This study presents a systematic review of 38 empirical studies about big ideas published between 2010 and 2022 in various disciplines. The review scrutinised the conceptualisation of the big idea in the identified studies and its application in educational practices such as standards, curricula, textbooks, school-based curriculum reforms, and…

Literacy skills are essential if students are to access knowledge and achieve academic success in middle school science. A key difficulty with interpreting literacy practices in any discipline is the problem of conceptualising what constitutes literacy. Our study contributes new understandings to the discipline of science where there are ongoing…

Errors that occasionally manifest in examination papers and other educational assessment instruments can threaten reliability and validity. For example, a multiple choice question could have two correct response options, or a geography question containing an inaccurate map could be unanswerable. In this paper we explore this oft-neglected element…

Educational discourses have embraced therapeutic discourse, a psychology-based system of assumptions about the self, its boundaries, development and social relations. While scholars have debated the virtues of this therapeutic turn, there has been little empirical study of therapeutic discourse in teacher pedagogical discourse. This article, using…

Peer assessment (PA) is generally effective, and especially important for school teachers, as the experience might lead teachers to use PA more skilfully with school students. Digital PA (using computers) becomes more important as universities switch to online learning. This systematic review of research literature on digital PA for pre-service…

Grouping by attainment is a relatively new and contested practice in Norway, where strong historical discourses of heterogeneous education are under pressure from international test comparisons, particularly in mathematics. At the same time, research indicates that Norwegian teachers have a high degree of autonomy in education policy enactment.…

Reading is fundamental to academic success, but international reading surveys indicate current pedagogy fails a fifth of adolescents, disproportionately from lower-socioeconomic groups. This UK, mixed-method study evaluated the impact of two whole-text reading approaches on comprehension, using standardised tests. Twenty teachers of English and…

This article focuses on the importance of highlighting students' role as informal leaders and their efforts to take on active roles in decision-making processes. Students' involvement in such roles entails an imperative process for the development of school inclusion. Contemporary literature has repeatedly focused on the multiple roles student…

This paper is a critical systematic literature review of empirical work on creative pedagogies from 1990 to 2018. It responds to the increased international attention being afforded creativity and creative pedagogies in research, policy and practice and examines the evidence regarding creative pedagogical practices and the potential impact of…

The purpose of this paper is to explore how teachers understand the role of affects and emotions in manifestations of the nation and nationalism in schools. In particular, the paper examines how teachers' political orientations -- conservative or progressive -- are entangled with their understandings of 'affective nationalism.' To do so, the…

This study reports on the adaptation and outcomes of a teacher professional development (TPD) programme in a rural Zimbabwean secondary school. The programme incorporated Open Educational Resources (OER), specifically OER4school materials, that were provided via tablet computers for teachers and students. A mixed-methods case study was employed to…

Collaboration skills have been identified as an important educational outcome, not just as a means to enable learning mechanisms to be enacted, but also as a demonstrable skill of interest to assessment practitioners. In recent years, there has been an ambition to develop models of assessment that are underpinned by the collaborative process, and…

Many scholars argue that the practice of educational tracking exerts a distinct effect on young people's political engagement. They point out that students in academic tracks are becoming more politically engaged than those than those in vocational ones, and suggest that this may be due to differences across tracks in the curriculum, pedagogy,…

The challenge of research methods teaching is gaining attention among policy-makers keen to build social science research capacity and, critically, among educationalists keen to enhance the pedagogy. This paper addresses pedagogy, presenting a new conceptual-empirical typology of pedagogy for social science research methods teaching. Taking a…

There is no consensus about whether a teacher-centred or student-centred instructional approach is more effective for students' maths achievement. Prior studies have highlighted the role of students' maths self-concept as a predictor and mediator for maths achievement. This study examined whether instructional approaches were related to students'…