This article examines textual traces of the standard language ideology within current education policy in England, focusing on post-2010 reforms which are characterised by a (re)shift towards conservatism, discipline, and standards. Using tools and methods from critical stylistics and the critical discourse analysis of language policy, I…

The US uses an evidence-based approach to education (US-EBE) as a strategy for pursuing two major goals: (1) to raise achievement in the US overall by facilitating improvement among all students, including students in disadvantaged groups; (2) to narrow achievement gaps between socially advantaged and disadvantaged groups by levelling up…

Public education systems are often large, diverse, fragmented, and historically very hard to change. While previous reforms targeted primarily school staff, large-scale policies now include a broader audience including non-system organizations (e.g., knowledge brokering organizations) that may influence directly or indirectly policy…

Homework is a core pedagogical tool used by schools around the world. Yet concern for heavy homework load has been raised regarding stress on students and families and how it may overshadow opportunities for non-academic development. Drawing support from Self-Determination Theory and Hope Theory, an innovative intervention project was designed to…

This research was conducted to examine the influence of parental involvement, in the form of parent conversations, on mathematics achievement for high school girls. Data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) public-use file provided a sample of 13,694 students, including 6,592 girls for our analyses. A scale for measuring…

Despite the outsized influence the Catholic school sector in the United States has on policymaking, research into the organization of Catholic schools has not kept pace with contemporary educational research trends. In this brief paper, we diagnose how conceptual and empirical decisions made within the field of Catholic education resulted in the…

Raciolinguistic ideologies are sets of beliefs about language which frame racialised communities as displaying linguistic deficiencies which require remediation. These ideologies are tethered to European colonialism and white supremacist logics which have long been normalised and actively written into teacher education policy in England. In this…

How are teacher pension benefits funded? Under traditional plans, the full cost of career teachers' benefits far exceeds the contributions designated for them. The gap between the two has three pieces, which may (with some license) be mnemonically tagged the three R's of pension funding: "redistribution," "return," and…

The COVID-related financial market decline and economic recession have raised new concerns regarding the financial sustainability of retirement plans for state and local government employees, the largest group of whom is public school teachers. Using data from the Public Plans Database and the National Income and Product Accounts, I analyze…

Purpose: We assess whether school start times predict the engagement and achievement outcomes of middle grades students. Our focus on middle grades is important because biological changes in sleep often begin when adolescents are in middle school and because middle school is a time when more students struggle academically. Research…

This paper examines the recent growth of experiential learning (EL) and the university-community (or so-called town-gown, TG) connections created as a result of this expansion. The research is framed by critical scholarship on the nature and role of the university and the place of liberal education specifically, as well as policy drivers aimed at…

Concern that children are not engaging in enough physical activity (PA) to bring about health benefits is a crisis globally. This paper aims to examine primary school-based PA initiatives from within an English context. A qualitative inquiry was adopted and underpinned by the socio-ecological model. The study was presented through a realist case…

School attendance/absenteeism (SA/A) is a crucial indicator of health and development in youth but educational policies and health-based practices in this area rely heavily on a simple metric of physical presence or absence in a school setting. SA/A data suffer from problems of quality (reliability, construct validity, data integrity) and utility…

This paper analyses the experiences of English primary school leaders who perform critical roles in interpreting government policy and navigating the landscape to design relationship and sex education (RSE) for their pupils. It considers schools as sites of political contestation and educators as policy actors, the voices of whom are often absent…

Defined as the tendency for structures and groups to "grow more alike, to develop similarities" policy convergence is a recognized factor in policy analysis across fields. In the arts education sphere, this can mean adopting similar curriculum standards, imitating an after-school arts program, or even borrowing a large-scale metropolitan…