Organizational building is essential if school leaders are to promote school improvement, but it can be difficult to combine with school leaders' requirements to satisfy teachers' personal and relational needs. The the aim of this study is to explore critical aspects when combining organizational building with requirements to satisfy teachers'…

In Spring 2020, schools in many countries had to close in response to the COVID-19 virus pandemic and move to remote teaching. This paper explores the views of pupils, parents/carers and teachers of 'home-school' in one Norwegian municipality, gathered through parallel online surveys in April 2020 during the peak of the COVID-19 lockdown period.…

Recent research has produced evidence to suggest a strong reciprocal link between school context-specific language constructions that reflect a school's vision and schoolwide pedagogy, and the way that meaning making occurs, and a school's culture is characterized. This research was conducted within three diverse settings: one school in the Sydney…

Using metaphor to clarify pedagogical understanding and to anchor teacher beliefs and knowledge to meaningful contextualized mental maps can have powerful consequences in schools. Frequent changes in school staff and clientele present schools with the challenge of how to share culturally specific messages quickly and effectively to those new to…

School premises make a difference to learning, but it is important to understand the relationship between setting and educational activities. Physical space has been found to entrench practice, making it harder to reflect and make changes. Yet changes made to the physical environment may not lead to changes in teaching or learning. This may be…

There has been much media speculation and general conversation about the crisis of masculinity, the lack of male role models--in particular, the lack of fathers, and how many boys are becoming a "lost" generation. An 2002 Australian House of Representatives report "Boys: Getting it right" investigated this issue in depth and…

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989), which applies to all children under the age of 18, established the overarching principles guiding pupil participation. In most European states, signatories to the Convention have enacted policies to promote the voice of the child or young person in decisions that affect them. In…

Transition from primary to secondary school is an important but neglected topic. For this review, 88 studies were selected from 325 possible studies, as including substantive data related to transition. The teacher's perspective and the child's perspective were very different, the former principally concerned with attainment and the latter…

Education policies tend to evoke mixed feelings: excitement amongst advocates of change or uncertainty and stress among teachers expected to implement them. Reactions to the Education White Paper 6: Special Needs Education--Building an Inclusive Education and Training System have been no different. Emanating from a PhD study, this article…

During the past decade, the State of Qatar has positioned itself as a leader of educational reform. In 2004, Education for a New Era (ENE) established internationally benchmarked curriculum in Qatari "Independent Schools". Educational reform was to provide an educated workforce and economic prosperity based on a competitive,…

Evaluations of a children's rights education initiative in schools in Hampshire, England--consistent with previous research findings--demonstrate the effectiveness of a framework of rights for school policy, practice, and teaching, for promoting rights-respecting attitudes and behaviors among children, and for improving the school ethos. The value…

This article develops the analogy of the "black box" in relation to different levels of a professional development project to understand the nature of learning that results in higher student achievement. Principles of formative assessment are used to frame the on-going, evidence-informed inquiry into learning that operated at each level…

Schools and teachers in England have found themselves coerced into a situation where high-stakes testing, scrutiny of "performance" and the generation of data for competitive league tables have dominated the educational experience of young people. There is a growing recognition from all quarters that this model is failing and that…

In recent years, the principle of networking and collaboration has become more prevalent and more widely studied in education. Most research to date has been carried out in urban contexts. However, it can be argued that, for school improvement in rural areas, their specific circumstances make collaboration imperative. In this article, we discuss a…

This article argues that the engagement of teachers in collaborative discussions about assessment can provide a fruitful context for valuable professional learning. It is of interest to those who provide Continuous Professional Development (CPD) opportunities for teachers and teachers themselves. It looks particularly at the value of writing…