While much has been written about the impact of metrics in higher education, less is known about the variety of response orientations that individual academics may adopt in reaction to the increasing metricization of academia. Taking the English higher education sector as a case study, this research surveyed the views of academics from Education…

This article outlines reasons for creating the Excellent Futures Curriculum at Stanley Park High School, Carshalton, the strengths of the curriculum, and its subsequent development.

Whilst the notion of the whole child is well-established within early years and primary education, the related concept of the whole teacher is less well developed. However, it is important to progress understanding of the concept in light of high levels of teacher stress in performance-driven education systems. This paper details an empirical…

The few studies conducted in Europe to date suggest that little attention is paid to pre-service teacher preparation for family-school partnerships (FSP) and that many teachers feel unprepared for such work. In England there has been little research in this area but a government review of best practice in parental involvement with schools…

The paper traces the development of citizenship in the curriculum in England since the 1960s, emerging particularly from the Crick report. It argues for lessons to be learnt from John Dewey's "Democracy and education", the centenary of which is being celebrated this year.

Nursery experience is now common for young children and their families. Questions of quality have focussed mainly on safety and early learning. The roles of subtle emotional processes in daily pedagogic interactions have received surprisingly little attention. This paper discusses the Tavistock Observation Method (TOM), a naturalistic method of…

The article proposes a new way of analysing and understanding blended learning and contributes to current debates about adult learner motivations for study. It argues that, whilst the validity of the Andragogical Model has been criticised, it has provided a useful framework of analysis in the context of blended learning to meet the needs of adult…

This article seeks to nuance arguments about the impact of broad policy technologies of auditing processes upon teachers' practices by providing empirical evidence of the effects of such processes, in context. Specifically, the article draws upon a cross section of teachers' accounts of schooling practices in a specialist, academically oriented…

While a great deal of attention has been given to evaluating how well policies are implemented, that is, how well they are realised in practice, less attention has been paid to understanding and documenting the ways in which schools actually deal with the multiple, and sometimes opaque and contradictory demands of different "types" of…

When students fail an examination at the end of their first year, they are offered a resit examination, which they merely need to pass to progress into the second year. These resits anecdotally provide a dual purpose of testing that students have achieved the required level of attainment to progress, and incentivising additional effort. This paper…

It is a well-established norm in England that secondary school mathematics is taught in groups categorised by prior attainment. It is therefore worthwhile to report alternative practices of all-attainment teaching--but these are rare. In this article, we report aspects of all-attainment mathematics teaching in a secondary school that has…

When language is processed, brain activity occurs not only in the classic "language areas" such as Broca's area, but also in areas which control movement. Our systems of understanding, including higher level cognition, are rooted in bodily awareness which needs to be developed as a precursor to intellectual reasoning. Cognition is…

The researchers examined transcripts of comments made and dialogues engaged in by children, teachers and student teaching assistants during a 10-week enrichment programme for gifted and talented children aged 7-9 years. Attempts were made to match these utterances with the programme's aims and aspirations as expressed in a promotional document.…

This paper explores the relationship between global, regional and local influences on adult literacy policy and practice in the UK through a discourse analysis of policy-related texts. The analysis is framed by theoretical perspectives from literacy studies and socio-material theory. The paper identifies a number of specific features in the UK…

This article presents a comparative study of innovation in vocational education and training (VET) in three innovative European countries: England, Finland and Germany. The focus is on innovation emerging from VET practitioners' (directors, teachers, project coordinators, etc.) participation in inter-organisational networks with local, regional,…