Merck Institute for Science Education (MISE) to assist them with the development of a strategic plan for improving science education in the district. The data used in the report have been gathered and analyzed through the…

Secondary civics and government courses are often framed as a content area in which students learn about processes of government and ways of participating in a democratic society, as opposed to a discipline in which students use specific tools and ways of thinking that mimic those used by professionals within that discipline. In this article, we…

This article is a qualitative study, which adopts the approach of social construction in order to comprehend the role played by the body in the formation of social behaviour. Using the concept of embodiment, professional ballet dancers have been chosen in order to investigate the particular attitude they form towards their bodies. The use of their…

In fall 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a three-year project (IB Access Project) with International Baccalaureate (IB) to increase participation of minority students and students in poverty in the Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme (DP). The IB Access Project seeks to do four things: (1) Improve teacher practice…

Background: Despite the large body of literature regarding student misconceptions, there has been relatively little cross-cultural research to directly compare the prevalence of common scientific misconceptions amongst students from different cultural backgrounds. Whilst previous research does suggest the international nature of many…