Pedagogical reforms in sub-Saharan Africa have often been unsuccessful, arguably because they fail to account for the social and cultural context of teachers' choices. Two studies in rural Tanzania examined the pedagogical decisions of teachers taking part in a programme of teacher professional development. Teachers reflected on their own…

Since a nationwide reform of pre-primary education in 2010, Ethiopia has experienced a massive expansion of pre-primary enrolment that increased tenfold in six years. Our paper aims to assess the distribution of early literacy outcomes between children who attended preschool and those who did not and explore how that distribution has changed…

The COVID-19 pandemic suspended established practices that, in normal times, are seen as central to the functioning of education systems. For example, in England, school closures led to the cancellation of national examinations in 2020, and their attempted replacement with an algorithmic model. Following public outcry about what were seen as the…

Drawing on life history interviews, this paper seeks to explore the lives of a group of eight teachers, all with working experience in England, who self-identify as committed to a more socially just education system. Drawing on Levitas' "Utopia as method," this article examines these teachers' perspectives on and practices around social…

Links between mathematical attainment and economic performance, coupled with England's poor showing in international comparisons of skills, have focussed attention on post-16 mathematics education, for example, in the UK Government's 2017 Industrial Strategy. Whilst high-stakes academic qualifications at 16 (GCSE) and 18 (A-level) have stood the…

Raymond Williams was a literary critic, sociologist, novelist, and political activist but above all a teacher, with a theory of education as a societal process running through his work. He styled the UK's educational establishment of the 1960s 'Old Humanists'; guardians of a dominant elite culture who were losing their influence to the new…

The conclusion of recent research on the relationship between students' school curriculum and their opportunities to enter higher education has generally been that curricular differentiation is a further dimension of social stratification, and that it has become a mechanism of effectively maintained inequality, in the sense defined by Lucas. The…

Performativity is a dominant mode of regulation in many education systems that has caused a significant shift in teaching and teacher professionalism, yet minimal attention has been paid to understanding it in non-Western contexts. This study explores Singaporean teachers' perceptions of teaching within its unique and normalised performative…

This study looks at educational inequality in China, a country that has greatly expanded access to education in recent decades. It uses a sequential logit model to study the changing impact of family background on educational transitions, comparing birth cohorts that completed their schooling during different stages of the market transition…

One response to the coronavirus pandemic has been for educators, public health experts and politicians to emphasise the importance of empathy, compassion, care, or similar human qualities in tackling the crisis. We explore these claims philosophically in regard to education. What moral attributes are relevant to a crisis such as a pandemic? How…

Over the last four years, initial teacher education in Wales has been fundamentally reformed. The stimulus for those reforms were concerns about the quality of current provision, but more importantly a recognition by the Welsh Government that if their wider reforms of curriculum and assessment were to succeed, then teachers themselves had a key…

The 'dyslexia debate' is resilient. In the media, a key component of the debate is the notion that dyslexia does not exist, popularised by a series of vociferous commentators. For them, dyslexia is an invention of overly-concerned parents, supported by a clique of private educational psychologists willing to offer a diagnosis -- for a fee -- even…

Risinghill School was one of a new type of secondary school, called a 'comprehensive', which opened in Islington, north London, in 1960, under the headship of Michael Duane. He had a cause: a clear view as to the style of school that he wished to create: it was one that was progressive, democratic and inclusive: for him, the true essence of a…

Countries around the world are striving to improve their educational systems with a view to improving their economy and society. In this global competition, national and international test results are of considerable interest. In this paper, we show that national testing in England and the USA have shown little or no improvement over the years.…

As concerns spread about the capacity of teacher education programmes to prepare preservice teachers for entry into the teaching profession, literature and policy have begun to scrutinise the knowledge and skills of teacher educators. Some publications have focused on the professional development needed by teacher educators to align their teaching…