This article reports findings from a research project which developed and introduced the Enhanced Learning Support Assistant Programme (ELSAP) as a source of professional development for learning support assistants who were supporting students with additional learning needs in a college of further education in England. The purpose of this article…

Many young people in the youth justice system in England and Wales are educationally marginalised and systemic barriers to their engagement with education persist. This article presents an analytical framework for understanding how education and youth justice practices shape young people's educational pathways during their time in the youth…

This paper presents research undertaken with trainees, mentors and tutors who are associated with the new School Direct initiative in England. Introduced quickly in 2012, this was a new way of training teachers which is seen as school-led. That is, schools, not higher education institutions, are the leaders of this programme and in many cases…

SECURE is a collaborative project under FP7 to provide research results of current mathematics, science and technology (MST) curricula across Europe. The research focuses on the MST curricula offered to 5, 8, 11 and 13 year old learners in ten European countries. The consortium invited 60 schools from each partner country to participate in the…

This study examined the perceptions, attitudes and beliefs of pre-service teachers using the iPad for their professional learning purposes and for teaching during their school placements. The sample consisted of 117 pre-service teachers undertaking a one-year postgraduate qualification in England to gain qualified teaching status (QTS). A mixed…

The Ashford Teaching Alliance (ATA) Research Champion project ("the programme") was a pilot intervention aimed at developing teaching expertise and practice by promoting the use of educational research in decision-making and teacher practice. The programme ran for one academic year (2014/2015) in five schools within the ATA. Delivery was…

In research textbooks, and much of the research practice, they describe, qualitative processes and interpretivist epistemologies tend to dominate visual methodology. This article challenges the assumptions behind this dominance. Using exemplification from three existing visual data sets produced through one large education research project, this…

The word "safe" is widely used in everyday education speak in phrases such as "safe learning environment", but how do trainee and experienced teachers interpret, understand and use this word in their everyday teaching? Teachers are acting as observers of pupils' well-being, and one of their roles in the classroom is to offer…

Through a case study of a first-language English teacher's approach to teaching writing, the significance of conceptual and affective beliefs about grammar for pedagogical practice is explored. The study explores a perceived dichotomy between grammar and creativity, examining a belief that attention to grammar is separate and secondary to the…

Adult learners on Access to Higher Education courses struggled with institutional and social structures to attend their courses, but transformed their identities as learners through them. Although asymmetrical power relationships dominated the intentional learning communities of their courses, their work was facilitated by collaborative cultures…

Debate about the definition of a "child" occurs in multi-disciplinary contexts, most recently located in the new sociology of childhood where social constructionism is the dominant discourse. Given that the child's voice has become an increasingly valued component of research, this paper reports on one aspect of a study which explored…

Recently identified as an academic "achievement emotion", boredom has long been implicated as a factor contributing adversely to student attainment across a diverse range of formal educational settings. Despite this, the study of boredom, particularly among students in higher education, remains a relatively neglected and underdeveloped…

This article reports on two UK initial teacher education studies from two contrasting contexts: a secondary school course in Oxford, England and a primary school course in Strathclyde, Scotland. The questions of how student teachers understand the effect of poverty on pupils' educational achievement, and what they as prospective teachers can do to…

The complex relationship between language and culture has been widely problematised in applied linguistics and education (see Byram, 1997; Byrnes, 2002; Kramsch, 1993; Risager, 2006). While this issue has been extensively explored from a theoretical perspective, few studies have examined the complexity of this relationship from the…

This paper explores the physical education (PE) and physical activity experiences of a group of South Asian, Muslim girls, a group typically marginalised in PE and physical activity research. The study responds to ongoing calls for research to explore across different spaces in young people's lives. Specifically, I draw on a…