"Guitar Hero" is a video game where one or more players use a specially made game-style guitar to play along to popular and well-known songs. Players need to match the correct notes and timings of the sings. An on-screen guide shows players which notes to play, when. There are levels of difficulty in the game, as well as the choices to…

This paper is concerned with expanding knowledge of how femininity/sexuality intersections are constituted in secondary schools. Existing studies have drawn upon Judith Butler's notion of a "heterosexual matrix" in order to understand how intersections of femininity/sexuality are produced in schools through normative discourses of…

The under-representation of females in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) fields of study and careers continues to attract considerable attention. This article discusses findings of a research that investigated interest in ICT studies and careers among female secondary school students from schools in three districts in the Central…

This article examines the impact of single-sex schooling on a range of academic outcomes for a sample of British people born in 1958. In terms of the overall level of qualifications achieved, single-sex schooling is positive for girls at age 16 but neutral for boys, while at later ages, single-sex schooling is neutral for both sexes. However,…

In this article we discuss students', teachers' and school principals' perceptions of democratic school leadership reforms in Kenya. The article is based on a study that was conducted in two phases. In phase one (conducted between September and December 2007), interviews were undertaken with 12 school principals in which understandings of…

This paper, delivered at the International Drama in Education Research Institute (IDIERI) conference in Sydney in July 2009, explores the outcomes of a project designed to apply the applied theatre techniques developed for the Acting Against Bullying programme to the specific problem of covert or hidden bullying by adolescent girls. Conducted in a…

Geometry certainly is in fashion, at the Henrietta Barnett School for girls in North London. Within the project "Engaging mathematics for all learners", led and funded by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), the Royal Institution of Great Britain (Ri) looked into how mathematical tasks usually reserved for the "gifted…

Algebra uses symbols for generalizing arithmetic. These symbols have different meanings and interpretations in different situations. Students have different perceptions about these symbols, letters and signs. Despite the vast research by on the students' difficulties in understanding letters in Algebra, the overall image that emerges from the…

This article assesses gender differences in academic self-concept for a cohort of children born in 1958 (the National Child Development Study). It addresses the question of whether attending single-sex or co-educational schools affected students' perceptions of their own academic abilities (academic self-concept). Academic self-concept was found…

Despite student interest, the heart is often a poorly understood topic in biology. To help students understand this vital organ's physiology, the author created this investigation activity involving the mammalian heart and its role in the circulatory system. Students design, build, and demonstrate working artificial "hearts" to exhibit what they…

The study focused on the influence of peer group counselling and school influence on the self-concept of adolescents' in Nigerian secondary schools. Sixty-eight Senior Secondary School II students from three schools--a boys' school, a girls' school and a co-educational school in Benin City participated in the study. A pre-test, post-test control…

This research investigated some determinants of classroom environment in Australian Catholic high schools. The Catholic School Classroom Environment Questionnaire (CSCEQ) was used to assess 7 dimensions of the classroom psychosocial environment: student affiliation, interactions, cooperation, task orientation, order and organization,…

The New Zealand Council for Educational Research's (NZCER's) Families and Communities Engagement (FACE) project is investigating ideas and practices involved in bringing together teachers, families, local communities and students to contribute to collective conversations and decisions about education. This report concerns a sub-project of FACE…

Teaching William Shakespeare's canonical tragedy "Romeo and Juliet" to teenagers in the context of the English classroom in Australia is not a particularly new pedagogical practice. In the year 2008, when many teachers (particularly those with a feminist bent such as I) are intent on guiding their students to decipher the ideological…

This paper describes an instance of continuing professional development and explores the contribution it might make to the ongoing international dialogue of professional development. It reviews the way features of the current debate on effective teaching, teacher learning and continuing professional development overlap and feed into each other and…