Widening participation in England has been framed around two primary needs; raising attainment and raising aspiration. Whilst aspiration is complex, policy definitions often frame it in narrow economic terms and see access to higher education as primarily about developing a workforce, the underlying logic being that to improve social mobility that…

The quality of early childhood programs plays a crucial role in improving outcomes for children. Play-based practices are considered a vital component in early childhood development as they offer opportunities for children to learn and grow. Despite this, the field is still trying to understand the role of teachers in facilitating play and their…

Educational leaders are firmly committed to detecting students at the first sign of concern for both major disorders of childhood: internalizing (e.g., extremely shy, anxious, withdrawn) and externalizing (e.g., noncompliant, aggressive, disruptive). Input from educators who have been engaged in the universal behavioral screening process contains…

This critical qualitative study focused on what are the factors that contribute to high learner performance at a public school in South Africa. Purposive sampling was used and the data was produced via interviews with the participants (the principal, ten teachers, five ex learners and two parents) as well as observations of various school…

Background/Context: The landscape of English-medium independent schools today is increasingly multilingual, challenging traditional monolingual norms of English testing and teaching. Multilingual learners--students who are able to navigate school in more than one language--are more vulnerable to the negative impacts of standardized tests in…

Over the past decade there has been a growing number of studies that focus on Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), however, there has only recently been a push to examine these institutions with an asset-based lens given that HSIs may be doing more with less. This study examined how HSIs integrate student and institutional identities and engage…

This policy analysis, informed by ethnographic techniques, reviewed 12 Florida school district ESOL policies. A priori coding of these policies was conducted using criteria pulled from the literature on culturally responsive practice (CRP). Subsequent observations and practitioner interviews within two schools from the same district were conducted…

The EdResearch for "Action Overview Series" summarizes the research on key topics to provide K-12 education decision makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students. Authors -- leading experts from across the field of education research -- are charged with highlighting key findings from…

This study examines undergraduate senior students' participation in high-impact practices (HIPs) and the relationship of that participation with engagement indicators, perceived gains, and overall satisfaction, as well as institutional outcomes of persistence and graduation based on race/ethnicity, first-generation status, and low-income status.…

The rhetoric of the reading wars has become more than just an armchair academic debate, but is encoded now in the very laws, house and senate bills, and legislative policies of the majority of the states. In turn, these policies are powered by staggering sums of money such as the 90-million-dollar investment of Fulton County, Georgia in a revamp…

Calculus is a stepping stone to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees and careers, but countless college students abandon their STEM ambitions after an encounter with calculus--or to avoid taking the intimidating course altogether. While traditional approaches have focused on prerequisite courses--which often repeat high…

Background & Purpose: According to McClintock, persons and groups exercise formative justice as a strategy of selecting the behaviors, powers, and potentials that ought to receive educational attention to achieve their maximization. We argue that the question of what motivates individuals and collectives to utilize certain capacities to…

This chapter reviews multiple complementary and divergent descriptions of practices that have been identified as holding particular promise for high impact on college student success and offers a possible map of practices to illustrate key features and relationships.

Nostalgia rightly elicits suspicion, even derision, for to give oneself up to longing for something from the past runs the risk of compromising one's capacity to act effectively in the present. But this does not make nostalgia, "by definition," either sentimentally reactionary or wistfully unreflective. On the contrary, in the education…

This chapter introduces three categories of unintended consequences from school inspections: (1) intended strategic behaviour where schools manipulate the inspection assessment through window dressing, misrepresentation or gaming, (2) unintended strategic behaviour when schools narrow their educational practices as a result of the behaviour of the…