This essay explores a student teacher's experience teaching an identity-themed poetry unit to a Year 9 class at an all-boys comprehensive school through the lens of one student's writing. Investigating an intimate poem, produced at the end of a difficult lesson, reveals the importance of allowing students the space to bring their individual…

Sarah Black wanted to remedy Year 9's lack of knowledge about nineteenth-century politics. With just five lessons to work with, she decided to devise a sequence on Gladstone and Disraeli, shaping the sequence with an enquiry question that invited argument about change and continuity. Black analyses the status and function of different layers of…

Students at age 11 or 12 took a course where scientific skills were taught discretely rather than in an integrated approach alongside scientific knowledge and understanding. There is evidence that this may be a more beneficial approach for developing scientific skills. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

The commentary (1) uses the U. S. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as a prototype for examining standardized reading achievement tests at the item level, and (2) sketches an alternative based on an initiative underway in the United Kingdom.

The authors critique the mechanistic notion of aspirations running through much research and policy-making on educational and vocational outcomes. They present a performative model, with individuals drawing on limited social resources to express aspirations within constrained contexts. This argument is illustrated by discussion of the findings of…

This paper examines the King's Oxfordshire Assessment Project, which took place in the UK and explored the use of coursework as a means of terminal assessment. In particular, it considers the findings of the six English teachers who were involved. In a standards-based curriculum all six teachers supported 100% coursework. The paper looks at how,…

Regional Australian students were surveyed to explore their understanding and knowledge of the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion and climate change. Results were compared with a parallel study undertaken in 1991 in a regional UK city. The comparison was conducted to investigate whether more awareness and understanding of these issues is…

This article applies Engestrom's Activity Theory (AT) as an analytical lens to identify defining characteristics of the collaborative creative music making activities of composing and arranging. Attention is paid to the complex interrelationships among the various elements of interaction in children's collaborative creative music making as…

This report describes how the education system in the United States compares with education systems in the other Group of Eight (G-8) countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom) that are among the world's most economically developed countries and among the United States' largest economic partners.…

Objective: Although current UK policy argues that schools have a key role in raising health standards, emphasis on the core curriculum restricts teachers' opportunities to undertake health promotion activities. The challenge is to design effective health promotion interventions that minimize pressures on teaching staff and curriculum space. Here…

In this paper, we report on survey and focus group data relating to the activities and perceptions of learning with Web 2.0 technologies of students aged between 11 and 16 years in 27 UK secondary schools. The study confirms that these learners had high levels of access to Web 2.0 technologies and that Web 2.0 activities were prolific. However,…

This paper reports on an evaluation of a drama-based Healthy Relationships programme on domestic violence delivered on a pilot basis to Year 8 pupils. The programme included a play delivered by a local theatre-in-education company followed by a series of weekly workshops. Eighty-five pupils in a secondary school located in an area with high rates…

Objective: To assess the sexual health knowledge of secondary school pupils in order to ascertain whether the current government public health and education policies are having any impact on pupils' sexual health. Design: Results obtained from a questionnaire as part of a two-phase intervention study. Setting: Nineteen mixed-sex, state secondary…

Adolescent health service provision is an area of growing concern in the UK, where a number of studies have indicated that young people in their teenage years find accessing formal health services difficult. The Bodyzone Project in Oxfordshire is an innovative programme aimed at bringing health services into schools to ensure greater…