School attendance and absenteeism are critical targets of educational policies and practices that often depend heavily on aggregated attendance/absenteeism data. School attendance/absenteeism data in aggregated form, in addition to having suspect quality and utility, minimizes individual student variation, distorts detailed and multilevel…

The purpose of this article is to address student absenteeism through the theoretical lens of ecological agency and to encourage the use of ecological agency in a school setting to address student absenteeism more holistically. We align absenteeism research within the ecological agency framework and suggest that absenteeism is a manifestation of…

Following the announcement, in November 2018, that Scotland would be the first educational system to introduce an LGBTI-inclusive curriculum in all of its state schools, this position paper advocates critical literacy as a theoretically congruent framework within which LGBTI issues can be explored. We suggest educators could do this by…

An interpretive narrative inquiry approach is adopted to shed light on the improvement agendas applied in a specific set of coastal schools. The unifying thread between the focal cases is that they had been designated as failures and made notorious through association with their communities' tainted reputations. These schools feature in a report…

In today's era of increased accountability and standards-based reforms within the United States educational system, Community Partner Organizations (CPOs) can offer essential support to teachers, schools, and districts. CPOs have the potential to have a positive impact in urban schools in particular, where high-stakes testing and accountability…

The poverty-related attainment gap is an internationally recognised problem. There is growing recognition that it cannot either be understood or addressed without taking cognisance of children's mental health and wellbeing. The focus of this conceptual article is to examine the impact of social inequality and poverty on the mental health and…

Pluralistic societies are generally characterised by weak national cohesiveness, increasing the risk of political tension and violent conflict; for communities from diverse religious or ethnic backgrounds, peaceful coexistence alone is insufficient to build the social cohesion needed for sustainable development and lasting peace. As an effective…

Transition from primary (elementary) to secondary school can be both an exciting and a daunting prospect for young adolescents. Ensuring that students quickly settle into their new secondary school environment is the goal of transition programmes employed by schools. These programmes typically comprise a number of discrete and interrelated…

Depressive adolescents are a challenging and vulnerable group in schools. Specific developmental features such as irritability and comorbid behavioural disorders complicate the recognition of their emotional problems for peers, teachers and even parents. Our research shows that teachers tend to overlook depressive feelings in adolescents; however,…

Drawing upon a broad concept of inclusion, the first section of this article is dedicated to a critical discussion of the principle of "equal opportunities," which currently dominates the social justice discourse in Germany. Specifically, this section examines how far this principle, which focuses on the role of the individual in…

Teams of teachers and administrators have become more and more common as a framework for improving responsiveness to the ever more dynamic educational environment. Although teamwork is often expected to broaden the team's collective knowledge base, consequently improving team effectiveness, research shows that this potential effectiveness is not…

Developing effective novice teachers involves many components. Researchers have studied the impact of principals, induction programs, and mentors on the growth and development of novice teachers. Relationships with college/university faculty, students, parents, and support staff can also impact the growth of these novice professionals. The…

Services provided by primary schools have a significant impact on citizens' living conditions. We need more knowledge of how innovation activities in primary schools should be organized and managed. This article addresses this gap by raising the following question: "Why do municipalities have different ways of organizing preventive work in…

While the importance of a professional teacher's collaboration with diverse families is clearly highlighted in the US Department of Education's Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and in US teaching standards, research consistently reports that teachers feel unprepared to do this aspect of their work. The failure of the teaching profession to grow…

Research results have provided evidence of the potential contribution that professional learning communities (PLCs) can make to enhance school outcomes. While numerous organizational and cultural aspects of schools have been recognized as key requirements for PLC success, researchers have noted that a teacher's ability to share knowledge in the…