This article reviews the methodologies used in 76 empirical studies conducted on creative thinking in primary school education and published between 2011 and 2021. The studies were analysed for their context, foci of investigation and the methodologies used. Each study was coded and analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings are…

Evidence-based education aims to support policy makers choosing between potential interventions. This rarely involves considering each in isolation; instead, sets of evidence regarding many potential policy interventions are considered. Filtering a set on any quantity measured with error risks the "winner's curse": conditional on…

Debates about how best to support students' transition from school to university have re-emerged periodically since at least the 1970s. This paper focuses upon one aspect of this transition: how to develop the quantitative skills students acquire at school throughout the first year of their degree. We report on an attempt to inject pedagogic…

In this paper, I argue a new politics of ordinal differentiation and its instruments for governing education aims to make invisible a 'low intensity civil war' against the labouring classes. It does this through the elevation and ubiquity of actuarial and quantitative measures aimed at producing a new form of differentiated belonging: that of…

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to discuss the "Q-Step in the Community" programme, part of the Q-Step Centre based in the Sociology Department at Manchester Metropolitan University, designed to help address the skills gap in quantitative methods (QM) that is evident across parts of the UK higher-education sector. "Q-Step in…

In large-scale low-stake assessment such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), students may skip items (missingness) which are within their ability to complete. The detection and taking care of these noneffortful responses, as a measure of test-taking motivation, is an important issue in modern psychometric models.…

The analysis of exemplars of different quality is a potentially powerful tool in enabling students to understand assessment expectations and appreciate academic standards. Through a systematic review methodology, this paper synthesises exemplar-based research designs, exemplar implementation and the educational effects of exemplars. The review of…

The use of advanced quantitative methods within mixed methods research has been investigated in a limited capacity. In particular, hierarchical linear models are a popular approach to account for multilevel data, such as students within schools, but its use and value as the quantitative strand in a mixed methods study remains unknown. This article…

Numerous studies have investigated economies of scale and scope in higher education as a means of providing public and private providers of college and university teaching, research and other services and their stakeholders with knowledge of the cost structures that underpin provision in this economically and socially important sector. However,…

The role of the university in society and the economy is evolving. Universities produce knowledge that promotes technological developments, which are, in turn, critical to economic growth and competitiveness in the global economy. Therefore, it is increasingly expected that universities become more entrepreneurial and assume this third mission in…

Background: Despite the importance of social networks for health and well-being, relatively little is known about the ways in which adults with intellectual disabilities in the U.K. experience their social networks. Method: A systematic review was completed to identify research focused on the social networks of adults with intellectual…

This paper proposes a new application of Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) for estimating the student performance gap and how this can be used to assess changes of teaching quality at the individual unit-of-study level (module-level). Although there have been other examples in the literature that assess 'efficiency' in student outcomes, this is…

Effects of asking children to communicate through their drawings have been investigated using animate rather than inanimate drawing topics. The present study investigated the impact of a communication context on children's drawings of topics with contrasting animism. Three hundred and twenty-two children, 156 boys and 166 girls aged 6-11 years…

Lifelong learning is a long-standing European Union priority, with an emphasis on the need for it to be pursued by all, but particularly those at the risk of exclusion. This study explores participation in Portugal and the UK, countries at opposite ends of the European adult learning spectrum with markedly different contexts. Analysis reveals that…

University league tables give the image that there is a single dimension along which institutions can be placed. Most derive rankings from an aggregate score of multiple items, which often include opinion responses which has the potential to introduce sampling bias. This paper explores what happens when the two issues of dimensionality and…