Finnish education has received worldwide attention due to the country's performances in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Research investigating Finland's positive outcomes in the assessment has highlighted not only the strength of teachers, but also the rigour of Finnish teacher education. Finnish student teachers must…

The concept of cultural literacy as a dialogic social practice celebrates alternative perspectives. Navigating multiple perspectives in dialogue requires high 'tolerance of ambiguity' characterised by a positive, open and flexible attitude towards uncertainty. This article aims to explore how provisional language is used in classroom dialogue to…

How to best utilize curriculum time has long been a question for England's schools, which are free to vary time between subjects or to extend the school day/week. This question has now risen to national prominence as policymakers consider ways to help support students catch up lost learning after the COVID-19 pandemic. This article explores the…

This article examines the relationships between children's everyday lives and geographical education. Drawing on research with five young people in London, the article examines their narratives, analysed as relating to race and territory, critically considering the relationships between children's geographies and the geographies of race and racism…

Tasks are crucial for gaining access to powerful knowledge in geography and for fostering higher-order thinking in lessons; therefore, they are key to subject-specific pedagogy. After analysing tasks in geography textbooks for upper secondary education, it was revealed that higher-order thinking barely occurs in textbooks in the Netherlands and is…

Across Europe, educational institutions are essential in assisting exploration of politics, culture and history, and the use of creative arts appears crucial to supporting this aim. This article reports on Creative Connections, a multi-partner research project that facilitated exchanges for young people to explore their European identities using…

The idea that teaching and school leadership should be informed by research and other evidence has developed traction recently in England and other jurisdictions. Yet, such research has too seldomly involved the student perspective in leadership decision-making. This article presents a case study of an 'all through' academy in the south of England…

This article explores the usefulness of Maude's translation of Young's idea of powerful knowledge into geography education. Maude's classification of five types of powerful knowledge in geography education was used to analyse the written curriculum of the 'human and society' interdisciplinary domain in four schools in the Netherlands. The…

This article examines whether the so-called 'London effect', in which London's schools improved rapidly and outperformed the rest of England on key performance measures between 2003 and 2013, has persisted through the high levels of change that have continued to characterize the school system in England since 2013. Using detailed analysis of…

This paper examines what goes on in an improvising jazz combo in a secondary school in Scotland, where teaching follows Rogoff's three-stage sociocultural process, moving from an initial apprenticeship model through one of guided participation to one of participatory appropriation. Using a case study research design and interpretative…

In 2012, Uganda celebrated 50 years as an independent state following more than half a century under colonial rule. Since independence, Uganda has experienced a period of political turmoil and civil war within its constructed colonial borders. Given these historical experiences, what do students find important about their nation's history and what…

This article examines the extent to which young people in New Zealand share the dominant beliefs and assumptions that inform contemporary notions of war remembrance concerning the First World War. In particular, it considers how they make meaning of the ANZAC/Gallipoli narrative. Informed by two empirical studies, it questions whether young people…

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an important international study of 15-year-olds' academic achievement. Although PISA has traditionally been used to draw comparisons across countries, there is growing interest in the production of regional (i.e. city,state, or provincial level) results. In this paper we present the…

This paper is a reflection on action research I conducted in two classrooms to explore the effectiveness of feedback. As a result of this project, I have changed my practice to streamline verbal feedback. Despite its transience, verbal feedback can be made far more effective if it is reduced to key points only

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government's reforms to secondary school Performance Tables have changed how schools make decisions about the subjects and qualifications entered by their pupils. The National Pupil Database is used to explore these changes between 2005 and 2014. We find that schools are responding to accountability…