This paper explores how a small but growing number of schools in England are gradually extending their roles to act as, what I term, agents of "slow renewal": supporting long-term change in children's complex family and community environments, through a series of strategically-aligned, small-scale, locally-bespoke actions, intentionally…

Contemporary discourse on Muslims and Islam has included a reassessment of traditional educational institutions; "makatib" and "madaris." Hitherto, understanding insider aspirations and anxieties appear to be rare. To this end, the perspectives of Muslim female teachers in "makatib" (supplementary schools for Muslims,…

The reduction in local control and oversight of schooling represented by the growth of Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) in England raises critical issues for public policy. These include the articulation and exercise of power in the governance of MATs, the future of democratic governance of local services and accountability. Applying Foucault's…

Background: Service user involvement is imperative in the delivery of mental health services. However, a paucity of research has explored how individuals with a learning disability find waiting for therapy. Therefore, this project aimed to explore how service users accessing a community learning disability team experienced waiting for…

This paper explores young people's aspirations and the influence of community drama in shaping these arts-focussed aspirations. Research was undertaken using creative drama methods with young people who attend a youth drama group. The young people identified career and personal aspirations, recognising the hard work and support that it can take to…

This article investigates the work of Henry Morris (1889-1961), in particular his ideas on the Cambridgeshire village colleges. It is now 90 years since the first of these was founded in Sawston in 1930, and the article aims to address the issue of whether Morris's views on education and democracy encapsulated in the village colleges still have…

This paper examines the intergenerational effects of deindustrialisation on the processes and experiences of education at 'Lillydown Primary', a state primary school in a former mining community in the north of England. Complicating Avery Gordon's notion of 'haunting', and drawing on conceptualisations of affect and community 'being-ness', it…

Unprecedented global temperatures have brought the question of how to teach sensitive issues of climate change to the fore. In this paper we suggest that a refocusing on adaptation productively shifts the debate to climate justice and practical solutions to building community resilience. The paper examines a practice-led project that sought to…

Psychological literacy refers to the ability of a psychology student to use psychological knowledge, rather than merely "learn" it, in the context of personal, social, and organizational issues. Embedding psychological literacy in assessment is a critical step in helping students develop this capacity. This report presents an innovative…

Attempts to solve perceived policy problems in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) have seen national and international jurisdictions increasingly centralising ITE curricula, coupled with monitoring and auditing of outcomes against defined sets of professional standards. This paper reports the findings of a documentary analysis of 75 items of publicly…

Social isolation and loneliness are reported as having significant impacts on health, especially for older people. Policy concern has led to the creation of interventions to try and tackle these issues, including the funding of community-based support groups. The National Lottery Ageing Better Fund, 2015-2022 supported voluntary and community…

Enterprise challenges are teaching activities that allow students to develop and pitch a creative idea in response to a real-life challenge, usually posed by a charitable organisation. Students work in teams to develop their ideas and draw on their subject knowledge, as well as entrepreneurial processes, to articulate their product or service that…

Examining the entanglement of democracy and social justice in education and the relationship to social mobility, this paper critiques the individualising nature of social mobility in policy discourse as inimical to human flourishing and education as a public good. The rhetoric of social mobility which responsibilises individuals for their success,…

Teachers who mentor student teachers have a range of mentoring, coaching and teaching experience. Appropriate professional development for mentors takes consideration of this experience as well as the age phase, context (for example, main-stream or special education setting) and route that the student teacher is taking into teaching (school-based…

Lesson study is a collaborative and contextualised approach to professional learning that involves small groups of teachers working together to design and reflect on the teaching of a research lesson. Although it is a well-established approach to professional learning in classroom-based subjects, research on its effectiveness within physical…