This paper reflects on two research projects undertaken a decade apart. The first, "Celebrating creativity collaboratively (CCC)," undertaken in 2009-10 (see Fitzgerald and Smith 2012), explored how a collaborative approach could inspire student teachers of English to become competent, confident teachers of creative writing. The second,…

The cry that today's higher education students are particularly individualist is a commonly-heard one. In England, the considerable personal cost of tuition is often blamed for creating a series of negative student traits, including consumerism (an idea that one has bought the right to a degree) and individualism (a sense of the individual as the…

Escape rooms are an increasingly popular form of live-action entertainment in which teams of players need to solve puzzles to escape or reach a narrative goal within a specified time limit. Current research suggests that this style of activity promotes the effective use of team skills in the classroom, which are desirable in the workplace, and…

The article reports data from an aspect of the study which aimed to study the nature of children's interactions and their perceptions of ability-based groups in a primary classroom in England. Previous studies on ability-based group have mainly used quantitative research designs to study children's interactions and appeared to award less…

In this article, we report on a pilot study to investigate the use of aspects of team-based learning (TBL) in mathematics to raise the aspirations of young people from disadvantaged areas. The study involved employing elements of TBL to deliver a mathematics revision course to students who were compulsorily resitting GCSE mathematics in schools…

This paper presents findings from a study into children's media and information literacy (MIL). The purpose of the study was to understand English primary school children's (ages 8-11) attitude toward the internet as well as their ability to find, use and evaluate information. This then informed the development of a MIL programme of learning for…

Gender balance in computing education is a decades-old issue that has been the focus of much previous research. In K-12, the introduction of mandatory computing education goes some way to giving all learners the opportunity to engage with computing throughout school, but a gender imbalance still persists when computer science becomes an elective…

This paper reports on initial findings from the Visible Maths Pedagogy research project, a collaboration between an academic researcher and two teacher researchers (the paper's authors). The aim of the project was to explore the effects of making pedagogy more visible on students' success in school mathematics. We adopted a Participatory Action…

This work applies a cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) framework to understand how the outcome of a high school laboratory task may be positively influenced without making changes to the hands-on practical task itself. Informed by cognitivism, novel practical instruction videos that were based on the same video but had different audio…

This action research study, drawing on participatory frameworks, investigated whether a Year 10 English class (15-16-year-olds), including struggling readers, could develop their reading self-concept and 'voice'. The research aimed to extend findings from a larger, mixed-method study, developing reading comprehension and motivation with younger…

Increased levels of internationalization have led to individuals working in multicultural organizations, a trend that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. To navigate these environments successfully, more emphasis is being placed on the importance of higher education in preparing and arming the future workforce with the international…

Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) has been widely used in both industry and in schools over at least the last twenty years. The Industry Hothousing variant of CPS is an intensive, time-constrained workshop-based process to build mutual trust between customers and industry experts in order to synergically develop creative solutions. The main…

The concept of cultural literacy as a dialogic social practice celebrates alternative perspectives. Navigating multiple perspectives in dialogue requires high 'tolerance of ambiguity' characterised by a positive, open and flexible attitude towards uncertainty. This article aims to explore how provisional language is used in classroom dialogue to…

Digital capabilities are recognized as key skills that students must possess to learn and work in our increasingly digital world and have been the subject of a growing focus over recent years. Similarly, smartphones and, to a lesser degree, tablets are now ubiquitous within the student body, and many academics are beginning to leverage these…

While there is a growing body of research on affordances and benefits of integrating augmented reality (AR) technology in education, barriers to engagement (often misinterpreted as negative results) can sometimes be overlooked and unpublished. Based on observation and reflections on 6 conducted classroom sessions, together with the interview…