In this article, Theo Woods shares the experience of one history department as they embarked on a substantial process of curriculum review and development. The department sought to address concerns that the range of history taught in their school, across the full seven years of students' secondary experience, was too 'traditional, White and…

Purpose: This essay engages with scholarship on history as a discipline, curriculum documents and academic and public commentary on the teaching of history in Australian, British and Canadian secondary contexts to better understand the influence of the tension between political pressure and disciplinary practice that drives the history wars in…

Practical work may be assessed using many different forms of assessment, including coursework projects, practical exams and written questions in exams. In this article, the authors focus on the evaluation of one method for the assessment of practical science: written exam questions. Although individual syllabuses and curricula state the skills and…

This book provides an introduction to what it means to be numerate, and how numeracy can best be developed and nurtured in children and in adults. It also presents a cohesive coverage of numeracy development from early childhood to adulthood. This book draws on international research and practice to provide a comprehensive overview on the topic.…

This paper sets out to explore the perceptions of teachers towards assessment techniques at a secondary level private school of Karachi. This was conjectured on the basis of the circumstances of parallel boards in the education system of Pakistan and its effectiveness within the context with respect to the curriculum. This was gauged in line with…

Key competences are important for personal development, employment, integration into society and lifelong learning. They are transversal and form the basis for all other competences. Acquiring key competences is possible through various learning pathways, including vocational education and training (VET). However, little is known at the European…

This study investigates the effects of socioeconomic status and schooling on the academic attainment of a cohort of students at a single medical school (N = 240). Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to explore how students' summative assessment scores over 4 years of medical school were affected by: attainment in secondary…

This paper reports on the findings from a survey of academics responsible for undergraduate programmes in English and examines the extent to which they were aware of recent reform of A level English and had made, or are making, changes to their courses as a result. Our findings demonstrate that relatively low numbers felt that they had a strong…

Noting the need for richer theories of identity and identity formation in education, the author describes aspects of D. P. McAdams' psychosocial constructivist framework enriched by select concepts drawn from Life Course research for conceptualizing and analyzing identity development within audit-driven societies and educational systems. Drawing…

Children experience numerous types of learning transitions throughout their educational lives physically (changing schools) and substantively (moving through different key stages in school), and daily (in moving between subjects). One transition that is frequently overlooked within the British education system is that from the General Certificate…

This paper takes the form of a discussion document. A number of ideas surrounding the topics of continuing professional development (CPD), performance management (PM) and effective classrooms in secondary schools are outlined. The paper draws on some of the recent literature in these areas and refers to some current trials within a UK-based…

For a number of reasons, increasing reliance is being placed on teacher assessment in high-stakes contexts in many countries around the world. Simultaneously, countries that have for some time relied to greater or lesser degrees on teacher assessment for high-stakes purposes are in the process of questioning the validity of that reliance. In…

This election factsheet highlights the following points: (1) While the GCSE pass rate has increased since its introduction, this doesn't tell us very much about how standards have changed. Evidence from international surveys suggests that education standards have remained stable. Stopping the use of modules and limiting resits is likely to reduce…

The article argues that science assessment should change from an item-driven to a construct-driven practice and pay more attention to disciplinary scientific reasoning. It investigates assessment scales developed from a novel theoretical rationale, describing scientific reasoning as three fundamental practices (hypothesizing, experimenting, and…

Within large scale educational assessment agencies in the UK, there has been a shift towards assessors marking digitally scanned copies rather than the original paper scripts that were traditionally used. This project uses extended essay examination scripts to consider whether the mode in which an essay is read potentially influences the…