The rationale for the study is to enhance our understanding of how young people learn and engage with vocational subjects within the lower secondary years of compulsory education. The concept of pre-vocational education has recently emerged to describe the initial transitional phase of preparing young people for employment in specific occupational…

The purpose of the study was to investigate effects of different school and teacher characteristics, such as municipal and independently-operated schools and teacher certification on grades in compulsory school, and the extent to which parental education confounds the relations between such characteristics and grades. Multilevel, multivariate,…

President Barack Obama's call for every state to require school attendance until age 18 may spark a flurry of action in some statehouses, but changing attendance laws will do little by itself to drive down the nation's dropout rates, experts on the issue say. In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama said states should require…

This article is based on ethnographic studies in the context of vocational education: two in Sweden and one in Finland. The Swedish data originate from the Vehicle programme and the Child and Recreation programme; the Finnish data originate from the social and health-care sector. In this sense, the authors' perspective is cross-cultural. The…

Inclusive education is a complex and multidimensional process that, among other aspirations, tries to foster the rights of every student to obtain a high-quality education. This process focuses on the diversity of needs of all students by increasing participation in learning, cultures, and communities and reducing exclusion within and from…

Background: This article engages with the tradition of educational transitions research, particularly with its attempt to evaluate the effect of exogenous variables on educational attainment. The study revisits a number of hypotheses that have attempted to explain the changing patterns of such effects throughout students' educational career,…

Coexistence and moral education are areas of great interest in Spanish compulsory education, especially in the period that comprises between 12 and 16 years of age, named "compulsory secondary education" in Spain. With the aim to improve the processes of coexistence within this level, this research team on education from the University…

The global discourse of human capital theory has long dominated educational development commitments. There is a huge body of literature which critiques how this discourse and associated global trends and targets have created a standardised blueprint for how education in low income countries should be carried out. While most attention has been…

This research-based volume presents a substantive, panoramic view of ways in which Australia and countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America engage in educational programs and practices to transform the learning processes and outcomes of their students. It reveals and analyzes national and global trajectories in key areas of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways in which learning is contextualised among the intersecting worlds of education, training and work. Design/methodology/approach: A case study methodology is used. Findings: It was found that contextualised learning is integral to industry-school transition strategies in senior secondary…

In this article, the author makes a distinction between two kinds of change: tinkering change and systemic change. Tinkering change includes reforms intended to address a specific deficiency or practice. Such tinkering change can be contrasted to what Shakespeare termed "sea change" in "The Tempest" ("a sea change into something rich and strange")…

This study examined what kinds of groups can be identified according to students' task-values across four subject domains (languages, math and science, social sciences, practical subjects) and the related gender differences using a person-centered approach. Latent class analysis was applied to classify 638 students (mean age = 15) into four…

The value assigned to "friluftsliv" (activities similar to outdoor education) in physical education teacher education (PETE) and in the physical education (PE) syllabus in Sweden does not seem to result in the implementation of "friluftsliv" in the practice of teaching in Swedish schools. This study investigates how the…

The title of this article comes from the editorial written for this journal by Olive Banks, Len Barton, Roger Dale, David Hargreaves, Roland Meighan, Ivan Reid and Graham Vulliamy (Banks et al. 1980, 4) that appeared in its first issue, and set out its remit. The seven scholars who wrote that editorial pledged to "publish high quality work of…

Over the past decade, Argentina created and implemented a compulsory lower-secondary education level, within an ambitious educational reform programme. This article addresses the reform at the national level, diverse provincial responses, and the particular way that the powerful province of Buenos Aires appropriated the structural change. The…