Over the last decade, there has been an increasing drive towards the promotion and development of enterprise education in Scottish schools. This has involved much debate about the nature of enterprise and how it may be addressed and applied within primary and early secondary school settings. The recent renewed interest in citizenship education and…

This research uses the National Child Development Study to investigate the effects of adult learning upon 12 outcomes that act as proxies for health and social capital. To minimise selection bias we consider changes in outcomes rather than levels. We find that adult learning plays an important role in contributing to the small shifts in attitudes…

Following an earlier survey of the attitudes and activities of academic staff who had retired three to five years earlier, a survey was undertaken of the policies and practices of university authorities in relation to supporting the academic activities of their retired staff. The sample included 21 universities in England and Scotland, and 28…

In this paper we report and analyse findings from part of a two-year evaluation project which focuses on parent-professional communications over the issues of learning difficulties arising from dyslexia. The key concepts in this study are dyslexia friendly schools and parental partnership, which are discussed in the current policy interest in…

This article examines secondary school admissions criteria in England. The analysis revealed that in a significant minority of schools, notably those responsible for their own admissions--voluntary-aided and foundation schools--a variety of criteria were used which appear to be designed to select certain groups of pupils and so exclude others.…

Many studies have demonstrated that a teacher has a substantial impact on how much pupils learn. However, research on the long-term effects of teachers is scarce, and the results obtained so far are inconsistent. Some studies have concluded that teacher effects are relatively permanent, while others claim that they fade away more or less rapidly…

The concept of organisational learning has been widely debated and frequently contested by educationalists, but the specific processes and actions which constitute this form of learning have received relatively little research attention. This paper reports a three-year empirical investigation into organisational learning in a large industrial…

This paper considers the range of research methods used by the UK education research community. Using insights from 25 interviews with key stakeholders it describes their views on the current strengths and weaknesses in methods, and of what methodological developments are needed for future improvement in this field. Using survey returns from 521…

The formative Assessment for Learning proposals outlined by Black and Wiliam (e.g. Black et al. , 2002 ) have been well publicised. Since 2002, in its Assessment is for Learning programme, the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) has been exploring ways of bringing research, policy and practice in assessment into closer alignment using…

The superior performance of girls, especially in terms of GCSE examinations, continues to attract attention. Much of the debate to date, however, has focused on absolute differences in attainment rather than differences in pupil progress. Furthermore, the role of the school in contributing to the differential progress of the two sexes has been…

Current conceptions of citizenship favour public involvement in dialogue on controversial issues such as GM food. 'Students with higher levels of civic knowledge are more likely to expect to participate in political and civic activities as adults' (Kerr et al., 2003, p. 4). Young people need to be aware of the nature of controversy and be able to…

This paper presents findings from a fieldwork study concerning the impacts of learning upon health. In-depth biographical interviews were conducted with 145 adults about the effects of learning throughout their lives. In addition, 12 group interviews were conducted with practitioners about their perceptions of the effects of learning upon their…

Teacher effectiveness research has tended to neglect the analysis of values in two senses: the general values associated with the processes of education, and the more specific values underlying effective teaching. The possibilities for re-conceptualising teacher effectiveness, by incorporating a values dimension, are illustrated through two…

The globalisation of higher education implies the application of a neo-liberal market forces model based on competition and choice. This is happening in Germany by gradual stages, and is often, but not necessarily correctly, assumed to be antagonistic to the Humboldtian model that underlies the classical German university tradition. This paper…

This paper reports on a research project involving a sample of 19 state-educated students in their first year of a German course at Oxford University. The project is one of a number of research studies into widening participation issues funded by the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) and the Sutton trust. The paper describes the…