This predominantly conceptual paper explores "uncertainty": it foregrounds students engaged with climate change, in all its socio-political and more-than-human complexity, as political subjects within and beyond the school. It combines conceptual work on Rancièrian political philosophy with empirical work on teaching climate change in a…

Background: Understanding teachers' experiences throughout the school closures and reopenings that have characterized large periods of the COVID-19 pandemic provides us with unique insights into what it means to be a teacher during a global public health crisis. Aim and Method: To investigate teachers' narratives of their experiences, we conducted…

On the occasion of its sesquicentenary, which coincides with an extended period of school closures imposed due to the effects of a global virus pandemic, this paper analyses the Elementary Education Act of 1870, and in particular in relation to its implications for compulsory attendance at school. It did not introduce compulsory schooling but…

Since 1994, the London-based queer performance collective Duckie has produced thousands of events, from its regular Saturday club night to larger-scale immersive themed productions and, more recently, long-running projects working with specific underserved groups. In this edited interview, Duckie's three full-time employees, Simon Casson, Dicky…

Background: Many countries around the world imposed nationwide school closures to manage the spread of COVID-19. England closed its schools for most pupils in March 2020 and prepared to reopen schools to certain year groups in June 2020. Understanding teachers' lived experiences at this time of educational disruption is important, shedding light…

England and Wales since 2010, this article presents issues faced by teachers of art and design and their responses in practice. The current insistence on transparency in education emerges through policy that audits performativity, in a limiting skills bank. Practitioners in art and design are particularly affected by what I term 'the…

Outdoor learning experiences can invoke feelings of uncertainty and discomfort, acting to disrupt human-environment narratives. In this article, the "performance" of nonhuman nature and discomfort in outdoor learning is considered, told through two vignettes from residential field trips with secondary age students, held at Slapton Ley…

This study examines the personal and professional development of 34 pre-service teachers who participated in a study abroad program for education majors in Brighton, England. The participants completed a variety of assignments and learning activities before, during, and after the program, including 20 hours of observation in area schools. The…

During the last two decades, a number of successive policy initiatives have attempted to professionalise the further education sector in England: professional qualifications have been rewritten, made compulsory and then returned to voluntary status; professional bodies have been established, briefly promoted, and then neglected; professional…

While policy-makers in Britain can justifiably lay claim to creating the term NEET to define young people who do not engage in formal learning, training or employment, the high number who fall into, and remain in, this category continues to challenge them. This, in part, is attributable to the extended use of the term NEET to capture all young…

While a great deal of attention has been given to evaluating how well policies are implemented, that is, how well they are realised in practice, less attention has been paid to understanding and documenting the ways in which schools actually deal with the multiple, and sometimes opaque and contradictory demands of different "types" of…

This study is based on interviews with 25 programme leaders at two universities in England. Programme leadership is ubiquitous and essential to effective university operations, yet there is surprisingly little research on the role. It is an ambiguous and complex form of leadership, existing as it does in the space between standard academic and…

At the heart of learning and teaching in studio based design subjects lies the engagement by students and tutors in activities which are based on practical work simulating design professionals' work. We report here on a research project which explored the student/tutor relationship in design pedagogies across a range of academic levels and…

This paper presents selected findings from a wider study on the expression of health within physical education (PE) curricula in secondary schools in England and Wales. The study revealed that the expression of health in PE broadly reflected ideologies associated with promoting "fitness for life" and "fitness for performance"…

Empirical studies have found that participation in international service increases learners' intercultural competence, language skills, appreciation of cultural differences, and tolerance for ambiguity. While previous studies suggest that international service experience is potentially transformative in nature, the present study examined…