During the COVID-19 pandemic, questions abounded about how best to support children during the 'new normal' where homes, often instead of schools, were identified as the usual sites of learning. Educational research has explored the impact of COVID-19 on schools, education and learning, and childhood studies research has shown the impact on…

This article explores the normative representations of higher education students in seven films and television series from four European countries. Drawing on the concept of the 'independent learner' as an 'ideal construction', I demonstrate how these texts offer complex and at times paradoxical representations of who gets positioned as the…

This paper critically evaluates societal reactions to integrating LGBTQ+ content into the Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) curriculum in England and Wales. Utilising Stanley Cohen's theory of moral panics, it examines the roles of media, moral entrepreneurs, authorities, and the public in shaping debates around educational reforms. The paper…

Background: 'Fat Talk', or the act of negatively discussing one's own or another person's body, is linked to body image constructs, body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem and disordered eating. The spaces in which young women talk about the body are changing, as social media use escalates. Understanding the interplay between social media use, body…

This paper is a critical discourse analysis of the responses by Harvard and Oxford to the murder of George Floyd. Findings point to how the two institutions visually separate stated commitments to equity and their identities as world-class institutions. The official university response is compared and contrasted to student media, The New York…

Racist nativism is a concept which helps us understand the relationship between racialisation and nativism. It is used here to examine cultural values perpetuated by media and political discourse as alien to British values in constructions of Britishness. This paper will consider with interest racist nativism revealed in the construction of Islam…

Foodborne diseases are a global burden, are preventable, and young people are a key population for behaviour change as they gain autonomy. This study aimed to explore young people's needs across several European countries in relation to learning about and implementing food hygiene and food safety. Qualitative focus groups and interviews were…

Young people can be motivated to learn science using the power of various entertainment media. The author states the need to recognise that they are accessing science through informal learning outside school. With children saying they have learnt from cartoons such as Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants, it would seem that entertaining animations…

In May 2008, Ofqual established a two-year programme of research to investigate the nature and extent of (un)reliability within the qualifications, examinations and assessments that it regulated. It was particularly concerned to improve understanding of, and confidence in, this technically complex and politically sensitive phenomenon. The…

This paper explores how "social democratic" Sweden initiated and implemented choice reforms that attracted the interest of "liberal" England. By studying how English media framed and portrayed the Swedish free school "export" from 2008 to 2014, this paper aims to describe and discuss how a market-oriented policy idea,…

This paper considers the public debate surrounding assessment in English education and presents evidence of the misuse of public data from national tests. Statistics generated by pupil assessments in schools and colleges in England are argued to be subject to misinterpretation by the media and policy makers. The discourse tends either to be…

Citizenship, character and the virtues that constitute both are increasingly concerns of public policy in the UK. This article understands character to encompass the morally valuable, reason-response and education part of personality, and understands virtues as states of character concerned with praiseworthy feelings and conduct in specific…

Over the last decades, many liberal democracies have experienced a tension between the education system's expressed requirement to foster citizenship norms and the liberal (sub-)ideal of norm neutrality. This dilemma has been accentuated by, on the one hand, increased ethnical and cultural diversity and, on the other hand, liberalization of…

The purposes of this article are to understand the factors that women are likely to take into consideration when making employment decisions and childcare choices while their babies are young, and to identify their choices, beliefs and dilemmas: the focus is on the experiences of working mothers in England. These choices are problematised in the…

This research focused on the observation of infants between the ages of 2 and 18 months with regard to their aesthetic preferences for a variety of visual stimuli. These stimuli included: a black-and-white schematic drawing of a baby, a popular cartoon image, a colorful abstract painting of a baby, and a photographic image of a baby's face. Prior…