One of the assessed research elements in the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise in 2014 was the research environment. The quality of the research environment was assessed by expert peer reviewers who were given a set of quantitative factors to support their decision making. However, there is no systematic procedure to integrate this…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the potential of Virtual Reality (VR) employment in airline pilot training. Specifically, this study conducted an experiment that introduced VR equipment into the Multi-Crew Cooperation (MCC) course in the United Kingdom (UK). Increasing pilot throughput in airline pilot training is critical as demands for…

Much is made of students generally rating assessment lower than other aspects of their educational experience. It is frequently cited in research literature as evidence for a general crisis in assessment, and it strongly influences institutional enhancement efforts and media coverage of student feedback. Focusing on the UK's National Student…

This study investigated whether the amount and timing of group-based childcare between birth and 51 months were predictive of cognitive development at 51 months, taking into account other non-parental childcare, demographic characteristics, cognitive development at 18 months, sensitive parenting and a stimulating home environment. Children's…

The report, "A world class mathematics education for all our young people," commissioned by the Conservative Party in 2009, produced by a Task Force chaired by Carol Vorderman, was published in August 2011. The document makes some sensible recommendations, many of which will be welcomed by the mathematics education community. In this…

Bernard Barker's thesis that schools have been undermined over the past quarter of a century by a damaging combination of top-down, centralised reform and a desire to impose a market philosophy on education is powerful. This article analyses the nature of the apparatus of control--both statist and free-market--which has been applied to schools…

Relatively little research has explored whether schools differ in their effectiveness for different group of pupils (e.g. by ethnicity, poverty or gender), for different curriculum subjects (e.g. English, mathematics or science) or over time (different cohorts). This paper uses multilevel modelling to analyse the national test results at age 7 and…

This report was produced for the 2012 Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers meeting in Mauritius. Its main purpose is to track the historical progress and likelihood of attainment of Education For All and education-specific Millennium Development Goals while also critically reviewing the methods used to track this progress. The analyses…

In England, the "Every Child Matters" (ECM) initiative has driven important changes in educational services in order to support five key outcomes for children and young people identified by the ECM initiative, namely to "be healthy", to "stay safe", to "enjoy and achieve", to "make a positive…

Published indicators of school "performance", such as those shown annually in league tables in England, have been controversial since their inception. Raw-score figures for school outcomes are heavily dependent on the prior attainment and family background of the students. Policy-makers in Wales have reacted to this fundamental flaw by…

Improving the quality of state-funded secondary school education remains a major explicit policy aim in the UK. The central means by which state-provided education in the UK is now regulated is through the system of inspections carried out by the Office of Standards in Education (Ofsted), set up in 1992. The research reported in this paper…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…