This paper presents a critical analysis of a report by the Office for Standards in Education in England based on a survey of practitioners' perspectives of play, focusing on children age 2--5 years in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). The report, 'Teaching and play in the early years -- a balancing act? A good practice survey to explore…

Academic Language and Learning (ALL) is a relatively recent practice field known in Australian Higher Education as Academic Skills Advising or Student Support. Changing social, political and economic circumstances shape ALL work in complex and contradictory ways. Of crucial current significance are discourses calling for education to become an…

This article adds a political perspective to the phenomenon of higher education de-differentiation, by building on Gary Rhoades' neo-institutionalist account. Diversity is operationalized on a hallmark dimension for Central and Eastern Europe: the public-private divide. Higher education is conceived of as a structured organizational field and its…

The overriding objective of this study was to investigate secondary and university teachers' assessment conceptions in an EFL context using a four-factor ("Student Accountability", "School Accountability", "Improvement" and "Irrelevance") teachers' conceptions of assessment (TCoA) inventory (Brown, 2006).…

This book brings together distinguished scholars, community college practitioners, and emerging leaders to expand upon existing theories, provide reflection on practice, and demonstrate the dynamic nature of community college internationalization. There is a special challenge for United States community colleges to move from selected international…

In this paper I discuss the possibility of the idea of emancipation within an educational philosophy that does not accept schooling as its first premise. The first part of the paper will take Sweden as an example of an educational state defined through educational policies such as life long learning, accountability and evidence-based research, and…

A particular trait of the educational system under socialist reign was accountability at the input side--appropriate facilities, centrally decided curriculum, approved text-books, and uniformly trained teachers--but no control on the output. It was simply assumed that it met the agreed standards, which was, in turn, proven by the statistics…

There is an inextricable link between democracy, education and the law. After 15 years of constitutional democracy, the alarming percentage of dysfunctional schools raises questions about the efficacy of the system of local school governance. We report on the findings of quantitative and qualitative research on the democratisation of schools and…

This paper considers the discursive production of violence in the context of educational markets. Drawing on a larger study of sexually violent incidents that occurred in an elite private boys' school in Sydney, Australia, in 2000, the paper examines disciplinary traditions and communicative practices surrounding these events. Insights from Michel…

This paper examines the current state of outdoor education in primary schools in England and Wales and presents arguments to counter current constraints on its provision. Within the national curriculum, outdoor education has been interpreted in the sense of "outdoor and adventurous activities" and, as a result of recent pruning, is now…

This volume of the 27th International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education Conference includes the following research reports: (1) Improving Decimal Number Conception by Transfer from Fractions to Decimals (Irita Peled and Juhaina Awawdy Shahbari); (2) The Development of Student Teachers' Efficacy Beliefs in Mathematics during…