A substantial body of research emphasises school leadership as a major influence on quality improvement in schools. Although numerous studies have identified the importance of the principal, fewer studies have examined the middle management level within schools, the deputy heads and assistant principals. Influenced by international trends, local…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the crossing of knowledge and power boundaries within a bureaucratic organization by using enterprise social media (ESM). (Carlile's 2002) boundary crossing framework is used to guide this research. Design/methodology/approach: This is a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews and…

School governing bodies in England have considerable powers and responsibilities with regard to the education of pupils. This article explores how power relations operate, within governing bodies, through struggles over which types of knowledge are claimed and valued. The article draws on the analysis of policy and on ethnographic research in the…

This paper applies aspects of Bourdieu's conceptual toolkit related to capital, and analyses inter- and intra-generational relations of influence. Applying Bourdieu's concepts to examples of case studies from a children's parliament in Finland, and with reference to an adult resident forum, moments of continuity and disruption in the relatively…

This exploratory study investigates the influence of teachers' perception of students' socio economic position (SEP) on the disciplinary practices they adopt in classrooms. Qualitative data were collected using classroom observations and interviews with students, their parents and teachers. Findings highlight differentiated disciplinary practices…

Research Findings: Digital play is now commonplace in many young children's lives, but not in preschool settings. This situation is likely due to the fact that the existent literature seldom highlights what digital play looks like, the various ways it can be situated, and what young children do when they play together with digital devices in the…

As western countries have become increasingly diverse, education is often emphasized as one of the most important arenas for social integration. However, research within physical education over the past decades has highlighted how students with non-western backgrounds experience processes of 'othering', exclusion, and marginalization in the…

This article examines the impact of contact-based educational encounter strategies of shared learning on Jewish-Arab relations in Israel. It analyses a programme of education for shared life that takes place in a mixed (75% Jewish/25% Arab) city at the centre of Israel since 2012. The programme aims to mitigate Jewish-Arab relations in the city…

This is part of a larger ethnographical study concerning how school development in a local educational context sets cultural and social life in motion. The main data "in this article" consists of semi-structural interviews with teachers (facilitators) who have the responsibility of carrying out a project about formative assessment in…

This article explores teachers' experiences of dyslexia and classroom interventions via lesson observations and semi-structured interviews. These experiences were analysed through a Bourdieusien lens, based on Jenkins's "levels of interaction", to delineate power relationships inherent in classroom interactions, teachers' interactions…

This study examines how acceptable play was framed for a class of pre-Kindergarten children by their teacher and classroom aide. Using comic subjectivity theory [Zupancic, A. (2008). "The odd one in: On comedy." Cambridge: MIT Press], the author explores how children's playing at pretend violence (bad guy and pretend gun play) is…

This paper presents aspects of a small scale study that considered student teachers' language and discourse around race and ethnicity at a university in the northwest of England. The first part of the paper critiques current education-related policy, context and practice to situate the research and then draws upon aspects of critical race theory…

Using the Degrees of Democracy Framework (Woods & Woods, 2012), we examined eight New Tech (NT) high schools to determine the extent to which they demonstrated characteristics of holistic democracy. We collected qualitative data, including observations and interviews during the fourth year of implementation. Findings indicated that the eight…

This article examines the masculinization of discipline and its interplay with power in the primary school through an exploration of teachers' gender and disciplinary work and roles by drawing on data from an ethnographic study conducted at a primary school in Taiwan. The research findings suggest that discipline was men's work due to women…

The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) is a national, extra-curricular mentoring programme that is closing the educational gap for young Indigenous Australians. So what is AIME doing that is working so well? This article draws on a large-scale classroom ethnography to describe the pedagogies that facilitate the teacher-student…