Primary homework in England is widespread and contentious, yet research largely ignores its gendered impact on families. This netnographic study locates mother perspectives online to explore whether participation in mother-focused forums affords maternal cyber-agency in the homework debate. Findings suggest that many women, positioning themselves…

This book traces the historical background of liberal arts education from west to east, expounds its implication and fundamental goal of universities, and introduces its application in Western and Chinese universities, particularly its experimentation at University of Nottingham Ningbo China. It takes the University of Nottingham Ningbo China as…

School-to-school collaboration has been central to many improvement efforts over recent decades. In an attempt to promote both improvement and equity current developments in England have included changing formal governance arrangements to promote collaboration for improvement through "federations" and "chains" of schools.…

This paper is a study of collaborative partnerships in education. It uses qualitative research methodology to explore case studies of three partnerships within a British city. Written from the 'insider' perspective of a headteacher, it uses personal reflection to make sense of experience in relation to a context of unprecedented change in…

This article highlights the findings of an empirical research project, using an ethnographic approach, taking place over one academic year. It investigates the different forms of engagement that children may present, when acting in free play situations in a nursery in NW England, without direct adult intervention. This range of engagement includes…

Children's life chances are enhanced when relationships between home and educational settings are strong. This original piece of research involved second-year trainee teachers who were surveyed about their perceptions about parents and the nature of the partnership relationship. Research suggests that teachers act in accordance with their beliefs…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address a gap in the comparative research literature on vocational education and training (VET) and skill formation systems. It examines the impact of international technical standardisation and regulation on the design, organisation and delivery of apprenticeships in the aeronautical and aerospace sectors…

As part of a transnational degree programme, students in the UK and China were linked together to carry out group work. This was enabled by having two versions of our FHEQ Level 4 Sustainable Chemistry module; in person for UK students, and by distance learning for Chinese students. Groups were instructed to discuss issues relating to the UN…

This article draws on the notion of communal constructivism to explore its potential to frame and facilitate the development of evidence-informed practice. The explicit aspiration to nurture a research-informed workforce is prominent in discourse across policy makers, educational researchers and teacher professional groups in England; however,…

The Diversity in Teacher Education (DiTE) research programme is the first attempt to chronicle the origins, character and effects of different ways of training teachers in England since the influential Modes of Teacher Education project in the 1990s. Informed by DiTE's large-scale quantitative research and its smaller-scale qualitative studies,…

Social capital has recently emerged as an effective approach to rethink schools as wider learning ecosystems where students, teachers and families have greater access to learning resources through social interaction. Literature has not provided research-based assessment tools that document school leaders' abilities to weave social relationships…

Democratic principles and human rights, the core values of the Council of Europe, informed the development of the "Common European Framework of Reference for Languages" (CEFR; Council of Europe 2001. "Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.…

Internationalisation is now a key strategic priority for many universities. As part of this process, universities are increasingly looking to build a number of key strategic partnerships with a small number of like-minded institutions. This paper, based on a detailed study of three such partnerships, seeks to understand and theorise the process by…

One hundred years have passed since John Dewey's seminal Democracy and Education (1916), yet academics and practitioners continue to search for ways in which democratic relationships in education can be enacted. This article uses a case study of an English Co-operative school to explore how far becoming co-operative can support a shift in the type…

Collaboration with parents is widely regarded as important in the education of children and young people, yet teachers rarely feel sufficiently prepared for this task. Several studies indicate that initial teacher education (ITE) programmes struggle to address issues of family-school partnerships (FSP). Our purpose in this study was to assess…