Direct instruction, an approach that is becoming familiar to Queensland schools that have high Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations, has been gaining substantial political and popular support in the United States of America [USA], England and Australia. Recent examples include the No Child Left Behind policy in the USA, the British…

In this paper we investigate how schoolmates influence high school dropout intentions in Catalonia, Spain. Our analysis uses self-reported friends to identify possible peers by assuming that peer influence flows in one direction in cases where one student identifies another as a friend, but the other does not reciprocate. We first estimate the…

Purpose: Although it is expected that building schoolwide capacity for teacher learning will improve teaching practices, there is little systematic evidence to support this claim. This study aimed to examine the relative impact of transformational leadership practices, school organizational conditions, teacher motivational factors, and teacher…

The ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) worked for ten years to improve outcomes for learners across the United Kingdom. Individual projects within the Programme focused on different research questions and utilised a range of methods and theoretical resources. Across-programme thematic seminar series and task groups enabled…

This article considers the extent to which the English National Curriculum for science has influenced practice and learning outcomes, and briefly reviews the mechanisms through which this influence is exerted. It identifies and discusses three central issues for the review that is now in progress: the structure of the science curriculum; the…

This paper discusses the experience of UK doctoral graduates in pursuing entrepreneurial careers: there is evidence that this applies to a substantial number--about 10%--of doctoral graduates. The nature of their experience was explored using 37 interviews with doctoral entrepreneurs. The research was funded by Vitae (www.vitae.ac.uk), an…

The purpose of this study is to construct a national demographic profile of high school band, choir, and orchestra students in the United States using evidence from the 2004 follow-up wave of the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002. Results indicate that 21% of seniors in the United States' class of 2004 participated in school music ensembles.…

In order to increase the knowledge of locomotor disturbances in children with autism, and of the mechanism underlying them, the objective of this exploratory study was to reliably and quantitatively evaluate linear gait parameters (spatio-temporal and kinematic parameters), upper body kinematic parameters, walk orientation and smoothness using an…

Since 2006, 19 institutions across the United States have been trying to figure out how to work smarter through their participation in the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education. Drawing on data from the first year of the study, the robust, mixed-methods study the authors report in this article evaluated growth in the first year of…

There are at least three powerful insights for educational technology researchers and designers from recent neuroscience studies of the brain and from cognitive science research findings: First, our brains learn and process two very different types of knowledge; non-conscious, automated, procedural, or implicit knowledge, and conscious,…

Recognising school readiness as a national priority, the National Education Goals Panel identified the development of young children's approaches to learning as essential for achieving readiness. Approaches to learning include inclinations, attitudes, and learning styles. Despite wide agreement that learning approaches are critical for school…

Bullying in schools has been identified as a serious and complex worldwide problem associated with negative short- and long-term effects on children's psychosocial adjustment (Smith 1999; Ttofi and Farrington, "Aggressive Behav" 34(4):352-368, 2008). Entering kindergarten is a crucial developmental step in many children's lives mainly because it…

A large-scale paper-and-pencil assessment of the attainment targets of environmental studies with a focus on the subject area nature was held in primary education in Flanders (Belgium). The tests on different subfields of nature, i.e. the human body, healthcare, organisms, ecosystems, environmental care and non-living nature, were administered to…

This article takes issue with the notion that professional learning communities need to be more focused on teacher expertise through the use of online videos of lessons taught by expert teachers that are aligned with the Common Core State Standards. The authors argue that the use of externally developed, research-based, and standards-aligned…

Drawing initially on evidence assembled by the Cambridge Primary Review, and acknowledging Maurice Galton's trenchant critiques of recent educational policy, this paper tracks the rise and decline of the flagship standards agenda which was launched by the Blair government in 1997 and came to dominate the work of England's primary schools during…